Pete McKenzie 0:00
Word for word getting out. We’re back. It’s good to see you here. It’s good to be here a man. Look the guy next to you and say, Listen up. He’s gonna be talking to you today.
You know, my good friend Jerry Leachman. Jerry helps me make sense out of a lot of things. But not all things. But he got he got a letter out last week, that was really a powerful letter. Some of you know, Ravi Zacharias, and you’ve heard of him, he’s a great apologist and great preacher and teacher. He’s from India, had a wonderful testimony and had a great ministry. But he didn’t finish strong. He passed away last year. And they found out afterwards that he had a secret life. And I think that’s what motivated Jerry to write this letter that he got out to his ministry. And I’m going to read you the letter and then we’ll make some comments not just about this letter, but about what’s going on today and nation’s facing judgment from Jeremiah, and what God’s doing in our country today. But he took this as It’s entitled Do not leave your post is taken from Ecclesiastes 10 four where it says if the temper of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your post. Because composure and calmness prevent great offense. Do not leave your post. Do not leave your post is exploitation from both parties in the Bible, the teaching tells us that even in difficult situations, we must not leave our post. Never, never, never leave your post, even for a little while, because a lot can happen in a little while. There’s also a teaching in Ecclesiastes, that is true and it’s taken should be taken seriously. In the last verse of chapter nine, it says just one center destroys much spilling over into chapter 10 one it says dead flies putrefy that prefer perfumers on, and cause it to give off a foul odor. So does a little folly for one respected for wisdom and honor. And here’s the sobering lesson. Those who are respected for wisdom and honor can have even a brief sinful indiscretion. And their entire legacy can be ruined. They left their post. The reputation goes from respected and honored to a foul odor. The wise grieving are wounded by it. And fools have a heyday when the respected and honor leave their posts and become hypocrites. Paul says in Romans 222 through 24, you say you do do you say do not commit adultery? Do you committed adultery? you boast about the law? Do you honor dishonor God by breaking the law, for the name of God is blaspheming among the Gentiles because of you. Now when followers of Christ who really have a fear of the Lord, hear these teachings, it hits him like a brick. And they immediately break into prayer. Oh Lord, please fill me with the Holy Spirit, that I may never leave my post grant me that I will finish strong. And here you say well done. good and faithful servant. raavi did not finish strong. The teachings of the Lord are true. The whole thing has a foul odor. For whatever reason, he lost his fear of God and thought he could live a secret life. You know what? There’s no such thing as a secret life. The fear of God always reminds us that God is ever present, all knowing, all powerful. When I’m tempted to click something evil on my computer, the fear of the LORD is my friend. He reminds me that Jesus sees all that I say all that I do, and all that I think Don’t get me wrong. There may come a day when we’re faithful and refuse to leave our posts and we’re overrun and killed. I get it. But one of my core values and beliefs is that on my last day, when I’m drawing my last breath, I will be on my post for Jesus Christ. Boo yah. I’m grieved that Robbie left his post. This brings me to the next point. David left his post. He messed up his family for generations. But one of his best friend Jonathan, it’s still been alive. is Jonathan arrived on the battlefield he would have asked Where’s David? He’s back at the palace hanging out, then Jonathan would have shouted, that’s not his post at this moment. He needs to be right here with his men, God, that God called him to be a leader off, then Jonathan would have written, written his horse straight to the palace, walked in and yelled at David, get off your rear end and get back at your post
and lead our men and do what God has made you to do and do it now. David’s entire future and legacy would have been completely different. What a tragedy. So who was Robbie’s? Jonathan? I guess nobody, what a tragedy. I just read a study about 246 ministers here in the US, that all had moral failures and were disqualified all in the same year. The study interviewed all 246 of them. And here with a trend lines, none were involved in any kind of personal accountability. Guys, that’s why we have for him. That’s why you always have small groups. It’s not just to study the Bible, but get in each other’s lives to walk through life together, someone sees me slipping, I want them to come and grab me and say, Hey, bud, that’s the wrong direction to come when they were going in the right direction. They weren’t involved in any kind of personal accountability. Each had ceased from having any kind of personal prayer, Bible reading and worship. Guys, this is a hard enough life on our own. We can’t live it. We can’t be men of god apart from Christ. Jesus said, If you abide in Me and my word abides in you, you will bear much fruit. far apart from me you can do nothing, nothing lasting, nothing powerful, nothing fruitful, nothing multiplying. Nothing healthy. Nothing right. Nothing true. Nothing excellent. Nothing worthy of praise apart from me, nothing eternal. But somehow we think, I guess that we can do it on our own. And sometimes we go out on our own. More than 80% became sexually involved with women. Without exception, each of the 246 had become convinced that this sort of fall would never happen to them. Now, what are the principles we can learn from this? Well, Principle number one, sin thrives in isolation. Satan lives in the darkness. That’s why it calls us there. Stay in the light. Stay in community. You know, first Peter one sevens says, If you walk