Well, good morning, Crossing Church.
How are you doing today? It is good.
And I'm not going to ask you this time, decide to try to get
you to do it louder. And there's a reason for that,
because the song that we just sang, I'm praying God come and
turn this thing around. I mean, that's kind of a
reflection of my heart right now.
I don't know about you, but do you feel a little bit like your
heart is under attack if you're watching the news, if, if you're
seeing what's going on in the world, whether we're talking
about the this what Hamas did coming into Israel.
I mean, we've got a group that was planning on going to Israel,
156 people the day after Christmas and all that's being
canceled and then, you know, rescheduled and going through a
we're going to have to go through a whole process there
because, you know, it's a war over there.
Now. The idea that people are all
over the world marching and and chanting Hamas slogans is kind
of beyond me as well. And I'm I'm trying to understand
the human heart. You you hear the story about a
guy that goes into a bowling alley in a restaurant and shoots
the place up and and kills 18 people and injuries more and
then goes and kills himself. What in the world is wrong with
this world? Right?
And it and it can really be like a weight on us, right?
Like, what do I do with this? What do I do with with, with
these feelings? Then I come to church.
I come into a place like this. We sing a song like that.
But then we see what God, and only God can do as person after
person after person, turns their heart over to the saving power
of Jesus Christ. And that gives me hope.
That's what that song says. All of my hope is in the name,
the name of Jesus. So I hope today that that's
what's happening in your heart, that you're you're saying, you
know, I know that these I'm not. I'm not shutting my my eyes.
I'm not covering my ears. I I know what's going on in the
world around me, but all it does is reinforce the fact that I
need to put all of my hope in the name of Jesus.
And this is exactly where you need to be to do that.
And we're thankful for everyone that's joining from all of our
locations all around this area in three states.
And if you're inside or online, we're thankful for you as well.
And last week we introduced a new series called Handle with
Care, and it's about the heart of David and the life of David.
And we explored his heart last week when we were talking about
how God formed it and and how God chose him and called him.
And we got a feeling of the raw material of a man that was after
God's own heart. And we learned some things about
David. I know I learned some things
about David. That that he was despised
probably because of other people's sin, not his.
That he was overlooked. That he was the least in his
family. That he was subject to harsh and
dangerous circumstances that the people that were supposed to
love him actually put him in. That he was in the most humble
of circumstances. And yet those were the
circumstances that God used to shape David's heart.
And what I see in David is that at that point in his life, he
doesn't curse his lot in life, but he embraces it instead.
And he chooses in that embracing, in that keeping a
positive mental attitude, he is choosing the substance of his
heart. And the substance of David's
heart, in a wide overview, is that it was humble.
David chose to have a humble heart.
Now that's a sermon I need to hear, because I really struggle
in this area, that this is a besetting sin of mine, that I I
tend to want to have a prideful heart.
Maybe you're where I am and maybe you're a little bit of a
control freak like I am, and and you want to have more of a
prideful heart. You want to depend more on
yourself. You want to have a sense of
independence. But what I see in David at the
core is a humble heart. And what is that?
When I say that, what does that mean?
A humble heart is a soft heart. It's a heart that is more easily
molded into whatever God wants it to be, and you can see that
illustrated in different ways. Like a humble heart finds
gratitude easier instead of being bitter, right?
It tries to capture the blessings, even if those
blessings are small. And it finds that easy to do.
How about you? Are you that way?
Are you able to capture blessings, or do you want to
concentrate on the bitter stuff in life?
And even if those blessings are kind of hard to find, you find
them easier with a soft and humble heart.
You know, a humble heart doesn't want to take the credit.
It would rather give the credit. And that's because a humble
heart is a generous heart. And that is generosity, when
instead of trying to take the credit for yourself, you'd
rather give it either to God or to someone else.
A humble heart is a teachable heart, and I struggle sometimes
having a teachable heart and a prideful heart's.
The opposite of that is he a prideful heart.
He can't learn anything because it already believes it knows
everything, right? But a humble heart is teachable,
and and this is where David's choice comes in.
