(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

Good morning, good morning.

It's day seven of 21 days of fasting and prayer.

Y'all made it.

You made it through the first week.

You got your butt out of bed this morning.

You're in the house of God this morning.

Give yourself a hand clap.

Raise your hand if you're hungry right now.

Raise your hand if you're hangry right now.

Okay, listen, if you're sitting beside one of the people that raised their hand after the second question, you need to be careful over the next 30 minutes.

Okay, don't lift a hand to worship too fast or too close.

You can lose a finger.

We're not going to have a normal day at church if somebody gets bitten.

Okay.

That's the 11th commandment in my house.

Some of y'all have toddlers.

You know what I'm talking about.

Thou shalt not bite.

But man, fasting, fasting is, it's wild.

You know what I mean?

It's, and everybody is called in, you know, in a different way.

But, um, I wanted to go over some of the things that fasting isn't and some of the things that fasting is.

Cause I understand that some of you, you may just be exploring the claims of Christ and you're like, why are these crazy people not eating?

You know, all of that stuff.

And I want you to understand, and you know, maybe you've been a Christian for a long time and you just don't really fully grasp the concept or the, the, why we would do this.

So first let's talk about some of the things that it's not.

Fasting does a lot of things.

So I wanted to break it down, but fasting is not a hunger strike.

I was raised Baptist, Southern Baptist.

Now I'm not saying that all Southern Baptists believe this.

In the little podunk town in West Virginia that I grew up, they told me that fasting shows God how bad you want it.

That is not what fasting does.

That is incorrect.

It's not a hunger strike.

Fasting is not a diet.

Although weight loss is often a byproduct of fasting, that's not why we're doing it.

It's not some intentional form of self-abuse that is part of this weird God worldview that some people have of Christianity.

Fasting is a discipline.

It is putting my flesh under subjection.

It's getting things lined back out, okay?

Because sometimes, most of the time, if we're being honest, our flesh is a lot louder than our spirit.

And sometimes, I need to take steps to quiet my flesh and allow my spirit to rise in me and my spirit to become stronger, my spirit to become fuller.

So I'm going to read a passage.

It's actually my favorite scripture in all of the Bible.

And you'll find it if you have your Bibles with you.

In 1 Corinthians, we're going to go from 9, 24, chapter 9, verse 24, through 27, as Paul talks to the church in Corinth.

I love this.

Do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?

So run that you may obtain it.

I love that.

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.

They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we, an imperishable.

So I do not run aimlessly.

I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.

Fasting is about bringing my body under subjection to my spirit so that it's not the other way around.

So the tail isn't wagging the dog, so to speak.

Fasting denies my flesh its most basic need because fasting is food.

I want to be clear for just a second and intentional with my words.

Fasting is food.

So if you are fasting, let's say Instagram, that's not fasting.

That's just a good life choice.

If you are fasting Facebook, that's not fasting.

That's just a good life choice.

Fasting is food.

It causes physical pain intentionally.

If your fast does not hurt, then you are not getting the full or the fullness of God through your fast.

So, and there's different ways to do it.

It's not like, you know, there's just one way.

Some of you are fasting sugar.

That's hard for a lot of people.

Some of you are fasting caffeine.

I'm not even that brave.

I need the caffeine way more than I need the food.

Some of you, maybe you're fasting one meal.

Some of you, maybe you're fasting 24 hour, 21 hours of the day and eating for three.

And you're thinking, man, I'm the kind of guy that, you know, golden corral shivers when I walk in.

I can do a lot of damage in three hours, you know.

But your body's like, over the last 21, we changed some things in here.

No, you won't.

That piece of salmon and that rice is it.

But what it does, again, is it perishes my flesh and it shuts it up for a long enough for me to hear from the Father, for my spirit to hear from the Creator.

And it doesn't mean that every single day you're going to have some giant revelation from God.

But what it does mean is that as your flesh withers, your spirit gets stronger and stronger and stronger.

And you can do it for 21 days.

Maybe you do it for seven days.

