Let me just open in prayer.
Tim prayed and just so much confirmation because
my prayer really has been that we leave
here different than when we arrive because I
don't think you came up here to play
church.
I know I didn't.
And once you surrender and commit and you
make that decision, Lord, change me.
I wanna leave here with a heart of
worship.
He'll honor that prayer if the heart's right.
So let me open in prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would
be here tonight, tomorrow, Friday, of course, Saturday
and Sunday.
But Lord, let me not go beyond what
you want me to say but also change
the direction of this message and tomorrow, if
that is your will.
Lord, we pray that your will be done
in this place, that hearts would be changed,
that people who've come up here broken would
go back whole and restored and rebuilt.
We're here because of you.
We give you all the honor, all the
glory, and all the credit in Jesus' name,
amen.
Boy, there's so many different, I have many,
many things to say.
So I've been praying all week to just
help God, help me with this to get
it back down to where it needs to
be and not going on so many different
rabbit trails.
You look at the direction of our nation,
we need a wake-up call.
We are calling good evil and evil good,
and I'm not scared to talk about those
things.
Also the direction of the church.
But before I get to that, I actually
really love men's conferences.
That's where I started, I believe it was
2002, 2003, I began speaking at a lot
of different conferences, mainly Southern California, some different
states.
And it was men's conferences and men's conferences,
and God was calling me to plant a
church in 2010, and I kept ignoring that
calling.
Because you think of pastors, you wear glasses,
you smile a lot, you're just this nice
guy, and I didn't really have that nice
guy mentality.
I had the John the Baptist fire brewing
in my, like Jeremiah, his word is in
my heart like a burning fire.
It shut up in my bones, and I
just didn't feel this calling to pastor.
I liked speaking, because you could just go
and speak, and then you leave.
Go to the next event, and especially men's
conferences.
You can have a truck cut in half,
and I can wear a flannel shirt and
some interesting socks that I don't get to
wear on Sundays.
And when I preach, I love men's conferences
also because I can shoot you straight.
I shoot people straight on Sunday, obviously, but
as men, I think sometimes we need to
be encouraged, and I love encouragement.
I love to be built up, but there
comes a time when we also need to
be challenged.
A.W. Tozer said, and I would encourage
you to read anything that man has written,
he said that the same word of God
that encourages us, we need to allow it
to convict us.
And what we are seeing, two things.
My challenge, to be honest with you, always
is to tell people what they need to
hear versus what they want to hear.
Because what we want to hear and what
we need to hear are often two different
things.
And I was gonna share some of this
Friday, I guess, with my testimony, but I
was raised in what you would call today
probably a fairly abusive home.
On my father's side, very angry.
A very angry man from the farms of
Oklahoma.
Even though I loved him dearly.
You know what that, if you know somebody
from the farms of Oklahoma or Texas, or
it's a hard atmosphere, and I don't think
I ever heard him say once that he
loved me.
And always trying to measure up.
And boy, you don't cry.
You know, you get hurt, you don't cry.
Get your, you know, it's just tough.
Very tough mentality.
And you take that into a marriage, you
can destroy the marriage.
And as a boy wanting that dad's affirmation,
dad, look at what I did.
Dad, and always trying to, you know, people
-pleasing is, it was, I realized that's what
I was challenged with, and wanting to make
my dad happy.
And obviously going, doing well in baseball, and
then having arm surgery, and wanting to always
please him.
And now you take that into preaching, that
doesn't work.
Because when you preach, you leave here and
you say, God, did I do what you
called me to do, whether anybody liked it
or not.
You're not pleasing men, you're pleasing God.
As a matter of fact, you can't please
men often, and please God at the same
time.
So that's a challenge with preaching.
And the big push right now, probably the
last 10, 20 years, I've never seen anything
like this before.
The big push right now is to not
offend.
We don't wanna offend anybody.
We want to just tell me, tell me
what I want to hear.
And it reminds me of what Paul said,
that the time will come when they will
not endure, put up with sound doctrine.
But they will look for teachers who will
tell them what they want to hear.
So we see this push in the church
and in the media and different things.
