Fellowship with God

Well, we're in between book studies. I was visiting with a dear family just a couple of weeks ago who are new to our area, new to Grace Life Church, and they started coming after we had concluded preaching through the book of Titus. You know, with 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and then Titus, and I really like between books to go back and pick up on, very often like I'm doing now, some basic things, some foundational things that we need to reaffirm in our hearts, but also some foundational things that newer church members may not have thought through, and so I'm doing some of that, but while we were talking, since they had again began visiting with us after we finished Titus, the dear lady said, do you ever do expository preaching, preaching through books of the Bible?

I said, yeah, I get to that every now and then. Actually, I preach through 25 books of the Bible and large sections, exposition of large sections of several others, but in the spirit of Martin Lloyd-Jones, who encourages expositors to take some breaks and look at some things, I didn't plan this, but things keep grabbing my heart and my study, and I think, well, I want to talk about that again because it's helped me afresh. So I want to talk about something very basic and very primary and very central to everything we're about. Fellowship with God. Just fellowship with God. We're talking about the Christian stone, 1 John chapter 1 verse 3, where John's writing in this New Testament epistle. He makes a very foundational statement, if you will, to our Christian faith and experience. 1 John chapter 1 verse 3. John writes, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also so that you may have fellowship with us. Then he gets to the foundational thing before that. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ.

Now that's a cornerstone thing there. You're looking at a Judaic context where people viewed religion as something external that you do, something external that you put on, rituals, sacraments, disciplines that you put on the outside, that is. You walk through them externally, if you will, and then somehow you hope that gives you a right standing before God. And then John says, no, that's not it at all.

That's the old economy. That's things that could never make you right with God. What makes you right with God, what gives you fellowship with God is Jesus Christ. So I want to talk Roman numeral one about the principles of our fellowship with God. The principles of our fellowship with God.

Now, A under this would be the provision for it. What is the provision that you and I, as sinners who are unholy, that Ephesians tells us in the womb of our moms, we contained, we possessed a sin nature that called for God's wrath to be against us. So what could make that kind of being to be in loving, intimate, accepted fellowship with God? Well, the provision, of course, is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the provision for us to have fellowship with God. Ephesians two, twelve and thirteen reminds us. Remember, you are at that time separated from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, a phrase to picture that you are excluded from God and God's people and God's things. And strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. You didn't know it.

You could not be intimate with him. You had no fellowship with him. Verse thirteen of Ephesians two. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. What a provision Jesus is. First Peter three eighteen reminds us, for Christ also died for sins once and for all, the just for the unjust.

Here it is. So that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. Now, Jesus is the provision. But if you want to get a little more foundational than that, God the Father sent Jesus the Son to provide for us because God desired your nearness. God desired your fellowship. There's nothing you could have done. There's nothing you could. There's no way you could have stirred up God's interest enough to give you a way that you might in your own strength, power, wisdom, ability, find your way to God.

That can't happen. God came looking for you in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. So we just fall on our faces in humility and say, Oh, how glorious that God would look on me, a child of wrath. A totally depraved sinner and God would say, I want fellowship with you. I'm going to send my son Jesus to righteously make the provision for you to be my own. So that's the provision for our fellowship.

Jesus is the provision. Now, number two, B in the outline under the principles of our fellowship, the pursuit of it, not just the provision Jesus, but the pursuit of it. Now, John was writing and talking about there were some who professed to know Christ that did not give any evidence that they were in the pursuit of fellowshipping with God.

Can I challenge you this morning? Are you in the pursuit of nearness or fellowship with God? For example, talking about those who do not appear to be in pursuit of it, John said in 1 John 1 6, If we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

What's that mean? If we say we have fellowship with him, but as a purpose and pattern of our life, we're still embracing darkness. He's not just saying you sin some. We all sin some.

We shouldn't, but we do. And we're repenters. But he's saying beyond that, when your life is still your perspective and your vision and your pattern of life is still like the pagans of the world, that's darkness. And one particular area he points out in the context of this that proves you are walking in darkness and not in the light of one who's been saved is 1 John 2 11, where he amplifies and helps us understand what this walking in darkness points to.

I would say primarily points to not entirely, but primarily points to that's this. He says the one who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness. Here's what John's saying. There is no way you could be striving in the pursuit of fellowship with God and not also be striving to stay in good fellowship with your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, i.e. your local church family. You cannot have a desire for God's fellowship and not want to fellowship with those whom God fellowshiped with. If you follow Jesus, you know where Jesus is going to go?