in the light as he is in the line, you’ll have fellowship with one another. And the love of Jesus Christ will keep you together. Stay in the light. Pray for two Jonathan in your life who will come running when they see you slipping. Principle number two. If you flirt with sin, you fall into sin. Sin is a slippery slope. The longer you walk on the edge of the abyss, it only takes one step to go over the edge. Pray Jesus would keep you on his path and he will stay on yours. Never leave your post. There’s a story told about a man back in the horse and coach days that needed a coach driver to drive his horses. And so he started interviewing him. He asked one guy took him up to the side of the mountain Cliff on the right there’s it went to the right side of the road. He said How close do you think you can get to that cliff? I think I can get within a foot or two. He interviewed the next guy. How close do you think you can get? Well, I can get it within six inches to a foot. Then he asked a third guy how close can you get? He says I don’t want to get close to the edge. I want to stay as far away from it as I can. He said your heart. That’s the principle guys. Sin is a slippery hope. Pride blinds us to our weakness. Pride comes before a fall. First Corinthians 1012 says anyone who thinks he stands Take heed lest he falls I think we could apply that to our nation. that anyone who thinks he stands Take heed lest he fall with the greatest nation in the world. We got the greatest military in the world. We got the greatest economy in the world. We got the greatest health care in the world. We got the greatest lifestyle in the world. We drive the greatest cars in the world. We live in the most beautiful houses in the world. We got it. We’re on top of the situation where America, America first I’m not to hearing that as much as I heard it before. There’s a lot of people that don’t think America’s first. America may be facing judgment guys, we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes out of the book of Jeremiah
pry blinds is from our weakness in the fourth principle. Purity is cultivated by loving Jesus. And loving Jesus is cultivated by spending time in his presence, to know Him is to love him. Do not allow your hearts to become cold towards the one who loves you so much, guard your heart. Don’t leave your post. I don’t care how tough it is, I don’t care what you’re going through. I don’t care what soup you’re in right now. Don’t leave your post. Hang in there. Trust God, find strength in him, find patience in him, and purpose in him. Don’t leave your post. Holly and I have given a solid pledge to one another to help each other with all we’ve gone through into finished strong and faithful, picking up speed as we cross the finish line for Christ, The Lord be with you. I needed to hear that you need to hear that. We need to be reinforced in our faith. One guy says I can resist anything but temptation. And we’re going to be tempted at every turn. Especially if you’re a man of God, you’re going to be asked to compromise don’t turn that wheel in. Don’t look the other way. The Holy Spirit saying don’t put click that button on your computer. I was reading in Jeremiah at the same time this week. And I was looking at the verse in Jeremiah 2911. For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, their plants are good and not for evil that you might have a future and a hope. And I thought, What’s the context of that? So I started going back a few chapters and saying Why did he say that? What did God say that. And if you go back to chapters 23 and 24. And I’m reading from a commentary by Warren Where’s B? In his insights, he realized the disgraceful conduct of the false prophets in Israel, what they were doing to the people and to the nation. And it made him sick. He looked at the leaders. The leaders of Israel were not kings at the time when they were kings, and they had a lot of bad kings. But they were also led by prophets. Jeremiah was a prophet, they called him the weeping prophet. He was grieved over what he was seeing other prophets, other spiritual leaders and how they were acting and what they were doing. They were false prophets, and they were committing adultery and throng into houses of prostitution. They thought they could be live a double life, they thought they could get away with it. And not only were they not unashamed, they started doing it in the broad daylight. They started doing it and everyone see it, and then they tried to make it good. And part of the faith in religion is they were doing it so they could keep a clean reputation. And then they would go to the temple and pretend to worship Jehovah. The word adultery also means the worship of idols turning from the true God, to Whom Israel was married. I think we made an idol in America out of our lifestyle. I think we’ve made it idols out of the freedom that we’ve enjoyed, not because we deserve freedom, because men fought and died for our freedom. But we’ve taken it for granted. We think it’s a right not a privilege. We think we stand and now we’re following. The false prophets offered people false hope by saying the Lord says you will have peace, no harm will come to you. Of course, this was a popular message. And the frightened people grabbed it and held on to it. But the false prophets hadn’t heard that message is God’s counsel. They made it up on their from their own hearts instead of peace. A storm was brewing from the Lord. I just couldn’t read this without going that’s what’s going on. That’s what’s happening to us. The false prophets also ministered under false authority. They hadn’t heard from God and yet they still prophesied. God hadn’t called them and yet they ran with the message. It was a popular message. People grabbed it, they were fearful. That remind you of anything. A lot of false prophets out there too. They saying this is what’s going to happen. And that’s what’s going to happen. And Trump’s going to be elected by a landslide. Maybe he should have been maybe he should. But he wasn’t.
