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

Now we have been in a season as a church where we have been fasting and praying.

If you're new with us, we are entering into the third week of what we have referred to as 21 days of prayer and fasting, believing God for some breakthroughs in our life, believing God for fresh vision in 2026, not only for us personally, but for us as a church family, so that we can run after those things by faith in the way that God desires for us to run after those things.

Now, I don't know how many of you have ever in your lifetime run in some sort of race, maybe a marathon, half marathon, 5K, whatever it is, but you have to get yourself ready for those kinds of journeys.

And our faith journey with God is a lot like that.

It's like running a race, but whenever we run the race, we have to prepare our heart, we have to prepare our mind, we have to prepare ourselves physically, sometimes to run the race that God has set before us.

And in order to do that, and the reason we like to do 21 days of prayer and fasting in January is we have to take some things off of our life and we have to put some things on.

And so today we're gonna dive into the scriptures looking at what it kind of says about doing that, about running the race of faith and preparing our hearts for what God wants to do.

And again, we are glad you're here today, but we do hope that God helps prepare your heart for greater things, because I do believe he has great things in store for us in 2026.

You know, fasting and prayer helps us lay aside what slows us down.

Come on, somebody.

It helps us lay aside what slows us down.

The scripture says this in Hebrews 12, verses one and two.

The writer says, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to this life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially, he says, the sin that so easily trips us up.

He says, let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.

And he goes on to help us understand we do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus.

Come on.

And really, that's why we come together every single weekend, is to keep our focus, keep our eyes, keep our focus on Jesus, who is the champion, who initiates and he perfects our faith.

Because of the joy awaiting him, the Bible says he endured the cross, disregarding its shame.

Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God's thrones.

So the writer of Hebrews reminds us here in this short passage that not everything that slows us down is obvious sin.

He does say, get rid of the sin that so easily trips us up in this race of faith.

But he also says, you know what?

Get rid of the weights that slow us down.

Now this last week, we went home last Sunday after Pastor Jared spoke a powerful word, come on somebody.

Yeah, and he spoke a powerful word to us as a church family.

Well, I got home that afternoon and what I decided to do was, you know what?

I couldn't get one more thing in my stinking closet.

My wife and I just got back from a trip where we went on a trip the week before.

And so I had some things packed up in suitcases and all that sort of stuff.

And we live in a small condo, so we don't have a lot of closet space.

My wife says I have more closet space than she has, but what I decided to do is like, you know what, I'm gonna clean some things out of my closet so I can get these other things in my closet.

And I started that process, and what I realized as I was cleaning out the closet was I had big black trash bags full of things that I hadn't even put on or wore in over five years.

Come on, somebody.

And I'm like, why am I keeping this stinking stuff?

And I decided to go ahead and get it cleaned out and make room for the things that I needed to put in there.

And what it helped me do was it helped me organize my life a little bit.

Do you know how much time sometimes we take, like even getting dressed in the morning, if you got a closet packed full of stuff, you only wear like five things like I do.

How much time you take going through all that stuff to try to figure out what you're going to wear.

Our life is a lot like that sometimes.

We need to take inventory of what's in our life and we need to clean out the clutter, come on, so that our life of faith can begin to operate the way that God desires for it to operate.

And I just wonder what we need to lay aside this weekend.

What God's speaking to your heart, not just my heart, but what he's speaking to your heart about, you need to lay this aside, because it's a weight.

It's a distraction.

It's keeping you from running the race the way that God desires for you to run the race.

Maybe it's an attitude, come on.

And again, maybe you have an attitude towards what God's trying to do through you and other people.

Maybe it is some form of media.

Nothing wrong with social media, nothing wrong with all of those kind of things.

Those can be tools to really help you on the journey.

But what we all know is we get sucked into those kind of things sometimes.

And we spend hours, unnecessary hours, come on, scrolling on our phone, come on, seeing what somebody else is doing, examining what's happening over the river, come on.

But at the end of the day, what God wants us to do is correct those unhealthy patterns in our life, come on, and begin to get ourself together to run the race of faith that he designs for us to run after.

And again, the older we get, sometimes the more clutter we have.

