A Prepared Heart

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. The real thing about prayer and fasting, what we're doing is we're giving God priority in our lives. And those things that we are passionate about most, or we almost feel like we're addicted to, or we lay those aside. We lay those idols aside, and I use the word idols lightly.

But what an idol is is anything that you put above God, and when you lay those things that you feel like are idols in your life, and you put God in place of those, that's the idea is to put Him first, make Him priority. We call it first fruits. It's kind of a Christian term for it is first fruits. When we look through the Bible, the first fruits in the Genesis account and onward. And it's a very spiritual thing.

The idea is to lean closer to God this year, to lean into God, to hear Him for this year, because He speaks, and He still speaks. And He spoke from Genesis to Revelation. He spoke to the church. He speaks today. And so often we are bombarded with all the stuff around us, so we can't really hear Him.

So that's kind of what I want to launch this series today in, is how to hear God. I'm very passionate about this because I believe that everybody can and has the ability to hear from God. And we all want to hear from God, I would say. If you're a believer, you want to hear from God. But some would say that God doesn't speak today.

In fact, some of certain theological persuasions would even say that God doesn't speak, that we have the Word of God, and that's enough for us. And they're not heretical or anything, but that's what they believe. But my problem with that is how can you tell someone that they can have a personal relationship with God, and He doesn't speak to them? How can you tell somebody He's not speaking today, and oh, but you have a personal relationship with them? Because any relationship I want to be in, I want there to be some type of communication, right?

So for me, it just doesn't make sense that people would believe that God doesn't speak today. And throughout the Bible, we see instances all over Scripture where God was speaking. He was speaking to the church right to the end of His letters to the church. So the difference between, and gaining direction this year, I want to distinguish the difference between a believer and a non-believer when it comes to this. The difference between a believer and a non-believer is, and you would probably agree with me, is a personal relationship with Christ.

So as we enter into a year and we're making decisions, say you're looking at a new job. A believer and a non-believer both, when they look at a job, they're going to do the same things, right? They're going to, what does the job pay? Will I have to move? The area I'm moving into, is it a place I want to live?

I'm going to scope out the landscape. If I have children, I want to look at the school district and see if it's a good school district, if my kids would get an education, and we look all around. But the difference between a non-believer and a believer is that we go to God. Because ultimately, we want to hear from God. Because the thing about it is, God knows about that company.

He knows if that company is going to go out of business in a year. So why wouldn't we want to hear from God? Why would we not want to pray and ask God and hear directly from God where He's taking us? And this is probably the number one question that pastors are asked, including me, is how do I hear from God? How do I pray and how do I hear from God?

I want to hear from God. So I'm hoping this series will kind of open this up and we'll get real practical through some of this series in the weeks to come. But today, I just want to kind of give you an introduction. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to the Gospel of John and we'll start there. John 10, chapter 10, verse 1.

We also have some notes that you can fill in if you're new with us. We always have some notes there for you to fill in and kind of follow along with it. And so in John 10, verse 1, he uses a metaphor of shepherd and sheep. He often used that in Scripture Jesus when he was teaching and he liked to use a lot of stories and things like that. And so he talks about the shepherd and the sheep.

And as we read this, we know that the shepherd is Jesus and the sheep are us. So today, I kind of want to challenge you to be a sheep, okay? You want to be a sheep because the sheep hear his voice. Here's John 10, verse 1. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. Talking about Jesus. And to him, the doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear his voice. Can you say that with me? Hear his voice.

The sheep hear his voice. It doesn't say that the sheep get an impression. It doesn't say that they get a feeling or they get a gut or they get a vibe. It doesn't say any of that. It says the sheep actually hear his voice.

And he calls to his sheep by name. So he knows us by name. He calls to his sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, his sheep, he goes before them and the sheep follow him. And they know, what again?

Know his voice. And then skip down to John 10, 11. And it says, just in case you're wondering if this is really talking about Jesus, here's how Jesus explains it. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep.

So that's how much God cares about you. That's how much Jesus cares about you. He wants to communicate to you. And he wants good things for you. He wants to give his life for you.

And he's kind of. Prophetically talking about the cross there as well. And then, down in verse 16, it says, the other sheep, and he's talking here about the Gentiles, okay, because he was speaking specifically to the Jewish people, because he started with the Jews, the ministry of the gospel started in Jerusalem, and he's kind of being a little prophetic here as well. He says, the other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring. And they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd, meaning there will be both Jews and Gentiles, everyone.

