Welcome to the Illuminate Church podcast.
We hope today's message is encouraging to you.
Isn't it nice to have just a little moment of silence, a
little break for the noise when it doesn't feel so rushed or
busy or hurried? Did anyone feel uncomfortable
with that silence? You're kind of like, what are
you doing right now? I'm at church and I know how
this program goes. You're supposed to be talking.
I'm supposed to be listening. Then anyone feel the urge to
just like, grab your phone and do something productive?
It's kind of like, why are you wasting my time, right?
Our lives are so full, so full, and we have so much to do and so
much responsibility. You know, I was talking to my
grandpa the other day and he lives not too far from here out
in Leesburg. And, and he was like, Dave, I'm
so glad I'm retired because if I wasn't retired, I would not have
time for my social life. I was like, all right, that's
good to know. He's a busy man.
But have you ever gone to bed at night and thought, I don't think
I've stopped moving all day? It's like you wake up in the
morning and you go, go, go, go, go, and then you lay down at
night, get ready to do it all over again.
We feel so busy. There's so much to do.
We have our school, we have jobs, we have to pay the bills,
right? We've got to clean the house,
we've got to do maintenance on things.
You know, we've got to live our lives and we have our kids, our
kids. You know, it's like, I feel like
I work for my kids sometimes. They are, they're my little
employers, my tiny CEO's and they expect their agenda.
They want to know what they're doing, when they're doing and
how they're doing it. And I'm the one and my wife and
we're supposed to be the ones responsible to provide that for
them, right? Like they've got soccer
practice, they've got cross country in the morning.
They've got to make sure they have their lunches made and
ready for the day. And it's like, can I get a
water? Can I get this?
Can I get that? Daddy, can you fix my toy?
Mama, can you? And by the end of the day, it's
kind of like I've done so much. And then you clean it all up,
right? Anybody.
Is this anybody? You cleaned it all up and ready
for the next day. It's so much, so much.
We're so busy. But I have a question for you.
In our wild busyness, how do we practice devotion to Jesus?
How do we pause? How do we slow down and actually
engage in an abiding relationship with Jesus?
If you brought your Bible or you have you have it on your device
on you version, you can go ahead and turn to John chapter 15 and
that's why you're turning there. I just want to give a shout out
to my people in the mezzanine. What's up guys?
You feeling good up there? I love seeing that mezzanine
filled. It's such a wonderful church
that we're part of and it's because God is here.
I know that you know that, but it's true.
And it's because we have wonderful pastors.
Pastor Tim, pastor Christine, you guys are genuine.
You're the real deal. You are beautiful people and
wonderful friends. And I, I can say, you know,
because I have the microphone right now and they would never
say they care for you so, so, so deeply that they're thinking
about you. And we talked a lot about when
we do have our teeth brushing time, it's like you're, you're,
you're focused on talking about the people about what's going on
in the church And, and there is a deep love in their hearts for
you, for illuminate each one of you.
And, and I know in our lives, I'm very grateful and Elena is
to for our friendship and relationship with you guys.
Thank you for being such wonderful people and so inviting
and so warm and for the opportunity to speak today.
Thank you so much. We love our pastors, don't we
guys? Hey, there's some churches I
wouldn't say that about, just saying they're the real deal.
And also my family. I know we know a lot of you guys
now that we've got three kids, Elaine and I do.
And, and I want to say that worship was my favorite because
my favorite worship leader was leading today.
I'm sorry, Alex, I don't know if you're here, but sorry, Alex, I,
I love you too, but it's not as much, but I, I loved worship.
I love that we get to, to serve church together.
And we've got three kids, David, Liam's 11 and Joseph is 8 and
Verity's five. And if you saw the video
announcements, just at the very end, there's a little girl and a
yellow shirt carrying a basket of toys.
That's my daughter. She's so sweet and so beautiful.
