A Pregnant Pause – Sarah Jakes Roberts

What if you saw the delays in your life as a “pregnant pause” that would ultimately create the momentum that would lead to an even greater outcome than if the delay had not been there? SJR teaches on the “Pregnant Pause” at Focus Conference in London.

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

And today I am so excited. I know you are too.
We’ve got one of our favorite speakers in the entire world and favorite people.
We’re so glad that we even get to be friends with them, let alone to have her voice in our church.
So incredibly thankful for Priscilla Schrier. I mean, this woman has, she is the real deal.
She has impacted the globe. She and her husband Jerry, their kids. We love them tremendously.
They are not just as good, maybe even better off the platform than they are on the platform.
People of integrity, people of character and these are some folks.
Yes, these are folks you can trust and I’m telling you we put people on this platform that you can trust.
So today I have my bible, I have my notebook, I have a pen and I’m going to be taking notes today and I want you to do the same because today God is gonna speak to every one of our hearts.
Would you guys get your hearts and your minds ready as Priscilla gets ready to open up the word of God with us today.
Love your church. We’ll be back in just a minute. Shoreline family.
I am thrilled to have an opportunity to be able to share with you today.
You know, I love you guys so much. My whole family. We consider you to be our family.
So we’ve sort of adopted you, whether or not you’ve adopted us, we’ve adopted you.
We love you so much and I’m so grateful for all that the Lord is doing in your church.
But even more than that, all the that the Lord is doing through your church.
And that’s what you need to know, even while all of this online stuff is happening with churches all over the globe.
The ripple effect of the ministry that is happening through Shoreline continues.
And to me that’s the mark of a good church, a great church, a healthy church is one that even when the norms of that church are interrupted, the influence and the ministry through it continue.
And so you need to know that that’s happening and from the outside looking in, we’ve just been cheerleading and applauding the growth, the development, the health and the impact of Shoreline Church.
Thank you for letting me be a part of today this Sunday sharing God’s word with you.
You know, it’s what I love to do. I love God’s word.
So I’m grateful to share it with you today.
I’m praying and have been praying for you that God has prepared the soil of your heart without you even knowing it because see, that’s the thing God is preparing the soil of our heart all the time through the coincidences that have happened, the circumstances that have shown up in our life, the difficult things, the good things, the relationship issues that maybe we’ve had this week, the prayers we’ve prayed the angst that we’ve had the solutions that we’ve been trying to figure out for problems that have come up in our life.
We don’t even recognize it at the time, but all of that stuff becomes tenderizer for the soil of our heart.
And then he comes along with a word and that seed drops into softened soil, soil of our heart that wouldn’t have been softened, had we not gone through what we’ve gone through.
And so I’ve been praying that this week, even without us knowing it, he’s been preparing the soil of our heart for what he wants to encourage and challenge you with today and me with today really quickly before I pray.
I also want to just applaud your leaders, the entire leadership team of Shoreline Church.
I’ve been praying for you, Pastor Earl and Onka and the team there that is serving with you, praying for you as you shepherd God’s people during these very unusual times that God will give you unusual clarity, unusual wisdom and insight and that He’ll give you the grace that you need to really carry you not only in ministry, but in your marriages as you parent, your Children through all that you’re navigating personally, your own fears and concerns.
Just know the Jerry and I man, we are praying for y’all. We love you so much.
Thank you for including us in the ministry of your church. OK. Let’s pray. Lord.
I praise you. I thank you that your word is living. It’s active, it’s sharper than any two edged sword.
And today you are gonna use it to speak to your people.
Father, I’m asking you to challenge us to dive deeply into your word, to cultivate an ongoing vibrant friendship and relationship with you through the scriptures.
Father. I’m asking that we will hear your voice, not just today but even more when we are alone uh by ourselves having our own personal devotions and quiet time.
Now, more than ever, father, we need to hear your voice.
And so I’m praying, father that you will speak and that today everyone under the sound of my voice will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they’ve been in the presence of God in Jesus name.
Amen. My dad got tell on him just a little bit. He is technologically challenged.
What I mean by that is even now in this year of our Lord 2020.
Um He still does not really know all the nuances of technology, every advancement sort of goes over his head.
And you know, I can sympathize with him because I’m a little bit the same way I’m not really into all of the new advances of technology.
I can’t quite keep up well, he’s been this way all the time, so much so that you need to know that my father who many of, you know, is a pastor.
He’s been preaching in, in um this community for 44 years or so.
My, he and my mother started the church when I was very, very, very little um brand new.
actually, they started the church. And so they’ve been preaching and teaching and shepherding God’s people for a long time.
Dad continues to and just to give you a little bit of an inkling on where he stands on technology.
Still to this day, my father writes down all of his sermon notes on one of those yellow legal pads.