And it’s happening in broad daylight. We’re living in a day where right is wrong and wrong is right, good is bad and evil is good, is turned upside down. We’re having a hard time adjusting to that we’re having a hard time getting our arms around that we’re having a hard time because we’re so used to justice and freedom, that the corruption that’s happening, the breakdown of our government, our courts, our judicial system, the media, we’re having a hard time getting a grip on that. But we better get a grip on it, we better be at our post, we better not let this go and just say there’s nothing we can do about there is something we can do about it. But it’s not strapping up, you know, maybe around our chest like Rambo putting on a headband, and going into battle, we’re going into battle. But that’s not the battle God called us to those aren’t the weapons that God’s given us to fight this war. But I’d say the average Christian guy thinks it is we’re going to be more activists and prayers.
Whenever a nation needs healing, it’s usually because God’s people aren’t obeying and serving Him as they should. We like to blame dishonest politicians and various purveyors, for a nation’s decline in morality. But God blames his own people. And Second Chronicles 714. We’ve been dragging that out a lot over the last year. So if my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways. There’ll never be a point in time where we can have God’s fullness, God’s blessing, God’s a revival, without turning from our wicked ways. The problem with turn from our wicked ways is we don’t see our wicked ways is wicked anymore. We don’t see him as wrong. We think we can hate people. We can complain and grumble. When the scripture says do all things without grumbling and complaining. And that’s what we’re doing. And you know, when we are grumbling, complaining, we should do all things without it because we’re grumbling at God. If God’s not in control, God’s not on his throne, God didn’t know what’s happening. God, what are you thinking? When’s the last time you thought that? Why are you letting this happen? This is wrong. This isn’t none unjust. And it just eats us up. And it’s natural. On one hand, on the other hand, we can’t let it make us leave our posts in the post is to be God’s man for such a time as is.
In chapter 24, God disposes of his rebellious people. What God was going to do is he was going to discipline and chastise Israel and Judah. And the way he is going to do it is he’s going to, and it was interesting to me that Nebuchadnezzar was a king of Babylon. And he was going to let the Babylonians come in and take over and defeat Israel. And he was going to for 70 years that we’re going to take exiles from Israel and take them back to Babylon. Then they would leave some people in Israel. So you got the survivors that are left in Israel and you got the exiles that are going back to Babylon. God gives Jeremiah vision in chapter 24. He said, very Jeremiah, what do you see? He says, I see two baskets full of figs. That’s pretty amazing. commercial break. He said, What do you see I see two baskets full of figs. One of them is full of good figs. The other is full of bad figs that are so rotten, no one will eat them. And God says those good figs are the exiles that are being carried off to Babylon. The bad pigs are the survivors and the king and all of his officials that are left in Israel and Judah.
