 That's totally portage campus issues, right? Because at Richland, we're like 15 minutes early, right? How many grew up like I did where my dad taught us if you're on time, you're actually late. If you're five minutes early, you're on time. Anybody like that? Okay, the rest of you, respond to the ultra call at the end of the service. Get right with God. Hey, open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter seven this morning. And while you're turning there, just highlight that tonight, our Team Radiant Night is gonna be really, really special. You are a part of Team Radiant. You volunteer, you serve in some capacity here at Radiant Church. Your part of Team Radiant in this night is for you. And yes, we're gonna have some great food and get together. And we've also got a, I don't know, what do we call it? A preview of the roll-in for at the movies this year. At the movies is coming, so we're gonna show that tonight. But probably the most important reason you should be here tonight, if you weren't planning on it, is two things. Number one is we're gonna pray together. And there's such power when you get five or 600 people that are committed all in praying together over needs of our city, over our church. And it's really powerful. And the other part of it is there's some things that over this summer, the Lord has been depositing in me, kind of showing me about the direction we're moving in the future, some things that are coming. And I don't always talk about those on Sunday morning, but I do more in a leadership capacity. My staff has heard me talking about it over the last month. And many of them were like, you need to share this with Team Radiant on the team night. And I thought, well, I probably wouldn't do that. And they're just like, no, you need to do that. And so I'm actually gonna do that. And so if that's at all interesting to you, you wanna get a sneak peek of some things. Come on out, it starts at six tonight. And I really believe it's gonna be, it's gonna be really powerful instrumental. How many of you enjoyed Presbytery last weekend? Do you guys enjoy prophetic Presbytery weekend? Thank all of you for staying so focused and coming into all the different services that we had, had Sunday night, Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning. And you know you've crossed the line of fanaticism when you have two or 300 people that show up for church on Monday and Tuesday morning. That is awesome. I love that. And so we're just gonna start, no, I'm kidding. I was gonna announce the new Monday morning service, but you guys would probably not show up. Okay, so, hey, Matthew chapter seven, beginning in verse number seven. I wanna read these words of Jesus this morning. I want you to read along with me, not out loud, but just follow either in your Bible or on the screen. It says this, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you for everyone who asks, receives. And he who seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man is there among you if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask? So this is part, I think it's part four of our series entitled tuned in. And the whole point of this series, why we're talking about the voice of God is because there is nothing more vital and important in the life of a Christian than their ability to identify, understand and relate to God on a personal level. We need that, we need an ongoing relationship with God that's living, that's thriving. We need to be able to hear the voice of God over all the other voices, all the static, all the other opinions, even the internal voices that oftentimes we pay attention to. And some of the primary ways that God speaks to us is through the word, it's through others, it's through supernatural means. But over the next couple of weeks, this week and next week, we're gonna be talking about prayer because prayer is not just a discipline, it's supposed to be a desire and a design of the Christian life. Many of us pray because we know that we should, but we don't often feel confident that we know how to or that our prayers are heard. You know, if you were to just kind of do a survey of just average American people on the street, just ask them, hey, if you were to meet or you were to know a Christian, what do you think are a couple of things that all Christians have in common that they do? And one of those things would obviously be going to church. So you guys check the box because here you are, well done. Another one would be reading the Bible. You know, Christians read their Bibles or at least they should. Probably a third thing is they pray. So, you know, that's maybe true of a lot of people who are Christian, non-Christian that we pray. Part of the reason why we pray is because we've been hardwired as spiritual beings to want to connect with God. So religions have all been shaped around that desire and that longing, but relationship is more important than religion and oftentimes religion gets in the way of our ability to pray effectively because we think that we have to do it in a certain way in order for God to hear us. And if we don't feel qualified to pray or that we don't know how to pray the right way, then we won't even bother doing it because we don't want to do something not well and a lot of us also we don't pray or we don't understand prayer because instead of being clothed in relational righteousness, we feel more garbed up by our own shame and guilt. And so that pushes us away from God. So if I were to ask you, how many think if you're a Christian, one of the things that