MAR 31 2019 | Accelerate S1E3 | Time With God

Sea Change Church · Accelerate · "Time With God" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · March 31, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

All right. Good morning, everybody. I'm reading the scripture today. It's from Mark chapter 1, 35 to 39. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed, Everyone is looking for you. Jesus replied, Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.

So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues, and driving out demons. The word of the Lord. That's my man Alex right there, running Surf Church, another one of the ministries we work with. If you're a surfer, talk to him, or you want to surf, talk to him. And I got some great stuff going on here at the beaches. We got awarded a grant for our Surf Church through the American Baptists. They liked what we were doing, and they've invited us to go back to Philadelphia.

So Alex and I, and Rebecca and Drea, we'll be heading to Philadelphia, I guess, sometime later this week. And Alex and I will be sharing a place together, a little tiny room. I can't wait. It's going to be exciting. I'm a joy to be that close to for a long basis, so let me pray. Jesus, bless this message. Let it speak deeply to our souls in an interconnected, light-speed culture. We need to slow down. We need to hear from you. We need to get our ballast.

We need to get our hearts in tune with the gentle song that you whisper over us, Lord. We just bless you. Let the word come alive. In Jesus' name, amen. How do you live when everyone's looking for you? It's a great question. I don't know if you noticed that in the Scripture. There's this moment where Jesus is just rising in popularity. He's rising in fame. He's been really becoming, quickly, one of the most famous rabbi celebrities of his day.

The crowds were coming to him. His Twitter followers were blowing up. His Snapchat was amazing. It was just this amazing. He was doing the faces like a little raccoon face and all that. If you've seen that, some of you are like, I have no idea what you're talking about. If you have Snapchat, you know what I'm talking about. And there comes a moment where Jesus can enter into increasing that platform, building the platform of self, or he can choose a different way, a way of the Father, a way of the kingdom, a slower way, a more peaceful way, a more verdant way, and a way that was a lot more profound, a kingdom way.

And Jesus lived a very profound life and a very slow life that was very different. There's two words in here that you'll see. It's the same word, but it's written twice. If you'll look in there, the word is so. And I want you to, it's S-O. I want you to circle that in the text, if you would, because we're going to look at that. Because life is lived on the opposite side of so. There was all these things happening, so Jesus did this.

There was this desire, this calling, so Jesus did this. Life will come at you at a million miles an hour, actually faster than this. The world comes to you now at light speed. We are people that have been built to live at camel speed. We're agrarian people that are now living at light speed, and it's breaking us. It's breaking society. I don't know if you were privileged enough to be alive before even cable television.

I remember growing up as a kid where we had three channels at 11 p.m. The little Native American face would come up on the screen with a three or a six or a five. And the black and white TV I had in my room would just turn off. You're just done. There's nothing at 12, like 11, 30, or it would just turn off. Like TV just ended for the day. We're like, okay, it's done, you know. There was no Atari yet. We actually had a thing called a bike.

And I would get on, seriously, I would get on this thing. And it had pedals. And I don't know if kids know this anymore. You'd get on it, and I would ride it around my neighborhood. And my friends actually lived in houses near me. And we would play in the street. It was awesome. And things changed very quickly. And I was an early adapter. I liked that change to the point where it almost broke me because I was going so fast.

I made some pretty big changes about five years ago. But in 1989, I had the car phone. Now, do you remember Wall Street, the movie, when he was on the beach, and it was Michael Douglas, and his phone was like this big, it looked like he could have been in Apocalypse Now, the movie in Vietnam, or in the movie Wall Street. I had a phone. I remember it was like $2 a minute. A cell phone in your car in 1989 was pretty cool.

I thought I was, you know, pretty cool at that point. But what I realized is the more I've moved into trying to live at the pace of the world, the more I lost my focus until where it actually, I felt, broke my, not only my emotions, but really broke the cadence that God wanted me to live according to. And Jesus had this moment where his ministry is blowing up. And everyone is looking for him. And maybe you feel that way.

You have all the pressures of a very successful business, or a relationship, or many relationships. Perhaps you're the matriarch of a family who fixes everyone's problems. Or, you know, there is this constant moving of society, and everyone's looking for you. I saw a meme this week, and it was a picture of a mom's feet. You could tell that she was indisposed in the restroom, and there was little, the door was there by her feet.

