When God Gets Your Attention

Transcript

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

We are going to be in the book of Hosea, if you want to begin to turn there. Today, we are beginning a new series called Biting Bullets. Biting Bullets. The phrase, bite the bullet, it's kind of an old phrase, but I'm sure many of you have heard the, at least the expression, to bite the bullet. It kind of has murky origins. People don't really know where that phrase came from. There's a couple of options, but it likely originates from World War I or before in a war where doctors would be performing battlefield surgery on soldiers. Well, if you know anything about battlefield surgery in World War I or before, no anesthetic. So they were performing very painful surgeries on people. And so what they would do to help the soldiers, you know, manage the pain is they would give them a bullet and they would say, here, bite down on this just to keep from screaming, okay?

So biting the bullet, it likely originates from this really painful experience. And that's what biting the bullet means, right? So it carries this idea It carries this idea of enduring extremely difficult and necessary things. So we endure something that is very painful, but it's also very necessary. When you bite the bullet, you kind of have to face the music to use another expression. We are calling this series Biting Bullets because we are diving into what is called the minor prophets. Okay, there are 12 minor prophets. It is at the end of the Old Testament. So if you're still looking for Hosea, it's okay. We don't preach out of Hosea very often. Okay. The 12 minor prophets are not, they're not, you know, we don't quote from the prophet Micah that often. The only thing we know about Jonah is that he was swallowed by a whale. We don't, we don't know much about

these minor prophets. And they're called minor because of their page count. The longest of them, I believe, is 14 chapters, and that's Hosea and Zechariah. But everybody else is two, three, maybe one. There's a couple of smaller ones in there. So they're minor because of page count, but they're still very much worth a listen. Prophets bring God's message to people's attention. That's what a prophet does. Okay. So in the Old Testament, the prophets were receiving the word from the Lord. They were giving the word to God's people. The minor prophets in particular

were speaking into a situation where God's people were divided North and South. So there were two different kingdoms. You have Israel to the North and you have Judah to the South. And if you read through the minor prophets, you're going to see a lot of different names for that country. So Israel is also called Jacob, is also called Ephraim. Judah is, I don't think it's called anything else, I think it's just called Judah. So you have Israel in the north, you have Judah in the south, and you have these different prophets over the course of 400 years that are preaching. They're giving God's word to these people in these situations, sometimes in the north, sometimes in the south, sometimes both, sometimes even to the countries around them. Okay. So what does it all mean? Why, why call this series a series on the minor prophets? Why call it biting bullets? What's so difficult about it? Well, when you read

the messages that these prophets delivered, they were not happy fun time messages. Okay. There were no rainbows and unicorns in the message that they gave. They were particularly difficult to hear. And so in this way, minor prophets speak to us about biting bullets, about facing difficult things. Because all of them began with the understanding that God's people have betrayed him and they do not care. That is the basic understanding of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Zechariah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi, all 12, they all start with this basic understanding that God's people have betrayed him and they do not care that centuries have gone by. And the betrayal of God's people against him has become so commonplace that it has faded to the background. They are turning against God, but their hearts are too hardened to notice. In fact, a really good illustration of this is a wife who habitually cheats on her husband.

I mean, habitually cheats on her husband. Just goes from one boyfriend to the next, even though she's married. She never acknowledges it. She never admits it's wrong. She might even talk about it in front of her husband. She just doesn't care. She is brazen. She is reckless. She is detached. people would describe this behavior as pathological. In fact, the illustration of a wife cheating on her husband is so appropriate that it's the one that God chooses as the opening illustration for the whole section of the minor prophets. And that is why we're going to be in Hosea today. It is both the first book of of the 12 prophets, and it also sets the tone for the rest of the 12 prophets. So we actually are going to be in Hosea for three weeks, but we're gonna be kind of pointing to different places within the minor prophets as we go through some places in Hosea, okay?

