August 31, 2025 • 50 mins
In this episode of These Walls of Biblical Illiteracy, we’re taking a wrecking ball to the walls that have you boxed in. Stop asking God for the five-year-plan floodlight and use the lamp He gave you for your next step. It's time to get off culture's broken GPS and start living according to who the Word says you are. Tune in and get free! Your share might be the sledgehammer someone else needs, so share the link with five people who need to tear down a wall today!
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God Bless,
Pastor Tim
If this message touched your heart or challenged you in any way, we're asking you to pass it along. Share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. Your willingness to share doesn't just help us it extends God's Kingdom. It plants seeds. It opens doors. It points people back to Christ. That's the real mission. So don't keep it to yourself. Let it travel. Let it matter in someone else's life. Love & Need Ya!!!
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Pastor TIm: pastortim@kingdomchicago.org
Brothers In The Word - Facebook
Brothers In The Word - YouTube
Join: Brothers In The Word | Facebook
6 pm CST: Wednesday
8 am CST: Saturday
God Bless,
Pastor Tim
If this message touched your heart or challenged you in any way, we're asking you to pass it along. Share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. Your willingness to share doesn't just help us it extends God's Kingdom. It plants seeds. It opens doors. It points people back to Christ. That's the real mission. So don't keep it to yourself. Let it travel. Let it matter in someone else's life. Love & Need Ya!!!
🎧 New episodes drop every Friday | Available on: Spreaker, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio
👉 Like, Subscribe, and Share
Pastor TIm: pastortim@kingdomchicago.org
Brothers In The Word - Facebook
Brothers In The Word - YouTube
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Tim Smith. I just want you to
know it's an absolute honor to be with each of
you today. Wherever you're tuning in from, please understand that
the city is back up as a must be outside,
whether you're catching this live on Facebook, whether you're listening
to the podcast. I believe that you're here by divine appointment.
I believe that your steps have been ordered to this
teaching today. This teaching is for you. So we're not
(00:23):
in a building, but we are building something powerful right
here in this community, right now, in this digital space.
Do me a quick favor before we even get started.
Please like love and share. Please like love and share.
It's important that everyone does that. Let somebody know that
(00:44):
we are about to go on a journey. So today
what I want to talk about. We're talking about something
that I believe and I felt this way for a while,
but I believe it is a silent crisis in the
heart of so many believers. We're talking about tearing down
these walls of biblical illiteracy, these walls of biblical illiteracy. See,
(01:04):
we live in an information age, we live in information overload.
You can find out how to do anything, You can
find out how to become anything, go anywhere with just
a few clicks of the mouse. You can get a
degree online. You can learn and new language. You can
become a self proclaimed expert on anything, all from the
(01:27):
comfort of your couch. And yet, with all of this
information at our fingertips, there are so many of us
who are living in spiritual darkness. We are starving in
the middle of a feast. We have Bibles on our phones,
We have Bibles on our computers. We have Bibles on
our notepaths, our iPads, our shelves. We know the status
(01:48):
of our favorite athletes, We know the plot twist of
our favorite shows. We know the lyrics to every song
on the radio. However, when it comes to the very
words of God were strangers, we're biblically illiterate. If I
ask you to turn to your Bible right now, without
looking into the table of contents, If I actually to
(02:09):
pick up a physical Bible and turned to the Book
of Nahum, could you do it? If I actually to
turn to the Book of Habacca, could you find it?
And so this isn't a small problem, This ignorance, this
lack of biblical knowledge, this lack of biblical understanding, It
isn't just a gap in your Bible understanding. You know
(02:30):
what it is. It's a wall. It's a thick, high
spiritual fortress. And what that wall does is it separates
you from the power, from the peace, and from the
purpose that God has for your life. It's a wall
that leaves you vulnerable, a wall that leaves you weak,
a wall that leaves you susceptible to every single lie
(02:54):
that the enemy whispers because you don't know how to
use the word of God to filter out some of
his his lies. And so if these walls could talk,
they will say, you're not smart enough to understand the Bible.
If these walls could talk, they say, God is not
really talking to you. You don't have to do all
that Bible stuff. Just go to church. If these walls
could talk, they just say, go to church once a week,
(03:16):
pay your tire. That's all you have to do. That's
all God wants from you. But those those walls of
whispering lies to you. And so today we're serving an
eviction notice on that darkness. We're bringing the demolition crew,
and that demolition crew is the Holy Spirit. The purpose
of this lesson these walls of biblical literacy is to
(03:37):
show you once and for all that God has given
you the ultimate two to break down every single wall
that's blocking you from His light shining into your life.
So I want you to grab your Bible. I don't
want you to just listen to me whenever someone's teaching.
I want you to make sure you verify and you
fact check everything that they're saying, not fact check, biblically
check everything that they're saying. I want you to see
(03:59):
this for your I want you to see this for yourself.
I want you to get the revelation. Don't simply be
a hearer of the word, mother James said, he said,
but be a doer of the word. So get ready.
I need everybody take detailed notes, no sloppy notes, take
detailed notes, because we're about to dismantle these walls break
by bricks. Family. Your mission, should you choose to squabble up,
(04:25):
is this identify the walls of biblical literacy in your
own life and start the demolition process today. The goal
of this lesson is for you to be transformed by
the truth that you encounter. So I hope you're ready.
Let's go to work. Let's go to the book of Psalms.
Psalms one nineteen, Psalms one nineteen. We're going to be
(04:49):
over on one hundred and nineteenth in Psalms, and we
are going to zero in on verse one oh five.
This will be the foundational text for every that we're
going to talk about. The Psalmist is writing the longest
love letter to God's Word. It is a love letter
dedicated to God's Word. There's no other chapter like this
(05:14):
in the Bible. It is the longest chapter in your
Bible that in and of itself should capture your attention,
that should spark some curiosity in you to say, let
me go over here and read this. Why is this
the longest chapter? What is it that's so special about
this particular chapter? But you should go over there and
read it. Just spend some time over there. It'll really
(05:35):
bless you. We're going to pull up on Psalms one
nineteen one a five. The Psalm says, this Thy Word
is a lamp unto my feet and a light onto
my path. That's a powerful declaration. And I just want
to take that one verse, that one simple, profound, life
altering verse. Let's go to work wall number one for
(05:56):
those of you who are taken notes, write this down
on the wall of wilful wandering. The wall of wilful wandering.
I want you to focus your attention on the first
part of that verse, one O five A. That word
is a lamp unto my feet. Let's unlock that because
I want you to imagine this. Imagine walking through a
(06:17):
completely pitch black woman, can't see your hand in front
of your face, and every step is filled with anxiety.
Every step is filled with trepidation. Have you ever walked
in the dark instead of your toe before? Yeah, you're
trying to figure out is that there are a table there?
Am I about to walk straight into the wall? Am
I about to fall down the stairs? Am I about
(06:37):
to hit my shin? What's going on? I can't see anything?
And so you have a certain level of anxiety when
that's happening to you. You have a certain level of hesitation,
a certain level of trepidation, of a fear of moving
forward because you don't know what's in front of you.
That's what this spiritual reality is for so many Christians.
(06:59):
You have your eyes open, and you're walking through life
in the dark, and you're trying to feel your way
through life. You're trying to sense your way through life,
and in our modern context, I want you to think
of this lamp as the low beams on your car
car lights. You have low beams and you have high beams,
(07:23):
and they both have different assignments. But the lamp unto
his feet. I want you to think of it like this.
The low beams are designed to light. They aren't designed
to light up the whole highway. The low beams are
designed to illuminate what's immediately in front of you, the
next fifty feet of asphalt. They show you the potholes,
(07:44):
they show you the debris on the road, the line
on the shoulder. And it's in that context that the
Bible is a lamp for your feet, for your life.
The Bible is designed to show you where to take
your very next step. And this is where so many
of us get it wrong. We want God to turn
on the stadium lights for our internity, for our entire
(08:07):
life journey. We want the full blueprint. We pray, God
show me if I should take this job, and if
this job will lead me to a promotion in three years,
and in five years God showed me that I'm own
the company, and in seven years. God showed me that
I'm on the mansion with a ten car garage. But
God says, no, I'm giving you a light for right now.
(08:32):
I'm not giving you a flood light for the future.
I'm giving you low beings for right now. Stay with me.
God is focused on your next step. He's intentional about this.
Why because he wants you to walk by faith and
not by sight. He wants you to trust him with
the next step. You can't see, and the next step
(08:55):
is the one after the next step. Biblical receipt builds
a wall of wilful wandering because when you refuse to
use the lamp God has given you for the step
right in front of you, you're choosing to stumble in
the dark. You're choosing the step of your tat You're
(09:17):
choosing to walk in anxiety. You're choosing to walk intrepidation.
And this is not a new problem. Think about the
people of Israel. Let's take this analogy. Let's take this
in this place of right squarely on the Church of Israel.
The Church loves to quote Jeremiah chapter twenty nine, verse eleven.
(09:38):
Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. You've heard it, so I know
the thoughts that I think towards you, said the Lord,
thoughts of peace and not of evil. To give you
an expected end. The preacher can get up, he can
preach that, he can quote that, and you will literally
see the church just jump up and break out and
run laps all around the church when they hear that's
(10:01):
our hype scripture. That's the go to scripture to get
the crowd pumped up. We'll put that scripture on T shirts,
We'll put that scripture on coffee mugs, We'll put it
on graduation cars. I've even seen some people tattoo that
scripture on their body. Yeah, but let me ask you
a question. Do you know the context of Jeremiah twenty nine,
(10:22):
verse eleven. See, it's easy to just go grab your
favorite scriptures and run with it. But has a preacher
ever put that verse in context for you? If not,
allow me to do it. When God spoke Jeremiah twenty
nine eleven to the children of Israel, do you know
where they were? They were being held as captives in Babylon.