Tell us what we wanna hear.
Don't talk about offensive things.
God forbid we talk about the cross, what
happened on the cross.
God forbid we talk about repentance and the
blood of Christ and judgment and all these
things that the Bible is filled with.
We're starting to avoid these things.
Many times I think it's because pastors, and
I can fall in this category very easily,
are not truly humble and broken before the
Lord.
This sermon does not come from pop psychology
or a computer.
It comes from a prayer closet, spending time
with God, allowing God to break my heart.
He first prepares the messenger before I prepare
the message.
And I can fall into that trap very
easily in telling people what they want to
hear, not what we need to hear.
And also with preaching, it's a challenge because
some of you are older, some of you
are younger, some of you are my age,
some of you have kids, some of you
don't have kids, some of you are walking
vibrantly with the Lord, some of you have
no idea what that means.
So it's trying, but fortunately for me, if
you just shoot the word of God straight,
let the Holy Spirit convict and draw and
rebuild and restore and humble and break.
And basically they used to call them, C
.H. Burgeon called them the hound of heaven.
The Holy Spirit letting that spirit, the conviction
loose on people.
And there's different types of preaching.
There is expositional preaching.
Expository where you take a chapter and I
do it often.
It took three years in the book of
Matthew, I'm in Acts now and expository preaching
is essential.
We need it.
But we also have what's called topical is
where somebody pick a preacher or pick a
topic and pull in scripture and talk about
that topic.
But I also think there's a third type
where we need heart surgery.
Where like the Isaiah's and the Jeremiah's calling
God's people back.
It's not popular, it's not politically correct, but
it is powerful.
It takes exposition, but it also takes topic
and it gets right to where men are
at.
And I know there's a lot of people,
especially at men's conferences, you're struggling with things.
You're some of you don't know how you
even made it up here, why you're here
and we have these things coming at us
from pornography to the direction of our nation,
to the disintegration of the family, to all
these things.
We are now a nation calling good evil
and evil good.
You realize that?
Woe be to that nation who calls evil
good and good evil.
And in order to offset when a culture
and a church begins to go over here,
what I call compromise and not offending and
not alarming anybody, what God usually uses is
somebody to come back and call the people
back to that area.
Why can't we talk about purity and holiness
again and God's righteousness?
Yes, I love His grace and His mercy.
If it wasn't for grace, I wouldn't be
here.
It's grace that's brought me here thus far
and it's gonna be grace that leads me
home.
But let's not forget about the other attributes
of God either.
I mean, if you look throughout the Bible,
the biggest attribute, the one that stands out
most, at least in my opinion, is not
love, even though I thank God for it,
it's holiness.
The angels cry, holy, holy, holy.
Paul said, come out from among them, be
separate.
The Old Testament is talking about being holy
and being set apart.
And as I was preparing, I thought of
Isaiah 39.
And again, I make no apologies for what
I'm going to talk about the next few
days because we need a wake up call.
We need to sound the alarm because the
hope is not in the next presidential pick.
The hope is not in Congress.
The hope is not in Senate.
I'm gonna talk about where our hope is
and I'm hoping that we can leave here
different.
Isaiah 30, verse nine, this is a rebellious
people, lying children, children who do not hear
the law of the Lord, who say to
the seers, do not see, and to the
prophets, do not prophesy to us right things.
Speak to us smooth things and prophesy deceits.
Now, some of you know, Isaiah wrote at
a pretty important time in Israel's history, the
southern and northern kingdom were divided into two
and they had the nation now was blessed.
Prosperity is a blessing and a curse.
This nation now is blessed and they are
walking away from God.
And that was the whole role.
If you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel,
Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Zechariah,
Haggai, Malachi, you know what the whole role
of that prophetic element was?
To call the people back.
We missed the majority.
A lot of the Old Testament was to
call the people back.
So he's writing in the setting and the
people, the children of God are saying, don't
tell us right things.
Don't tell us smooth things.
Tell us easy things.
And Isaiah had to go against that cultural
shift.
Because when I leave here tonight, it doesn't
matter how many people say, oh, great job.