And so what I wanna do is I wanna begin in Hosea chapter one, verse two. Hosea one, two. This is the Lord speaking to Moses. He said, when the Lord first spoke through, oh, sorry, I meant Hosea, excuse me. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go, take to yourself a wife of Hordim and have children of Hordim, for the land commits great Hordim by forsaking the Lord. Yes, I did say Hordim three times. Okay, Hosea does not shy away from the word whore, And it's more than just prostitution. It's not, this isn't people paying Gomer money, paying his wife money. This is Gomer, this is Hosea's wife, her name's Gomer, we'll find out. Hosea's wife, Gomer, habitually cheating on him, going away and just being, playing the whore. And God tells Hosea to go take that woman as your wife. moment as your wife, I want you to imagine the spectacle in a small town of a wedding

between a noble, righteous man of God and the town whore. I want you to just let that sink in for just a second, because that is exactly, exactly what God is calling Hosea to do. It It must have been the biggest topic of conversation for months. And the only defense from this man of God, whenever somebody says, why did you marry Gomer? His only defense is, God told me to. God told me to marry her. So Hosea the prophet marries Gomer the whore. And not only to marry her, it doesn't end there. God says, pretty soon in Hosea chapter one, God says, I want you to marry her and I want you to start a family with her. Right? It says, go take for yourself a wife of Hordom and have children of Hordom. The children are even named in honor of God's displeasure. The first child is Jezreel, which is a valley where Israel unjustly slaughtered a whole people group. So one of the nation's worst sins against God, God wants Hosea to name his first child

that place name. The other two children don't really require a lot of explanation. Their names are No Mercy and Not My People. You cannot piece that one together. I don't think I can help you. These are names given to children. I mean, look, this really happened. This isn't some allegory, this isn't some sort of thing, this really happens. Could you imagine your child and don't child, could you imagine them marrying a whore, a known whore, and then having children and naming them in honor of the displeasure that God feels against his people? Come on. This is crazy, but it is exactly, exactly what God wants Hosea to do, and it really begs the question, why is God calling a prophet to marry a whore? Why is he doing this? Well, it says right there, it says in verse two, it says, for the land commits people, commit great hortom by forsaking the Lord. So God's people historically here, now this has gone on for a couple of centuries, God's

people continually are going after other gods. They are continually worshiping other gods. A lot of times they're worshiping other gods in God's temple. So they're setting up in the temple the Lord, alters to other gods so that it's more convenient for them when they go to worship. Because why would you want to hit like four temples? Just go to one. This is the mindset of God's people by the time Hosea is talking to them. By the time that God has fed up and is saying to them, go, go, Mary, go, Mary, whore to show my displeasure. God works to get people's attention. And the minor prophet's got a sick of his people's betrayal and he is set. He is focused on doing something about it, something serious. This isn't like a note he's going to drop in their mailbox. This isn't even a billboard he's going to put on their highway. He's going to make their prophet marry someone that by all accounts he should not marry.

God works to get people's attention and he does it in dramatic fashion. He does this all through the minor prophets, not just Hosea. And the most famous is actually Jonah. What does God use to get people's attention to Jonah? He uses storms, plants, a worm, and finally a whale. In fact, people, when they read Jonah, they don't even believe they think it's just straight allegory. There's no way that could have happened. However, that's not what we read all through the minor prophets. They're all using, if they're not being swallowed by a whale themselves, they are all using stark imagery. They are using caustic language. They are using, they have messages of destruction. These aren't smiley, happy people, okay? Prophets have earned their reputation, but I want you to know something today. I want you to know that this is part of God's character.

It is part of God's character. It is how he works. God, when his people, when someone that he loves is running away from him, is rebelling against him, is doing everything they should not do, God's character is not to sit back and idly go, oh, well, whatever, I mean, they're just gonna get what's coming to him. No, he doesn't do that. And if you can imagine, if you can imagine a parent with an adult child who is a drug addict, right? What would that parent do to get their child's attention? What would they say? There's almost no limit. Why? because they want to be mean to their child? No. Because their child is in dire straits and they want to rescue them. They will stop at nothing to get their attention. This is exactly what we see in the minor prophets. This is exactly what we see in Hosea. This is God's character. God's character is that he has love for his people

that moves him so much that he would literally Bend and shape heaven and earth to get their attention. This is God loving his people. Instead of simply judging his people, which he is more than right to do, he labors over people and he calls them back to himself. Our God is a restorer, amen? Our God is a redeemer. Our God is a justifier. What God is, we see here in the minor prophets. It is difficult to see it first, but what God is, we see, and when we see God working to restore and rescue his people, these are the things that we ascribe to him in worship. These are the things we sing about when we sing as a church. We sing about God's just long suffering. We sing of God's patience toward us. We think of God's love for us. even though we have spurned him, even though we have turned away from him many times. And so if God is the one coming after us, if God is the one reaching out