You see, the raw material was there because God created
David's heart. And the raw material for
everything that God wants to do in your life, it's already
there. Do you know that anything and
everything that God calls you to do in life, He has already
equipped you with all of the raw material that you need to do
that, But that does not absolve you of making the proper choices
so that your heart is a conduit for all that raw material to be
expressed, glorifying God. When we come to David, it was
like, you know, he was, he had the raw material and was wired
to be a leader, but he became a good follower first, and that
was where his humble heart and his choice came in.
He was wired to be a champion, but his first battles against
the lion and the bear were never even noticed by anyone else
except him and God. He was wired to be this
incredible artist, this this musician, this songwriter, but
he found inspiration in the most normal, base, basic things in
life. He was wired to be this
incredible prophet, this foreteller and 4th teller, but
he never took advantage of that gift that God had given him to
manipulate people. You see, all of those choices
that David made were proceeding out of a humble heart, and we
are the ones who determine the substance of our hearts.
If we choose to be prideful, we'll be like Pharaoh in the Old
Testament, where, you know, Moses tells Pharaoh, let my
people go. But the Bible says that Pharaoh
hardened his heart. He made a choice about how he
was going to receive the message of God.
He had a prideful heart, not a humble heart, and so it he
hardened his heart. And then, after we get through
about half the plagues, it says God hardened Pharaoh's heart,
which means the effect that God had on a prideful heart was to
harden it rather than to soften it.
It was Pharaoh that made the decision of what the substance
of his heart would be. If it would have been the
substance of wax, it would have melted.
But because he chose for it to be the substance of clay, it
hardened under the light of God. See, a heart that's prideful is
a heart that God has to shatter before he can mold it.
But if we choose to be humble, our hearts will be pliable, and
we'll be able to see God's purpose no matter what the
circumstances are that we face. You know, Jesus talked about
this in the most famous sermon he ever preached, which was in
Matthew 5-6 and seven. We call it the Sermon on the
Mount. And the Sermon on the Mount
begins with the Beatitudes. And the Beatitudes are these
beautiful attitudes we're supposed to have.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
God. Blessed are they that mourn, for
they'll be comforted, right? You know, he says all of these
things at the beginning. But when you look at this, when
you look at this, the first one, the first one is actually
talking about the substance of your heart.
What does it mean to be poor in spirit?
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God
or the Kingdom of heaven. It means that you recognize your
spiritual poverty. A humble heart recognizes
spiritual part of poverty, poor in spirit.
So I want to seek the Lord 1st instead of my own needs.
First, would we approach God and we approach God with a prideful
heart. It's like we have a cup in our
hands. OK, but that cup is already
full. Like we're asking God, Lord,
fill my cup. But he can't because it's
already full of your stuff. You know what I'm trying to say?
A prideful heart is already full of your own stuff.
And so the first thing that we have to do if we want to have a
humble heart before God is we have to turn the cup over.
And you have to pour that stuff out.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
heaven is the process of turning that cup upside down and pouring
it out. It's actually something that we
do in our mind. We make a conscious decision to
do that. I understand the truth that I am
poor in spirit. And then it goes to the second
Beatitude, which is blessed are they that mourn, for they'll be
comforted. You know what mourning is?
That's emotional. So it isn't just an intellectual
idea of being spiritually poor. It's causing an emotional
reaction, which is I I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I filled my heart
and my life up with all my own stuff.
So it's your whole self. Not just your intellectual self,
not just your emotional self, but all of you.
So both of these realities happen as I'm I'm pouring out
this cup and making it empty. A humble heart is an empty cup,
which is beautiful, because then God fills it with good things.
Like when you go on and you start reading the rest of the
Beatitudes, there's some things there that you just can't have
on your own, like pure in heart, who's pure in heart?
Like none of us, right? That has to be imparted to you
by God because it's not something inherent to you or
inherent to me. So the things that God wants to
give us are only available if there is some sort of a
receptacle inside of us to put those wonderful things in.
And that's where David started. He started with a cup that was
poured out, lifted up to his Heavenly Father that then God
could fill with good things. If we want to have a heart after
God's, it begins with humility, and humility begins with our
attitude. It's not the circumstances, it's
how we interpret them. How do you interpret your
circumstances? Are you looking at the blessings
instead of the bitterness? Are we finding opportunities in
our circumstances instead of using them to make excuses?