And we're just, we're so thankful for the family the
Lord's given us. But today we're going to center
ourselves around devotion, around learning how to abide in
Christ. And so let's look at John
chapter 15. It says, abide in me and I in
you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless
you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the
branches. He who abides in me, and I in
him bears much fruit. For without me you can do
nothing. How much is nothing?
Nothing. A branch that's cut off from the
tree can produce no fruit. It dies.
It has to abide, it has to remain The word abide in the
Greek is this word pronounced men?
No. Now I looked it up on YouTube,
so I know it's right. Men know.
Do you say that men know what that word means is simply this.
To remain, to stay, to linger, to be present, to tarry, to
stand, to abide. The invitation to abide is not a
task. It's about relationship.
Abiding is something that we do when we're doing something we're
enjoying, right? Or if we're with someone that we
love, we want to abide, we want to be there.
We want to engage in that situation that we're in.
When Elaine and I were dating, I would drive from where I live to
where she lived, which is about an hour each way, just to
deliver flowers to her door because I wanted to abide with
her. I wanted to be with her.
It was worth it. It was worth that and so much
more. People come here to this area
from all over the world, and they spend all of their money to
abide with whom? Mickey Mouse, right?
It's so true. When you abide in Christ, the
noise stops. It quiets and silences the noise
around you when you learn to stay, when you learn to remain,
to linger with Him, to be connected to the vine.
You didn't even know that noise was there until it stopped, did
you? Sometimes we don't know the
noise we're living in until we stop it.
Learn to abide. If you want peace from the
noise. Learn to abide in Christ.
When you abide in Him, you don't need to be anywhere else.
And even if you do, you're OK to show up late because you're with
Jesus, because he's the most important person.
He's all that matters. We need to find our secret place
where we go into the room and and we shut the door and we just
remain with him. Where's your secret place?
What's it like? When I think of a secret place,
I think about that story, The Secret Garden.
Have you read that before or have you seen the movies?
There's this little girl, Mary Lennox, and, and she comes and
finds this beautiful, overgrown, abandoned garden and finds the
key and can get in through the wall and, and she goes into this
place and remains and just plays and finds joy and, and abides in
the secret place. Nobody knows about it.
Nobody knows she's there. She's just there remaining.
And I wonder, do you ever spend time with God like that, where
you can just disappear under the gate of the garden?
Nobody knows you're there. You can just stay, remain, be in
His presence. We often treat our times of God
more like the drive through line of Chick-fil-A.
We want efficient, we want convenient, we want quality.
We want it quick, don't we? Show up.
It's my pleasure to give you your food.
It's my pleasure to take it and drive away and eat it and enjoy
it, right? We want it quick.
But you cannot build a marriage in a drive through.
You cannot raise your children in a drive through.
And you cannot build a deep intimate relationship with Jesus
in a drive through either. It takes abiding.
It takes being present. It takes remaining if we just
pause and remain with Him. We have to learn to cultivate
that abiding relationship. Jesus isn't in a rush.
He's got all the time in the world.
You want to know why? Because He made it.
He's not in a hurry. He's never late.
He's not bound by time. But I think sometimes he just
needs us to step in. We just need to step into that
moment that he's creating for us.
Real intimate love happens when we abide, when we stay, when we
dwell, when we go to that secret place with him.
And so today I want to give you 3 keys to abiding in Christ. 3
keys. We've been in this series about
the seven habits of Jesus people.
How many Jesus people in the house?
Amen. There's a lot of us 7 Habits of
Jesus people, and today we're going to talk about abiding in
devotion with Jesus. So here's the first key
everybody say #1 reading your Bible.
Reading our Bible. Pastor Tim preached the message
just a few weeks ago about reading the Bible, and it was so
beautifully crafted and presented and so challenging.
And so if you weren't here that Sunday, I'd encourage you go and
listen to the message. Or even if you were, I'd
encourage you to listen to it again because it's such a
challenge. It's such an encouragement to
spend time in the Word. If we want to abide in Christ,
we have to have a relationship with this book.
