June 9, 2024, Message by Stevin Johnson
So welcome, everybody.
Psalm 1 says,
1 Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. 2 But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. 3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. 4 But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind. 5 They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly. 6 For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction. (Psalm 1:1-6, ESV)
I was looking for my intro into my sermon for tonight, and I was like, I don’t know. Well, let’s start looking at the psalms. Psalm 1, I was like, boom, there it is. That’s the intro that I was looking for to talk about tonight, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about it.
But we’re in a pivotal part of the year 2021, leading up to elections.
And we know the strife and the mayhem and everything that happened for the last election in 2020. And now, what has changed since then? Time, really. Same players.
So we’ll talk a little bit about that, but let’s open up this time of worship with the singing portion of worship. I get it right. Kevin will be happy. I got it right.
So please stand and do what makes you comfortable and worship, and just enjoy the time of coming into the presence of the Lord.
So Psalm 2, which was a good segue from Psalm 1, was a good segue into Psalm 2. Funny how that works. It works in order, not necessarily. Just happens to be the way the writers composed it, put things together, but it works out well here.
1 Why are the nations so angry? Why do they waste their time with futile plans? 2 The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the Lord and against his anointed one. 3 “Let us break their chains,” they cry, “and free ourselves from slavery to God.” 4 But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. 5 Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury. 6 For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne in Jerusalem, on my holy mountain.” 7 The king proclaims the Lord’s decree: “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son.8 Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, the whole earth as your possession. 9 You will break them with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.'” 10 Now then, you kings, act wisely! Be warned, you rulers of the earth! 11 Serve the Lord with reverent fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Submit to God’s royal son, or he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities— for his anger flares up in an instant. But what joy for all who take refuge in him! (Psalms 2:1-12, NLT)
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, NLT)
Amen.
All right, so I was very pleasantly pleased when I found my slides from this last time. I was up and gave sermon from Kevin and found that they tie real well into this time, so I didn’t have to put a lot of administrative effort into this one. It was just as you see, part two.
Is it all meaningless? So as we are going through our year-long reading in chronological order, we just happened to finish Ecclesiastes this week.
And that’s always been an interesting book to me because the wisest man on earth feels hopeless and he writes about everything is meaningless. What is life worth if it’s just to have something now and die tomorrow and somebody else gets it? It’s a very interesting book to me.
Ecclesiastes 9:11. History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say, here is something new, but actually it’s old. Nothing is ever truly new.
We don’t remember what happened in the past, and future generations will not remember what we are doing now.
10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now. (Ecclesiastes 1:10-11, NLT)
Historians and other people, not necessarily historians, will say history will repeat itself. It kind of seems true because we tend to forget the things that we’ve done in the past, and we don’t necessarily look to the future. Future generations will look back and not remember what we did in the past, or they will consider themselves so smart, so intellectual, and above.
What people did in the past is we won’t do that. We’ll do better than that. But they end up repeating what they’ve done. And I think we’re seeing that today. We saw it, and we saw a lot of people just turn their back on God.
We see that Solomon was given wisdom by God because that’s what he asked for. I want wisdom to rule the people. I want to do this wisely and be a good king. And he started out pretty well.
And then he met this woman, and then he met another one, and another one, and another one who all started turning his heart away from God.
God warned him and told him, I’m going to rip the kingdom out of your hands because you turned your back on me. And in the chronological order, we see that start. You know, Jeroboam, who was a servant of Solomon’s, was told by a prophet, God’s going to take the kingdom away from Solomon. He’s going to give it to you. You’re going to get ten tribes.
But because of his promise to David, whose heart was for God, he’s going to get to keep two tribes in his family.
But as we see, everybody started turning their backs on God on both sides of the border. The ten, the two, start turning their backs on God, and we start seeing them go back to pagan worship, sacrifices.
I don’t remember if it was the day before or reading, I think it was the day before reading. One of the kings in Israel, which I never really read this before until I read it today, rebuilt a city at the cost of his firstborn and the cost of his youngest sons.
I thought, well, that’s weird. Why did God kill his? Was it because he was so sinful? No, he killed his own sons as sacrifices to the pagan gods for these cities. Kill him. The first one is a sacrifice. We build the city, the city’s complete.
I’ll kill my youngest son. They’ve fallen off the edge. Right. Okay. I never looked at that perspective, Sydney, but you’re right. Middle children win.