The gospel is available. Jesus is available to everyone. And then, verse 27, it says, my sheep, once again, hear my voice. He stresses that over and over again. My sheep, hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me.

So, hearing God isn't just something we do, it's something we are. We are sheep. We are sheep. So, we're going to be sheep today. Here's just three things real quickly that I want to say, and then I'm going to give you some things that perhaps are blocking us from being able to hear God.

But here's the thing about being a child of God, and hearing God, and how we hear God. First of all, it's innate. innate. It's wired in us. It's innate.

It's natural. It's built in us. When we were born again, something happened inside of us. It was already there from the beginning of time, but something opened up where we were able to connect and communicate with God. He had that in us from the very beginning.

He created us that way. Think about this. Why do we communicate by speaking and hearing? Because we are created in the image of God, because we have a God who speaks and who hears. We pray to God, and He speaks to us.

So, why would God create mankind not to be able to communicate with Him when He created Him in His image? And that's what really separates us from every other living thing. The way we communicate. We communicate deeply and passionately and to another level. Think about animals.

That's what puts us above animals, really. Now, I love animals, you know, and animals do communicate, right? They communicate a lot. But think about it. When you're communicating to a dog, for instance, we got any dog people in here, huh?

We got some great dog people. Okay, where are the cat people? Okay, I'm going to, you know, pray for you in the name of Jesus, that that will be cast out of you. I'm just kidding. I do like cats.

I'm just allergic to them, so it's hard for me to be around cats a whole lot, even though they're great. Yeah, that's just, I just said that so I wouldn't get killed after service, okay? Because I know we have some cat people in here. But what's interesting, probably a cat's a little smarter than a dog when they communicate. But think about a dog for a second, you know, when you get, you know, your dog comes up to you.

You can say anything to that dog and say it with the right tone, and they're just going to love you anyway. Oh, you stupid little me. You're just so dumb. Yeah. You know, you could do that all day long.

What are they going to do? They're going to wag their tail. They're going to love you. They're going to do it anyway. Think about a dog that barks all the time, you know, like in the middle of the night.

Woof, woof, woof, woof. Stop barking. They're not going to stop and say, oh, my bad. You know, they're just not going to do that because they don't communicate the way we communicate. We communicate in a different way.

We communicate in a deeper way. It's innate. It's built inside of us. We're able to communicate. Also, it's learned.

Second thing is it's learned. It's not something that we just pick up all of a sudden. So it's okay if you're having trouble hearing from God. It's something that's learned. When you were a child or when your children were young, they had to learn how to communicate, right?

I was just with my family at Christmas. My sister just had a baby. She's not even a year old. How old is Jessa, Miranda? About six months now?

Six months. And I hold Jessa and I talk to her and, you know, you kind of talk to her with kind of this funny voice, right? Hey, you're so cute. You're so cute. How does she respond?

You know, and spits and, you know, yeah, she loves to go and things like that. So, you know, she's learning to communicate and she doesn't, you know, that's just all she knows right now. That's all she knows. So like children, we have to learn to hear God and communicate with God because God is at such another level than us that we have to connect with him. So it's a growth process in which we learn how to communicate.

And it's matured. It's matured. Back to kids, you know, kids have to mature. Now kids, when they start communicating, they don't always say the right things, do they? Like they don't know etiquette.

They see somebody, why is that guy so fat? You know, they'll say it right in front of anybody, right? Or how, you know, how old is grandma? You don't ask grandma how old she is. Okay.

And you don't say it in front of her. How old are you, grandma? You don't say that. Nobody says how old grandma is. Okay.

And they, and kids, they don't have a filter. They, they, they ask questions and, and, uh, they ask them in, in, in immature ways. And in the same way, that's how God is, you know, he, he, the way he communicates is just so at a different level and we need to mature in the way we hear and we hear from God that we move in God and we speak, you know, and, and things like that. So it's, I remember there's a story. It's really funny.

Um, when I was a kid, uh, my, my father's a pastor, been pastor. I was born in pastoral ministry and, uh, we were pastoring a church and, uh, many, many years ago, I think I was probably about three or four years old, maybe not even that old. And I'm, I'm, I'm playing outside, running around outside. There's this guy working on the property behind the place we lived at. And, uh, he stops and takes a break and start smoking a cigarette.

And, and I walk up to him and I'm like, uh, sir, do you know, smoking cigarettes make you go to hell? You're going to go to hell for smoking cigarettes. Yeah. And, uh, and obviously I didn't know, you know, it was kind of the theological paradigm that I understood at that particular age, right? I mean, uh, from, from, through my religious system of what I understood during that time.

