And all God's people said, amen. Thank you for the blessing tonight in song. What a sweet treat, amen? Amen, I tell you. Brother John, do you sing? Yeah. That sounds like you're messing with me right there. Well, you know, these singing preachers out there, they bother me. Look, I'm telling you, I tell folks, I was cut out to sing, I was just sewed up wrong is all it is. It's not in me. But I'm grateful for those that can, amen? To God be the glory. Loving God and loving one another for the story never, ever ends. I, I, as y'all was singing that, I went back to that Older Testament book of the, the book of Deuteronomy and chapter number 30 and verse number six, the Lord says, I will circumcise your heart that you may love me with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your spirit, that you may live. You see, the only way to love our God, the only way to really love our neighbor is for something supernatural in the grace of God to take place within us. You know, the circumcision of the heart is what we would say in the New Testament as being born again. means to be regenerated of the Spirit of God. That God does something and cuts away at the heart of a man and removes that heart of stone that is not pliable and moldable and cuttable and he puts a heart of flesh, something that can be worked so that we can, in response, love him and then love our neighbor. Because none of us outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, loved the Lord, the Father, with all his heart, with all his soul, with all that he had, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He never missed it, and I wanna tell you, that's why we must be hidden in him, amen? Because it's just not something that we can do apart from a work of grace taking place in our life. I'm reminded that lawyer, that scribe, lawyers in the New Testament, During the days of Jesus it wasn't like a lawyer in our day. They were just someone skilled in the law of God or they considered themselves to be skilled in the law of God. The problem is they didn't know the God of the law. And that's why they did what they did to Jesus. And that's why they persecuted him and went after him and didn't know who he was. But he asked, how would he inherit eternal life? And he told him, what is your reading of the law? And he said, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your spirit. And he says, well, you said, well, do that and you'll live. Well, it's impossible unless God does a work in you. Well, the lawyer wanting to justify himself, he says these words, well, who is my neighbor then? And Jesus went into the story about the man who fell among thieves on the road between Jericho and Jerusalem. And those thieves beat that man up, stripped him of his clothes, took what he had and left him half dead alongside to the road. And then two ministers come by, a Levite and a priest. And when they saw the man, they slipped over on the other side of the road and kept on passing him by. And then the Samaritan shows up. and he used his hands and he used his resources. He got off of his beast and he picked the man up and he wiped the blood off of him and he cleaned him up and put him up on his beast and he took him to an inn, put him in there, covered the cost and said, if he inquired anymore, just put it on my tab, I'll take care of it when I come back. And he asked the lawyer that day, who do you think was more neighborly? And he couldn't say the Samaritan because he still had a problem with people. See, he couldn't love his neighbor. He just said, him who showed mercy. And he said, you have rightly said, go and you do likewise. And last time I was with y'all, a few years back, we looked at those passages. I don't know if you can recall that, but I said, out of that, we find three types of people in the world. The kind of people that'll beat you up. The kind of people that'll pass you up. the kind of people that'll help you up. And I wanna be the type of person that will help people up. I'm not always that way, I haven't always been that way, but I need to be in a position that the compassion and the mercy of God will allow me to enter into the hurt of others. And not beat them up, not pass them up in this busy life we live, but help. people up in their despair and their trouble. Too many times we may not be as guilty as some as beating people up. You don't have to beat people up with your fist. Now, you can beat them up in a lot of different ways. You can beat them up with your words, emotionally, mentally. A lot of times we beat up our spouses with little things we do and say. We beat our children up and things. We hard on our own family, amen? Are you with me? When I say amen, I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying that is a fact. It's a lie that we practice and live. It's not based on truth, but it's still a fact. We harder most of the time on our family than we are other people. But we're usually more guilty of passing people up because we got places to be, things to do. We just busy like those ministers that day that didn't want to involve themselves and that man along in the ditch because I've got another meeting to get to. I've got another person to go see. Somebody needs me. I gotta get home and cook dinner. I gotta get to the deer