Are we turning the cup over to empty out the things of this
world so that we can hold up to God, an empty cup and let him
fill it? And you know what?
Some of you right now, that was your sermon.
Like you can just completely disconnect from everything else
I'm going to say and just start internally processing that and
working on that in your heart. If I was sitting there and
somebody else was preaching that to me, that's probably what I'd
be doing right now. I'd probably be going OK, that
that that's a that's a plateful for for me today.
OK, God, you got you, got you got to help me here.
Have a humble heart. If we really do want that, and
if we really do have a desire to have a humble heart before God,
then God can shape that heart into ways that reflect him.
And that's what God did for David.
And you see this happening in David's life.
David had the heart of a stranger.
Well, what do I mean by that? Well, it means that he wasn't at
home in this world. Now, I told you last week that
there's 150 psalms in in the Book of Psalms, and 75 of them
David wrote. But the other 75 other people
wrote, but David was the one responsible for compiling them,
Right? And eleven of those psalms were
written by the sons of Korah. Some of my favorite psalms in
the Book of Psalms were actually not written by David.
They were written by the sons of Korah.
Now who are they? Who are the sons of Korah?
There's a whole sermon there that I have.
I don't have time to preach, but incredible sermon that actually
would connect the last week because they had a very
questionable lineage. There's a story about who Korah
was when Moses led the people out of out of Egypt toward the
Promised Land and what God did. Anyway.
They had a reputation, OK, that they had to live down of what
Korah had done and how God judged him.
So they had a questionable lineage.
Like I talked about last week, David had a questionable
lineage. But do you know what David did
for the sons of Korah? First of all, he made them choir
directors, songwriters, and singers.
He also made them doorkeepers in the temple.
I mean they have this these interesting roles and and so the
song that I'm going to use in a little bit is was written by the
sons of of Korra. And some people might think,
well, those are kind of not really manly, manly jobs, you
know, they're kind of different than that.
Well, you you've got those guys all wrong.
But before they were ever choir directors and songwriters and
singers, they were mighty warriors in David's inner
circle, the sons of Korah. So they had fought with David
and they wrote Psalm 84. And David loved these psalms.
Like David didn't have to actually write it.
Again, David has a humble heart, so he doesn't have to be the one
who writes the song to like the song.
Have you ever noticed there's some people that are so prideful
that the only things they like are the things they come up with
and they don't like whatever anybody else came up with?
Well, David wasn't that kind of guy.
He actually loved what other people produce.
Let me ask you this question. Have we ever sung a song at the
crossing? And it just connects with your
heart and it's like it opens up all the doors and windows and
you, you feel the the fresh air, the spirit of God just blowing
through your heart. Because when you sing that song,
it just touches you. But you didn't write it.
Somebody else wrote it, right? But that doesn't mean that it
doesn't connect with you. And I really believe Psalm 84
was one of those psalms that really connected with David.
It was a reflection of how he felt.
Let's read it together. The 1st 12 verses.
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty, my soul
yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord.
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Even the sparrows found a home and the swallow a nest for
herself where she may have her young, a place near your altar.
You notice David's not necessarily at home in a palace
or as a king. He would rather be in the House
of God. Lord Almighty, my king and my
God. Blessed are those who dwell in
your house. That's the heart of a stranger,
that they are ever praising you. Blessed are those whose strength
is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
Like I will put in the time and and I will make the journey so
that I can be in the House of the Lord.
I might that might not be my home, but I want it to be my
home. As they pass through the valley
of Baca and make it a place of springs.
Autumn rains also cover it with pools.
This is him describing their way to Jerusalem, to the temple.
They go from strength to strength till each appears
before God and Zion. Hear my prayer.
Lord God Almighty, listen to me, God of Jacob, look on our
shield. O God, look with favor on your
anointed one. Better is one day in your courts
than 1000 elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper
in the House of my God than dwell in the tents of the
wicked. For the Lord God is a son and
shield. The Lord bestows favor and
honor. No good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.
Lord Almighty, blessed is the one who trusts in you.
