The Summer Rut

And it is summer, okay? And you guys are still here, praise God. Summer is one of those seasons where you probably get more depression in pastors than anybody, and here's why, because everybody's on vacation except the pastor, and he's still there, and your attendance is low, your giving's low, all those things happen with pastors. So we have a lot of, it's kind of an ongoing joke, you know, that's our, that's our, you know, everybody else is like up in the summer, and we're like, oh man, church is falling apart, things like that, but what I want to get to today is we're in a message, a short series within our Summer of Salt series that I just felt personally we needed to share on a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I read a book called The Cave by Chris Hodges, and a lot of this is his material, and what spurred him to write this book is that in 2018, there were three pastors that committed suicide, and he felt like it was something, it was a subject that the church needed to talk about.

It wasn't just, you know, psychology and everything else, which is a part of it, there's more to it, there's something spiritual that's happening in people, and it needs to be addressed. Now again, let me just say this, not everything is curable without medicine. So some of you do have some medical issues you need to attend to, you need therapy, get therapy, if you need medication, it's okay, all right, no condemnation, no stigma, we talked about that last week, there should be no stigma, because mental health is not your identity, it's not who you are, it's just something you're going through, it's like wearing glasses, sometimes you have to get a prescription of glasses so that you can see, it doesn't make you a different person because you wear glasses, does it? Neither does it with mental health. And if you have more sad days, or more anxious days than you do good days, then maybe it's something you should address, you know, with your doctor, or with a psychologist, or with a therapist, it probably should be something you pay attention to.

So I want to start by saying that, like, don't dismiss it, don't feel like you've lost faith, or you don't have enough faith because you're dealing with mental illness. But that's our subject, that's what we've been talking about. And last week, we looked at how we get in the cave, and if you haven't heard that one, you need to go back, because there's six reasons why we find ourselves in the cave. And the idea around the cave is in the book of 1 Kings, Elijah went to a cave, you know, he got sad, and he went to a cave, after this great, great, great victory. And what spurred me to even think about this, I'm going to tell you, and this hits home for me, not only do I deal with depression from time to time, throughout my life, one of the greatest men I ever knew committed suicide.

He was a missionary that planted many, many, many churches in East Africa. One of the greatest men I ever knew. Loved the Lord. I stayed at his house in Africa and I'd wake up in the morning. I woke up early in the morning.

He was in there on his knees praying in the spirit and just loved the Lord. I mean, a man of God. Who would have ever thought? And he ended up taking his life one evening while he was on furlough and just really touched my heart. It can happen to anybody.

It can happen to anybody. It can happen to pastors. It can happen to the missionaries. It can happen to church leaders. It can happen to you.

And it even happened to a prophet. And that's where I want to go today because Elijah was validated by heaven. He was the prophet of prophets. He was a major prophet. He got to be a part of the transfiguration with Jesus himself as Moses and Elijah and the gospel were together.

He was actually dismissed from experiencing a physical death. He was taken to heaven in a chariot. I mean, this guy had it going on. And yet, after one of the greatest victories, and you know the story. I talked about it last week.

After a great victory where the gods of Asher and Baal were challenging him or the prophets of Asher and Baal were coming against him, he called God to send fire from heaven and consume the altar. A very powerful thing. A very powerful thing. And 850 prophets were put to the sword that day. The 850 who were worshippers of Baal and Asherah.

A great military victory. It was in the spiritual realm, right? It was a great victory for him. And just after that, it's a three-year drought, and he prays for rain, and rain comes. And just these powerful things that you don't experience, you know, just in the natural, the supernatural happened.

And yet, in his great victory, he faced a deep, dark season in his life. And it's interesting that it usually is after a great victory, or it's before a great victory. Depends on what the devil's strategy is. And we can often feel down, and sometimes we don't really even understand. So, I want to deal with that today.

Last week, we talked about six reasons you're in the cave. And this week, I want to talk about five, how to get out of the cave on five points, okay? Five points. So, we got in the cave last week, right? We're in the cave.

