 This word will help the believer who's struggling. This word will help the believer who's strong. This word will also help the believer who was once doing well spiritually and then fell away. And is wondering how to get back to that place where they're on fire for the Lord. When we say that someone is on fire for God, what we mean is that they're living a life surrendered and that they're burning like a light. They're burning with passion for the things of God. They're walking in holiness. They're living clean. They're living as a Christian should really when we say someone is on fire for the Lord we're describing the Christian life. First we must understand that by doing the spiritual basics you can avoid spiritual crisis. Imagine I go to the doctor and I'm not eating. I'm not sleeping. I'm not exercising. And I go to the doctor and I say doc I'm just, I feel terrible. Something just feels wrong with my body. Something feels off. My mind isn't sharp. My body's fatigued. I'm achy. I'm in pain. Just I'm weak. I don't understand what's going on. The first few questions the doctors are going to ask me if he's a good doctor. The first questions he's going to ask me are going to be about the basics because why? Because he wants to rule out the simple things first. How's your sleep? How's your diet? Do you exercise? Why do they ask these questions up front? Because they want to see if you're doing the basics. Because if you're not doing the basics that's going to automatically lead to many problems. So before they jump to while you need surgery. Before they jump to well it could be this disease or that disease. Before they can jump to well here's the medication we think you should take. They have to first assess and see are you doing the basics? And the same thing is true with our spiritual lives. If you do the basics you can avoid the spiritual crisis. You would be amazed at how many of what you think our major spiritual issues would be resolved in a matter of weeks if you simply did the spiritual basics. You'd be astonished. You'd be amazed. You would go oh my goodness was it that simple? Simple yes easy not always. You would be amazed at how many things would cease to become issues if you simply did the basics. But often we try to blame on demons what's actually a lack of discipline. Wow. Often we try to blame on spiritual dynamics which what really is just disobedience on our part. Lay hands on me and make me obedient to God. Lay hands on me and make me disciplined. Lay hands on me so I can do the right things. We want the quick fix. We want to go have the chills in some worship service. We want to have that special oil poured over our head. We want to have hands laid on us and instantly experience everything we should already be experiencing by practicing the basics. But even if you did obtain breakthrough in that way which again I believe in. I believe in that there's a place for that. But even if you did experience it and then you went back to living your life as you lived it before without implementing the spiritual basics well guess what? You'd find yourself in the same issue again which is why we repeat these cycles of chaos. We repeat these cycles of bondage, these cycles of immaturity, these cycles of confusion. We go from event to event, conference to conference, live stream to live stream, YouTube channel to YouTube channel, book to book. All will never changing our behavior hoping that someone else will do the spiritual work for us. Wow. You can avoid spiritual crisis if you do the spiritual basics. So let's look at number one. This one's key. Live a lifestyle of repentance. That's number one. Sin stifles the influence of the spirit in your life. Take for example, Samson who was seduced by Delilah. If you look at that narrative you'll find that he was seduced in phases. You see he gave up the secret to his strength in phases. Little by little as Delilah pressed him for his weakness she wanted to know what makes you strong so I can make you weak. As she pressed in to know his answers got closer and closer to the truth. Go read the narrative. And it incrementally happened to where he was destroyed till finally he gets up and he didn't realize that that supernatural strength had left his body. He didn't know that the Lord had left him and when the scripture says the Lord left him it's talking about the power upon him. Remember the Holy Spirit doesn't leave the believer from within but that influence can be diminished upon our lives and that's what happened with Samson. Incrementally he was taken away. Temptation is not an event it's a process. You fell into sin on Friday because Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday you were looking at things and listening to things and being around people and doing all sorts of things you should not have been doing. And those things accumulated into a crescendo of falling into temptation and that's how you found yourself in that situation again because you allowed the temptation to overtake you incrementally little by little by little that's how the enemy lures you in. He'll give you a little taste of something that maybe doesn't seem like it has heavy consequences and he's training you to give into temptation for the big thing. Think about this now. He trains you in the little things but you don't realize the big hook is coming. He trains you to take the bait but you don't know when the hook is gonna be in it and we make a practice of saying yes to sin even on a small scale if you could even call it that I mean technically speaking there's no such thing as a small sin but sin can have stronger and stronger influence in your life as you continue to give into that sin in what we would call smaller ways. So first maybe a Facebook message married men you see she sends you a message on Facebook. You say, hmm, I remember this woman from school. I remember she was really nice and you remember maybe you took a liking to her message. How you doing? How's life? The first fall you respond. Wow. Maybe say, brother