3/23/2025 Youth Night

Intro

-Last week I talked about the Lord’s prayer - “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be they name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” . We talked about it in Sunday School a little while ago but there are times that we take the things we learn early on, some of the “simple stuff” as we would consider it, but we take those things, memorize it and then never actually grasp it. We read the Bible, we know it’s true and we believe it, but just because it’s a truth to us on the paper, doesn’t mean that it has become a truth to our spirit. It doesn’t mean that the truth has become a part of us, so while we get it, we don’t get it. He’s giving us a cheat code to know that posture that we are to be in, and we’re going to get into this tonight, but the first thing he tells us to do when we pray is to see Him where he sits. To recognize that the Lord is Holy, and have that be your truth. Because once it becomes your truth, the next part comes naturally and His kingdom comes, because we become the instrument of His will to carry out what he has led and called us to do. I asked Abby to learn a new song and come lead us to help get us in that posture. Lean into Him, and try to find Him where He is sitting in heaven, not asking him to come down to us. Psalm 24. Prayer

Abby

Testimony

-Growing up, I was a church kid, here every time the door was open. I didn’t dislike it, I had friends here, I enjoyed it. But it was all I knew. Now I’m not saying that as a negative, because it gave me a foundation that I desperately needed. But just like Uzza and the Ark, I became comfortable and accustomed to a way of doing things and church became defined in my mind naturally. Now once you define it, it does hold a place in your life and in your heart, but then it’s going to stay in that place until you decide to make it more than the space that it currently takes up.

-As I grew up, sports became a huge part of my life and that became the place that my pride came from. Any popularity at school, notoriety, or attention from people outside of my family, was basically focused on sports, so at that point, it began to overtake that place in my heart and push God to the side. Did I do it on purpose? Absolutely not, I knew better, and I had a fear of God and of my family that I didn’t want to to disappoint them, get in trouble, or go to hell. But this is the place from Genesis 4:6-7, Cain’s offering wasn’t accepted and the place that his heart was in became apparent in his response to his rejection. This is the step before the departure and the sin.

-Fast forward to high school, sports are the same but now I’ve got my first real girlfriend. She played ball and she was firmly entrenched in the group of friends that I wanted to be apart of. So now not only did I get attention from the group I had been a part of before because of ball, but on top of it, I’m now getting attention from a different group of friends that made me feel like I had made it.

-Now 2 years later, and a break up and a broken neck later and I’m now sitting here without the sports that I had defined MYSELF by, or the girl and friends that I had defined MYSELF by. I have what feels like nothing to fall back on, because that piece of me that was ingrained within me, was still there, but had been pushed so far back that while I was there and dedicated, it was a truth in my actions but had ceased being a truth to my heart and the impact that God was able to have in me was either short lived or non existent because He will not overrule my free will and when I choose to put him on the back burner, He loves me enough to respect my decision.

This is where we find the question that framed the next 15-18 years of my life, and the question that led to if not every sin, fall, or failure I had. Who am I and what in the world am I doing?

Has anyone ever been there?

Every preconceived notion of my plans, my strengths, successes, even my personality, I had based it off of the person that I had been and then in a matter of a few months, all of that was gone. As you lose yourself, you then begin to cling to just about anything you can. Now I’ll say, this is where that foundation comes in, because of that foundation, I fully believe I was spared and had enough discernment to keep me out of places that I could have ended up. But needless to say I still had more falls, failures, and sins than I could ever imagine or count. I praise God for deliverance, I praise God for Salvation, and protection, but I praise Him that he opened my eyes that the source of the problem wasn’t all of the things that I did. My testimony could consist of drinking/drugs/partying, all sorts of things, but each one of those things stemmed back from the place that I didn’t recognize sin crouching at the door, and then didn’t care enough to do what it would take to finally recognize the actual problem.

Fast forward to either 2017/2018, I don’t remember if it was a Sunday Morning or Night, but I remember where I was sitting and I remember the moment that changed my life forever. A portion of the youth group had just went to Perry Stone’s Warrior Fest in Cleveland, Tennessee and Pastor Keith had dedicated the service to the youth department telling about what all had happened at the conference. See the group that had went were the same ones I had grown up in and we had similar testimonies of our upbringing and our roots, but the ones I saw up there, they were different than who they were the week before. Jaron, Jakan, Kinsey, and Shelby, came back and they were carrying something that grabbed me in a place that I didn’t know existed. It was tangible, people say that you can see God all over someone, and that was the first time I can say that I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was true.