And what I would say to that sometimes we don't hear from God, rather we hear from our religious systems that were brought up through, right? We, we, we, we want to hear from God. We don't want to set the tone based on what we already understand or the way we were raised. We want to, we want to really hear from God. We want to speak the things that God has for us to others and listen to them correctly.

So if we aren't careful, we can hear anything from God, right? If we aren't mature and we work in that way. So, kind of taking a shift here, I want us to prepare our hearts a little bit, okay, for this season. Because, honestly, do you want to hear from God? Do you want to hear from God?

Do you want to hear Him clearly? Do you want to know it's Him? Well, we have to prepare our hearts. We have to prepare our hearts. What keeps us from hearing from God?

It's the noise. It's the muddiness. It's all the things that we have that are keeping us, that are muddying up the waters. And I think a perfect example, if I'm talking to Scott Blalock in the back of the room, and I'm like, Scott, Scott, you know, and everybody's like talking and going on, you know, just over and over again, just talking. Hey, Scott, Scott, he's not going to be able to hear me because all of the muddiness, all of the noise, all the things that are going on in your life, you know?

But when the room is quiet like it is now, Scott can hear me clearly. Hey, Scott, how you doing, brother? Yeah, see, he hears me. Hey, who's talking to you, Scott? It's Leon, right?

Yeah. So we can hear each other. He can hear me. He can speak back to me. And that's what we need to do.

We need to release all the noise. We need to let it go. Let's get to the heart of the issue here. And there's a few types of hearts we need to deal with today. The first one is a polluted heart.

A polluted heart. Hearts that are polluted cannot hear recognize God's voice. If we want to hear God's voice, how can we expect him to respond when we're polluted? Just like the air in a city is polluted and it's hard to live in, how can God talk, be, and move through us when we are polluted? When we are living contrary lives to what God has for us, according to what he, there's this thing called righteousness and holiness, we as believers seem to kind of push to the side and not talk about because we can't deal with sin, but we invite sin into our lives all the time and we pollute our hearts.

And it's hard for us to hear from God. There might be some movies that you need to stop watching, some shows you need to stop watching, some things you need to start participating in, and maybe some people that you've been hanging around that you have no business to hanging around, they're influencing you, they're polluting you. And I was just in the store. I mean, it just happens all the time. I was in the shopping mall the other day and I was listening to an old rock song and it was a very graphic old rock song.

And I was back in the day, I love rock music and I still do love rock music, but back in the day I listened to a lot of stuff that I had no business listening to and it affected me in many ways. But just going into a store and hearing that song, and that song kept ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing through my head all day, and it started to affect me. And I realized, like I was driving down the road and I said, man, I hear that song, it's affecting me. I'm not even thinking right. And when we allow things to come in, and I'm not saying you have to cut off everything.

I'm just like when you walk into a store and you hear a song, oh, I've got to get out of here. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that's how it affects us. We don't even realize it's affecting us and it's polluting us and it's really hard to hear from God when we have sin in our lives. We need to go to the Lord and say, Lord, if I have any sin in my life, I need to let it go.

And I'm talking about not necessarily unwillful sin. We deal with sin, okay, guys? By grace we are saved, not by works, right? We cannot be good enough to make it into the kingdom, but we can work from salvation because there is something called righteousness that we can obtain. And it hurts me to see people walking the opposite direction.

When God has it available, He can free you from the power of sin. Paul talks about it all over Romans, Romans 6, the whole chapter. Just read that alone and it talks about how we can be freed from the power of sin. But we cannot hear from God if we have polluted hearts, if we're affected. We've got to get rid of stuff.

In fact, James talks about that in chapter 1, verse 21. Get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives and humbly accept the message God has planted in your heart. So He's planted a message, He's trying to speak to you, but we've got so much stuff going on, we can't hear from Him. For it is strong enough to save your soul. Wow!

It could change everything. So we need to get rid of the polluted heart. The second thing, we need to get rid of the distracted heart. Distractions. How many of you go to start praying and then you start thinking about everything that's going on around you?

We can't get quiet, you know? My mind's going all over the place. I've got to get this done. I've got to get that done. I've got to do that.

I do it all the time. I'm guilty. I'm preaching to myself here. It's hard, but we have this distracted, just everything else is important, right? This is a big, but the biggest thing you can do in your life is set an appointment with God.

