Rehoboam

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

For many first-year college students, there is a near universal phenomenon that happens known as the freshman 15. If you're not familiar with the freshman 15, the freshman 15 happens when you have a drastic change in your eating patterns, your sleeping patterns, your exercise patterns, everything changes, you're not eating, usually you're not eating as well, and the 15 is the pounds that you gain as a freshman, okay? So you gain roughly 15 pounds. My son and others are about to go to college. Consider this your heads up, okay? The freshman 15, it happens so often that it has its own title, that I can just say freshman 15 and you know exactly what I mean. There is another lesser known phenomena that happens with college students. It is the sophomore slump. The sophomore slump is different. It is the trap that a college student falls into after overcoming the freshman

15. Okay, so you fall into the freshman 15, you know, you gain the 15 pounds or however many it is. For me, it was the freshman 30, okay? And, and you know, the freshman 15 happens to you, but then you snap out of it, right? You recognize what's going on, you snap out of it, you adjust your habits, you begin kind of eating healthy, you kind of take control, and you overcome, okay? So you overcome the freshman 15, but in the aftermath of that overcoming, you think that you have the entire process licked. You think you've got it all figured out. So what do you do? You let down your guard. You relax your diligence on those habits. You don't try as hard. You don't think as creatively. This is the sophomore slump. In the music world, the result of the sophomore slump is the one-hit wonder. The one-hit wonder, it's a band that overcomes adversity. They kind of make

it through their version of the Freshman 15 and they strike goal with that first album, but then they just relax and they never really duplicate that success. They get into a sophomore slump. Spiritually, a sophomore slump can become much more dangerous. It can become a lifestyle, actually. You go through a tough battle, maybe your first big spiritual battle, and you make the mistake of thinking that it's all over. And today we're going to see this in one of our hidden figures. Today we're going to continue our summer series on hidden figures. In our summer series we've looked at small players, right? So not players like Moses or David or Joshua, not looking at how people influence millions. We're looking at regular people in insignificant lives, relatively, small players. These small players are caught up in a big story. So the Old Testament again is like the Wild West Testament.

When you read the Old Testament, things are grisly out there. Things are weird. Things are like frontier. They're strange and they're kind of wonderful. And in their stories, we see God at work on a grand scale. So this is the big story. Small players, big story, they inform our real life. Romans 15, 4 says that we have Old Testament stories for our instruction, that they were written down so that we can learn from them. So we are in fact those same small players in a big story. And a couple weeks ago we kicked it off with Jonathan, then we talked about Uzzah, and then last week was Noah. And this week we're going to be turning to 2 Chronicles 10. We're going to read about King Rehoboam. Second Chronicles is that part of your Bible where the pages are still kind of stuck together. So if you need to kind of break those apart, you pretty much go to, you know, go to Ezra and turn left,

and you'll hit Second Chronicles. Second Chronicles 10, we're going to be reading about King Rehoboam. I realize that some of you have heard about King Rehoboam recently. In fact, last week in adult Bible study We studied some of the life of King Rehoboam. Two weeks before that, my wife was telling me that grade school studied the life of King Rehoboam. So as we're talking, my wife and I were talking about a specific lesson that I'm in the middle of learning. And she said, this will be the third week in a row I've heard about King Rehoboam. Okay, we gotta pay attention. So I'm excited, I'm okay with repeating the story a little bit, but we're going to go a little bit further than what you guys went through in an adult Bible study. Rehoboam is the son of King Solomon, that Solomon, the big, great, wise Solomon, the wisest man that has ever lived. And so he had really big shoes to fill.