And the reality of it is, we can't get ourself attached to that clutter.

And I'm not just talking about, I'm not just talking about the physical things.

I'm talking about the things in our heart.

Because sometimes whenever we do life's journey, our heart gets damaged.

Our heart gets damaged through the things that happen to us in life.

And what I want you to know today is through this fasting and prayer, God does want you to maybe rid yourself of some physical things on the outside.

But what God's really trying to do is He's trying to readjust your heart.

So you can run the race of faith that He intends for you to run.

And so we have to understand that fasting and prayer doesn't only change our habits, it's designed to change our hearts.

And the Bible has a lot to say about this.

If you're just going through the motions, praying prayers, going through the church service, fasting and doing without food, and you're just doing these things to basically be outwardly show, the Bible says, it really isn't what God wants out of your life.

It'd be better for you to eat a bag of potato chips, come on, and let your heart be changed than to just fast and nothing happens on the inside.

Listen to what Isaiah chapter 58, as the prophet Isaiah speaks to the people of Israel, says about fasting in Isaiah 58 verses three through seven.

The people were telling God, we have fasted before you, they said.

Why aren't you impressed?

See, I wonder if sometimes we do some of these religious activities to try to impress God.

When God's saying, no, no, no, it's a tool to change your heart.

It's not about impressing God.

God's not impressed with our prayers.

He's not impressed with our fasting.

Look what it says.

It says, they go on to say, we have been very hard on ourselves and you don't even notice it, God.

I will tell you why I responded.

It's because you were fasting to please yourselves.

Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers, speaking to the nation of Israel in this particular time.

He says, what good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarreling?

He says, this kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me.

This is God speaking to the people through the prophet Isaiah.

You humble yourselves by going through the motions of penance, bowing your heads like reeds bending in the winds.

You dress in burlap and you cover yourself with ashes in repentance.

Is this what you call fasting?

God asked this rhetorical question to the people.

Do you really think this will please the Lord?

No, this is the kind of fasting I want, God says.

Free those who are wrongly imprisoned.

Lighten the burden of those who work for you.

Let the oppressed go free and remove the chains that bind a people.

Share your food with the hungry and give shelter to the homeless.

He says, give clothes to those who need them and do not hide from your relatives who, what?

Need your help.

God clearly speaks to the prophet Isaiah about fasting.

If it doesn't change your heart, it doesn't please your creator.

If the fasting doesn't change your heart and focus you, my friend, on your purpose as a Christ follower and begin to help you live that purpose out in this world to change the world with the good news of Christ, it has nothing to do with impressing God.

It has everything to do with aligning my heart with what God wants to do through me in the local church.

Come on, somebody.

What does God want to do through us?

God is not after your routine.

He is after your heart, come on.

And what we have to do is we have to examine our heart through the prayer and fasting.

Believe that God wants to do something in us and through us.

Fasting isn't to impress God.

You know, some of us, if we are just doing it outwardly to impress God, it would be like washing a coffee glass on the outside, but leaving all the stains of sugar and the leftover residue in the coffee cup, come on, and going and trying to pour a fresh cup of coffee in a clean, good-looking cup, shiny, got some silver and gold on the outside, come on.

But on the inside, it is dirty.

Jesus says, you know what?

He said to some of the spiritual elite in his day, he said, you're like that.

You're dirty on the inside.

And on the outside, you're all shiny.

You look the part, but God hasn't changed your heart.

Give your heart to God.

Let God work in you so he can work through you.

God is about cleansing the inside and it should show up on the outside, come on.

But at the end of the day, fasting is about changing my heart.

It's about getting rid of some things.

Maybe you need to get rid of some bitterness before you can run the race of faith that God has for you in 2026.

Maybe you've been damaged because something happened to you five years ago.

And you know what?

All your focus is, is your heart's focused on that.

Well, it used to be this way.

I used to do it that way.

No, no, no.

How's your heart?

What does God want to do now?

What does he want to do from this point forward?

Have you repented of your sin?

Have you stripped off the things that hold you back?

Some of us keep going back to the same old habits, the same old things.

And really, the reason we design it as 21 days is because 21 days can shift that.

