Hello, this is Elder Brandon Hartfield. We're thankful to have this opportunity to come and be on the radio broadcast again this week. We certainly desire the prayers of those of you that know the Lord, and by the Lord's help, we certainly pray that we could be used of God to be a blessing. Before we get started today, as always, we do want to look to the Lord in prayer. And I try to say this at least two or three times a year. That is not just a routine that we do. When I ask you to pray for me, if you're saved and you know the Lord, I mean that. I believe that prayer, it moves mountains. I believe in prayer. And I believe it helps us preachers to preach. I hope you have a good home church to go to. I pray that you pray for your pastor because I know it helps him to be a better pastor. And they need prayer. I hope you pray for them. And I'll say this. I don't get to say it often, but I do want to say it again. If you listen to us and you say, well, this is our church, please don't do that. You need a local visible body. If we can get a missionary to you, if we can help get a good church established in your area, if we can help you find a good church in your area, look, we want to help you. We're not here for us. I hope you understand that. We're here for you. We're supposed to be servants. He that's greatest in the kingdom of heaven is going to be he that serves, not he that gets served. And so I hope you understand that. We're here to help you. If you don't have a place to go to, I know many of our stations are in the South. I know we've got some in other locations. But look, we know preachers in Alabama. We know preachers in Mississippi. We know preachers in Louisiana. We know a couple of churches even over in East Texas. And if we can, we'll make phone calls and we'll try to help you find a place that you can go. And if we don't find a place that we can have confidence in, we'll see if you want to start a mission point in your area. And we'll try to see what can be started and how things can grow. But look, there needs to be a fervency for God's people to be in church. This is the blood-bought church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And near about everywhere you look in Scripture when the word church is used, it is a local, visible body. There's a lot of people that talk about churches as this unseen place and all this, but when you look in the church, the church at Corinth, the church at Thyatira, I mean, you go through and it's this church, that church, the church that's in this person's house, the church that's meeting here. I mean, it is a local, visible body. And I want to encourage you, if you're saved, that you need to be a part of a local, visible body. And you need to be working together in that place for the furtherance of the Gospel in that area. And I hope you see the need of it. I hope you see in the Scriptures the importance of it. But we do need your prayers, and when we pray, we pray because we know that we need God's help. I cannot touch your heart, I cannot burden a lost soul, and I certainly can't save a soul. It is the work of God, it is the work of His Holy Spirit, And I need His help when I preach, so bow with us in prayer. Heavenly Fathers, we come to You this day. Father, we're so thankful for the many wonderful things that You've done for us. We're thankful for Your church, thankful for Your salvation, thankful for Your Word and what it means to us. Help us, Father. that we can preach your message and the power and demonstration of your Holy Spirit, that much good could be accomplished. And Father, for the good that is accomplished, let us step aside and give you the praise, for it's in Jesus' name we do pray. Amen. As we come today, go and turn to the book of Matthew chapter 14. I know this would be a familiar reading of Scripture. This is after the 5,000 have been fed. That's in verse 21. They had eaten. There were about 5,000 men beside women and children, so it's over 5,000 being fed. You know, that was just the men, and then women and children also. It said in verse 22, in straightway Jesus constrained His disciples to get into a ship and go before Him unto the other side while He sent the multitudes away. And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up into a mountain apart to pray. And notice that even Jesus took time to be alone and pray. He set the example for us, dear friends. And when the evening was come, He was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, for the wind was contrary. And notice that you've got the waves. You've got a storm on the water. You've got the waves and the wind going, and it was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And you know, I've been amazed sometimes when people have shown me some pictures over time of Jesus walking on the sea, and I'm not big of pictures of Christ, we don't know what he looked like, but most of the things that you see over time are not accurate. And you know, when he's walking on the sea, the waters are almost calm. Look, I don't know how big the waves were, but I expect they were at least five or ten feet high. I mean, a little ship is, look, I can deal with two or three foot waves and, you know, and be out in somebody's bass boat somewhere. And that's not a deep hole by any stretch of the imagination. And you can even, you know, go through five foot seas with that. So, I mean, you might get banged up a little bit, but you can deal with it. But I mean, you start getting those beer ways at least 10 foot on something like that, that's when the water starts to come in. That's when you're like, man, the right wave comes and we in trouble. And no doubt that's what they were looking at here. And so when Jesus is