David are you being religious? No, I'm being realistic because we know in our hearts what we're doing, don't we? And that's how deceptive the flesh is because the flesh likes to cooperate with the enemy. The flesh will cooperate with demonic deception. The flesh will lie to you will lie to yourself. You are so good at lying to yourself you'll actually believe that you have no intention of taking it any further than a conversation but hidden behind that response to the message there's this deep buried desire for something more. Wow. And so you send the first message and then another and then it becomes a conversation. Then you start to divulge information about your life, your feelings and you start to have emotional affairs and then you start to share secrets and sooner or later that Facebook message turns into adultery and you lose your reputation, you lose your marriage, you lose your family, you lose so much more than you ever thought you would when you first sent that message. That's how temptation works. A small fire, if you saw a little flame in your living room you wouldn't say, oh, it's just a little fire. Who's that gonna hurt? It's not gonna burn anybody. No, you would attack that little flame as quickly as possible and you would put it out. And that's how we have to treat sin in our lives. Wow. We have to put out that fire, even if it's just an ember as quickly as possible don't even allow for the little embers to build up in your life. You may think you're putting them all out. You allow too many, you may miss one. And it may end up becoming a fire that destroys your life. Why? Because you didn't wanna address that when it was a smaller issue. And of course I use that word, that term smaller loosely because again, in the eyes of God anything that we do that sinful is highly offensive to who he is, his holiness. I'm talking about how it manifests in consequences that we can certainly classify as smaller sins. The Bible says in 1 John 1 9 but if we confess our sins to him he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. This is to those who fall into sin. If you happen to fall in a sin, know this. If we confess our sins to him, we don't confess our sins to him daily so that we can be saved. We're saved to the finished work of the cross. We confess our sins to him that sin might not gain influence in our lives. Now, who knows? I mean, there's a lot of debate. The ones saved always save. People ask all the time, brother David, what are you? I say it doesn't matter whether you believe in one saved always saved or you believe that you can lose your salvation. It doesn't matter. We all should be striving to live holy lives, period. And if someone has fallen away from the Lord, whether we think they were with the Lord and then fell away or whether we think they were never saved to begin with doesn't matter because that person still needs Jesus. So whatever you think about how sin might affect us in the end result, let's not even get to that point. Let's just look at it from the very beginning and say, okay, why do we even have to go that far to where there's a debate? If someone goes far enough in sin do they lose their salvation? Why should that even be a concern if we're addressing it at the front end and saying I won't even let it get to that point where I start to question my salvation? So many believers ask how close can I get to that line of sin before it's actually sin? How much of the world can I participate in before it actually becomes compromised? If that's the angle you're coming at it from you're already starting from the wrong place. Wow, yep. If we confess our sins to him this is something that's consistently done. How do we know? Because the scripture says he's faithful meaning he does it over and over and over again and just to forgive us our sins. So he's faithful to forgive us our sins in that he does it continually and he's just to forgive us our sins in that he does it legally because of what he did on the cross. But we must live lifestyles of repentance. Stop waiting for it to become a bigger issue and start addressing it now. Right. This may be God's warning to someone watching. Address it now. Preacher, address it now. Man of God, woman of God, address it now. Believer, address it now before it becomes a major issue. Before it becomes something that disqualifies you from ministry. Before it becomes something that will destroy your marriage. Before it becomes something that will cost you the respect of your children. Before it will cause you to bring reproach to the gospel. Address it now. Come on. And be aggressive about it. Live a lifestyle of repenting. You wanna keep the fire of God? Stop allowing those little things that stifle the influence of the Holy Spirit in your life. Number two, cling to Jesus. How? How do you cling to Jesus? You keep your prayer life intact. If you're not praying, you're saying to God, I can do it without you. Well, it's just as simple as that. In order to cling to Jesus, you need to pray. And if you're not praying, you're saying to God, I can do it without you. You're saying, Lord, I don't need you to do this. I got this, Lord. I can do this on my own strength. There's not much I need from you. Without prayer, that's what you're doing. The Bible says in Colossians chapter four, verse two, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. This is a continual thing. Philippians four, six, through seven, do not be anxious about anything. But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. First Thessalonians chapter five, verse 17 says, pray without ceasing. Now look at John chapter 15, watch this. This is powerful what Jesus says here. John 15, five through eight. Yes, I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them will produce much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want and it will be granted. When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my father. Again, John 15, five through eight. Preachers ask me often, what's the key? And this is the