And so the people, right after Solomon died, the people go to Rehoboam and they ask him a question. We see that in 2 Chronicles 10, 4. 10-4 it says, your father made our yoke heavy now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us and we will serve you. So in order to solve that or figure out that proposition, Rehoboam looks to his advisors. So first he starts with his father's advisor so we see that in verses 6 through 10. It says then came Rehoboam took counsel with the old men who had stood before Solomon and his father while he was yet alive saying, How do you advise me to answer the people? And they said to him, If you will be good to this people and please them and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever. So the old men, these old men in verse 6, these are battle- tested guys. These are grisly saints who have withstood insurrection. They have

fought side by side. They have wisdom. They even have wisdom in how they open, you know, a can of beans. I mean, they got wisdom coming out of every pore and they tell him, be good to them and they'll be yours forever. And then after he seeks out the old men, Rehoboam seeks out the young men. And as he seeks both of them out, I'll just skip to how he answers the people. He answers the people in verses 13, 14. He says, And the king answered them harshly. Rehoboam answered them harshly. And forsaking the counsel of the old men, King Rehoboam spoke to them according to the counsel of the young So in other words, he didn't listen to the old man He listened to the young men and here's what the young man told him to do said my father made your yoke heavy But I will add to it my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with Scorpions, okay, so he's not playing

King Ray of all decides I'm gonna be tough. I'm gonna act tough I'm actually gonna make it harder for you. And just so we're tracking, just so we're tracking, right here is Rehoboam's freshman 15. Right here is where Rehoboam, he's got all the power now, you know, there have been rapid changes to his ability to make unilateral decisions. He now has all of the power in in the land. He's dreamt about it, I'm sure most of his life and now he has it, but he mishandles it. He blows it. He arrogantly pushes aside the wisdom and he believes his own hype. Because what are those young men telling him? Those young men are telling him exactly what he wants to hear, right? He believes his own hype. He drinks his own Kool-Aid and the result of all that is rejection from the people. We read in verse 16. It says, When all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them,

the people answered the king, what portion do we have in David? Meaning, we don't have a portion with you. We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. Each of you to your own tent to Israel, look now to your own house, David. So all Israel went to their tent. It's not just telling you the geography of where they went. It's saying they are rejecting in their hearts. They are rejecting that king. This is a soft rebellion, okay?

On top of that, what really made everything worse is that Rehoboam believes that this bad decision is going to stick. So he sees all of what we just saw, and he's like, no, they'll come around. So what does he do, verses 18 and 19? King Rehoboam sent Hadorum, who was taskmaster over the forced labor. and the people of Israel stoned him to death with stones. Okay, so he sends the taskmaster to go and inflict all of that rule that he just said. He goes, I'm gonna discipline you with scorpions. Well, Hadorum is the guy with scorpions. He's the guy that's gonna go whip them all into shape. And what do they do? They stone him. King Rehoboam knows the jig is up, so King Rehoboam quickly mounted his chariot to flee Jerusalem, verse 19. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.

Right here at this moment is where the story, usually where the story of Rehoboam stops. If you're doing a Bible study, if you're preaching on this, whatever, this is where you stop and you say, you know, don't use your authority unwisely. And that is good. That's really good. However, Rehoboam's story continues, so we're going to continue with it too, because right after he flees, right after the Kingdom is divided, he flees to the southern part. So now Israel is divided into a southern kingdom and a northern kingdom. He's in the southern kingdom. When Rehoboam gets there, he gathers his army for battle. And this is typically what young men are going to want to do, right? They're going to want to go to war, they're going to want to hash it out, they're going to say, yeah, let's just see who's got the bigger muscles and let the best man win, right? But then, when all that's happening, I mean, he's mounted the warriors to go to war.

What happens? Shammiah happens. Shammiah, the old prophet, speaks up. Second Chronicles 11-4, this is what Shammiah said to King Rehobo, and says, thus says the Lord, you shall not go up or fight against your relatives. Return every man to his home, for this thing is from me." So they listen to the word of the Lord and return and did not go against Jerusalem. In this moment, Rehoboam reverses his decision-making process from before. Because this time, Rehoboam listens to the old man. He listens to Shemaiah and when he does, you look at the rest of Second Chronicles 11, you see immense blessing in the life of Rehavon and in the kingdom of Rehavon. Immense. Fortified cities are happening all over. King Rehavon establishes order. He welcomes priests from all over Israel to serve the Lord. He sets up his children as a blessing to the kingdom. Everything you read, it's all