He's going to go to church. Now, I don't mean a congregation. We have a lot of congregations in our world today that barely resemble a church.

I agree with John MacArthur. He said a lot of these congregations should be called non churches, not churches. Now, that didn't mean there's not some precious and true Christians in most congregations. I believe that's probably true. However, on the whole, the church has lost its way so significantly that it's hard to call them as a group of church.

There's maybe a remnant in there somewhere. What John's saying, getting back to it, he said, you cannot not like fellowshiping with God's people and say at the same time you're fellowshiping with God. Are y'all with me, church? I don't want to belabor this and chase this rabbit too far, but I remember as a young Christian, as a young minister, I would think I want to do this for Jesus and I want to do this for Jesus and I want to do this for Jesus. You know, it's almost like Jesus spoke to me, not audibly, but louder than that and said, Jeff, I've laid out how I want you to serve me. Why don't you just get in on my plan?

A quick coming up with this for Jesus and this for Jesus and this for Jesus. I decided on the earth, I'm going to do my work through local churches, overseen by elders, served by deacons, where I'll give gifts to all the body, they'll love and serve and care for and evangelize together and edify each other. And you're going to be my kingdom on the earth to glorify me in the earth. That's the way I've ordained it to be. So why don't you just get in on my plan and shut up about the rest of it?

He didn't say it that way, but that's kind of the way I took it. Getting all the way back to the point, you cannot be fellowshiping with God or pursuing it and not have something of a desire, at least the germ or the seed desire in your heart. I want to be with God's people.

All right. Psalm 119, verse two, still talking about the pursuit of it. How blessed are those who observe his testimonies, who seek him with all their heart. Brothers and sisters, seeking him with all of our heart is not just for the exceptional few who are monks crawling up in a cave somewhere to get away from worldliness and sin. It should be the continual communion of our everyday lives, nearness or fellowship with God. The psalmist said in Psalm 119, verse 10, with all my heart I have sought you. And in James, chapter four, verse eight, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. There's to be the continuum of repentance of things in our lives with our hands, our bodies, our actions, but also our hearts coming before God in a continuum of repentance, saying, I want my heart to be yours, Lord. And so often it's not.

That's the pursuit. Now, one day you'll get in heaven and you'll finally be rid of you. You know, you are your problem. It's not my brother.

It's not my sister. It's me, O Lord. But until we get perfected bodies in heaven, our hearts and minds keep drifting away from the nearness and the closest with God. As James 4 reminds us, fellowship or rather friendship with the world is hostility toward God. So talking about the principles of our fellowship, Jesus is the provision that allows it, that enables it, that secures it even, we should say. It's beyond just allowing it.

He's settled it. And then we're to be pursuing it. The third principle here is the preciousness of it. There's a preciousness, a familial element to it, an intimacy, a sweetness about it. I hope you haven't defined God in your mind as this austere, distant, authoritarian being out there somewhere that you have to obey.

No, no. The Lord Jesus, when he prayed, the Bible says in Mark 14 36, he was saying, Abba, Father. Abba's would be the equivalent of our word, Daddy. It's familial.

It has a family loving intimacy in the context. Now, the Jews of this day would scoff at that. How dare you refer to our Holy Father as your daddy, your papa? Well, first of all, Jesus was God the Son, God incarnate, co-equal to God the Father. He could do that. But you know what's astonishing?

You and I also can do that. The Bible tells us very clearly in Romans 8 15. You have not received the spirit of slavery. You've received the Holy Spirit, the co-equal person of the Godhead, with God the Father, God the Son. You've not received the spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption by sons by which we cry, Abba, Father. And then Galatians 6 4, or 4 6 rather, because your sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. When we came to know Christ as Lord and Savior, Christ lives in us in the person of the Holy Spirit. And now we commune with God and approach God the same way the Son of God approaches God.

Abba, Daddy, Papa. There's a preciousness. There's having children and now having grandchildren changes you. There's a preciousness to that grandchild saying, Hi, DD, jumping in your arms and enjoying it. It's just there's not words.