And then I ran across in verse seven and 24. In this is right on point, but it was a powerful verse for me because it confirms something in my heart. I’ve shared with you untold number of times that I was sinners prayer when I came to know Christ, and I was reading the bobby Richardson story. And Bobby is a Christian and he met a Christian ballplayer and he became friends with that ball player. And he said, for the first time in my life, I began to realize I could be a professional baseball player and uncompromising Christian at the same time. And I thought, gosh, that’s me. I compromise everything. Things I know I should do, I don’t do the things I know I shouldn’t do. I love doing a start and stop, and I quit. And I start again. And I was sick and tired, full of guilt and shame. And this was my senators desperate prayer. God, I’m the terrible example of being a Christian, I can’t do it. I can’t keep the rules. I can’t be the good guy you want me to be. And I know I’m not the man you want me to be. But I want to be. Would you make me that man? You ever been that desperate? Here have been so desperate to live for God, to want to be right with Him, to want to be holy and clean and pure. to want to have the fruit of the Spirit in your life. I remember reading a book by Billy Graham. And the title skips slips me now. I’ll think of it in a minute. But I remember reading the fruit of the Spirit. I don’t ever remember reading that before. And I thought that’s the kind of guy love joy, peace, hope, goodness, gentleness, kindness, self control. That’s what I want to be. That’s the man I want to be. But then I started asking myself the question, not at that moment, but years later, and I go, why did I want to be? Why did I want to be that God’s man, what I want to stay at my post and not be wandering off all the time. And then verse 24, seven says this, I will give them a heart to know me, for I am the Lord. Pete, you will be my man. And I’ll be your guide. For you return to me, and seek me with all of your heart. I will put I will give you a heart to know me. Now, how did I get that heart? I worked real hard. I kept all the rules. I didn’t do bad things. I did good things. And I got a heart to know God. That is not the way it happened. I deserved it. That wasn’t true. I deserve to see opposite. But for some reason God looked at me and I hope he’s looked at you. And he says I’m giving you a heart to know me. And it comes from God. He puts it in my heart. I’ve known it I knew it since I was a child. And you were in high school and I was riding around with a bunch of guys. And gal was driving recklessly and foolishly. And I’m sitting in the back thinking and these guys are lucky they got me in the car, God’s got a plan for me. God’s got his hand on my life. And God let me know that as a young man, I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t understand it. And I still don’t quite honestly. But God put it in my heart, his he put it in your heart. Because if you’re going to stay on your post, if you’re not going to leave your post, if you’re in a marriage, if you’re in a job if you’re going to sickness and an illness, and that’s your post. That’s where you’re going to glorify Christ, that’s where you’re going to be a witness for him. That’s where you’re going to let your light shine. That’s your post. And if you’re not going to leave your posts, you got to have a heart to know God. And if you have a heart to know God, that means you want to know God’s word. You want Jesus to be the Lord. I’ll give you a heart to know me. You will know that I am your Lord. Jesus Christ is not just our Savior, he’s he’s your Lord. God’s word is not just God’s word. It’s our final authority in life.
And we put ourself in submission to it. We want to obey it. That’s where all truth is. That’s where we get the truth. That’s how we know the truth. Jesus says, I am the way I am the truth. And I’m going to put a heart for you to know me. But how do you get a love for the Bible? Do you wait to get a love and then read it? Or do you read it and find a love? tasting, see that I’m good. You don’t just have to know that God’s good or believe God’s good you taste and see you give him a chance. You ask him to come into your heart. You walk with him in the word in prayer and fellowship with godly men. And you taste and you find and you see that God is good. God’s merciful, God’s compassionate, God’s loving God’s kind. You find that by walking with Him, you find that by sinning and returning with a whole heart, and I’ve been returning with a whole heart for the last 55 years. When I sin, I get to turn and come with my whole heart and ask for forgiveness. And God forgives me and he keeps a heart in me to know him. But if I keep sinning and don’t repent, if I don’t even understand that what I’m doing insane and Spirit in my heart, my attitude is sin. It’s grumbling. It’s complaining, it’s hating. It’s being bitter. It’s being unforgiving. It’s being resentful. It’s being angry. And I think it’s right not wrong. Because I’m not in God’s presence. I’ve left my post. I’ve wandered off. I’ve been tempted and taken captive by the enemies call me into the darkness out of the light.