Let me see here real quick. March, April, June. So which son was it? Was it Basha or…? Yeah, it was in a recent one. Yeah. So it was probably somewhere, if you probably will find it, somewhere between the 7th and the 9th. Yep.
Well, I’m not sure which of the Israel rulers it was, and I don’t remember. Jeroboam was the one who started, but it was one of.
Well, it wasn’t even his descendants because God killed all of his family because they all turned against him. If I remember it or I find it, I will text you during the week and show it to you.
Okay. Yeah. And because this translation, and this one is where it really, I finally figured it out, I was like, oh, he sacrificed his sons to build that, to finish the city off, to finish the fortress.
This one is New Living Translation. Yep. Then NLT. Mm hmm. Yeah. So did.
Yeah, Kevin may have some extra ones laying around. The chronological order last year, I did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It is anonymous history kind of guy, so it helps me out.
So Kevin had talked about wisdom being knowledge, and you can be an intellect or an information. It’s all about the information I take in. And I’m smart because I get all the information. Or sometimes I think there are kind of two crowds.
There’s some folks who live by the information, and then there’s others like me, who sometimes things are common sense. I’m more of a common sense kind of guy. I look at things from that perspective, and I don’t necessarily need to be a debater and be able to debate things with people because I don’t like to do it. People are like, well, where did that come from? It just makes sense. I don’t necessarily have to have the proof to show you that, but trust me, it makes sense.
So why did I throw that in? I don’t remember. It was my own little rabbit trail, but I think I threw it in there because of the way America is kind of tracking right now. People think they’re smarter than God.
It’s not a new tracking line that we are going through right now. This started a while ago. I mean, before the founding fathers, people were looking for a place to practice their religious freedom without persecution. They came to America. It was a long time people were here.
We had the British come in and all the colonizers. We started making money, business, and I think we started losing focus then, even though our founding fathers wrote a lot of Christian thought and process in heart, in the Constitution and in founding our government, because it makes sense.
I mean, it’s a lot of love and honor and freedom, and all men were created by God, and we should all therefore be equal. But I think that was a moment in time they had that idea.
And then ever since that happened, we’ve started falling away from that. World War I, World War II, we get in post-World War II, we’ve got the sixties and seventies, sex, drug, rock and roll, rebellious movements going on. Everything is just taking a path away from removing God from. I mean, I remember standing for the pledge of allegiance in school, public school. We stood, pledged allegiance to our country. But I also remember that God was not out of the school. There was still God in the school.
Now you get run out of the schools if you talk about God, that’s just an ex. Those are examples of where we’ve been going and how we’re tracking away from where I think we’re going away from common sense.
Because to me, even if I was not a believer already, if I was an intellect, this is a book I would pick up and read. Why do people believe in this guy called Jesus? What is all that about? I need to read this book.
I think I would get a lot of common sense out of this book and go, you know what? I need to fear the man that this book has written about. He has the power of life and death over me.
And it’s not just saying that it’s in here. We see it happen. You turn your back on me and you start doing evil things like sacrificing your children, you’re done. Get out of the pool.
So that’s where I was going with my common sense. We know the outcome.
We know that Jesus, who you even talk in Psalms 2, the king, I think, is easily substituted Jesus in that, and that’s the king that God has put on the throne who’s going to have the nations under his feet.
We can also look at some of the leaders who the rest of the psalm talks about. If they don’t follow God, it’s not going to go well for them. But we know the outcome. Satan knows the outcome, knows the war is lost, but he’s not given up the battle.
So he’s going to continue to try to corrupt hearts, minds, and souls of all he can. And he’s got an incredible arsenal of weapons. I think he used the women’s liberation movement to start separating the family. He used the sex, drugs, rock and roll to introduce immorality further. I mean, it’s not like it wasn’t there before.
Again, we kind of go back to Ecclesiastes. Nothing’s new under the sun. They had all kinds of nasty festivals back in the Old Testament days.
So if we think we’re smarter and we’re doing things better, I think you can make a pretty good comparison to the two, the constant entanglements in the, where we’re at right now. I mean, we’ve got this for me, and we’re in it right now.
This is the month of June. It’s a month out of the calendar year. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It never belonged to anybody before. But there’s an organization out there that claims it is their month. It’s not. It’s our month.