should define your life is that you live a life of prayer. Raise your hand. That's a normal expectation. All right, most everybody. But if I were to ask you how many of you have struggled in knowing how to when to or if you're qualified to pray, you've struggled in your prayer life, raise your hand. Isn't that crazy? It's the one thing we know we should do, but it's also one of the things that we're the most insecure about in our relationship. I've heard people pray before and thought to myself, man, I wish I could pray like them, eloquent words. I did this wedding one time and I'm a pretty informal person, but I had to do this wedding at a very formal church and so formal that the pastor wore a robe, one of those long robes and he had like vestry, things over his shoulders and he wanted me to wear one. I was like, no. So, but he said, now when we walk in, you've got to, we'll walk out the side stage and you have to look at the cross and you have to bow down and do this thing and I'm like, well, I'm just gonna follow your lead and I had to follow his ceremony. His ceremony was written in the 1700s and so it was this Elizabethan English about wo-gee unto thee betrothed and I mean, words, I didn't even know what they meant. I'm like, I took Latin and I don't know what this means and I was never more uncomfortable than doing that wedding ceremony, but when he did it, man, when he prayed those prayers, he knew every word, he knew the right tone, he knew the inflection, I'm like, wow, this guy, I don't even know what he just said, but it sounds holy and a lot of times what we can view prayer is something that it's an art, that it has to be poetic, it has to be perfect, even doctrinally, it's got to have everything right there. We've got a law and order mindset about prayer that we have to have our proof text and our evidence in order to present it to God, in order to convince him, to get the legal decision on our favor and I get that there's parts of prayer where we claim the promises of God and we call God into remembrance of his promises over our life, but that's not what Jesus taught his disciples about prayer. What Jesus showed and demonstrated in his life about prayer to his disciples was different than anything else his followers had ever seen. They were all good Jewish kids who had grown up in Sabbath school every Saturday of their lives. The custom of young boys was to learn the Torah, the first five books of the Bible almost verbatim. So here they are adults, they know the Bible, they've been to church, they've heard sermons and they've heard the prayers because the prayers in the synagogue had been prayed for thousands of years in Hebrew, out loud. God, creator of the heavens and the earth, Almighty God, all these transcendent statements. So it wasn't that they didn't know what prayer was or didn't know how to pray. It's just when they saw Jesus praying is radically different. Jesus would get away from them. He wouldn't pray with them. I'm sure he prayed with them, but he would get away one-on-one with the father and he would begin his prayer like a child begins their conversation with a father. And when they came to him one day and said to Jesus, teach us to pray, they weren't asking because they didn't know how to pray, they were asking because they wanted to pray like him. And it wasn't the eloquence that drew him, it was the attitude and the posture of their hearts. You see, I don't know exactly what they saw, but we see later on in Jesus' ministry, he goes into the Garden of Gethsemane and he talks to the father. And John chapter five, when people religious leaders were asking Jesus to do certain things their way, he said, I can't do it that way. In fact, the son of man can't do anything on his own, but only that which he sees the father doing is what he does and only that which he hears the father saying is what he says. He says, basically what Jesus said is, I get along with my father, I find out what he's doing and I leave the prayer closet and I go and do that. And whatever he's saying, that's what I do. I don't care about you, I don't care about opinions, I don't even care about my own desires. And so the disciples saw that and here's what Jesus taught his disciples to pray. It's interesting. Called the Lord's Prayer. Jesus said, if you want to pray, pray in this manner. In the Greek language it says, pray according to this pattern. And the first two words of the Lord's Prayer are? Come on, everybody say it out loud. Isn't that interesting? You say, well, what's so interesting about that? What's interesting is nobody else prayed like that. Everybody else prayed, oh, God, almighty creator of the heavens and creator of the universe. Jesus said, if you want to pray, if you want to dialogue with God, you want to know the voice of God in your life, you want the word, the voice of God in your life to be the preceding word of God that's daily manner to you. If you see something in my life that you want to follow, here's how you have to pray. You have to start with understanding that God is almighty God. God did create the heavens on the earth. God is transcendent. He knows every molecule, every chromosome in every DNA strand in a hundred billion galaxies. He controls the speed of light. He knows everything past, present, and future, but that's not going to help you in your prayer life. What's going to happen, what's going to help you in your relationship with God is knowing and relating to him as, and that says it all. And that's where Jesus picks up in Matthew chapter seven. He says, if you ask, it