I was introduced to the Holy Spirit that day and it created a hunger within me that I couldn’t describe. I had come out of some pretty dark places, and was in a better place but I knew that in that moment, it wasn’t enough. I had to have it, I had to carry what they did, I knew that it was something that was apart of my being and it was a part of an identity within me that I hadn’t known. I dedicated myself to Him and began to seek Him in a way I never had. As I did, and that part of my life became my hearts desire, when my hunger for God outweighed my hunger for the things that I had been doing and the way I had been living, my life outside of church began to line up. I began to prosper in finance, at work, in friends, my relationships began to line up in ways that I never could have imagined. Now don’t get me wrong I didn’t get it all right and it’s not like I didn’t have struggles, but those struggles were either the result of my doing, or the ones that weren’t my response were now being met with better fruit than the fruit I had been carrying.

So my question is why? Why did all of that stuff begin to line up? And at what point is my initial question answered? Who am I and what is my purpose?

God and The Holy Spirit -

Genesis 1:1-2 - Out of respect of everyone’s time, we’re hitting this pretty quick but stick with me. In the text, the Hebrew word for Spirit is - Ruah and it’s literal meaning is breath or wind. So in practice this is saying that the Breath of God or the Wind of God is hovering over the waters. Now we’re starting slow, but first things first, before anything or anyone, there was God. He is Alpha and Omega, he is the beginning and the end. He is omnipresent, and omniscient, which just means he knows all, sees all, and is every where all at once. But we’re 2 verses in and we’re noticing that the Spirit is also there. Now just in case anyone needs to hear this or know it, this is the same Spirit that lives within us, this is the same Spirit, that fell on the Upper Room. This is not some ancient Spirit that no longer applies. See scripture tells us that we are given authority from on high, and that whatsoever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, but how do we think that happens? We get excited and claim to the scripture that gives us power and gives us some pride about something, without realizing that we haven’t actually met the one that gives us the power in the first place. How can we have authority when we don’t even know the source of it? Our first step to answering any sort of question about who we are, is that we have got to realize who it is that is on our team.

Genesis 3:6-11 - Once again, scripture that most if not all in here should be familiar with. But in the past month I learned something about this scripture that I had never realized. In verse 8, who all is there? It says they heard the “voice of the Lord” walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Now the next part is the kicker, the hebrew word used for cool - ruah. Now we are back to the Spirit. So in this moment, here comes the Lord walking and the Spirit is with him. Was this normal?

When you pair the two scriptures together, I believe that it was commonplace. Without it being commonplace, it’s just Adam and Eve in the garden with some animals, are they ashamed of their nakedness in front of the Zebras they just named or are they expecting the Creator to come through and at this moment they are aware of how unworthy they are and how Holy he is. This is the moment that the fruits of the flesh were born. This is where shame, fear, doubt, all became to creep in. These are the things that make us question our identity, our worth, and our purpose.

He is Holy

Isaiah 6:1-8,

As Adam and Eve hid, they covered themselves to hide themselves in shame. But in contrast, just as God put his hand over Moses so that he wouldn’t die as he walked by, these Seraphim are covering themselves. These are angelic beings, that have never known sin, never been introduced to the things of the flesh that would cause Isaiah to say that he is a man of unclean lips, but yet they still have to cover themselves. They say Holy, Holy, Holy, because they can’t contain how Holy He is. It can’t be described. The superlative Holy or the most Holy that is going around constantly. And when we say constantly we tend to separate ourselves as if this doesn’t happen until we get to Heaven. Right here, right now, the foundations of the temple are shaking with the Holiness of Jesus being proclaimed because he is the most Holy, he is the most worthy. This is the man that came and died, the one on the cross, the one who is coming again to take us home, why do we get nervous and separate ourselves from the reality that this is so much closer than we think? That we’re not in this separate timeline of things that happen after this on Earth is all over, right now, He’s Holy, right now, He’s worthy. But is that our truth?

Revelation 4:1-11

What’s the difference? Within Revelation we get descriptions of 4 beasts that are Seraphim in Isaiah. In Revelation we get 24 elders and their thrones, but the main thing I want to point out, in each vision, what is the difference about the one having the vision? Isaiah had to have the coal purify his lips, he had to be sanctified before he could even live within that vision. But John, in Chapter 1 falls at his feet as if he were dead, and Jesus says, “fear not”. This is where we begin to realize our worth, not because of who we are, but because of the one who lives within us. It’s because of Jesus that John is purified, it’s because of Jesus and his death and resurrection that John doesn’t have to cover himself in order to not die. Rev 1:9-11, This tells us he was in the Spirit, outside of a charismatic Church setting do we know what that means?