There's not ways to explain it. There's just a prayer. Brothers and sisters, God loves you like your daddy. There is a preciousness to this fellowship that we have with God. Psalm 65, verse four tells us, How blessed is the one whom you choose and bring near to you. If you know the Lord, it's because the Lord chose to bring you near. That's precious.

That's precious. And then John 17 21, Jesus prays in his high priestly prayer before the cross, that they all believers may be one, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us. That they might know that I don't have the articulation ability, the vocabulary to preach near like I would like to, but there's no way to possibly articulate the glories, the sweetness, the wonders, the intimacy, the dedication, the beauty of God, the Father's relationship with God, the Son. We can struggle and wrestle to try.

You can't grasp it. And yet in Christ, that's been given to us. We go to the Father with the same spirit.

The Son went to the Father. The Spirit of the Son is in us. What a preciousness.

What a preciousness. We're talking about the principles. We've talked about the provision for it, Jesus. The pursuit of it. We're to be striving toward it. The preciousness of it.

Now, fourthly, the last one under our first point. The purpose for it. The purpose for it. I've invented a word or two in here to complete my sub outline so I know what I'm doing. Don't come up and give me an English grammar correction at the end because I know I'm doing it.

All right. The purposes. First of all, number one, there's a self-word purpose. There's a self motive, if you will, that's righteous and good in your fellowshipping and drawing near to God. The Bible tells us, John 17, verse 13, again, the high priestly prayer. Jesus is talking to the Father before the cross on our behalf. Now I come to you, Jesus says, talking to the Father.

And these things I speak in the world so that they may have my joy made full in themselves. Now, all through there, he's talked about us being unified and he's talked about us being united and near to God, the Father, and through to Jesus, Jesus, the Son. And now he tells us that nearness, that fellowship with God will bring his joy to the full in our lives. So one of the purposes God gives us for drawing near is for our own self blessing.

Not that we bless ourselves, but that we ourselves are blessed in the nearness of God. Some of you will remember Shanky Sharpe, mayor of Muscle Shoals years ago. Shanky was one of our first elders here and God gloriously saved Shanky rather late in life.

And then he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, didn't live very long after the diagnosis. And he told me on several occasions that he wouldn't trade it for anything because he had found the nearness of God. I can't say that today, but I haven't been given dying grace today. You see, a lot of you think, I don't know if I can face that and I don't know if I can handle that. I don't know if I could do that, Pastor.

Well, you're not there yet. The grace will come when you get there. But his point was, this has drawn me near to God and my blessedness and the joy of it is so rich. So there's a self-ward purpose. It's for your own blessing.

It's for your own joy. My first pastor was Charles Owen Dinkins. What a man of God. He pastored at First Baptist Church, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. It's toward the end of his tenure as a pastor. And here I am, a very young believer, and this Reformed Southern Baptist pastor comes to be our pastor. I didn't see the providence of God in that, but every pastor I've had was Reformed in theology. And my Baptist professors were. And that's very rare, especially in those days.

Radically rare. But Brother Dinkins would often be in his study early in the morning studying and you could hear him shouting and praising God. Just found something in the Bible. He starts shouting, just praising.

He was blessed by his nearness to God. And I learned early on that I could not separate my quiet time of our devotional time from my study time. It's just too much.

Can't do it. But I learned to make my study time for you the devotional time for me. And sometimes I literally sit in my study and come to tears and raise my hand toward heaven and say, I get paid to do this. It's such a joy, such a blessedness to my life. Are you listening? Now, not every day when you come home to mama, are you fired up, excited about it?

Now, don't look at me like a calf at a new gate. You have to work at it sometimes. You have to do what's right and then the joy comes later. So it is with our Lord. We sometimes seek his nearness and we start cold. But if we'll stay in there, we'll end warm.

We start without joy, but we'll end with joy. Oh, there's a purpose for it. There's a self-purpose for it.

Now, let's go to the second one here. There's a worldward, you'd say Godward, but there's a worldward purpose. There's a purpose for the world in us individually as Christians drawing near to God, fellowshiping with God. Notice how Jesus says it again in the high priestly prayer. John 17, 21, that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that they'll be one with us. They'll be in fellowship with us.

They'll be treasuring us. Then here's the phrase. So that to the end for the purpose that the world may believe that you sent me. We're to fellowship with God so that people in the world will see Christ. I got to share the gospel with the dear lady yesterday that I've come into an acquaintance with. And, you know, I was reminded afresh that God put us here so that others might see Jesus. And there's something to you fellowship with God that causes people to look at you and say, there's something different about her.