good, it's all blessing, it all happens in the aftermath of him, of Rehoboam, listening to the wisdom and going, okay, I'm not gonna make that same mistake, I'm gonna do something different. It even says in verse 17 that, it's talking about God sending people who feared him to Rehoboam, and it says, they strengthened the kingdom of Judah and for three years they made Rehoboam the son of Solomon secure for they walked for three years in the way of Solomon and David and in other places you understand that Rehoboam begins to follow the law of the Lord and so what you see here in 2nd Chronicles 11 is Rehoboam who was the young idiot you see him start to learn the lesson and you see him become blessed immensely for over three years. He was learning not just that he ignored the old men. He's not just learning that lesson. He's learning that he didn't walk with God, that he didn't follow the law of the Lord.

And this is when Rehoboam, what we're seeing right here, this is Rehoboam overcoming. This is Rehoboam dealing with the freshman 15, dealing with like I really screwed up. Now the kingdom's divided. Instead of going to war though, he follows the Lord, blessing happens, and Rehoboam is overcoming. We have these same kinds of overcoming moments. Maybe we see victory after a long sin struggle. Maybe we finally have restoration on a soured relationship. Maybe we develop a spiritual habit and we begin to see fruit. We have a season where God takes really small obedience and begins to really allow you to take big leaps forward spiritually. There's a lot of stories of this kind of blessing in our church where the Lord has graciously restored marriages, provided jobs, provided comfort in a time of hurting. We've seen these moments, right, where it's happened. These are good moments.

We should celebrate these moments, but these moments are not forever. We don't always, we don't go through the freshman 15 once and then overcome it and just ride high forever. That's not how it works. It doesn't last forever and for Rehoboam, it lasted about three years, for about three years because somewhere along the way, Rehoboam falls into the same trap from a few years earlier. Here's how the chronicler says it in 2 Chronicles 12. Remember I said all of 11 is the blessing of Rehoboam, but in 12, at the very beginning of 12, verse one, we see this, we see when the rule of Rehoboam was established and he was strong, he abandoned the law of the Lord and all Israel with him. When the rule of Rehoboam was established and he was strong, he abandoned the law of the Lord and all Israel with him. Rehoboam has success. Rayaborn has made wise choices. It's been good.

He might even be grateful for it all, but he begins to believe the hype again. He begins to drink his own Kool-Aid again. And this is his sophomore slump. He made it through the first battle, but now that it's three years later, he's slipping again, he's relaxed his guard. This, this right here is the moment that we need to watch out for. It's the thing that happens, uh, that catches the best of us. We have success and we receive blessing, but then we make the mistake in our hearts of attributing that blessing, that success to ourselves.

We believe the blessing has come to us because we have earned it. And so we might not say it out loud, but we believe I invested my time or my money and my resources wisely, and that's why I'm reaping benefits over here. I did that. I'm the one who invested in Tesla, and so now I'm reaping the benefits. It's mine. I can claim victory over that. Or even in our marriage, like I avoided the traps of a bad marriage. I really, I kept up date night. I did all these things and that's why I have a good marriage now.

Or I raised my kids the right way. And that's why I got good kids now. All these things are very easy to attribute to ourselves, right? We see good in our lives, but then we attribute it to ourselves and we fall in a sophomore slump with that. We believe we have earned our blessings. We believe we have earned our own blessings. And it's only a matter of time if we believe this. It's only a matter of time until we are spiritually bankrupt. Let me say that again. If we fall into the trap of believing that we have earned our own blessings, if we look around our lives and we say, you know what, this is the result of my hard work, my diligent planning, my, my, my, right? It will only be a matter of time until we are spiritually bankrupt, until there's nothing left in there. And what I wanna give you is I wanna give you three indicators in the life of Raya Baum on how you can tell if you are spiritually bankrupt,

and I also wanna give you three ways, or four ways to pray. So three ways you can tell, four ways you can pray. The first way that you can tell that you are attributing blessing to yourself, believing that you've earned your own blessing is that gratitude has faded. Gratitude has faded for rayon balm it is implied That because he he abandoned the law of Lord law of the Lord when he became strong In other words, he took that strength that established Kingdom. He took that for granted He believed that he had earned it and and he was not he was no longer grateful I don't know if you've ever seen children