So, how do we get out of that darn cave, okay? That's what we're going to talk about today, all right? So, turn with me to 1 Kings 19, beginning with verse 5. If you have your Bibles, or you have your Bible app, there's a Bible app you can download. Everybody has that available to them.

And also, there's an event section there that you can go to. Do you have the events slide there, Matt, so people can know how to get to that? So, go to the Bible app, and go to select events, and then select Salt Church. You'll see a live Salt Church, and you'll have some notes. And you can save those notes, go back to them anywhere.

We don't do physical notes right now, but we, since the pandemic, we haven't done physical notes, but you guys have been awesome with your electronic notes, and I know most of you use phones anyway, right? Okay? It works better that way. So, 1 Kings 19, follow along with me. Then they laid down, or he laid down.

So this is after the great victory. He laid down under a bush and fell asleep. And all at once an angel touched him and said, get up and eat. I find it interesting. He didn't come up to him and say, you dirty sinner.

Why are you running away from me? Do you not have enough faith? Why are you acting like that? And he didn't say that. He said, get up and eat.

I love that. I'll do that. Okay, let's go eat. Let's go eat something. Let me go to the kitchen real quick here.

And he looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals and a jar of water. And he ate and drank, then he laid down again. He went back to sleep. Then the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you. So he got up and he ate and he drank, and strengthened by the food, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.

Now, Horeb is emblematic of God's presence, okay? In the Old Testament, we see places, whether it's a temple or whether it's a mountain, where the presence of God manifests himself, right? The good news is we have the presence of God available to us any time. Through Jesus Christ, he has opened the veil where we can have the presence of God wherever we are inside of us. But remember when Jesus was with the woman at the well?

He said, there will come a day when the true worshiper will not worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem in the temple, but the true worshiper will worship in spirit and in truth. So we have the presence, the manifest presence of God available to us now. And I find it interesting that before he even gets to that part, he says, why don't you just eat something? And why don't you just lay down? Which leads me to my first point.

First of all, you've got to step into a needed recovery. Maybe you just need some physical recovery. Maybe you need to practice some Sabbath a little bit. Maybe take some time to get your body and get your soul kind of purified a little bit. Because you've been running and you have no gas left.

But you're just burning fumes, right? And that makes us very unhealthy. I heard the story of a man who was waiting for a liver transplant. He had a bad liver. And it was a couple-year process.

He went through all the paperwork. He went through all the rigmarole of putting everything together. And finally, the day came where his liver came in. He went in for the surgery. He went through all the rigmarole of putting everything together.

And they were doing vitals and getting ready for the surgery and then the doctor came in and says we can't do this surgery right now. He's like why not? He says because your body's not healthy enough. And if we put a healthy liver in an unhealthy body, the body will reject it and it won't work. And for many of you can't get anything healthy in you because your body is so depleted.

You're hungry and you're thirsty and you haven't slept for a while and you've been up and you've been anxious and life has been kind of crazy. It's been running 100 miles an hour. And you can't come to church and even receive a good word from God. Praise God, right? Anointed word from God from Pastor Leon because you're so sick, you're not able to receive it.

And sometimes God's just like you need a needed recovery. You need to get healthy. You need to get strong. I mentioned last week better is one hand with tranquility than two hands chasing after the wind and with toil in your heart. And for many of us we're two-handed people.

We've got to get more. We've got to get more money. We've got to have two. We can't just do one doughnut. We've got to do two doughnuts, right?

We've got to get more and we've got to have more and we don't have peace in our heart. Tranquility is the calmness and peacefulness. And it's better to slow down and just accept maybe I don't need as much because peace is more important than that. So for some of us, we just need to settle down. Because if I don't prioritize my life, you need to write this down.

This is in your notes. If I don't prioritize my life, someone else will. Or something else will. And marketing understands that. They want to make themselves a priority in your life.

That's why they push things at you all the time. That's why you're on social media and you can't get away from it because all these things come up. They know how to catch those eyes and catch those minds, you know. And they keep going and going and going with it until you buy, right? They want you to buy something.