will be given to you. If you seek and keep seeking, you shall receive. And if you knock, the door will be opened unto you, kind of all that. We can break those down into three dimensions, but it's really the second half of what Jesus said that I think stands out. He says, or what man, what father among you, who even though you being evil, if your child asked you for bed, would you dare to give him a stone? If your child was hungry and he asked for a fish, would you give him a serpent? And then he says, if you being evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more, how much more will your heavenly father give good things to you if you ask, if you seek, and if you knock? See, the master key to a relationship with God is understanding him as father, but the master key is desire on the inside of you to relate to God as a father. Because listen, if you relate to God as anything other than a father, then you can believe in his existence, you can even fear him, you might even obey him. But we don't typically draw close to things that we're afraid of, we keep them at a distance. We relate to things, we relate to people that we're intimate with, that we love, that we cherish, that we know love us, that have invested words and equity into our life, and it's a magnetism that draws us to them. You see, I think far too often we have shaped prayer into a Harry Potter mentality instead of a this is us mentality. Now I've never seen Harry Potter, so forgive me if you love those books, great. When I was younger, and our kids were younger, I was convinced by videos that if you watched those, you'll go straight to hell, so obviously my kids never saw them, I never saw them. I did watch Lord of the Rings, however, because that was written by J.R. Tolkien, so that was way better. But Harry Potter, any of those shows that have wizardry, it's all about the incantation, it's all about reading these old, pulling up old wisdom and these incantations and magic spells, formulas, that if we say the right formula, we can manipulate the course of nature and forces and energy to do our bidding for us. That's what I mean by we treat prayer far too often more like Harry Potter than this is us, because it's like we think to ourselves about prayer that God is withholding from us, but if we can find the right formula, we can put the formula as a master key into the door and get what we want on the other side of it. And if we treat God like that, not only is that putting us at the center of the universe and causing God to orbit us, but it's also indicting the very nature and the character of who God is. But if we could see prayer to be more like this is us, how many have seen that show, this is us? There are only two shows that make me cry every single time I watch them. The first one is called Little House on the Prairie. I'm crying even thinking about it, like right now. Inside I can hear Laura going, Paul, Michael Landon, my, okay. I grew up every weekdays, 6 p.m., grandfather clock struck six. One, ba da ba da da da. And I'd watch, I'd watch every episode. When Ashley married Zach, when we brought him into the family, I'm like, Little House on the Prairie is like, oh, I've never seen that. I'm like, son, sit down. I have the whole box at DVDs. And he didn't like them. I almost didn't let him marry my daughter because of that, but every single time by the end of the show, there's like this, even Harriet Olson, I mean, just tears. The other show, I thought I was safe. When I stopped watching, I thought, okay, I'm growing up, I'm matured. Then Jane says, there's a show on NBC we've gotta watch. I'm just like, what's it called? And she goes, this is us. I'm like, I'm not watching that show. It looks dumb. And she goes, just watch it. So I watched it and it's, if you've seen it, I just sat there and by the end of it, I was like looking out the slider so that Jane couldn't see me because I'm just, Jack. And I look over at her and her eyes are just snot. I mean, just, we're both bawling. And you know what I realized about both of those shows? Both of them are centered around a good father. Both of them are centered around not of perfect people, not of people that are going through life without any challenges or difficulties, but the anchor for them is the strength of a father who will go to any extended means to take care of his children. And when we see prayer like Harry Potter, listen, formula, magic incantation, a formula, if we see prayer as being more about a formula than a father, we will never develop a strong prayer life. But if we see prayer as always being about the father, the father who sees us, loves us, and has good things for us, not just things that we can receive, that's part of it, but notice it says, if you seek, you'll find, okay, there's some pathways in life we wanna find. If we ask, we receive, there's some things that we want to receive, questions we wanna ask, directions we need, but doors, there's also gonna be doors that we stand before. And we're trying to figure out whether this is a wall or whether this is a door. If we'll see it through the lens of the father who's for us, it will change our desires. It will instigate something on the inside of us. The question, listen, everything in life really boils down to desire. We started in the garden with an issue of desire, with an issue of our wills, whether we were gonna submit to God's word, his voice, or whether we were going to allow our own desires to take us in another direction. It has everything to do with temptation. Prayer has everything to do with