It says, God, did I do what you've
called me to do?
Did I allow your word?
Because I believe the word will penetrate our
hearts and break us to such a point.
Because see, it takes broken men to break
men.
If you wanna go home a better husband,
a better father, a better young adult, you've
gotta go home broken and humble.
That's a major problem that we're seeing in
our culture.
1 Corinthians 16, 13.
Ironically, this is the verse I sent Jason
where I was gonna take this conference.
16, 13, be watchful, stand firm in the
faith, act like men, be strong.
From the English Standard Version of the Bible.
Be faithful, be watchful, stand firm, act like
men, be strong.
But I couldn't get this other concept off
my mind.
Morning, noon, and night, it felt like God
was challenging me and wanting to change the
entire direction of the sermon series.
And I don't like that.
I've already got everything lined up.
I got it dialed in.
I've got the points.
I've got some poems.
I've got all this wonderful thing.
I did my hermeneutics and my homiletics.
I've studied some pneumatology, eschatology, all these wonderful
things.
The sermon's ready and then God says no.
And how I usually sense that is there's
a burning passion in my heart that lines
up with the word of God.
And it's something that I have to change.
There's this unrest.
And before I get to the main point,
I just want all of us to remember
one thing.
As men, this is interesting.
If you look at the culture, you look
at the media, they've been portraying men as
idiots for the last 20, 30 years.
Just this idiot, just they let the kids
rule, let the wife push you around, and
let this, oh, dumb man who doesn't know
anything.
And that's what we've promoted.
And as we watch, that's what we become.
But the Bible says something quite differently.
The man is called to lead biblically, to
be the leader in the home, to lead.
You initiate prayer, you initiate worship, you initiate
the heart of God in your home.
But what happens is this.
The enemy sidetracks as he goes after the
leader every time.
And recent statistics, 7% of saved children
will help lead their parents to faith in
Christ.
23% of saved wives or mothers will
help lead their husband and children to Christ,
to Jesus Christ.
But 94% of saved husbands and fathers
will help lead their entire family to faith
in Jesus Christ.
94%, why?
Because God has called us to lead.
And that's why you don't want to.
That's why I don't want, it's a challenge.
I'll be honest with you, it's a challenge
to lead.
It's a challenge to, because our flesh, the
war against the spirit and the flesh is
real.
The flesh wants to be lazy.
But you've gotta fight against that and get
back and leave this mountain different and say,
I'm gonna lead my house.
I don't know what it looks like, but
with God's help, I'm gonna lead my house
spiritually.
And that's where the shelter and the safety
and the protection comes in.
If we do not teach our children to
follow Christ, the world will teach them not
to.
And in a group this size, there's always
a lot of single guys.
And let me remind you, I'm gonna give
you some great advice that I wish I
had many, many years ago.
You do not say I do and then
become a man of character.
If you have a problem with pornography, which
I hear all the time, oh yeah, but
it won't be a problem once I'm married.
Oh yes, it does.
You just turned a little fire into a
blazing inferno.
If you have a problem with anger now,
you will be a volcano ready to erupt
in marriage.
See, you don't say I do and become
a man of character.
God calls young men to become who they're
seeking, to become that godly person.
Many young people are not concerned with this.
And my best advice is follow Christ and
see who keeps up.
If you're looking for somebody, I don't know
who to date, I don't know who to,
follow Christ and see who keeps up.
Make him the primary focus of everything else.
And this is interesting, what I've noticed at
men's conferences, especially with worship, we're not worshipers.
We're not worshipers, are we, most of the
time?
I used to poke fun at worship.
We said, well, I'm just not emotional.
Well, is not anger an emotion?
You express that very well.
The problem is God has got to humble
and break us to such a point that
a true worshiper worships out of their brokenness
and out of their humility.
You will not see a prideful man truly
worshiping God.
Let me just quote a few things.
The average, this is the average in different
statistics.
These are actually older, old statistics.
Now, obviously, these have changed.
About fatherless homes, 63% of youth suicides
are from fatherless homes.
90% of all homeless and runaway children
are from fatherless homes.