They want you to have it. And they want to take your life. That's what commercials want to do. They want to take control of your lives. But you need to take back control of your life.

You need to take control of your life. That's why Psalm 90 says it like this. Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are. Help us to spend them as we should. Sometimes we just need to slow down a little bit.

Yeah, there's seasons where you're going to be going a lot. I get that. Business is big on certain times of the year. Christmas happens and you've got a lot of stuff going on around that time of year. But look, it's summer, guys.

Why don't you just take a little time. Just be with yourself. Be in yourself. Connect with your body. Connect with your soul.

Connect with the Holy Spirit. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Just be yourself. Get out of that false alternative thing that's trying to push, trying to steal your life and even steal your joy and just be in Jesus. Be in Jesus.

Take naps and eat. Take naps. It's okay to take a nap, right, and eat. We think we don't deserve it, right, because we've got to get going. We've got to do that.

You're not... Stop being lazy, just enjoy the Sabbath and Sabbath a little bit. You know, that's the most broken commandment out of the ten is the Sabbath. We don't take Sabbaths, so take a Sabbath. Jesus is our Sabbath rest, by the way, and we need to learn to operate in that Sabbath rest.

1 Kings 19, 9, moving on, there he went into a cave and spent the night, spent the night, and the word of the Lord came to him. Well, how do you get the word of the Lord? I want to hear a word from the Lord, don't you? I want to hear a word from the Lord. Well, how do you do that?

Can I get a word from the Lord? Well, let's look on. He says this, what are you doing here, Elijah? And he replied, I have been very zealous for you, God, okay? He's whining here, I want you to put it in whining voice, okay?

I've been very zealous for you, God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword, and I am the only one left, which is absolutely not true, which you will learn in a few minutes. And now they are trying to kill me. And the Lord didn't try to answer his question. He just said this, he said this, the Lord said, go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.

So God's probably speaking to some of us today, right? You need to go wait at the mountain of the Lord, because he's getting ready to pass by. Well, God, I don't, you know, all this stuff is happening. I don't have time for it. There's, there's, there's, there's disastrous things.

The whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. I don't know what to do anymore. He says, go to the mountain, go to the place where my presence is, and wait for me to pass by. And this is what he tells Elijah. We all need the manifest presence of God.

We all need a touch from God, because a touch from God, in the presence of God, things change. Things are different. That's why we come here and we worship and we call down heaven, because we want heaven to touch us, because we need the presence of God in our lives. And this is what God's like. God's saying to Elijah, he's saying it to us, won't you come and dwell in my presence?

Won't you come to the mountain? Come to the mountain. And then it says this, and this is very interesting, because we've made it too hard. We've made it too difficult. He says this, then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord.

Ooh, that's God, right? But what did it say? But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. He's sitting in the mountain.

He's waiting for God. And after the earthquake came a fire. Where did this fire come from? This has got to be God, right? But the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire came a gentle whisper. God speaks to us in simplicity, in the quietest places, in... And... In the sweet places of our lives. He's a tender voice, and we need to have a tenderness towards God.

We've made it way too complicated. We're waiting for the lightning strikes to come, right? We want the Shekinah glory to glow on our face like Moses, and I'm not saying that doesn't happen from time to time. But in almost every case where God speaks, it's in a whisper. He whispers to us.

He's gentle with us. He's speaking, but we can't hear Him because everything else is taking the place of His voice. So how many voices do you have speaking into your life? You need to go to the mount where God is. You need to get with God and listen.

The gentle whisper. So step two, or number two, step into a God encounter. You need a God encounter in your life. You need a touch from God. Because here's what we do.

We look for the dynamic, but God is in the intimate. We look for the dynamic, the powerful things, but God really just wants us in the intimate. And we've made it too hard. That's why the psalmist says, Be still and know that I am God. Be still and be quiet in the simplicity of worship.

Maybe you're carrying something heavy. Maybe things are out of control in your life. You don't even have the energy to pray. Have you ever been that way? Let me tell you the secret to getting through troubled times.

