-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Welcome to the program.
00:42 Welcome to the cafe. It’s a wonderful day here at the cafe. I thank you so much for taking time to join me today, for tuning in.
00:49 I promise you’ll be blessed by this episode if you’ve been listening at all this week and this time here and going through a series of messages on seeking God. Amen. It’s time to seek the Lord.
01:01 Our text verse is Hosea 10:12. Sow to yourselves in righteousness. Reap in mercy.
01:08 Break up your fallow ground. For it is time to seek the Lord. Till he come and reign righteousness upon you.
01:15 And so we spent time this week, and I’ll just recap briefly here, discussing how to seek God because it is for our good, our good purposes to seek Him. We must sow righteousness. We must sow seeds of righteousness in our lives.
01:34 How do we do that if we’re not righteous in and of ourselves? We do it by living out the commands of Jesus Christ. By living out how God has called us to live. By seeking Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds.
01:48 By understanding our place in this world as servants, as bond servants to Him. And we will reap in mercy. We will have a great harvest.
01:57 We’ll reap in mercy. Notice these are action words. Sowing.
02:03 You’re actually out there planting seeds. Amen. Reaping.
02:06 You’re actually reaping. Break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord. That fallow ground is ground that’s been left, left unplanted.
02:15 It’s ready. It’s rested. It’s ready.
02:19 It’s ready for regeneration. Amen. We’re born again.
02:24 We are regenerated in Christ. We are no longer of the old Adam. Amen.
02:28 We have a new nature. All things become new. Amen.
02:31 And so we are commanded by God through Hosea in chapter 10 verse 12 to seek the Lord. And I’ll tell you this. God wouldn’t put it in His Word if people were already seeking Him.
02:49 If they naturally had a inclination to seek Him. If carnally it was acceptable to seek Him. No.
02:57 He puts this in His Word for us here today because we don’t naturally want to seek God. Even Paul, the great Apostle Paul wrote that the things that he wanted to do he did not and things he didn’t want to do he ended up doing. The flesh and the Spirit are at odds.
03:13 The natural man, the Bible says, is enmity to God or at warfare with God. We have a sin nature that is deep within us. Our flesh, even when we’re born again, still desires the things of this world.
03:28 And so to seek God is not natural. To seek God, again, it’s very similar in the sense that like most people, and I know there’s some people that are just gifted by God athletically and they love to move and they’re just so strong and so on, but most people don’t love exercising, right? It’s hard. It’s unnatural to their body.
03:47 It’s kind of a shock to their body and it’s difficult and they’ll do it once and then the next day comes and they’ll think of a reason not to do it. And that, honestly, that physical fitness that our body does not desire to engage in is so good for us, isn’t it? And the Bible tells us, you know, that will just fade away in a minute, but spiritual fitness, the things of the Lord, will never fade. And so how much better is spiritual fitness for us, Amen. Spiritual exercise.
04:13 And so we see the comparison. Again, if you’ve ever spent a season in physical shape, you know, at the gym or playing a sport or something, you know, you just sleep better, you eat better, your mood is better, everything is, you know, your body’s just doing so much better. Well, spiritually, when we get fit for God, when we seek God, things improve in our lives.
04:33 We have a closeness with God that we didn’t have before. We have discernment that we didn’t have before. We have peace in our hearts that we didn’t have before, despite what’s happening in our surroundings.
04:42 So how can we get close to God in this world, when we are drawn away from him by all these sinful things? I’ve given many examples throughout the week. And I’ll start here with this one. Prayer breakfast, prayer breakfast, why not organize a prayer breakfast? Everybody loves breakfast for the most part.
05:02 We’ve got a 16 year old who doesn’t like breakfast, but everybody else pretty much likes breakfast. Okay. Organize a prayer breakfast.
05:10 What happened to that? You know, I talked to my old pastor back before Lord had called me to plant this church. And, you know, I would talk to him about the noontime prayers, and how there used to be many years ago, afternoon prayers, noontime prayers, every day of the week. In many towns, there was noontime prayers.