That's 32 times the average.
85% of all children who show behavioral
disorders come from fatherless homes.
80% of rapists with anger problems come
from fatherless homes.
71% of all high school dropouts come
from fatherless homes.
Now, here's how most guys get out of
this.
Well, I'm not an absentee father.
And let me remind every man in this
room that you do not have to leave
your home to be absent.
You can be absent physically, spiritually, emotionally.
You can be checked out mentally and not
leading your family.
Now, this I still wanna research because I
don't believe it, but a lot of good
reputable places that take polls have said something
along these lines.
And I don't know whether to laugh or
cry, but the average American father spends only
seven and a half uninterrupted minutes per week
with the children, but 32 hours a week
watching television.
Well, that's not true.
Who knows the exact number, but that is
very true.
Not watching the NFL and then go, uh
-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
That's not spending quality time.
Proverbs 27, eight, like a bird that wanders
from its nest is a man who wanders
from his place.
As a bird wanders from that nest, so
is a man that wanders from his place.
What is my place in, Shane?
Wandering is sitting under that covering, that protection
of God's will and being in the center
of God's will and being the man that
he's called us to be.
And I believe that a funeral actually needs
to take place this weekend.
A funeral needs to take place.
We need to die to self.
There's another not popular term you're not gonna
hear.
Die to self.
The Bible is crystal clear that we must
die to self.
Jesus said, he who seeks to save his
life will lose it, but he who wants
to lose his life for my sake will
save it.
It's all about dying to self.
And this is why people don't like what
I'm saying.
And I have to bring this up here
as well.
Sundays, if you don't like what I'm saying,
it's probably because you need to hear what
I'm saying.
God doesn't call preachers to be popular.
He calls them to be confrontational.
Guys, I just, I gotta shoot you straight.
In these dire times that we're living in,
in these dire times that we're living in,
we're one court case away from this.
We are living in some very dire times.
We're aborting children.
We're all these things are terrible.
And Joel Osteen type sermons aren't gonna cut
it.
In these dire times, I'm not putting down,
I'm just saying, there comes a time when
men of God have got to stand up
and wake up and say, not on my
watch.
It's suicide now, it's an epidemic.
10 year old girls to 14 are killing
themselves, overdosing, hanging themselves.
In the last two and a half years,
I've prayed for three young adults in the
back of my church after worship.
They're going through more hell on earth than
you can even imagine because their fathers are
not leading them.
Two are gone to a heroin overdose and
another one OD'd on pills.
I had to meet the coroner at a
hotel and hold her little three year old
daughter out in the grass while they took
her away.
So we, but Shane, can we be positive?
Yes, there's a time for that.
There's a time for joy, but there's also
a time to cry.
There's a time to be wonderfully encouraged and
there's a time to be challenged and that
time is now.
The church is drifting up course.
We need that voice in the wilderness that
so upsets you that you leave here and
you say, I don't like what he said,
but God, I need to know if that's
true.
Here's the solution.
There is hope.
Don't worry, I'm not gonna leave you hanging.
There is hope.
Act like men.
How?
Second Chronicles 7.14. If my people who
are called by my name will humble themselves
and pray and seek my face and oh,
he's gonna say it.
Here he goes.
And turn from their wicked ways.
We can say that in church.
You know they used to preach that in
church?
They used to preach that in church.
I remember it was, I don't know, I
was reading, I think it was Alex de
Tocqueville.
I never can pronounce his name, but I
read something and stood out 10 years ago.
He said, he wrote, I think in the
1800s, he went to America to understand why
in the world was she so successful.
He said, I went and searched her boundless
prairies and fertile fields and it was not
there.
I went and looked in her vast world
commerce and her gold mines, it was not
there.
I searched everywhere.
Why was she so great?
And here's what he came back to say.
It was not until I went to the
churches of America and I heard her pulpits
aflame with righteousness that I understood the secret
to her success.
She is great because she is good and
if she ever ceases to be good, she
will cease to be great.
I mean, that's a whole nother rabbit trail.
You understand that America's not evil, right?
It's just a condition and it's a reflection
of the character of her people.