You know, the ones that come bound together at the top and you sort of just write down on all of those lined yellow sheets of paper.
My father’s got those yellow pads laying all over the house. He still does not type. Not a one note.
He writes them all by hand to this day.
Well, his, um, lack of knowledge in regards to technology isn’t a new thing early on years ago.
I remember maybe 15 years ago or so when there were no ipads yet, you know, it wasn’t as advanced as it is now, but about 15, 20 years ago, I recall something that happened.
My dad really wanted to figure out how to get online.
But the only reason he wanted to get online is because at the time, my youngest brother, Jonathan was playing football for uh Baylor University.
He wanted to get on the Baylor University website so that he could look up.
His youngest son, John John, who was playing football for Baylor.
And if you know anything about my dad, he may not be about technology, but he sure is about that football.
And so with his youngest son playing college level football, he want to do everything he could to look him up.
So at the time, my sister was at the house and so he called Crystal back into the guest room, the fourth bedroom of our parents home back there 20 years ago, back in that room, there was a whole monitor that was sitting on the desk there with a keyboard, but he really didn’t use it.
So he said to Crystal Crystal, come back here, show me how to turn this thing on.
So when I tell you that they were starting from scratch, I mean, they were starting from scratch.
My sister came back to the back room and she said, dad, let me show you where the on button is.
So you will know in the future how to turn this thing on once they got it all powered up.
Then my dad said to her, how do I get to the Baylor home page?
So she showed him how to type in the URL address so that you can get to the website that you wanna be on.
So finally she got him to the Baylor home page.
And just when they got to the home page, the phone rang, Crystal had to run out of the room into the kitchen where the phone was plugged into the wall.
And so she raced out of the room and as she raced out of the room, my dad yelled after her, how do I maneuver around this page?
She said back to him, use the mouse. So daddy starts looking around for a mouse.
He had no idea what in the world she was talking about.
He of course, lays eyes upon this little gadget that’s got a tail sticking out of it.
He assumes this must be the mouse.
So he picks it up, places it flat on the computer monitor and begins to drag it up and down side to side on the actual computer monitor.
Then when that didn’t work, he just held it up in the air and was sort of just moving it around in mid air.
My sister came back to find our fairly bright stable father waving a mouse around in the air.
Now, here’s what you need to know that computer has been in the fourth bedroom of my parents’ house for a long time.
He also has a laptop that someone gave him and it’s, you know, folded and unused in the drawer of his desk at his office.
There’s also another computer monitor and a keyboard that is in his office space at the church.
So my point is he has computers available to him. He has technology available to him.
But technology does you no good unless you know how to use it. Having it available is not enough.
You gotta know how to use it for the next few moments.
I want to just encourage you less preach and more just teach and talk to you about the importance of us as God’s people.
Not just having God’s word available to us, but knowing how to use it.
Listen to me more now than ever before as our culture continues to be increasingly godless you and I are gonna have to know how to do what the psalmist said.
I hide God’s word in my heart so that I might not sin against him. We gotta use God’s word.
It’s not enough for us to just have um the Bible around our home because you know, you got the big pretty one that’s up on the mantel.
You’ve got the little small one that sits on your nightstand.
You’ve got the one that’s just for Decor, that might be like a coffee table book.
And then you know, you have that one, that one that’s got all the dog ears and it’s got all the underlines and all the post it notes.
That’s the one that you take to church with you.
So you can actually look, you know, holy like you use the Bible.
We have all all of these Bibles available to us, but the Bible don’t do us no good.
Just sitting there looking pretty. It only does us good if we know how to actually take advantage of the truths of God.
The fresh breath of God that is available to us through the scriptures.
So I wanna talk to you to me, to us, challenge us about utilizing God’s word truth, everyone is saying is so relative.
No one has a anymore for the truth of God as declared in His word.
Now, more than ever if we’re gonna be unapologetic about our faith.
If we’re gonna be able to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy, if we’re going to be able high school student and university student and mother and father, wife, husband, single woman, single man, entrepreneur, ministry president, if we’re going to be having the opportunity to stand firm, then we got to know the truth of God’s word.
And we’ve got to be able to live off of every word that God speaks to us.
We’ve got to be found on our knees in prayer and prioritizing our time in God’s word.
I wanna tell you this before I share with you some principles that actually have transformed the way I spend time in the word of God.
The enemy wants to convince you.
He wants to convince me that God has some sort of hotline connection between he and certain people that it’s just our spiritual leaders, our pastors, our Bible study teachers, the folks that are on staff, the people that are in full time ministry, the folks that have, you know, a microphone on their jacket, the people that are in the spotlight, the folks who we go past their Instagram feed and we are um admonished or encouraged because they are teaching and preaching to masses.
