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My message, Seeking the Face of God.
Seeking the Face of God.
Psalm 27.
Verse 7 and verse 8.
Psalm 27.
Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my
voice.
Have mercy also upon me and answer me.
When thou saidest, Seek ye my face, my
heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will
I seek.
Verse 8 is my message.
Lord, when you said, Seek my face, my
heart said unto you, thy face, Lord, will
I seek.
Bless this word, Lord.
Anoint it.
Open our hearts to receive it, I pray
in Christ's name.
Amen.
Here in Psalm 27, he prays, Lord, hear
when I cry.
Have mercy.
Answer me.
David had one all-consuming prayer.
And if you look at verse 4, we
find his consuming prayer.
There's one desire.
Folks, he's looked over his life and he's
come down.
He's come down to one issue.
He's come down to one prayer, one desire.
He wraps up his whole life.
There's nothing else he wants out of life,
out of his future.
There's one master desire.
Now, that's an amazing thing when a man
or a woman can tell you, when you
ask them, what's the one goal in your
life?
What's the one thing you want more than
anything else?
Ask you that question.
What is the one thing that you want
out of life?
One mission, one pastor in Europe told me,
he said, would you pray for me?
I want to win 10 million souls to
Jesus.
Well, that's that's that's a wonderful thought.
That's not what David had in mind.
I don't know what your thought may be.
If you could say the one thing, the
one desire you have in life that you're
going to spend your life, rest of your
life seeking to obtain.
And here it is in verse 4.
One thing have I desired of the Lord
that will I seek after that I may
dwell in the house of the Lord all
the days of my life.
To behold the beauty of the Lord and
to inquire in his temple.
One thing I want now, he's not talking
about leaving his call, leaving the throne and
moving in to the temple, into the house
of God.
That that's not what he's talking about.
There's something spiritual he sees.
There's something very deep in his heart.
There's a longing.
You see, he's not an ascetic.
He's not a hermit.
He's a warrior.
He's an active man.
He's a passionate man.
He's not just trying to shut everything down
in his life.
He's going to continue doing what he has
been doing.
He's going to go out to warfare.
He's been through this.
Now, here's a man who's tasted of everything
that a man could ever want in his
life.
Here's a man that's known power, authority, respect.
He's known the applause of the multitudes.
To him, they sang, David has killed his
tens of thousands.
Here's a man who had a heart for
God.
Here's a man whose heart panted after the
Lord, a man of prayer, a godly man.
And yet there's something missing.
There's something he has not obtained.
He's facing a host at the time of
the 27th Psalm.
There's a host that's come against him, a
huge host, an army of enemies coming.
And they've sworn to eat him up.
Those are the very words, to eat him
up.
I'm going to eat you alive, the enemy
said.
I'm going to consume you.
And David's not going to God now.
And his prayer is not, oh, Lord, deliver
me from my enemy.
That's not his own prayer.
He's saying, I want something now that truly
satisfies my soul.
I want something deeper than I have ever
known in the Lord.
He said, I have one goal now, and
that's uninterrupted communion with my Lord.
He doesn't want to move into the house.
He knows that's impossible.
But he knows one thing, that the tabernacle
is where the presence of God is.
He knows that the house of God is
to be called the house of prayer.
And he goes into the house of God.
And I believe David saw something that just
did not satisfy his heart.
He saw the images.
He saw the altar.
He saw the labor.
He saw the sacrifice.
He said, there's got to be something behind
it.
And I believe with all my heart, David's
not afraid of his enemies.
He said, I will not be afraid.
He said, the Lord is my strength.
He's a praying man.
He knows the Lord is his strength.
He's not fearful.
But he said, there's something missing.
There's something missing.
And there are millions and millions of godly
Christians, those who love the Lord.
But they know that there is something that
there's an inner longing that has not been
quite satisfied.
There's an unmet spiritual need.
Yet there's something out there, something deeper.
There's a beauty.
There's a glory.
There's an excitement about who the Lord is
that I have not seen that would give
me something to see me through the rest
of my life.
Something I could give my life to.
That would be my goal.
My only ambition.
My only agenda.
Boils down to one thing.
I want to know what it's like to
have uninterrupted communion.
I want to be able to call on
him at any day.
I want to have my life to be
a life of prayer.