walking on the water, I want you to picture that water is not calm. But He's calm. Because He is the God of the wind and the sea. And so he's walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him on the sea, they were troubled, saying, it is a spirit. And they cried out for fear. Let me ask you this. What would you think if you all of a sudden see a human figure walking on the water? Some of y'all probably been out in the water in different places, maybe even in deep water. Look, there's places you know that somebody should not be walking. There's waters that you're familiar with. And look, even if it was a lake somewhere, you know there's lakes around here that's 30, 40, 50 foot deep, maybe more than that in some places. That's not a place. If you saw somebody in that spot walking on top of the water, you'd say, whoo, what's that? And this is at nighttime, and they see this figure out there, and their thought is, man, it's a spirit, it's a ghost. And they're in fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer, it is I, be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. Now, I want you to notice some things that we need to pay attention to here. Nobody else was asking, Lord, bid me come. Out of the 12, Peter was the only one that had the faith to step out there on that water. And so I know Peter would be ridiculed for some of the things he does, but I'll tell you what, the other 11 didn't even have the faith to get out of the boat. Let's be a little bit more easy on Peter and how many of y'all would have said, in the wind and in the storm. Remember, Jesus walking here on water, the storm has not ceased, the wind has not ceased, the waves have not ceased. All that's still going on and yet Peter had the faith in that storm, in that situation to say, Lord bid me come to thee. And he said, come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. Peter was walking on water, not because of his power, his ability, but because of Christ. And as long as he was looking at Christ and paying attention to Christ, everything was fine, wasn't it? Everything was well. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they were coming to the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth, thou art the Son of God." Now, sometimes in life we start noticing the storms. Let me ask you, when has the wind and the storms of life ever stopped? When? And please don't misunderstand anything that I am telling you. I have great compassion for people going through difficult circumstances. Even you young people that might be listening, I have compassion for what you're having to face in the world and go through and even how hard it is to start off in life. But when has it been easy to start out in life? When? Some people say, well, you know, houses used to cost this much. Rent used to cost this much. How much were people being paid then too? I know some of it's recent. I know we're going through a time of inflation. But I'll tell you this. There's a time when you could rent a room for a quarter in my grandparents' lifetime and I guarantee you rent went up a whole lot more than from a quarter to a dollar. It went up a whole lot in their lifetime. There was times, no doubt, that they could buy a new house when they were young for $12,000. They were also getting paid about a dollar an hour. That was the minimum wage. Look, my papa had to kill coons and rabbits and sell the meat and the skins to people to get gas money. when he was married. He lived in a one-room shack and Granny had to walk down to the creek to wash her clothes. Y'all think that was easy? They had no air-conditioning and the only heat they had was from a potbelly oven, stove. There's many people that that's what they dealt with. Do you know that there's people that they had to work all year just to get a pair of shoes for the kids that would only last through winter and the kids had to walk around barefooted. Y'all think those days were easy? Y'all think it was easy growing up in a time when you thought the Soviet Union would drop a nuclear bomb on you? That was from the 1950s to my time in the 1980s. Up until about 1989, you know, we lived with that fear that Russia just for any reason might drop a bomb. And considering some of the leaders they had, especially going back to Joseph Stalin, you thought they might do it. You think it was easy when me and my wife got started? That's 20 years ago. Oh, a lot easier. Really? It was. Because I remember having to just stay at home. I remember Frosted Flakes being my lunch and supper. Because that's all we had money to eat sometimes. I can remember paying all my bills and all I had to get through the week was $5 in the bank account. Y'all know how much fun it is to try to make it through a week on $5? And look, I'm not complaining. I actually loved that time. All we had was each other. Throughout history, do you know that most people have had it difficult? And most kings and rulers have been evil. Even go back and study in the Bible. How many of the kings were good kings in the nation of Israel? And how many were wicked? I've never just done the ratio, but I know I've read a whole lot more times about this one was wicked than this one was righteous. This one did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord versus this one that did that which was right in the sight of the Lord. And I'm not trying to belittle what we're going through. I'm not trying to benign it in any way. I want better. I'm praying for better. I'll be voting this November. And I'll be voting my conscience. I'm not telling you to vote for her. I'll tell you some principles to vote for. I'm not telling you who to vote for. But dear friends, sometimes we think, oh, we