(10:46):
They had lost everything, They had lost their identity, they
had lost their land, and many of them even lost
their lives. And false prophets were telling them, Hey, don't
worry about it, You'll be home in two years. Quick fix.
They wanted out right then and there. But God's actual
word to them through Jeremiah was this, No, You're going
(11:10):
to be in captivity for seventy years. So build houses,
plant gardens, get married, have kids, and seek the welfare
of the city where you are captives. What you say, God,
see God's promise of quote unquote an expected end. That
was the long range plan. But the lamp to their
(11:34):
feet was the instructions for right now. He's telling them,
bloom where you are planted in Babylon. God was giving
them a word for their immediate next step, even when
it wasn't the word that they wanted to hear. He
was telling them how to navigate the present moment in
a way that would prepare them for the future He
(11:55):
had promised them. See, if these walls could talk, they
would say, the future is to garyt just they put.
But the lamp says, I have just enough light for
you to move forward. Trust me. See these lamps that
the Somers is, this lamp that Somers is speaking of,
this was just a small clay pot. It had oil
(12:16):
in it, It had a wick in it, and you had
to light it and you had to keep it close
to you to see where you were going on the path.
The path that they walked on were very dangerous path.
It could be a snake there, it could be something
that you could trip over. So it was just enough
light to walk by. Faith. It didn't light up the
whole road. It just it just it would light up
(12:38):
the next step in front of you. The problem is
this church. We don't consult the lamp. We consult our feelings,
We consult our friends, We consult with social media is
saying we consult our bank accounts. We consult everything and
everyone except the source of pure, unadulterated truth. And guess
(12:59):
what we do? We wander? Yeah, we wander. We wander
through life. We make bad decisions based on fear, We
make bad decisions based on feelings, based on convention, based
on convenience, based on what feels good to us. And
you know what ends up happening. We end up spiritually bankrupt,
(13:22):
emotionally broken. Wandering will take you places you never expected
to go. Wandering will keep you longer than you expected
to stay. Wandering will cost you more than you can
pay wandering through life will cost you time. It will
cost you purpose, It will cost you joy, It will
(13:45):
cost you resources. It will cost you peace, It will
cost you love. Hear me, family, it will cost you
your sanity. Question how many decisions? I want you to
be honest? How many decisions have you made this week
without one time stopping to ask God? God, what does
your word say about this? What does the lamp say
(14:09):
about this decision? Right here? Right now? You're facing a
challenge at work, You're facing conflict in your family, You're
facing a temptation in your heart. Have you opened the
Bible to allow its life to shine on your next step,
your next decision? Why are you just out here freestyle
and you're just out here guessing. You're just out here
hoping for the best, wishing for luck, and you're stumbling around.
(14:33):
Choosing not to read your Bible is not a neutral act.
Choosing not to read your Bible, that's not a neutral act.
It is an active choice to walk in darkness. So
if you choose not to open your Bible, you're walking
in darkness. Oh yeah, you got your eyes open and
you can see, but you're walking in spiritual darkness. That's
(14:58):
what you're choosing to do when you don't turn on
your lamp. We should all have lamps in our hands,
not these modern day lamps with these thousand white buves. No,
that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about just
enough lumination to make you trust God. Here's a call
(15:19):
of action this week. This is what I want you
to do. Make one decision differently, respond differently, before you act,
before you speak, before you say anything. Open your Bible.
Find a principle, find a word, find a command, find
a promise that applies to your situation. Question for you,
(15:41):
what immediate next step are you hesitating to take because
you're waiting for a floodlight instead of using the lamp.
God has already given you wall number two, the wall
of deceptive direction. So this is a what I call
a spiritual double undert and of the highest order. If
(16:03):
the lamp for your feet is your car's low beams,
the light for your path is your cars high beams.
The high beams don't just show you the next fifty feet.
The high beams. High beams cut through the darkness and
show the curve up ahead. They revealed the direction of
the road. They give you a bigger picture of where
(16:24):
you're headed. A couple of years ago, I flew out
to California. My daughter was ready to come back home
stay with her mom in Fort Wayne. So I flew
out to California to help my daughter and my grandson
go to Fort Wayne. She picked me up at the airport.
(16:46):
We stopped at the gas station and she had all
my zuzu's and wham whams, all my snack good. He's
sitting in the front seat. Her and my grandson where
in the back seat. And I started to drive. I'm
gonna drive all the way back. I'm not stop, I
think anywhere buffer gas. I'm not pulling over at the road,
on the side of the road. I'm not pulling over
at the rest area. I'm not stopping to get it around.
(17:06):
I'm not doing any of that. I told her, baby girl,
we're going straight back. And that journey took us through
the mountains of Colorado, and I wasn't prepared for it.
We hit one of the most treacherous parts of that
drive around eleven o'clock at night. They at the backsleep
they knocked out and it's pitch black. I'm talking about
(17:30):
pops that kind of darkness that feels like a heavy blanket,
and we're climbing in elevation. The car is shaking, the
air was getting thinner, and the road was full of
these sharp, winding terms. There are no guardrails. I can
look over at certain points in time of the trip
and I can see the city down below me. And
(17:52):
in that moment, guess what I needed. I needed both
the low beams and my high beams. I needed, with
the lamp of my low beings to see the immediate
edge of the road to make sure the tires weren't
about to go over the side despite any rocks on
the pavement right in front of me, because there were
signs that read beware of falling bowsers. Wait what But
(18:19):
I also needed the light of my high beings to
see the direction of the road. Is this a Heropian urn?
Coming up? Is the road? About the switch back? I
had to constantly flick between both to navigate that mountain
and to get us through it safely. The low beings
kept me on the road in the moment. The high
beings kept me on the road for the long haul.
(18:42):
About this saying about his word, His word functions just
like that. It gives you low being truth for your
next step, your next decision, and high being truth for
your life's direction. This is where the second wall of
biblical illiteracy comes up, the wall of deceptive direction. When
you don't use the high beams of God's word. When
(19:03):
you don't use the high beam of God's word, you're
susceptible to every false trail, to every dead end for
your life. The world is full of paths that look good.
Proverbs fourteen twelve says it best. There is a way
which seem it right up to a man. But the
end thereof are the ways of death. If these walls
(19:24):
could talk, they would tell you everyone else is doing
it till it must be okay. But the light on
the path says over Matthew chapter seven, verse thirteen through fourteen.
Sermon on the Mouth, Jesus says, enter by the narrow gate,
for the gate is wide, and the way is easy
that leads to destruction, and those who enter that gate
(19:47):
are many. Then he talks about this other gate, for
the gate it's narrow, and the way it's hard, that
leads to life, and those who find it are few.
God's word is the light that exposes these deceptive paths
for what they really are. God's Word is your official
(20:07):
tour God. It shows you the one true path that
leads to life, to purpose, to a relationship with your creator.
It's not always the easiest path, hear me. It's a
narrow road. You're not going to find a lot of
people on this road with you. You have to embrace that.
I tell people all the time, if you're going to
get into this word, prepare yourself to be in the minority,
because all Christians are not going to get into this
(20:29):
word because they feel it's too hard. Life is full
of twist and turns. Where is your life heading right now?
Is the direction of your life determined by the high
beings of scripture or by the flashing neon lights of
the culture. Are your goals, your ambitions, your priorities. Are
they aligned with what the Bible says lead to life
(20:53):
or what the world says lead to success? Do you
want life or do you want success? Do you want
life or do you want success? Jesus said, I am
the Way, I am the Truth. I am the Life.
No man comes to the Father but by me. Jesus
(21:14):
also says this, what good is it? Because some of
You all might say, I want success, Okay, cool, What
good is it? Jesus says, for a man to gain
the whole world and then lose his soul, he says,
in what should you give in exchange for your soul?
So which one do you want? This is a serious question,
(21:34):
and we all have to wrestle with this because it's
possible for us to be very busy making a lot
of moves would be on the completely wrong path. You
could be climbing a ladder of success that is leaned
against the wrong building. Except the Lord build a house.
(21:54):
I believe that. Simn for in twenty seven to one
they labor in vain the building you're building, But it's
God building your house, or you're building your house. Think
about the game of monopoly. When you land on someone
else's property, you can't tell that person, yeah, I don't
(22:15):
have the money, because guess what that you owe them
is real, whether you acknowledge it or not, whether you
believe it or not, those are the rules of the game.
And it's the same way. God's word is a lamp
and a light, whether you use it or not, whether
you believe it or not, the power of God's word
(22:35):
exists independently of your participation, but the benefit of God's
word it only comes through your engagement with the word
of God. The light is shining on the true path.
But now if you choose to walk on a different path,
then you'll still face the consequences of that choice. The
(22:57):
truth is the truth is the truth. The truth is
the truth is the truth is the truth, whether we
accept it or not. Call to action. Identify one area
in your life where you know you are on a
path that contradicts God's work. Be honest with yourself. It
(23:20):
could be in your finances. It could be in your relationships.