If you'll begin to focus on that, maybe you get up on day seven and you're still thinking those things.

Maybe by day 20, it's gonna be, no, I have renewed my mind.

I'm thinking of the new things that God wants to do.

I've changed my heart.

I've allowed God to begin to do a work in my heart and change my life.

God wants to change our hearts, not just our habits.

Some of us need to lighten the load.

You know, Jesus, in Luke chapter 10, Bible says he sent out 72 people to go into the world and basically begin to share the good news of who God is and begin to expose the God of the universe to other people.

And he sent them to different towns and villages.

And what he said is he said, in Luke chapter 10, you can go read it.

He says, don't take your purse.

He says, don't take, you know, your sandals, extra pair of sandals.

He says, don't take your bags with you.

Just, just go.

And what Jesus was trying to teach these new disciples is it's about his power, working in them and through them.

It's not about their own provision.

It's about trusting his provision.

And, and what happens sometimes, we want to take our provision into the game plan.

What, what we think we can do.

Do you know the Bible says God can do more?

Come on.

Then you can imagine, or you can think about.

And so the question is, are you trying to take all your own baggage, your own sandals, your own provision, into the life of faith that God has before you?

I think about our own journey.

Back, you know, around the year 1998, 1999, God began to speak to Kim and I's heart about going into ministry.

And again, not that everybody has to do this, okay?

But he spoke to us about relinquishing and ridding ourselves so that we could get our heart full of him, go to seminary, and begin to let him speak into our heart.

And we spent years doing this.

But we had, at that particular time, we had a 105-acre farm.

I owned a small business.

And you know, getting rid of a small business is really just not an easy thing to do, especially when it's a landscaping business and people have to work, come on.

But at the end of the day, God began to speak to us and we relinquished those things to God and said, God, whatever you want, you show up.

God, miraculously, within a few weeks, sent a buyer for our business.

We didn't get rich off the business, come on, somebody, but we didn't go into more debt with the business, we relinquished it and gave it to God, the 105 acres.

God miraculously, within just a few months, sent a buyer for the 105 acres.

God miraculously began to, when we begin to take some family heirlooms, come on, and put them in a yard sale.

What are we gonna do with that for the rest of our life?

How are we gonna transport that table to our new place of living?

And we had to relinquish some things that basically our heart was connected to and sell those things, but God supernaturally replaced all of those things with His provision, His goodness, and what we needed for the journey.

Come on, somebody.

Why do I share that story?

We've been on this journey for over 25 years and God has not failed us yet.

Come on, somebody.

And some of us, God began to speak to us right now as teenagers.

And He'll say, what do you need to relinquish to serve my purpose in your generation to do exactly what I've designed you to do.

He'll begin to speak to some of us that are older.

There's some old folks in here.

Come on, somebody.

But maybe God, maybe God, I'm not telling you what to do with your stuff.

You know, that's up between you and God.

But if God says it, you better turn loose of it because God wants to replace it with more than you can ever imagine or think of.

You gotta trust his provision, not your own provision.

And again, this is a hard lesson because as we begin to build and as our faith begins to build and we begin to see God do miraculous things, what we wanna do is we want to control it again.

This is why we need to go back to prayer and fasting.

This is God working in us on the journey.

And my question to you today is what do you need to change in your heart?

Are you willing to let God do a new thing?

Are you willing to expose your heart to God?

I'm not saying you have to come in here and tell everybody all your stuff.

Come on, somebody.

You don't have to vomit everything in your past on everybody.

But at the end of the day, what is God speaking to you?

And what is God speaking to me?

And if we are willing as individuals to put our heart before God, what I believe the Bible teaches is God can put your heart and my heart together to do a greater work in this world if we're willing to run the life of faith.

Come on, somebody.

God's after our heart.

Fasting and prayer prepares us for the spiritual battle before us.

See, some of us will wake up every day and we don't understand, there is a real spiritual battle going on.

There's some things going on you can't see with your eyes.

And again, it has to do with all the spiritual powers and principalities in this world.

Did you know that there's spirits that have assignments over your dominion and over the domains that you serve in?

And the Bible speaks about, there's a God who is on your side.