There's something different about Him. There's a worldward purpose. We impact the world. We even bless the world.

We show the world God is real when we fellowship with Him and He, if you will, oozes out of us. And it's more than your words. I've seen a lot of people who are very disciplined, committed, quote, soul winners, end of quote, and they were too forceful. They were too harsh.

They were too busy winning the argument. And you didn't see God in them at all. When we ought to share the gospel with a humility and a graciousness and a winsomeness, that Christ would be seen through us. So there's a self-worth motive, great joy and blessing comes to us by being near to God. There's a worldward purpose. It impacts the world and shows them the things of God and shows them God. And then number three, there's a churchward purpose. It blesses the church, our brothers and sisters in our local church. First John one, three and four, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

These things we write so that our joy, all of us around you, as you're close to God, our joy may be made complete. There's nothing like going to the small group class and realizing these sisters love the Lord. Going to your men's small groups live and say, these guys, they're not perfect, but they really want to honor the Lord. And in general, in the church family, there's a churchward purpose. Your individual fellowship with God is essential for this church to be what it needs to be. Your nearness to God causes you to be a blessing to the brethren in your local church. Well, not only a self-ward purpose, it gives us personally joy, not only a worldward emphasis, our purpose rather, it blesses the world, it causes them to see the truth and reality of God in Christ. Not only a churchward purpose, it's essential for our brothers and sisters to see it in our lives and it blesses them. But number four, it has a Godward purpose. There's a sense in which being near to God puts us in a condition, if you will, that blesses God. I know you've got to be careful.

I'm not going to sound like some of these whack jobs on TV. All right. But there is a truth here that is quite powerful. First, I'm sorry, Romans 2, 29. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that which is of the heart, not by the spirit, not by the letter. And his praise is not from men, but from God. God sees you and God praises over you, praises because of you. If you're treasuring him and seeking him, have a nearness to him.

And then amplifying this out further, Zephaniah chapter three, verse 17. The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior, and he will exalt over you with joy. He will be quiet in his love and he will rejoice over you with shouts of joy. And here we have God who's praising us. Here we have God who's rejoicing over us.

We are his delight. Now, why do you think God delights in that? Why would God praise us? Why would God find joy in us?

For the very simple fact that there's been something very radical that's happened to us and that very radical thing was the new birth, the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, whereby we now desire what we truly need. We now joy in and desire God. And when God sees that, it gives him joy.

He delights over that. God desires us to know him, to love him, to draw near to him. And look, when God sees a Jeff Noblitt or whoever they may be, and he says sees their pattern used to be this way. Now something's happened and now they're Godward and they're focused. Now they want to be God centered and pleasing and glorifying to God.

They want to find out what God's purposes are in the world and get in on that. And when we're doing that, the Trinity looks at us and the Trinity sees their own wisdom and power and beauty and the change that's happened in our lives. And the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit rejoices over you when you're like that. Joys in you, praises you when you're like that, when those are your desires. But to keep those desires strong, you have to have a nearness to God. You have to have fellowship with God. So in a very real sense, there's a Godward purpose and that it blesses God when we're near to God and treasure God. Treasure God, excuse me.

Now, Roman numeral two, if you will. The practice of our fellowship. We talked about the principles of our fellowship. Now let's talk briefly about the practice of our fellowship. And I don't know, as we end this part, if I've ever preached to you anything more valuable or more important than what I'm going to preach to you.

And not necessarily the first part of it, though I think that's important, it's the third part of the last part of it that I want to see. Our fellowship with God is a reality that once we're converted, it never ends. Now, our fellowship with God is stronger at times, but he said, I will never leave you or desert you.

He's always there. And we need to remind ourselves that while you cannot improve your relationship to God. You're related to God through the merits of Christ that can't be improved upon. You are related to God as God's pure cleansed, born again, forgiven, guilt removed child. You're God's child through the provision of Jesus Christ. That is settled.

You can't fix that, improve on that period. Hallelujah to the land. So you can't improve your relation to God, but you can improve your fellowship with God.