It can be in your entertainment choices, It can be
in your thought life. This week, this is what I
want you to do. Make a conscious decision to get
off that path. It might be painful, it might be
a struggle, it might require a difficult conversation or a
radical change, but it's the first step towards getting on
(23:44):
the path that leads to life. Use the light for
your path and change your direction. Question for you, what
deceptive path have you been walking on because it air
quotes seems right? What deceptive path have you been walking
on because it feels good? What deceptive path have you
(24:07):
been walking on? Even though you have a nagging feeling? Yeah,
this path is actually needing me away from God. Some
of you you need employment, and I get it. We
all need to work. Bible says a man don't work, man,
don't eat. Even in your job, does your job lead
you to God? Or does your job lead you away
(24:29):
from God? Because there are times when things are open
up on the gig where you get a chance to
make a few extra dollars. But are those few extra
dollars worth your communion with God? God said, come let
us reason together through your sense of scarlet. I'll make
them wider than the snow. God is inviting each of
(24:51):
us to sit down and fellowship with him. Behold, I
stand at the door and knock. If any man hear
my voice and open the door, I will come in
to him. I believe that's all in Revelation. Might be
three twenty somewhere around there, but I know that's written
to the Church of Layout to Sea. God wants fellowship family.
God the creator of the universe, He wants to have
(25:14):
fellowship with you. Don't ever forget that wall number three,
the wall of ineffective identity. Now I really need you
to lean into this one right here, this last walk,
the wall of ineffective identity, because this is a wall
that I see in the lives of many of my
(25:36):
brothers and sisters, and it breaks my heart when I
see this particular wall. Let's look at this first one
more time. We're gonna look at the exact same verse,
but we're going to look at it now from a
different perspective, from a different angle. That word is a
lamp unto my feet and a light into my path.
Got it? Okay. So we've talked about the word as
(25:58):
a tool for guidance, a lamp. We've talked about the
word as a tool for direction, a light. But there's
a third dimension in that verse. In fact, it's the
very first word of this verse. Thy thy word. This
isn't just any word. This isn't just any self help
(26:22):
book or a collection of why sayings. This is God's word,
the possession of it, the source of it. It is
what gives its power. God's word gives power. And this
brings us to our third wal wal number three, the
wall of ineffective identity. When you are biblically illiterate, you
(26:42):
don't just lack guidance. You don't just lack direction, you
lack a fundamental understanding of who you are and who
you are. And this is because you don't understand who
the Word truly is. If I ask you to explain
to me in your own lam in terms, who is
(27:05):
the Word? What will you say? What would be your answer?
Let me help you. Let me give you three verses
of scripture that are going to help you to better describe,
to better answer that question. The apostle John, the disciple
whom Jesus loves. John loves to refer to himself in
that third term of phraseology. Over in the Gospel of
(27:27):
John the Apostle. John drops a powerful revelation in his
gospel about the Word, and it's found over in John
chapter one, verse one. John says, in the beginning, what's
the word and the word? What's with God? And the
word's God? I need you to identify who the word is?
And that verse whom John is referring to. See John
(27:49):
doesn't deal with genealogy because what he's saying right there
in John chapter one, verse one, it predates Genesis chapter one,
verse one. In the beginning, what's the Word and the
word was with God, and the Word was God. So
the Word isn't just a thing. The word isn't just
your Bible. The word isn't just a book. It's a person.
(28:12):
The Word is God himself. And then, just in case
you missed it, he says it even more profound. In
John chapter one, verse fourteen. He said, if you didn't
get it there, let me show it to you one
more time. He says, And the Word was made flesh,
uh oh, and dwelt among us. John said, I saw
(28:35):
and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What
is John saying to us family, He's saying, the word
put on a body, the word put on flesh. The
word walked amongst men and women. He said, we saw him,
(28:58):
we beheld him. The word became in a human being.
It's crazy. The word pitched his tenth and moved into
our neighborhood. And the word has a name. Want to
know his name, Jesus, that's his name. Look at your
(29:19):
neighbor in the chat and declare, all I need is
the word. That's all I need. Just give me the word.
That's all I need. Y'all can have everything else. Baby,
just give me the word. But then guess what our
brother Paul tasted baton. And he runs a little bit further.
He gives us the resume of this word made flesh
(29:43):
one Timothy, Chapter three, verse sixteen. You gotta get this,
Paul writes this. He says, and without controversy, great is
the mystery of godliness, God's manifest in the flesh. God
was manifest in the flesh. Do you know what that means?
That means God was revealed. God was tangible, He put
on flesh. Paul says, he was justified in the spirit
(30:07):
scene of angels, preached unto the gentiles, believed on in
the world, received up into glory. Do you see that resume?
Whose resume is this? Now? Whose resume is this? That's
the resume of Jesus. He is God who showed up
in a body. He was vindicated by the Holy Spirit
(30:32):
at his resurrection. That angels watched his every move even
when he was born. His story was preached to the nations.
People like you and me believe in him, and he
was taken back up into glory in Acts chapter one,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
That ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that is the word.
So let's go back to Psalms one nineteen one oh five.
(30:56):
See now that it's different. Now, thy word is a lamp.
The psalmist is prophesying. He's prophesying about the person of
Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate lamp. He is the
ultimate life. He is the ultimate word from God. Jesus
is God. Jesus told Philip over and I believe it's
(31:20):
John chapter fourteen. He said, Philip, when you've seen me,
you've seen the Father. And let me tell you this family.
And I don't say this in any uncertain terms. Let
me say this. If you don't know the word, you
don't know Jesus. You can know going to church. That's cool.
(31:44):
If that's the standard that you've set for yourself, have
at it. But I'm gonna say this to you one
more time. If you don't know the word, you don't
know Jesus. Jesus said, why call me Lord? And you're
not going to do what I t told you to do.
Jesus said, many will prophesy in that day and say, Lord,
(32:05):
we did miracles, Lord, we cast our demons. Lord we
did A B and C. And guess what Jesus' response
was to these people, these church folk. He said, I
never knew you. Depart from me, your workers of iniquity.
See Biblical literacy builds a wall of ineffective identity. You
know why, because it separates you from this truth. The
(32:30):
devil doesn't care about you going to church. He doesn't
want you to know who the Word is. He doesn't
want you to know who Jesus is. If these walls
could talk, they would whisper your failures back to you.
If these walls could talk, they will say, you're just
a collection of your mistakes. But when you know that
the Word is Jesus, and when you know that Jesus
(32:50):
is God, everything changes. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter two,
verse ten, we are his workmanship. That means you are
his masterpiece. All says we were created in Christ Jesus
unto good works which God had before ordained that we
should walk in them. God ordained that you should walk
(33:11):
in his word before he ever called the Son into existence.
The issue went, You're not an accident. You are God's workmanship.
You have been created in Christ Jesus. Your identity is
not in what you do, but in who you belong
to Biblical illiteracy family. It creates an identity crisis. You
(33:36):
try to find your identity in your job, but then
you get laid off. You try to find your identity
in relationships, but then you go through breakups. You are
dependent on something or someone else for your sense of work.
But when you build your identity on the rock solid
truth of God's word about who Jesus is and who
(33:58):
you are in Him, then you're unshakable. The Bible tells
us that if any man be in Christ Jesus, guess
what he is a new creation. The Bible tells us
that we have redemption through His blood for the forgiveness
of sins. The Bible tells us that as many as
received Him to them gave he power to become the
sons of God. The Bible tells us that our conversations
(34:21):
is in heaven. The Bible tells us that in all
of these things we are more than conquerors through Christ
Jesus who loved us. What labels have you been wearing?
What lies have you been believing about yourself? What false
identities have you accepted as truth? Maybe it's failure. Maybe
(34:44):
it's at it. Maybe it's unlovable. Maybe it's anxious, maybe
it's depressed, maybe it's angry. Those things might describe your struggle,
but they don't define your identity in Christ. Those are
two separate things. Your struggle is not who you are
in Christ. Jesus. I need somebody to get this, because
(35:06):
you have been speaking words of condemnation over your own life,
because of your struggle. That's not who you are. Romans
eight one, Pull up, Pull up. There is therefore now
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Poul says,
right now, at this moment, there's no condemnation for you.
(35:28):
So if God is saying there's no condemnation for you,
stop condemning yourself. Stop condemning yourself because of mistakes that
you've made. As far as the east is from the west,
God said, I remember your sin no more. So you're free,
And he who the sun sets free is free of deed.
Stand fast in the liberty where Christ has set you
free Galatians five to one. And be not entangled again
(35:48):
with the yoke of bondage. You have been allowing the
walls of your past coming right at you, Chris. You've
been allowing the walls of your past and the whispers
of the enemy to tell you who you are. Stop
the power to tear down that wall of ineffective identity.
You know where it comes from. You know where the
power comes from. The power comes from replacing those lies
(36:09):
with the truth of thy word, the truth of who
Jesus says you are. Guess what, Family, It's a daily battle.
It's waking up every morning and before your feet even
touched the floor, you have to lay there and declare,
I am who God says I am. That is a conscious,
deliberate act of warfare against the lies that have held
(36:33):
you captive. Come on, brother Chris.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, excellent teaching, Brother Tom.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I was just looking through some scriptures while you were teaching,
because in our culture it's always taught to us like,
you know, all you're doing too much? Is not that serious,
you know, like biblical literacy is almost like welcomed in
our culture.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
But when I was looking through some scriptures while you
were delivering this excellent teaching, like God takes it so
so serious, like het Jeremiah five, he says, my people,
and I'm paraphrasing for the sake of time, but my
people love false prophets.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
But what will you do when the incomes? You know?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
In Deuteronomy, he says, if a false prophet arises among you,
don't listen for the Lord, your God is testing you.