stand and hunt. I gotta get to the lake and cast that. You know, we pass folks up every day of our life. We go from store to store, from place to place, work to work. PASS A THOUSAND PEOPLE UP ON THE WAY HOME THAT NEED JESUS. AND ALL GOD'S PEOPLE SAID, ARE YOU GUILTY? WE ALL ARE BECAUSE WE GET CAUGHT UP IN WHAT WE STARTED OUT THIS SERIES IN. REMEMBER IN LUKE CHAPTER 17 AND VERSE NUMBER 26 Jesus says that like it was in the days of Noah, so will the people on the earth in that day be. They will marry, they will bury, they will harvest, they will plant, they will be just living a routine, everyday, normal life in this old world with no regard that judgment is about to fall. Tomorrow night, if Lord willing, He gives us tomorrow night. We're gonna look at that idea of that until, that time frame that God gives. But tonight, what we wanna do is look at the book of Isaiah. That's where I'd like you to turn. Isaiah chapter number 54. Isaiah chapter number 54. We started off looking at how easy it is to allow this old world to throw some dirt on our wells. We start acting and thinking and looking more like the world than producing that well of life out of us to help people because the old world we live in has a way of throwing debris on that well. and filling it up with dirt, and we picture that with Isaac when he was down with the Philistines and how the Philistines threw dirt upon the wells that Abraham had dug, but when he got right with Jesus, he got right with the Father, he got right with the people for whom the Father brought him into, when he got those things right and confessed it, what happened? That man became faithful, he became fruitful again. What did he start doing? Remember we talked about that? What was characteristic of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? They built their... They built their what? They built their altars and they what? Pitched their tents. They put a priority on worship rather than living in this world because they were simply passing through this world living and walking by faith. The only exceptions we see them getting out of that order acting uncharacteristic of who they were as a way of life was when they found themselves in sin. And when they found themselves in sin, misrepresenting the covenant, misrepresenting the ambassadorship they had upon this earth as God's men, when they found themselves in that position, they set aside the priority of worship and they settled in the land that they were in And the scripture gives us a picture that these men were not fruitful nor faithful during that time. Yes, the wives, like Sarah, interceded. She trusts God. She followed his lead. Even in the foolishness of Abraham, she trusted God, and God protected not only her, but he protected Abraham as well. We looked how Noah, when God warned him, he was moved. He was affected by the warning. And we said that faith does a couple things. I mentioned them last night. I probably went through them fairly fast. Brother John said he didn't get them. He missed them. I said, well, I'm gonna put them on sermon audio, you can get them. But what faith does, faith propels. He was propelled by the warning of God. It affected him, it moved him. Faith also prepares us to build something. He built an ark for the saving of his household because that's what the mission was. He was given by God. He just did as God commanded him and faith propelled him To what? To move, to act on the warning. But then what we find in what faith did, it prepared him to act on the wisdom that God gave him to build the ark. And then we see that faith positioned him to stand with God. And when he stood with him, that was a condemnation on the entire world that was anti-God, wasn't listening to him and wasn't following him. And that's what faith does with you and I today. It propels us to move, to act, to do. It stirs us, it affects us. Every once in a while, I get a guy, I've shared these things with him a couple times. He's a great friend of mine. I preach in their church on a regular basis, and I think a couple years ago he asked me this. He asked me about, Brother Nick, what's the difference between preaching and teaching? And that's a challenge if you really want to narrow it down, and I believe all good teaching ought to have an element of preaching, and all preaching ought to have a little element of teaching, amen? And what preaching does is really move us, it stirs us, it moves us in a direction, but teaching helps us get to where we're going. It helps us understand how to get there. And that's what happens in faith. Faith stirs us. It moves us. It puts us in a position to move with fear and give place to God. But then God begins to give us wisdom to explain how to put it all together as we own the journey with Him. And no different than what Noah was doing and building an ark, we're building a kingdom today with the help of God's grace and by the power of His Spirit. we building a kingdom for him. And I'm so grateful for our church at Briggs Chapel and they love on Stephanie and I and they love on our family and they've gone to great measures to demonstrate their love toward us and they are a kingdom-minded group of people. When they invited us to come and shepherd them on this journey of life nine years ago. We were