That’s the battle we’re facing. We’re not facing a battle in Washington, DC. You’re facing a battle inside and when God gets the inside, right, all the outside starts to make sense, then we start understanding. But you got to get the inside, right. And that starts with a personal revival. It starts with repentance if my man if Pete will humble himself. It starts with humility. I taught on that about three or four weeks ago. It starts with humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God realizing that apart from him, you can do nothing realizing it on your own, you’re lost. And you find out what you’re like, apart from him. And then you find out what you’re like with him and in him in because of him, in you. In times of national Excuse me, I feel a little airhead commercial break.
In times of national catastrophe, no matter how discouraging the circumstances may be God doesn’t deserve his faithful servants. Stay at your post. God won’t desert you. God will be there for you. He runs ahead of you he encloses you behind. Rebels are scattered and destroyed. But true believers find God to be faithful to meet their needs and accomplish his great plan in their life. The people that were exiled into Babylon would have 70 years to repent and seek the Lord. So what God was doing is he was disciplining a nation. And what he did is he took his chosen people, the one that he was going to bless the good figs in the vision. And he took them to Babylon, he will get them separated from that nation. He got them out of there. He took them captive. He had Nebuchadnezzar who’s a pagan king, and he said he called him twice, at least twice that I read in here. Nebuchadnezzar, my servant. He called David his servant, he called other godly men in the Bible, this servant. Why is he calling a pagan king, his servant, because he’s using him to discipline his people. He uses illness to discipline his men. He uses separation marriage problems, to discipline us. And the problem with discipline is it’s no fun. But what we see as a result, according to Hebrews 12, what we see as a result is a quiet growth in grace and character. You want grace and character you want wisdom and be respected? Then you’re gonna have to go through discipline and chastising. You’re gonna have to go and you’re gonna have to go through it with a good spirit and a good heart. Yeah, but Pete, you don’t know what I’m going through. You don’t know how hard it is. All I can do at that point is say, go to the cross. How hard can that be? How hard can what you go through be compared to what he’s been through? What he did on the cross, how he suffered, how he surrendered himself, he emptied Himself, and became a man and being finally found in the appearance of a man. He humbled Himself even to the point of death on a cross. Don’t tell me it’s hard. But you can tell me anything you want to I’ll probably believe you. But don’t tell him it’s hard. Don’t tell him it’s tough. Don’t tell him It just seems like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a light of the cross there’s a light of heaven there’s a light of well done good and faithful servant. That’s what’s it the light is in your darkness. And he’ll never leave or forsake you. The destruction of Jerusalem in the fall of Judah were not accidents. They were appointments for God was in control. So Jeremiah sent a letter to Babel and there was emissaries going back and forth between Babylon and and Judah. And Jeremiah sent a letter to tell them how they should behave in their new land. We got a new land guys. It’s not the same night and land we’ve ever had. I’m not sure we’ll ever get that back. How you gonna behave in this new land that we’ve got how Are you going to behave when you’re not the fair headed child and putting fish on your car so you can be identified with Christ? Because that’s a hate crime these days, and it’s going to get worse. How are you going to behave in this new land? He was a man with a heart of the true shepherd. He wanted to them to be good witnesses to the adulterous Babylonians. And to be good Jews, even though separated from their temple and their services. We’ve been separated from our temple and our services, we’re glad to be back. hope we’ll be here for weeks and months and years to come out. We’ll have the freedom together in prayer like we did upstairs today. But when’s the last prayer meeting you went to? When’s the last time you had the freedom to? Because it will be one day where we won’t have freedom to do that. If certain people have their way, it’ll be a hate crime. It’s not anything new. It’s happened to Christians for 2000 years, we lost more Christians to persecution and death. Because they were Christians in the 20th century than all the 19 centuries before. And we’ve gotten a pretty good start in this one. God’s bringing it to a close God’s saying this is good. I’m coming. Is this? That’s a big question. Is this the last times? Well, yes, the last times we’ve been the last time for 2000 years.