You know, it's not only about the false prophet. We
fall into the false prophet's hands by by by not
knowing our own bible, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So God is testing us.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
And Ezekiel it says, the punishment of the false prophet
and the punishment of the father follower will be the same,
you know. And we bounced over the Romans, and God
keeps that same energy. He never changes. In the Romans,
he says, avoid them, for such people they do not
serve our Lord Christ. We bounced over the second John.
It's just repetitive. Do not receive them. Whoever receives him
(37:50):
will take part in his wicked works. And and if
we keep pressing the issue. And second Thessalonians, it says,
God will send them a strong delusion so that they
may believe what is false. And then you had already
said about Matthew seven, it will finally get to the
point that God would say, look, man, I never even
knew you.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Just go a head, get out.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
He gave you a lot of opportunities. You don't want
to take this thing serious. You're banished from my present.
You will act wickedly disregarding my commands.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
So yeah, this thing is like it's heavily serious.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Hey man, Brother Chris, Brother, Chris, Brother, Chris, as Reverend
Kendrick Lamar said, I got my foot up on the gas,
but somebody gotta do it. I might make some people mad,
for somebody gotta do it. Chris put his foot all
the way on the gas. I don't eat everybody's cooking.
I'm sorry. I don't get them raisins out of that
(38:48):
cold slot. Get them raisins out of that potato. I
don't eat everybody's cooking. And what Chris is saying, you
can't go around eating everybody's spirit of demonic. The Bible
said that there was a doctrine of demons. Did you
know that? And you can't go around eating all of
the false lives of the enemy because it's going to
affect you. It's going to get in you. And like
(39:09):
Chris said, you're being taught. Hey, don't worry about that.
Just come to church. Just come to church. Just come
to church. And again the bar is being set low
for you. But if you look at Psalms one nineteen
one oh five, I don't say nothing about no church
says your word. That word is a lamp until my
feet and the light from my path. What are we
getting at? You have to make this personal. You have
(39:32):
to make this personal. You can go to a church
and you can sit there all day. That's not going
to make you a Christian. I can go sit in
my garage all day. That will not make me a car.
So we have to do this science. We have to
get our own lamp. The thing about having that lamp,
let's go back to when the Palmers wrote this. You
(39:54):
were responsible for the maintenance of your lamp. You were
responsible to keep that oil in there. I'm supposed to
keep that wick trimmed and learning called action. I want
you to find one verse in the Bible that declares
who you are in Christ Jesus, and I'll give you
a cheap code for this. Get Roman's chapter eight verse one.
(40:16):
Get Romans chapter eight verse one. The whole lot of
scripture are thousands of scriptures that declare who you are.
But this is what I want you to do. Here's
the chance. That's what I want you to do. I
want you to write it down, physically write it. Don't
type it, don't copy and paste it. No, I don't
want that. I want you to see your own handwriting
when you look at it. Write it down, put it
(40:36):
on your mirror and your bathroom, put it on your
dashboard in your car. Here it is. Put it as
your phone lock screen. Write it down, take a picture
of it and make it as your screen saver on
your phone. And every time you pick up your phone
when you're having a bad day, when tears are running
down your eye, you're going to pick up your phone
and you're going to read this love letter that you've
(40:59):
written to your So there is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. And you're going
to look at it every chance you get, because you
have to get the word of God in your spirit.
Jesus said, the words that I speak are spirit and life,
and you have to inhale God's word. David said, thy
(41:23):
word have I hid in my heart that I might
not sin against you? Let the truth of God's word
speak louder than any other voice in your life. Right now,
let the truth of God's words speak over your life
louder than any other voice, any other negativity that might
try to come your way. Start living from your identity,
(41:47):
not from your old labels. Question for you, what lie
about your identity have you been believing? And what truth
from God's word can you use to demo today? So
let's get ready to bring this in for a landing.
Because we've been talking about tearing down these walls of
(42:08):
biblical literacy. We've seen how a lack of engagement with
God's word builds prisons in our lives. We looked at
wall number one. Wall number one was the wall of
willful wandering. That wall is built when we refuse to
use God's word as a lamp unto our feet like
the low beams of our car for our very next step.
We choose to stumble in the dark because we want
(42:31):
a five year plan instead of daily guidance. Then we
looked at wall number two, the wall of deceptive direction.
This wall goes up when we ignore God's word as
a light onto our path, the high beams that show
us the road ahead. We get lured into paths and
into places that seem right but leads to destruction, like
(42:54):
a dark mountain road on a Colorado mountain, because we
haven't consulted divine gps. Then finally we confronted the wall
of ineffective identity. This wall is constructed from the lives
that we believe about ourselves when we forget that it
is quote unquote thy word, the living word, the living
(43:19):
word Jesus, who is God himself. That word defines us.
So many times we live like beggars when God has
called us to be his children, to be his sons,
to be his daughters, And we live like beggars so
many times because we don't know our true identity as
(43:40):
children of the King, identity theft. Somebody has stolen our identity.
So these walls don't just block your view, family, please
hear me. You know what these walls do. They limit
your life. They keep you from freedom, they keep you
from power. They keep what God has for you. On
the other side of that wall. God has some things
(44:01):
that are rightfully yours. Paul says over in Ephesian Chapter one,
verse three. God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings.
In heavenly places, that's already done, that's in your account,
but you can't even access it. You don't even know
the past code to get to it. But the good
news is you have a sledgehammer and it's in your
possession right now. That sledgehammer is the word of God.
(44:22):
The word of God is not passive. The Right of
Hebrew says that the Word of God is living, is active,
as sharper than any two edge forward. The Word of
God can demolish every single one of these walls in
your life right now. Let's say this, maybe you came
into this teaching feeling trap. Maybe you came into this
(44:42):
teaching feeling like the walls are closing in on you,
trap by your past, trap by your fear, trap by
your lack of finances, trap by your own bad decisions.
And so you've been living inside of these walls that
you've gotten comfortable. You've been living inside these walls so
long that you started decorating the walls. You've gotten comfortable
(45:02):
in your confinement. If these walls could talk, they would say,
it's just who you are. Get used to it. You're
just like your mama, You're just like your daddy. But
I'm here to tell you that it is a lie
from the pit of hell. If any man, if any woman,
be in Christ Jesus, they are a new creation. So
the light is shining in right now. The Word of
(45:22):
God is shining in on your situation right now. And
the Word of God is exposing the cracks in those walls,
and it's showing you what you thought was a permanent wall,
there's nothing more than a temporary prison. And guess what
you got to keep. But you have to choose if
(45:42):
you're going to pick up God's word for yourself. You
have to choose to walk in the light as He
is in the light. You have to choose to follow
the path that God has laid for you. It's not
it's a lonely walk. If I can be honest with you,
it's so worth it. Ignorance is not bliss when it
(46:03):
comes to the Word of God. We can't do this alone. Family,
No one can do it. No one can do this
for you. No one can do this for me, not
your past and not your praying grandmother. This is your fight.
So right now, wherever you are, I feel a holy
urgency to challenge you. Stop waiting, stop making excuses. The
(46:23):
benefits of walking in the light are available to you.
You have to engage with the Word of God. I
love you, I'm praying for you. I'm praying that you
demolish every last brick of these walls in your life
right now. And if this teaching shook a wall in
your life, do me a favor, share it, do the
(46:46):
brother as a favor, Share it Facebook, family, like, comment,
share it. Tag some people that are living behind walls
right now. To the podcast listeners, those of you that
are on speaker, Spotify, Amazon, our Heart Radio, drop a
rating copy that hit that little copy signal, get that link,
text it, share it with your family, share it with
(47:08):
some people who are going through right now. We'll recommend
people go eat at restaurants, will recommend people to go
and watch movies. Can you please recommend somebody the Word
of God? If it's blessing you, why do you don't
think of the blessingbody else. We're building a community of
people who are serious about tearing down these walls and
walking in the light of God's work. But we need
your help in this rescue mission. And guess what it
(47:31):
doesn't cost you a dying I want to challenge you
open your Bible tomorrow morning before you open any other
app tomorrow morning. Y'all know how y'all are. Y'all got
a routine. Soon as your eyes open, you reaching for
that fall, reach for God, reach for God. If you
(47:53):
don't do them, but just layter with your eyes closed
and quote one scripture. I want you to learn Psalms
one nineteen one oh five to a morning, to challenge
yourself to just later and just say it out loud,
put it in the atmosphere. Five minutes. Can God just
get five minutes of your time before you get started
with your busy day. Find one verse. Let it be
(48:14):
the lamp for your feet, Let it be the life
for your path. Start with one brick. Start tomorrow, everybody.
That's the challenge. We have to change some things in
our lives. We can't just keep doing what we've been
doing and expect different results. That is the truest definition
of insanity. We're not done, but like I always like
(48:35):
to say, get into the word of God and the
word of God will get into you. Let's pray, Father,
we honor you, we bless you God. I thank you
for this word. God, I thank you for your people.
I pray Father, that your word truly will be a
lamp unto our feet and a life or our path. God,
I pray for my brothers and sisters that are struggling.
(48:57):
I pray for my brothers and sisters that are uncertain
about there next step, that are uncertain about their next week,
that are uncertain about their future. God, I pray that
they will have a Matthew five and six, a hunger
and a thirst for your righteousness, a hunger and a
thirst for your word. God. Your word tells us to
make our calling and our elections sure. And so God,
(49:18):
I pray that they will have one single purpose, one
single focus. God. God, I pray that you will lead
them and guide them into all truth. I pray Father,
whatever weapon the enemy may have formed against them, that
it will not prosper. And so God, I pray that
this word will beget a demolition project in all of
(49:38):
our lives to tear down some things that we got,
tear down some things that we've been hiding behind, to
tear down some temptations and some struggles. God, because that's
not our identity, that's not who you've called us to be.