And what He'll begin to do, and sometimes God's working some things out behind the scenes that don't happen immediately, but it's God working behind the scenes because those spirits and those powers of darkness are so strong, it takes the supernatural strength of God to break through.

Come on, somebody.

It's not about your might and my might.

And the Bible speaks of this in Ephesians.

Ephesians 6, verses 10 and 12.

Paul says this, a final word, be strong in the Lord and His mighty power.

Come on.

Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against the strategies of the devil.

The Bible says, for we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities in the unseen world.

There's authorities in the unseen world.

There's evil rulers in the unseen world.

We're fighting against mighty powers in this dark world against the evil spirits in the heavenly places.

And the Holy Spirit that lives in you, believer, is the one that ministers to your spirit and begins to give you the strength to operate in the power of God so you can keep pressing forward by faith in this life of faith and not let those spiritual powers take over and take over the domains and the atmospheres and the spears of influence that God has given you.

But you can't just operate in your own human mind, in your own flesh, because the Bible says this real battle is going on and that battle is stronger than any physical battle you'll ever fight with your life because the enemy wants to hold you back from the things that God has for you and God has for us and God has for the local church.

The enemy is putting things in place to divide so he can conquer.

And your awareness of this depends on your supernatural Holy Spirit horsepower that God is ministering to you and your spirit.

You need to understand this is significant.

It ain't about the weather.

It ain't about sickness.

It ain't about these things that come against you and your family.

It's all about spirits of darkness are striving to hold back the work of God through his people in this world.

But you gotta understand that this fasting and prayer is what prepares us on the inside to fight this battle.

Fasting is not only about taking some things off, fasting and prayer are about putting some things on.

Look what the scripture says, Ephesians chapter six, verses 13 and 17.

This isn't just pretty handwriting.

So you can have it on a gold chain and walk around with, no, no, no.

This is some stuff that you need to put in your heart and understand, look what it says.

It says, don't only take off some things, take off the sin and the things that so easily trip you up in Hebrews.

It says here in Ephesians six, it's put on, come on.

It says, put on every piece of God's armor so that you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil.

Evil will end, come on.

Evil will end.

Jesus is going to come back and we're waiting for his return.

And the Bible says when he does, he's gonna put all evil in the abyss and we're gonna live with him forever and ever and ever.

But in the meantime, you need to understand that evil exists and works through people.

God works through people and evil works through people.

But the Bible says, if you put on every piece to resist the devil, then after the battle, you will still be standing firm.

Otherwise, he won't knock you off of your relationship with God.

Stand your ground, look what it says, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness.

For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news so that you will be fully prepared.

In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery errors of the devil.

Are you operating by faith?

Is your shield against the devil, the faith that God has given you to move forward?

Because God calls us to advance in this world, but it's our shield of faith that we keep up that begins to extinguish those fiery errors.

And the Bible says this, put on salvation as your helmet and take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Every piece of this armor represents something about the Lord Jesus in our life and who he is in our life.

And the question is, or the Bible speaks of us about putting on Christ, clothing ourself in Christ.

And again, it's not just about physical armor, but are you clothing yourself in such a way in Christ, reminding yourself daily of who you are in Christ?

Come on.

You know what?

If Christ has saved you and forgiven you of your sin, you know what that means?

You're fully forgiven.

Remind yourself of that salvation.

It's not from you.

It's not the work you do.

You have no room to boast.

It's the work he's already done on a cross and his defeating death through his resurrection.

And again, the enemy can't take that from you.

Remind yourself in your head, put on the helmet of salvation on a daily basis.

Don't lose sight of what God, I don't care how tough it gets and how difficult it is.

God said he saved me from my sin.

It's not a work I did.

I believe it with all of my heart.

I trust it with all of my heart and I renew my mind with this over and over and over and over again.

I don't care what you say.

I know what God said.

Whenever I surrendered my life of faith to him and let him come in and save my spirit, he made me come alive in Christ Jesus.

And in that moment, everything began to change.

But as I do this journey, this life of faith, I want you to know that the world around me, the works of the devil, the evil one, will begin to work and hold back that journey.

Paul reminds us there's a real battle going on.

Don't lose sight of this.