But I think part of what we’re experiencing right now and how Satan is still fighting the fight in the war is shifting people who don’t believe in that and don’t want the month of June to get taken away from them. But we don’t stand up and speak against it. We don’t talk out about it.
We have a problem as Christians, I think, and we have a problem in that we have hearts that are to love everybody, which is what we’re called to do, to love one another and not go after people we’re supposed to.
Our neighbors, I love them because Jesus loves them, but they live in sin. Their lifestyle is not the lifestyle that God created, but we don’t step up and take a stand for it, which I think we should.
We’re called to do that. We’re not called to be afraid to not stand up and say, no, it’s wrong. I can still love you, but I can still say that that style of living is wrong. I can still love you, but I can tell you that if you are trafficking young men and women, that’s wrong. That’s immoral.
You shouldn’t do that. And we should, I think, be able to be justified to stop that. Not necessarily we’re going to go around killing people. I don’t think that’s a good idea. But we do need to stop it by speaking up against it and figuring out better ways than just being passive and letting it continue to happen.
I heard somebody recently say that they wish it was November already. I thought that was an interesting statement. I wish it was November all the way.
And I was like, well, I didn’t say it, but I was thinking, well, what’s that going to change? What’s November going to change? I don’t think it’s going to change anybody’s hearts.
I think we’re going to be just as divided in November as we are today. That’s not where the change needs to happen. The change needs to happen in America’s heart. It’s individual people’s hearts that need to change.
Putting either Donald Trump back in the White House or leaving Joe Biden in the White House is not going to solve America’s problems of where we’re at today. We started down that track a long time ago. Change of heart is what needs to happen.
And how do you change your heart?
Well, first we need to stand up and tell everybody who Jesus is. When the opportunity arises, show them his heart and his love and explain. I think we need to get away from the stereotypical Christian view that says, “Well, you guys are supposed to just love people and not stand up and step out against people or say somebody is bad for what they’re doing.” How can you say anybody’s bad for what they’re doing?
Well, I can tell you, we can go right back here into this book here, and I can show you how history has gone when people have chosen to do bad things and to be immoral. It’s gone very badly.
Israel’s destruction happened, right? The exile began. Ten of the tribes disappeared, not to be found again. Two of the tribes survived. They were able to come back and rebuild the temple and continue the line of Israel, but because of the way they were living, many of them didn’t want to give it up.
People didn’t want to give up that sin. Probably way off the path where I was planning on being for this. But I guess it leads to don’t compromise just because it’s the path of least resistance, and I already started on that.
Don’t compromise your values as a Christian. Don’t compromise that. We’ll let LGBTQ, the rest of the Alphabet, come in and start saying that their rights are being violated and they need to have a month to stand up and celebrate them.
Every time I go to the Bainbridge ferry and I drive by the church that’s on the road there, Siebold. Yep. Every time I go by Siebold and I see that flag hanging above their foundational sign, I’m like, they’ve compromised.
So do you pray for them? I need to. You’re exactly right. And that’s where we should go. And, Kathleen, you’re absolutely right. And you’re about four bullet points ahead of me or two bullet points ahead of me, but, yeah, don’t compromise. It’s okay not to compromise on what you believe and what we believe.
Now, here’s.
I read an interesting article. My wife gets me some interesting articles every once in a while, and this one was good. It’s a challenging word for me, but it’s regime evangelism. Regime evangelism. What is that? That’s a very good question. It’s weird.
As American, the Christians in America got so used to being. Our government was founded on the Christian Judeo belief and system, and Christians have been protected just because the power that had been in play in our government was still fundamental Christian values. I mean, how many presidents and leaders?
It really irks me now because I don’t. I think. I don’t think they believe what they’re saying when they say it, but they all say, God bless America. They close everything. God bless America.
And I’m like, do you really believe that? Is that what’s in your heart? Because if it is, you got some things to change there, Buster, because it doesn’t hold with what you’re saying you’re going to do. If you’re God bless America, there’s some things that need to change.
And I don’t know how many of you guys think about what would you do if you were president. Am I the only one? Yeah, I might be. I might be the only one who thinks about, what would I change if I was president.
And I got ideas. I wouldn’t be president for very long in this country. I would. I think the Secret Service would probably step away and go, you’re gonna get us killed, dude.
And I gotta say, Jesus helped me because I’m like Kevin now. And I said I wouldn’t do it.