Your word, says a just man fall seven times but
rises back up. So help all of us God, to
get back up out of what has held us now
for so long. And so God, I thank you for
(49:59):
this GET I thank you for this digital community. I
thank you for those that are watching from all over.
I thank you for those that are listening to this podcast.
And I pray God that you will meet them right
where they are. Thank you, Father for your love. Thank
you Father for your mercy. Thank you Father for your grace,
and will be forever so careful to give your name
(50:21):
all the praise, all the glory, and all the honor
in Jesus' name. Amen,
My name is Tim Smith. I just want you to
know it's an absolute honor to be with each of
you today. Wherever you're tuning in from, please understand that
the city is back up as a must be outside,
whether you're catching this live on Facebook, whether you're listening
to the podcast. I believe that you're here by divine appointment.
I believe that your steps have been ordered to this
teaching today. This teaching is for you. So we're not
(00:23):
in a building, but we are building something powerful right
here in this community, right now, in this digital space.
Do me a quick favor before we even get started.
Please like love and share. Please like love and share.
It's important that everyone does that. Let somebody know that
(00:44):
we are about to go on a journey. So today
what I want to talk about. We're talking about something
that I believe and I felt this way for a while,
but I believe it is a silent crisis in the
heart of so many believers. We're talking about tearing down
these walls of biblical illiteracy, these walls of biblical illiteracy. See,
(01:04):
we live in an information age, we live in information overload.
You can find out how to do anything, You can
find out how to become anything, go anywhere with just
a few clicks of the mouse. You can get a
degree online. You can learn and new language. You can
become a self proclaimed expert on anything, all from the
(01:27):
comfort of your couch. And yet, with all of this
information at our fingertips, there are so many of us
who are living in spiritual darkness. We are starving in
the middle of a feast. We have Bibles on our phones,
We have Bibles on our computers. We have Bibles on
our notepaths, our iPads, our shelves. We know the status
(01:48):
of our favorite athletes, We know the plot twist of
our favorite shows. We know the lyrics to every song
on the radio. However, when it comes to the very
words of God were strangers, we're biblically illiterate. If I
ask you to turn to your Bible right now, without
looking into the table of contents, If I actually to
(02:09):
pick up a physical Bible and turned to the Book
of Nahum, could you do it? If I actually to
turn to the Book of Habacca, could you find it?
And so this isn't a small problem, This ignorance, this
lack of biblical knowledge, this lack of biblical understanding, It
isn't just a gap in your Bible understanding. You know
(02:30):
what it is. It's a wall. It's a thick, high
spiritual fortress. And what that wall does is it separates
you from the power, from the peace, and from the
purpose that God has for your life. It's a wall
that leaves you vulnerable, a wall that leaves you weak,
a wall that leaves you susceptible to every single lie
(02:54):
that the enemy whispers because you don't know how to
use the word of God to filter out some of
his his lies. And so if these walls could talk,
they will say, you're not smart enough to understand the Bible.
If these walls could talk, they say, God is not
really talking to you. You don't have to do all
that Bible stuff. Just go to church. If these walls
could talk, they just say, go to church once a week,
(03:16):
pay your tire. That's all you have to do. That's
all God wants from you. But those those walls of
whispering lies to you. And so today we're serving an
eviction notice on that darkness. We're bringing the demolition crew,
and that demolition crew is the Holy Spirit. The purpose
of this lesson these walls of biblical literacy is to
(03:37):
show you once and for all that God has given
you the ultimate two to break down every single wall
that's blocking you from His light shining into your life.
So I want you to grab your Bible. I don't
want you to just listen to me whenever someone's teaching.
I want you to make sure you verify and you
fact check everything that they're saying, not fact check, biblically
check everything that they're saying. I want you to see
(03:59):
this for your I want you to see this for yourself.
I want you to get the revelation. Don't simply be
a hearer of the word, mother James said, he said,
but be a doer of the word. So get ready.
I need everybody take detailed notes, no sloppy notes, take
detailed notes, because we're about to dismantle these walls break
by bricks. Family. Your mission, should you choose to squabble up,
(04:25):
is this identify the walls of biblical literacy in your
own life and start the demolition process today. The goal
of this lesson is for you to be transformed by
the truth that you encounter. So I hope you're ready.
Let's go to work. Let's go to the book of Psalms.
Psalms one nineteen, Psalms one nineteen. We're going to be
(04:49):
over on one hundred and nineteenth in Psalms, and we
are going to zero in on verse one oh five.
This will be the foundational text for every that we're
going to talk about. The Psalmist is writing the longest
love letter to God's Word. It is a love letter
dedicated to God's Word. There's no other chapter like this
(05:14):
in the Bible. It is the longest chapter in your
Bible that in and of itself should capture your attention,
that should spark some curiosity in you to say, let
me go over here and read this. Why is this
the longest chapter? What is it that's so special about
this particular chapter? But you should go over there and
read it. Just spend some time over there. It'll really
(05:35):
bless you. We're going to pull up on Psalms one
nineteen one a five. The Psalm says, this Thy Word
is a lamp unto my feet and a light onto
my path. That's a powerful declaration. And I just want
to take that one verse, that one simple, profound, life
altering verse. Let's go to work wall number one for
(05:56):
those of you who are taken notes, write this down
on the wall of wilful wandering. The wall of wilful wandering.
I want you to focus your attention on the first
part of that verse, one O five A. That word
is a lamp unto my feet. Let's unlock that because
I want you to imagine this. Imagine walking through a
(06:17):
completely pitch black woman, can't see your hand in front
of your face, and every step is filled with anxiety.
Every step is filled with trepidation. Have you ever walked
in the dark instead of your toe before? Yeah, you're
trying to figure out is that there are a table there?
Am I about to walk straight into the wall? Am
I about to fall down the stairs? Am I about
(06:37):
to hit my shin? What's going on? I can't see anything?
And so you have a certain level of anxiety when
that's happening to you. You have a certain level of hesitation,
a certain level of trepidation, of a fear of moving
forward because you don't know what's in front of you.
That's what this spiritual reality is for so many Christians.
(06:59):
You have your eyes open, and you're walking through life
in the dark, and you're trying to feel your way
through life. You're trying to sense your way through life,
and in our modern context, I want you to think
of this lamp as the low beams on your car
car lights. You have low beams and you have high beams,
(07:23):
and they both have different assignments. But the lamp unto
his feet. I want you to think of it like this.
The low beams are designed to light. They aren't designed
to light up the whole highway. The low beams are
designed to illuminate what's immediately in front of you, the
next fifty feet of asphalt. They show you the potholes,
(07:44):
they show you the debris on the road, the line
on the shoulder. And it's in that context that the
Bible is a lamp for your feet, for your life.
The Bible is designed to show you where to take
your very next step. And this is where so many
of us get it wrong. We want God to turn
on the stadium lights for our internity, for our entire
(08:07):
life journey. We want the full blueprint. We pray, God
show me if I should take this job, and if
this job will lead me to a promotion in three years,
and in five years God showed me that I'm own
the company, and in seven years. God showed me that
I'm on the mansion with a ten car garage. But
God says, no, I'm giving you a light for right now.
(08:32):
I'm not giving you a flood light for the future.
I'm giving you low beings for right now. Stay with me.
God is focused on your next step. He's intentional about this.
Why because he wants you to walk by faith and
not by sight. He wants you to trust him with
the next step. You can't see, and the next step
(08:55):
is the one after the next step. Biblical receipt builds
a wall of wilful wandering because when you refuse to
use the lamp God has given you for the step
right in front of you, you're choosing to stumble in
the dark. You're choosing the step of your tat You're
(09:17):
choosing to walk in anxiety. You're choosing to walk intrepidation.
And this is not a new problem. Think about the
people of Israel. Let's take this analogy. Let's take this
in this place of right squarely on the Church of Israel.
The Church loves to quote Jeremiah chapter twenty nine, verse eleven.
(09:38):
Jeremiah twenty nine eleven. You've heard it, so I know
the thoughts that I think towards you, said the Lord,
thoughts of peace and not of evil. To give you
an expected end. The preacher can get up, he can
preach that, he can quote that, and you will literally
see the church just jump up and break out and
run laps all around the church when they hear that's
(10:01):
our hype scripture. That's the go to scripture to get
the crowd pumped up. We'll put that scripture on T shirts,
We'll put that scripture on coffee mugs, We'll put it
on graduation cars. I've even seen some people tattoo that
scripture on their body. Yeah, but let me ask you
a question. Do you know the context of Jeremiah twenty nine,
(10:22):
verse eleven. See, it's easy to just go grab your
favorite scriptures and run with it. But has a preacher
ever put that verse in context for you? If not,
allow me to do it. When God spoke Jeremiah twenty
nine eleven to the children of Israel, do you know
where they were? They were being held as captives in Babylon.
(10:46):
They had lost everything, They had lost their identity, they
had lost their land, and many of them even lost
their lives. And false prophets were telling them, Hey, don't
worry about it, You'll be home in two years. Quick fix.