in full-time evangelism at the time. They saw what we were doing. They embraced that, and they didn't wanna get in the way of it. They just said, we would love for you to shepherd and pastor us, and we wanna support you in the kingdom work that God has called you to do, and we'll see that as mission work from us. If you could just be with us two Sundays out of a month, we would love for you to pastor us. And I tell you, you don't see that in a lot of places. And they welcomed us in. We don't abuse that. We don't do it that way. But we're usually gone on an average about once a month somewhere. We're doing what we're doing here. And they see that as kingdom work. And they see this as part of the fruit that God has blessed them with. And they're praying and interceding for us tonight. and we have those that have been set aside to be intercessors that pray specifically for specific needs in people and they will tarry and wait and labor before the Lord and the needs that are brought before them and I just wanna say tonight they're praying for us. And what refreshing blessing that is when people pray for us. But faith always prepares us to build. It equips us to build, it effects us to move, and then it empowers us and positions us just to stand with Jesus when everything else seems to be falling apart. And that's what we see in this passage here. Isaiah 54 and verse number nine. The scripture says, for this is like the waters of Noah to me. Now I want you to, I'm gonna read that one more time, beginning in verse number nine. For this is like the waters of Noah to me, for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, so I have sworn that I would not be angry with you, Father, we ask you tonight for your help. We're grateful that we could lift our voices in song, that we could hear testimonies of the righteous through song. You promise us in your word that you will surround us with the songs of deliverance, testimonies of the righteous. And we experienced that tonight. We've embraced it by faith and we're thankful that we can love you and love one another and that we can be your hands and feet upon this earth, that we don't have to beat people up, we don't have to pass them up, we can help them up, and we're just asking you tonight to help me be a help to this congregation. In Jesus' name, amen. the waters of Noah. Have you ever considered why God personalized these waters? Yes, no doubt it's a historical reference to Noah and a particular timeframe of what God did in that day when he says the waters of Noah, it's no doubt that he's bringing us back to a time when God destroyed the earth minus eight souls and all that was living within it But what it goes beyond that, I really believe it goes beyond just the historical reference that he is making in this passage. And I think what he's telling us is this. Noah, a man moved and affected by God, prepared this ark and what he preached What he practiced, how he prepared his life, everything matched up with the message that he proclaimed. And what did Noah proclaim? The Bible tells us in the newer testament that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. Noah was a preacher. And what he preached matched how he lived. And what he preached was that the waters of judgment were coming. And I personally believe that Noah became known for the message that he preached, for the life that he lived. You've heard it before. Most of us in here are fairly mature and mature and we've been through a life a bit. We know that the end of all flesh is death and that everyone is going to die at some point. And we believe that Jesus is our answer for life. He's our answer for sorrow. He's our answer for joy. He's our answer for sin. We believe that he's the answer for death. He's the answer for the grave. He's the answer for eternity. I believe Jesus is the answer for everything. And we've all experienced the funeral. How many of you have not ever been to a funeral before? How many of you ever heard a preacher say this? Well, Joe Schmuckatelli preached his own funeral by the life that he lived. And you know, we all preach our own funerals, amen, by the life that we live. I've been part of quite a few funerals over the nearly 20 years of preaching the gospel now, and I've had some funerals, my very first funeral, I'm talking about I am as green as green can get in the pastorate. I was not raised in the church. I did not have a family that served Jesus. There was no lordship of the Jesus Christ in our family. There was no grace in our family. I lived in an ungodly family. When I say ungodly, simply is God was not present in it with my dad and my mom leading us in the things of God. But we were a family that cared for one another. We were a family that spent a lot of time with one another. My dad invested in me and my brothers. and he took care of us, he played ball with us, he taught us how to play ball, he taught me how to kick a ball, throw a ball, catch a ball, he taught me how to hunt, he taught me how to fish, he taught me how to garden, he taught me how to cook on a grill, he taught me how to do everything most in life, he taught me and my brothers, he coached me, he coached them, and he did all these things, but he did not lead us to Jesus. He didn't lead us to Jesus. I wasn't the