Maybe physically you cannot fast for any length of time, but maybe you just need to set something aside so that everybody say, so that you can dive deeper into the word.

We should be deep in the word every day, but I'll tell you over the last seven days, man, I've been hungry.

I've been weak.

And, but man, my reading has been much more intentional that time because sometimes we lose sight of that or your body needs sustenance.

Your body needs vitamins, minerals, calories, all of that stuff.

So does your soul.

So sometimes we eat with our flesh a whole lot better than we feed our spirit.

Sometimes we're just not spending any time in the word.

And it's not about, oh man, I'll read 15 chapters today.

I read 25 chapters.

Read whatever God calls you to read, but do it daily.

Because if you miss a day or you miss two days and then you start to feel some kind of way, don't be surprised.

You're hungry.

Sit down and eat.

But in this time, if you'd be so bold as to join us, because something amazing happens when it happens corporately, because we're a body.

Like hear me for a second.

This is not an analogy that I came up with.

God did this.

So we are a body.

And so when the body suffers together, the spirit strengthens together.

And when you've got a couple thousand people who are tight with the spirit now, who the spirit has flared up inside of and then they link arms, suddenly hell starts to shudder every time they sing a song and something deep happens inside of its people and a church gets propelled forward in their mission.

That's what fasting does.

What fasting should produce is weakness for his power to be made perfect.

Like you see in 2 Corinthians 12, 9.

The first few days are usually the hardest, but if you keep the focus on God, he'll do a mighty work in you if you focus on what you have as opposed to what you lack.

And this is a problem with us as the church globally, because we operate in this scarcity mindset.

We spend 10 times more time focusing on what we lack than what God has done, and we have no gratitude in our hearts.

Or the gratitude is beige, and it's quelched, and it's not a whole lot.

It's just a touch.

I am thankful in some way, but I'm not really truly living a life that reflects my incredible gratitude.

And that's the word that God gave me a few weeks ago, after Clay had told me that I was going to be preaching this weekend, because him and Kim last week went and did something awesome.

I'm not going to tell you what it is, to steal his thunder, but I started thinking.

I was like, okay, I usually tell my people about gratitude.

It's something that you get well.

And I want to be clear.

It's not like I've just arrived, because if I had to only preach on the things I'm an expert on, there would be like two messages over and over and over again.

The gratitude is something that I get.

And I always ask God when I hear something to confirm it.

How many of you know that if God gives you a word, you can ask him to confirm that word.

And if it was from him, he will, I know that he will, because that's exactly how I do sermons.

I don't have like a book that I go back to other than the 66 love letters that he gave me and say, okay, well, what's the next on the curriculum?

It's just, what did you say?

Was that you Lord?

And he confirmed this one in the most unlikely of ways.

So we do this thing, your staff, every day at 1130, we do a daily devotional.

We all gather together.

We call it staff unite.

We all come together.

We pray together.

We worship together.

You know, we go through some kind of a devotional so that we're all growing in the word together because unity matters.

Slap your neighbor and say, unity matters.

Not that hard.

I heard some of those are crazy, but he did it through the most unlikely person, Michael Allen.

Most of y'all have no idea who that even is.

I work here and I've seen him like six times total.

But Michael is our in-house IT guy.

Our Michael, how do I fix this guy?

Michael, I know you're on vacation right now, but my computer just shut down again.

What do I do now?

Michael, Michael, why is the software not working?

Michael, can we get this on the website guy?

God bless.

Y'all should all give Michael Allen a hand because if he didn't do what he does, none of this would be going down.

See all this cool stuff?

It's because Michael put it together because nobody else reads Japanese.

But he gave it that day and he went through this devotional, this end of the year devotional, and it was all about gratitude and about the way that we look back over the previous year.

See, a lot of times we're checklist kind of people and nothing wrong with a checklist.

My wife loves checklists.

This is how she gets stuff done.

If it happens on that list, she checks it off and she feels more and more accomplished as she goes on.

For me, I have a calendar on my phone.

If it's not in the calendar, it doesn't happen.