The secret, here it is, guys. I'm letting the cat out of the bag. It's a secret thing that we know as Christians, and it's worship. It's worship, yes. So when you're going through, look, you're not going to feel like it at times.

There's times I wake up in the morning, and it's before Miranda wakes up, or the kids wake up, and I go into the living room, and I'm like, God, I'm just not feeling good today. God, I'm frustrated. God, I'm depressed. God, I don't feel like worshiping you. I don't even feel like talking to you right now.

But what I do is I go to my playlist on YouTube. I've got my YouTube channel on my TV. I put on, like, stereo sound, and I start playing that music. And I've got different types of music for different things I'm going through. And you know what?

When the music starts, I'm still in that mood. God, I just don't want to. I don't want to. But I do it. And it begins to change me.

It begins to change things. It begins to change the environment. As I speak those words in worship, and I honor him, even when I don't feel like worshiping you, God, I worship you anyway. Even when I feel in pain, Lord, I'm overjoyed because of the great things you have done, Lord. And I trust in your promises.

I trust everything that you've done. And I'm waiting on you, and I'm seeking you, God. And I'm waiting on you, Lord. And he shows up because when we seek him, he seeks us, okay? He meets us when we are seeking.

Because he's looking for worshipers to see. homelander and Holly and Harry, and補充ers are the Colonel. that are not much of a science. At a worshiping. He's moving around looking for those who are worshiping.

Worshippers. He wants to meet us. If you can't find him, worship him and he'll find you. He will find you. He will enter into you.

Enter into your environment. Enter into your world. If you seek him, you will find him. Be still. Know that I am God.

He is seeking worshipers. Seeking worshipers. Psalm 73 says, when I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God. I tried to understand it with my wisdom. I tried to do it with my own abilities.

But when I went into the sanctuary, and some of you are like, well, I'm in the sanctuary today. The sanctuary is anywhere the presence of God is manifested. And you are an instrument for manifestation of the presence of God. So get alone in your home, in church service, wherever it is. We're going to invite the presence of God into our lives because we need the presence of God.

The sanctuary of God. Enter into the sanctuary of God. Set aside that time. Go into his presence. If you're here in worship today, that's what we do.

That's why we start. This is why the church starts out with music and worship. And throughout the ages, it's always been that way. Worship and singing and rejoicing. There's something special about song.

Special about worship where we enter into the presence, invite the presence of God because we're setting the tone for everything else God wants to speak to us. And if our hearts aren't there and our minds aren't connected, then we can't hear from God because our body's sick and our soul's sick. And we need to open up a pathway for God to speak. Verse 13 says, and then Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face. Now this right here represents identity.

He pulled the cloak over his face. He hid his identity. And he went out and he stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah? And he replied again.

Now ruminating, those negative thoughts, right? He does it again. He replied, I have been very zealous for you, Lord God Almighty. I've worked hard for you. I've done all this stuff for you and you are honoring your promises.

The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars and put your prophets to death with the sword and I'm the only one left and they're trying to kill me too. He does it again. He lost his confidence. He lost his confidence. He was this bold prophet that stood before 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah and now here he is hiding his face and complaining.

And it's just like us. We can have the greatest event, the greatest day in our lives and one text message comes in, one comment on social media, one defriend on social media. Oh my, why did they defriend me? Why did they do that? Why did they?

Oh, and it just ruins your day. Why did they make that comment? Why do they act like that? Why did they send me that? You know, we, and we lose.

We lose everything. We lose our identity. We start questioning who we are. Because one person, like Elijah, one person sent him a message. Jezebel sent him a message, I'm going to kill you.

It just ruined his day, it ruined his days, and he sat, and it's a false narrative that we allow the world to speak over us. This false narrative. That's who you are. You're the eyeglasses wearer, right? That's who you are.

No. Your mental health or whatever it is, that's who you are. No, that's not who you are. You're not that. And you need to step into true identity, okay?

That's number three. Step into true identity. Because no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, according to Eleanor Roosevelt. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Because here's the deal.

God paid the price for you. God saw you as something special. God saw you as something unique. I don't care who you are, where you're from, or what you've been through, or what you're facing right now. God made you an art piece.