Do you know what the Bible says the Bible is?
Did you catch that? What does the Bible say that the
Bible is? Let's look in Second Timothy
316. It says all Scripture is
breathed out by God. It's profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness that
the man of God may be complete equips for every good work.
And so all Scripture is God breathed.
That means that the words that are in the pages of this book
are breathed out by God. So when we take these words and
we read them, we're doing this and breathing in the breath of
God, and we begin to declare and believe and speak out the word
of God. We are breathing out the breath
of God. We need the breath of God in our
lungs. Look at this in Genesis 27.
Then the Lord formed Lord. God formed the man from the dust
of the ground and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life
and the man became a living creature.
When God breathes, it creates life.
Look at Job 33 verse 4. The Spirit of God has made me,
and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Do you remember what happened to Job?
Job suffered intensely. He bore an intense amount of
grief and in Job 33, which is almost at the end of the book,
he says, the breath of God gives me life.
That means it sustains me. It's sustained him through his
suffering. Ezekiel 37 and five says it says
the story of the dry bones. When the dry bones come to life
says, thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will
cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
God's breath resurrects things from the dead.
And so do you need the creating, sustaining, and resurrecting
breath of God in your life? I mean, do you really need it?
We all need it. It's here.
It's right here. And a lot of times this book
sits on a shelf in our house with a thin layer of dust, and
we ignore the power of the breath of God.
If we would just open it and breathe in, we would experience
His presence in ways like we've never known.
Learn to abide in His word. The second thing everyone say #2
prayer. We need to have an abiding
prayer relationship with Jesus. Conversations with people that
you don't know can sometimes tend to be really awkward,
right? Because you're kind of like
making conversation. You're kind of just trying to
figure out you know who's who and, and get on with the thing
and you know, whatever it is. But often times those
conversations are short, you know, to the point, whatever.
And then you kind of reach that point.
If you're an introvert like me, you reach that point in the
conversation where you're like, okay, all right, so and you kind
of don't know what else to say. You know, I read something that
if you carry a bottle of water around with you or a glass of of
water or whatever, you know, if you're talking to somebody you
don't know, just making small talk, it's like a great
conversation. And because you'd be like, oh,
I've got to go get some more water or I need to go to the
bathroom. I've had too much water, you
know, So if you ever see me carrying water when I'm talking
to you, you'll know what I'm up to.
No, I'm teasing. I'm teasing, trying to help some
people out. Sometimes you feel the need to
carry on the conversation, but when you really know someone,
the conversations become longer, they become more intimate.
You get to know one another better.
Many of you experienced this as you got to know your spouse.
First dates are kind of like trying to get to know one
another. And then little by little, you
begin to deepen and your conversations begin to build on
one another and they're longer and they're more familiar.
You become really, really familiar with the voice of the
person you're spending time with.
Somebody calls on the phone. You're like, hey, what's up?
Like you know them. Also, you have caller ID.
That was like a total 1990s thing before we knew who called.
What did we do before we knew who was calling, right?
Moms. You know your babies cry, right?
Any moms in the house, you know when your baby's crying, you
know that's your baby. And not only do you know that's
your baby, you know what that cry means.
You know, if the cry is distress or if the baby's hurt, or if
there's just like a tantrum going on, or if there's a
squabble with the other siblings.
You know what that cry is. And I want to suggest to you
that we can be so close with the Lord, abiding in His presence,
knowing Him in such a way that we become so familiar with His
voice. We can hear Him clearly, close
enough to hear the whisper. So how do we pray?
How do we have this engaging prayer life?
Jesus taught us how to pray, and let's look at what He said here
in Matthew chapter 6, verse 6 through 14.
I'm going to read from the message translation.
It's going to be here on the screens for us.
Here's what you ought to do. Find a quiet, secluded place so
you won't be tempted to role play before God.
Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage.