When David had the opportunity to sing that song that was
written by the sons of Korah, I'm sure that he connected with
it because it defined his longing to be in the presence of
God. But we all know reading about
David's life, he wandered. He wandered away from God.
He did it a lot. And Psalm 84 is is a reflection
of an intention. Have you ever, like sung a song
in it? And it's talking about how much
I care about God and how much I love God and all that.
And you kind of have a hard time singing it because.
You know that that's not actually true about you.
You know, it's like that's not, that's a little bit puffed up
for you. And maybe I don't have a right
to sing. It saw many force like that.
It's not talking about necessarily what is, but it's
talking about what I would want it to be.
Like my the intention of my heart.
This is the desire of my heart. This this is the kind of
relationship I want to have with God.
This is the kind of priority I would like to have with God.
Now David little different than the sons of Korah, because that
humble heart made him a very transparent man and so he writes
12 verses in Psalm 139. Now a lot of us, when we look at
Psalm 139, we concentrate in the middle section of it, where it
talks about being fearfully and wonderfully made.
And it all of my days were written in your book before one
of them came to be. And you knit me together in my
mother's womb and all that, right.
But look at the 1st 12 verses that David writes.
It says, you have searched me, Lord, and you know me now.
This is real. This is transparent.
You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts
from afar. You discern my going out and my
lying down. You're familiar with all my ways
that that should make you a little uncomfortable.
Do you really, God, do you really know all my ways, not
just the ones I want you to know before a word is on my tongue?
You know it, Lord, You know it completely.
You hem me in behind, and before you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to
attain. Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
You see, there's there's that human side of us that
necessarily want to be in the presence of God.
But I can't escape you. God, you're there, right?
If I go up to the heavens, you're there.
If I make my beds and depths, you're there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn.
If I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand
will guide me. Your right hand will hold me
fast. If I say, surely the darkness
will hide me and the light become night around me.
Even the darkness will not be dark to you.
The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to
you. That is a deeper and more
transparent reality. Because what David is admitting
is that the presence of God is where the truth is.
Not just general truth, but the truth about David, The truth
about all of his inconsistencies, about all of
his hypocrisy. It's right there, and that's
uncomfortable for us, right? But when we know that it leads
you to the 23rd and the 24th verse, look what it says.
Search me God and know my heart. That's a scary thing to pray.
Test me that's even scarier and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way
everlasting. That is what comes out of a
humble heart. To have a heart that pursues God
is to be a person of constant reflection and repentance.
It's where the truth is revealed, and then it's
addressed with repentance. David had the heart of a
stranger, and it proceeded out of a humble heart.
He also had the heart of a warrior.
Now there's no doubt about that. There's plenty of information in
the Bible about that. Look at Samuel Second Samuel
814. He says it puts he put
Garrison's throughout Edom and all of the Edomites became
subject to David. But this sentence is the one I
want you to see. The Lord gave David victory
wherever he went. That's pretty powerful isn't it?
David had the heart of a warrior.
As long as he was in the presence of God, God gave him
the victory. Now, next week, Clayton is going
to be preaching about this epic battle, this epic battle between
David and Goliath. And I'm not going to spend time
on that and steal his Thunder, but I'm going to steal just one
verse that refers to the heart of David.
It's First Samuel 1747, so he's facing off with Goliath in the
with Goliath in the Valley of Elah.
And they're having this conversation, which is like this
hateful conversation. And this is how David ends it.
Before he goes on attack, all those gathered here will know
that is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the
battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our
hands. This is powerful because what
David is saying, his warrior's heart is saying this.
Whatever victory I receive, it's not about me.
It I'm not going to be the one who wins it.
God is going to be. It's not even a physical battle.
It is not a battle of of weapons like swords or Spears.
The matter of fact, God is going to be the one who does the
fighting. God is going to be the one who
does the winning. And God is going to be the one
who receives the glory. Now, you can't do that unless
it's not about you. You can't do that with pride.
You can't do that unless you have a prepared, repentant
heart, and all of David's victories depended on that.
And so do all of yours, all the battles you fight, all the
giants you face. Without it, even the things you
perceive as victories in your life really aren't.
They're still defeats. Unless the battle belongs to the
Lord. David had the heart of a
warrior, and it flowed out of a humble heart.