Who are completely spoiled? opening Christmas presents on Christmas morning. It is underwhelming to say the very least. When you have spoiled children who believe, who just get everything they want anytime they want, they get to Christmas morning and their minds, you can see it, right? They're not good at pretending yet because they're little. You can see them, they're thinking, this is like every other day for me. This is like every other day in my life when I get what I want. And they might try to drum up some gratitude like, oh, thanks. But it's just all forced and weird because there really is no gratitude there. It's nothing special. They get everything they want every day of their life. Why is Christmas morning different? When God blesses you and you believe that you have earned it, there is nothing special about it because it becomes like a paycheck. When God blesses you, you feel the same as you feel when

you receive a paycheck. It's the exact same thing for you. You try to drum up the gratitude. You try to say, oh yeah, oh okay, yeah, I'm really grateful, but it's not there because you believe you burned it. And without gratitude, blessings arrive spoiled. There is no freshness in them. They don't bring joy to you. They don't help you glorify God. It is only a matter of time When you when your gratitude is gone. It's only a matter of time until you are spiritually bankrupt We see that in the life of Ray and bone if you do you struggle to muster gratitude? You might believe that you have earned your own blessing the second thing that you need to see from the life of Ray and bone This might be an indicator that you've lost your wonder. You've lost your wonder. This might be an indicator that you believe you've earned your own blessings. In my imagination, this is exactly what happened to Rehoboam.

I don't know what the text doesn't say it, but because it happens so often with us, it's easy, I think, to see it in Rehoboam. We encounter a problem, a solution, a rush, Arises to that problem and then we work backward from there to see how it worked And so we just we just reverse engineer that whole solution into a principle and we say hey look When you have this problem this thing works when you have this problem this thing where I mean this is what parenting books are made of Okay parenting books you crack one open. You know like when your kid does this here's what to look for Here's how to fix it right there is nothing wrong with that right? There's nothing wrong with learning a method, but typically, if it's anything more important than changing the oil in your car, it can become dangerous. There's nothing wrong with learning a method, but when it comes to following Jesus, it is

dangerous to put your faith in a method. When it comes to following Jesus, it is dangerous to put your faith in a method. For example, a prayer that you pray specifically that always works. So like, you know, maybe a guy named J.Bes prays a certain prayer. Okay? And you gotta, if you pray this prayer exactly, then it's going to bless your life in this way and everything will be fine. That's really dangerous spiritually. That's really toxic spiritually. you're essentially turning God into a slot machine, right? You're like, hey, or a vending machine, right? Where you're just going, okay, yeah, hey, need, you know, I need a new truck, so I'm gonna pray this certain prayer and now God owes me a new truck. That's not how it works, it's really dangerous. We do the same thing with like a preacher that always has the right answer, maybe we have like a favorite podcast,

we're like, oh, I always get, or like a favorite worship song. There's nothing wrong with having a favorite worship song or even a favorite prayer or favorite preach, it's fine. But there's a difference and you know what the difference is, you turn the corner and you begin to put your faith in that method, not in the Lord. And what happens when you do that, when you begin to trust the method, you boil all spirituality down to that method.

And when you trust the method, you don't pray. The only time you pray is over dinner. When you trust a method, then you judge other people that don't use your method. When you trust a method, you can turn it on and off. When something goes wrong in your life, it's just about you adjusting your behavior to get the method just right, to get the results that you want. It's really, really toxic. before long, you're just putting yourself in God's place. You're just treating God like a vending machine. If you can pray the right prayer, if you can do the right button combination, you know, and then hit the right thing, then you get exactly what you want. That's really spiritually dangerous and toxic. So just a question, do you, you know, we talked about gratitude, struggling to muster gratitude. Do you struggle to pray for difficult things? To trust Jesus in moments of uncertainty? Is the only time you pray over dinner? Because if that's true,