There's a part of this that has to be worked out in time and space history. In First Thessalonians 5, 17 and 18, Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica and he says, Rejoice always and pray without ceasing and everything gives thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So he talks about that. There's this continual communion, this continual fellowship with God, where you ought to always be throwing yourself in rejoicing that everything that happens to you is happening for God's glory. And you're good no matter how horrible it looks. So you can just rejoice in Him and you're to pray without ceasing. That's a continual communion.

You should be striving for that in your daily lives. Just kind of carrying on a communion with God, no matter what happens. As I was sharing with this dear lady yesterday, I remember pausing many times as she was talking, saying, God, give me wisdom.

God, give me wisdom to share with her what she needs to hear. It's just a continual communion. Now, I'm not saying I'm scoring 100 at that, but I do strive toward it as you live your life. So first, that's on Ephesians 5, 17. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and everything gives thanks. There's nothing in your life that you cannot give thanks for. See how communion, I mean, so everything that happens, you can be thankful. And that's communion, i.e. fellowshiping with God. And Christ is the provision, of course, that makes this continual communion, this enduring fellowship possible.

But there are too many times when there are interrupting circumstances and we find ourselves having to fight our way back to God. The young man finished graduate school, the seminary, and he was going into ministry and an older minister was talking to him. He said, I've completed my studies and what I need to do now? He said, well, you went to seminary and you lost God. You studied a bunch of stuff, filled a bunch of stuff in your head. But now you've got to leave school and fight your way back to God.

And I found there's a lot of truth to that. I don't know where we got the notion that we're to take the Greek university approach to training pastors when Jesus didn't do it that way, nor Paul did it that way. They trained them in the work, which is what we're striving to do with the pastors training network. Classroom teaching, but our classroom teaching, and I believe God's given us some really sound stuff because we've drawn it out of 40 years of reforming this church.

And God's taught us some things, a lot of things we did wrong that we can teach these boys not to do. But the teaching is solid. But I would still say 70% of ministerial training is getting in a healthy church and just catching it. Seeing it, watching it, and then the classroom teaching to back it up.

Kind of getting off track here a little bit. We find interruptions in our continual communion. We find ourselves needing to practice back or get back to closeness to God. So very practically speaking, to deepen our fellowship, some practical thoughts. A, under the practice of our fellowship, this first practical thought, set a time for uninterrupted nearness to God. Now we're to commune all the time, but you must have an approach to looking for a daily time to have uninterrupted nearness to God.

And it seems that a morning time is the key. People have asked me through the years, pastor, I like to have my quiet time in the evening. Well, I said, I guess if you want to be your best for Christ while you're asleep, that's good.

That's not wrong. I'm not saying it's sin, but makes sense to start my day near to Him. Especially if there's a world word and a God word and a church word overflow out of my life. Purpose for my nearness to God.

I need to get near to God first. For example, in Psalm 88 verse 13, the psalmist says, But, O Lord, I have cried out for your help, and in the morning my prayer comes before you. Psalm 143 verse 8, Let me hear your lovingkindness in the morning.

So the psalmist said, I want to hear from you in the morning and I want to cry out to you in the morning. Nearness to God is kind of like breathing. You breathe in the word of God. Let it change your thinking, change your view, convict of sin, and then you breathe out your response to the truth of the word of God in your prayer. Breathe in the word, breathe out your prayer.

Back to God. Jesus followed this same pattern that the psalmist followed in Mark 1 35. In the early morning, while it was still dark, Mark 1 35 tells us, Jesus got up, left the house and went away to a secluded place and was praying there. When I was in my first year of graduate school, I rented a little room in a house. There were several of us guys renting the rooms and my bedroom was upstairs and another brother's bedroom was upstairs. And as you went out into the hallway and went down the steps, there was a little space on the wall there above the steps. And he put a placard there so that every morning you have to look at that placard as you leave. And on that board over the steps were these words. If you got up late, you have a thousand things to do, and you're under a lot of pressure, do yourself a favor and skip your morning devotions. Signed, Satan.

I'll just never forget that. We need to seek an uninterrupted time with God before we begin our day. Now, secondly, not just a time, but a secluded place.

Find you a place that you're most likely not to be interrupted. Of course, I have a study in my home. The first church very graciously let me build my study at home instead of having one here at the church. And that has been a wonderful blessing because the moment I walk in these doors, I'm a reactor. I react to every question, everything and every need rather than an initiator and a vision caster. Matter of fact, some of the best times with God is when I'm off because I'm not thinking about all the stuff I need to do. And you get a vision about Pastors Training Institute or Anchored in Truth missions or whatever else God's given us to do around here.