You set an appointment for everything else, right? It's pretty important. You want to put it on your list. I've got to have an appointment. I've got to put it on my calendar.

I've got to make room. This is important. I can't interfere with this. How many of us do that with God? Because God, yeah, God's with us all the time, and He speaks to us all the time, I suppose.

But what if God wants an appointment with you? What if God wants some time with you? Just to give you an idea, in fact, if you go to Scripture in Luke 10, verse 39, and most of you are familiar with the story if you were raised in church, but you have Mary and Martha, two sisters. They were best friends with Jesus. Jesus comes to your house, Martha's cooking and doing all the stuff, and she sees Mary over by Jesus' feet.

She just cannot get over that. She's just working really hard. How many of you are Marthas in here? You know, sometimes we're so busy serving that we miss out on God. You know, we're doing God's work so much.

That's me. I've done that so many times. I'm just doing God's work, doing God's work, doing God's work, from really just sitting at the feet of Jesus and laying on his feet, laying against his bosom and just hearing his voice and giving time to him. It says that she had a sister named Marian who seated herself at the Lord's feet and was listening and teaching, but Martha was so occupied and so busy, was distracted with much serving. And that's what happens.

Or maybe we don't serve. Maybe it's just not a priority. We're serving our families, yes. We're serving our community, yes. I'm so thankful that we have so many people who love your community and love Virginia Beach and serve, but sometimes I think Virginia Beach is our God and not God Himself, right?

We want God to infiltrate Virginia Beach, not Virginia Beach to infiltrate God, right? We want to be a change agent in our city for that reason. And here's just a little bit, I'll probably get deeper in this, more practical as we go through this series, but here's just a method that I think is really good and I practice a lot. And so when you set that appointment with God, when you put that time on the calendar, I mean, pull out your calendar and actually put a time on it, ding, ding, you know, and honor that time like you honor anybody else. And then you go into, if you go into your, your, I guess, prayer closet, prayer room, whatever you have going on, maybe it's in your office before work.

Maybe it could be in the evening. It could be any time you want to do it. When you walk in, just, just begin to, first of all, I put on worship music and you can put on worship music and, and just, and that takes the distraction away because what you're doing, you're taking everything from that day and you're starting to focus, excuse me, focus on God. You focus on God, you focus on his presence and it clears your mind and clears your heart. And then you lay your needs or you lay your, your burdens at the feet of Jesus.

Because if you don't lay your burdens down, if you don't let those burdens go before you go into a time of wanting to hear from him, then what you're doing, your prayers are just whining. I need this. I want this. Yes. He wants to hear your needs, but you need to lay them at his feet.

I'm giving you my burdens. I'm clearing my burdens away right now, Lord, because my ultimate desire is to hear from you. And then I go to the word of God and it doesn't matter where you start or where you go, but you go to the word of God and you start to just, just allow it to exegete. That's the Greek word for, you know, just, just pulling things from scripture, just pulling things out of scripture. And, and, and Lao, Lao, and there's this thing called revelational exegesis that, that, that God can do.

I mean, there's, there's the exegesis of scripture where you look at the context and the interpretation, all that, and all the, all the, all the academic terms you want to use, you know, with exegesis. But there's also that part where the Holy Spirit is part of really speaking to you. And then you go, and I love this, and I would challenge every one of you to do this is pull out something to write on and just spend a little bit of time just listening, just being quiet and listening and writing down what God's telling you. So the third thing is, is a, and I'm kind of coming back to my, my other point, because I think it's so important is an immature heart, an immature heart. Hebrews 12 says it like this, since we are surrounded by so many examples of faith, right?

We must get rid of everything that slows us down, especially sin that distracts us. So we talked about that earlier, the things that fluid us, and we must run the race that lies ahead of us and never give up. We must focus on Jesus. The immature heart has a problem focusing on Jesus because the immature hearts focused on their heart. They're focused on everything else.

And when people start hearing from God, just kind of, there's two sides of it, actually, because those who are, who are, like I said earlier, they're learning to communicate with God. Um, uh, it's kind of funny, um, being in the church world for so long, you have all these different types of people that, that, that, you know, you got the, uh, that the message a minute people, you know, that hear from God every second, you know, God told me I need to put salt on my fries. You know, God probably didn't tell you that. And it's probably, you know, I want God to speak to you every second, but you know, he's not, he's not just, uh, you need to wear a blue shirt today, you know, or whatever. I mean, it just kind of gets, gets out of control.