I can take you back to the conception
of the pilgrims of Puritan 1620, the Mayflower
Compact, to the advancement of God in the
Christian faith.
I can take you to the Supreme Court.
Actually, John Jay, the first Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court said to him who's the
author and giver of all good, I render
sincere and humble thanks and especially, and especially
through the grace of his son, Jesus Christ.
John Jay?
Separation of church and state, you know, they
didn't have that back then.
They proclaimed God boldly and confidently.
The pulpits were aflame with righteousness.
They didn't care who they offended as long
as they didn't offend God.
Have we ever stopped to consider that we
may be offending God in our politically correct
culture that doesn't want to upset anybody?
The gospel is offensive.
Sinners on their way to hell without Christ,
that might offend some people, but that's where
the grace comes in.
But for the grace of God, there go
I.
See, it's an interesting concept.
We wanna focus just on the good things.
That's all they wanna hear, but it's the
bad things that convict and challenge.
I've never seen a man turn from his
sin without being convicted and challenged.
If my people who are called by my
name will humble themselves and pray and seek
my face and turn from their wicked ways,
I will hear from heaven and forgive their
sins and heal their land.
Now, the context is interesting.
God is talking to Solomon.
Everything's fine right now, but God says, I
know when the people drift from me and
when I bring pestilence and when I bring
famine, when I bring drought, if my people
who are called by my name will humble
themselves.
And I can't get any farther than looking
at this first part.
If my people, do you catch that?
Not Washington, not Hollywood.
They're not coming.
If I preach this message on Hollywood Boulevard,
I'll be dead by tomorrow.
If my people, if my fathers, I spoke
at a pastor's conference this week in Southern
California, and actually could say, if my pastors,
see if I could just get pastors and
preachers and men to fall on their face
before God.
You see, I remember when the church wasn't
in a hurry.
I remember when we would weep after sermons
and praise and worship would break our hearts.
We would turn the clock around.
Who cares what time it is?
I gotta seek God and I have to
find him.
Now we wanna get our services down to
an hour, a quick song, a quick announcement.
Let's get out of here.
That's not the church.
That's buying into the cultural mindset.
Because when God's word is boldly proclaimed, lives
are changed, marriages are restored, prodigals come home.
I don't know about you, but I look
at the culture and I look at even
in my church, we've got divorce, we've got
adultery, we've got pornography, we've got same-sex
attraction.
We've got all these things that are coming
at people and they need hope, they need
answers.
If my people, you, not by might nor
by power, but by my Spirit, saith the
Lord.
Interesting thing, I spoke on this last week.
It's not by my might nor my power,
but by God's power.
So as I submit and surrender and fill
with the Holy Spirit of God, that's where
change takes place.
If my people, let's look at these real
quick.
If my people who are called by my
name will, what's the first one?
Nobody's gonna wanna talk about.
Yeah, let's just roll right over that one.
But that's the foundation, that's so important.
You know what humility is?
I actually wrote this down two hours ago.
You don't always have to be right.
By the way, I'm preaching to myself right
here.
Are you unteachable?
Are you proud?
Are you eager to dispute?
Are you argumentative?
Do you always have to get the last
word in?
Man, pride, rebellion is as a sin of
witchcraft.
Pride is a sin we don't talk about
in the church.
And God says, I won't even hear your
prayers if you're prideful and arrogant, you're holding
onto the sin.
It's not my ear heavy that I cannot
hear, my hand short that I cannot save,
but your iniquities, your iniquities have separated you
from God.
See, that's the thing again, we don't, Shane,
you're talking about sin.
Yeah, so did Jesus.
So did Jesus.
He said, go out and preach repentance.
John the Baptist comes on the scene.
He said, you brood of vipers, repent.
Peter, his very first sermon, what was it
about?
Really nice and cozy and loving?
No, he said, you put Christ on the
cross, repent.
Repent, I can show you repent.
And back in Noah, I can show you
repent throughout Abraham's time.
I can show you repentance throughout the prophetic
books of the Bible, the Old Testament, the
New Testament, repentance all over the scripture, calling
people back to God, but it takes humility
and brokenness before God.