And again, he wants you to put on the full armor of God, remind yourself of who you are in Christ.

Sometimes you need to do it more than one time a day.

And you gotta continue to take off dress for the battle that God has already prepared for us to win.

And a lot of times this prayer and fasting is a great time for us to remember what we need to take off, what's really hindering our spiritual journey, what's holding us back and put on the things of who Christ says that we are.

And again, God has a plan for our life.

He wants us to walk in that plan.

He wants us to be prepared for the battle, but he doesn't only want us to be prepared for the battle.

It says something else here in Ephesians 6, 18.

It says, pray in the spirit at all times and on every occasion.

Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.

So here, this passage reminds us that we as believers are in this thing together and we need to be praying for one another and we need to continually be praying with our spirits on all occasions.

But it says here to keep alert, to stay alert.

And one of the greatest ways for you to stay alert is to remember this, that God never designed you to do this faith journey alone.

You need the other gifts and the people of God around you in order to rise up and be the person that God desires for you to be.

God is working through his body.

It is called a local church.

We are the body of Christ.

Jesus is the head and we're to take our gift and put it with the other gifts and stay alert for the schemes of the enemy.

We're here to help shepherd one another.

Come on someone.

We're here to build one another up in our faith journey.

We're not here to condemn one another and put one another down.

We're not here to elevate ourself above one another.

We're here simply to work together in this race of faith and help the world know the greatness of God who lives in us and works through us.

Come on somebody.

I've been, you know, watching a lot of football.

It's kind of about over now.

Come on somebody.

But they just had the national championship game and now we're in the professional sports where they're getting ready to move towards the Super Bowl time and all that kind of stuff.

But what's fascinating is they figured out how to mic up some of these players.

And some of the stuff that comes out of their mouth is absolutely ridiculous.

It's live.

But one of the things that they do that is amazing to me is you will hear a quarterback sometimes, he steps up to call the play.

And he looks over the defense, the enemy.

The one that is trying to hold him back from scoring a touchdown.

And this is what you will hear him say, alert, alert, alert.

The crowd's roaring.

And not everybody can hear what he says on the field.

And so he'll go, alert, alert, alert.

And the guard will be down there in his position.

You'll see him do his head like that, like what the heck.

And he'll go, alert, alert, alert.

And why that's fascinating to me, they're alerting one another.

That guess what?

There's a scheme against us, but we're here to score a touchdown.

And what I need you to know, that belonging to a local church is a lot like that.

The enemy is constantly dreaming and scheming how to stop the work of the local church through the generations.

And what we need to learn to do to one another is alert, alert, alert, alert, alert.

Come on.

There's an enemy trying to destroy the work of God.

And my friend, it ain't just in you and your family.

It's in and through the local church.

And he wants to conquer and divide.

And what fasting and prayer begins to do is help us put off that stinking thinking and put on the things that God says is up and step into it and play the game and begin to move and march forward as the local church.

I am charging you.

I don't care how old you are, how damaged you are.

Get renewed in Christ Jesus and watch God work and do an incredible thing.

Through your life.

See, again, I wanna read to you what Hebrews 10 verses 23 through 25 says.

It says, let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm.

The hope that we have in Christ Jesus.

He's coming back.

He's gonna put all evil in the abyss.

What's your hope in?

See, he says, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.

He's gonna do what he says he's gonna do.

Let us think of ways, look what it says, it's beautiful.

Let us think of ways to motivate one another to the acts of love and good works.

And not neglect our meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

See, I said, I don't know why you come to church.

I don't know why you gather on Sundays, but we gather here at Valorous Church to worship Jesus, the one that our hope is in.

We're here to announce over and over, he's defeated death and he's rose from the grave.

He said, to tell us that, sin no longer has dominion over your life.

And I'm here to speak about it every weekend.

So if sin and the enemy has no dominion on your life, why do you keep slowing down?

Why do you keep pulling over to the side?

Why do you keep giving up on the gifts that God has given you and placing them in the local church so together we can run this race of faith and accomplish the great thing that God designed us to accomplish.

Keep speaking hope.

Keep dreaming of growth.

I know it's an off weekend.

I know there's a lot of empty seats here.