And you could see these little fingers, like six of them, coming underneath the door, just pulling, like, you know, just wanting more of her to take her soul. You know, these children. That's what happens. And the question is, is when life is moving so quickly and at light speed, and this is the new Holy Spirit, this is the secular Holy Spirit that will guide and direct your life. It will buzz. I know that about six, seven years ago, I got to the point where there's a thing called phantom vibration syndrome.

If you haven't heard of that, it's when you feel your phone buzz, because it buzzes and vibrates. You feel your phone vibrate, and then you look, but no one's calling you, okay? It's actually a form of PTSD. I don't know if you know that. And what it is, is your body doesn't like to be surprised. This is why you build calluses. The body will learn to make sure that it's not surprised. This is why you will usually start to wake up a minute or two before your alarm.

Maybe you don't. Some people I know don't. But nonetheless, you know, you set your alarm at 6 a.m. every day. Pretty soon you're going to wake up at 5.58. The body will figure this out. It means that you are being awoken. You are being startled. Cortisol is flowing through your body. It is an emergency response to be startled. And you will start feeling that. Now, I won't ask you to raise your hand. But if you've experienced that, you are actually in PTSD.

I just want to let you know. Jesus had this same thing happening. People were trying to constantly pull at him. The needs of the world were so great. And maybe you're a benevolent person. Maybe you're a person working in missions. Or you're a person working with the poor. You will see that the needs will easily overwhelm your ability to meet the needs. What do you do at that place? It is so interesting that in this passage, as we look to Jesus for an example of how to live our lives in a much faster-paced world than he was living in, that we see that the so in that sentence made a huge difference.

And I don't think it was a flippant so. It was a so that came out of a calendar, a day timer, if you will, for back in the 80s, or 90s, that was formulated through spending dedicated, solitary time with his father. His calendar was dictated by his time with his father, as opposed to his life being dictated by the calendar. And as you look in this, it says, everyone is looking for you. And then Jesus replied. I love Jesus' replies.

Oh, everyone's looking for me? Well, let's go somewhere else. Great answer, Jesus. Jesus, everyone's looking for you. Well, we'll go somewhere else. Jesus, every opportunity that you are given is not from God. Jesus knew that he had something larger that God had called him to that was not about building popularity, was not about building a following. Granted, he was building a following, but he wasn't going to do it according to the world's terms.

I know if you're, maybe you're a teacher, or maybe you own a business, like I said, or maybe you're a lawyer, or maybe you're a real estate agent, or maybe you're a pastor, or maybe whatever it is, and the needs of the day will continue to pile up. The phone will not stop ringing. And it's interesting that we are, as technology increases, we are expected to keep up with technology. You are expected to be able to respond to every text that comes in.

Do you know that people in Brazil now can text you in light speed, and it's going to come, and you're expected to respond? Like 300 years ago, it would take you nine months to get that response, you know what I'm saying? By the way, biologically, that's how we're meant to live. We're supposed to live at camel speed. And to really only have an understanding of what's going on in our surroundings from about a five to seven day horse journey from us.

Kind of what is in your basic understanding of area, and this is why we're being broke. You're actually not supposed to know what's going on in Malaysia. You're not actually supposed to know what's going on in Antarctica. You're not built to have that much information going into your brain. And if you saw the study this week, with 18 to 35 year olds, anxiety and depression is at the highest rate ever. And they attribute it, according to the study that I read this week, to the speed at which we're living, to the connectivity, and to the rewiring of our brains.

You'll see in the notes that Microsoft did a study. I'll read it right to you. It says, The human attention span is at its lowest ever. According to a study by Microsoft, the average human being now has the attention span of eight seconds. This is a sharp decrease. Now, it seems like only a few seconds. Okay? But this is a one third decrease. This is a sharp decrease from the average attention span of 12 seconds in the year 2000.

Now, eight and 12 seconds might not seem like a big deal. But if you look at it, it's 25, excuse me, it's 25, I believe it's 25 percent, 33. It's a big one. I can't do my math in my head at the moment. It's a simple math equation. I can't figure it out. It's a big jump. It's a big drop. We were losing the ability to focus. We were driving up to Mammoth, and my daughter was looking, my 11-year-old was looking out the window, and then she would look ahead, and if she looked a little further ahead, she could see the trees.