I say that to say, because if you make an appointment or something with me out there in that lobby and you don't see me pull out my phone, remind me.

Otherwise, that appointment's not actually going to happen.

But we get to start to look at all of the things over the last year that didn't happen.

The goals that we didn't meet, the breakthroughs that we didn't have, the things that we prayed for that God didn't give us.

And we completely forego all of the things that he did do.

This isn't just a mindset.

This isn't just a thought process, but you can start to change your mindset and change your process in your mind.

And you'll start to see a change in your life.

This checklist is all about failures and not successes.

But I wonder if you know today that God is the same God.

The God that is the God of your victory is the God of your failure too.

The God that is the God of the good side of you that you want everybody to see is the God of the ugly part of you that you hide deep inside.

He is the same God in every facet of your life.

And sometimes when he says, no, we need to say, thank you, God, for saying no, because I know it wasn't good for me.

And when he says, yes, we need to say, thank you, God, and not say, well, you know, I guess I earned it.

I've been praying long and hard for it.

No, it's because I have a good father that gives me good gifts that I don't even close to begin to deserve.

My God is good.

But that leads me to my first point.

Gratitude is not an attitude.

Gratitude is a way of life.

See, in some of us, we got attitudes.

Why are y'all laughing?

It's like y'all sitting beside somebody who's got one.

But some of us don't really need an attitude adjustment.

See my wife right there?

She's laughing right now.

Pam says something over there.

She got attitude because she ain't got no peanut butter.

Y'all are laughing.

That's the hardest part of this fast for her. 2 a.m., that's her deal.

Big scoop of peanut butter, 2 a.m. It's not just at 2 a.m. now.

Now we have a Sam's Club membership, and I'm pretty sure that the Sam's Club membership is just for peanut butter.

That's it.

Because only at Sam's Club can you buy a 66-pound jar of peanut butter that comes in a two-pack.

And my wife, she's always like, there's five of us, last service.

She's like, there's five of us in the house, but there's only one of us at 2 a.m., like a crackhead, and they're...

See her every night.

But that's been hard for her.

She had to give that up.

But to live this way of life, this way of life called gratitude, it takes faith.

Faith that what didn't happen and we prayed for was good.

Faith that what God said no to and didn't bless us with was for our own good.

Faith that what he did give us was because he loves us.

We have to get out of this checklist mentality.

Nothing wrong with making the lists, but we need to start actually addressing the real problems in our life.

And usually or always the real problem in my life is my heart.

That's what's impacting the way that I'm seeing things.

See, we enter into a new year and a lot of people love New Year's.

Raise your hand if you love New Year's.

If that's like your jam, you love it.

And I'm not, I ain't gonna make fun of you.

I'm not picking on you.

I'm just saying that there's a lot of the world that does because they think that date on that calendar is going to give them some kind of a genesis that now, now that 2025 is over, I'm going, I'm going to do some stuff different.

Okay.

I'm going to be, I'm going to save money.

I'm going to stop going to Starbucks three times a day.

I'm going to lose weight.

I'm going to get in the gym.

I'm going to be nicer to my wife.

I'm going to be nicer to my kids.

I'm going to do all of these things.

And then I know that this is true, at least with the fitness aspect, because right now is like the most annoying part of the year in the gym at 5am.

Like I go at 5am for a reason.

A, because like I don't want to talk to anybody.

Not that I don't like talking to people, it's just it's 5am.

I don't even want to make eye contact with people.

I haven't had nearly enough caffeine to say words yet.

But usually it's about the third week, it's back to the normal.

Not because people don't have the gumption to follow through on what they say.

Not because people didn't really mean it when they say it, but because they didn't actually address the real problem.

Now I'm going to give you a truck analogy.

I got a truck and it's got a bad motor in it, possibly a Ford.

It's got a transmission full of shavings because it overheats, could be a Chevy.

It's got cigarette burn holes and beer cans in the floorboard because it might be a Dodge.

I'm joking, I'm joking.

But the motor's blown and the transmission's done.

If I move it to another state, is it going to run?