smartest apple upon the tree. I didn't do very well in school. I didn't care much for school. The only reasons I went to school was, is there were pretty girls like honey that went to school. I enjoyed playing football and baseball, and that provided me an opportunity to be able to play, and I was good at landing the prettiest girl in the school. I was fairly well at playing sports, and I was terrible in academics. Not that I was a troublemaker, because I didn't cause my teachers trouble. Most of my teachers liked me. Most of my teachers went out of their way to try to help me, but I thought I was a big dummy. I didn't think I could learn, honestly. If I told y'all in here tonight what I scored on my ACT, y'all would run me out of here. I was not the brightest fella on campus by, I was in the, you know, really, I'm gonna be honest with you now. I mean, when I was in grade school coming up, elementary up through, I was even in some of those learning disability classes. I'm not messing with you, I'm telling you. And I always thought in my mind I couldn't learn. And if I thought I couldn't learn, I wouldn't apply myself in learning. Well, when God saved me at 26 years old, saved Stephanie, same age, just before me, saved her, then saved me. God revealed a proverb to me, Proverbs 16, three, which says, commit thy works unto the Lord, and he shall establish your thoughts. Roll your works, entrust your life, entrust your works over to the Lord, and he will establish your thoughts. I said, oh, I'm the candidate for that. I need that Lord, I trust, and I tell you what, I believed exactly what God said, and my bride, I testify, I tell you, God began to teach me. And he began to establish my thoughts for me. And he began to do things that couldn't be explained in my life other than a God thing. And God, not long after that, I sensed God calling me into the ministry. I didn't have no church background, none of those things. I didn't know much about church other than just what God did with me and what He was doing with our church at the time. And I finally, eventually surrendered that. Stephanie didn't even believe I was called. I was very shy, I didn't talk a whole lot. I know y'all have a hard time believing that, but I was very shy, didn't say a whole lot. If you spoke to me, I would speak to you. I wasn't rude to you, wasn't mean to you, but see, I didn't have a whole lot of, people that talk that don't have a lot of knowledge are fools, are you with me? Knowledge gives you confidence. You find me somebody that has knowledge in a thing, I'll show you somebody that has confidence in it. Now what you need with confidence, because you got knowledge, you need compassion. Because compassion, a mead out, a measure out your knowledge so that you can love people even with having knowledge, you won't be arrogant or prideful. And we need the love of God working in us, amen. No matter how deep we go into the Lord, we want to go deeper into his love. That's why Paul said in Philippians 1, I pray that your love will grow and abound more and more in all knowledge and discernment that you may approve those things that are excellent. in the will of God, that you may be without blame, that you'll be spotless unto the coming of the Lord. See, that love has to grow in knowledge and discernment. Well, I was growing in those things. People around me that knew me best would have never in a million years, I would have never in a million years anticipated God calling me to teach the word of God and preach it. I was intimidated to even pray in front of people. I just didn't know, I didn't know how to pray other than just talking to him. And in our church, it was a church very similar to the setup like this. Our pastor brother Malcolm Lewis was pretty predictable. And he always called on the man that stood right here to take up the offering to pray. We also had balconies with loaves that come down and I would always, when they would ask me to usher, I was gonna find me a spot that wasn't this spot. Because I knew if I got in that spot, he was gonna call on me to pray. Now think about this. Now the whole time, he's stirring in my heart of setting me aside for ministry, and I'm avoiding the spot. So I wouldn't, how in the world am I gonna preach if I'm intimidated to stand up there and just pray? She knew me very well, obviously. Well, God began to do a work and he worked in me and eventually I surrendered to that, surrendered before the church and said, I don't know what God's calling me to do specifically at this moment, but I'm willing to do anything. People began to pray for me. God began to open up doors and I started going to preach in places. And I want to tell you the first invitation I had to preach, it was within a month of surrendering. Another preacher brother in our church called me on a Saturday night at 10 o'clock and said, I got an invitation to preach, I can't do it, can you do it in the morning? I ain't never preached before. It's 10 o'clock on a Saturday night, I said, Brother Steve, I anticipate at least a week or two of praying and being advanced to study for it. I said, can I call you right back? I hung up the phone, I went upstairs, got down, I just began to pray. I said, God, I was asking for you to open a door for your word, and