But if she looked straight ahead, she couldn't see the trees. And she couldn't figure out, why when I look straight out, I can't see the trees, but why when I look ahead, I can see the trees? The ability to have your focus and your gaze set a little further out, as opposed to what's right in front of you, and everything became a blur. However, I would say that if Satan had a plan to disrupt society, to disrupt God's work on the earth, one of the most subtle ways to do it would just be to increase the pace at which we live.

So subtle, you don't even see it coming. As a matter of fact, it gives you a lot of personal satisfaction to know that you're getting more done. You know, I was listening to a person, and they were telling me, you know, they were saying, you know, they were kind of bragging, I work 60 hours a week. I work 60 hours a week. Sometimes I work 70, 70 hours a week. They're talking about this, great, and I'm like, you know, wouldn't it be better if you could work 30 and get the same amount done in 30?

Wouldn't that be better? Like, you're kind of bragging that you're having to work extra hard to get all this done. And I wonder sometimes if we lived a little slower, if you wouldn't get more done. And one of the things that the enemy wants to do is constantly get us to live out of focus. If he can get you living out of focus, if he can just increase the speed of which we live and break the emotions, which is what is happening, the speed at which we are living, the amount of information we are taking in, without something to ballast us other than distraction, which actually works as increasing the speed and the distraction and the lack of being able to attention span and focus on anything, to increase that will actually breaks humankind.

And we see it happening. There's a lot of other reason things are happening. But the question is, is when things got overwhelming for Jesus, and the only time we ever see Jesus overwhelmed is in the Garden of Gethsemane when he was facing the cross. But when things had the temptation to become overwhelming, what did Jesus do on the other side of that? So, I want to say that being overwhelmed, not in all cases, but oftentimes being overwhelmed is a decision that you've made.

You can choose to not be overwhelmed. Now, it's going to take you some work. You're going to have to learn how to do this. But there is an ability to step away into faith, into trust, and to say, this universe has been here a long time without me in it, and if I don't solve this immediate problem at the moment, I have a feeling it will still move on. One of the things I tell the staff on a regular basis when we're feeling overwhelmed, or I tell myself when I'm totally overwhelmed, was this church has been here 100 years without me, and it lasted just fine, way before I was born, and it's going to make it without me again.

And I tell Chris and the others as well, it's been here a long time, go home. Sometimes the best thing you can do is go home and get up and take a break. One of the things I want you to notice in this scripture is you look through. It says, very early in the morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up. I want you to circle God up, because sometimes we hunker down when we really need to get up and take a break from what we're doing, and go center ourselves with God's love, with God's consolation, with the heart of God speaking to us and telling us and giving us direction for the path that we should go.

And he left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him. And when they found him, they exclaimed, everyone is looking for you. And Jesus replied, well, then let's go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so I can preach there also. This is why I've come. So he traveled through Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and driving out demons. We're going to talk about a few of those things.

But before we do, I want to say, if you look on your notes, it says we're living life increasingly out of focus. Good question for you. Do you feel like you're in focus? And perhaps if you are, are you focused on the right things? Addicted to the tyranny of the urgent, overwhelmed by the needs of the day. If you're living in a constant state of being overwhelmed, it's probably time to recalibrate before you break. Because we are not meant to live constantly overwhelmed.

There are survival modes and survival times when we need to be at the height of alert. But we are living almost in a warlike state now when there is no war. We are living in a state of constantly being overly stimulated, constantly living in a survival mode because of all that is going on and being told that this is the way you should live because it's productive and you're getting things done. Perhaps we should do less.

Jesus was okay with doing less. The devil, it says in the notes, makes his dwelling at the intersection of distraction and chaos. Makes his dwelling there. In the midst of distraction and chaos. And as a person who's been in the church for a very long time, I've seen spiritual organizations that thrive on the chaotic, that thrive on the crowd, that thrive on the noise, that thrive on spiritual activity. And I have to say that spiritual activity is not spirituality always.