I went down a rabbit trail, told myself this morning I wouldn’t do that. Government protected Christians. Ah, thank you. Because. And you can. I think you can connect the dots.
When we started seeing God being taken out of schools, out of public speaking engagements, you know, you just. You see it removed more and more that the power has shifted, that if you’re a Christian, you don’t necessarily can step out and say what you believe. I think we can see that happening right now.
If you step out, there’s a Christian on that street out there next to an LGBTQ flag, which is a pride, which is a whole nother issue.
And you say, I’m against this. I don’t believe in this. We need to start taking these down because I didn’t vote to have that put up there. I don’t know why somebody else decided that they needed to put that up there.
You would probably get hit with hate speech real quick, which is to show you that your beliefs are not protected anymore.
So we as Christians, I know Kevin’s talked about it, that this is probably one of the few places in the world where you as a Christian could speak out your point of view, and you can meet in fellowship and worship together.
I don’t know how long we’re going to have that privilege in this country anymore. I pray we get to continue that. But that’s where the regime evangelism goes, is if you’re. If you’re the one protected under the government right now, you can. You can do whatever you want to.
And if we see the Siebold church and other churches who have swung to the government, saying that this is okay, we’re going to protect these people from hate speech and from the church or anybody else speaking out against them. But we’re going to love them and we’re going to support.
What side of the fence are you on? Are you on God’s side of the fence, or are you stepping over that?
The government has now become your God, and you’re going to do whatever it takes to please the government so that you maintain the protection of the government, and you don’t have to worry about it.
One of the other things I’ve been toying with is the church has been a nonprofit, right? Most churches can establish a 501(c) and be a nonprofit. As a nonprofit, you kind of, I think, open yourself up to government influence.
They could step in and say, ah, may not be able to put their finger on you, but it doesn’t mean they’re not going to try.
If you’re a for-profit church, at least you know, you can play within the for-profit system and you can go, eh, eh, go away. I don’t know how well that would work, but that’s one of the other.
I get some strange ideas at times. I don’t know that that would not be part of my presidency idea, but I might suggest it to people anyway. That was what that was about.
We as Christians is more somebody stands up and speaks what is true and what we believe. The more you’re opening yourself up for persecution in this nation, which wasn’t the way it was before, but we’re seeing it shift that direction.
So I guess really part of that bullet that’s up there that says, keep your guard up is we’re going to kind of get back on topic here. Solomon didn’t keep his guard up.
Solomon let his guard down, and he did so with the many wives that he had and who he set up a bunch of shrines. I think he even had set up some Asherah poles for his wives to go worship at.
Now, what Solomon did was interesting. He still was wise enough to know that you don’t turn your back on God. The smart person sticks with God because God is all-powerful, and the smart person fears God because that’s the best thing to do, to fear God.
But life is meaningless.
He got himself into a do loop, but he didn’t keep his guard up, and he got knocked down.
I think it would have fallen into an early trap. I mean, King married for alliances and teachings. Yep. Yep, that’s right. And that was why he married the Egyptian, the pharaoh’s daughters, is alliances. But what he didn’t do is keep his focus on God. And so it got him. He lost ten of the tribes right after he died, and then it just kind of, as we all know, it went downhill from there.
But he did say to stick with God because that’s the best thing you can do.
All right, so in the next slide, please.
All right, so we’ve been equipped with everything we need. God talks, or Jesus in the Bible talks about God made the lilies of the field, even more splendid than anything that Solomon ever wore. You know, he’s given all this beauty in the land. No sparrow is going to go without food, right? So how much more are we going to be supplied with? Everything we need to stay engaged. Engaged. Enemy. Engaged.
Enemy with prayer. Right, Kathleen? Yes, prayer.
Our struggle is not against the flesh and blood, right? It’s against the principalities and the rulers and the authorities of this world. And we’ve talked about it. Kevin’s talked about it. That’s not necessarily the fleshly people we see running for presidency in 2024 or throughout in other countries. That’s against the principalities and the rulers and the authorities in the spiritual realm, the unseen realm. That’s where the war is being fought. These other guys are not really the big worry that we have. We need to pray for them.
Those being the leaders that have been elected or who are in power. Those being the folks who want social reform and change. Those being the ones lost on the street under the influence of drugs, those being our family members who don’t believe.
We need to fight for them and engage the enemy in prayer, spiritual battle for them. I know that when I do that, it’s not all fun and games, and I’m probably pretty sure everybody in here has experienced that.