I believe you just opened it. I'm not gonna be the one to close it. I called him back, said, yes, I'll preach. And then about every two weeks or so for the next year, somebody would invite me to come and do supply and fill in. My pastor had some wisdom and saw that Nick was pretty green and didn't know a whole lot when it come to church life and church work and fooling with deacons and all that kind of stuff. Y'all notice that, fooling with deacons, you know. Working with deacons. So he said, Nick, this is what I want to do. Will you let me ordain you as a deacon so that you can come into those deacons meetings? He said, I sure hate the first deacon meeting you ever go to, you be the pastor of the church. So won't you come on in. He ordained me in January as a deacon at Northcrest. Well, in October, they ordained me as a pastor of my first church. Pastored them for seven and a half years. Had a great work there and grateful for them and how they loved on me and let me make a lot of mistakes and they followed me and let me lead them. But it wasn't but about two weeks into my pastor, I got a phone call and said, I need you to do a funeral for me. It's my son, he was murdered, shot in the chest down on the Gulf Coast. That's my first funeral. Drug deal gone bad. Man, I was hoping my first funeral would be an old salty saint, amen? Not a situation like that, but what did I had to do? I had to act in faith and just do what God led me to do, amen? Church work. Preaching funerals, but I'm grateful for those funerals that I can preach that when I know the person and who they were and how they lived and the message they proclaimed in their life when there is no, there is no question who they were absolutely in love with for their life was a testament to a glad-heartedness of joy and rejoicing in the presence of the Lord. We had a lady not long ago back in February, end of January, February that passed away. She was in her early 90s. She was a diabetic for a good portion of her life. She'd done a lost portion of her leg, and lost a husband, been through several different things. But this woman, she could never quit looking to Jesus. And that was her message. She just couldn't stop looking to Jesus. No matter what she went through, no matter what came her way, but John, when you was in her presence, she ministered to me. I never felt like I was actually serving her no matter if she was on a sick bed of affliction or she was chipper and sitting in her bed or sitting in her chair. Not only did she minister a spirit of joy, she ministered the Word of God to me. She knew the Word of God inside and out. She shared Jesus wherever she went. There wasn't a person that knew her that did not know who she was in love with. And no matter what she went through, she rejoiced. No matter how painful, how troublesome, how it was, what she did was always kept her eyes on Jesus. And it was manifested in her life. I believe Noah preached the judgment waters were coming and he became known for what he preached in life and that it even became a testament, not because people listened to him, not because people followed him because no one did. I think it became a mockery toward him that when Noah would preach those waters were coming, they laughed at him like we talked about last night. But it didn't keep him from building that ark. He kept in faith doing what God called him to do. And he was a man known for what he preached. And I guarantee you, you are known for what you preach as well. You're known, people know you. And what they know of you, is it a message that lines up with the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Do they know you? Do they know me? Am I known? Do people know me for the message that I proclaim? The message that I live? I think we're all known for that. All we have to do is start evaluating. Ask your wife, what do you know me for? Ask your children, what is it that you know me for? You say, no, don't ask my wife. No, don't ask my husband. No, don't ask my children. I'm not talking about a life that is not without failure. Look, we're not infallible. We're gonna mess up, amen? Y'all say that with me, I'm gonna mess up. But I don't have to let my mess-ups mess me up. I don't have to let my mess-ups in life mess me up. Because you're gonna mess up. You don't have to let your guilt go ungraced in life. I want to tell you, you can be a man or a woman or a boy or a girl of grace. Why? Because you've embraced the forgiveness that is in Christ. And when God ever forgives, when He forgives and He is a forgiving God, He's ready to throw mercy upon us. But we don't approach Him our way, we come to Him His way. And the only way to come to Him is in faith. And when in faith we seek Him and trust Him, God forgives us. But you know what? Because God does forgive us, the scripture says, God, when He does forgive us, He forgives us that we might fear Him. That's in Psalm 130. The psalmist said, Lord, if you were to mark iniquities, who could stand before you? If you were to seal up our wickedness and mark it that we couldn't get out of it, we couldn't get beyond it, it was a barrier around us, once we had iniquity and sin, there was no way of overcoming it, getting around it, there's not a single soul on this planet could stand before