You see, I'm passionate about this subject because
I used to, I would come in and
laugh at this group, worshiping like a bunch
of sissies.
Back when I was taking steroids, bench pressing
400 pounds, beating people up, drinking beer, that's
a real man, right?
Is that a real man?
That's a definition of a man.
I was dying inside.
I destroyed my marriage.
I destroyed so many different things.
Why?
Because of pride.
You see, pride is the soil in which
all other sin grows.
With the Pure Desire Seminar, they'll tell you.
They'll tell you that at the heart of
pornography is pride.
At the heart of sin is pride and
arrogance.
And I wanna break free, but, and but,
but, but, and pride is destructive.
Andrew Murray said, I'd encourage you to read
his materials as well.
Most of these guys are dead, unpassed, many
years ago.
But he said, pride must die in you
or nothing of heaven can live in you.
James 4, 6, God opposes the proud, but
he gives grace to the humble.
He opposes.
Do you want God opposing you?
Do you ever feel that he might be
opposing you?
God's against me, he's opposing me, right?
He poses the proud and gives grace to
the humble.
On this issue of humility, I remember a
story.
I think it was the 1970s, Muhammad Ali,
you remember him?
Some of you know him, some of you
don't.
Hopefully most of you do.
But he was on an airplane and he
wasn't gonna put a seatbelt on.
What's the point, right?
But the stewardess came by and she said,
Mr. Ali, put your seatbelt on.
He said, Superman don't need no seatbelt.
And she looked at him and said, Superman
don't need no airplane.
But isn't that pride?
We're blinded by pride.
Guys, please hear my heart, I'm not angry.
I'm passionate.
I'm wanting, I've seen men break before God.
I've seen marriages transformed.
I've seen lives changed.
But it's not until this era of pride
is dealt with.
God has to break a man before he
can use him.
You ever enjoy olive oil?
Do you know what happens to the olives?
Where do they get perfume and fragrance from
flowers?
They crush them.
And God wants to crush our hearts, break
our hearts because a broken and contrite spirit,
I will not cast away, thus sayeth the
Lord.
It's brokenness and humility because then when you're
broken and humble, you enjoy worship.
You love worship.
You love because God's breaking your heart and
rebuilding and restoring.
It's all about humility.
1 Peter 5, 6, humble.
Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.
Interesting scripture.
He says, humble yourself or God will humble
you.
And I don't know about you, but I
don't want a spanking from God.
I don't want him to humble me.
The Bible says, humble yourself under the mighty
hand of God and due time, he will
exalt you.
He'll put you up.
He'll give you that respect in the home
with your kids and with your wife.
He'll give you that respect on the job.
He'll do it, but you must humble yourself
under the mighty hand of God.
Humility is not thinking nothing about yourself.
It's thinking lowly about yourself and not being
a doormat, but saying, God, I'm broken before.
I need you.
It's very hard for a man to say,
I need you, or I'm sorry, or I'm
wrong, isn't it?
Because of that pride element.
What will humility cost me?
It will cost you absolutely everything.
Everything.
When I say, Shane, you're disrupting my entire
evening, I plan on disrupting your entire weekend
in a good way, in a very good
way.
Humble yourself before God does.
There's a long poem I wasn't gonna read
just the end of it.
Dad, the lessons you give me may be
very wise and true, but I'd rather get
my lesson by observing what you do, for
I may misunderstand you and the high advice
you give, and there's no misunderstanding, Dad, how
you act and how you live.
See, it's not what we say.
I got your high advice.
I understand that.
So this portion of humility is so important
because I don't know where you're at in
your walk.
I don't know if you know God, but
the first step to knowing God is humbling
yourself.
The first step to knowing God is saying,
God, you're God and I'm not.
I humble myself before you.
I need you.
I need more of you.
And you humble yourself.
If my people seek, and if now we're
gonna get, and I'll let you go in
just a minute here, just a few thoughts
on this.
If my people humble themselves and pray, pray.
Seek's coming up.
If my people humble myself, if then people
humble themselves and pray and seek my face.