When you start praying in earnest and you start looking for change and you give your life over to Jesus and you start just really trying hard to bring the kingdom down, the enemy fights back.
He may not target you specifically and individually, because I like what Kevin has to say: Satan is not necessarily that equipped. He can’t be everywhere all the time. God can. God can be everywhere all the time. Satan can’t because he’s not God. But when he does a drive by, sometimes it hurts.
He’ll take a swipe at you as he goes by, or he’ll command one of his minions, one of the demons, to try to harm you. So don’t be afraid when that happens.
In fact, I would even say double down when that happens, because you know something you’re doing is right. So don’t quit, engage in the battle. Can’t run away. Your commander has your back. Jesus has got your back. He’s given you everything.
Interesting in the Bible when he sent the disciples out, take nothing, go out. I’m giving you my power. Go do the thing.
They went out and they came back and they’re like, that was awesome. Everything was great.
Later, as he was talking with the disciples and it came down to the swords, does everybody remember that discussion about swords? Hey, have your sword, sell your robe, get a sword, because I’m not going to be here much longer. All right, we got two. That’s more than enough. You don’t, and I’m like that. Why did he say that? Two’s enough. Two’s enough. Like, okay, two’s enough. Because he’s enough. That’s why. Two is enough. You don’t need him.
You don’t need an arsenal. You got me. Keep your eyes focused on me, and things will go. You’ll be able to. You’ll be able to battle all these things. You can do it. So we need to do it. We need to stop letting people say wrong is right. You need to be able to speak out against that if somebody’s talking to you.
For me, because I go to the office a couple of times a week, most everybody in my office is a retired sailor, so it sometimes gets a little colorful in the office.
And I myself need to have more of a backbone and stand up and say, come on, guys, I don’t really want to hear that. If you want to just do it the days I’m not in the office. But is that right? Wrong is not right. Right is right. And in your heart, you know right is right. And I know those guys do. I know. They all know what right is. Right. But they choose differently because of the atmosphere.
Groupthink, groupthink is, you know, it is a thing.
And when somebody steps out and nobody corrects them, then everybody goes ahead and keeps doing right. So, yes, there will be casualties, there will be struggles. Don’t. We’ve all heard this before. Don’t let what man can do to you. Don’t be afraid of that. That’s temporary. Be afraid of God and what he can do to you, because that’s eternity.
I want to be able to step in front of God on the day I die, which is inevitable.
I’m 1 second closer right now than I was before, and I do really want to hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant.
And I’m going to be standing there going, yeah, well, what about, I won’t probably, if I can bring it up, I will probably be forced to because I think it’s just in his presence. You’re going to just break down and start going, well, I did this, I did that.
And he’s like, no, it’s going to be on a movie screen. You don’t even have to say, yeah, right.
And he’s going to go, what did you do? I forgot. Hey, come on in. I got this mansion. It’s really cool. Foosball table. You play foosball? Come on. I’ve yet to be beaten. Well, I’ll get you. I’m a horrible foosball player. I don’t even know why I brought that up, but it seemed funny at the moment, right?
So the strife, the struggles, maybe even death can happen when you stand up to man and what man thinks is right.
But God is the ultimate giver of life, and our life is guaranteed for eternity because of who we believe in, which is Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior.
So face it. When you face persecution, just remember that. So it is time, right? Saddle up your horses. It’s time to ride. And I almost put the. Wanted to put. I thought about putting that Chapman song up right now so we could all saddle up our horses. It’s time to ride. I didn’t, but it’s time to. We gotta prepare for it.
We gotta draw up our plans, our battle plans. Be ready.
So Jamie and I are doing our. Now she’s worried. Don’t worry. I’m not. I don’t tell. Kevin’s the only one I know who can get away with telling wife jokes. He’s the only one I know who can get away with that.
When we were active duty and flying, there was a strike fighter weapons tactics program. The Navy had just switched over to it, and it was a program derived from Top Gun, where everybody had to go through some form of that training.
And you spent hours preparing for it, and you drew up plans for the scenario that you had to go in and fight your way in, fight your way out.
You had this guy who’s a top gun graduate, who’s your wingman, and you had to prove to him you knew what you were doing. It was pretty stressful, wasn’t it?
And then it wasn’t just one flight. It was, like, 14. A lot of it was fun when it was over, but at the time, prepping and doing it was not good.