I want to dwell in the house of
the Lord.
I want to be one who prays constantly.
In other words, my life is the prayer
itself.
He said, there's something in me.
I've known victories.
I've prayed about victories.
I've prayed about these things.
I've seen God's hand.
I've been delivered.
But in spite of all of my deliverances
and these flashes of blessing and anointings, he
said, there's something that is not steadfast.
There's something I'm longing for, unshakable, uninterrupted.
Some kind of a walk with God that
I've not yet seen or experienced.
And folks, David, I believe, got tired of
dead ritual in the house of God.
He tired of the ceremonies.
He sees the lamb, but he says, they
talk about the lamb.
But who is the lamb of God?
I want to know this lamb.
I want to know what those candlesticks burning
mean.
What's the fire mean on the altar?
What are these things?
What's behind that?
And David's heart cries out, I believe, when
he goes to the house of God.
And David loved the house of God.
And he said, this is death.
This is why people are going to the
idols, because they don't feel life here.
The word of God, the priest, come and
deliver the word.
But it's a dead letter now.
It's knowledge.
And we've been given this knowledge over and
over again.
It's knowledge.
But there is nothing of life to it.
The number one complaint I get on our
mailing list from hundreds of thousands of people
from around the world.
My church is dead.
One young lady wrote and she said, you
can tell when a preacher is praying.
You can tell whether you're just getting something
that he got from studies rather from his
prayer.
Is it because even the most biblically strict
message can be dry bones if it's not
bathed in prayer and the congregation can tell?
And I think David felt that there's something
missing of life.
There's something missing of excitement.
This is death.
And that's why I leave the house of
God with my soul cast down.
And I'm saying I've been to church.
But why is my soul cast down?
And I believe David made a decision.
He said, I've had it.
I am not going to live out the
rest of my days with these unmet spiritual
needs.
There's something calling me.
There's something out there behind the scene that
I have not yet gotten a hold of.
And I'm going to make that the goal
of my life.
One thing I desire and one thing I
have set my heart to.
And that is that I can dwell in
his presence and inquire of him.
In other words, I want to know who
he is.
I want to see his face.
So David goes to his own house and
he says, I think he's saying, if the
house of God, if the tabernacle of God
is the house of prayer, I'm going to
make my house a house of prayer.
And I'm going to give myself to seeking
him until I find he does not go
to his priest to buy a Zadok.
Zadok's a godly man.
You see, you're not going to get what
I'm talking about to you from your pastors.
You're not going to get it from teaching.
You're going to get it until you're sick
and tired of a ritual of your own
life, going through the same motions, trying to
find the depths of Christ.
And you have not found it yet because
somewhere along the line, you got stuck in
front of a television set and you neglected
your Bible and got dead inside and you
turned your own prayer life and everything else
into a ritual.
And now it's left you hungry.
But I'm saying even the godly people who
pray, even those who are under the anointing
of the Holy Spirit, they're always reaching out
to this one eternal, glorious joy, something that
will take me to the coming of the
Lord and see me all the way through
eternity.
It's a relationship.
It's an uninterrupted intimacy with Jesus Christ.
And there's something out there.
And just as sure as the Bible says
Moses saw his day, the day of Christ,
and rejoiced in it, I believe David saw
the day of the Messiah and began to
yearn after it for a revelation of the
face of this great Messiah.
So David goes home to pray.
And that's where verse seven comes in.
Oh, Lord, hear this cry of mine.
Hear my voice.
Answer me, Lord.
I want to know you.
God answers him with three words.
David says, have mercy on me.
Oh, God, there's a hunger in me.
There's a God have mercy.
I'm so hungry.
I have a host of enemies coming against
me.
I've had so many battles in my life,
but oh, God, for one time.
Lord, open your heart to me.
I want to know you.
I want to see you.
And the Lord answers him with three words.
Seek my face.
Now, this is not a call to prayer.
David's been praying seven times a day.
This is not a call.
Well, go spend more time.
Yes.
Thank God for more time.
Thank God for all the Bible study and
all of that.
But the face of God is his reflection.
It's his likeness.
This is a call to get to know
who the Lord is so you can live
like him.
To seek the face of God is to
receive the knowledge of who he is, how
he acts toward mankind, how he how his
very nature and who he is.