But now we’re seeing birth pangs. There’s volcanoes in Guatemala, there’s floods in Kentucky. There’s hurricanes and log in tornadoes and earthquakes. And not that we haven’t always had them. But the birth pains say they’re reset and world records. We’ve never had a tornado like that it was a mile wide and stayed in the ground for 20 minutes, that just didn’t happen. We’ve never had an earthquake like that. It registered on every seismograph on the planet. It caused a tsunami that killed 1000s of people. That was in 2001. We’re in the birth pains. Now we have to be on our posts, God’s looking for guys, and you take a group like this 50 or 60, guys, not every one of us is going to stay on our post is going to be getting too fearful. It’ll get too hard, it’ll cost too much. And the only thing we hope that I have, and you have a stand on our post as being in God’s presence, every day, all day, every day, all day, that’s one of your posts to be in God’s presence, to acknowledge his presence, to call on Him for strength and wisdom and discernment. To call on Him for strength to resist the temptation to call on Him wisdom to know what to do, to be growing in your faith, not being a man of fear, but a man of faith. And finally, I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, and this is the Lord’s heart. He wants to bring them back from exile in they’re coming back into a new healed land. So maybe God will do that. Maybe God will do that for us. We see where we’re headed. But maybe God’s got us headed there because he wants to cleanse this nation. He wants to purge the church. He wants to be find people that truly have a whole heart for him. Who will be faithful to him no matter what he will stand at their post. And you’re going to be surprised in those days, who leaves their posts and who stays. Who Manzer posts and who leaves. Some of the people you think for sure you’re gonna stay on their post won’t. And some you think they’re not that strong they will. So don’t try to guess who’s gonna stay on their posts and who’s not. You don’t know the whose inner strength of certain people just because they’re not up front and they’re not shooting their mouth off like I do. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to stay in their posts when I may be running for the hills. I pray that won’t happen. And it will happen if I’m not in his presence every day and I don’t take him for granted. And I don’t get prideful. And I stay humble and seek his face and turn from our wicked ways regularly every day. I got wicked ways going on every day. So do you. And we have to turn from our wicked ways we have to repent. We have to keep our slate clean between us and the Lord. We have to not let guilt and shame and the enemy come and debilitate us with guilt and shame. a guilty conscience and Heaven forbid we get a seared conscience. And we call good evil and evil good. That can happen if you’re not confessing sin on a regular basis. You can become lazy and loose with sin. What about guys like Ravi, let’s say Ravi didn’t die. What about Israel when it kept worshiping it? And stumbling and falling and disobeying God and he’d bring judgment and the book of Judges says 400 years of that same cycle going over and over, they repent. They have a revival they start walking with and being God, they tear down the idols and then they start intermarrying with pagans, they start out of worship again, God brings discipline war Babylonians, then they repent again and over and over again. What about when we stumble and fall? What about when we have moral failures? Charles Charles Spurgeon said, when when a pastor in the pulpit falls tomorrow, he ought to go and sit on the back row until his repentance becomes well known as a sin. There are some who God is going to restore that’s the exiles. They had 70 years to repent, to be delivered from idol worship, to turn to God and seek Him. In God’s heart is to restore is to redeem is to forgive, but he can only restore pastors in this case that we’ve been talking about when they’re broken and repentant. When they humble themselves, and pray and seek God’s face in turn from their wicked ways. God says, then I will hear their prayer, then I will hear their prayer.
We want him to Hear our prayer without turning from our wicked ways. God says, then I will hear their prayers, I’ll forgive their sin, and I’ll heal their land, I’ll heal their church, I’ll hear their family. But it all starts with humbling ourselves and repenting. And God calls us there all the time, because he wants to forgive, he wants to restore, but he can, and he won’t. If we’re not broken and repaired. I’ve seen pastors who want to dictate the terms of their own restoration. I’ve seen other pastors weeping and don’t deserve to be restored. I’ve seen them weeping and repenting, and feeling like they’ll never be any good anymore when the Lord comes along and lifts them up. And he makes him better than they ever were. They were gifted, they were growing, they were seeing fruit, but they were having a secret life and God called him he let him go so long and then he called him on it. And that in you find out who the men of God are, how they respond to that. Do they did God really put it in their heart to know him? Are they just trying to build their tabernacle on God’s foundation. And so guys, there’s no way around this. When David was running from God after committing adultery with Bathsheba and getting iraq killed in war. He ran from God for a year, Nathan found him told him a story about an injustice done to a young shepherd and David stood out of his throne and said that man should die. And Nathan