If I paint it a real pretty color, it'll run then, right?

If I clean it all out and I put in new seat covers and a fuzzy steering wheel cover, then it will definitely run.

No, because I have not addressed the problem.

I didn't have a problem with my paint.

I didn't have a problem with the state that it was registered in.

I didn't have a problem with any of those.

That's the same thing with us.

Moving to a new place to get a fresh start, you're just going to take the same old problem to that new place and it's going to start to impact you there.

A new relationship in 2026, you take your same busted self into a new relationship.

You're just going to mess that person up too.

And that relationship is going to fail too.

But what if we started just addressing the problem?

What if we got on our knees and we thought, man, I serve a good God.

I serve the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings.

And if I ask him to reveal the things in me that he wants changed, he will give that to me.

He will tell me what's wrong with me.

And only he, it won't be because Jared just was super, super smart and read all the right books and all that, only because he loves me, will those things begin to change?

The problem is my heart and no change of behavior, no change in relationship status, or no change in my appearance will fix it.

Although it is better to be a handsome jerk.

Like if you are mean, you should, you know, at least dress up.

So when I bring my problems to the one true God, he gives me grace, everybody say grace, to wash away my sin again.

He restores me into a right relationship with him.

He removes my busted hard heart and gives me his heart.

He directs my path.

He promises never to leave me or forsake me.

And because of what he has done, my response should be pure gratitude and worship.

Worship.

What does that look like?

Because oftentimes, even in the church, we get people, they just, they ain't worshiping.

They stand there the whole time, just as mellow as they could be.

Like God ain't done nothing for them.

Hands down to the side.

I'm not saying you got to dance or anything.

I'm just saying that it should invoke something inside of your spirit.

If you can sit through three sets of these men and women up here, and three songs of these men and women up here, and something don't stir inside of your spirit, and something don't start to burn, baby, your wood is wet.

The problem is in you.

It ain't the drummers.

It ain't the keys, because Jill is phenomenal.

She's up here reaching over her belly to play keys for you.

But it should have some kind of a response in us.

And worship isn't something that's like negotiable.

Psalm 118.24 reads this, because this is how my life should look every single morning when I wake up, that I wake up in my heart knowing that I know that He is in control.

Psalm 118.24 reads, this is the day the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Baby, I'm not going to be a mellow, half-hearted Christian.

I woke up.

I know that you got problems.

I got problems too.

You got bills.

I got bills too.

You got relational issues.

You got physical issues.

You got all of those things.

But some way, somehow, by the grace of God this morning, breath came into your lungs and you started to feel a flutter in your chest and you were able to get up, wash yourself, walk into the house of God.

You had a car to drive here.

God's been good to you, church.

Some of y'all have food in your belly right now.

God's been good to you, church.

Some of y'all woke up in a bed, not in the back of a car.

God's been good to you, church.

Did you deserve any of it?

Why is it so hard to worship?

It's a daily verse.

It's not a sometimes verse.

That's a verse that you ought to say every morning as soon as you wake up.

This is the day the Lord has made.

I will rejoice and be glad in it.

When you wake up, thank Him.

When you kiss your kids goodbye, thank Him.

When you kiss your wife goodbye, thank Him.

When you kiss your husband goodbye, thank Him that you have one of those to kiss.

When you go home and there's dirty laundry to do, thank Him that you have a healthy family that has clothes to wear that you have to wash.

When the kitchen is dirty, thank Him there's food in the cabinet that you were able to make to feed your family, start thanking Him.

But this is a command from God.

Psalm 100 verse 4 says, enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.

Give thanks to Him.

Bless His name.

I'm going to break that down in country for you.

That means don't have your butt coming down my driveway before you start thanking me.

And by the time that you get to the front yard, you better be singing because I'm a good God.

I've been there for you from the time you were born until now.

I've made a way where there weren't ways.

I've kept you safe.

I've protected you, and I haven't protected you from everything, but I've been with you in everything.

Every one of those trials and the tribulations and the problems and the upset and all of the trauma in your life, I never left you.