They wanted out right then and there. But God's actual
word to them through Jeremiah was this, No, You're going
(11:10):
to be in captivity for seventy years. So build houses,
plant gardens, get married, have kids, and seek the welfare
of the city where you are captives. What you say, God,
see God's promise of quote unquote an expected end. That
was the long range plan. But the lamp to their
(11:34):
feet was the instructions for right now. He's telling them,
bloom where you are planted in Babylon. God was giving
them a word for their immediate next step, even when
it wasn't the word that they wanted to hear. He
was telling them how to navigate the present moment in
a way that would prepare them for the future He
(11:55):
had promised them. See, if these walls could talk, they
would say, the future is to garyt just they put.
But the lamp says, I have just enough light for
you to move forward. Trust me. See these lamps that
the Somers is, this lamp that Somers is speaking of,
this was just a small clay pot. It had oil
(12:16):
in it, It had a wick in it, and you had
to light it and you had to keep it close
to you to see where you were going on the path.
The path that they walked on were very dangerous path.
It could be a snake there, it could be something
that you could trip over. So it was just enough
light to walk by. Faith. It didn't light up the
whole road. It just it just it would light up
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the next step in front of you. The problem is
this church. We don't consult the lamp. We consult our feelings,
We consult our friends, We consult with social media is
saying we consult our bank accounts. We consult everything and
everyone except the source of pure, unadulterated truth. And guess
(12:59):
what we do? We wander? Yeah, we wander. We wander
through life. We make bad decisions based on fear, We
make bad decisions based on feelings, based on convention, based
on convenience, based on what feels good to us. And
you know what ends up happening. We end up spiritually bankrupt,
(13:22):
emotionally broken. Wandering will take you places you never expected
to go. Wandering will keep you longer than you expected
to stay. Wandering will cost you more than you can
pay wandering through life will cost you time. It will
cost you purpose, It will cost you joy, It will
(13:45):
cost you resources. It will cost you peace, It will
cost you love. Hear me, family, it will cost you
your sanity. Question how many decisions? I want you to
be honest? How many decisions have you made this week
without one time stopping to ask God? God, what does
your word say about this? What does the lamp say
(14:09):
about this decision? Right here? Right now? You're facing a
challenge at work, You're facing conflict in your family, You're
facing a temptation in your heart. Have you opened the
Bible to allow its life to shine on your next step,
your next decision? Why are you just out here freestyle
and you're just out here guessing. You're just out here
hoping for the best, wishing for luck, and you're stumbling around.
(14:33):
Choosing not to read your Bible is not a neutral act.
Choosing not to read your Bible, that's not a neutral act.
It is an active choice to walk in darkness. So
if you choose not to open your Bible, you're walking
in darkness. Oh yeah, you got your eyes open and
you can see, but you're walking in spiritual darkness. That's
(14:58):
what you're choosing to do when you don't turn on
your lamp. We should all have lamps in our hands,
not these modern day lamps with these thousand white buves. No,
that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about just
enough lumination to make you trust God. Here's a call
(15:19):
of action this week. This is what I want you
to do. Make one decision differently, respond differently, before you act,
before you speak, before you say anything. Open your Bible.
Find a principle, find a word, find a command, find
a promise that applies to your situation. Question for you,
(15:41):
what immediate next step are you hesitating to take because
you're waiting for a floodlight instead of using the lamp.
God has already given you wall number two, the wall
of deceptive direction. So this is a what I call
a spiritual double undert and of the highest order. If
(16:03):
the lamp for your feet is your car's low beams,
the light for your path is your cars high beams.
The high beams don't just show you the next fifty feet.
The high beams. High beams cut through the darkness and
show the curve up ahead. They revealed the direction of
the road. They give you a bigger picture of where
(16:24):
you're headed. A couple of years ago, I flew out
to California. My daughter was ready to come back home
stay with her mom in Fort Wayne. So I flew
out to California to help my daughter and my grandson
go to Fort Wayne. She picked me up at the airport.
(16:46):
We stopped at the gas station and she had all
my zuzu's and wham whams, all my snack good. He's
sitting in the front seat. Her and my grandson where
in the back seat. And I started to drive. I'm
gonna drive all the way back. I'm not stop, I
think anywhere buffer gas. I'm not pulling over at the road,
on the side of the road. I'm not pulling over
at the rest area. I'm not stopping to get it around.
(17:06):
I'm not doing any of that. I told her, baby girl,
we're going straight back. And that journey took us through
the mountains of Colorado, and I wasn't prepared for it.
We hit one of the most treacherous parts of that
drive around eleven o'clock at night. They at the backsleep
they knocked out and it's pitch black. I'm talking about
(17:30):
pops that kind of darkness that feels like a heavy blanket,
and we're climbing in elevation. The car is shaking, the
air was getting thinner, and the road was full of
these sharp, winding terms. There are no guardrails. I can
look over at certain points in time of the trip
and I can see the city down below me. And
(17:52):
in that moment, guess what I needed. I needed both
the low beams and my high beams. I needed, with
the lamp of my low beings to see the immediate
edge of the road to make sure the tires weren't
about to go over the side despite any rocks on
the pavement right in front of me, because there were
signs that read beware of falling bowsers. Wait what But
(18:19):
I also needed the light of my high beings to
see the direction of the road. Is this a Heropian urn?
Coming up? Is the road? About the switch back? I
had to constantly flick between both to navigate that mountain
and to get us through it safely. The low beings
kept me on the road in the moment. The high
beings kept me on the road for the long haul.
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About this saying about his word, His word functions just
like that. It gives you low being truth for your
next step, your next decision, and high being truth for
your life's direction. This is where the second wall of
biblical illiteracy comes up, the wall of deceptive direction. When
you don't use the high beams of God's word. When
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you don't use the high beam of God's word, you're
susceptible to every false trail, to every dead end for
your life. The world is full of paths that look good.
Proverbs fourteen twelve says it best. There is a way
which seem it right up to a man. But the
end thereof are the ways of death. If these walls
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could talk, they would tell you everyone else is doing
it till it must be okay. But the light on
the path says over Matthew chapter seven, verse thirteen through fourteen.
Sermon on the Mouth, Jesus says, enter by the narrow gate,
for the gate is wide, and the way is easy
that leads to destruction, and those who enter that gate
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are many. Then he talks about this other gate, for
the gate it's narrow, and the way it's hard, that
leads to life, and those who find it are few.
God's word is the light that exposes these deceptive paths
for what they really are. God's Word is your official
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tour God. It shows you the one true path that
leads to life, to purpose, to a relationship with your creator.
It's not always the easiest path, hear me. It's a
narrow road. You're not going to find a lot of
people on this road with you. You have to embrace that.
I tell people all the time, if you're going to
get into this word, prepare yourself to be in the minority,
because all Christians are not going to get into this
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word because they feel it's too hard. Life is full
of twist and turns. Where is your life heading right now?
Is the direction of your life determined by the high
beings of scripture or by the flashing neon lights of
the culture. Are your goals, your ambitions, your priorities. Are
they aligned with what the Bible says lead to life
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or what the world says lead to success? Do you
want life or do you want success? Do you want
life or do you want success? Jesus said, I am
the Way, I am the Truth. I am the Life.
No man comes to the Father but by me. Jesus
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also says this, what good is it? Because some of
You all might say, I want success, Okay, cool, What
good is it? Jesus says, for a man to gain
the whole world and then lose his soul, he says,
in what should you give in exchange for your soul?
So which one do you want? This is a serious question,
(21:34):
and we all have to wrestle with this because it's
possible for us to be very busy making a lot
of moves would be on the completely wrong path. You
could be climbing a ladder of success that is leaned
against the wrong building. Except the Lord build a house.
(21:54):
I believe that. Simn for in twenty seven to one
they labor in vain the building you're building, But it's
God building your house, or you're building your house. Think
about the game of monopoly. When you land on someone
else's property, you can't tell that person, yeah, I don't
(22:15):
have the money, because guess what that you owe them
is real, whether you acknowledge it or not, whether you
believe it or not, those are the rules of the game.
And it's the same way. God's word is a lamp
and a light, whether you use it or not, whether
you believe it or not, the power of God's word
(22:35):
exists independently of your participation, but the benefit of God's
word it only comes through your engagement with the word
of God. The light is shining on the true path.
But now if you choose to walk on a different path,
then you'll still face the consequences of that choice. The
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truth is the truth is the truth. The truth is
the truth is the truth is the truth, whether we
accept it or not. Call to action. Identify one area
in your life where you know you are on a
path that contradicts God's work. Be honest with yourself. It
(23:20):
could be in your finances. It could be in your relationships.
It can be in your entertainment choices, It can be
in your thought life. This week, this is what I
want you to do. Make a conscious decision to get
off that path. It might be painful, it might be
a struggle, it might require a difficult conversation or a
radical change, but it's the first step towards getting on
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the path that leads to life. Use the light for
your path and change your direction. Question for you, what
deceptive path have you been walking on because it air
quotes seems right? What deceptive path have you been walking
on because it feels good? What deceptive path have you
(24:07):
been walking on? Even though you have a nagging feeling? Yeah,
this path is actually needing me away from God. Some
of you you need employment, and I get it. We
all need to work. Bible says a man don't work, man,
don't eat. Even in your job, does your job lead
you to God? Or does your job lead you away
(24:29):
from God? Because there are times when things are open
up on the gig where you get a chance to
make a few extra dollars. But are those few extra
dollars worth your communion with God? God said, come let
us reason together through your sense of scarlet. I'll make
them wider than the snow. God is inviting each of
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us to sit down and fellowship with him. Behold, I
stand at the door and knock. If any man hear
my voice and open the door, I will come in
to him. I believe that's all in Revelation. Might be
three twenty somewhere around there, but I know that's written
to the Church of Layout to Sea. God wants fellowship family.