And this issue of prayer, I'll talk about
a little bit tomorrow, but this should not
be the most boring thing on the planet.
This should actually be one of the most
powerful things in your arsenal.
I'm gonna leave you with this thought.
I came from the fitness industry.
I was a district manager at 24-Hour
Fitness.
It was family fitness centers.
Many years in the 1990s, they got bought
out.
24-Hour Nautilus became 24-Hour Fitness.
Now they're all over, as you know.
I worked my way up.
I was a district manager making really, really
good money.
And unfortunately, alcohol, anger and addiction took its
toll.
My wife left, affair, all these different things.
I was totally released biblically, but God used
that to break me.
And I didn't realize how prideful I was
until he broke me.
Then his word came alive.
Then prayer was my, I needed prayer like
I needed oxygen.
Prayer is the most powerful thing you possess.
God is saying, I want to talk with
you.
I want to answer your prayer.
It doesn't matter if it's two o'clock
in the morning or up here.
We have a God, an all-sufficient Savior,
an ever-present help who hears our prayers.
But back to 24-Hour Fitness.
Most of you know that hunger, right, is
a sign of health.
If you're hungry, you're healthy often.
If you're not hungry, many people, we have
a ministry where we go and visit a
lot of hospital homes, and these people are
terminal, and they're not hungry.
They have to be fed intravenously and with
IVs.
But hunger is a sign of health.
So if you're not hungry for prayer, how
hungry for God are you?
If you're not hungry for the things of
God, you're dying spiritually.
Take from the physical, put it into the
spiritual.
If we're not hungry for the things of
God, then we are dying spiritually.
And it's gonna take resuscitation, spiritual resuscitation to
humble ourselves, to pray and seek His face.
Robert Murray McShaney, died at age 29, very
famous preacher in Scotland, said a man is
what he is on his knees before God
and nothing more.
Who we are really is who we are
on our knees before God and nothing more.
Think about it.
Who I am all week is who I
am when I come to this pulpit.
I'm not gonna say a quick little prayer
and hope God blesses the message.
If I'm filling my mind with tons of
garbage all week and I expect to come
up here and speak boldly through God's word,
I will be gravely mistaken.
Because what we put in is what we
get out.
Jesus said, my house will be called a
house of preaching, a house of worship, a
house of entertainment, a house of benevolence, a
house of all these things.
They're all good, we need them.
But He said, my house shall be called
a house of prayer.
And guys, maybe it's just my perspective.
I'm gonna close on this.
I know we're short on time.
But the hardest part, the hardest part about
pastoring, I'm gonna share with you, is not
sermon preparation.
It's not a counseling appointments.
The hardest part about pastoring that I have
to deal with every single week is watching
people die spiritually with living water just steps
away.
It's the hardest part.
We've got a half dozen marriages going to
divorce court.
We've got kids hooked on everything from oxytocrystal
to heroin.
We've got kids 10 years old, don't know
if they should be a boy or a
girl because there's no leadership in the home.
And I have the answer.
I have the answer to all of that.
God has the answer.
So I see people dying spiritually with just
living water steps away.
Would you take this water?
Would you humble yourself?
If I have to counsel another husband in
the counseling session who says, yeah, I know
I'm addicted to porn, but, but, but, no,
no, no, sir.
You need to humble yourself before God.
Stop making the excuses.
A prideful man makes excuses.
So that's the hardest part.
I see people dying spiritually with living water
just steps away.
And it makes you wonder.
Jesus said, if you believe on me, as
the scriptures say, out of your belly, out
of your innermost being will flow rivers of
living water.
Jeremiah said, his word is in my heart
like a burning fire.
Shut up in my bones.
John the Baptist said, he will baptize you
with spirit and with fire.
So begs the question, where's this fire?
Where's this passion?
Where's these rivers of living water flowing out?
They should be flowing out of the men
that flows into our family, that flows into
the government.
That's how we change a nation.
You gotta stop blaming everything from God and
the government.
Look in the mirror, look within.
That's living water just steps away.
Shane, you're being too tough.
Really, let me just share with you just
some of the emails I get.