and getting our attention, if God is the one that is bending over backward to deliver difficult but important news to us, then what is our response? Our response is to bite the bullet. Our response is to bear down, embrace ourselves, to face what we know in our hearts to be true, to admit our failure, to admit our indifference, and yes, to admit our betrayal. This is difficult for us. This is actually a really difficult thing to do on our own. And I want to point out two reasons why. When God tries to get our attention, why? Why is it so difficult? When God gets our attention, it is always alarming, and it is always painful. It is always alarming, and it's always painful. It's alarming. It's alarming because sin happens slowly. Sin happens progressively. It is not, you know, in sin we get dumber and dumber as we go. You get me? We, we, I don't know how many times I have, I have found this to be true.

I have experienced this. I'm sure you have too. Where, where one day you were just kind of looking around and you are genuinely surprised at how in deep you are. Genuinely surprised. It might have seemed obvious to others for weeks or months or years, but you are surprised. You look around and how did I get this far down? How did I get in so deep? Theologians call this the noetic effect of sin. N-O-E-T-I-C, noetic effect of sin. And essentially it says the more you sin, the more numb you get to the Spirit's promise. The more you sin, the more your senses dull. The example is Romans 1, you know, we see it a lot all over the New Testament, but in Romans 1, it talks about people that are rebelling against God and how God gave them over to a debased mind. God gave them over to the lusts that they had in their heart, gave them over to, In other words, you just get this idea in Romans 1 that God is somehow restraining people back,

saying, no, it's going to be too terrible. Don't do it. Don't go. It will be bad. Don't go there. Don't do it. Don't do it. And then they just fought and clawed and scratched and screamed their way forward. And God said, OK, go for it. People do not cheat on their spouses on a whim. It begins with a thought. It turns into a fantasy. And then finally, a plan. You don't just accidentally find yourself in the bed of someone else. It's slow.

People don't intend to live in open defiance of God. Many people, many people today, people that I've known, grown up with, they went to church with me, they went to camp with me, we grew up together. You know, they profess to know the Lord, love the Lord, and now they live in 100% open defiance against God. And I guarantee you, it wasn't one morning where they woke up and go, you know what, I'm going to live in defiance of the Lord and just incur his wrath. That's going to be a great plan for the day. That's just not how it happens, right? It's slow. It starts with maybe being disappointed by God. It moves to doubting His goodness, His patience, His character. And then it just turns into this excuse to where you're just living how you want to live. And you don't really care what God thinks about it. Before long, I mean, you're antagonistic to everything that God stands for and to God

Himself. People don't plan to ignore child abuse. It starts with excusing a bruise. And maybe then it moves to putting some distance relationally between yourself and the abused child. And then before long you're just pretending like it doesn't really happen. You don't see the bruises anymore. You don't see the claw marks. You don't see how withdrawn the child is. And then when someone finally breaks, when the story finally comes out, you're shocked. How many news stories do you see, right? Where there's this grisly murder, this person who just finally snaps, and they interview the neighbors. And like there's always that one neighbor who's going to say, I knew it the whole time. One. Everybody else that we know they're lying. They're lying. But everybody else, shock. Shock. Didn't see it coming. Didn't see the warning signs. Didn't know. How many times? So with that, with the noetic effect of sin, with the fact that we get progressively dumber

and dumber with sin over time, how, then what is our hope? What can we do about this? If we're only going to get progressively worse, what is to be done? Surely, this is a black hole, where once we start, we're never really getting out. The answer is that we need to be shaken to our core. We need to have something on the order of our life almost falling apart. And there really is no other way around it. You just try to deal with a drug addict. Just try to deal with an alcohol abuser. And you will understand that whole process where it's, oh, I can feel bad and then I run back to it. I can feel bad again and then I run back to it. And you can't feel bad enough. A lot of times what has to happen in that moment is what is called an intervention, right? Where everybody that you love is magically in a room and you're shocked by it and they all looking at you right in the eyes and they're saying, you have a serious, serious problem.

And all of us are going to essentially disown you if you don't do something about it. This is kind of the last stand. This is the last straw. That's very uncomfortable. It doesn't make the abuser or the addict feel very, very nice on the inside. But it's absolutely, absolutely necessary for that person to begin to understand that they need help. They need to be shaken to their core. We see this in the New Testament with some of the things that, that a parable that Jesus tells and a person that Jesus meets. Jesus talks about the prodigal son, the prodigal son that runs away and lives a life of debauchery. And what does the prodigal son need? He needs a pig's style. He needs to be so starving that he's eating pig's food. And it's only at that point that he wakes up and he says, I could go back to my father's house and live better as a servant, right? This is, but this was the wake up call for the prodigal son.