So that you can spend your time reaching
out, seeking Jesus.
Is this the way you would do it?
Is this how you would treat?
First, you start with your wife, your husband,
your friends and the job everywhere.
Seeking the face of Jesus is not just
a call to prayer.
It's a call to a hunger and a
thirst of the soul to seek in your
life a lifestyle that totally reflects who Jesus
is.
My Bible said he is the express image
of the father.
And I thank God.
I thank God for that day that God
took on a face.
You see, David kept crying out.
Oh, Lord, show me your face.
Why are you hidden?
Job said, God's hidden his face.
And one of his advisors said, if God's
in his face, why seek him?
And that was the heart of his complaint
to Job.
And in the Old Testament, it was hard
because his face had not been fully revealed.
Jesus Christ is the face of God.
The express image, the exact chiseled engraved
as is same essence.
Same glory.
He is God in flesh.
And folks, we have the privilege of seeing
his face of touching him because he took
on a face.
He took on the image of man.
He took on the form of man.
He came to feel my pain and your
pain.
He came to be tempted as you and
I are tempted.
He came to live as you and I
have lived to show that a man can
live wholly dependent on the father.
Totally wholly dependent on.
That he can have uninterrupted fellowship.
You can live as he did and say,
I don't do anything except I see and
hear it from my savior.
This is the Christ of Calvary.
But today, when you hear these words, seek
my face, it is taking on now implications
beyond any generation we've ever known.
When I tell you, I want you to
listen closely to what I'm about to share
with you.
This is a prophetic word and I want
you to get it deep in your soul.
I'm saying it again.
When God says to this generation, seek my
face.
In other words, seek to know the real
Christ.
The implications today are beyond anything history has
ever known.
Because the question now by multitudes is which
Jesus?
Which Jesus?
The scripture warns there will come many Christ's
deceiving many.
Matthew 24 5.
In fact, Jesus said just before he comes,
this will be the one great sign that
Christ is at the door at the end
of all things is about to happen.
The disciples asked Jesus, which will be the
sign of your coming and of the end
of the world?
And Jesus said, many shall come in my
name saying, I am Christ and shall deceive
many.
In Matthew 24 23, he said, they'll say,
here's Christ, there's Christ.
Jesus said, do not believe them.
This is not a bunch of crazies running
around dressed in white robes and long beards
saying, I'm the son of God.
That's not what he's saying.
He's not even talking about many.
He's talking about Christ concepts that are coming,
concepts, definitions, explanations of who they believe Jesus
is a Jesus of their own making, of
their own imagination.
And he said there are going to be
many.
And they're going to say, no, here's what
Christ is like.
Here's what Jesus is like.
Then over here said, no, here's what Jesus
is like.
Then tell there is such confusion.
In Matthew 13 22, false Christ and false
prophets shall rise to seduce the elect if
possible.
False Christ will seduce the elect.
That sentence used to intrigue me.
How can anybody be deceived by somebody said,
I'm Christ, I'm Christ.
They'd be laughed out of church.
They'd be laughed out of society.
That's not what it means.
The reality is these are concepts.
These are going to be this is going
to be teachings by false prophets who've transformed
themselves into angels of light to deceive, if
it were possible, even the elect.
He's warning about the coming of a new
Jesus movement.
Educated men who have left the authority of
the scripture.
Who no longer believe in the power of
prayer.
Who have formed their own concepts of a
radical Christ, a radical Jesus.
That would appeal to young people, especially young
ministers.
Radicalism.
Communion, they talk about.
Social justice.
All good things.
But it's a new gospel.
Another gospel.
And it's all about another Christ.
In no uncertain terms, Paul warned us.
There will become those are corrupted from the
simplicity of the gospel.
There will come false prophets transforming themselves into
the apostles of Christ.
Satan himself will be transformed into an angel
of light.
And his ministers will be transformed into the
ministers of righteousness.
They will come talking about a new kind
of holiness.
And that being love your brother, love your
sister.
Do good to the poor.
All things that good Christians do anyhow.
I want to speak to you about this
new movement.
It's a new kind of church that is
springing up all over the world.
They call themselves the emerging church.
It was in the New York Times.
It's the number one religious thing on internet
now.
It's being pushed by bloggers.
They meet in little groups.