Um, and then, uh, there was this, there was this, uh, point, uh, my, my grandfather's generation, probably more so it was called the, the, the, uh, point and hope philosophy. You know, you just kind of close your eyes and point to a scripture and you're like, this is my life verse, right? There was a life verse philosophy, you know, that, that this is God speaking to me. The problem with that, uh, is that the highest chapter and the highest verse is 1951. So anybody passed that was born past 1951, no longer had a life verse, right?

So that, that didn't really work. Uh, Dallas Willard, uh, he's, he's a author of many books about hearing from God. And he said, he, he went, uh, uh, he went to his life verse and he just chose Genesis because it was the first book in the Bible. And when he pointed, um, and he, or he found his life verse, basically took his birthday. I guess you take your birthday and all that kind of stuff.

And you put it together and, and you find your life verse. And he went to Genesis and it says, so they got drunk and slept with him. You know, that was his life verse. So that, that doesn't work. That's probably not God speaking.

Um, um, and then there's kind of the, whatever will be, will be philosophy. And this is probably more prominent is that, you know, God's just going to do what he's going to do. And you know, I'm a, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm mature enough and I don't need to hear from God because I know what to do anyway. And, and, uh, and, uh, some use this philosophy, uh, because part of it is maybe they're, they're, they're lazy or they don't care to grow. We've got a lot of, a lot of believers that are just sitting and they don't even care to grow.

And maybe they are lazy. Maybe they're idolizing their schedules. Going back to the last thing we were talking about, they idolize their schedules and things are, you know, I like my sleep. I don't want to wake up early in the morning and pray to God. I like my sleep and I don't need God.

You know, I don't, I don't need, I mean, I need God, but I don't need to hear from him because, you know, I have the word of God and this and that. And plus he's going to do what he's going to do anyway. But how can you have a personal relationship with God and how can you grow closer to God? Unless you talk to God, how can you grow closer to God? Unless you have some time with God, you spend time with God.

How do you have a close relationship with your spouse? How do you have a close relationship with your friends? How do you have a close relationship with your family? How do you have a close relationship with the church, the people who are part of your church family? What do you do?

You spend time with them. You talk to them. You communicate with them. You get to know them. And for some reason, we have a multitude of people in the church and Christian life that don't know how to talk to God.

They don't care. They don't want to mature and they're missing out. And over time, they become very callous. And in fact, Hebrews 5, 11, 12 says this. And I don't have this in your notes.

It was something I kind of put in there last night as God was speaking to me about. The message is, about this we have much to say, if you want to write this down, Hebrews 5, 11, and 12, and it is hard to explain, so Paul is saying, it's hard to explain, I've been teaching you, it's hard to explain, since you have become dull to hearing, he said you have become dull of hearing, not dull to hearing, but dull of hearing, for though by this time you ought to be teachers. So many of us even here should be already at the place of teaching, but you need someone to teach you again. And that's what happens to so many people, they should be at a point where they're teachers, where they're grown and mature, but they can't hear from God, because they're dull of hearing. They cannot hear, they cannot hear what's being said, because they have this whatever will be, will be philosophy.

They couldn't discern good from evil, they couldn't hear good teaching, because, because, God's going to do it anyway, I don't need to hear it, I don't, you know. So, God's voice, and let me just say this statement, God's voice is clearest in a prepared environment. So, we need to get rid of the pollutions and distractions and the attitudes about, you know, about hearing from God, so that we can have a clear, a clear, a clear prepared environment. We're saying the atmosphere is changing now. That's a good song to put in the environment where you want to hear from God.

Just start saying, you know, God, change my environment, I'm cleaning this. In 2 Corinthians 7, 1, in the message, I love how the message paraphrase says this, it says, let's make a clean break from everything that defiles or distracts us, both within and without. Let's make our entire lives fit and holy temples for the worship of God. We want to be holy temples. We want to prepare a body.

We want to prepare a temple for God. So, circling back around to my first statement about the difference between believers and unbelievers, and kind of closing here today, why do we ask, why do we want to, why does God want to communicate to us more than anything? I think the first answer for many of us would be direction. He wants to give us direction, right? Yeah.

No. It's about friendship. What God really wants is friendship. Friendship. To get direction.

Yes, that's available. To hear from God for a new job or a new situation, or whether I should move here or move there, whether I should be here or be there. That's great and everything, but why does God really want to communicate with us because he wants a relationship with us? Friendship. In fact, John 15, 15 says it like this.