a holy God. But he says, there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. You see, when God forgives us, he doesn't do anything accidentally, amen? We've already established that. God does nothing accidentally. He's always an intentional and purposeful God. And when he forgives us, it's not just this blanket statement that I forgive you, now go do what you want. No, his forgiveness always comes with a product. When God delivers us from something, he always delivers us to something. He never just takes us from a thing and lets us alone and leaves us out hanging there. No, He delivers us from whatever's got us trapped, but He delivers us to someone. Him and His grace and His forgiveness and His fear and abiding in Christ and a fruitful life. Luke chapter one says it like this, for thou has come to deliver us from the hand of all our enemies, that we might serve him in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life. You see, he delivers us from the hand of our enemies, but he delivers us to a lifestyle of service for him. God never does anything without a purpose or an intention, and when he forgives, he does something in us to move us, amen. Praise Him and give Him glory for that. I wanna be known for a message of grace, a message of the gospel of grace, a message of redeeming grace, a message of the glories of Christ and the riches that are found in Him. When people see me, whether they look at me and laugh at me, say, yeah, that preacher carries a bean in his pocket. They can laugh all they want. This bean reminds me of who I am. and that I'm nothing without him and I must be buried in him so that I can see the glory of God manifested out of my life, I carry pacifiers in my pocket. You say, preacher, man. Look, I've had this mentality, people don't plan to fail, they just fail to plan. I've got things that remind me and are tools in my hand to help me share with someone else about what God's done in my life. I use these little pacifiers. I carry them, I don't always give them away, but if God props me to, I'm ready to give them away. I buy them at the party store. They don't cost hardly nothing. They're little like this. Some of them are a little bit bigger. They're kind of like the stuff you do at a baby shower. You know what I'm talking about? Well, I carry them around because in the book of Ecclesiastes, the scripture says that it's an evil thing that a man come into this world and lead this world like he came. How do we come in this world? We come into this world with nothing, naked, having nothing, and we're gonna lead this world with what? Ain't nobody taking their fields, nobody's taking their homes, nobody's taking their money with them when they go, amen? We came into this world naked, we're gonna lead this world. But he goes on to say it a little bit further in chapter 5. He says, it's a sore, terrible thing that in all points as a man came in this world that he also leave this world. See, we came into this world more than just naked. We came into this world fallen. We came into this world bent towards sin. Remember, we looked at it the other night. Last night, chapter 8 of Genesis, the flood didn't eradicate the problem with man's heart. Noah and his sons, when they came off of that, and the sons and the daughters they had, their imaginations of their heart was desperately wicked and evil. We were all born sinners, separated from the love and the life of Christ as a sinner. Now, I do believe in providential grace that a child that can't understand the things of grace, God's mercy, covers that. There is no law or no sin when there's no law for a child. If he can't understand the law of God, doesn't know of any of those things, God doesn't impute sin to him, he covers them in his mercy, but there comes a point in all our lives where we're gonna have to give an account to God. You know what we do with pacifiers with little ones? Why do we give a little one a pacifier? To do what? To pacify them, right? What does a little one want? They want a belly full, they want rest, and they want their bottom clean. If their bottom clean, and if it's not clean, and they're not rested, and they're not full, what does a little one do? How do they let you know? They cry, what do we do? Put the pacifier. They grow up a little bit, brother. And when they grow up, you know what we do? We give them a baby doll. And then they get a little bigger, we give them a tricycle. They grow up a little bit more to pacify them, we buy them a bicycle. They grow up, and they get a little more, we give them a four-wheeler. Before you know it, you give them an old side-by-side. You give them a truck, and then it's a motorbike, and then it's a boat, and then it's another gun or another pair of shoes. It's this girlfriend and that boyfriend and this girlfriend and that boyfriend. It's this wife and that wife and the next wife and the next husband. You see, people go through entire lives trying to pacify themselves with things. The only thing is, as you get older, your pacifiers get more expensive. And if you've never been interrupted by Jesus, where life is no longer about you, and it becomes about Him, and you die in that, the Bible says that's a terrible thing to die as you entered into this world. You can be interrupted and