I know the weather, man, has discouraged some people, but I'm here to tell you right now, God wants to fill every seat where everybody is sitting on top of one another, hearing the word of God, being encouraged in their journey, where they're serving, where they're giving.

Come on, somebody.

Where they're believing God for greater things and we're taking off the old and putting on the new.

See, again, it's easy.

It's easy for us to get discouraged, but I want you to know, if you want to keep the fire of the Holy Spirit burning in your life, it's not just up to you personally.

It's up to you to get your butt connected to the rest of the fire.

I don't know how many of you ever sent around a campfire, but one single log will burn for a few minutes and it'll eventually go out.

You can kick it over to the side and it'll burn and go out.

But if you put that log together with the rest of the logs in the fire, it becomes something roaring, and the heat off of that will begin to give heat to those around the fire.

One log by itself is basically worthless.

You need to understand something.

The Bible says, Jesus, for God so loved the world, come on, that he gave his one and only son, whoever would believe in him would not perish, would not waste away, but have everlasting life.

Do you believe that for your neighbor?

Do you believe that for the one, the enemy who come against you?

Do you believe that they can supernaturally be changed by the power of the living God working through the local church?

Do you really believe that?

Because the Bible says that all of those things are possible.

And the reality of it is, is we have to stay connected.

I'm telling you right now, the enemy wants to disassemble the family, not so much your physical family, and the enemy wants to disassemble God's family, the local church.

And I'm here to declare that we stand on the rock of Jesus Christ.

He is our foundation.

And I don't care if it gets down to three of you.

I believe in God's great provision enough that you know what he'll do?

He will begin to strip away what don't belong and he will put what does belong so his work of the local church can get done in a community.

Come on, somebody.

And I will never, as a believer, and I'm not saying this to offend anyone, but I will never, ever stop challenging you and stop charging you to step away from sin, but not only step away from sin, but step into the life of faith and use all of you to change the world.

Some of you got gifts you ain't using.

You keep letting them lay dormant.

Don't you die with those gifts going dormant.

Let me encourage you today.

Put them together with the local church and let's see what God wants to do.

My friend, he wants to do miraculous things, but the enemy wants to hold it back.

Let this season of prayer and fasting remind us that we gotta take some things off and put some new things on because God is supernaturally working through his church.

Do you have the life of faith that God desires for you to live?

Be encouraged today.

Strip off the old and put on the new.

Let me pray for you today.

God, I thank you for every man, woman, boy, and girl here today.

And God, it's not just our religious routine that you're impressed with.

God, it's our surrendered hearts that you're after.

God, if there's one here today that hasn't surrendered their heart to the Lordship and the forgiveness that Jesus offered on that cross to their life, God, I pray today they would receive the perfect gift, the perfect one, the shed blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of their sin.

Jesus, you came to pay every penalty of sin that has ever been committed against God.

And God, we trust that Jesus forgave that and he gives new life to those who trust that by a faith.

But God, we don't only wanna be a people that trust the forgiveness of sin.

God, we want you to go to work.

We want your spirit to be in to minister our spirit.

And God, if there's some habits, some things that we're doing that we need to shake off, God, help us see them and have the courage to take them out and put them out of the closet and put them in the trash bag and send them to the dump.

God, there's some new things you wanna do.

God, I pray you would clothe every person in this room today with Christ Jesus.

And God, they would operate that way.

They would operate with a surrendered heart.

They would operate with the things you wanna do in them and through them.

God, they would trust your provision and we would be a church that lives like you are our provider.

God, you're an amazing God.

So God, if there's one here today that needs to surrender, I just pray today would be the day that they say, God, today, I turn from my sin.

I trust the perfect work of Christ and his resurrection that he gave on a cross.

And I want my faith to come alive.

I want my spirit to come alive.

My friend, if you prayed that prayer till God thank you for the gift and our expectation is you come alongside of us and we become alongside of you and together we would change the world.

God, I thank you for every man, every woman, every boy and every girl.

I thank you for everything that we have been through.

God, I pray we'd learn from it.

We would grow from it.

And God, we would do greater things than we could ever imagine or think of.

We pray this today in Jesus' name.

Amen.