Finally, David had the heart of a father.
There's no doubt that when you read about David's life and the
tragedies of his life, you realize how much of A father he
wanted to be. He really did desire to have the
heart of a father. In a few more weeks, we're going
to be learning about David's biggest defeats, because the
biggest defeats actually happen in David's own heart.
Those are the places where he loses battles.
And we're going to also learn just how much it costs him.
You see, when David gives in to the lower story and the sinful
desires that are in his heart, not only does he become a victim
of it, everybody around him becomes victims of it.
There's a while ago I I preached a a sermon on the erosive power
of sin and how sin all begins inside the mind.
And there are 7 ES related to that.
And it's the way all sin comes to us.
It's the entrance of a thought. Then we entertain the thought.
Then we examine the thought like, well, you know how good
this is going to feel versus what's going to cost me.
And then we get to this fourth E, which is to enjoy the
thought. It's where we actually begin
sinning, because sin begins in your mind and in your heart.
So to lust after a thing, to want to do a thing, to defy God
is where sin happens, right? And then some of us believe
Satan's lie, that is. Well, since I'm already guilty
of this sin, I may as well go ahead and do it.
So after I enjoy the thought, I go to the to the 50, which is to
experience the thought. And we think that it's the same.
It isn't the same because when we're enjoying the thought,
there's only one victim of that sin, and that's you or me.
But when I experience the thought, then the rock hits the
water and the ripples go out and everybody else around me gets
affected by it, right? Because that's what Satan does.
He doesn't want to just destroy you, He wants to destroy
everybody you love and care for. Nobody knows that better than
David because there's a big shift between it being in my
mind and actually acting it out and the place where it hit David
the hardest was with his children.
David had the heart of a father, but he failed as a father.
He was defeated as a father. And the fact is, it was
heartbreaking and it was avoidable.
And your sin is heartbreaking and avoidable.
My sin is heartbreaking and avoidable.
And the truth is even though we want to always paint ourselves
as the victim, we are also the perpetrator.
We're both. We play both roles all the time,
both victim and perpetrator. And there's only one thing we
can do. Same thing David did in Psalm
51. John wrote about it the apostle
first, John 19. It says if we confess our sins,
he God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and
purify us from all unrighteousness.
We see David doing that in Psalm 51.
He wrote it down how humbling it would have been to admit that in
a song, and that's what he did. Now understand that that doesn't
mean there aren't going to be consequences and restoration.
Some people really have a really skewed view of what restoration
means. Restoration does not mean
everything goes back to the way it was.
Restoration means that your relationship with God is in the
process of of being restored. But you can still be
disqualified from a lot of things because of the
consequences of your sin or my sin, and that definitely
happened to David. It does mean that your
relationship is moving back into a right place with your Heavenly
Father, and David knew that. He wrote about it in Psalm 23.
Look at the second-half of verse three.
It says He guides me along the right paths for his name's sake.
Some of you may have memorized it as that.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's
sake. And one thing we need to learn
from David is that the path of righteousness never, ever, ever,
ever goes through fields of sin. I've talked to people before
who've said, well, you know, we did this, but I can see God's
hand in it. No, you didn't.
That's Satan's lie. God would never lead you.
He would never lead you through a field of sin.
There was always a better way. Like you hear Clayton say over
and over. God's way is the best way.
You see, David had the heart of a father, but he failed in many
ways as a father. Good warrior really wanted to be
in the presence of God, had the humble heart, but still needed
grace and mercy, didn't he? Just like we all do.
So all three of these characteristics that we see in
David's heart reflect the heart of God.
God is a stranger. You know that he's a stranger.
When God describes himself, or prophets describe God, they use
a word to describe him over and over again.
And that word is holy, right? Holy.
What does that mean? It means other than like the the
actual definition of that word means to be separate.
Other than that, God is a holy God.
Basically. It's a recognition that this is
something that God is that I'm not.
Any holiness that I'm going to ever have in my life isn't going
to be mine. Any holiness that's going to
happen in my life, God's going to have to impart that to me.
It's going to have to be the result of an empty cup that he
fills with holiness. I need to be holy.