Just because there is a cloud of dust doesn't mean that spiritual things are happening. But there is a sense of human beings in our control. If there's a lot happening, we feel like something's getting done even if we're maybe moving in the right direction. There might be progress being made, but are we progressing in the right direction? The devil makes his dwelling at the intersection of distraction and chaos. And on a distraction and chaos meter, how's the chaos in your life?

I know that there was a time where I couldn't have peace unless I had chaos. Like as soon as things got peaceful in my life, I had to go mess it up. I'd be like, this is boring. I'm going to mess this up. Like, get in an argument, spend more money than I could afford, just mess it up. You know what I mean? We just, we need some action because this just ain't working. learning how to live according to a different cadence, learning how to hear from God, learning how to settle down.

Maybe that next storefront that you're going to open up seems like a great business idea was maybe not the right thing for you to do. Maybe that next class you should take, the next degree, everything that is offered to you by the world does not mean it's the right thing to do, even great offers. I have to say, the devil is amazing at offering really good stuff to you. You get that? And his deal, if you just read the scripture, his deal is the ability to make it look like it's from God.

If you think without hearing from the Holy Spirit and spending time with God on a regular basis, you are going to be able to outwit the devil, you're barking up the wrong tree. You have no understanding of what the scripture says. He's fantastic at it. He offers everything. And the scripture does say there is a way that seems right to a person, but in the end, it leads to death. And just because something seems right to you doesn't mean it's right.

One of the things we're being told in culture right now is this, that if you think it's right, it's right. That personal truth trumps any kind of absolute truth, any type of moralism. The question is, do you have the discernment to know what is right and what is wrong? And the scripture says that Jesus found this out, although he knew these deep within him, but he was able to harvest that from time with the father. I want to just read 1 Corinthians 14, 33.

It's in the notes. It says, for God is not a God of confusion, but a God of peace. It's not a God of confusion, but a God of peace. Do you have peace? Do you have financial peace? I got to say, if you didn't have financial peace 15 years ago and you still don't have it now, according to Dave Ramsey, he's not God, he's not in the Bible, he didn't write a book in the Bible, we do follow, we do take his class here, probably has to do with you more than anything else.

And taking personal responsibility to say, if I don't have peace in my marriage after a certain amount of years, if I don't have peace in my finances, will you continue to have confusion and chaos in certain areas of your life? Maybe it's your health life. Sometimes that has to do with you. I don't want to break it to you, but sometimes our personal decisions influence the way we actually live. I'm just saying. Not saying, I'm just saying.

So how do we live? How do we change? How do we know what to do? You know, I don't like spiritual algorithms. I don't like one, two, three, you know, easy bake it cake and you get, you know, following Christ and everything that goes with it. But if Christ following does have a secret sauce, if it does have a secret sauce, it would be spending daily, dedicated, solitary, personal time with God. every component of following Christ, every component of following Christ, builds off of the mortar of that time with God, off of the foundation.

If you want to move forward in your relationship with Christ, the place to start every time, starts with getting away, spending time with God, getting into his word, meditating, getting quiet so you can hear, getting back into focus, letting him speak his love over you, and letting the scripture speak to you and to tell you which direction to go. We see that over and over again. This is, guys, this is basic. If there's anything practical that I can give you today, it's this.

That if you start spending daily time with God, daily time in the word, daily time sitting quiet and just letting his love wash over you. Let's say, let's break it up into 21 minutes. Seven minutes of reading God's word. Seven minutes of sitting quietly and just letting him speak over you, just getting the distractions out of your mind and seven minutes of just talking to him about whatever is on your mind. Just do that for 21 minutes and do that every single day and see if your life doesn't change.

This is the basics of following Christ. If you want to get your life out of the starting blocks, your faith out of the starting blocks, everything, missions builds off of this, benevolence builds off of this, healing, power, everything builds off of it. This is it. This is basic Christianity 101. Christian spirituality is not a religion of rule following. There's some rules. Or deed doing. But rather one of relationships set in the mortar of time alone with God.

The scripture even says that in heaven, people are going to come up and say to God, hey, hey, I knew you. Look at all the stuff I did. I cast out demons. I did this. I did that. And you know what he's going to say? Actually, I don't have any clue who you are. Who are you again? I don't think I've ever met you. That's what the scripture says. It's not about spiritual activity. It's about spending time with the father and building relationships so he can look into your heart and say no or yes or I love you or I care about you or you matter to me or I want you to go give hope to someone today.