The focus will shift from you to God and you begin to sense His
grace. I want to read it again from the
ESV English standard version. It says, but when you pray, go
into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who's
who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward
you. Let's keep going in the message
in verse 7 through 14. The world is so full of
so-called prayer warriors who are prayer ignorance.
They're full of formulas and programs and advice peddling
techniques for getting what you want from God.
Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you're
dealing with, and he knows you better than you, what you need
with with a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply
like this. Our Father in heaven, reveal who
you are. Set the world right, Do what's
best. As above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the devil.
You're in charge. You can do anything you want.
You're a blazing beauty. Yes, yes, yes.
According to Lifeway and Barna Research, a lot of Christians
don't have an abiding prayer life, and even some without a
prayer life at all. More people say they believe in
prayer than actually do it. Isn't that wild?
Listen, 79% of Americans say they believe in the power of
prayer, but only 31% say they pray regularly.
Many prayers that we pray are on the go prayers.
And listen, there's nothing wrong with praying on the go
while you're going somewhere doing something.
We should always do praying. In fact, the Bible says pray
without ceasing. But we can't survive on on the
go prayers. We need abiding prayers.
But over 60% of Christians say they pray on the go, while
they're driving, while they're working, while they're doing
chores, while they're doing other things.
Prayer is often transactional for people Only 16% of
Christians say that their prayer life is mostly about
relationship with God. The rest say that they're asking
for help, guidance or blessings in their life.
Transactional prayers. You might think that people in
ministry, right, like pastors and people who serve in church,
they, they find it so much easier to pray because they get
paid to do it, right? Like you get paid to pray,
Pastor Tim, You get paid. It's what's up.
I mean, for real, Listen, 70% of pastors say they struggle to
have time in their busy lives to have a prayer life.
It's all of us. We are given the same 24 hours a
day. All of us have the same 24 hours
in a day and it's what we choose to do with our 24 hours that
makes us different. Have you thought about this?
I'm sure you probably heard people say if it's not on your
calendar, it's not, it's not happening, right?
It's not on your calendar, it's not happening.
Have you ever thought about scheduling Jesus on your
calendar? Have you ever thought about
having a meeting with Jesus everyday that happens?
I mean, you wouldn't not show up for your meeting with your boss
tomorrow morning, right? You wouldn't, you're not going
to not show up for your team meeting and, and, and be there
and be present. You're going to be there because
your calendar says you're going to be there.
So schedule a meeting with Jesus and don't miss it.
Be there. We have to build abiding prayer
into our lives. And when we pray, don't bring a
Jesus do list. You've ever heard of a honey do
list, right? It's like all the things that
you've done around the house. Don't bring a Jesus do list.
Simply come. We can't show up for prayer and
just tell him everything that we need and not listen.
That's not abiding prayer. We need to pray abiding prayers.
Maybe start your prayer time by saying, God, what do you want to
say to me today? And then wait, listen, what if
He says something? What if we're so quick going
from thing to thing, drive through relationship with God,
and we miss the jewels and the treasure of what He wants to
share with us? We have to abide in prayer.
It's so important. We need ongoing awareness and
conversations with God. There are also these times that
God will call us into deeper moments of prayer, deeper senses
of abiding in his presence. We're like Moses, we need to go
outside the camp to the tent of meeting.
Intimacy with God grows behind the closed door of prayer.
Sometimes you got to shut the door.
There's intimacy that happens when the door is closed.
There are times in and my marriage with Elena that we go
into the room and we close the door and what happens in the
room behind the closed door stays in the room.
No one knows what happens behind the closed door.
It's the same with us and Jesus. Having an intimate relationship
with Jesus means you have to go into the room and you have to
close the door. You have to be willing to go to
that place. Some of you are feeling really
awkward by what I just said because you're like, how can I
have a relationship with Jesus like that?
That's the kind of relationship that he's inviting us into.
A deep, loving, passionate, beautiful relationship.