God the creator of the universe, He wants to have
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fellowship with you. Don't ever forget that wall number three,
the wall of ineffective identity. Now I really need you
to lean into this one right here, this last walk,
the wall of ineffective identity, because this is a wall
that I see in the lives of many of my
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brothers and sisters, and it breaks my heart when I
see this particular wall. Let's look at this first one
more time. We're gonna look at the exact same verse,
but we're going to look at it now from a
different perspective, from a different angle. That word is a
lamp unto my feet and a light into my path.
Got it? Okay. So we've talked about the word as
(25:58):
a tool for guidance, a lamp. We've talked about the
word as a tool for direction, a light. But there's
a third dimension in that verse. In fact, it's the
very first word of this verse. Thy thy word. This
isn't just any word. This isn't just any self help
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book or a collection of why sayings. This is God's word,
the possession of it, the source of it. It is
what gives its power. God's word gives power. And this
brings us to our third wal wal number three, the
wall of ineffective identity. When you are biblically illiterate, you
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don't just lack guidance. You don't just lack direction, you
lack a fundamental understanding of who you are and who
you are. And this is because you don't understand who
the Word truly is. If I ask you to explain
to me in your own lam in terms, who is
(27:05):
the Word? What will you say? What would be your answer?
Let me help you. Let me give you three verses
of scripture that are going to help you to better describe,
to better answer that question. The apostle John, the disciple
whom Jesus loves. John loves to refer to himself in
that third term of phraseology. Over in the Gospel of
(27:27):
John the Apostle. John drops a powerful revelation in his
gospel about the Word, and it's found over in John
chapter one, verse one. John says, in the beginning, what's
the word and the word? What's with God? And the
word's God? I need you to identify who the word is?
And that verse whom John is referring to. See John
(27:49):
doesn't deal with genealogy because what he's saying right there
in John chapter one, verse one, it predates Genesis chapter one,
verse one. In the beginning, what's the Word and the
word was with God, and the Word was God. So
the Word isn't just a thing. The word isn't just
your Bible. The word isn't just a book. It's a person.
(28:12):
The Word is God himself. And then, just in case
you missed it, he says it even more profound. In
John chapter one, verse fourteen. He said, if you didn't
get it there, let me show it to you one
more time. He says, And the Word was made flesh,
uh oh, and dwelt among us. John said, I saw
(28:35):
and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What
is John saying to us family, He's saying, the word
put on a body, the word put on flesh. The
word walked amongst men and women. He said, we saw him,
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we beheld him. The word became in a human being.
It's crazy. The word pitched his tenth and moved into
our neighborhood. And the word has a name. Want to
know his name, Jesus, that's his name. Look at your
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neighbor in the chat and declare, all I need is
the word. That's all I need. Just give me the word.
That's all I need. Y'all can have everything else. Baby,
just give me the word. But then guess what our
brother Paul tasted baton. And he runs a little bit further.
He gives us the resume of this word made flesh
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one Timothy, Chapter three, verse sixteen. You gotta get this,
Paul writes this. He says, and without controversy, great is
the mystery of godliness, God's manifest in the flesh. God
was manifest in the flesh. Do you know what that means?
That means God was revealed. God was tangible, He put
on flesh. Paul says, he was justified in the spirit
(30:07):
scene of angels, preached unto the gentiles, believed on in
the world, received up into glory. Do you see that resume?
Whose resume is this? Now? Whose resume is this? That's
the resume of Jesus. He is God who showed up
in a body. He was vindicated by the Holy Spirit
(30:32):
at his resurrection. That angels watched his every move even
when he was born. His story was preached to the nations.
People like you and me believe in him, and he
was taken back up into glory in Acts chapter one,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
That ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that is the word.
So let's go back to Psalms one nineteen one oh five.
(30:56):
See now that it's different. Now, thy word is a lamp.
The psalmist is prophesying. He's prophesying about the person of
Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate lamp. He is the
ultimate life. He is the ultimate word from God. Jesus
is God. Jesus told Philip over and I believe it's
(31:20):
John chapter fourteen. He said, Philip, when you've seen me,
you've seen the Father. And let me tell you this family.
And I don't say this in any uncertain terms. Let
me say this. If you don't know the word, you
don't know Jesus. You can know going to church. That's cool.
(31:44):
If that's the standard that you've set for yourself, have
at it. But I'm gonna say this to you one
more time. If you don't know the word, you don't
know Jesus. Jesus said, why call me Lord? And you're
not going to do what I t told you to do.
Jesus said, many will prophesy in that day and say, Lord,
(32:05):
we did miracles, Lord, we cast our demons. Lord we
did A B and C. And guess what Jesus' response
was to these people, these church folk. He said, I
never knew you. Depart from me, your workers of iniquity.
See Biblical literacy builds a wall of ineffective identity. You
know why, because it separates you from this truth. The
(32:30):
devil doesn't care about you going to church. He doesn't
want you to know who the Word is. He doesn't
want you to know who Jesus is. If these walls
could talk, they would whisper your failures back to you.
If these walls could talk, they will say, you're just
a collection of your mistakes. But when you know that
the Word is Jesus, and when you know that Jesus
(32:50):
is God, everything changes. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter two,
verse ten, we are his workmanship. That means you are
his masterpiece. All says we were created in Christ Jesus
unto good works which God had before ordained that we
should walk in them. God ordained that you should walk
(33:11):
in his word before he ever called the Son into existence.
The issue went, You're not an accident. You are God's workmanship.
You have been created in Christ Jesus. Your identity is
not in what you do, but in who you belong
to Biblical illiteracy family. It creates an identity crisis. You
(33:36):
try to find your identity in your job, but then
you get laid off. You try to find your identity
in relationships, but then you go through breakups. You are
dependent on something or someone else for your sense of work.
But when you build your identity on the rock solid
truth of God's word about who Jesus is and who
(33:58):
you are in Him, then you're unshakable. The Bible tells
us that if any man be in Christ Jesus, guess
what he is a new creation. The Bible tells us
that we have redemption through His blood for the forgiveness
of sins. The Bible tells us that as many as
received Him to them gave he power to become the
sons of God. The Bible tells us that our conversations
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is in heaven. The Bible tells us that in all
of these things we are more than conquerors through Christ
Jesus who loved us. What labels have you been wearing?
What lies have you been believing about yourself? What false
identities have you accepted as truth? Maybe it's failure. Maybe
(34:44):
it's at it. Maybe it's unlovable. Maybe it's anxious, maybe
it's depressed, maybe it's angry. Those things might describe your struggle,
but they don't define your identity in Christ. Those are
two separate things. Your struggle is not who you are
in Christ. Jesus. I need somebody to get this, because
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you have been speaking words of condemnation over your own life,
because of your struggle. That's not who you are. Romans
eight one, Pull up, Pull up. There is therefore now
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Poul says,
right now, at this moment, there's no condemnation for you.
(35:28):
So if God is saying there's no condemnation for you,
stop condemning yourself. Stop condemning yourself because of mistakes that
you've made. As far as the east is from the west,
God said, I remember your sin no more. So you're free,
And he who the sun sets free is free of deed.
Stand fast in the liberty where Christ has set you
free Galatians five to one. And be not entangled again
(35:48):
with the yoke of bondage. You have been allowing the
walls of your past coming right at you, Chris. You've
been allowing the walls of your past and the whispers
of the enemy to tell you who you are. Stop
the power to tear down that wall of ineffective identity.
You know where it comes from. You know where the
power comes from. The power comes from replacing those lies
(36:09):
with the truth of thy word, the truth of who
Jesus says you are. Guess what, Family, It's a daily battle.
It's waking up every morning and before your feet even
touched the floor, you have to lay there and declare,
I am who God says I am. That is a conscious,
deliberate act of warfare against the lies that have held
(36:33):
you captive. Come on, brother Chris.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, excellent teaching, Brother Tom.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
I was just looking through some scriptures while you were teaching,
because in our culture it's always taught to us like,
you know, all you're doing too much? Is not that serious,
you know, like biblical literacy is almost like welcomed in
our culture.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
But when I was looking through some scriptures while you
were delivering this excellent teaching, like God takes it so
so serious, like het Jeremiah five, he says, my people,
and I'm paraphrasing for the sake of time, but my
people love false prophets.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
But what will you do when the incomes? You know?
Speaker 3 (37:08):
In Deuteronomy, he says, if a false prophet arises among you,
don't listen for the Lord, your God is testing you.
You know, it's not only about the false prophet. We
fall into the false prophet's hands by by by not
knowing our own bible, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So God is testing us.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
And Ezekiel it says, the punishment of the false prophet
and the punishment of the father follower will be the same,
you know. And we bounced over the Romans, and God
keeps that same energy. He never changes. In the Romans,
he says, avoid them, for such people they do not
serve our Lord Christ. We bounced over the second John.
It's just repetitive. Do not receive them. Whoever receives him
(37:50):
will take part in his wicked works. And and if
we keep pressing the issue. And second Thessalonians, it says,
God will send them a strong delusion so that they
may believe what is false. And then you had already
said about Matthew seven, it will finally get to the
point that God would say, look, man, I never even
knew you.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Just go a head, get out.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
He gave you a lot of opportunities. You don't want
to take this thing serious. You're banished from my present.