The enemy wants you to think that it’s a seminary degree that is required before you can actually have a fervent ongoing relationship with God.
Where you yourself can open up the word of God and know that the Holy Spirit can illumine the scriptures and give you guidance and direction and insight and clarity and encouragement and comfort.
He wants you to think that that kind of fervent friendship with God is only for certain people because He knows that as long as you and I are not convinced that we can hear a fresh word from God for ourselves.
Then at best, we’ll be handicapped in our faith because we’ll always be waiting on somebody else to spoon feed us the word of God instead of knowing that we can have confidence in our friendship, in our relationship with God, that person who you admire rightfully.
So there are people that I admire their faith, their stability, their strength, their peace in the midst of the storm.
There are people I admire their prayer life.
I admire how they um are concrete in their faith and their beliefs. No matter what happens in culture.
There are people I admire their ministry.
I admire the fervency in which I see the presence of God operating in their life.
So yeah, there are folks that we can admire, but just as quickly as we admire them, we have to be careful and guard ourselves against thinking that what they have access to is not also something that we have access to the same holy spirit of God that lives in that person you admire is the same presence and power of God that lives on the inside of you to guide you into all truth, to alum in the scriptures so that you too can hear the voice of God.
And so I wanna encourage you to not wait until Sunday morning for a word from God.
I wanna encourage you to not wait until the next time your Bible study group can get together again in person before you engage in hearing the voice of God for yourself from the scriptures.
I wanna encourage you to not depend upon someone else to spoon feed you God’s truth.
I wanna remind you that you can hear God and we need to have a daily relationship with God through His word, your stability is counting on it.
Your peace, my peace of mind, particularly in the craziness.
And chaos of the culture that we’re living in right now.
If we don’t have a relationship with God, where we are prioritizing, coming to him in his word, then we will find that we are not stable.
We don’t have peace of mind.
We don’t have clarity, revelation, direction, insight and encouragement to keep on putting one ft in front of the other and not be discouraged by what we see happening around us.
So I wanna encourage you to have a relationship with God through his word.
I wanna share with you what I call the five P’s of Bible study like the letter P.
So, you know, if you like to take notes, I want you to get the notes out app on your phone or get a pen or a pencil.
I want you to write these five ps down.
These ps have changed the way that I relate to God through his word.
And I say the word relates specifically because it’s not just about reading a book y’all this, this just ain’t no book.
It’s not just a regular um book filled with pages and papers and bound by leather.
It’s so much more than that. This book is alive.
The Holy Spirit makes it so that He shines a spotlight in the place where we most need to be fed, where we need guidance and direction so that God’s present word leaps up off the page and gives us exactly what we need for the circumstances that we are facing right now.
Don’t no regular book do that. This book is alive.
And so as we engage in it, we can relate to God through it because he speaks to us through His word.
So these five p have transformed my relationship with the Bible and with the, with God himself and I wanna share them with you.
Because what this means is that after today, on a regular Monday, regular Tuesday, on a regular Old Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday, you’re not sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting until the next time a pastor preaches to you or a spiritual mentor um helps to uh give you opportunity to rightly divide the word of truth.
You thank God for those shepherds, but you’re not twiddling your thumbs waiting on them.
You know that you can have the privilege to go to God in His word and hear Him for yourself.
The first p of Bible study is to position yourself to hear from God real simple.
In fact, all five ps are position yourself to hear from God.
I’m gonna say it again, position yourself to hear from God.
There is power in your positioning in your posture. OK?
I mean, this in a spiritual sense, but I also mean it in a physical sense, I wanna tell you about both.
When you come to God through His word that you’re gonna meet with Him through the pages of scripture So this is your own personal quiet time.
You know, you may have just sat up in bed and you’re gonna have 10 or 15 minutes that you’re spending with the Lord or you’re gonna come out of your room into the kitchen table, maybe in the quietness of the morning or in the quietness of the evening when all the activity in your house has died down just a little bit.
You’re gonna position yourself over a portion of scripture.
And I’ll tell you in just a few moments how you can choose a portion of scripture to dive into.
But when you make that commitment to posture yourself, to position yourself, I mean that in a spiritual way, meaning the position of your heart has to be uh in a perspective and a frame of reference that is eager to hear and expects to hear the voice of God speaking to you.
It’s a w Tozer, a great theologian that put it this way, the person that does not expect to hear.
God won’t because every single time God speaks, they’ll just discount it as their own idea.
They’ll think that it was just a coincidence.
They will attribute it to anything and anybody else except what it is.
God’s breathed word coming to life through the power of the Holy Spirit to speak to you, to give you guidance and direction in your own personal life.
And so you have to have a heart.
I have to have a heart that is filled with expectation that I am one of the sheep of God’s fold.
And I can hear the voice of God. John chapter 10, Jesus said my sheep, hear my voice.