I want to speak over your life today. This is what it's about. This is it. It's basic. Following Jesus is not rocket science. We make it into that, but it's not. It's are you spending daily time with God? Here's three practical lessons and we do want to strive to be the most practical church in the world. We might not be the biggest or the best, but I really want to be practical. I want you to go home and on Wednesday be able to resource what we've talked about today and have it change your life.

Three things from the life of Jesus. First, the rest of Jesus' life was subservient to his time with the father. Everything else was secondary. The rest, the rest, meaning everything, was subservient to time with his father. That was primary. The to-do list, the 401k, the vacation, the making sure your Twitter followers are covered to make sure that your, you know, your direct marketing is done, that the kids are making it to school.

I mean, obviously there's times where you have to, you know, there's emergencies and whatever, but primarily, everything was subservient to time with the father. Is that true for you? That's Christ following. That is Christ following. Everything is second to relationship with God. Two, Jesus' agenda was set by time with the father. He didn't make a to-do list and add number six, make sure I spend time with God today.

He spent time with God and then he wrote his day plan. That's how it worked. It wasn't the other way around. His calendar, for all of you from the 1990s, his day timer was set through spending time with the God. He got his compass, he got his balance and he knew what to do from that. And third, the power for life flowed from Christ's times with his father. Look at number one, everyone wanted a piece of Jesus. Have you ever felt like that?

Everyone wants a piece of you. You don't have enough time, enough margin, enough ability. It was interesting, I was on vacation this week and it's funny how many needs come up when you're on vacation and how many texts and how many phone calls and they just come in. I don't know why anybody can't invent the text reply, the vacation text reply. It's 2019, can I please put a reply on my text? You know what I'm saying? So all this stuff is coming in and the question is, I remember I was sitting there thinking, I really need to take five hours away from the family, I need to go spend a half day working at Starbucks, get some internet and I gotta get this stuff taken care of because it has to happen because the world doesn't exist unless I'm there, right?

And I thought, well, before I do that, I just wanna go spend time with the father and I came across this verse that I was using today that showed that Jesus did things very differently and he let his entire agenda be set according to his time with God. So I said, okay, God, what shall I do today? What am I wanna do? He says, of all that list and emails and text and there's other things besides church, there's family stuff, there's whatever.

He said, call that person, now there's like 20 to call, call that person, speak this way and then go have fun with your family. So I did. I gotta say, the world went on, it was really surprising that the world, it was surprising and you know what I also learned is people will figure out things on their own if you don't come in and you don't have to be, I don't know if you've realized that, people have this weird ability to be able to figure something out.

You know, Pastor Adam, where's that broom? I can't find the broom. Oh man, I'm gonna let him figure it out and then I get there and they bought a vacuum cleaner. It's like, wow, they bought a vacuum cleaner on their own. You don't have to save the world. You don't have to run the world. You don't have to run at the pace the world runs. To listen to the Father and to say, hey, this is a really smart thing to blow your platform up, to make more sales, to be the number one realtor on the board.

Maybe God doesn't want you to be the number one realtor. Maybe He wants you to be like number six, you know, but have a really good time and coach your daughter's soccer team. Just saying. Maybe there's something else, but you're going so fast and the trees are going by so fast and the thing is blowing up and you're so important because your phone's blowing up all the time and you're getting to the next level and you're moving up the chain and you're not gonna get the steak knives, you're gonna get the Cadillac because you're gonna be the number one person and all of a sudden your kids are just growing up in a blur.

I gotta tell you something. I have a feeling I could have blown my platform up a lot more but I would have missed a lot more. And I will say this, that while I miss my kids being young, I didn't miss them when they were young. Never. Never. And it's why my 16 year old calls me now and says, Dad, do you wanna go hang out? I had a friend call me but I wanna go hang out with you. And that's what we always wanted. To sit and to say something is more important than my next book.