05:33 And of course, there was prayer breakfast, where have these things gone? They’ve gone the way of the world. Amen. Why not kick one kick, kickstart one again? You know, who knows what will come of that? Amen.
05:41 Maybe someone will get invited to it. Maybe someone in that setting at the prayer breakfast would share something that they wouldn’t share in the setting at a church house that could lead to God working out some issues or even salvation. And by you organizing a prayer breakfast, guess what, you’ll be praying more as you get ready to do it.
05:58 And you’ll be studying the word as you prepare to help officiate it. So prayer breakfast. And again, you can do it by group.
06:06 It could be a prayer breakfast for the women, it could be a prayer breakfast for teens, could be prayer breakfast for seniors, could be prayer breakfast for the steel factory workers, could be prayer breakfast for dot dot dot, right. But that’s always a good one. Amen.
06:19 Always a good one prayer breakfast to grow closer to God to seek God. How about committing to chewing the cud to thinking about the weightier things in Scripture? You know, recently, I did a message on don’t cast your pearls before swine. And that message is, I believe it deals with this idea of the weightier things in Scripture, both in the fact that it is a weightier concept in Scripture, but also in the sense that it says, be careful you share those with.
06:46 Well, you know what the inner voice spending time with yourself, spending quiet time with God, amen. And in sharing those scriptures with the Lord and spending time and praying over their scriptures, chewing the cud. Amen.
07:01 We live near a bunch of cattle farms all over the place. My daily drive, I pass by horses and cows and bulls and steer all that. And a lot of times, what are they doing? They’re out there in the field, chewing the cud just chewing away just either sitting there, it was a real hot the other day, we were driving back from church.
07:19 And we were on a rural country road and the the cows were in the water, they were in the lake, they just got up about, I don’t know, I guess they don’t really have a waist, but they got up neck deep in the in the lake, and they were just in the water, chewing a cud. Thinking about the things of God is very similar to that, right? Spending time seeking him. Because if you start thinking about it, you know, really thinking about it like a believer, you know, and not like a believer, but as a believer saying, Okay, God, what does this mean? What exactly does this mean? Because we know that God’s ways are above our ways.
07:56 And we look at God often as as someone that’s predictable. But he is God. Amen.
08:03 He’s very unpredictable in a lot of ways. His ways are incredible. You read the Bible, you look at Scripture.
08:09 God loves children. And here comes Elijah in Scripture, and they’re mocking him to two bears come out and kill what 40 kids, rip them to shreds. That’s a way to your piece of Scripture.
08:19 You kind of want to go to God and say, What’s going on there, God? You know, Job was perfect before God and Job was rebuked by God as he was speaking to God about why these things happen to him. You know, a way to your thing of Scripture. Amen.
08:34 Christ was beloved of God and it pleased the Lord that he was bruised for our iniquities, that he died the most brittle death of all mankind. He was these beliefs, God’s only beloved, it pleased God for him to go through that. These are way to your things in Scripture.
08:44 Why not commit to spending some time? I do this. I’ve done this recently, especially on Fridays. And I know that my schedule is more flexible than most.
08:55 I work a couple of jobs, but they’re flexible. I kind of can do them, you know, as the Lord allows. And so, in addition to full-time preaching radio ministry, I’d like to say, I also do some jobs.
09:09 So my schedule is flexible, more flexible than most, but I see everybody has some free time here or there, on break, you know, after dinner, before lunch, whatever it is. On Fridays, I try to give myself one thing to study up on, to chew the cud, to think about and to study up on. And it’s been a blessing, Amen.
09:31 And some messages have come out of that and some clarity has come out of that and some greater understanding has come out of that. And what that is, is seeking God, chewing the cud. So prayer breakfast is one idea.
09:38 Commit to chewing the cud. These are practical ways to seek God. Another practical way to seek God is to memorize scripture.
09:47 It is so important, you know, when I first heard about the importance of memorizing scripture, I understood, like, broadly that it made sense, but as someone that’s not good with names, I don’t even, I mean, for the longest time, I didn’t even remember my own phone number because I had a work phone and a personal phone. And the personal phone, I didn’t even remember the number. It was very embarrassing.