But saying all that to say having a time away from other distractions in a place that will work for you. For example, Daniel, the Bible says in Daniel 6 10, when Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house. Now, in his roof chamber, he had windows open toward Jerusalem and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks before his God, as he had been doing previously. Daniel had a private place on the rooftop where he sought the Lord to practice, to build nearness to God. And I told you before, Jesus said in Matthew 6 6, but you when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who's in secret. So Jesus said, in contrast to the religious authority to the day, he would do these word salad prayers out in the public square so people would honor them. He said, don't be like those guys. Jesus is not saying public prayers wrong.

He's just saying those guys, they lived impressed men. That's why they want to pray in front of men all the time. But your main prayer life needs to be alone with God.

Find a secluded place to spend some time in the word with the Lord. Eleven times in the gospel, the Bible records that Jesus sneaked away from the people. And we find him praying and communing with the Father. Now, I want you to understand, if you're a man sinner, this bothers you.

If you're God sinner, don't bother you. Jesus sneaked away from people who were hungry and he could have fed them. They were diseased and he could have healed them.

They were impoverished and he could have granted them anything he wanted. But he did not come just to make the world better. He came to build a new kingdom that will one day replace this world. This whole thing of Jesus will fix the world. Jesus isn't going to fix this world. Who told you that?

Where did you get that? He's not going to fix this world. He's doing away with this world. It'll be destroyed in wrath and then he'll establish his church in the world in a perfected, glorified, eternal state. Now, that does not mean we should not, as Christians, try to do the best we can for the world. Of course, we're salt and light. But he's not about that.

My point is, Jesus himself sought a secluded place to stay in tune with his Father. Now, here's the thing that revolutionized my life years ago. It's a powerful perspective that everything I think, that might be exaggeration, no, I don't think it is. Everything, everything I've said so far depends on this. If you miss this, forget everything else. The third part of practicing fellowship, not just set a time, not just have a good place, but thirdly, set your perspective. Or you might say, realign or reset your perspective. God, I'm going into the inner room.

I'm going into a secluded place. I've set a time so that I might realign how I'm thinking. Because you know, God, I get to thinking backwards a lot. So here we go, God, I'm going to get in here to realign my thinking. And really, when we have our quiet time, our devotional time, when we're seeking to improve our fellowship with God, what we're really trying to do is realign our hearts with God's heart.

Reset our perspective to be God's perspective. You know, the task of the Christian life and your individual Christian life, our corporate Christian life, is not about getting our will done in heaven, but getting heaven's will done on earth. So God, here I'm coming in my devotional time to get right with heaven's purposes, not me trying to twist your arm into blessing what I want to do. Help me find joy in your will, in your perspective.

Get me realigned. Brothers and sisters, when you fellowship with God, your fellowship is with the King. Your fellowship is with the Lord. He's holy. He's transcendent. He's perfect. He's always good. He's always wise.

He's always right. You do not go to meet with God to negotiate. You go and meet with God to surrender and realign your heart and mind with God's heart and mind. He saved you so that you could join him in his all-important enterprise of building his kingdom. Do you understand, folks? There's a time coming when Jesus comes back and from that moment for all eternity, millions upon billions upon billions upon trillions of years, however you want to describe it, from that moment forever, nothing will be in existence and nothing will matter but God's kingdom.

It's just that you and I have been offered the stupendous privilege of getting in on the embryonic stages of the building of that kingdom right now. So we have to keep getting with God to realign ourselves with the King, the Lord's, the all-wise holy one's purpose. Now look, he can't align with your purpose because if he aligns with you, he would be sinning and he can't sin because your purpose is always unholy. His purpose is always perfect and holy. He can't align with your purpose. And secondly, he would be hurting you by aligning with you. So do you go to your quiet time and say, God, here I am. Let's get me straightened out again.

I was thinking this was important and this is important and this is important. And they are in a sense, but only to the ultimate sense, am I aligned with your grand and glorious purpose for heaven and for earth. He saved you so that you could join him in his all-important enterprise of building his kingdom. He did not save you to be your errand boy to satisfy your wondering desires.