Listen to that again. He basically says the default position for anybody who’s a part of the fold, the flock, the family of God.
What my sheep do is hear my voice.
It’s one of the schemes of the enemy to get you to think that you need to be something more, be something else, have a different perspective or a different personality or be someone other than you are to have excelled in some way to not have made the mistakes that you’ve made.
It’s the scheme of the enemy to get us to think that we have to be anything other than a son or daughter to have this right, this privilege to hear God speaking to us through the word.
So we have to pray and say, Lord, would you carve away anything in my heart?
That is a roadblock that’s keeping me from having an expectation that in my own regular quiet time while I’m in my pajamas or in my jogging suit while I’m in my house shoes, whatever I’m doing.
And no matter what I look like, I have the privilege to keep company with you that you want to cultivate Lord Jesus.
Thank you a friendship with me that you want to speak with me, that you gave me a love letter so that I can hear your voice and know you and know who you are.
Thank you Lord for that privilege. And if my heart doesn’t expect it, would you begin to mold in me?
A holy expectation that desires and anticipates that I have the privilege to hear the voice of God, posture your heart with expectation.
The psalm is to put it this way in Psalm 27.
It’s one of my favorite verses, verse 13 and 14.
He says, I would have despaired unless I believed that I would see the hand of the Lord in the land of the living.
Did you see that expectation there? He says, I would have despaired. I would have been hopeless.
I would have been down. My countenance would have been down cast, man.
Accept that I expect that I’m gonna see God.
I expect that I’m gonna hear God so I can wait patiently on Him because I have an anticipation, an expectation that God is going to come through on my behalf.
The prophet Habakkuk spoke to this as well.
If you look at his little book that is named after Him in the Old Testament, you’ll see that the entire first chapter of Habakkuk is Habakkuk calling out to God, mostly Him calling out to God and saying, Lord, how long are you gonna let this go on?
He’s looking around Him at the destruction that He is seeing happening in His in his nation, man.
If that don’t speak to us right now, I don’t know what it is.
You and I can’t flip past all that’s happening on our Twitter feeds.
Our Instagram feeds the news channels that we’re watching and not see the vortex of chaos that is swirling our all around us.
Habakkuk knows exactly how you feel and he calls out to God and says how long Lord, it seems like you’re just sitting back idly letting all this go on.
And so Lord I’m going to vocalize my concerns to you, my cares to you. I’m gonna be authentic.
I’m not gonna hold back and that’s the privilege we have in relationship with God.
He lets us ask our questions, voice our concern.
He knows that in our humanity, we have some worries and some issues and some fears and he lets us come to hear him and bear it all.
But after Habakkuk bears it all, chapter two, he says, now I’m going to climb up on the watch tower and I’m gonna wait to see what it is that my king is going to say to me how God is gonna respond to me?
Do you see that? He positions himself to hear from God?
He says, I’m gonna climb up on a watch tower.
Back in biblical days, there was a stronghold or a citadel that would sit at the front of a, of a city and it was designed so that a soldier or a watchman could climb up to the top of this watch tower position himself above ground level circumstancess.
In other words, he was saying there’s too much chaos swirling around down here.
I won’t be distracted if I keep myself positioned here.
So I’m gonna climb up on the watch tower where I’m up above ground level distractions and I’m gonna position myself here because from this vantage point, I’ll have a clear view to the horizon and I expect that God is coming.
I have e expectation that there is someone coming who’s going to deliver an answer for me.
And so because of that expectation, I’m gonna position myself in a place and in a posture where I can hear God where I can see his hand where I have clear view and there’s nothing to distract me, position yourself, spiritual expectation and anticipation, but not just spiritually like Habakkuk position yourself physically.
Do you see that? He climbed up somewhere?
He went to a place where there was some silence and some solitude.
There’s a whole lot of noise in life, isn’t it?
You’ve got your to do list and I’ve got mine.
We’re trying to check the things off that we gotta do on our list when it comes to our kids and our marriage and what we’re cooking for dinner tonight and the demands of the job that we have and the ministry assignments that are before us and all of the things that we have to, to do that go into the regular rhythms of a 24 hour day.
There are so many ground level circumstances that aren’t unnecessary, they’re critical.
We gotta keep going from day to day, but there’s gotta be a moment of time where you decide I’m gonna climb up on the watch tower and have some space where there’s silence and solitude.
So that for just a few moments, there is nothing standing in the way of me seeing the king who is coming to respond to me, of me hearing clearly what it is that God has to say to me.
Now, this can be difficult. I know it because your house is probably busy like mine is many of you or you’ve got, you know, your phone buzzing and ringing and beeping and all the things that all of our devices do.
So this is going to take some intentionality on your part. It’s going to take you being proactive.