You left me, but I did not leave you.

Thank Him.

And gratitude will start to do something for you.

Isn't it crazy that God is that good?

That even when we praise Him, even when we worship Him, who benefits?

God don't need you to praise Him.

God don't need you to worship Him.

I benefit.

Everything He does is out of love for me.

Leads me to my second point.

Gratitude fuels spiritual growth.

You should write that down.

You should write it on your mirror at home so that you remember it tomorrow morning when something goes wrong and you're frustrated again.

Gratitude fuels my spiritual growth.

Me and spiritual growth will not happen without it.

Hear me, it will not happen without it.

We see, we weren't made, church, just to get saved and then stop there.

Get a ticket to heaven like, baby, I'm going.

When Jesus comes back, I got my ticket.

My name is in the book of life.

I was made to grow in Him and to grow daily.

God wants to create things in you that weren't even possible before.

He wants to continue His work in you until the day your lungs give out.

And He says, all right, that's enough.

Now you can come home.

But all too often, church folk, not all of these are Christians, by the way, have bad attitudes.

They got bad relationships.

And then something happens in their life and they say ugly things.

This church ain't void of it.

Some of y'all are thinking right now, yeah, I shouldn't have said that to my wife this week.

I shouldn't have said that to anybody this week.

Because we're more focused on what we don't have.

We're more focused on the bad in our life.

We're more focused on the pain in our life.

And something that happened to us a long time ago, and we've become bitter and angry and filled with resentment.

You cannot truly be a worshiping Christian and be bitter, angry, and filled with resentment.

That it makes as much sense as a soup sandwich.

There's no way that that works out, okay?

You can shake it however you want to, it don't work out that way.

But then when we get mad, when people judge us off of our actions and not our intentions.

Well, I didn't mean it that way.

This is something I had to learn with my wife, because somehow, some way after 20 years of being married to this beautiful woman, I still say things.

And in my head, it sounded one way, but apparently in hers, it sounds a different way.

Or I forget something that she told me was important to her.

No one is as surprised as me in hearing the plans that she's told me for the sixth time.

And so I tell her, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean that.

I didn't mean it like maybe I said it.

I didn't mean all of that.

But then I tell her, I don't expect you to judge me on my intentions.

I expect you to judge me on my actions.

That's the way that we, the church, should judge each other.

And I know the Bible says, judge not lest you be judged.

It's not saying don't judge at all.

It's saying don't judge the world.

The world is outside.

In here, judgment happens.

It's not judgment in the way that condemns you.

We do not condemn.

But it is a brotherly love.

It is a sisterly love to say, honey, you are going down the wrong road.

And if you keep on going down that road, bad things are going to happen.

You're going to end up single.

You're going to end up frustrated.

You're going to be frustrated with your kids.

All the things that God has given you, you are not going to enjoy them, not because they weren't good gifts, but because something was wrong up here and in here.

See, the hardest, the biggest distance for the spirit to travel sometimes is from here to here.

That's where my problem lies.

There's a break somewhere in there.

But Jesus said in Luke 6, verse 45, "'Cause nothing can come out of you "'that's not already in you.'

He said, the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good.

And the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks."

No situation, no person, no matter how frustrating they are, can make you say something that ain't in you.

I'll give you an example.

This is a jar.

This is water, I'm from West Virginia, it's not what you think it is.

So God gives you a pure heart.

And what's in here?

Water.

If I shake it, what's gonna come out of it?

If I kick it, what's gonna come out of it?

If I say ugly things to it and tell it that it's worthless, what's gonna come out of it?

Water, because that's what's in it.

But this is our heart.

See, what happens is life happens.

Somebody comes and breaks our heart.

And so now something else gets in there.

And then we get really frustrated or somebody really does this wrong and something else gets in there.

And then it happens again in the next relationship and something else gets in there.

And then our kids, they're not really visiting us the way that we thought they would and something else gets in here.

And now every single time that I start to shake, every single time that something frustrating happens, my heart starts to look worse and worse and worse so that when whatever comes out of it isn't water anymore.