Something is more important than the amount of Twitter followers or the next store you're gonna open or whatever. Maybe it's time to downgrade. Maybe God wants, I don't know what the thing is. Maybe God's saying I want you to go faster. I don't know. He might. But are you even listening to where you can get a focus on what God is saying? They came to Jesus and everyone wanted the peace and Simon and his companions in verse 36 and 37 went to look for him and when they found him they exclaimed, everyone is looking for you.

And what do you do when everyone is looking for you? The question, what do you do? Jesus, as we see, he went away and spent time with his father. Turn the page over. Jesus directed his calendar. It did not direct him. Does this device own you? Does it direct you? When you sit down, I was on vacation and I laid down and I was there a good 13 seconds before I thought, I should go see what the weather's like next week. Like, why does it matter what the weather's like next week?

You know what I mean? Like, it didn't matter to me but I wanted to know. And then I thought, well, I want to see how that news story's going and I was like, forcing myself to lay down and then I just opened up the window and I looked at the eastern Sierras and it was work to just sit there and let the beauty of God's creation just drain into me. I gotta say, that's a different way of life and a different way of living and one that this scripture really spoke to me about.

It says that Jesus directed his calendar and did not direct him. All these needs are coming to Jesus and what does he do? So, instead, he traveled throughout Galilee. He left. Preaching in their synagogues, driving out demons. This word, so, is so powerful. It's a word that showed Jesus' decision-making process when the politically savvy or commercially effective move would have been to cater to the crowds and build his platform.

Let me say that again. this word, so, is a powerful word that showed Jesus' decision-making process and all of you have a decision-making process. Life calls you and then you have a decision-making process. When the politically savvy or commercially effective move would have been to clear and to cater to the crowds to build his platform. I gotta say, this is incredibly important for pastors to understand because Eugene Peterson says this, the pastoral itch is to be where the action is and it should be resisted.

We wanna be where the action is. Now, when I was off last Sunday, I wanted to be here but I was off and I was driving by this other church and they had, like, unicorns coming out of the church. It was awesome. I looked at it. They had a parking team and they were, like, playing, like, a game with stuff out the front and they were handing out, like, they had, somebody had, like, cinnamon rolls and they're handing it out and I looked at them and I thought, gosh, my church isn't that good and we've been here five years.

They were so happy and, like, it looked amazing and, like, it was hard to get in there and there was a light and there was all this traffic and then a bunch of the Christians that were going into the church blocked the traffic so other traffic couldn't go through and I didn't think that was a good look but nonetheless, it was, like, popular and super crowded and I wanted it really bad. I was like, oh, hmm. That looks good.

And then I thought, no, I don't want that. I like the pace. I like that rest is our core value at this church and that we're breaking people with spiritual activity over and over again. We want to teach people to have a spiritual relationship. There's nothing wrong with what's going on at these other places. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I feel like the Lord has told me to do something a little bit different or else I'm going to break.

Then I was on Facebook yesterday and a friend of mine, he has a church and he started telling about his church and how they had, he goes, you know, so many years ago, like less than five years ago and I've been here six now, less than five years ago, we had three people on a couch and now there's 700 every week and I was like, oh, 300 on a couch. Let me see, we started with 45. I'm doing the math in my head, you know what I mean?

I want that! And then I thought, no I don't. I don't need that. I love what we're doing here but I have to say that the emotional opium of having something everyone looks at and points to and say, that's amazing, you're awesome, I love what you're doing there is incredibly addictive and all of you have something that pulls you towards it. It might be to be the best grandma, the best soccer coach, the best real estate agent, the best whatever it is, best surfer, best whatever it is.

All of us have this and it's so subtle and I gotta say, Satan has screwed up six months of a person's life by just whispering to them or maybe 20 years or their entire finances, you know, your house just isn't quite as nice as that person's, you should get a new one. Just a little, then he can just bounce, I'm out, gotta go. Or, you know what, she's 10 years older than you and she looks so much better. I'm just saying, a chemical peel could help.

Just whisper, pssh, I'm out, let you run with it. Now the deal is, he just hands the ball, Satan just hands you the ball then you run with it. And then he's like, well I'm done here for six, I got, oh that, that, that, I just got a year right there. You know what, no one likes you, you should probably date that guy anyway. He's a loser and he asked you out, you know, so you better go. He might get two years out of that.