He's we're his bride. He's the bridegroom.
We're invited in. Don't feel awkward around
intimacy with Jesus. Go into the secret place, shut
the door and be intimate with your Father, with Jesus.
He is there waiting for us. I love this quote from Francis
Frangipane. He's an author and he wrote a
book that I love called Holiness, Truth in the Presence
of God. He says this, every minute you
seek God is a minute enriched with new life and new power from
God. Give yourself a minimum amount
of time, an hour or two each day, but don't set a limit, as
the Lord may draw you in to seek Him into the night.
And as you continue, day by day, week by week, until you have
drawn near enough to God that you can hear His voice, becoming
confident that He is close enough to hear you whisper.
If we are going to become a holy, we must sever the chains
and restraints, the bondage of desiring just an average life.
We will choose to leave the camp of familiarity and place our
tent in the presence of God. It sounds kind of crazy, doesn't
it? Like an hour or two each day.
That's a lot of time. You're like, how would I build
that into my life? Listen, you spend an hour or two
watching TV everyday. You spend an hour or two on
Instagram, you're doomed scrolling YouTube.
I'm just saying you have time. We have the same amount of time.
There will be times that Jesus will call you into these deep
places where you have to set something aside to pursue him
with greater intensity. Are you willing?
I mean, will you respond to the call if Jesus invited you to
dinner? Like if if we live 2000 years
ago and Jesus says, come to my house for dinner and you believe
in him, right? You're not going to miss that
dinner. You're going to turn up and I'm
telling you right now, Jesus is inviting you to dinner.
He's inviting you to spend this time with Him.
It's us that are too busy for His presence.
We need to learn to abide. How many of our prayers are one
sided? How many times do we do all the
talking and none of the listening?
Are we only praying when it's convenient or are we willing to
inconvenience ourselves to pray, to spend time, and to abide in
His presence? Are we seeking His hand what He
can do for us, or are we seeking His heart, who He is?
We have to be willing to go to that place.
And so I want to ask you and challenge you, Church, can we
commit? Are we willing to say I'm going
to go to the secret place, I'm going to have an abiding prayer
life with God? Imagine, imagine this, if
everyone in this room, let's put the 9:00 service in the same
boat, everyone who comes to illuminate church.
If we took time this week to spend one hour with Jesus, one
hour of dedicated time when we're pursuing him, when we're
abiding with him, what would we look like?
What kind of church would this be?
I mean, we would have to get a new building, guys.
Like we would need to do something because revival would
break out. Because when you spend time with
Jesus, miracles happen. There's breakthrough in your
life. You begin to get prophetic words
for people. You begin to seek him and find
him and people around you were changed.
That's the kind of church I want to be part of.
Let's not just have illuminate Peso on the outside of this
building. Let's actually be illuminating.
Let's shine the light of Jesus. We can't shine the light if we
don't have it. Fill up, be in His presence.
Spend that time with Him in the secret place #3 everybody say #3
this is the home stretch. We're going to talk about
worship. Worship, having an abiding
relationship with God through worship is so valuable.
It's such a treasure. AW Tozier said this.
We're here to be worshippers first and workers second.
Bible says in Psalm 95, come, let us worship him.
Everyone bow down. Kneel before the eternal who
made us. I was thinking about when Jesus
goes to dinner at Lazarus's house and there's Lazarus who
just got raised from the dead. He's like, I'm back, bro.
Like, this is great. And then we've got Martha, who's
working and serving and, and everything going on.
And then who do we have over here?
We have Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, lingering, abiding.
And do you remember what she does?
She takes the expensive, costly oil.
This was worth a year's worth of wages.
This is valuable stuff. Valuable.
Think about how much you make in a year and think about, am I
willing to shatter that at the feet of Jesus?
Am I willing to give everything to him?
Mary breaks this jar of oil and pours it over Jesus's feet and
lets down her hair and, and begins to wipe his feet with her
hair. And you know what happened?