Now, there's some of us that in that situation we'll acknowledge it and we'll come back to Jesus and we'll dump it and he'll fill us back up with the water.

And that's good, that's good because you get pure water again.

The problem is, is that all of those things are pretty likely to happen again.

And so I'll end up in the same situation with the same discoloration, the same issues in my heart.

But then there are some of us who understand what he's done for me.

And because of what he's done for me, I'm not letting him out of my sight ever again because I remember what it was like back then.

So then I stay real close and my life just starts to overflow in everything I'm doing.

And then, you know, the stuff still happens, but it doesn't get very far.

And then, you know, heartbreak happens again, but it didn't get in very far.

It just can't seem to get in there because it just keeps overflowing with the goodness of God.

It goes and goes and goes.

And I stay planted by the tree, as a tree by the water.

Stop there, I think we've had enough floods for today.

Stay near him, don't walk away.

And the road is narrow, it's hard.

Jesus told us that it would be hard.

And sometimes pastors lose sight a little bit.

And not like, you know, you're way off in left field somewhere, but like, man, I got so busy this week and I was doing this and I was doing this.

And then like, I just kind of lost sight for a second.

And you need to fast to shut your flesh up long enough so you can get your eyes fixed back and say, no, there's my Redeemer.

There's my Redeemer.

And I know my Redeemer lives.

And whatever comes this way, he's going to take care of it.

He's going to work on all my problems today.

And he ain't going to need any of my help.

Bless you.

She meant that sneeze.

But my gratitude is overflowing when every single other hurt comes.

I just can't seem to get too far.

My forgiveness is so immediate because I'm constantly being forgiven.

I remove the thought process that my joy or my gratitude should come from anywhere except for Him.

That's the problem that a lot of us have in our life.

We are giving people way too much power over our life.

And we're giving them way too much responsibility.

Men, if you are blessed enough to have a wife, and she is the source of your joy, that is unfair.

She can't be.

She's a person.

She going to mess up.

And it's not fair to lay the burden of being your joy on her.

Women, if you are blessed enough to have a husband, it is not fair for you to make him the source of your joy.

He cannot be.

And no marriage, no relationship, boyfriend, girlfriend, none of that, no child will be able to be the source of your joy.

I love my wife with my whole heart.

But if Jesus told me tomorrow, or if she left me tomorrow, I'd still have Jesus.

And he'd be the only thing that got me through it.

I'm not saying that would rip me in half.

But she is not the source of my joy.

She is a resource of it.

See, God gave her to me as a gift, and he gave me to her as a gift.

It probably don't feel like that all the time.

But we are gifts to one another to better each other's lives, to better this journey, because he knew the road would be long.

He knew the road would be hard, and you were gonna need people, and maybe you're in here and you're not married, and you're like, well, this part ain't for me.

He planted your butt in a church, a family, a big old family in here, because you would need people.

But she's not just some benefit to my life, she makes me more.

See, in Genesis, when God created Adam, Eve was not an afterthought.

Eve was always in the plan.

Adam was as much made for Eve as Eve was for Adam.

I know this because in the Hebrew, it calls her Ezra Kinecto.

In the Hebrew, that means to make him more than he was.

This indicates that Adam, apart from Eve, was insufficient.

He was an insufficient creation without Eve to perfect the creation that he was.

Complete, rather, not perfect.

They were already perfect.

See, in there, they just ate for pleasure.

They didn't need to eat.

I'm sorry, I'm thinking about food a lot.

But she was given to him as a gift, and he knew it.

He knew that his joy came from the one who got down on his knees after he spoke everything else into existence, took a bowl of mud and made a man.

He knew the joy came from him, but still fell away.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be thankful because I'm gonna say the opposite.

If you're in here and you are blessed enough to have a wife, you should thank God for her every day.

I don't care how she acts.

She's a blessing to your life.

If you're in here and you have a husband, you should thank God for him every single day.

It's so funny how sometimes the things that we pray for, we get real used to, and then all of a sudden, we just ain't as thankful for it anymore.