That would hurt you and would not glorify him. So you come before him in this quiet moment to realign yourself, to get back on course. Now, when he saved us, we got realigned positionally. He saved us so that we might line back up, not as Satan's child anymore, but line back up as God's child and that positional righteousness, that positional point, our standing of sanctification could never be changed. But now in time in space history, as we live out our lives on the earth, we keep going to God, seeking God, having fellowship with God, that we might continually get ourselves realigned practically and hopefully progressively. So the positional realignment happened at conversion and the practical realignment is a continual process of sanctification in him. Now, the model prayer that Jesus gave us is called the Lord's Prayer, but it's not the Lord's Prayer.

He didn't need to pray it. But he gave us an example. He gave us the perspective. Now, listen to me.

Do not miss this. He gave us the perspective that every single prayer and every single thing we are and do builds off of this precept. Everything, not most things.

Well, this is the most important part of my life, but no. Everything sits on this principle, the model prayer. You begin the model prayer, Jesus said, when you pray, pray this way. He didn't mean the exact words. It's not a liturgy as such.

I'm not saying that's all wrong, but that's not what it's about. He means this is where your heart should be. This is the core. This is the foundation.

If you lose the foundation, nothing else matters in the house. So he says, you begin this way, our Father, who art in heaven. We can stop right there for a moment, because the only way you can call this holy being in heaven, your Father, and as Jesus said, your papa, your abba, is if God has done something to make you his child. So now you have this one, this holy, righteous, transcendent, glorious, all wise, all knowing, all powerful, all beautiful being, and he is your Father. So help me to get out from under all the other authority figures I seem to want to respect on the earth.

Let me get realigned. You're my Father. I'm of your household.

I'm about your business. I'm to be about your purposes. Our Father, who art in heaven. Secondly, hallowed be thy name. Hallowed be thy name. The word hallowed comes from the word holy.

And what he means is name is used in the Bible to epitomize, to express as better one's character and attributes. May your character and attributes be known so that the world, so that everything that is would look at you and say, wow, what a God. Hallowed be thy name, holy and superior and infinitely greater and more wonderful and more powerful and more wise than anything else. So Father, I'm here in my quiet time. I'm here in my devotion time. I'm drawing near to you that I might once again realize you're my Father and I'm here to make sure you are hallowed, that there's much made of how wonderful, transcendent, glorious, righteous, perfect you are. Now, thy kingdom come, that's the next phrase, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Now that's a high task. I'm to be about the mission with God the Father, that his kingdom is increasingly established in the earth, like it already is established in heaven. No matter what you're about, if you're not about that, you're about the wrong thing.

It's not about you. It's about him and him being hallowed by, through his kingdom being built up in the earth. Now, there's a sense in which the kingdom of God is present in every believer.

You know, when Jesus showed up on the earth, he said the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What he meant was, we're getting it started. It's about to take off. That's why I love Christmas, because man, when he comes to the earth, it's on.

I don't want to say like Donkey Kong, but it's on more than that. It's on. When Jesus comes, it's started. It's like we knew it was coming. We knew it was coming. We didn't doubt it was coming. But he's here and he says the kingdom is at hand. He said, I'm about to get this thing started. So when Jesus said he was here, he said the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

You're about to start seeing it. And as people are converted, local churches come together. God puts elders of them, deacons to serve it. All the body has gifts to serve, care for, love, minister to one another, impact the community with the glory of God. All of that is the kingdom of God getting started in the earth. That's what you're praying in the model prayer.

Help me in the totality of my reality as a husband, as a wife, as a mother, as a father, as a homemaker, as an engineer, as a sanitation worker. Whatever I am, make sure the totality of what I am lines up with the end of your purposes, God, to make your church all it can be in the earth. Now, that's what revolutionized my ministry. Again, early on, I thought, I'm going to do this for Jesus. And I'm going to do this for Jesus. And I think I'll do this for Jesus. And it was all about Jeff until God just, boom, gave me an epiphany and said, no, no, no, it's not about you doing great things for me. It's about the great thing I'm going to do.

Now, do you want to join me in it? So you're realigning yourself with God's name being hallowed, glorified, through him bringing heaven's tight rule to be on earth. And all of its imperfection and limitations that is most realistically and powerfully manifested in local church life. The kingdom of God is present when Christians meet together at the coffee house or wherever, workplace, whatever, school, Christian fellowships, praise the Lord. There's a sense in which the kingdom of God is present and all that, but not like in his local church. That's why the exhaustive teaching of the New Testament is Paul preaching and starting churches. That's all he did.