Judas and, and old Judas, you know, and the others and they're
like, what are you doing? This is crazy.
This could have been so, this could have supported the
ministry for so many more things.
This could have given us so much more opportunity to further the
work of Jesus in the world. And Jesus is like, what's
happening here is significant and this is important.
This is worship. And I wonder, are you willing to
bring worship that cost you something?
I mean, it's pretty easy, isn't it, to show up the church and
sing a few songs? Is it easy to give a costly
offering of what you've made in your finances?
Is it easy to schedule that time with Jesus, to take time, a
couple hours a day and set that aside for him?
That time is valuable. David, King David said I will
not bring to God that which cost me nothing.
He's worth everything. He's worth more than you have
everything. We can never give enough to show
the beauty and the glory of who He is.
But I can give my heart. I can give myself.
I can be like Mary and not be so distracted with the working and
the doing to not realize that Jesus is calling me to sit with
him, to be with him, to abide with him.
That house where Mary broke the oil over Jesus's feet.
The Bible says that the house was filled with the fragrance.
Fragrance of worship. What's your house filled with?
Is it filled with the fragrance of worship or the stench of
media? So I was a little strong.
Sorry, that was a little strong. The stench of media.
I don't know, It just came out. Is it filled with that though?
I mean, is it filled with Instagram?
Is it filled with comparison? Is it filled with striving?
What's the fragrance of your home?
Let it be worship. Let it be abiding in worship in
the presence of God. So how do we do it?
We talked about a lot of things today.
How do we actually do it? There's, there's been times in
my life that that I feel like I've I've done really well and
other times that I've not done so well, but I seek to do as
best as I can. And I just want to share a few
things of what I do that maybe would encourage you and maybe
give you some tips and tricks to spending abiding time with
Jesus. The first thing is just to find
a quiet place might be difficult.
You might have to leave your house.
You might have to go for a walk or disappear into your closet.
Find a quiet space. Step outside of the noise.
Don't bring your phone. This thing is loaded with
distraction loaded. Don't bring your phone.
And when you go in to spend time with the Lord, maybe set an
alarm. Does anybody have an old clock?
Like an old fashioned clock? Like no one?
Yeah, there's one person in the back.
Thank you, Sir. I see that hand.
If you have an old clock or a timer or something like that,
set a timer for an hour and stay until the timer goes off.
Remain until the timer goes off because everything in you is
going to tell you to get up and go because you're so busy.
There's so much to do. Just remain until the timer goes
off. When you pause, when you start,
just just kind of pause and and quiet yourself before the Lord
and tell the Lord you're ready to listen.
So got him. I'm ready.
I'm here. I'm going to open my ears to
hear from you. I'm going to open my heart to
you, whatever you want, I'm in. And then maybe play some worship
music, pull up, you know, Spotify or if there is something
I'm telling you to not have your phone.
How are you going to stream music?
I mean, how do we play music anymore?
Turn on airplane mode. How about that and listen to
some worship music that would be encouraging to you and just sing
along with the music and, and begin to worship the Lord.
And, and just as you're in that space, you can just experience
his presence and just sing just to him.
Nobody's listening. Read a chapter 2 of the Bible.
Don't forget to breathe in the breath of God.
Breathe out His breath. I love to take my Bible and I
love to say Scripture out loud when I'm spending time with him
because I love to hear it. I love.
I think it's important that we say the Word.
It's important that we memorize it.
If you don't read your Bible much or you're kind of just
finding your way through it, you can read Romans.
It's a great place to read. It's so encouraging about who we
are in Christ. You can read the Psalms.
You can read John the story of Jesus.
Just take time and then wait. Just listen.
Don't do anything else. Don't bring any more lists in.
Don't, don't ask him a bunch of questions.
Just wait and see if there's anything that he would say to
you. And if he does, write it down,
like take a pen and paper, write it down.
Just journal something I heard from the Lord.