desire. If you desire God's word above all things, then you will be a person of prayer, you'll be a person that it won't be drudgery to, it will actually be delight. But if you see prayer as God being this kind of mean, distant, indifferent God towards you, not a father, then prayer will be something where you don't wanna bother God as much, or maybe I can't trust his good intentions for me. The real question that we have to ask is, what do you wanna hear? What do you want to hear in your life? Do you wanna hear the voice of God? Because here's what I know, if you want or you desire to hear the voice of God, you will. But there are all kinds of competing voices, thoughts, worldviews, opinions that are luring us saying, come on, listen to me. Trying to sell us on their desires. And the real question is what, at the end of the day, what do you want? Because that's what Jesus is saying, if you will ask, you'll receive. If you'll seek, you'll find. If you knock, the door will be opened unto you. You know, I was reading that scripture one time and I was thinking to God, this was kind of my internal conversation. It's like, Lord, if you already know everything that I need, why do I have to ask? And if you already know where I'm going, why do I have to seek? And if you know every opportunity that's gonna come my way and why do I have to knock on doors? Why can't you just open all the doors that need to be opened? Why can't you just, you know, if you're working all things for my good, why do I even have to do these things? Why did you build it in that I have to ask, seek, and knock? And the Lord's answer to me was this. He says, because the process of asking, seeking, and knocking actually reveals and creates desire on the inside of you. And I want you, I want you to hear my voice. I want you to pursue me. I want to partner with you. I'm not, see, if we see doors in our life as blockades that are keeping us from what we want on the other side of it, then whenever you come up to doors in your life, you'll be tempted to see them as barriers, as walls. So many times we come up to doors and it's like, well, I know what I want's on the other side, but I don't see a door as actually an entry point. I actually see it as a wall that's telling me no. If you think God locked that door to keep you out of something and that you've been denied access, then you'll stop seeking. Or if you're asking, you're seeking for God's wisdom, you've gotta come do a place where you want to hear God's voice, you want God's opinion, you want God's truth, you want God's way more than you want anything else, more than any opinion matters, more than what people think, more than even your own desires. And what happens is when you get to a place of holy desperation on the inside of you where I need to hear you, Lord, and you've said that if I ask, I'll receive. So I'm asking in the process of asking in the process of seeking, what is revealed is how good God is, but it begins to stir desire for the right things on the inside of us. So the issue is the question we're all asking is what do you want to hear? What do you want to hear? When Jane and I go on long road trips, like she's right now, she's in Florida, she took Tiffany back to school, so all three of the girls drove down to Lakeland, Florida. So it was like a Queen B road trip. And there was way too much estrogen in that car for me to get into, so I said, I'm gonna stay behind, take care of the dogs. But Jane went down there and they're having a great time, but when we'll take road trips often, I drive, there's a lot of times where I get in the car and I just want quiet. Can anybody relate to that? It's like, I just want to get in the car and I just, I don't want anything. I don't want to talk, I don't want conversation. I just, I want to stare out the windshield and look at the road. So still, it's like quiet. I'm not uncomfortable with quiet. It's just like, I can think, I can daydream and time goes fast, but when we get in the car, Jane loves music. So growing up in our house, we always had music on, always had worship music on. 24-7, our computer was never turned off. From the moment we bought our Mac, iMac, until the day it died, it never was powered off. Always playing iTunes music and worship music. So when we get in the car, I like quiet, we'll go on a road trip and Jane will often be like, I know what that sigh means. Like what? And she goes, do you wanna play some music? And what that means, she's not really asking me if I want to. She's telling me she wants music. And I'm like, well, what do you want to hear? There's two questions that I often ask in a car. Where do you wanna eat and what do you wanna hear? In both cases, she rarely knows. Where do you wanna eat? I don't know. She knows where she doesn't wanna eat and my job is to guess. My job is to come up with it. It's like, well, hey, we could go to Panera. No, no, no, no Panera. How about some Thai food? Everything in the mood for that. Pizza, pizza's always good. It's what we're gonna eat in heaven for eternity. She's like, I'm like, where do you wanna eat? I don't know. Second question, what do you wanna hear? So I've got a library on my phone. We've got Bluetooth, I've got XM, I've got AM, I've got FM, I've got all these. What do you wanna hear? So most of the time what we do is go to FM and I'm like, do you wanna hear the 70s? Is that what you wanna hear? No, I want you to. No, not cheap trick. Go to the 80s and she loves the 80s. So it's like, oh, the 80s. A lot of times we'll go to the 80s because we both grew up in the 80s. 