have it worse than anybody else in the world. Life has always been hard. When my parents got started in life, they were so broke. Those of you that are from Mississippi, you know where my parents spent their honeymoon at? And my mama graduated from Stone High School, my dad graduated from Purvis High School, if you know where those are. They spent their honeymoon at Paul B. Johnson State Park. That was their honeymoon. Look, there's people that haven't had it that good. There's people that their honeymoon was going to their house and then going to work. What I'm trying to say is, is whatever things you're facing in life, look, the Bible says there's nothing new under the sun. Sometimes we're so focused on the wind. I think video, even our smartphones and things, we don't know how to lay things down and just listen to God. Take time to be still and be quiet and see the work of God. We're so busy and so focused on all these other things in life, the deceitfulness of riches, as God talked about them, that we get so focused on and think we've got to have this, we've got to have that, or we've got to do this, we've got to do that. And we have our hearts and minds on the wrong things. There's people that even tell me, I've had young people that get married and they said, you know, it'll be a long time before we can have children. I said, why? Well, Brother Brandon, it's just difficult. I said, I'm sorry. I pastored people that brought up children during the Great Depression. When I first started preaching, I pastored a lady that had ten kids. Ten. And I think they had a three-bedroom house. The boys got one room, the girls got another room, and the parents got one room. They raised ten kids. And her husband didn't make a lot of money. But they were able to feed and clothe and raise 10 kids. And they grew up during the Great Depression. Their children, you might say, well their children got to enjoy the 50s and 60s. Do you know what the 50s were like in Mississippi? I know this, my great-grandparents in the 50s were still plowing with a mule. They didn't have a whole lot. And even in the 50s in the South, there was still a lot of poverty. And in the 70s, I mean, you got recessions hitting and you got Inflation that hit strong all the way into the early 80s. I can remember growing up in the 80s and look, a lot of the people that I grew up with, I didn't notice it then because it seemed like we were all that way. We all had hand-me-down clothes. We all visited with one another and fellowshiped with one another and we were a close-knit group. But by the standards today, y'all would call every one of those people poor. The houses back then were very plain, most of them block houses and, you know, paneling on the wall and things of this nature. That's what I saw growing up. And the closet space, whew! What, about four foot wide? For closet space, how many of y'all grew up that way? There's a lot of things we could cut and still be good on. And what I want to get across to you is some people say, oh, nobody knows what I'm dealing with and the pressures I'm dealing with and the trials I'm dealing with. Those winds have been blowing a long time. Those storms have been around for a long time. And you can't go a hundred year time period in history usually a lot less than that. Where people didn't have to go through some kind of hard time. and difficult days. And I'm not saying that's good. I'm not saying not have compassion about it. That's not what I'm saying. But when we face these things, sometimes we act like it's too big of a mountain and we lose faith. We get our eyes on all the politics and we get our eyes on all the storms. We get our eyes on inflation. We get our eyes on this over here and that over there. And I'll tell you this, we just need to get our eyes back on the Lord. He asked Peter, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? I've had young men, why I just can't get married, there's no good women. I said, are you being the man that a good woman would want? Are you looking in the right places? I'll tell you this, if you're looking on the internet, you're looking in bars and you're looking out in the world, let me tell you, you're going to find a whole lot of wicked women. You will, men. And you women, if that's where you're looking also, guess what? You're going to find a whole lot of wicked men too. I'll tell you what, the Bible talks about a wife that she's like a hid treasure. That was written around 3,000 years ago. And he would say, a man, a virtuous woman, they're hard to find. They're valuable. Their price is far above rubies. Even then it was saying a good woman's hard to find in that time, 3,000 years ago. And women, are you being a virtuous woman that a godly man would want? Let me tell you this, let me go ahead and throw this in. If you're showing a lot of your skin off, if you're wearing those tight breeches that show every curve of your body, and shirts that reveal your top and everything, and you're getting the attention with meat, don't be surprised when the wolves and the sharks show up. There's a reason God told His people to clothe themselves in modesty and He mainly focused that on the women. Not that it doesn't apply to us men. We don't need to be wearing tight pants and tight shirts and going naked either. God wants our character to be what's attractive about us. But dear friend, you look at all the storms in life, I'll tell you this, you can have a great life if you want it. And I know our ultimate life as Christians is eternity with the Lord, and we can even face persecution and trials down here. Some people say, I can't do this, I can't do that, I'm overwhelmed, I can't face this problem. Do you know what you're