You prayed for that man for five years, and God finally blesses you with him, and five years down the road, suddenly he just irritates you?

You prayed for that baby for years and years, and God blesses you with it, but now he's five years old, he just keeps on talking all day, every day, all night, every night, and now you're frustrated.

God, what would it look like if you were just grateful?

If you were just thankful?

If you didn't flip out every time you had to pick up a sock, but you were glad that there was a sock to pick up, because if it wasn't there, you would be, you'd miss it.

Some folks in here know exactly what I'm talking about.

They've lived that, wishing to just wash those dishes one more time.

My home, my finances, they all become resources of my joy because I know the source.

And suddenly I have so much to be grateful for.

Amen.

And my heart is so glad, and the enemy begins to lose his grip on me.

You wanna become spiritually strong, start praising God for everything he's given you.

Start looking at all your have-tos as get-tos.

See, because if he wasn't so kind and merciful and beautiful and wonderful, you'd all get what you deserve.

You know what we deserve?

Being really real?

To be dead.

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death.

That means that if you are sucking air in this room, I don't care how bad it is right now.

I'm no bad, it's been bad for me before too.

And it's bad in some ways for me now.

And my life isn't perfect, I know it's bad, but you woke up today.

God gave you another day.

He brought you here, and he's gonna do something mighty in you if you just let him.

If you'd hit your knees and start thanking him for the goodness he's poured out, I bet you'd start to see your life change, but you'd see your attitude change too.

You would start to have a different experience.

Sometimes we get so focused on the destination as Christians, like, I can't wait till Jesus comes back.

Me too.

I can't wait for him to come back.

I don't want him to come back today.

I got too many people I gotta tell about Jesus, but I can't wait for him to come back.

The only reason that I wanna live any longer in this stupid earth suit is so that I can run my race.

But we miss out on the journey.

And it's not, you know, it's not about the destination.

It's not about the journey either.

It's about who you become on that journey.

It's about who he reveals that you are.

About who, when you start to find out who the real you is, not the you that was fashioned by experiences and pain and frustrations and bad situations, but the you that he had in mind when he laid the foundations of the world, when he put you and placed you in this space and in this time, he planted you where he planted you for a reason, for a time such as this, because he's got a plan for your life.

But then it leads me, lastly, to as Mama Kim says, the why behind the what.

Last thing I wrote down, the why behind the what is because He's worthy.

Amen.

He is worth my sacrifice.

He is worth my tithe.

He is worth my praise.

He is worth my worship.

He is worth me standing down here looking like a fool every Sunday morning because if I'm going to be a fool, I'm going to be a fool for Jesus.

He is worth my life change.

He is worth me doing better.

He is worth my struggle daily.

Psalm 145, three reads, great is the Lord.

We all read this with me.

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

And His greatness is unsearchable.

Psalm 18, three, we all read it with me.

I call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised and I am saved from my enemies.

Hebrews 13, 14 through 15, we all read it with me.

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek this city that is to come.

Through Him, then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.

That is the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.

Acknowledge His name.

Come on, man.

Jesus.

No matter what this life throws at me or the enemy of my soul throws at me, I know that I know that my Redeemer lives.

His name will ever be praised by these lips.

Sometimes we have a hard time with praise because we have a heart issue.

We're not grateful anymore.

And some of us are like, man, you don't know how hard my life is right now.

You don't know the cancer, it came back.

I prayed for my mama and she had cancer and she was healed for a little bit, but she still died.

When God, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, called Lazarus out of that tomb, do you know he died again?

He went back to Letha Kuhn, that little girl, when he said, little girl, get up.

She died again.

But we lose sight of the five years that you got with her, that you wouldn't have had, had you not called upon the name of the Lord.

You lost sight of the things that he was giving you over and over and over again.

See, I don't have everything figured out.

I'm not better than anybody.

I just remember where I came from.

I remember what hell I came from.

I remember when I first came to Valorous church, I remember walking with the devil, looking him in his eyes.