A different scenario when Jesus is talking to the rich young ruler. What did the rich young ruler say to Jesus? He said, look, I've kept all these commandments. I mean, I'm basically perfect. What did he need to hear? He needed to hear that he didn't measure up. Jesus was quite plain. Oh, you've done all that's great. That's, well, sell everything. And says the rich young ruler went away sad because he had great wealth. Jesus wasn't just trying to make him sad or what Jesus was doing, he was placing the finger on the exact thing that the rich young ruler was holding back from God. And if Jesus had not done that, that rich young ruler would have just pranced along believing that he was in right relationship with the Lord. It is love to throw the prodigal son in the pig's tongue, because it's the only way they're going to see. It is love to tell the rich young ruler

or anybody who thinks that they measure up to be loved by the Lord that they don't measure up. When God decides to lovingly grab our attention, it is always alarming. It always shakes us up because our senses are so dull. So if we are going to bite the bullet, how then do we embrace that whole thing? If we're going to bite the bullet, maybe the obvious thing to say is that we need to open our eyes. We need to realize and listen to the alarm clock that's ringing. We need to wake up. We need to see that something is wrong. And inevitably, when God brings something to our attention, things get difficult for us. Life gets a little harder. It gets uncomfortable, and we don't really know what's going on. And in that moment, when we feel that, we have a choice. We can believe one of two things, either God is trying to get my attention, which is the truth, or God is being

mean to me. It's basically it. Got two choices. I've met people, I've been that person that has believe that God is being mean to me. I will tell you from experience, while it is easier on my conscience in the immediate to believe that God is being mean to me, because it makes me the victim, it helps me feel better, you know, lets me sleep for like a day. Pretty soon,

pretty soon, I mean, I wake up to the fact that God is actually trying to get my attention because he wants to show me something. He wants to tell me something. I need to wake up, Biding bullets then is pulling back the curtain on your own life. Biding bullets is taking a long look in the mirror and asking and praying with a with as much authenticity as we can muster in the moment. Praying and asking, what?

What? What would you have me do, Lord? What? I'm so frustrated. I'm so tired. All the things that I'm trying to do aren't working. Everything's broken. What? This is a biblical prayer. This is an appropriate way to respond when God is getting your attention to say what? You can add a sir on the end of it, too. That's fine, too. But God wants our attention. We need to open up our eyes. We need to pull back the curtain on our own lives and take a long look in the mirror. The second thing that would be appropriate would be to open our lives to the people around us. Many times in my life, when I have been in that moment where I have been uncomfortable, where there was a restlessness within me, I did need to look at my life. But praise the Lord, I had other people that were looking directly at my life going, hey, that doesn't, what is that? Why are you doing that? Why did that make sense to you?

Why are you thinking that? It was uncomfortable. I didn't like them for a couple of days, but they were faithful. This is why our church does life groups, because we cannot do all of this on our own. Christianity is not a lone ranger endeavor. Scripture tells us to confess sin together. Listen, you and I have blind spots. We have things that we believe that are lies, and we don't know it. And there's nothing wrong except that we're human, right? And we need people to see our blind spots. We need people to poke at our lives and say, what are you doing here? How does this make sense to you? Why are you talking about your husband that way? Why are you talking about your wife that way? Why aren't you ever content at work, Drew? Why don't you write all of these things? All of these things, incredibly uncomfortable. I mean, you talk about a bad night. You talk about a restless night of sleep.

Yes, and amen. But if that's what it takes, and it is, if that's what it takes for me to be on that road of becoming more like Jesus, for me to be on that road of making disciples, for me to be walking in a manner worthy of the gospel, then so be it. What a price, what a small price to pay. Yes, and amen. You cannot see all of your own blind spots. To claim that you can is hubris. It is foolish. And I'm not trying to be mean to you. I'm trying to help you understand. You have limitations as a person, just like all of us do.