you might be headed towards some spiritual bankruptcy. You might be headed toward believing that you've earned your own blessing. Here's a third way to tell. A third way to tell from the in the life of Rehoboam. You only see Jesus working in the rear view mirror. From what we can tell from the life of Rehoboam, whenever he thought about what God did on his behalf, it was always three years ago. God worked on my behalf three years ago. And like I said, he could have even been grateful for God stopping him from going to war. He could have even been like, I see the Lord's wisdom now in dividing the kingdom and giving me the southern half, it's fine. But there was a lack, a specific lack in Rehoboam of something current. It's interesting to do the math. If you look at the next verse in 2 Chronicles 12-2,

2 Chronicles 12-2 says, in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, because they had been unfaithful to the Lord, She-Shak, King of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem. And so we're not there yet, But in 2 Chronicles 12, too, it says, in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, I want you to remember something, that it was three years, three years for Rehoboam until he abandoned the law of the Lord. And it wasn't until five years in that the King of Egypt came against him. That means that Rehoboam followed the Lord for three years, felt that blessing, rode that wave. And then there was around two years where Rehoboam felt the blessing, but his heart was in rebellion.

About two years, Rehoboam's still feeling the after effects. He's still riding high off of those three years where he's following the law of the Lord. And then after three years, he stops, but he still feels the blessing. In those two years, Rehoboam looked and felt fine, but he was headed for disaster. His heart was in rebellion. Some of us today have been walking with the Lord for a really long time and we remember God's faithfulness to us in years ago mode. And we are even grateful for what the Lord did X number of years ago. You feel fine. You seem fine. But it could still be that your heart is in total rebellion. None of us are above this. None of us, we only, when we only see Jesus working in the rear view mirror, we remember what he did, but there's nothing current going on. Hebrews 3, 12 through 13 says, "'Take care brothers, lest there be in any of you,

"'an evil unbelieving heart leading you "'to fall away from the living God, "'but exhort one another every day, "'as long as it is called today, "'that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. If we only see Jesus working in the rear view mirror and we don't see Jesus working today, as long as it is called today, if we miss that, then our hearts have a way of deceiving us.

Where we begin to say to the Lord, Jesus, thank you for all that you've done. Really glad, so good, so helpful. Thank you, I've got it from here. I got it. Hey, you were faithful when I went on that mission trip. Great, Lord, you were faithful for VBS. Thank you, oh yeah, but we got it from here. Thank you for setting me up with this great career and this house and this family. Just thank you for all those things, but I'm going to take over now. We miss it, we lose the ability to see what Jesus is doing around us now. We lose the ability to see what Jesus is doing in other people. We don't track with that. We don't remember that the Lord is doing something new, that the Lord is completely, you know, just creating something for the future, in us, for us, amongst us, around us. He's doing it, he's at work. He's not asking our permission, he's making it happen. What Rayaborn dealt with is what we all struggle against

and it's spiritual blindness, where we struggle to see the blessing as blessing. We struggle to see the supernatural working of the Lord around us and to trust that. We struggle to see the Lord growing something in us even today. And so when we're there, when we're there, I wanna give you four ways to pray. Ephesians 1 18 says that we can pray for the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened. I think that's a really great prayer. So I wanna give you four ways to pray. First, we can pray, Lord convict me of my sin. And this is what the rest of Rehoboam's story is. When Sheshak the king of Egypt comes against Rehoboam, Rehoboam and all of his advisors, everybody on his staff and his cabinet, they all bend the knee, they all bow before the Lord. And they say, Lord, we've sinned against you. And they humble themselves. And the Lord restrains some of what goes on. they're still actually, they become kind of servants

to Shishak, the king of Egypt, but they're not all eradicated, right? They began by being convicted, and really for us, this is where it starts also, if you're in a place where you're just numb, you're just blind, you can't feel anything, my encouragement to you is to begin to ask the Lord to convict you of your sin. Don't try to invent sin, that's a really bad idea. Just ask the Lord to send the conviction. He'll do it, promise. I've been praying that lately, and I have been convicted on about four different fronts. Okay, I feel like I've got like three flat tires, and I'm just flopping down the road here. But the Lord's grace has been great, and it's just continuing to repent, right? But you pray the prayer, and it's not a bad prayer to pray. Sometimes we ingesting, we'll say something like, You know, hey, don't pray for humility, the Lord will give it to you.