He doesn't have to mess with you for two years, you're out. You know, that's what his deal is. And the question is, if you cannot pull away or have a ballast, that's why we need to spend time with God. Because deception is unbelievably effective. The enemy is so good at deception. And there's a thing that seems right to a person, but in the end it leads to death. Over and over again, we're just being told over and over again, if you think it's right, it's okay.

Do, are, where are you, where are you hearing from? And are you crowdsourcing your, your, your, your opinions? Over and over again, what we see in society today, especially with social media, is what does the crowd think? Okay, I better think that. What does the crowd think? I better think that. And that is going to drive you in a different direction oftentimes than where Jesus went. Because the crowd thought Jesus should be doing something and Jesus didn't care about crowds.

Wasn't into crowds. He was into individuals. He's into broken people, broken individuals, and he wants to come to you and he wants to make a nest with you. He wants to make a home with you and tell you that you, he, you are his beloved. And finally, Jesus, by spending time with God, has the power not only to identify, but to dispense of the demonic after time with his father. You see, so many believers have no clue if something that is offered to them is from God or Satan.

Because you tend to think that Satan only offers you bad stuff. No. He offers you really good stuff. Stuff that you want. That's his whole game. Jesus, after spending time, had the ability to say, this is the right decision, this is the wrong decision, and he could identify the demonic voice. And that's the thing. It's the voice of the spirit. But the voice of the spirit doesn't oftentimes yell. That's what I found about the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit doesn't scream for attention. If you give him attention, he'll let you know what he thinks. But he has the ability to speak, to give you a direction and a ballast in your life so that you can not only identify, because here's the thing, you can't drive out the demonic until you understand and can identify it. So somebody has loneliness in their life, or they have something that's going over their life, or some kind of oppression, or some kind of disorder, or something that's happening, and it's all coming because, as the Bible says, there are spiritual forces in the world, but you can't even identify it.

And you're going to have no power over it if you can't identify it. You might just think, well, that's just them. That's just the way that they live. I had a person this week who came to me, and they said, you know, I'm really struggling with this thing. And all of a sudden, in my spirit, and I'd been away, I'd been in the mountains, I'd been listening to God, and turning off the headphones, and taking walks, and looking at the grandeur of creation.

And something in my heart said, that's a demonic thing. You can just get rid of it. And so I just said, okay, I'm just going to try it because the Bible says I can. So, because I like trying stuff that the Bible says. So I just prayed over them, and I said, you know what? In the name of Jesus, I just believe that this is a demonic thought. You've believed this, and you're living under this, and you've chosen to be, and in the name of Jesus, I just rebuke it.

It's gone. I just send it, you know what I mean? I just got all my Pentecostal on, you know what I'm saying? So I sent that, and I said that, and then immediately, like within probably 20, 30 minutes, things changed. And all of a sudden, the rest of the week, that person got a hold of me and was like, hey, things are so different. I'm seeing a different perspective. Like, some physical things changed. Some physical ailments changed.

It was amazing. But it was because I really feel that I had slowed down enough to where, as opposed to just saying, well, I'm sorry, I'll pray about that in the future. Something in my heart said, take this moment now and dispense with it. If you want to live in power, you have to spend time with God. If you want to be able to identify what is from God and what is not, you have to spend time with God. If you want to have fruit, like it says in John 15, the scriptures and the verse, you have to be attached to the branch.

This is so simple. Let me just tell you, simple. 20 minutes a day. Make it 15. Okay? Five minutes of sitting quietly. Five minutes of reading the Bible. Five minutes of talking to God and just telling Him what your needs are. Just do that. It will absolutely change your life. You will walk into a store and somebody will be grumpy behind the counter and instead of just being an annoying person that should do a better job because they're in the service industry, you'll say, you'll get a sense in your heart, hey, something's going on with them.

There's something deeper there that maybe I can pray for them. You will live completely different. As a matter of fact, you'll start living like a Christian. It's amazing. It'll totally change your life. I don't know why I thought that was so funny, but I did. We want to give you practical tools. This week, dive into faith. Dive into a relationship with God. Stake a claim into your daily calendar. Get back to spending daily time with God.

This is the basics. It is so simple. It is so easy. It is the most difficult thing you'll ever do. Amen? Go do it. Chris, lead us. little bit. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. mana- go.