He made you special. You are a masterpiece, and you need to claim that and know that. Don't allow these narratives of others to enter your life. You don't need those people anyway. If they're talking bad about you, they were talking bad about other people in front of you, and you listen to it.

Listen, if they are talking bad about somebody else in front of you, they'll do it to you too. And you do not need that stuff in your life. You do not need those people in your life, because they pollute your soul. They pollute your identity. They steal every bit of joy out of your life, and you do not have to give them permission.

In the name of Jesus, you do not have to give them permission to take your life. They do not command your life. You can walk with purpose. You can walk with power. And you don't have to feel inferior.

And in this church... I mean, you went to those churches that told you you were going to hell, you know? Of course we're going to hell without Jesus Christ. We're all going to hell without Jesus Christ. But the point is, you don't have to, because of Jesus Christ.

And God forbid if we ever be a church that makes people feel less than. And we're going to give people hope. And we're going to... I'm always going to sway. I don't care what anybody says.

Sway on the side of, you have hope, you have life. I don't care where you've been, what you're doing. If you messed up yesterday, if you walked away from God, you can always come back. You can always come back. You know, you can take a thousand steps away from God.

But you can turn around and be one step right back into His arms. And that's available for you. I'm not going to believe what other people say about me. I'm going to believe what God says about me. And you need to take those in.

You need to hold on to those things that, throughout Scripture, God has said about you. Hold on to those things. There's power in them. Verse 15, it says, And the Lord said, Go back the way you came. Go back the way you came.

Where did he ask him to go back to? To Beersheba. Beersheba, interestingly, is the place of oath. That's what that means, the place of oath. That was where he originally had his calling, where God spoke to him, and where he committed and surrendered to Christ, or God rather.

I'll give you my life no matter what. I'll give you everything. That place, maybe some of you need to go back to that place. You need to go back to Beersheba. Go back to where you began and recommit your life and say, I surrender God.

I give it back. He says, Go back where you came. And he went to the desert of Damascus. And when he got there, God began to give him, show him, there's a lot more going on. And I'm preparing something.

And he says, Then you get there and you're going to anoint Haziel, king over Aram. Also anoint Jehu over that word, king over Israel. Anoint Elisha, son of that word, you know, over that word. And succeeded prophet Jehu will put to death any who escaped Haziel. And Elisha will put to death any who escaped the sword of Jehu.

Yet I reserve seven, listen, I reserve 7,000 in Israel. Prophets. Prophets that have not bowed a knee to Baal. And whose mouths have not kissed them. That false narrative that he was the only one, God just revealed to him, I've got people set up for you, Elijah.

We are going to take this back. I've got something prepared for you. Number four, you need to step into a new assignment. God has an assignment for you. He's got things prepared for you.

Stepping into a new assignment is powerful. In fact, psychology, secular psychology says nothing is more important than a project when you're going through times of trouble. A project, something bigger than yourself, something that takes the focus off of you and puts it on something bigger than yourself. And if you wake up every day and you're just paying bills and you're just getting through the day, you're going to be in the cave. But if you wake up and you know that eternity is there and you've got a purpose and you're living for that purpose and you know that there's something greater, there's a difference that you're making, that will make absolute difference in your life.

In fact, Proverbs says it like this, where there is no vision, what? The people perish. Y'all know that scripture. That's like a popular church scripture. But it's not just a big vision.

It's not, it's a nice, nice scripture when we share vision for our church, reaching a thousand for Jesus and we're just rolling and we're going to reach them, you know, we get, we get hyped up. But that's a... A vision for your life. God's given you a vision, but you can't see that vision because you're sick, right? But God has a vision for your life, and if you live for that vision that God has called you to something greater than what you're currently experiencing, because that isn't it.

What you're experiencing, if it's sadness or anxiety or whatever it is, that's not it, guys. This is just a season. You will get through it. The power of God, you will get through it. The glory of God and the relationship with God, you will get through it.