It’s gonna take you, you know, setting your alarm to get up a little bit early or drive, driving into the office space whenever we go back to office spaces and getting there, you know, 10 or 15 minutes before the buzz of the office starts or when you’re in your car deciding that at this particular hour because I’m running errands all the time that I’m gonna turn off talk radio or I’m gonna turn down the music just a little while and I’m gonna use that opportunity while I’m sitting outside of my kids’ soccer practice.
I’m gonna use that as the 10 or 15 minutes or half hour that I’m going to devote to having some silence and solitude.
Pushing aside in my mind’s eye, all of the demands that I have so that I can have an opportunity to have a clear perspective on what it is that God wants to say to me.
So we position ourselves not just spiritually in expectation, but we position ourselves by prioritizing some space in our life where we can actually have a clear opportunity, more clear opportunity to hear the voice of God.
I wanna encourage you before we move on to the next p of Bible study to know that this does not mean that you have to have a specific place in your home that you go, that is just devoted to prayer.
Sometimes, you know, we can look at people’s Instagram feeds and man, their quiet time looks so perfect, don’t it?
They’ve got their little white couch and their little white coffee cup and everything is so beautiful and amazing and immaculate.
It looks like the most beautiful photo shoot you have ever seen in your life.
That could be discouraging to regular folk who have, you know, like dinner dishes sitting over there from last night that we didn’t get to or we’ve got all the toys from all of our toddlers sitting around it or all the homework papers from our teenagers that are still scattered across the kitchen table from all the online schooling or we got the laundry sitting over there every single load that you know, we washed and dried, but we dumped it out on the floor hoping that somebody was gonna come fold it at some point.
But there it still sits, still waiting on us and we look at the chaos of our life and we think, can I really have quiet time in here?
Can I really expect God to speak to me in a space like this? The answer is yes.
The enemy always wants you to think and me to think we’ve got to have something different about our space or different about our lives in order to actually meet with God intimately and personally ourselves.
But listen, if the bathroom is the only place where you can find some sil silence and some solitude, I gotta be honest with you and tell you that for many years when my Children were younger, I would sit on the edge of the bathtub, I would close the bathroom door.
I would lock that door and I would sit there and that’s where I would have time with the Lord.
I have a friend when her Children were young.
She used to tell me that she would go into her closet like she made her actual closet, her prayer closet.
And she said, listen, I would sit right under the blouses where the blouses were with a flashlight.
That’s the only space that I could find to have a little silence and a little solitude for many of you.
It’s, it’s in your car. I mean, you’re in your car anyway. Why not make that car?
A sanctuary a place where you can meet with God because you’re in that car anyway.
And you’re by yourself there. Why not make that an opportunity where you can make that space a sacred space to meet with God.
You’ve seen people who are doing that.
You know, they’re driving down the freeway and you just see them worshiping God and you see their hands outstretched and you see they’re having a whole prayer meeting, a whole church service by themselves in the car.
They have made their car a place that can be a watch tower where they can meet with God around His word.
Position yourself. Oh, more now than ever, brothers and sisters. We’re gonna have to prioritize positioning ourselves.
We’re getting a word from everybody else, from the newscasters, from the media, from the politicians, from our friends, from opinion makers.
We’re getting news from everybody else.
We’ve got position ourselves, not just to hear them, but we’ve got to prioritize positioning ourselves to hear a word from God.
So once you position yourself and you’ve got your Bible or you know, you’ve got your electronic Bible in front of you and you’re looking at a particular passage of scripture.
I wanna encourage you to choose a passage, not just you know, one verse here, one verse there, here, verse there, verse everywhere, verse, verse mm mm It taking little verses out of context like that can be incredibly dangerous.
But what you can do is take a whole book of the Bible.
Start it verse one and go all the way through.
Took me about two years to go through the book of John.
Like this, I would take one verse or two verses a day and I would make sure that I read right through.
So as to not take anything out of the context, not only of the chapter that it’s in, but the book that it is in because the story that God is telling um is linear meaning not, not only is every word and every verse God breathed, but the way it is located in the Scriptures is also God breathed.
So take a whole book of the Bible, maybe one that stood out to you recently that your pastor preached from and it was from the book of Ephesians or the book of John or the book of Habakkuk and just decide you’re gonna start right at the beginning.
And the second p actually has two P’s in it.
I want you to pour over the passage and paraphrase the major principles, pour over the passage and paraphrase the major principles when I say, pour over the passage, I mean that real specifically, I mean that as in opposition to scan the passage, when I say poor, I mean, to meditate on it, to read it, not just once, but to read it twice to read it in two or three different translations so that you can see different nuances of words that maybe need to stand out to you in a different way.
I mean that you open up opportunity for you to have space and time to think through what it would be like.
If you were the woman that was caught in adultery, in that passage that you just read, see how it would feel to have God speak over you.