10:08 Someone would say, what’s your number? I’d have to go into the settings on my phone and look. I’d say memorizing scripture is really hard. And then I started realizing that that is exactly what you need.
10:18 That is the weapon you need when Satan attacks, when the flesh attacks, when temptation comes, you need that scripture applied to your heart and your mind. You need to be able to recite that scripture. And as a preacher, many pastors can recognize this.
10:33 You deal with anxieties and stresses, especially in the nighttime. Well, that’s what I do. I just recite scripture back and God knows it’s not always perfect in the memorization.
10:43 But memorizing scripture is so important because it is a crucial weapon. And if you don’t have it memorized, it’d be hard to recall when you’re, oh, so distressed, so tired, whatever it is. You don’t always have your Bible right there to go look it up.
10:57 Amen. You may not know where to look it up. And so memorizing scripture, commit to memorizing scripture.
11:04 Jerry Stavinsky is his name, preacher. We went to go see him at Revival. I saw him two years ago, Carson Memorial Baptist Church, a little Baptist church in Crowder’s Mountain, North Carolina there.
11:14 Carson Memorial. Went there two years ago to see him, really enjoyed it. Came back this time and I brought some money with me to get the books.
11:25 He has scripture memorization books that he created to help people memorize scripture. And I watched him preach and it’s a beautiful message about perseverance and patience and the trying times of your life leading to refinement by God and God doing a good work in your life out of the book of James. And I watched that man preach and he didn’t have to pick up his Bible.
11:45 He would preach those verses with such authority. And yet he didn’t have to even look at the word, amen, because he had memorized the scripture. He literally wrote a book or a series of little books on memorizing scripture.
11:54 And so it’s great for preaching. It’s great for Bible study. It’s the weapon that you use to attack the enemy.
12:03 Think about when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. What did he do? He quoted scripture three times to the devil. Amen.
12:09 If Jesus did it, then we should do it too. It’s so beautiful. Amen.
12:13 So beautiful. So commit to memorizing scripture. That’s a practical way to seek the Lord.
12:18 Say, in addition to my Bible study, I’m going to block out 20 minutes a day and I’m going to try to memorize whatever it is, a verse or a passage. Don’t get overwhelmed. Try to memorize a few words at first.
12:29 Try to memorize a simple verse. Look for simple verses. Go into the Psalms or Proverbs.
12:33 Not that they’re simple, but sometimes some of the verses are a little bit shorter or a little easier to memorize compared to say a genealogy. You start there and see what God does. Amen.
12:43 I got time for one more here. Create a morning routine and a nightly routine. And the reason why I recommend this is if you commit time in the morning to God when you first wake up and you commit time in the evening to God, not just laying down and going to sleep and praying, but you know, or praying and then going to sleep, but time before bed, time in the morning, time before bed.
13:04 If you are faithful to do that, I believe that God will open up that midday time for you as well. And before you know it, there’ll be three times a day or more that you’re devoting to God, to spending time with God, to seeking him and having that devotional quiet time and putting some of these things into practice. Because we are to seek God in order to know what we are to do.
13:23 John 6:38, for I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. That’s John 6:38. So as Jesus came from heaven to do the will of the father, we are here today.
13:35 Amen. And if we’re saved and we’re born again, we’re here to do the will of God. And so we’re no greater than Jesus.
13:42 Jesus says that the servants no greater than his master. So if he came to do the will of the father, who are we to say that we aren’t to seek God and do His will? And how can we do His will if we don’t seek Him? You see how those two go hand in hand. So as we seek the Lord, He will guide us and we will do His will.
13:58 And it’s impossible to seek him if we don’t have faith. And it’s impossible to do his will if we don’t seek him. I hope that all makes sense here today.
14:08 And I have so many more on this list. I’ll share a few more tomorrow. But I thank you so much for listening today.
14:11 It’s been a blessing. I hope it’s blessed you. Take care.
14:15 God bless and amen.