preachers who are just starting in ministry and say, what's the key? How do we see growth and this and that and miracles? And it's always the same answer. How do we see more miracles? Same answer. How do we grow our spiritual gifts? Same answer. How do we preach with the anointing? Same answer. How do we overcome sin? Same answer. How do we grow the ministry? Same answer. How do we get financials? Same answer. Cling to Jesus. How do you cling to Jesus? Prayer. We can't do anything without Him. When we get disconnected from Him, we start to wither and we wither fast. There's a very quick process to withering once you unplug from that place of prayer. This is why you have to guard your prayer life with no compromise. Make sure you're communing with the Lord every single day. And we get tired. We get weary. We get distracted. Our flesh starts to grab hold of our lives again. Isn't that funny how the moment you start to disconnect from prayer, old habits begin to return? Right. Maybe you start getting snappy again, a little moody, a little angry. People offend you more easily. You're more doubt filled, more negative, more worried, more full of lust, more full of pride. All of these things start to take root. The moment we unplug from the source, you have to cling to Jesus. And I mean cling. Yes, he'll hold on to you, but there's something to be said of you just cling. That's how I feel. I feel like I'm just grabbing hold of him. That's how all of this has felt, honestly. The growth of this ministry, the busyness of the schedule, the traveling around the world, the media, everything that I do for the Lord, that's what it feels like. I feel like I just grabbed a hold of his robe and I have my eyes closed. I'm just clinging to him and he's just taking me where he wants to go. Now sometimes that's what it feels like. And on the days when I don't do that, when I don't do it as long as I should, or when I kind of just brush it off till later in the day, it's not a very good day. And I have to remind myself that without the Lord, I can't do anything. You can accomplish more in a prayer filled day than you can in a prayer less week. I heard another minister say something to the effect of, I have so much to do today, much more than usual. So I'll pray three hours instead of one. That's the dependency we must have. And the proof that you believe in prayer is that you actually pray. But prayer is the clinging to Jesus. The starting your day, the moving throughout your week of just hanging on. And that's all you can do, just hang on. You're dealing with issues with the flesh, just cling. You're dealing with doubt, just cling. You're dealing with even anxiety and depression and confusion and chaos, people coming against you. You're worried about your future, just cling. I need a miracle, a miracle in my family, in my marriage, in my body, just cling. How do I grow my spiritual gifts? How do I grow in ministry? How do I start a ministry? How do I know if God called me to just cling? That's all I can do. That's all I can tell you. There's no secret, there's no gimmicks, there's no 12-step method, you cling. You cling to Him and out of that comes everything else. Amen. I often use an illustration where if I were to stack wine glasses, and no, I don't drink, but if I were to stack wine glasses on top of each other in a pyramid shape, which glass would I need to fill first if I wanted it to affect all the other glasses? Well, of course, I'd have to fill the top glass. And in filling the top glass, that top glass would overflow and fill all the wine glasses below it. All those glasses can represent different things, finances, marriage, relationship with children, friendships, ministry, responsibilities, work, career, school, you name it, those wine glasses are stacked and we have a lot of them. And if we're not careful, we'll take that pitcher of water and we'll try to first fill the marriage. And then we'll try to first fill time with our children. And that's good, you should spend time with your children and with your wife, but hear the full illustration. Don't hear what I'm not saying. We try to fill the financial glass. We try to fill the career glass and the academic glass and the emotional glass. And we try to fill all these glasses. And the problem is we run out before we can fill them all. The only way to effectively fill all of them is to start with the top glass. And that top glass is prayer, time with the Lord, time in his presence, clinging to Jesus. When you fill that top glass, it begins to trickle over into all the other glasses of your life, right? I tell the Lord, Lord, if I could just fill that top glass, I don't have to worry about the others. They'll just come naturally, it will, it'll come naturally. That doesn't mean you don't have to work at them or you don't have to think about them, but it's so much easier to fill all the other glasses if you start with the top glass first. Don't be chaotic about it, pouring in all these different areas. Pour on that first one and it will overflow to the rest. Number three, stay in the word. The word, the word, the word. I can't stress this enough. Why do you think you can pray with very few distractions and worship with very few distractions, but the distractions suddenly become intensified when you try to read the word? Now your flesh will fight you the hardest when you pray, but the devil will fight you the hardest when you go to read the word. The flesh dies in prayer. The enemy is defeated by the word. So your flesh will squirm when you go to pray, but the enemy will assault you with everything he has when you go to read the word. It's your first line of defense because without the word, you don't know what to pray. You don't know what you can pray. You don't know your authority to pray. Without the word, there's no fuel for your prayer life. There's no revelation for your prayer life. The word is where it begins. And I'm not just talking about reading the verse of the day or watching a reel from my Instagram page. I'm