redeemed by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ covered in His precious blood, and He'll make a difference in your life, amen? That doesn't mean you're not gonna still have the temptations of the flesh and all, but there's a difference in the believer's life. Not only is he tempted by the flesh, but he's got a spirit of God living in him, and the spirit won't let him do this. The flesh don't want him to do this. There begins a war going on inside, but that doesn't happen in a common, natural man. That only happens in a a man that's been interrupted by Jesus and put on another course of living. And so I use things like this to help people. See, I want to be known, not just before men, but I want to be known by God as His ambassador. somebody he can entrust with his good news, somebody he can entrust with the precious treasures of the Word of God, that I will treat them with honor, that I will respect him and accurately. I want to be as the Apostle Paul asked the church at Colossae when he said, I pray that you pray for me, will you pray for me, that God would open the door for the Word of God to go forth. Now Paul's in prison because of the Word. But he's asking them to pray for him that God would open more doors for the word to go forth. And he said these things, that I will preach it as I ought, that I will preach it with authority, that I'll preach it with accuracy, that I'll preach it with compassion and passion in my heart. I mean, if anybody, We would seem that didn't need everybody and their brother praying for him to be passionate and accurate with the Word of God. He who wrote more of the New Testament than anybody else, we would never expect him to be asking everybody to pray for him. How much more you think we need people praying for us that we would be accurate? and that we would proclaim the word with authority, that we would be humble and meek and teachable and filled up with God's spirit. Noah was known for what he preached, the waters of judgment. Those waters were personalized to him. I'd love it for it to be said before the throne of God that God says, oh, my life, boy, my servant, he can't get over the cross. He just can't get over the cross. He can't get over what I've done for him. Give Him somebody else. Give Him more people. Put people in His path. Work it out so that He can cross people's paths because He can't get over what I've done for Him. I want the message of the cross to be personalized in my life. I want to be compelled by the love of Christ. that if one died for all, then all died, and he died for all, that those that live shall live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and rose for them. Amen. Be compelled. I wanna be known for what I preached. I wanna be known for what I practiced in life. I wanna be known what I prepared people for. My wife can tell you we've given our life to help equip and minister to the body of Christ, to see souls saved. But we believe our mission is really helping and encouraging and equipping the saints of God and teaching them and helping them. And as we journey on this assignment, this mission we've been given by the Lord, He empowers and He helps us and we get to see people respond in faith to Jesus. And we get to see people, their marriages, be bound and held together by the things that God is revealing and doing in their life because they're no longer competing against one another and they come before the Lord and say, God, have your way with me as a husband. Let me love my wife as you loved your church. And the wife says, Lord, let me come under the assignment that you've given me in the kingdom love my husband and honor him and respect him. We've got a mission from you to accomplish and we want to be known for what we practice and what we preach and what we were preparing for. Noah was. I personalized it in his life. And something that we don't see Noah doing, we don't see Noah asking God to fix it. the judgment that was coming. We don't see Noah asking God to fix the problems that he was facing. You know what we see God doing in Noah's life? God was not necessarily going to fix it because it was inevitable. The flood was coming no different than when Babylon was going to overthrow Jerusalem. He said it didn't matter if If Noah stood before me, or if Daniel stood before me, or Job stood before me, they wouldn't deliver their children or nobody else. The only way they would be delivered is by their own righteousness. They couldn't deliver no one else. I'm going to destroy Jerusalem and they're going into captivity 70 years. There's times that God does that, and there's times that you can't stop it. No different in Luke 19, 44. He told the people of Jerusalem, Jesus said, you missed your day of visitation. Now you only, you're going to be ravished, not just but your children will be ravished because you didn't respond in the time frame that God gave you. Now you're gonna have to suffer the consequences. Those things happen, but we don't find the saints of God walking in the power of God, asking God to fix it, whatever it is. We find them asking God to fix us for it. And I suggest that to you tonight. You see, our grandchildren, like Rosalyn, she's watching us. We wanted her to come and participate with us this week. This is her