facing is the same storms that everybody else throughout history has faced? And some of them have faced harder storms than you have faced. There's not a one of you graduating from high school worried about being sent over to war. Unless you're signing up for the military, you don't have that fear because there's no draft anymore. But there was a time when you hit 18 years old, you were watching the mail to see if you got a letter sending you to Vietnam, or sending you over to Korea, or sending you over into Europe. Most of you don't know that. There were times when there weren't jobs in some places and I know in some places they still are that way. But there are still help wanted signs I see in a lot of different places. Well it doesn't pay enough to get by. What are you needing? And let me tell you this, there's sometimes you struggle at the beginning. And there's sometimes you get out in life and it seems like you hit 30 and you're still not where you thought you needed to be. Let me tell you this, I thought I'd be further along than life. I'm almost 45 years old. You don't think I sometimes look at my life and think I should have been further along than I am? And some of that's my own fault. Some of that's You know, foolish decisions I've made and maybe I should have listened to Dave Ramsey a little bit more, things of that nature, but I mean, you are where you are. What are you going to do from here? You can live in fear of all the storms and all the things surrounding us in life, or you can get your eyes on the Lord and have faith. The Lord can help us to walk on water, so to speak. We can be more than conquerors through Christ Jesus. And dear friend, if you don't have Christ, that doesn't mean... and I'm not talking about being rich. I'm not talking about financial blessings and all this. I know there's things that people will take some of my words and misuse them if I'm not careful. But dear friend, you can learn happiness in a single wide trailer. You don't have to have the big house, you don't have to have the nice car, you don't have to have all these other things. You know what I learned from those older people and many of them are gone and passed on? I remember a lot of their laughter and my goodness they went through some hard times. I remember their joy in the Lord. I remember their faith. And my goodness, a lot of those people had four kids, five kids, six kids, ten kids, all kinds of things. They were about family and they struggled every day of their life. And they made it through by faith and they had giving hearts. There are those that make themselves poor but are rich. And a lot of people in churches have lost sight of that. And we've got our faith on things in the world instead of our faith in Christ. And that's the reason that we're depressed, that's the reason we're downhearted, that's the reason we're worried and we're struggling and we're sinking, just like Peter was. Oh Lord, help me. Notice what the Lord told him when he lifted him back up. O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" Sometimes we need to look in the mirror and say the reason we feel the way that we do and the reason we have all this anxiety and worry and different things is because we got our eyes off God. God has given us the tools to get through this life and to honor Him with it. Even in days of poverty, even in days of trial, even in days of trouble, God can give us what we need to get through. And that applies to somebody in a third world country that will never even have an opportunity to own a piece of land or to ever get out of renting a little 4x4 metal shack. He can still give them joy, still use them, and they can lay up great treasure in heaven. But if their eyes are on all the worries and cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches, they're going to miss out on a whole lot. And many are. And I don't want that to be you. I'm not saying we have to be poor to be a Christian. That's not what I preached. And I'm not saying we have to be rich to be a Christian either, because that's certainly not what I preached. I'm saying to be a good Christian we need to learn to get our eyes on the Lord. And we need to learn to serve Him. There is no storm that we are facing today that people have not faced before. And I'm not saying that to be cruel. Please don't take it that way. I have a lot of compassion of what people are having to face and go through. I've got family members facing it. I face it when I go to the grocery store. I've got two children I'm raising right now. and that are coming on up. You don't think that I'm concerned about what job opportunities they'll have and what kind of life they'll have and family life and all the political things. I have the same burdens and cares you do. Please understand. That's part of what I'm saying. And I'm preaching to myself when I say I've got to keep my eyes upon the Lord too. Our faith is in Him, not in our government, not in our leaders, not in all these other things. Our faith is in God. And let's live our lives that way. If we do, we might find there's more joy to be had. And we might find a peace and a contentment that goes beyond human comprehension. That'll be a bright shining light in this sinful world. I want to encourage you in that. This is the burden that God has given us. If you'd have anything upon your heart, our number is 601-606-4681. You can write us, Brandon Hartfield, 8 Smith Drive, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 39401. Heavenly Father, I pray that you'll take this message, use it to your honor and glory for the good accomplished through it. Let us step aside and give you the praise for it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.