But listen, even if you don't hear anything from the Lord,
just being with Him is enough. Just being near Him is enough.
You know they say when you're so close with someone that even
being quiet is comfortable. Just be with Him.
Let him speak, let him wash over you and then take time and share
your heart with Him. God, I'm, I'm going through
this. I'm, I just really want to see
breakthrough with my kids. I really want to, I need this
job opportunity to open up. I need you to help me steward my
finances better. I want to be bold enough to be
obedient to what you're asking me to do.
You know, just process these things with the Lord and let him
speak and, and receive what he says to you and just continue to
pray. That's what this exchange can be
like. That's what abiding is.
And then when you hear that timer go Ding Ding, Ding, Ding,
Ding Ding, you know that can be the end.
But maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe you can just stay a little
longer. Remember when Jesus told the
disciples when they were with him in the garden?
Can't you just tarry? Won't you just wait with me?
Won't you just stay? Let's receive the invitation of
our Savior. The more you take time to abide,
the easier it will become. Like I said earlier, everything
in you is going to want to run away because your flesh wants to
live. It wants to to do it's own
thing. It wants to be it's own person.
But what does the Bible say? We have to crucify the flesh.
How do we crucify the flesh? Abide in Christ, abide in Him.
Take that time when your flesh wants to run out the door.
Nope, I'm staying right here. I'm going to spend this time
with Jesus. I'm going to learn to abide in
Him. And the more you do it, the more
often you spend those extended abiding times with Him, the
easier they become. You become more familiar with
His presence, and you won't want to miss that time.
You're going to want to be with him as much as you can.
And when you walk through your life, when you go to your work,
when you do your things with your family, when you're
managing your kids and all the things you're walking with His
presence in you, it gives you strength, gives you power, gives
you boldness. He's with you.
We're going to end the service just a little bit differently
today, and we're going to have a song that's just going to play
over the speakers. There's not going to be a band
up here on the platform because you don't have a band at home.
You don't have Alex in your house to lead you in worship.
Maybe you can call him up. I don't know.
He might turn up, who knows? But you're not going to have
access to a worship leader. You're not going to have
somebody encouraging you. You're not going to have a band.
But what you can do is you can turn on worship music anywhere
you are, in your car, in your house, whatever it is, and you
can begin to worship the Lord. This is an opportunity of
something we all can do. And so we're going to just,
we're just going to do an exercise today together.
We're going to play the song over the speakers and we're
going to get along with Jesus. We're going to have abiding
devotional time. This song is about 5 minutes
long. It's not too long.
And what I want to encourage you to do, I'm going to ask
everybody to stand in just a moment.
And when you stand, if you want to come forward to the altar and
you want to kneel at the altar, or if you just want to go to a
corner of the room, or if you just want to sit back down and
just spend time with the Lord, that's completely fine.
Because what we want is for you to just abide with Christ and
become familiar with how it feels to stop.
Slow down. You don't have to sing the song.
We're going to have the words on the screen.
If you want to read along with the words.
It's a powerful song called The Secret Place, but you don't have
to sing. Just abide.
Just be with him. Let that be enough.
And then after the song, I'll come back up and, and we're
going to, to pray together and, and, and I'll, I'll close this
out. But I want to say to those of
you that might be watching online today or this week or
whenever you're watching, because of copyright things with
YouTube, we can't actually play a song and have it stream
online. So we're going to cut the stream
right now as soon as I'm done talking.
And you can do this quiet time as well.
You can just just as soon as the stream cuts off, just play the
Secret Place by Hillsong. It's the same song.
And you can engage in this time as well.
And so church, I want to ask you, let's go ahead and stand
together. Lord, I pray that you would
speak to us. I pray that you would teach us
to abide. We receive you in Jesus name,
Amen. Thanks for joining us today.
We hope God is speaking to your heart through this message.
If you'd like to connect with us, you can text connect to
407-588-0115 or visit Illuminate dot church.
Have a great week.