No one is that self-aware. They just aren't. No one is. And so like Amy Hay was announcing, if we were gonna do a life group banquet on Wednesday, November 18th, we start life groups every January and July. And if you know someone that is in a life group, or even if you don't, you can jump into a life group. Right now, that starts with a conversation with me. Or if you know somebody else in a life group, you can have a conversation with them. It doesn't have to go through me. And if you're saying, well, I don't know if I know people well enough, that's cool. You don't know people well enough. Jump into a connect group, start to know people well enough, right? Change that. When God gets our attention, it is always alarming. And if we're gonna bite the bullet, We need to open our eyes and open our lives. The other thing to consider is that it is always, always painful.

There is no, there is no painless version of God getting our attention. It is never this, oh, you know, I was just walking down the street and, you know, God showed me my sin and then I went to get groceries. I mean, no, that's just not how it's painful. disruptive by its very nature. Change disrupts our routines and our relationships. And saying that change isn't easy is like saying the Pope isn't Baptist. Change is extremely, extremely difficult. We build our lives the way we like them. Thank you very much. Our routines help us keep track of everything, our relationships, we cultivated them, they're kind of in their place just like we like them. And when God signals that it's time for a change, our first response is fear. It's fear. We overestimate the value of what we have, we underestimate the value of what could be gained. It's like a really bad version of let's make a deal.

I don't know if you know, let's make a deal for the older generation, that's Monty Hall the new generation, that's Wayne Brady, same game. In Let's Make a Deal, it is the inherent choice. They start you with $50, and they're like, oh, you want $50? That's great. And you know they're setting you up. You can just see it, right? Oh, you want $50? That's awesome. That's really good. Okay, do you want to keep your $50? Or do you want what's behind door number two? And, oh, I don't know. They start looking back at the crowd. What do you think I should do? It's the same game. It's been over decades. It's the exact same game. It's a compelling game though, because it's what we experience all the time. It is a human condition kind of game, because we experience that all the time. In our church's recent, recent history, we have undergone a lot of change. And I don't mean the pandemic,

although that has been pretty change worthy. Long before that, in January, when the Lord began to tell this church, it's time to change, actually before January. I showed up in January, but the Lord had already been speaking to this church body about, hey, it's time to change. And so, when I was hired, right, the Lord had put some things in my heart, Lord had put some people along with me. We were going to effect a lot of change. Change is always hard. And lest I forget, at the same time, probably at the same time the Lord would talk to this church, the Lord was telling me and my family and my friends and their families, it's time to change. And in both situations, whether it be on my side of a friend's side or whether it be on the church's side, you know, this is way back before it, now we're a church, I understand that. I'm speaking in terms of the past.

No matter which side you choose, both of us, Both of us could have said, but what we have right now is so good. What we have right now is just fine. Look at all these relationships we've built. Look at all these routines we have. This works. This is okay. This is good enough, isn't it? The Lord was saying, no, it's time to change. You have to exchange the things you have for the things that are coming. We don't like that. The Lord says you're going to have to add new relationships. It's going to change the dynamic. Everything's gonna be different. Because you know, in January, whenever we all came and this became something new, it was a new church for all of us, all of us. And although it has sometimes not been a smooth ride, I think we can all agree the Lord has been extremely faithful. In the midst of a pandemic, the Lord has been faithful. If we're gonna bite the bullet in the midst of that pain,

we need to begin to listen to honest assessment. We need to listen to honest assessment. What happens is God shakes you to your core. God disrupts your life. God brings that change in. He's signaling change is coming. You open your eyes, you open your life, and you say, what? Well, expect an answer. The Lord will begin to show you what you need to let go of. The Lord will begin to show you what you need to begin doing. It will not be fun. It's painful because letting go always is. We're actually gonna talk a lot more about this next week. This is something that the minor prophets deal with intensely. Ultimately though, biting bullets means that we take God as He is. Biting bullets means taking God as He is. As we live life, whether we claim to be Christian or not, right? Our idea of who God is takes a turn. Our idea of who God is takes a turn as we grow older.

It does all the time. Sin dulls our senses. Doubt creeps in. We begin to interact with God in a different way than we did before. This is part of just being a person. This is why we need scripture. This is why we need to rehearse the truth that we cannot see all the time. This is why we need people around us in Life Group or otherwise who will speak that truth into us at a time that is not very convenient for us, but it's just the right time for the Lord. To see this, to see how we take God as He is, we need to return to Hosea. We're going to be in chapter 3, we're going to skip ahead. Hosea 3, 1 through 3. This is where the Lord says to Hosea to go, and this is beautiful, to go by His wife out of slavery. See, what must have happened is that Gomer, his wife, got herself mixed up with some of the wrong people and actually became someone's proper. And what God says to Hosea, just this beautiful,

first three verses, and the Lord said to me, go again. Love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulterous, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins." Cakes of raisins are offerings to other gods. Verse 2, "'So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a Homer and a lethic of barley, which is roughly half the price of a common slave.' Verse 3, "'And I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the the whore or belong to another man. So will I also be to you.