And they are those that have claimed that
they have mega church burnout.
They're burned out from the bigness.
They're burned out from the preaching of self
-improvement.
They came to these churches really as seekers.
They came wanting something real.
And what they got was a self-improvement
message of how to improve your image and
reach your physical goals.
When all along they said we went to
find reality.
And we were cheated.
One news reporter who walked out of a
mega church.
Now when I talk about mega church, we're
not putting, we're not covering the whole mega
movement.
This church has thousands of people would probably
be called a mega church.
But we're talking about those churches.
Churches, it'll be explained here in what this
young man said.
He said we got mega burnout.
Most of the young people tired of the
shallow gospel of self-fulfillment.
He said a Barna Group survey showed that
10 to 12 million born-again Christians, believers,
have stopped going to church now.
10 to 12 born-again believers, most of
them young people.
And baby boomers as they're called.
So we were seekers.
We wanted a church that was an asylum
from iPods and TiVos, Xboxes, competition and bigness.
And the church deceived us.
It was not an asylum that we found
from the world.
We found Disney World.
A world of skating, sport leagues, cafes, game
rooms.
The same stuff we were already bored with.
You're going to hear more and more about
this movement.
Folks, in 50 years of ministry, I have
seen the winds and waves of doctrine coming
and going.
Movements that rise and fall and leave shipwreck
everywhere.
This is different.
All of that was before intranet and before
bloggers and before chat rooms.
And before there could be in just one
week a false doctrine or doctrine of demons.
Sweep the whole world in just a short
time.
It's a whole different game.
And this will not go away because what
we're seeing now is the last attack of
the enemy before Jesus comes.
Another gospel, another Christ.
He's saying no more, no more crucify Him.
No more trying to get to reject this
Christ of the cross.
Let's bring in our own Jesus.
Let's dress Him up and make Him like
man acceptable to anybody.
And so now the devil has introduced a
new Christ, a new doctrine.
And folks, believe me, these ministers that are
preaching this are educated people.
They are not hippies.
They are writing books as theologians and they
are interconnected now.
And there are they meet in little groups.
One writer said we were told that all
that was all this stuff was meant to
attract seekers.
But we asked the question, attracted to what?
Because we search the scriptures and we find
nothing in this that resembles the book of
Acts.
Oh, we don't find the book of Acts
in church.
The truth is most of these that are
called seekers are really seeking the face of
Christ.
They're wanting to know how to live like
Jesus.
They don't want to live in sin.
There's something about sin that absolutely destroys the
fabric of the family.
It destroys the conscience.
It destroys the meaning of life.
And I don't care what kind of house
you live in.
I don't care if you drive a Mercedes
or a Rolls Royce.
I don't care how much money you have
in the bank.
Where there's sin destroying.
There can be no joy, no happiness, no
peace.
And when you come to the end of
yourself, you want to go to church.
And you don't want a little sermonette.
You don't want somebody to tell you how
good you are.
You want to be convicted of your sins.
And that's what this generation is looking for.
They're saying we want to hear pastors that
pray.
We want to hear pastors that preach Jesus
and live the Christ that they preach.
We want somebody not trying to get our
money, but to get to our hearts.
We want to hear from the throne of
God.
We don't want to hear some man's, some
concept of who Jesus is.
We want the biblical Christ.
The one who shed his blood.
The bloodstained hands of a crucified Christ.
From Dallas, Texas News.
Says these emerging churches weave together elements from
different religious traditions.
Especially Catholicism.
Eastern Orthodoxy.
Some are reviving medieval mystical practices such as
walking the labyrinth.
In other words, have different stages around the
room.
Over here you can have a cross in
chalk on the floor.
You go and write your name on that
cross so that you know your sins are
pinned to the cross.
You go over here to the candle section
and you can light a candle.
You go over here and you can just
fellowship with somebody.
And over here you can take a piece
of cake and a Pepsi and have communion.
That's exactly what New York Times said.
Walking the labyrinth.
It's a special, it's a pick yourself, mix
and match approach to the gospel.
Stressing community and social justice.
Hell is rejected because it makes God look
like a torturer.
So now there are images, candles, incense.
We are trying to get, here's what they
say, we're trying to get reconnected to Jesus,
the radical Jesus.
They say we want to put a more
humane face on Christ, on Jesus.