My dad used to tell me that all the time when I was going through a sad time when I was a kid. You're going to get through it. It's just going to be a season. It's going to be okay. And I want to tell you, it's going to be okay.

But God's got a greater plan. He's got a greater vision for your life. And I want you to look at Viktor Frankl. Last week I shared Viktor Frankl, who was a clinical psychologist that worked with Holocaust victims, and he found out that really it isn't about... We don't live, like Sigmund Freud said, for pleasure in this life.

That's what we live for. He says we live for purpose. Really what he determined is people really get through those times, the post-traumatic stress and all those things that he was dealing with. They didn't even know what it was back then, but they were dealing with those things because they watched people die, their family was murdered or put in concentration camps, and a lot of things happened. And he found that purpose was the thing that got them to help.

That's what really worked. And here's what he said. People have enough to live by, but nothing to live for. And they have the means, but no meaning. We need meaning, and we need purpose in our life.

In fact, Paul was horribly beaten. Thirty-nine lashes, just like Jesus. He was shipwrecked. He was snake-bitten. He was stoned, and I'm not talking about this.

He was stoned like rocks and heavy, like almost to death and drug out of the city. He was almost murdered to the point of almost death. I mean, he was at the brick of death. Yet, he said this, Therefore, do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, though I'm beaten, though I'm hurt, though there's pain in this life, though I go through moments where, God, I don't even hear you or know you're there.

Outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary affliction or troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. The weight of what you're experiencing is nothing compared to the weight you will experience, the good weight you will experience in glory. That there is a glory waiting for you. You need something in life bigger than your problems.

It's not your problem, you just need something bigger than your problems. You need to see something, and this is what he's saying. So we fix our eyes, not on what is seen, because if we keep our eyes on what is seen, then we will be depressed, we will be discouraged, but we keep our eyes on the unseen since what is seen is temporary, it's just temporal, it's just a fleeting moment in our lives and in all eternity, what you're facing now, what you're experiencing now, what you're lusting after or going after now, or what's driving you now, that's pulling you away from and pulling you into that pit, into that cave, whatever it is that you're facing, it's just temporal, this life is temporal, the things of this life are temporal, but what is eternal is forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and the weight of glory and the things you will experience in forever and eternity far outweigh any great experience you may have in this life, and any pain in this life. Because we fix our eyes on what is unseen. We need to keep our eyes on the spiritual reality.

And then he goes on in verse 19, and closing here in a second with point five. So Elijah went from there and found Elisha, son of Shaphat, and he was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. And he himself was driving the twelfth pair. And Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elijah just comes and finds him somebody, an Elisha, and puts his cloak on him.

We all need an Elisha in our lives. Some of you need an Elijah. Elijah. Some of you are Elishas and need Elijah. Some of you are Elijahs and need Elishas.

You need mentors. You need accountability partners. You need friends. We all need friends. We cannot do Christianity alone.

We are not called to do Christianity alone. There is no such thing in Scripture as doing Christianity alone. And so many people, I am just going to do it alone. I am going to figure out God on my own. I am going to get out in the ocean and figure out, you know, that is my horrible mountain.

Yeah, I get that. There are times that we have to be alone and experience God in certain ways, but we cannot end there. We have to be with people. And I guarantee you, in this place, in this church service, in this, or this church gathering, Salt Church, if you went up to somebody and asked them, hey, I'm going through stuff, you're not going to get a, oh my gosh, are you kidding me right now? That's crazy.

No, you're not going to get that. You're going to get that. I am too. I'm going through it too. I feel your pain.

I know. Because we've, we've all been through it. And your... We're going to have a friend, and that's why we think groups are so important, gatherings outside of church are so important, it's great that we connect here, and we love the Lord here, and we experience God, and we need to fill the house, we need to go out to the byways and highways, and bring people into the house of the Lord, so they hear the good news of Jesus, but it doesn't end there, they need to grow, they need to heal, they need to be brought to the fullness of what God has called them to be, that their true identity needs to be discovered, and we need a revival in our hearts and our lives. The reason we're in dark places is because we don't do it together, we don't try to do it together.