With permission from the wife, of course.
I'm at a loss.
My Christian husband is verbally and physically abusive.
Ironically, he thinks that I'm the problem.
He sees no need to change.
He'll quote scripture about submission while yelling and
cursing.
His anger is also destroying our children.
A home once filled with laughter and joy
is now filled with fear and depression.
We walk on eggshells and cherish the times
when he is gone.
He also loves his porn more than his
family.
I can no longer bear it.
I've never thought of divorce, but now it's
a daily struggle.
What do you do?
Quote Romans 8.28. Oh, all things work
together.
Just get over it.
This is sad, folks.
The spiritual condition of your home depends on
your humility and your prayer life.
I mean, if you were game, I was
game, I would step here another hour, beseeching
and begging and guys, turn, turn to the
one true and living God.
Seek him with all of your heart, with
all of your strength.
And if you humble yourselves and pray, do
you know what seeking means?
That bakash, in the Hebrew language, it's a
very interesting word.
It's a pleading, it's a begging, it's picturing
losing your child or your grandchild in Disneyland.
They're gone.
What would you do?
I've lost mine at the fair before for
a split second.
And your world has changed.
You don't care if you're hungry.
You don't care if you have to go
to the restroom.
You don't care what time it is.
What do you care about?
All you care about is I've got to
find that child.
I've got to find that child that is
lost.
That's what the root word means in the
Hebrew language.
Bakash, to seek God like that.
When was he the priority, not the afterthought?
When was it an all-consuming passion?
Not perfectly.
I wouldn't be up here.
But there's something wrong when our heartbeat isn't
beating for God.
Lord, I want to restore my marriage.
I want to restore my family.
I don't know you like I want to
know you.
But God, would you change my heart?
Would you break me this weekend?
I'm tired of being a prideful, arrogant man.
That's the first step, if they humble themselves
and pray.
And seek my face and turn.
I will hear and I will forgive.
And we have to, like I love what
Tim said, it's this, two things.
God is not a doting grandfather and he's
not a cosmic ball of love.
It's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every knee will bow and every tongue will
confess that he is Lord.
A.W. Tozer said, I love him because
he's my savior.
But I fear him because he's my judge.
And we need to start giving people both
sides of the coin because you don't sell
Christianity like a sales pitch.
You proclaim the truth and let the chips
fall where they may.
Through the power of the spirit, God working
in the hearts to radically make a difference.
So I'm going to leave on that note.
And I think Tim's going to come back.
We're just going to do a song to
close out.
And what I often do at conferences or
on Sundays, I'm going to be actually available
over by the truck here.
And I'm going to ask guys, if you
want to take a step of humility, you
want to pray.
I need to be a better leader.
I need to be a better father.
I don't know God, anything.
I want to pray with you.
I want to agree with you.
I used to hide in that back row.
I would come in right when worship was
over and hear a little bit of message
and get out of here.
I didn't want anything to do with God.
And it wasn't God until he humbled me
and he broke me that I have to
worship him.
I have to.
So with this type of environment, I want
to just ask if there's people here who
want to humble themselves, get back on track.
It's a loving father.
It's God saying, come home.
Come home.
You have to come home.
I need to hit you with the hard
stuff so you understand the severity of what
we're doing.
What I said earlier, do you realize that
it's an epidemic now, the highest suicide rate
is girls, 10 to 14.
God help us, what's wrong?
Where's our heart of compassion?
We've lost that.
We've become an arrogant nation.
But these things, this should not amuse us
or be an out.
These are major priorities that are happening in
our lives and in the lives of our
children and family.
So let me close in prayer.
God, as we go forward this weekend, Lord,
start with me.
Just break me, humble me even more.
God, we need your presence.
We need your power.
We need humility in our lives.
Lord, I pray for marriages who are on
the brink of divorce that you would restore
and rebuild, that men would leave here, they
would be fathers to their children.
They would turn off Facebook, get off of
the media, kill their porn habit, get rid
of their ungodly friends and start to focus
on you and seek you.
Lord, with all their heart, with all their
strength.
And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.