No, pray for humility and watch the Lord give it to you. The humility is good to have. We should pray for that. When you do that, when you say, Lord, convict me of my sin, you begin repenting. And you really start to see more, it's somewhat depressing actually, to pray that prayer at first. And you see just all of this standing against the Lord and you're going, okay, I need to repent of this.

And you begin repenting. Second prayer, Lord help me see you at work right now. So help me see you at work. When you begin to understand that the Lord is at work right now all around you, that the Holy Spirit is moving in people's lives without permission, that really the Lord has placed you, what you find is the Lord has placed you in people's lives, in specific jobs, in specific places, relationships, so that he can use you to be a blessing to other people. That's what you find if you look for it. It's always there. You might not see it, but it's always there. When you begin to understand that the Lord is at work, ultimately, it's reassuring and exciting because it doesn't depend on you. It doesn't depend on you having the cool thing to say at the right exact moment. You know, some mic drop, that's not, it doesn't matter. It's not about your intellect or wit or timing

compassion. Really the Lord wants to use you to bless other people. He'll do it. Third prayer that we need to pray, Lord show me your plan. Lord show me your plan. Jesus will show you what you need to follow Him. He's not gonna show you everything. He shows you everything. You tend to screw that up. So do I. Right? If you say, no, no, just give me the whole plan. It'll be great. I can just follow like a blueprint. Nope. That's not what Jesus wants to do. Jesus will show you what you need to follow him when you need it. And this is not, listen, just on the other side, this is not needle in a haystack theology. This isn't like playing duck duck goose and trying to figure out, you know, when people, and I know why people say this, so bless them, but I'm not, I don't think it's a good idea. When people say like, no, no, no, I want to follow God's will, but I want to be

in the center of God's will. I wanna be like, not just in God's will, I mean, I wanna be right, I'm gonna be, and I understand the sentiment. The sentiment is, I really wanna follow hard after Jesus. And God bless you, I get it. But let's not get things mixed up. Being in God's will is what the Lord asks of you, okay? There's no center. You don't like, you don't get like double spiritual bonus. You know, like you don't enter into like another level of heaven or, you know, like all of a sudden, you know, like you get all the spiritual victory, like all at once if you find the center of God. Well, that's not how it works. That's not how the New Testament describes it, really. What we see, what we see is not that following Jesus is overly complicated or that it's a needle in a haystack. And then you have to, you know, you have to really like earn it and pray really hard

and wake up at 4.45. Because if you wake up at five o'clock, Your prayers aren't as good as if you wake up at 4.45 in the morning. It's got to be early and it's got to hurt because your prayers mean more. None of that's true. There is no center to find. It's just God's will, man. And it's in Scripture. It's pretty plain. Just begin to ask Him what you want, excuse me, what He wants you to do. Begin to ask Jesus very simply. Now, you don't need to get over complicated. Ask Him where He wants you to go. Ask him how he wants you to be a blessing. Ask him how you can make breakfast from a couple weeks ago when I was talking about making breakfast. Just the idea that, man, the Lord has all these things that he wants us to do. He's equipped us to do those things. Just do them. Just start doing them, see what the Lord does. It's a good thing. Last one. So convict me of my sin, help me see you at work right now.

Show me your plan, ignite my heart. Lord, ignite my heart. Look, it's not just about knowing what to do. It really is about the desire to get there. There are plenty of people that know exactly what the Lord wants them to do, but do not have the desire. They feel like they're running on empty spiritually. And let me just give you a small amount of comfort. That's not a bad thing. In fact, when you know what the Lord wants you to do and you feel the lack of power spiritually, When you're in that moment, you have a great prayer to pray, and that is, Lord, ignite my heart. Help me, help me get the want to, because I don't want to. There's nothing wrong with praying that prayer. In fact, if I were to describe the vast majority of my spiritual life, it would be knowing what I needed to do, but lacking the spiritual power to do it. And it's because I didn't ask. So that's our encouragement.