But why do I bring that up? Because we prepared for battle. We drew up plans. We were ready to go in and do what we had to do.
And was it scary? I remember the first time I saw AAA coming up at night when I was flying inbound into Iraq. And it was. I don’t know how far away it was. I was on night vision goggles, so everything seemed very close. And when a burning ball of fire is going through the sky, you just like, ugh, that’s too close for comfort. But it was.
It was nowhere near me, but so, but the point is, I was scared. It’s like, whoa, here we go. But we’ve prepared. This is not unexpected. We prepared for the fight. We have prepared for this fight that we know is going on around us right now. And we see coming even in our future of our country, we’ve prepared for it.
Our commander in chief has never been defeated. Victory is assured. We just need to not be afraid going into this. The election’s coming in November, and it could be tomorrow. I don’t care.
That’s not going to define my future. I’m going to put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness. I’m going to put on the belt of the truth and carry the sword of the spirit.
I’m going to have the shield of faith to put the flaming arrows that I know he’s going to try to launch at me, and he’s launched before at me. But my God is greater. And so my faith is going to be in that.
My faith is going to be in my prayer life, that I’m going to pray that there’s going to be revival in this country. I’m going to want the revival. Whether it’s painful or not, I want the revival. I want the revival because I want to live in the revival. I want to see America turn around. I want my children to live in a revived America. I want my grandchildren. No hurries. No hurries.
I want my grandchildren to live in a revived America in every generation until the king comes. Right?
I mean, that’s just what I want to do, to start mounting up. Saddle up my horse. I’ve already prepared for the battle, and I’m going to pray for strength and courage. We need to pray for each other, for strength and courage, to engage with the enemy.
Don’t you think the revival has to occur in the church first? The church is not strong. There are too many people who don’t fully believe. They don’t live up their faith. They don’t tithe. They don’t pray. It’s not, there’s not enough zeal in the body of Christ.
And I think God is gonna have to awaken our hearts and the whole body for a revival to occur. I couldn’t agree more.
And I think part of the regime evangelism that I spoke about before is that the church needs a revival. They need to remember who Christ is, why we are the church. We’re the church for him. It has to start with us. Exactly.
I worked for public schools for 25 years. Five years for Christian. And let me tell you about the liberal school districts. It’s bad.
And I thought to myself, when I started from day one, I had to make a difference. I said, Lord, I’m going to profess you whether I lose my job or not.
Guess what? I worked 30 years for school, never lost a job. But I started from day one. Maintenance guys. Most of the time I worked at district office, probably ten years of schools. But maintenance guys would come in with the dirty jokes and stuff. And that’s where you start, oh, walking away. And pretty soon, when they’re in that circle again, you’ve got business with them.
They go, okay, Sandy, it’s a good one. I go, okay. It’s the stand we make that they know who you are.
You know, I hear a lot of complaining on Facebook about the church. We are the church. It’s not the pastor. He’s our shepherd. But we’re supposed to be learning, you know, so stands we have to make. Yep, yep.
He’s very revival. What happened in Kentucky? What’s that? Those college kids just were worshiping the Lord, and he shows up with a sweet presence. To me, that’s what I look at. That’s what I want. Yep.
He’s going to revive us because we’re seeking him. And he’s going to show up because we’re seeking him and wanting him. And it spread, and it’s still spreading anyway. So, yes, but also, how do we do that? LGBTQ. How do we walk alongside them in love?
First, truth. If they need to know some truth, yeah, but if they’re not ready to hear truth, you gotta show them God’s love. I’ve seen it over and over. Love. This is it. The bottom line, I had this probably three weeks ago. Got new glasses.
And I walk into the eye place, and I see the lady sitting with the wig on. I mean, it’s very obvious. And so her name’s Annie. She helped me, but Annie probably was Andrew at birth. Okay? I mean, the features, the voice, the whole bit. Boy, it bothered my heart.
All we got is praying, knowing that last week, after I was going to get, what do I do, Lord? Well, this year I became a published author, and I wrote a 40-day devotional. And so Lord says, I want you to go.
I want you to put it in your purse and bring her a devotional.
So I’m waiting. I get in there, and there’s a guy helping me. And I said, is Annie here? And he said, yeah, she’s in the back. So I said, I’d like to talk to her.