You will act wickedly disregarding my commands.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
So yeah, this thing is like it's heavily serious.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Hey man, Brother Chris, Brother, Chris, Brother, Chris, as Reverend
Kendrick Lamar said, I got my foot up on the gas,
but somebody gotta do it. I might make some people mad,
for somebody gotta do it. Chris put his foot all
the way on the gas. I don't eat everybody's cooking.
I'm sorry. I don't get them raisins out of that
(38:48):
cold slot. Get them raisins out of that potato. I
don't eat everybody's cooking. And what Chris is saying, you
can't go around eating everybody's spirit of demonic. The Bible
said that there was a doctrine of demons. Did you
know that? And you can't go around eating all of
the false lives of the enemy because it's going to
affect you. It's going to get in you. And like
(39:09):
Chris said, you're being taught. Hey, don't worry about that.
Just come to church. Just come to church. Just come
to church. And again the bar is being set low
for you. But if you look at Psalms one nineteen
one oh five, I don't say nothing about no church
says your word. That word is a lamp until my
feet and the light from my path. What are we
getting at? You have to make this personal. You have
(39:32):
to make this personal. You can go to a church
and you can sit there all day. That's not going
to make you a Christian. I can go sit in
my garage all day. That will not make me a car.
So we have to do this science. We have to
get our own lamp. The thing about having that lamp,
let's go back to when the Palmers wrote this. You
(39:54):
were responsible for the maintenance of your lamp. You were
responsible to keep that oil in there. I'm supposed to
keep that wick trimmed and learning called action. I want
you to find one verse in the Bible that declares
who you are in Christ Jesus, and I'll give you
a cheap code for this. Get Roman's chapter eight verse one.
(40:16):
Get Romans chapter eight verse one. The whole lot of
scripture are thousands of scriptures that declare who you are.
But this is what I want you to do. Here's
the chance. That's what I want you to do. I
want you to write it down, physically write it. Don't
type it, don't copy and paste it. No, I don't
want that. I want you to see your own handwriting
when you look at it. Write it down, put it
(40:36):
on your mirror and your bathroom, put it on your
dashboard in your car. Here it is. Put it as
your phone lock screen. Write it down, take a picture
of it and make it as your screen saver on
your phone. And every time you pick up your phone
when you're having a bad day, when tears are running
down your eye, you're going to pick up your phone
and you're going to read this love letter that you've
(40:59):
written to your So there is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. And you're going
to look at it every chance you get, because you
have to get the word of God in your spirit.
Jesus said, the words that I speak are spirit and life,
and you have to inhale God's word. David said, thy
(41:23):
word have I hid in my heart that I might
not sin against you? Let the truth of God's word
speak louder than any other voice in your life. Right now,
let the truth of God's words speak over your life
louder than any other voice, any other negativity that might
try to come your way. Start living from your identity,
(41:47):
not from your old labels. Question for you, what lie
about your identity have you been believing? And what truth
from God's word can you use to demo today? So
let's get ready to bring this in for a landing.
Because we've been talking about tearing down these walls of
(42:08):
biblical literacy. We've seen how a lack of engagement with
God's word builds prisons in our lives. We looked at
wall number one. Wall number one was the wall of
willful wandering. That wall is built when we refuse to
use God's word as a lamp unto our feet like
the low beams of our car for our very next step.
We choose to stumble in the dark because we want
(42:31):
a five year plan instead of daily guidance. Then we
looked at wall number two, the wall of deceptive direction.
This wall goes up when we ignore God's word as
a light onto our path, the high beams that show
us the road ahead. We get lured into paths and
into places that seem right but leads to destruction, like
(42:54):
a dark mountain road on a Colorado mountain, because we
haven't consulted divine gps. Then finally we confronted the wall
of ineffective identity. This wall is constructed from the lives
that we believe about ourselves when we forget that it
is quote unquote thy word, the living word, the living
(43:19):
word Jesus, who is God himself. That word defines us.
So many times we live like beggars when God has
called us to be his children, to be his sons,
to be his daughters, And we live like beggars so
many times because we don't know our true identity as
(43:40):
children of the King, identity theft. Somebody has stolen our identity.
So these walls don't just block your view, family, please
hear me. You know what these walls do. They limit
your life. They keep you from freedom, they keep you
from power. They keep what God has for you. On
the other side of that wall. God has some things
(44:01):
that are rightfully yours. Paul says over in Ephesian Chapter one,
verse three. God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings.
In heavenly places, that's already done, that's in your account,
but you can't even access it. You don't even know
the past code to get to it. But the good
news is you have a sledgehammer and it's in your
possession right now. That sledgehammer is the word of God.
(44:22):
The word of God is not passive. The Right of
Hebrew says that the Word of God is living, is active,
as sharper than any two edge forward. The Word of
God can demolish every single one of these walls in
your life right now. Let's say this, maybe you came
into this teaching feeling trap. Maybe you came into this
(44:42):
teaching feeling like the walls are closing in on you,
trap by your past, trap by your fear, trap by
your lack of finances, trap by your own bad decisions.
And so you've been living inside of these walls that
you've gotten comfortable. You've been living inside these walls so
long that you started decorating the walls. You've gotten comfortable
(45:02):
in your confinement. If these walls could talk, they would say,
it's just who you are. Get used to it. You're
just like your mama, You're just like your daddy. But
I'm here to tell you that it is a lie
from the pit of hell. If any man, if any woman,
be in Christ Jesus, they are a new creation. So
the light is shining in right now. The Word of
(45:22):
God is shining in on your situation right now. And
the Word of God is exposing the cracks in those walls,
and it's showing you what you thought was a permanent wall,
there's nothing more than a temporary prison. And guess what
you got to keep. But you have to choose if
(45:42):
you're going to pick up God's word for yourself. You
have to choose to walk in the light as He
is in the light. You have to choose to follow
the path that God has laid for you. It's not
it's a lonely walk. If I can be honest with you,
it's so worth it. Ignorance is not bliss when it
(46:03):
comes to the Word of God. We can't do this alone. Family,
No one can do it. No one can do this
for you. No one can do this for me, not
your past and not your praying grandmother. This is your fight.
So right now, wherever you are, I feel a holy
urgency to challenge you. Stop waiting, stop making excuses. The
(46:23):
benefits of walking in the light are available to you.
You have to engage with the Word of God. I
love you, I'm praying for you. I'm praying that you
demolish every last brick of these walls in your life
right now. And if this teaching shook a wall in
your life, do me a favor, share it, do the
(46:46):
brother as a favor, Share it Facebook, family, like, comment,
share it. Tag some people that are living behind walls
right now. To the podcast listeners, those of you that
are on speaker, Spotify, Amazon, our Heart Radio, drop a
rating copy that hit that little copy signal, get that link,
text it, share it with your family, share it with
(47:08):
some people who are going through right now. We'll recommend
people go eat at restaurants, will recommend people to go
and watch movies. Can you please recommend somebody the Word
of God? If it's blessing you, why do you don't
think of the blessingbody else. We're building a community of
people who are serious about tearing down these walls and
walking in the light of God's work. But we need
your help in this rescue mission. And guess what it
(47:31):
doesn't cost you a dying I want to challenge you
open your Bible tomorrow morning before you open any other
app tomorrow morning. Y'all know how y'all are. Y'all got
a routine. Soon as your eyes open, you reaching for
that fall, reach for God, reach for God. If you
(47:53):
don't do them, but just layter with your eyes closed
and quote one scripture. I want you to learn Psalms
one nineteen one oh five to a morning, to challenge
yourself to just later and just say it out loud,
put it in the atmosphere. Five minutes. Can God just
get five minutes of your time before you get started
with your busy day. Find one verse. Let it be
(48:14):
the lamp for your feet, Let it be the life
for your path. Start with one brick. Start tomorrow, everybody.
That's the challenge. We have to change some things in
our lives. We can't just keep doing what we've been
doing and expect different results. That is the truest definition
of insanity. We're not done, but like I always like
(48:35):
to say, get into the word of God and the
word of God will get into you. Let's pray, Father,
we honor you, we bless you God. I thank you
for this word. God, I thank you for your people.
I pray Father, that your word truly will be a
lamp unto our feet and a life or our path. God,
I pray for my brothers and sisters that are struggling.
(48:57):
I pray for my brothers and sisters that are uncertain
about there next step, that are uncertain about their next week,
that are uncertain about their future. God, I pray that
they will have a Matthew five and six, a hunger
and a thirst for your righteousness, a hunger and a
thirst for your word. God. Your word tells us to
make our calling and our elections sure. And so God,
(49:18):
I pray that they will have one single purpose, one
single focus. God. God, I pray that you will lead
them and guide them into all truth. I pray Father,
whatever weapon the enemy may have formed against them, that
it will not prosper. And so God, I pray that
this word will beget a demolition project in all of
(49:38):
our lives to tear down some things that we got,
tear down some things that we've been hiding behind, to
tear down some temptations and some struggles. God, because that's
not our identity, that's not who you've called us to be.
Your word, says a just man fall seven times but
rises back up. So help all of us God, to
get back up out of what has held us now
for so long. And so God, I thank you for
(49:59):
this GET I thank you for this digital community. I
thank you for those that are watching from all over.
I thank you for those that are listening to this podcast.
And I pray God that you will meet them right
where they are. Thank you, Father for your love. Thank
you Father for your mercy. Thank you Father for your grace,
and will be forever so careful to give your name
(50:21):
all the praise, all the glory, and all the honor
in Jesus' name. Amen,
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