Jesus say to you go and sit no more. It means you mole over it for just a little while.
Now. What this means at least what it means for me is that if I’m really gonna pour over a passage, not just scan it, but meditate on it and think about it and wait for the Lord to speak to me through it.
That means that I can’t do that with a chapter or two at a time.
It means I can’t be more interested in quantity than I am with just quality time with God.
Remember it’s not about finishing. This is about you having a friendship with God so that you can be in sustained and encouraged and sense the presence of God in a practical way, not in theory but know a friendship with God where you feel and know that He is speaking to you through his word.
So most of the time that means one verse or two verses, and I read those two verses and then I read them again and then I might underline whatever words seem to leap up off the page.
Then I might look those words up and I might think through the scenario that is surrounding them, the context around them.
For example, in Joshua chapter one, when Moses has just died, and the Children of Israel are now being led by Joshua into the promised land.
God says to Joshua over and over again, be strong and courageous.
He says, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous.
And then he says, be careful not to let the word leave your mouth, but keep it close to your heart and close to your mind and meditate on it, day and night.
Meditate means to ponder it, meditate actually means to press your mind upon it, to think through it, to evaluate it, do whatever you have to do to spend a little time, not just saying, well, I read a verse a day and you know, a verse a day keeps the devil away.
This ain’t a checklist. This is you developing a friendship with God who is longing to speak to you.
Once I pour over a passage a verse or two, then I’ll paraphrase the major principles.
I usually just have a notebook that’s sitting nearby or I’ve got the notes app on my phone or what, however you wanna do it.
And I just, for each verse, write down a sentence or two that paraphrases exactly what that verse said.
Now, I want you to resist the urge to try to be deep or to try to make it rhyme or sound clever.
You’re not trying to be clever.
You are literally just taking the words right out of the verse and writing down a paraphrase of what that verse says.
Usually when I get to this point in the five pieces, I will close my Bible and I’ll put it aside and now I’m just sitting and I’m looking at the paraphrased rendition of what the verse actually says that takes me to the third p, pull out the spiritual principles.
This is where I prayerfully look at those paraphrases and I look to see what spiritual principles are hidden in the paraphrase.
I ask God to show me, is there something he’s revealing about his character?
Is there a promise here that I’m supposed to heed? Is there a directive I’m supposed to follow?
Is there insight that I’m supposed to uncover? What is it that the verse says, that’s the paraphrase.
But now I’m asking what does this verse mean?
You will often find that there are spiritual principles that are hidden, you would not have uncovered.
This is the way God begins to speak. You won’t uncover it until you ask yourself, what does this mean?
Is there a direction that I’m being given? Is there something about God’s character that I’m supposed to believe?
And that I’m supposed to trust and prayerfully pray and ask the Holy Spirit.
This is what the old preachers used to call alum in the word, ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate and you will find that there are spiritual principles tucked there that begin to direct you.
Now, I wanna tell you really quickly here on this third piece, I want you to be encouraged to know that every single time I sit down to have my quiet time, which by the way, as much as I want it to happen every single day, sometimes it doesn’t because, you know, life happens.
But every time I do sit down, I want you to know that each time it doesn’t mean that I just find, um God’s word spoken over my life just leaping up off the page every single time and it feels vibrant and fresh and on fire every time.
No, sometimes I’m reading along and it’s about the sites who were fighting the sites and the rights and the Canon nights and the other, I ate those.
Its and it just seems like a waste of time.
What in the world does this have to do with my personal life right now?
The crisis that I’m facing or God, what you want me to do with what I’m dealing with my child or my financial situation or my health, or the grief or the longing in my heart.
What does this have to do with that?
But I find that even those portions of scripture are vital to us because if nothing else, you’re still gonna ask yourself, what does this teach me about the character of God?
What did he do? What did he not do? What did he say? What did he not say?
What did he allow? What did he not allow?
It shows you who your God is and getting to know his character is what this is all about.
A friendship develops. Intimacy develops, the more we know, think about your regular friends, the more you know that person, the more you know the nuances of who they are and how they think and what they say and what they wouldn’t say.
Then remember in John chapter 10 when Jesus said the sheep know my voice.
He says they do not respond to the voice of a stranger.
The only way to be able to detect the voice of a stranger is if you know God well enough that when the enemies chooses to speak fear over your life or when your ego tries to get a word in edgewise, or when your pride is trying to sneak in there, or when the opinions of the culture in the world sound true.
The only way you’re gonna know if it ain’t God is if you’ve come to know his character so well that you can detect the voice of a stranger a mile away.
You know, my God would never say or do that.
My brother Anthony, um, is named after my dad.
So I got Anthony Senior and Anthony Junior and they walk alike. They talk alike.