So I went to the counter and you know what? She was so kind helping me. And that’s what I told her. I said, I recognize kindness. I said, I’m a kind person. I became a published author this year, and my first, I’d love to give you this devotional.
And she said, oh, thank you very much. So all I can think is, okay, there’s 40 days. 40. It’s 40 because that’s new. Because. And I pray God is going to take each of those days and do something with her. Amen.
You know, our hearts have. Have to hurt when we see things. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. It’s a heart issue, for sure.
The regime, evangelism. His closing remarks in his essay that he wrote were basically, the church kind of needs to get back to the form of government, if you will, is the priests and the king.
And the third one was God, wasn’t it? The prophet. The third one was prophet. The priests, the priests, were the ones who brought you to God. Right? They’re the intercessors. Right.
The king was the protector. And then the prophet was the word coming from God. The interesting one that he touched on, that I paid more attention to, was the king, the protector. Because the king, how does he protect his? How does he protect? Well, the protection is by love, providing, but it’s also by protecting through, dare I say, warfare. Right? That’s the struggle.
We don’t want people to get hurt. We don’t want to hurt people. People. Where’s that happy medium?
As a 25-year Navy warrior, I struggled with that at times. I was like, what? My moment that it finally had resolution was I just turned it over to God and I left it up to Him. I was like, if You put me in that position, then I know it’s You who put me here.
I don’t really want to kill anybody, but if you put me there, then I’m just going to have faith that it was you who put me there. I was never put in that position, and I never was, so. But that’s what a king does.
I think that’s what a king needs to do, is he needs to trust in the Lord with all his heart. Lean not on his own understanding, and God will make his ways straight and true.
So know your enemy. We see them out there. Our enemies are political foes.
Our enemies, our social agenda changers. Our enemy is Satan. That’s our enemy. That’s the one we need to know. This other stuff is his tricks and his trade that. He’s trying to pull one over on us.
Best defense is truly a good offense. Kathleen, what’s that offense? Prayer. Prayer, which is prayer? Right. Pray unending. Always pray about everything. Stay connected to the Lord. See injustice. Pray about injustice. See a change. Pray about a change.
A wise warrior is better than a strong one and a man of knowledge than one of strength.
For you should wage war with sound guidance. Victory comes with many counselors. Ask for wisdom and knowledge in your prayers, and God will grant it.
Many counselors. That’s us right here. That’s the church. Faithful and loyal to God. You can get good counsel from fellow believers. You can get good counsel from your pastor.
Prevent defense doesn’t always work. Watch. Prevent defense. And I see the question marks. Prevent defense. It’s an NFL thing. When a team is way up on the score, they go into prevent defense; they spread their defense way out.
All they’re going to try to do is keep the offense from gaining a lot of yards if they can help it, and just try to keep them from getting in the burning time, burning the clock down to win this game. It fails every once in a while. Prevent defense has never been a, has never been a good defense.
After your, when you get your third child, you’re in prevent defense. It’s no longer man on man. You’re now in prevent defense. Does that make you nervous, Sophia? That’s good. That’s why we only had two kids.
So go offensive. Work, fellow believers. Get your Bible out, read it, pray every day. Go offensive. I think that’s what we’re called to do: go offensive against the sin that we see. Don’t just let it ride. Do something about it.
So here, and I knew I’d written it down and I just couldn’t find it in my notes. But here’s Solomon’s final conclusion in Ecclesiastes.
13 That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. 14 God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, NLT)
The one that registers to me in that, because it’s just the way I operate, is this is everybody’s duty. Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. So that’s what I’m going to try to do. And I’m going to pray for strength and courage to do it.
I pray for strength and courage, Jesus, for each one of these fine folks in here, to be able to do that on a daily basis.
And I pray for each one of you who’s going to click the like button on Rumble and YouTube. And better yet, come visit us. Come to church here and meet the fellowship at the firehouse.
Paul’s bow, but I pray for strength and courage for you.
24 ‘May the Lord bless you and protect you. 25 May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. (Numbers 6:24-25, NLT)
Lift up his countenance to you and give you peace.
Go forth and serve in peace. Serve Jesus, who loves you deeply. Because I almost forgot because I was tracking that way.
Here’s a great remembrance right here. Communion. Great remembrance of who you are. Great remembrance of who loves you and who’s got your back. Come and eat the meal. Remember your Lord. Remember his love for you. Spread that love around. Come and eat.
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