This lets us rehearse two very important things. First, God is a rescuer. It says, even as the Lord loves his people, God is a rescuer. He continually comes after us. He does not stop. He is relentless. Some would call it reckless. This is his character. This is who he is. In fact, in the parable, the prodigal son, there was an image at the end where Jesus tells it, and it's the father running to meet the son halfway home. The father goes out on the front porch every day looking for the son, and when he sees the son coming, what does he do? He hikes up his robe that he's wearing, right? He hikes that thing up and runs, which was actually, I know that you don't know this, you do is actually very unbecoming of an older gentleman. I guess much like it would be today, right? If you see someone in their mid 80s just sprinting across the yard, right? You're going to look for a fire somewhere.

Okay. You're going to look for something. There should be a swarm of bees following them or something. Okay. Um, and so, I didn't expect to get such an amen from that. The father in the parable, the prodigal son, hikes up his robe and he is running toward his son because he loves him. Because he's praying for his return, because he's working it out. He wants to see his son restored and he's so happy. He's so overjoyed when it happens that he runs. How much more the perfect Father in heaven than this Father in a parable? How much more is God running to meet us? How much is God chasing after us? Even though we are running away, even though we think we're doing a great job with our life the way it is. No, God is not satisfied with that. He will run. He is a rescuer. He is a restorer. These are things he calls himself. This is his character. That is remarkably good news for us.

In fact, it's probably the best news we could ever hear. Here's the other side though. The other side is that God is also a restorer, right? God also doesn't leave us the way we are. He runs after, so hey, Hosea runs after Gomer the whore, but he says you won't play the whore anymore. If you are under the impression that God wants you to stay exactly as you are, then you, friend, have forgotten who God is. That's just not the business he's in. He's your heavenly Father, not your heavenly grandfather. Grandfather, man, grandfather will not discipline you, just won't, some will, most won't, though. I mean, just give him candy and let him watch TV and do whatever they want, you know. Leave the discipline for the parents. God is our heavenly Father, not our heavenly grandfather. That's what I mean by that. God is not interested in your status quo. He's not interested in what, you know,

all these things that you're planning to do where you control everything. That's not what God's interested in. He's interested in actually restoring you and growing you into his likeness, making you look like him. This means change. This means repentance. And this means we open our eyes and we open our lives to who God is, and we become ready for an honest assessment. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you that you are our restorer. We thank you that you take us as we are and don't leave us as we are. We thank you for the ability to walk with you just out of your great grace toward us. And it's your name that we pray. Amen.

We are going to have our time of response. And in our time of response, we're going to just stand and sing and Dan and Sadie are going to be leading us as we stand and sing. But as we do, I want to just encourage you, just use this time to pray, use this time to open your life to the Lord, open your eyes, pull back the curtain on your life, ask the Lord, even just quietly in your heart, if you need to do it out loud, God bless you. Just begin to ask God, what? What? What? What do you want? What do you, what do you, what are you calling me to see? What do I need to do? If you need help on that journey, do. If you want some help today, please feel free. I will be down here immediately to my right, your left. And I'll be just here singing, you know, praising the Lord. If you want to talk with somebody, if you need prayer, You want to make a decision for the Lord in any capacity, please come up and see me.

I'll have my mask on. You know, we can even do it like distance. We can do sign language, if you need. Whatever you need, right? We'll make it happen, is what I mean. I actually don't know sign language. So as we sing, I would encourage you to pray. Shout the fire here, be burdened. Beneath the load of guilt and shame Then the hand of Jesus touched me Now I am no longer the same

He touched me, oh He touched me And oh, the joy that floods my soul Something happened And now I know He touched me and made me whole Since I met this blessed Savior, Since He cleansed and made me whole, Oh, I will never cease to praise Him. I'll shout it while eternity goes. He touched me, oh, he touched me And oh, the joy that floods my soul Something happened And now I know he touched me And maybe, oh, something happened And now I know he touched me and made me go