Men, you particularly, we don't like to talk to other guys about our problems, and many of us don't even have friends, because we're lone rangers, because men like to do it alone, and that's kind of the popular thing of the culture, but you need people. Elijah had Elisha, Jesus had the disciples. Everybody in the Bible had somebody that they could talk to, that they could go to. I mean, Moses had his father-in-law. He set them straight.

He says, Moses, stop doing all this stuff that you're doing. You need to appoint people. You need to let go of some things, okay? You can't be God. Some of you need people like that.

You can't be God. You can't. For me, it's other pastors. It's people I got to note this morning. I was going to share this earlier.

I have pastors texting me, and it kind of went along with this message. The ark of God remained there in Obed's house for three months, and the Lord blessed the household of Obed and everything he owed. 1 Corinthians 13, 14. In just 90 days, the manifest presence of God transformed everything in Obed's family. His presence is the solution to every problem.

Didn't we just talk about that? And that encouraged me this morning, you know? As I'm getting ready to come out here and speak, and you know, I wear the weight of what Jesus even wore before he was crucified, of carrying the weight, a spiritual weight to be able to share with you, because I know that many of you have strongholds in your life. Many of you have things that have troubled you for a long time, but I'm telling you, in the presence of God, there is freedom. In the presence of God, we can have victory.

In the presence of God, we can have joy again. We can return to the joy that we once had. It's coming again, and you can believe that, and you can receive that in the name of Jesus in the presence of God today. And I believe that we have, we need to have a revival, a revival, a revival in our heart. And you know what I want to do right now?

I'm going to do something different than I've done before. I'm going to put Andrew on the spot, and I'm going to make him sing a whole song. I'm playing Andrew. I'm not going to do that, because he has no voice. But I want...

I want the whole band to come back up again, and I want us to end with God of Revival. Can we do that? And I want us to stand up, and I want us to ask, and I want us to pray for our city, because there's a darkness coming over. We're just going to end service and worship. How about that?

We'll just end, and we're going to walk out of here with the power of God in our hearts and our lives. And I want you to not only pray for the city, but I want to pray, you need to pray for revival. You need to worship with a revival in your heart. A revival in your heart, because some of you, you need revival in your heart, right? Amen?

So why don't you stand with us as they're preparing. And Father, in the name of Jesus, I'm praying for revival. There are the people who are in darkness, people who are in depression, people who are in the cave, Lord, that there is light in the Son of God. There is light in the Son of God. And we're believing for the God of revival.

Because revival doesn't start as just a big event. The Bible starts in our hearts, Lord. And we're ready to receive all that you have for us, Lord. The light of life is here today. The presence of God is available to us today.

God, every stronghold can be broken. Every mountain can be removed in the name of Jesus today. And I'm praying for that. Let's just begin to praise God. Just lift your hands.

Maybe you're not even used to the worship like this. Maybe you grew up in another tradition. Give God an opportunity to speak to you today. I'm not asking you to raise your hands. But if you want to try it for the first time, just surrender to God.

Just begin to praise Him. Just seek Him. You've seen what you can do, O God of wonder. Your power will rise, O God of wonder. In greater measure.

You'll do it again. There's no prison, all you can't break through, no. Mountain you can't move, all things are possible. There's no broken body you can't raise, no. So that you can't save, all things are the darkest night.

You can light it up. A mission. And I'm excited to go about it and pursue it this week. I hope you are too. Thank you, everybody, for being here.

Thank you for worshiping with us. Thank you for being a part of the revival that we know God is doing. We know that while Scripture says that the days are evil, our God is good. Our God is good. And we are living in a time where our God is the King.

And Jesus is the ruler over all the kings of this earth. So we're going to go out this week and believe that. Thank you. Guys, we're just going to throw up on the slide just the ways you can give if you would like to, if you're a regular attender, you know how to do that. We appreciate you continuing to do that.

We don't pass anything around, but if you'd like to, there's how you can do it. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful, wonderful summer, hot, humid, sticky July week. And then we'll see you back here next week. It'll probably be even hotter.

Thank you, Jesus.