Y'all getting this? I will stand with you at the judgment seat of Christ if you will give yourself to be all you and your family can be for the betterment and the building up of a biblically, spiritually healthy local church. Now, I'm not talking about just any congregation. Don't go out there and give your life to a congregation that's mildly biblical. You may can work harder than your pastor has worked to make sure we're thoroughly biblical, but it'd be hard to. I've tried to do that and we still have a long way to go. Don't misunderstand me, but I've really tried to do that for these decades. I will stand with you at the judgment seat of Christ when you say, my pastor taught me from your Word to make building up your kingdom, your church, the centerpiece of my life and my purposes. Heavenly Father, that's what I did. And if he says to you, well, you missed it, I'll step up and say, put it on me. Blame me then. That's what I taught.

But I'm confident that's not going to happen. After all, if the glorious, precious, beautiful, all-wise Son of God died to build this church, should I not live to help build this church? You just can't go wrong there. Then he says, okay, our Father who art in heaven, I have used my Father. Hallowed be thy name. I live to exist to bring glory and honor and praise and manifestation of your attributes in this world so people know how great and glorious you are. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. I want to get in on your beginning of your kingdom and the earth, which for now is local churches. That's the most authentic manifestation of God's kingdom and the earth today.

Not the only, but the greatest and the best. Give us this day our daily bread. Why should God give you anything to eat when you're not about his kingdom?

Why would you ask God for something to eat if you're going to serve another kingdom other than his? Are y'all with me? This isn't hard. If a guy comes to work for you and the first pay period comes around, I feel like Kenneth Copeland now, you know, come here.

If I touch you on the head, just be still, don't fall out or anything. But I lost my train of thought thinking about Kenneth Copeland. Help me, Pam. Give us this day our daily bread. If you are about something other than his kingdom, why should he feed you?

If a guy goes to work for you and it's the first pay period and it comes to you that all week long he was actually working for another company, are you going to give him his check? You have no right to ask this holy king for anything if you're not aligned with him. Guys, this isn't hard. Isn't the Lord's Prayer powerful?

It is so simple. I really like the next part. Forgive us our debts, our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. So we come to this part in our communion with God and we say, Now, Lord, unfortunately, as you said through the psalmist, you remember that we are but flesh.

I'm still going to blow it. I'm still halting, faltering and weak and inconsistent. But, oh God, in my heart of hearts, would you forgive me again? Realign me again to get back on the team again, to strive to build your church, your kingdom on earth, like the one that's up in heaven. That means Jesus having all rule and honor and glory. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. That's the next part. God, don't. Would you guard me from the stuff that would really get me off track bad?

That's what he's saying. Would you keep me from the things that would really cause me to miss this and really cause me to not be effective for you? We just had a man that was esteemed as one of the greatest Christian spokesman in America today who was found to have an immoral affair. So I plead with God.

God, I can't keep Jeff Noblitt, but would you keep me? Deliver me from evil. Guard me from the things that would cause me to miss what all really matters. So say the model prayer. It's the foundation stone of it all.

And it's so much fun. It's so much fun to roll with the Lord on this thing. So we draw near to God in fellowship that we might realign ourselves to his purposes, his perspective, that we might get in on effectively building his kingdom in the earth. For now, that's local churches primarily, not only but primarily, to the end that his name would be hallowed.

He would be greatly glorified. That's why I get up in the morning. That's why I study. That's why I teach. That's why I teach in the Pastor Training Institute. And that's why I try to help with these pastors, mentoring them all over the world, because that's God's perspective.

That's God's purposes. And you, dear church, as your pastor, I can say, have been a faithful co-laborer with me, with us, your staff and leaders, to stay on this perspective. And that's why we fellowship with God. It certainly blesses us if it realigns us back to what really matters. Now, can I charge you this morning as I charge Jeff Noblitt? Let's recommit ourselves to a nearness to God.

Now, one final caution. I've known people that never missed their quiet time, but they flat miss God. Now, this is a figure of speech. You're better to have three or four quiet times, but throughout the week and in your heart of hearts, you want to be on mission with God and you want to please God. You want to honor his kingdom and you enjoy him rather than never missing a quiet time. But it's just a rote, cold discipline. Amen? Amen.