Psalm 91:1-4 - He that dwells in the secret place of the most High will Abide under the shadow of the Almighty. This protection that John has, there is nothing we can do to earn it, Jesus gave us that, but what he doesn’t do is force it on us. When we look back to the beginning of this, we found the Spirit hovering over the waters, we find the Spirit with the Lord in the garden coming to Adam and Eve, we find a pillar of fire and we fire a cloud of smoke leading Moses and the Israelites to the Mountain of the Lord..… If we were trying to describe a person that is doing all of this, we would say this person wants to be with us. Wants to stay with us, wants to be in our presence, and us to be in his presence. But Psalm 91 tells us, that we have that choice. When you use the word “that” in that context, it makes it conditional. So when David writes “He THAT dwells”, is spelling out that when we make that choice, we then will abide, we then will live, within that place John writes about. That doesn’t mean you’ll live in a vision, it means that every promise that comes after this point, becomes yours. You get protection, you get covering, you get the Lord of Hosts on your side, all of his promises, they become yours. But better yet, you get to stand in His presence and not burn up.

Acts 5, Ananias and Saphira sell their land for a specific amount but decide they are going to present a lesser amount to the church as an offering. An act of giving, but because in their hearts they weren’t truthful, they died there in the presence. Ananias didn’t even lie with his mouth, didn’t even speak it, but because he presented himself as something that he wasn’t, not to the Apostles, but the God, he died. It makes us uncomfortable, but we’re talking about the same God, he doesn’t change. So how do we justify that? How do we explain what they were supposed to do when their gift wasn’t the problem, because I fully believe, that even if the offering had been in full, if their heart hadn’t been different there would have been the same result.

Our answer is to Abide, our answer is to dwell in the secret place of the most high. This is the place that fixes all heart issues, this is the place that puts us in line with the will of the Father, that shows us and teaches us his heart and what he would have us to do and who he has made us to be. This is a never ending seeking of Jesus and His Spirit. That in each and every situation, in each and every conversation, that he would be in it. Paul says to pray without ceasing, I love it, but in practice what does it look like? Abiding, when I’m playing with my son, seeing Jesus and all that he has done in him, when I’m working, seeking wisdom and knowledge on how to best handle my conversations and my work to point people to Him, with my wife, seeing the Love of God and how he created this woman with all this personality that loves me the way she does. See the more that I abide in Him, the other things begin to fall off. You begin to see less of those fruit of the flesh that was born in the garden, and begin to see the fruit of the Spirit. Your responses begin to change. You walk in a doctors office and get a bad report, you get in a traffic jam, you have a bad day at work, these things don’t all go away, but your response to them does and how they affect you does. See this is where our authority comes into play, we can’t assume authority over something that impacts us in a way takes us away from the source of our power. That’s the point, abiding comes us attached to our source and as His presence rises, fear shame, doubt, unbelief, all of the fiery darts of satan have to flee because they can’t stand in his presence. At that point we’ve taken away all authority that had been given over to him in our rebellion and sin.

This is our place for deliverance, for healing, for restoration, for recovery, every good thing that comes from the Lord comes from this one place. It comes from his presence and it’s the one thing that he has shown us time and time again that is his main desire. Jesus died for to redeem us of our sins yes, but that’s not the main motivation. If we’ll quit looking at this like if just benefits us then we’ll see the true love of God. He died that we could be with Him in his presence and not burn up. In all of our short comings, he has made a way for us to be with him, but once again, we’ve got a part in it that we have to decide whether or not we’re going to live up to.

This is the place I found my answer to all of my questions, Revelation 22:16-17. My purpose, my reason, is to say Come Lord Jesus. I’m a child of God, a friend of God, a bond servant to God, I am a vessel of his will. And you don’t reach that place unless you abide, because scripture says the Spirit and the flesh are at enmity with one another. That means in order for your desires, and your hearts to begin to line up with what scripture says is going to happen, then we have to do the single hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in your Christian walk. You have to choose, to do the exact opposite of what you feel like doing, you have to do the thing that your flesh is going to hate, and choose to turn away the things that remove you from that presence, that remove you from that shadow of the most high, and say Jesus make me your vessel, that being with you is more important than anything else in the world that could get in the way. Sin is the given, but these are the things that aren’t the sins, for me, is sports and family. I can love them, I can have them, but it has to be Jesus first, come give him this offering, come give Him your everything, all of those things you hold dear, and Abide.