90s, we'll go there, but we don't know any of the music except the theme song to Veggie Tales because we were raising kids in the 90s. I know Arthur, I know Wishbone, I know the big comfy couch and I know Veggie Tales. I know the theme songs. That was the only music that we listened to in the 90s. But the 80s, we both grew up in the 80s so we flip on the 80s. It's like Death Leopard, Night Ranger, Journey, Foreign, you know, all the Christian bands. So, and still a lot of times we'll tune that in or it's like, do you want comedy or whatever? It's like, what do you want to hear? I don't know until she hears it. I'll know it when I hear it. It's gonna take a while. It's a question we've gotta ask ourselves in life because let me tell you there are a lot of options. There are a lot of options out there. If we're just being real, look, there are a lot of options, a lot of voices and the voices, every voice, every voice, it doesn't matter if it's the voice of media, doesn't matter if it's the voice of our peers, it doesn't matter whether it's the internal voice of our past and our greatest fears and anxieties or whether it's the voice of the enemy or whether it's the voice of God. All voices are doing the same thing. They are offering, they're offering something that they think we want in order to trigger our desires because the hook of your life, the direction of your life will be determined by the desires of your life and the desire of your life is always lured in a certain direction by voices and so when you think about all the different voices that are competing for your affections, you got the voice of peer pressure, you got the voice of social media, you got the voice of the marketplace, you have the voice of the philosophies and the world views of mankind, you've got political voices, you have spiritual voices, the voice of demons, you've got the voice of theology, you've got the voice of philosophy. All of these voices are communicating something and they all have a hook to them and they're saying, look, if you'll turn your attention to me, I will give you what you want and we are all hearers, every single one of us are hearers. We're listening to voices all the time but we just have to determine what we want to hear because oftentimes what we want to hear we're using as a means to get what we want. Have you ever had this happen where you've been scrolling Google something or you're looking on Instagram and all of a sudden these little ads pop up like of a handbag or a new pair of shoes or Yankee candle or whatever. For me, it's always tennis shoes or something that pop up and it's like, hey, shop now, swipe up and shop now. It's like, how did they know? We'll be literally talking about it one day, talking about man, I really, I think I want a new pair of sneakers. The next day you're on Instagram and all of a sudden it's like, hey, ooh, sneakers, boom, right there. It's like, how did they know? They know. And then you peruse it or you've been on Amazon, you've ever searched on Amazon. There's algorithms that they have created so that when you search, it connects to other things because they know if we barrage you, put it in front of you enough times, eventually we'll get the hook into you and you will shop and then you will buy and it's a consumeristic mindset. And can I tell you that we all experience that every day, we're just used to it. It's true when it comes to buying things and it's also true of spiritual influences and voices in our life. Now, not all voices are equal. The world is trying to offer us all kinds of things. These voices are saying, look what you're really, you're confronted with your own needs, you're confronted with the desires that you have, there's things going on the inside of yours like, I need something or I need a sense of purpose or my life would be better if I had this and you know the enemy is super good at popping up in that moment and going, here's what you need. Or your fears whispering in your ear. Well, if you do it this way, then last time you did it, it went this way, so now do it this way or say this, guard yourself in this relationship or go to this place because if you just had that guy, I mean, I know you've had boyfriends before and it didn't work out, but if you just had this guy, your whole world would change. You know what the enemy's doing is playing on desires. It's like you married that guy, you married him and man, when you married him, he had a six pack and he loved you and called you all the time, but now he's got a six gallon and he doesn't pay attention. He's a little balding and he cares less about you and you know, even the media has done a terrible job. We paint all these guys who are young and single as just these studs and as soon as they get married, they become couch potatoes who are indifferent and dumb and that's not reality by the way. That's just the way that the world paints the picture. So what it does is it appeals to us, whether you're a guy or whether you're a girl, it doesn't matter what your attraction is. There's always something else that's out there that the enemy's going, come on, this is what you really want. What's he trying to do? Get a hold of your desire because the master key to a relationship with God is desire and the enemy knows if he can hijack your desire, he can hijack your relationship with God. Jesus said, I want you to ask, why Jesus? You already know what I need and you already know what I want. He's like, I want you to think about it. I want you to become focused in your desire. I want you to ask me because