I want you to go with me to
Galatians, the first chapter.
The first chapter of Galatians in your Bible,
please.
I want to show you what Paul the
Apostle says.
He says, if there's any other Christ other
than Paul preached, he's a fake.
First chapter of Galatians.
Sorry, verse six.
I marvel that you're so soon removed from
him that called you to the grace of
Christ unto another gospel.
Which is not another, but there be some
that trouble you and would pervert the gospel
of Christ.
Beloved, those days have come.
How do we know that Jesus is coming?
Because he said just before he comes, many
Christ, many gospels will appear.
Which is not another gospel.
But though we are an angel from heaven
preach any other gospel unto you than that
which we have preached unto you, let him
be accursed.
As we said before, so say now again,
if any man preach any other gospel unto
you than that you have received, let him
be accursed.
For do I now persuade men of God
or do I seek to please men?
If I yet please men, I should not
be the servant of Christ.
But I certify to you, brethren, that the
gospel which was preached of me is not
from man.
And I didn't receive it of man, neither
was I taught it, but by the revelation
of Jesus Christ.
He is a revelation.
And now they're saying, let us reason together
and let us see if we define.
In fact, one of the top leaders of
this new emerging church movement has said clarity
is good, but intrigue is better.
Intrigue.
Think about that for just a moment.
Intrigue is subterfuge.
It's clandestine effort to impress or to influence.
Clandestine effort.
They said clarity.
Folks, the very foundation of the knowledge of
Christ, the very foundation of the word of
God is clarity.
Simple.
They're being removed from the simplicity, the clarity
of the gospel, moving into intrigue in what
they're saying.
Let us get together and find out behind
the message what Jesus really meant.
In other words, they're putting their own face
on the face of Christ.
The Bible said they made him a man
like unto themselves.
So now it is.
You can worship with the Buddhists.
You can worship with the Islamic because Jesus
is love.
That's where it's headed.
You said, Brother Dave, I didn't know anything
about this.
Well, you're going to hear more and more
about it.
And God is always on time.
But the very words, the very foundation, and
I get this right from their writings.
Everything now is negotiable.
Take a look at the whole gospel.
Let's redefine it.
Let's look at Jesus and redefine who he
is.
Now, I've got a warning for every young
pastor that may be here.
Every young person that's in the Internet and
you like to surf the Internet and you
want to.
You've got a hungry heart.
And so you're searching and you're going to
bookstores and you're picking up books by these
writers about the new brands of Christianity, new
definitions of Jesus Christ.
And it's very intriguing, very well written, very
seductive.
But I'm telling you, the break, the bait
is Jesus, a radical Jesus who will be
against war, a radical Jesus that's going to
bring down the establishment, a radical Jesus to
wipe out poverty.
Folks, we know what Jesus Christ is in
all of those human matters.
We know our meek savior who loved the
poor.
And you know the love that Christ gives
to his body for the widows and the
orphans and all.
But you see, along with that radicalism, this
neo-radicalism, there's something deeper than that.
And it all goes to the divinity of
Jesus Christ.
To bring Jesus down.
And you see, it's no more a mirror.
See, the word of God is a mirror
that shows you Christ and so that you
can reflect that image to the world.
You don't mar that image.
The world is not to see you, they
see the reflection of Christ through you and
through me.
But now you see, I define Jesus and
it's not a mirror, it's a painting now.
I can paint his face.
I can describe him.
He looks just like me.
He is what I believe he is.
He's what I think he is.
So everybody's got their paintbrush and everybody's got
their canvas.
And this blogger over here says, no, we
have found a new way to bring Jesus
in.
And no, it said, well, we've added this.
And so now they call it their very
words.
It's a little messy, but you have to
have messiness.
You have to have intrigue.
Folks, this is an attack on the absolute
godness of Jesus Christ to make him a
man.
This is where the Islamics are going.
I've been warning for years now, 10 years,
about the new world church order that's coming.
And I've wondered how could you get denominations
to come in to a world church coming
out of Europe, coming out of Brussels?
A church that has all power and all
authority, who can jail anyone else who will
not go with them.
They're already doing that in some countries where
a pastor speaks about homosexuality from his pulpit.
It's happened in Sweden, it's happening in other
countries now.