I need to be separated from worldliness and pridefulness and
all that other stuff. But you see God, that he's truly
that he is a stranger, He is holy.
There is a distance between US and God, because even though we
were made in this image, sin has messed that up.
But God, and only God through Jesus Christ can close the
distance. And someday he's going to finish
that work and this world won't be your home anymore.
God is also a warrior. He has never gone into a battle
that he hasn't won. In Romans 8 it says we are more
than conquerors. Through him that loved us right.
He never loses a battle, but the greatest battle ever fought was
the one his son fought right here in the dirt on a cross with
his blood, when he defeated once and for all the power of sin and
death and proved it when after he died he rose from the dead.
God is also a father. And unlike David and his
failures, he's a good father, a great father.
And good is a Good is a great word and great is a great word.
But it's not the best word, The best word to put in front of
Father is this one. Ready.
Our Father. Our Father.
And unlike David, our Father will never leave us.
He'll never forsake us. He'll never abandoned us, be
lured away from us, deny us or fail us.
See, I don't want to be a man after David's heart, but like
David, I long to be a man after gods.
And I hope that's what you want to be as we move to a time of
decision. I have no idea what you're
dealing with right now. I have no idea what you walked
in to this room with. If you're online, I have no idea
what you're carrying with you right now.
And you really have no idea what I may be carrying right now
because although we might put a nice face on it, you know, clean
up, smile, and maybe we're actually having a good day or a
good season in life, that can change.
The circumstances can change at any given moment, right.
So some of you I know, might be in a, in a time of real
struggle, hurt, and maybe you feel isolated and alone, like
other people don't understand you.
They don't know what's going on, and maybe you're just reluctant
to dump the truck in their front yard and tell them the truth
about what's going on. It's kind of human nature, isn't
it? I don't want to burden anybody
else, which is also a prideful heart, by the way.
But if you listen to the scriptures from Psalm 139, God
already knows that God is fully aware.
Maybe you've never even spoken it before.
A word is on my lips. You know it, right?
Even though you've been running from God.
The thing is, you can't outrun God.
He's faster than you. And the fact is, if you would
just stop running for a moment and turn around, he's not in the
distance. He's right there.
And the Bible teaches us that we're two or three are gathered.
He's right here, and there's more than two or three of us
here, so he's here. So you've done good to this
point. There is a proximity right now
between you and Almighty God, between you and Jesus Christ.
But if you want him to do a work in your heart today, where does
it begin? Not in a stranger's heart or a
warrior's heart, or even a father's heart.
Begins with a humble heart, a heart that admits that I'm not
strong enough on my own, that I can't do it by myself, that I'm
just a child. And that's why these steps are
here. Because getting down on your
knees is at least some sort of visual representation of
humility, of understanding that God is greater than I am and and
he can do things I could never do.
And when we bring the hurts or desires or anything that's
filling our heart right now, if we if we realize that I've
already filled my cup with all my own stuff and I need to pour
it out, do it in a humble fashion.
And that can happen today. I have no idea what you're going
through, but God does. So why don't you deliver an
honest prayer to him? Maybe it's the Psalm 84 prayer.
Maybe you don't think that you can do it, but it really is your
best intentions, what you'd like to be able to do.
Maybe it's a more transparent prayer, like Psalm 139.
I don't know. But why don't you let him have
his way? Some of you have never come into
an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
And you might look at people that are getting down in that
water, the water of baptism, and you might think that's
embarrassing and that's humbling.
But do you ever see that on their faces when they come out
of the water? Do you ever see people that,
like, I'm so embarrassed that I did this?
I am I I feel so humiliated that I did this?
No, because it is a reflection of a desire to have a humble
heart before God. I can't take my sins away, but
Jesus, you can. I can't wash them away.
But you shed your blood and my sins are washed away in that.
I have no idea. I have no idea what God is doing
in your heart right now, but I will just give you 2 words
before we pray. Let him would you stand with me,
Heavenly Father, in Jesus name. I pray that we would let you.
We would let you do whatever it is you want to do right now.
I pray, Father, that you would help us to turn down the volume
knob of the noise of this world so that we can hear the still
small voice of our Father. In Jesus name, Amen.