I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I call you friends. So God calls us friends for everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you. So what does God want more than anything? What does God want more than anything?

He wants a relationship. He wants friendship. God speaks. And he speaks in ways that could save your life. You know that?

Pastor Robert Morris wrote this book called Frequency, which we're kind of basing the series off of. Pastor of Gateway Church in Dallas, Texas. He's a very, very great Bible teacher. And he shared a story. And this story really, really got me.

They were in their 21 days of fasting. I imagine it was about four or five years ago or so. And he has a few, all of his children are married. And his youngest son is one of the associate pastors at the church. And his wife, his daughter-in-law, is on the worship team.

So Robert's walking, Pastor Robert's walking up on stage and he's getting ready to go out and share the word of God. And he hears God tell him that his daughter-in-law, Bridget, is pregnant. He says, Bridget is pregnant. Bridget's pregnant. What Robert didn't know is that Bridget had prayed that someone close to her would reveal to her, speak to her, or God would speak through them about the situation.

They wanted to have another child, but they'd have several miscarriages. They already had a few children, but it was very hard for them to have children. And they were praying about that. And she had asked God, you know, somebody to give them a message. So dinner that night with the family, as they were breaking their fast, Pastor Robert, and if you know Pastor Robert Morris, if you've ever listened to him, he's got a world-renowned television teaching program and stuff like that.

He's very kind of, when he hears from God, he hears from God and he's going to tell you, right? So he just stands up and he says, I've got something to say. I've got something to share with the family, right, in front of the whole family. And he says, Bridget's pregnant. And everybody just started laughing, you know, come on, you know, no, no, no, Bridget's pregnant.

God told me Bridget's pregnant. God told me Bridget's pregnant. Well, his son, James, started arguing with Will. No, Bridget's not pregnant. Yes, Bridget's pregnant.

No, she's not. Yes, she is. God told me Bridget's pregnant. And they just kind of went back and forth. He finally pulled them into the back room.

He said, Dad, Dad, are you serious about this? He says, yeah, I'm serious. God told me. God told me that Bridget's pregnant. So they decided to go to the doctor's office to kind of, you know, the next week just to kind of check it out.

And the problem was, you know, she went in and the doctor looked at everything and says, Bridget, you're not pregnant. Sorry to tell you that you're not pregnant, but your progesterone level is low. Yeah. Pillow. Bye.

� And we want to give you some medicine to kind of help it so that you guys can have a child. So they said, OK, we want to do that. We're going to give this a try. Get our progesterone up and try to have a child. Well, they went back a month later to check up on the last visit and the doctor comes in scratching his head.

He says, you're not going to believe this, but you're pregnant. And you're not only pregnant, you're pregnant the first time you were here. I just missed it. And he says, OK, how far back does this go? You know, when you count the days and stuff and it dated back to the day before Robert heard that word on stage from God.

Not only that, because her progesterone level was low, they gave her more of that, gave her more medication, and that actually saved the baby's life. So God was working in that situation. You know why? Because God still speaks. God speaks specifically.

And he cares about your family. He cares about your situation. But more importantly, he wants to have a relationship with you. That's what it really comes down to. So I challenge you today, if you know the Lord or you don't know the Lord, the reason we exist is to bring people closer to Jesus.

Take a step closer to Jesus. Fully devoted, followers of Christ, whatever way. And maybe you're somebody here today that's been a Christian for a long time, but maybe you haven't took the next step in your faith to really trust and hear from God. Make this your day. Maybe you're somebody here who's never given your life or never even given the thought to walking.

You just saw Christianity as a religion. But can I tell you, it's a friendship with God. It's a friendship. It's a relationship. It's a God.

He's a personal God, a personal Savior that wants to speak to you, that wants to communicate to you, that wants you to hear Him. He wants to hear from you. He wants to talk to you. He wants you to talk to Him. That's what distinguishes Yahweh from any other religion is that He is a personal God who sent His Son so that you can have a relationship with Him.

So I say with all heads bowed and all eyes closed today, and I want to give everyone an opportunity here today, God is doing something in this place. I sense His presence. Maybe He's tugging at your heart right now. Today, make that decision whether it's to walk one step closer to Him or to give your life to Him today, to make a commitment to Him today. Just pray this with me.

Father, I believe that You are the Son of God, that You died on the cross for my sin. I receive You as Lord and Savior. You died and rose again. You live today. Come into my life.

Come into my heart. Transform you from the inside out. Yes, this is your name.