you know that I'm good because you know that I'm your father. I want you to seek and you shall find. Why do I have to seek for these things, God, in your way? Because you're living in a world where there's all these street signs saying, if you want happiness, live this way. If you want wealth, do this. If you wanna feel significant, be this. And God says, no, I want you to pay attention to that longing and that desire that's on the inside of you and I want you to push it in my direction. I want you to seek me. God's not hiding from you, God's hiding for you. See, there's not a door in the world, not a lock in the world that can keep you from the father's voice. He says, knock and the door will be opened unto you. God, if everything that I need is on the other side, that door, why is the door closed in the first place? Why are you telling me to knock? God's like, because in the process of knocking, I'm refining who you are and the focus of your desire and I'm causing you to exert yourself so that your need becomes desperation. Desperation becomes endurance and as soon as the door opens and you step across the threshold, you see that not only am I there, but I'm good and I'm the holder of everything that you've been longing for. You're powerful. So I have a great friend who has four boys and when his four boys were young, real young, they were all home and he had a home office in the basement. And as you can imagine, trying to get work done with four boys running around. If you're a mom trying to keep the boys away, it's like play zone defense, but somebody's gonna get by you. And so he gathered his four boys, a kind of rambunctious boys and he says, boys, now listen, dad wants to play with you. I wanna play baseball, basketball, all those kinds of things, but dad has a job, dad's working. So when dad gets up in the morning and he goes downstairs in his office, I'm gonna put this do not disturb. He had like a little marker that he made out of construction paper. When you see the red thing on the door and it says dad's working, don't disturb dad because I have important phone calls to make and they said, okay, dad, yeah, we can. So one day he has one of his sons who's just wound up. Wakes up and he's walking around us. He's like, where's dad? And the mom's trying to like deviate him. He's like, oh, I'm not sure if he's home or what, he might be working, but you know, don't disturb that. No, where's dad, where's dad? I need dad. No, just leave dad alone. He goes in the other room, finds the other boys. Where's dad? I don't know, I heard him downstairs. So he goes down to the bottom of the stairs and he hears dad in his office talking. He's on a business call and his dad's, you know, oh yeah, that PNL or whatever business people talk about. PNL or ARL, spreadsheet, Excel, boring, IBM, oh, what, all that kind of stuff. So he hears dad talking and he goes, runs over to the door and he sees the do not disturb markers on the door. But he hears dad and so he does what any responsible four-year-old kid would do. Dad, dad, I know you're in there, dad. The sign says do not disturb. Dad, and dad keeps talking, he hears pause and you know the dad's in there, right? He's going, I gotta finish this phone call. Dad, dad, dad, daddy, father, papa. Dad, dad, dad, dad, you know what the dad does? Come on, what do you think dad does? Dad answers the door. Hi, dad. I wanted to show you this picture that I drew. I worked really hard on it, it's a picture of a tank. Did you see this, dad? It's so cool. Remember that movie we saw, it has a tank and he's like, son, dad was on a phone call. Yeah, dad, but I just, I had to show you this. He's like, but son, I had the do not disturb marker on the door. He's like, yeah, this is the best part. He says, yeah, I know that's for the other kids, not me. Because I know you love my pictures and you would want to see this. Dad opened the door because he believed the character of his father was towards him and for him in such a way that you and I, maybe we sit back and we hear that story going, all that poor immature child who doesn't get social cues and really thinks that, but maybe we need to become a lot more like my friend's son. That delay doesn't mean denial, doors don't mean walls. That God's not abandoned us. God's actually asking us to knock. God, I'm so desperate, I need you. God, I know that all the obstacles seem in front of me and it seems impossible, but I'm not gonna stop knocking and wherever you're at, I'm gonna seek you. I'm gonna find you and when I hear your voice on the other side of that door, I'm not gonna take that as a no. God, I'm getting through the door. I'm getting to you. You've got what I need. You are who I need. You are all that I need. And I'm getting through the door. I don't care the voices that are in the kitchen telling me you're not there. I don't care about the voices of the naysayers that say you're too busy. I don't care about the signs on the door that say do not disturb God. I am gonna knock and ask and seek. I'm gonna be so audacious because I know, I know, I know how good you are. You see, if we are that radical in our belief of how good our fathers. Remember Jesus said if you wanna enter into the kingdom of God, you've gotta become like one of these, like one of these children. What do you wanna hear? Are you obsessed with hearing what everybody else thinks? Listen, we live in a world, I get it, where other people's opinions matter. And I think they matter way too much. We're checking how many likes we got on social media or constantly, did we get