I remember what it looked like then.

I remember the drug addict, the criminal that I was.

I remember the adulterer, the murderer.

I didn't actually kill anybody in the word.

It says, if you hate your brother, you are a murderer in your heart.

I remember that man, but I've seen God take a criminal and make a pastor out of him.

I've seen God do more in my life than I could even begin to imagine.

I've seen God take my wife who had such crippling anxiety that she couldn't leave the house, but baby, now she leaves ministries.

I've got a little girl, she's 15 and she was the only, the first of our children that survived the womb and when she was born on June 30th of 2010, she died again immediately.

I watched her beautiful little pink body go gray and my first core memory of that baby is her grandmother running down a hallway with her limp body in her hands.

But in that time, God breathed life back into her lungs.

She began to breathe and now, now because of what God did, I get to listen to that same breath, worship my King on this stage every single Wednesday.

God has been good to me and God, if I ever forget it, remind me, sit me on my knees, fast me out, take me out, just remind me because I know what a wretched man I've been, but I know what he does with wretched men.

I know that it hadn't been because of anything I did.

I know that it was because of the blood he poured out on that cross 2,000 years ago, some way, somehow it counted for me and it didn't just cover my sin before the cross.

I live in a covenant of grace and thank God because I need it daily.

I'm working and I'm trying and God's working in me and he's doing things in me.

I never thought imaginable, but I am still a man, but God is good and he's faithful and he is faithful to finish the good work that he started in me.

And I know that one day I will stand before God, the father and the judgment, and he'll ask me, where is your sin?

And I'll say, he took it.

He kept taking it over and over again.

He just took it from me and I argued and I fought him and I said, no, you can't keep doing this.

I'm not worth it.

And he said, but I love you.

So that's enough.

And I said, but I'll do it again.

He said, I know, but I love you and that's enough.

And then when I stand there, there will be no eyes in my statements.

It won't be because I put my faith in him.

I turned my life around because of what he did.

It's only because of what he did that I stand here today.

I should have been dead here and here and here and here.

I shouldn't be married to a beautiful woman.

I shouldn't be enjoying three gorgeous children, but God is faithful.

So tell me you don't have something to thank him for today.

I wish you'd get up for five seconds and just praise his name.

I wish you'd show him that he's worthy.

I wish that every voice would say, thank you, Jesus, today.

Worship him because he's worthy.

And in just a second, they're going to come and play a song.

And I just want you to worship in it.

You don't have to go anywhere.

If you want to come down here and get prayer, come down here and get prayer.

Or you can stay right where you are, but I want you to praise him.

Don't leave.

All these will still have bananas when you get there in 15 minutes.

The lunch ain't going anywhere, but hang out for five minutes because you don't want to miss what God might do in the next five minutes.

God might shock your heart and start to break that old bitterness out.

Stay here, worship him with me.

Let me pray.

Father, thank you for today.

God, thank you for every man, woman, boy, and girl in this place.

God, thank you that you are a good God, that you are filled with grace and mercy and kindness.

And you give us more than we deserve.

Father, thank you that we live in a country where men and women have fought and died so that we can worship you loud, Lord, so that we can blow the roof off of buildings with your name, Lord, that we can make your name famous in these streets.

God, I pray over every hurting heart in here today, Lord.

Every hurting relationship, every hurting finances, Lord.

God, I pray for the one that's here today that doesn't know you.

God, I pray that today would be the day that they would lay it all down at the cross and lay their hands on your heart, God, and that they would get a new heart.

God, I ask that you would save them, God, that you would give them the gumption and the boldness to walk down and be prayed for, God, and that you give them the boldness to walk through those baptism waters, to show the world who they've become because of you.

Father, thank you for the cross.

Thank you that you poured out your blood for me.

Thank you for your mercy and your kindness.

Thank you for that empty grave.

Thank you for the spirit that you've deposited in me as a down payment, a guarantee that you will return for me and that no six feet of dirt will ever hold me down.

Father, I love you.

I worship you and all God's children said.

Amen.