first experience of coming with us to a revival. Of course, she's been living 12 hours away from us for the last five years, so this has been a blessing for us. And we appreciate y'all loving on her. We appreciate Miss Eva and Brother Thomas for taking care of us and housing us. She was worried to death about that shed we was gonna stay in. She don't call it a shed, she said it's a mansion. It's been a great experience and we value that. We wanted her to come back with us again. When we go on revivals, we didn't want this to be experienced. She said, I ain't going with y'all no more. So we thank y'all for loving on her. But we want our children and our grandchildren to see who we are and what we do and why we live the way we live and why we think the way we think. why we love people the way we love people and why we make mistakes when we make mistakes and those types of things. And we want to be a blessing to them. And if she only hears us praying for God to fix things in our life, what we're telling them is that we can't be content and we can't be who we've been assigned to be unless God fixes things for us. But if they're listening to us and they understand what we're thinking and they hear us and watch us, asking God not to fix everything in our life, though he can and he often does, but asking God, Lord, fix us for whatever we gotta face to bring glory to you. Fix us for it. Because I want to tell you, God doesn't fix everything for us. Y'all can testify to that, amen? God's more concerned with making you more like Jesus than he is fixing your problems. So I suggest to you to start thinking about how we pray and simply start asking. Instead of saying, Lord, fix this, fix that, fix this, fix that, Lord, fix me for it. Prepare me for it. Because if they're not careful, they're gonna see us turn into this and we'll turn to that. I mean, we'll turn to the beer, to the alcohol, we'll turn to this thing and that thing when problems come our way, when we're trying to see them all fixed, we're trying to fix it ourselves rather than saying, God, you don't waste a thing. You've already promised me everything works together for the good of those that love you and are called according to your purpose. I'm not saying this thing is good. I'm not saying this thing is not gonna be hard. I know that you can remove it out of the way, but I've learned from you that normally you don't take us from things, you just deliver us through things. He didn't keep Daniel from the lion's den, he just delivered him through it. He didn't keep Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fire. What did He do? He delivered them through it. He delivers us through the floods. He delivers us through the fires. He delivers us through the blood of Jesus. It's just what God does. And we want Him to do that in our lives, amen. Knowing that He's gonna use everything to make us more like Him. Then I don't have to be threatened by what I go through. I can embrace it. I can be approachable. I can be accessible. And I can be a blessing to other people if I'm not threatened with the problems that I'm going through in life. Tomorrow night as we continue to look, I think we're going to look at some of those things about how God told Timothy, Through Paul, I didn't give you a spirit of fear, but God's given us a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. He's given us power to deal with problems in life, He's given us love to deal with people in life, and He's given us a sound mind to deal with pride in our own life. We have all we need to walk in the victory that we have in Christ Jesus so that those that are watching us, those that are behind us, those that are seeing us will see a message that we preach and it becomes personal to them that we have trusted and followed our shepherd. And he allows goodness and mercy to follow behind us all the days of our lives. Don't you wanna leave goodness and mercy, amen? Don't you wanna leave marks of the shepherd? You see, there is no goodness and mercy that will follow behind us if we're not following the shepherd through the valley of the shadow of death. If we're not following the shepherd's rod and staff, we follow him and his presence comforts us as we follow his lead, amen? Noah was known for his message, and so are we. What message have we been preaching? What message have you been preaching? Don't let your mess-ups keep messing you up. As a matter of fact, don't let the mess-ups of others mess you up. Get your eye on Jesus, keep walking with Him. Amen, church? Amen. Deal with him tonight as he's dealt with you. Father, we love you and thank you. Thank you for this time you've given us again to celebrate before you. I pray that faith will propel us tonight. I also pray that you prepare us and that we position ourselves with you, that we stand with you, that we're not asking you to fix the things in our life, though we know you can, and there's times you lead us to ask. but more than anything, you fixin' us for whatever you bringin' us through. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of them all, not from, but through. Help us tonight, Lord, respond in faith before you to confess our mess ups and just give you the glory so that we can walk in your liberty and freedom. In Jesus' name, amen.