Uh, there’s so much alike about the two Anthony’s and I’ve seen my brother use this to his advantage and kind of fool people.
I remember when we were growing up, people would call the house. And so he’d answer the phone.
People thought they were talking to pastor Evans.
And so they’d give him the whole story of whatever they were calling for.
He’d get all the juicy details before saying dad, somebody’s on the phone for you.
I remember one time he went up to the ticket counter at American Airlines so that he could get his ticket to get on the airplane.
And he said, well, my name is Anthony T Evans and he showed the license.
It said that he was Anthony Evans.
So they pulled up my father’s profile and my father had executive platinum status because he flies so much.
So immediately they upgraded Anthony gave him first class treatment.
Put him in first class, let him eat the meal that first class because he got all of that because he was able to confuse people because they are so similar to each other.
But let me tell you who he can’t confuse me and other members of the family.
If the phone rings in the first two minutes of the conversation or two seconds rather of the conversation I’m having with either Anthony, I can tell you exactly which Anthony I’m talking to because no matter how similar they sound, I have known them for so many years and been a part of their life and them, a part of my life in so many specific ways that they cannot confuse me.
Because I know the two Anthony.
Do you see the more you know God, the more clearly and easily you’re going to be able to put a finger on the voice of the enemy when he comes by trying to play you for the fool.
So you pull out the spiritual principles.
Once you pull out the spiritual principles, here’s the fourth p pose, the question. OK.
This is where you turn the spiritual principle.
You just pulled out, you turn it into the form of a personally directed question, man.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
This is when the Holy Spirit starts speaking because you say to yourself, am I living in a way that’s congruent with that spiritual principle that I just wrote down?
Am I heeding that promise? Am I behaving in that way? Is my attitude adjusted to that?
Have I forgiven that person? Have I been committed in my ties? Have I submitted to that authority?
Maybe that verse said that I need to be still and see the salvation of the Lord.
Have I been still or have I frantically been trying to figure out everything on my own? Lord?
What is it that you’re asking me to do? Ask yourself a personally directed question.
And when you start asking honest and authentic questions of the text, you will find that the Holy Spirit starts giving you the answers.
He starts shining a spotlight on the areas of your life and mind that I didn’t even existed that I need to get right with God that I need to line up so that I am in line for the favor and promises of God to be experienced in my life so that I have fresh revelation of God’s truth so that I can see clearly where in the culture or in the opinion of my friends.
Actually, that is antithetical to what it is that God is saying uh in His word and listen, there are two answers to every question God’s answer and everybody else’s and everybody else is wrong when they are in contradiction to what it is that God has said.
So as the Holy Spirit starts answering in your spiral notebook, you write down what it is that he’s been saying in your notes, write down the parts of your life that are coming to life like the palmon psalmist said, search me, oh God and know me, find out if there’s any way in me.
That ain’t like you so that I can get back to being in right relationship with you and having the opportunity Lord to experience everything you have for me.
And after you pose the question plan, obedience and pin down a date to obey.
Now, the reason why that’s critical is because we seem to plan for everything else except obeying God.
We’ve got a plan for our physical health.
We’ve enlisted a trainer, we’ve got our meals planned out for the week. We’ve got a membership at a gym.
We plan for our financial security.
We got a financial advisor to make sure that we can retire at the age that we want to so that we can save the way we want to.
We’ve planned um for the project that’s due at our job to make sure that we are working incrementally and progressively to make sure that the segments of the project are each done.
Well, we plan for everything except honoring God as God makes clear to you what he’s asking you to do, forgive that person or write that blog post that was on your heart to write or move forward in starting that business or stepping out in faith from the place that you’ve been employed, whatever it is, God’s asked you to do, make a plan.
I mean, on paper, be obedient to God intentionally and deliberately and then enlist accountability so that you can have some people around you this is what church and family, the family of God is all about.
Put some people around you who will challenge you and ask you and get all up in your business and say, did you do what God has asked you to do?
Make a plan to be obedient to God in closing.
Let me just tell you that, um I was traveling, you know, back when we traveled and I was packing some jewelry and I remember trying to put this jewelry together and I put it in my uh carry on case.
Then when I got to where I was going, I pulled it all out and it was all tangled.
Every little string or a little chain was tangled together, man.
I was just jingling and around trying to get it all separated.
My husband said as he watched me in frustration trying to get just this one necklace out.
He said, Priscilla, I think if you stop massaging the whole wad of tangled mess and you just grab onto one unhook that one and then just start working to get that one out of there.
I think it’ll be more successful. He was right.
I grabbed onto one little necklace and I just worked on getting that one unwound.
And you know what happened when I not only worked on that one, did I get it out?
But the whole tangled mess started to loosen up because it actually wasn’t about taking care of everything.
All I needed to do was focus on the one thing and the one thing took care of everything else.