likes? Somebody liked it. Oh, look at, I got this person's following me. Or you say the wrong thing and then you gotta retract it before there's implications of that. I get that we need to be wise and we need to be cautious and the things that we put there on social media. But at the end of the day, what this world needs is not a bunch of bots and people that are moved and shaped by every wind of other people's group think opinions. What we need is some men and women who know God, care only about what God has to say, have set their face like steel before the presence of God and say come hell or high water, I'm going to do the will of God in my life. Because I know God is a father and I don't care if the whole world stands against me. All I need is God saying that he's my father. That's all that I need. Unmoved by people's opinions and their criticism. Unmoved by even the voices of hell itself that are whispering, you're gonna lose everything. You're gonna miss out. All of that is trying to recharacterize the integrity of God. But God stands and he says, come on, seek me, ask me. Knock on the door. I want to ask you this question this morning. What do you want to hear? You want to hear over your life because the voice of God is available to you. It just requires you tuning some other things out. Just stand up with me all over this room, please. I want to ask you, please don't move. We're about to dismiss here in a moment but I really believe that the father that Jesus taught us about is in this room this morning. We've been talking about our desire that draws us but before we are finished this morning I want you to know God's desire. The father's desire is for you. The greatest desire in the father's heart is that you and I would be reconciled to him. Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son who said to his father, God, give me everything that you are gonna leave me in your will. Give me everything that belongs to me because I want to go live life my way. And the father brokenhearted gave him his inheritance and the son went off in the world and for a while he listened to all the voices that said, this is what you want, that's what you want. No, this is what you want. And what he ended up with was the very thing he didn't want. And there was a moment where he came to his senses and he realized how good he had it in the father's house, how good his father was even to people that weren't family. He said, I'd rather be a slave in my dad's house than a son in the world. And he went home and Jesus tells a story and he says, and a long ways off the father saw it. He picked up his gown and he ran to his son. Through his arms around his son, he kissed his son and he said, my son who is dead is alive again. The son said, Father, I've sinned. I've made all the wrong decisions. I listened to all the wrong voices. You know what, the father didn't care. The father said, what matters is that you're here right now. The father put a ring of authority on his finger. He put a clean robe of righteousness on him and new sandals that changed the way he walked. And he invited him back into the house where there was a feast prepared for him. And this morning, I believe that in the same way the father has been looking over the service, looking at our hearts in a way that only he can do. We can shape ourselves externally anyway that we want to but God sees through all of that, sees right to the heart of who we are and he sees our brokenness. He sees our shame. He sees our filthy rags. He sees our sin. We would be tempted to run from him because of those things. But the father actually comes running and chasing us to replace those things. And today, the father's here to replace those things. See, there's a lot of prodigals in this room. A lot of us that we know what it's like to be in the father's house. But we chose in other directions. Things that have taken us down the alleys of sin, separation from God, brokenness, some things that people are aware of, some things that nobody's aware of. And it keeps us from God. It keeps us from really serving him. We're afraid if we surrender all that we'll lose all but God says you've already lost all, so surrender all. And today, the father's looking at you not with disgust but he's looking at you with love and he says, if you'll come to me, I'll forgive. If you'll come to me and turn away from all the other voices, I'll speak, I'll lead, I'll guide, I'll clean you. There's a place at the table for you. And I want everyone in this room to buy your heads, close your eyes. And I want you to see in your heart the eyes of the father looking at you with compassion and mercy. Today, if you're here and you know in your heart of hearts you're not right with God. You say, man, I wish I could go home. I wish I could do it all over. I wish I could be forgiven. I've got good news for you today. Today, the father who forgives is here and he'll forgive you. And if you say, I wish I could have a brand new start today. I wish I could go back and redo some things. I've got good news for you. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Today, if you feel like all you deserve to be is a slave and to just serve God from a distance, God says, I don't want you to be a slave. I want you to be a son. I want you to be a daughter. My eyes have never been taken off of you. I love you intently and deeply. Today, if you take your eyes off the world and put them firmly on me today, I'll raise you up. I'll bring you back into the family of God. Today, you know you're not right with God. You just say, passively pray for me. I want to get right with God. Listen, if you will turn from your darkness, if you'll turn from your sin and you'll ask the father to forgive you, he'll never remind you of your past, but he will speak to you about your future. Today, you can become a son or a daughter of God. You can be born again. You can be a new creation. If you're here and you say, I'm not right with God, but today, I'm the like the prodigal. I want to come home. Father, forgive me. Cleanse me. Come into my heart. I want a new beginning. I want a thriving living relationship with you. I don't have that right now, but I want that right now all over the room. I want you to just shoot your hand up. Today is your day. Your day to come home. Hands all over the room. Come on, raise them. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Raise it all over the room. The father is here today for you. Will you respond? Will you take your eyes off of all the other things and put them on Jesus? Come on, raise it if you've not raised it right now. The father is running towards you. Hands all over the room. Turn from your sin. Turn to Jesus. Raise your hand if you've not already. The father's in this room. Yes, God, yes, God, yes, yes, yes. All the way to the very back. I see your hands. Yes, sir, I see your hand. There's a young lady. You don't have your hand raised right now. There's an internal war of shame going on. And the father says, tell her right now, I came for her. If that's you, you raise your hand. Today, Jesus is here to save you. Raise your hand if that's you. Can put your hands down. I'm gonna lead us in a prayer before we leave today. I want everyone, everyone in this room to say it out loud, but especially if you just raise your hand. This is us responding to the voice of God. Say this with me. Say, heavenly father, I come in Jesus' name and I repent of listening to every other voice of being shaped by the world and turning my face away from you. Today I'm coming home because I believe that Jesus is Lord. I believe that he died on the cross for me. I believe that he paid my sin's price. And I believe he did it because you're a good father. Today cleanse me, save me, wash me and make me brand new, father. I turn my back on my past. I'm leaving my dirty garments here. Today I say I wanna hear your voice above all other voices. Thank you for loving me, saving me and speaking to me in Jesus' name. Amen. And amen, amen, amen, amen, amen. Amen. I wanna invite our prayer partners and care ministers to make their way up to the front and here's what we're gonna do. I'm about to dismiss the service. But there were just so many of us that just raised our hand. There's no way in the world I would wanna make light of that. It's an eternal decision. It just literally, that decision changes your eternity. It's not just like, oh, that was a nice prayer. It changed you from the inside out. You're a son, you're a daughter now. And there's a new way for you to walk, new sandals for you. There's a new authority in your life and God is your father, you're in the house. God wants to speak to you about so many different things. We want to stand with you on that in your journey. It's not just a decision, it's a journey. So here's what I wanna do. Before we dismiss, I don't normally do this but I feel like I'm supposed to do this. If you just raise your hand, I want you right now, and you meant it, I want you to begin the journey home. I want you to make your way to the near style and I want you to come down to the front. You're not gonna be alone, I promise you. But this is your public statement of coming home to the father. If that's you, thank you, young lady. She's the first, who's gonna be next? Come on, come, be bold, be brave. Come right up to one of these. Come on, would you come? Come this morning. There were tons of hands, you're not alone. Come on, sons and daughters are coming home this morning. Sons and daughters are coming home this morning. Come on, come from every direction, all the way in the back. Come on, step out of your stagnancy and come home this morning. Come on, if you've not come, come right now. There's more, come on, there's more. Love you, buddy. Come on, come, they're still coming. Come on, Jesus is real, everybody. Who else will come? Come on, I need some more pastors, prayer partners up here. Who else will come this morning? Thank you, God bless you. Come on, just come. This could be the difference, right here. This decision, I feel like maybe there's a couple of people that are like, I raise my hand, I don't really wanna do, I just wanna go, this could be the pivotal decision. Thank you, thank you. So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna pray and dismiss us and then all of you who came down, we love you guys. We are so proud of you. Our prayer partners have been praying for this moment and we're just gonna hang around and pray with you guys as long as we need to. Is that all right? Before we dismiss you. But God is a father and he loves you. Can we just pray, let's, Father, thank you for loving us so much that you gave your only begotten son. Thank you for these lives that you've just changed that you've just stepped into and we pray, Lord, that the voice of our father would be the loudest voice in our life. I pray, Father, as we leave radiant tonight, today, we're just not leaving a church service. We're leaving the father's dinner table and we've been filled and are full of good things. Send us into the world overflowing with the joy that we have from being with you. In Jesus' name.