talking about being solely devoted to the word in such a way that you know it in and out. And we as believers have to know the word. People of God, we have to know the word. Sadly, I've met atheists and Muslims who know the Bible better than many Christians. Wow. I'm serious. I've met atheists and Muslims who know the Bible better than many Christians. This is sad. Now, how do we combat this? It's through daily discipline in the word. Where you're reading the word on a daily basis, consuming it and not skipping the parts that you think are boring. What an insult to the martyrs who would lay down their lives again if it meant that more people could have a Bible. Think about how in some parts of the world, they can't even have a Bible. It's illegal to own it. Why, because there's such power. And we just kind of skip, I don't really like that part. They would be moved to tears. Some of the believers around the world. Please hear me now. There are some believers in the world who would be moved to tears if they could have a page of the Bible that you neglect and throw out as one of the boring parts. Think about that. There's power in knowing the genealogies, believe it or not. There's power in knowing the history. There's power in knowing what the old law was like. We should know it in and out from beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation. We should understand the concepts of covenant and grace and faith and salvation. We should understand the record of the seed moving from Genesis all the way down to the Messiah. We should understand what the patriarchs had to go through. We should understand what the prophets had to face. We should understand what David is communicating and what other writers in the book of Psalms are communicating. We should understand the word and not just know it a little bit. We as believers should know the Bible better than any people group. Christians should know the Bible better than any people group on the earth and we don't even read it. I wanna say that again. Christians should know the Bible better than any people group on the earth and we don't even read it. How sad. And I'm not saying this to condemn you. I'm saying this to call you to something more. It's not just something that we can laugh off and oh yeah, have you read your Bible? Oh, it's been a while. Ha, ha, no. Why do we laugh these things off as if it's not a big deal? That's the very substance of your spirituality. Psalm chapter one, verses one through three say this. Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or stand around with sinners or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither and they prosper in all they do. So here we see that if someone is in the word and they meditate on the word that they prosper in every season. There's no season where they don't bear fruit. That's supernatural. Matthew chapter seven, verses 24 through 27 say this. Anyone who listens to my teaching, and this is Jesus speaking and follows it is wise. Like a person who builds a house on solid rock, though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won't collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't obey it is foolish. Like a person who builds a house on sand when the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with the mighty crash. You think COVID was something. We haven't seen anything yet. You think government overreach is a little overbearing right now. We haven't seen anything yet. You think the world hates the church now? We haven't seen anything yet. If we're not in the word, we are at risk for falling away. If we're not in the word, we're at risk for collapsing under the weight of the storm and a storm is coming. People of God, please hear me. A storm is coming. And if we're not careful, if we're not attentive to the word and when difficult times come, we as a house spiritually speaking will collapse. Get in the word. I say this with all love. I am pleading with you. Get in the word and don't just read it. Know it. Know it so well that you can quote it. Know it so well that you can explain it to a child. Know the word. That's what's gonna keep you strong. That's what's gonna sustain you in difficult times. When chaos comes and it will come, will you be kept standing? What have you built your house upon? What have you built your life upon? You can't say you're building your life upon the word if you're not in the word. You can't say you're building your life upon the words of Jesus if you don't even know what he said. If you're building your life upon the word, then the word is not just something you occasionally reverence when a preacher reads it. If you are living by the word, then it's a part of your lifestyle. You're consuming it constantly. I consume the word constantly. And I don't say that to brag because I like you need it. It's like bragging about I eat all the time. That's not, it's spiritually that's all I'm doing. I'm eating, but there's, I consume it constantly. When I'm on the plane, that's one of my favorite things because there's nothing else to do. So there's no distractions. And I could just put my headphones on and get in the word and I'll read it from the time we take off at the time we land. Chapters and chapters and chapters and chapters in there. You need to find it. And if you don't have time for the word, you need to rearrange your entire schedule. Yes, it's that important. If you say you're too busy, you need to rearrange your entire schedule. You need to rearrange your whole schedule to fit the word in. Build your schedule around the word. Build your schedule around your time with the Lord and let everything else have a place afterward. Fill that top glass first. Get in the word and stay in the word if you want to stay on fire. Thank you for watching EncounterTV. Don't forget to subscribe and click the notification bell. Also, help us spread the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Make a one-time donation or become a monthly supporter by clicking on the donate link now.