Brother, sister, focus once again on the one thing I know you’ve got a tangled mess all around you in your family and in the culture and in your marriage and with your Children and on your job and in your finances and your health and your aging parents or whatever it is that you’ve got going on.
I know it’s a whole big tangled mess.
But if you will just get back to the one thing, you’ll find that focusing on that one thing untangles everything Lord Jesus.
I thank you for your word and I thank you that you desire to speak to us through it.
Lord, I pray for fresh wind and fresh fire over your people in Jesus name. Amen.
Wow. Was your heart encouraged today?
Challenged? I know mine in this moment right now. Incredibly challenged.
Thank you so much uh Priscilla for pouring it out. Um This church, Shoreline City.
We have uh a vision statement like a win and, and our win is this.
We want to raise up Christ like leaders who make it on earth as it is in heaven.
I’ll say that again. We, we, we’re all about raising up Christ like leaders who make it on earth as it is in heaven.
Uh Our thought is if we all look a whole bunch more like Jesus, if we talk like him.
If we love like him, if we serve like him, if we give like him, if we encourage like him, if we protect like him, if we challenge like Jesus, if we walk like Jesus, we’re just convinced our world will be turned right side up.
So today, we received such practical life giving principles that will shape our character and help us walk and live more like our glorious savior.
So let’s not let these words just go in one ear and out another. I took town notes feverishly.
I pray that you did too. And let’s as a church family, as a community, as, as a body.
Let’s make sure we put into practice what we heard today.
Uh on our website, we actually, and even on our app, we have these uh tools, we have called growth plans.
This is where we actually have every person in our church, whether you’re married or single or older or younger, wherever you are on, on the journey, we actually have these made up for you to help you develop and grow in your walk with God.
And the principles that you just heard today from Priscilla, these things can be implemented with these growth plans.
And I feel like if we do this church family, our lives will begin to look different, our families will begin to look different.
Our community will begin to look different.
But if we’re just gonna keep digesting all the junk food of this world.
No wonder the body of Christ has zits all over it. We’re consuming so much mess.
Let’s get the purity of God’s word and an authentic life giving relationship with him.
And I’m telling you, we’ll begin to produce a type of fruit that people look at and think I wanna know about that.
God. So thank you so much for being with us today.
If you’re getting at a neighborhood gathering or you’re uh at a home, maybe sitting by yourself or wherever you are in the world, we want you to know God loves you and is with you.
And if right now you’ve yet to ever make Jesus Christ first in your life, you yet to make him number one.
You’ve yet to say Jesus, I surrender my soul to you.
This is the moment my friends, this is the moment where you get to say, I don’t wanna go my own way.
I wanna go his way. What God is doing right now is knocking on your heart saying, son, daughter, it’s time to come home.
It’s time to stop living in your own trespasses and sins and to turn and to give your heart and your life over to me.
So if that’s you today, you’ve never made Jesus Christ first in your life or maybe at one point in time, you didn’t, you slipped away, you’ve gone another direction, then you’ve been burned by church.
Maybe you can’t stand church, maybe you’re done with church, but here you find yourself today and you recognize that the love of God is pursuing you right now.
And you’re saying, I wanna give my heart and my life to Jesus, my friend.
This is your moment of surrender. This is your moment of a brand new start.
So I’m gonna ask you to put your hand over your heart right now if you would not mind.
And I’m gonna ask you to repeat this prayer out loud after me, say dear Jesus, I ask you to forgive me of all my sins.
I admit I’ve made mistakes and today I give you my heart, I give you my life.
Give me the power to live for you. In Jesus name. Amen.
Hey, can we clap our hands in every home, every neighborhood?
Hey, even if in this room right now, let’s go ahead and clap and celebrate new life, a brand new beginning.
And we’re incredibly excited about the future that God has for you.
And we wanna be a part of helping you understand what it looks like to be a Christ like leader who makes it on earth as it is in heaven.
So, hey, your next step is growth track. We’ve got it coming up on Wednesday again.
We’re gonna start having these on Sunday, not this week, but next week on Sunday and Wednesday, we want to jump on the journey.
And if you made Jesus first in your life we’d love to know about it.
You get to use 97,000 again, text Jesus first to 97,000.
Let us know we’d love the opportunity to pray with you and help you on your journey to become all that God has called you to be.
And again, Shoreline City. I wanna encourage us to uh encourage us to continue to put God first in our giving.
I wanna make sure as a church family, we don’t take this for granted but recognize there are other people’s lives on the other side of our generosities, whether it’s with the app or online church family.
Let’s go ahead and decide this fall season.
Even when there’s scarcity all around, we will, so we will give and we will be generous even when the world around is speaking scarcity, we’re speaking and living generosity.
Let’s go ahead and continue to do that.