One world church, and how will all the
denominations come in?
How will the Catholic church come in?
How will the Protestant?
How would charismatics come into that?
Because many of these in this movement come
from a charismatic background.
How could anybody, because the mantra, the hook
is Jesus.
Not Jesus God, not Jesus Christ, but Jesus,
a prophet, a man.
And folks, this is why the cry goes
out from the heart of God, seek my
face.
I have to have a people who so
reflect me that the world doesn't have to
go to a book, they don't have to
go to the internet, they don't have to
go somewhere else, but to their neighbor.
They go to you, they go to me,
and they say, I know where Christ is,
I know what his face is like.
I know a man, I know a woman,
wholly dependent on him, who walk and talk
like him.
We have to be the face of Jesus
Christ to a lost world that's mixed up
and confused.
So we go to this word, that's why
it's important.
The church has gotten so far away, they
go to some churches now, and all it
is, is prophecy, prophets.
And this is in Pentecostal movements.
And this is even worse, because they equate
prophecy with the same authority as the word
of God.
They say if he's a true prophet, his
word is equal to the scripture.
Can you imagine how men can dominate people's
lives under that concept?
Now this emerging church, they call it the
emerging church, Paul the apostle, if he stood
where I stood this morning, would stand up
here and cry at the top of his
voice, even if an angel from heaven preached
any other gospel to you than what you
have received.
Let him be accursed.
Let him be accursed, the scripture says.
Well, what's God's answer to all this?
How do we react as lovers of this
blood-stained Christ?
First, it is this very thing.
Seek my face.
You will not find his face anywhere else,
right here.
You will not, you see, David says, oh,
one desire, and that's where I've come to.
Thank God for family.
Thank God for ministry.
Thank God for 50 years of ministry.
But folks, it's boiled down to one issue.
One desire.
It's more than wanting to be loved and
appreciated for the cheers and praises of man.
It's more than being comfortable and knowing that
you're secure in your old age.
You've got some retirement plan.
That means nothing.
It comes down to this one issue.
I want to be like Jesus.
I don't want to see his face.
I don't want to be a reflection of
who he is.
That's all of our missionary work.
You know, people say, oh, the issue is
soul winning.
The issue of missions.
The issue is reaching the world.
But if you don't know his face, it's
all in vain.
How do you influence people?
How do you reach the conscience of men?
Unless you have seen his face, you know
who he is and you reflect him.
Seek his reflection.
That's the answer.
This past week, I was in my office
and I just raised my hand.
Oh, God, look what they're doing to my
Jesus.
And the Holy Spirit said, don't worry, David.
Don't be afraid.
You know how it's going to end.
And I turned to Revelation.
Will you stand while I read this to
you?
Will you stand for just a minute and
let me give you.
I'll just wrap it up here right now.
He said, don't despair.
You know what's going, how it's going to
end.
The heavens are going to open.
And behold, the king of kings and the
Lord of Lords on a white horse.
He's coming to rule with the rod of
iron.
He's going to hold on.
He's going to bring down and lay down
every false prophet.
He's going to smite with his sword all
that is a man to Christ.
And every knee shall bow and every tongue
shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of
all.
Raise your hands and praise him.
You know the real Jesus.
We know the real Christ.
Come on, folks, lift your hands and praise
him in the annex in an overflow room.
The Christ of the cross.
The Christ of the shed blood.
The redeemer who came to redeem us from
our sins.
Oh, God, that we could reflect your son
to this world.
That we would have this uninterrupted love and
relationship with Christ in a troubled, teeming world.
Oh, hallelujah.
Do you know he's here?
The presence of Jesus is here.
Just let me add one thought.
Let me tell you where I really saw
Jesus reflected.
Last week, I was in Los Angeles.
I think I told one of the services.
I don't know if it was a Sunday
morning or not.
Was it a Sunday morning?
Yeah, I told you about going to Los
Angeles.
Sonny Argonzoni was a drug addict.
The first drug addict won through Teen Challenge
here in New York years ago.
Now he's a bishop of over 500 churches
and outreaches to drug addicts in the inner
cities around the world.
I preached to 16,000 converted drug addicts
and alcoholics.
And I saw a choir of between 400
and 500 women, all dressed alike.
And it took a half an hour for
them just to march to the stage, a
huge stage in the Civic Auditorium.