pointed his finger right in his chest and said, Thou art demand. You either humble yourself before God or God will humble you. You either find Nathan or Nathan a fine you. This is serious business we can be playing around with is if we’re going to come back and meet here again, let’s meet with a new heart. Let’s start and we’ve got a new start here. Let’s start with a commitment to Jesus Christ, it will stay on our posts that we make a commitment to him that we’re going to be husbands that honor our wives. I don’t care how they’re acting, I don’t care what they’re doing. I don’t care how easy they are not to live with. This day on our post. Let’s come with purpose in our heart. Let’s come to encourage and build each other up. Let’s get into forum group, getting a group where you got some guys walking with you through life that can come after you if they need to. Or you can come after them. You can keep them on the straight and narrow. You can keep them following Christ. You can keep them in the Word of God, you can keep them in prayer, and they’re growing. And they’re dangerous to the darkness. You may end up in jail because of it. You may lose your job because of it. Praise God we got to suffer for Jesus Christ. Praise God that we were found worthy to suffer for him. You in or out? Don’t tell me tell him during the day. But I’d rather worship with about what 10 guys that are totally committed in seeking God with their whole heart than with 150 guys that are namby pamby that are like in the fellowship but not the Bible study. That enjoys singing in the choir but they don’t know wash boots or sweet aroma. Those are the kind of guys that’s going to be needed in the days ahead. And if you’re not that kind of guy, you’re going to leave your post. If you’re not that kind of guy, you’re going to walk away, you’re going to be fearful. You’re not going to be a man of the word and a man of prayer. You’re not going to honor I, I want to honor Christ. But I also want to honor Susan’s memory. As if she was still here. I don’t want her husband to be leaving this post. That motivates me. I don’t want Jesus Christ to kind of put it all he’s invested in me. And I would leave my post. This has been a wonderful time during the last year of lockdown for us to spend time in God’s presence. I hope you haven’t wasted it. Hope you’ve been listening to praise music and reading your Bible and journaling and hearing God’s voice. Instead of watching CNN and Fox News and whatever you’re watching Come on away blessed. So that’s that was a timely word from Jerry, for me, so I thought I’d pass it along to you today.
And I want to ask you a question. Will you make a commitment today to stay at your post? I don’t know what your post is. But will you commit to stay at your post and not just stay there gritting your teeth stay there with joy. find joy in it if you can’t find joy in it, you’re not really staying at your post you’re doing it begrudgingly you’re still having a pity party. Jesus never comes to a pity party let’s don’t have them let’s go out that door today saying I’ve got a new commitment to my wife to my family to my job to sharing the gospel. I’m going to humble myself and that make it right with people that I’m not right with I don’t want anyone when I die pointed at me and say he wronged me and never made it right you’re gonna have to turn that wheel in God’s saying go make it right with your wife go make it right where your children go make it right with your boss at work that person that wronged you or that person that you wronged you go to them and make it right best you can maybe they won’t receive it but you did the right thing you did what God told you to do. That’s all you can do. But those are the kind of guys who are going to be counted on and when the pressures on and I know you want to be that kind of guy I want to be that kind of guy so I want to hang out with you because I need to hang out with guys like that. I’m going to be I got a forum group you got one if you hadn’t got one and you don’t have some other kind of group get your rear end in a forum group there’s a man right there go talk to him right out to this thing and they ought to be aligned going around that net over there with guys who are going to say yeah, I will need to be with some guys. I might need to have my own group I know three guys right now. Guys are getting their sons they’re getting their friends they’re getting guys across the country and zoom for him groups links ministry starting for him groups for the saucers for crisis starting for him groups. We don’t know where this thing’s headed. But I tell you what, there’s nothing we need worse than that right now. If we’re going to hold the line and stay on our post a man stand up. Let’s make a commitment to Christ. Father, we just heard your word today. We heard it in worship. We had it heard it and now from Jerry, from Warren, where’s be from me, from you through me and all these servants of yours. And we’re making a new stand for Christ. New START staying in our post, we’re not going to forget that. We want to honor you we want to be counted on in these days. We want to be the light shining in darkness. We want to be blessings. We want to be able to take a punch we can be slapped on one cheek and turn the other we can go the second mile, bless those who persecute us. We can pray for our enemies. We’re not going to leave our post. That’s what you’ve posted us to do. That’s what you’ve called us to be. to crucify ourselves to honor Christ to empty ourselves. Help us do it in Jesus name And all God’s men said give them heaven guys
Transcribed by https://otter.ai