Ask. The Lord wants to give us the power, the spiritual power to do it. And you know what? I mean, if you're really stuck, then you can even pray this, Lord, I need the desire and I don't even know if I can pray for the desire. Lord, can you help me pray for the desire to do what you're asking me to do? What I'm telling you is I'm not trying to get all philosophical and verbally how we can all get down to the bottom. What I'm saying is it's okay to say, God, I know you want me to go to 10, but I feel like I'm at negative 18. I feel like I'm in a hole here and I need some help to get out before I can even feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I need some help. I need some power. What the Lord, I mean, we sang about it. You know, when Greg was leading us, we sang about resurrection power. Listen, that's, look, that's not just stuff that belongs to Bethel, right?

Like resurrection power is in the Bible. Resurrection power is something that the Lord puts in us, infuses within us. It's something that we can ask for and receive. It's something that we can walk in. It's something that can actually energize You doing the dishes. I know that sounds super ordinary, right? I get it, but it can energize you even for small acts of service, even for moments of compassion that you don't plan.

My encouragement, we see these four prayers up here. My encouragement is to pick one. Pick one of these four. I don't care which one. Pick one of those four. Spend the rest of the summer seeking Jesus by praying one of those four prayers. And then when you do and you mean it, when you do, just watch, watch the blessing. Like you'll be able to see it. You'll be able to see the blessing happen. You'll be able to be grateful for what you're being given. You'll be able to see the working in and around you. You'll be able to understand and comprehend like what the Lord is doing. You'll be able to cooperate with him, to work with him. I'm not saying you'll just like know all the mind of Christ and have all the plan, but I am saying It's a way for you to take a step forward spiritually whenever you feel like your feet are in cement so today from the life of Raya bone as we enter into our our time of invitation, I

Really? I want you to begin to look at these four prayers And I want you to begin to ask truly ask which one of these do I need to begin praying, Lord? Which one of these are for me? As always during our time of invitation if you want to make a decision and you need some help doing it, that's great. I'm gonna be up here but also if you have come with someone and you trust them and you want to talk to them about it, that's great too. It's not necessarily you don't have to necessarily come down, come forward, but if you do need to make a decision for The Lord, my encouragement is don't delay on that. Don't wait on that. If you're asking, if you know that you need to begin to ask the Lord, show me your plan. Really with any of these prayers, you need help doing it. Don't try to do it by yourself. You need help doing it. That's what our church is here for. We wanna help people.

We wanna just help people take that next step on their own journey. We wanna invest in the spiritual journey of other people. This is making disciples. And it starts with even just praying questions like these. Let's stand as we sing. Lord is He, evidence is all around the spirit of the Lord is He. Overflow in this place, fill our hearts with Your love, Your love surrounds us. You're the reason we came to encounter Your love, Your love, Sirah I'm a spirit of the Lord is here and this is all the right I'm a spirit of the Lord is here I'm a spirit of the Lord is here This is all the flow in this place Feel our hearts with your knees And we can counter your love Hearts with your head To encounter your love Your love surrounds us For fresh youngness We need your presence Your kingdom come, Your will be done Here as in Heaven of God for fresh on us We need Your presence

Your kingdom come, Your will be done Here as in heaven of God, for fresh on us Your prayer, O kingdom come on Here as in heaven For the Spirit of the Lord ever dances all around That the Spirit of the Lord is here Make a miracle happen The miracle can happen now For the Spirit of the Lord is here The evidence is all around That the Spirit of the Lord is here Jesus, we love you. We know that you are in this place. We know that you are among us as your bride and your body. I pray that you would empower us this week. I pray that you encourage us in our prayer that you would help us. Give us the want to seek you out and see the blessing is blessing to become grateful. Lord, do that work in us as a church. It's your name that we pray.