And I saw 400 to 500 converted prostitutes,
prostitutes and drug addicts singing, I am free.
I'm free.
That was the reflection of Christ.
That was the face of Jesus.
Seek my face.
Reflection, who he is.
Lord, speak to our hearts now.
Let that be the one ambition, the one
desire, the only consuming desire.
Lord, show me how to be like you.
Show me.
I'll seek it.
I will examine my heart through your word.
And I will seek your name, who you
are, that I can live it.
That the whole world could see a church
where they can come and feel and know
and experience the presence of Christ.
Where the Holy Ghost can interrupt at any
time and do what he chooses.
Thank you, Lord.
I don't know how to give an invitation
today.
If you're here this morning and your heart
has drifted away from Jesus Christ.
Or you came in here, bird, maybe you
don't really know him.
This is the chance to get to really
know him.
To draw near to him.
To step out and make a declaration.
I'm not where I should be.
I'm not what I want to be.
I am not the true reflection of Jesus
Christ.
There are things in my life that hinder
the reflection of Christ.
If you want that right, made right, you
can step out of your seat.
Go to the auditorium, go to the balcony,
go to either stairs on either side.
And here at the auditorium, just step out
of your seat.
This we call the altar area.
Just in front of the church where you
can come and join us.
We'll pray with you and for you.
And believe that the Lord will meet your
need today.
Don't walk out if there's an unmet spiritual
need.
He can meet that need.
Especially for those that say, oh, Pastor Dave,
there's something missing in my life.
There's something missing.
And in the annex, I think we'll have
room.
We'll invite you two to come.
Just turn around, go to the lobby.
And the astros will show you how to
get into this room.
You can walk down the stairs and come
and meet me right here at the front.
We'll believe the Lord Jesus to do something
of a change in your life.
Supernatural work of his Holy Spirit.
Step out of your seat.
Come only as the Spirit draws you, please.
In light of what I said, I'll go
back to what the Apostle said.
Lord, when are you coming?
When does this all wrap up?
When is the end coming?
And immediately, Jesus doesn't talk immediately about wars
and rumors of wars and all these things.
His main issue was, there's something going to
happen about my name.
There's something going to happen.
Many are going to come saying he's here,
he's there.
He's talking about these incredible images of
who Christ is.
I'm going to ask the Lord right now
to make sure that the image that's in
your heart and mine is not a wrong
image.
If you have an image of Jesus that
says, well, God, like one pastor said publicly,
he knows who I am and he knows
my passions, so he endures it.
In so many words, he puts up with
it.
No, that's not the real Christ.
The real Christ so loves you, he will
not let you persist in sin to destroy
yourself.
The real Christ will bring you to an
altar like this.
The true Jesus will say to your heart,
I can set you free.
And I can give you something that satisfies
you, not just here in church.
Because I think it's what David was thinking.
He had to say, Lord, this has to
be more than just a Sabbath experience.
I want this when I'm out in a
battlefield.
I want this sense of your presence.
And Jesus wants to go with you.
He wants to cleanse you by his spirit.
He wants you to know full fellowship.
You know, you can talk to Jesus.
All day long.
Did you hear me?
You can fellowship with him all day.
I do that, but I also have a
secret closet where I go.
I find time.
Jesus, one of the busiest men on earth,
made the time.
You find the time.
Do it on the subway.
Do it wherever you can.
Bow your head and just talk to Jesus.
But more than most of all, don't depend
on the tapes.
You can get them.
But you better get this open.
Get this in your heart and in your
soul.
Will you pray this prayer with me, please,
Lord Jesus?
I step forward because I'm hungry and I'm
thirsty to know you more.
To get more of you.
To live like you.
Would you cleanse me, Jesus?
Go deep in my heart.
Show me where I need to change.
Help me with my temper.
Help me with how I treat people.
Let the likeness of Jesus be a light
shining out of me.
Cleanse me.
Lay hold of my heart.
I surrender it to you.
I have something in me like David.
That hungers.
That says there's more.
And I want more.
And by faith, I'm going to set my
heart to get it.
Raise your hands and thank him right now.
Just thank him.
Thank you, Jesus, for hearing our prayer.
Thank you for hearing our cry.
This is the conclusion of the message.