These lures are going to find all this stuff. He might even sit there and look at the aquarium for 20 minutes. There's no telling. Because he's passionate about that. Same thing with sports or other things. You'll find somebody, they may be very busy a lot. They spend a lot of money on it. Maybe a lot of time on it. They're really vamped up about it. They're alive regarding that. But oftentimes as Christians, even though we're saved, even though we have the Spirit of God, we've been raised to walk in newness of life. It doesn't mean we always walk in newness of life. Sometimes we walk in deadness. of the world instead of newness of life. And we just get caught up in the world. And so I want us to look at a few verses about that this morning, because you'll notice in the first few verses here, notice that the problem is really defined in verse number one, what we seek in life. He says, if you're risen with Christ, Christ seek those things which are above. So that's the problem. What do you seek in life? Look in verse number 2, what we set before us in life. He says, set your affection on things above. What do you set in front of you? Whatever's in front of you, that's what you're going to focus on. So he says, set your affection on things above. Then in verse number 4, what we see. Are you looking for Christ? You know, wherever your head's pointed, that's normally the direction you're going to walk in. You don't walk like this. If you do, or you drive like this, I think they're getting ready to pass the laws in Georgia and so forth to where if you don't have a hands-free kit in your car, you can get a ticket. Because they don't want you doing the used to and the old phones. I know some of you guys, you still got your old flip phones or whatever, your emergency phones. You just pull it up, and you didn't even have to look. You just hold down the button, and it calls the person. You didn't even have to look at the phone. Now you've got to take it up, and you've got to look at it, and you've got to go find the contacts and flip through this. And the next thing you know, you're in the tree. So my point is this, whatever you're looking at, that's where you're gonna go. So if your direction's headed in heaven and you're thinking about heaven and you're thinking about Jesus and you're thinking about God and you're thinking about righteousness and you're thinking about what's good and pure and lovely, you're gonna tend to go in that direction. So how do we prevent this? How do we prevent this dying or this, even though we're raised to walk in newness of life, how do we prevent Or how do we get resurrected if we are living a dead Christian life? Turn over to Ephesians 5. We're gonna have three places we turn for the lesson this morning. Look over in Ephesians 5. And here we find Paul's exhortation here regarding some things with the Christian life. If you'll come down to verse number five, We don't have time to read the whole chapter, but look in verse 5. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. The first exhortation is, wake up. If you find yourself, or if you see yourself, or maybe you're thinking, I have the tendency to be more dead toward the things of God than alive toward the things of God, this is the exhortation for you. He says, Wherefore, awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead. He's talking to Christians. Christians can be asleep. There was this church, and it was a larger church, and they had some paramedics and different people in the church, and they had this guy that actually had died in the service. They had made this call. They got on the thing. They got the people coming. They hauled five people out of the service before they got the right guy. In other words, people are sitting there sleeping and the server's like, hey, this guy's been passed that way and they take him out and take this one out. They finally got the right guy. But the idea is this, you can be asleep toward the things of God. You can be going along in life and like I said, some of the things of this world, maybe your job, maybe things that aren't necessarily evil, but you have more life and you deal more with that than you do the things of God. And you're more alive to the world than you are the things of God. Paul says, wake up! Now you'll notice some signs of slumber, verse number seven, be not partakers with them. And verse 11, he says, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Signs of slumber would be, number one, bad fellowship. If you have more friends that are not saved and are out in the world and doing bad things than you do friends that are encouraging you in the faith, then that's a sign of slumber. Notice another thing in verses 11 and 12, have no fellowship with the unfit for works of darkness, but rather reprove them for it is a shame even to speak of those things. Approval of sin or non-rebuke of sin. Approval of sin where you don't even think it's wrong for certain things the Bible clearly says is wrong. And there's no need to get mad with me, the Bible's still true. There's some things the Bible says are wrong. And we're not living in some relativistic society. I know that's a society, but the Bible's not relativistic. The Bible says thou shalt not, and it's not because God's bad, it's because God's good. And God gives parameters for our own good and for His glory. So if you approve things God does not approve of, that's a sign that you're spiritually sleeping. You've gotten slumber eyes and you're not being aware of what the Bible says. Or, if you don't rebuke it, and I'm not saying you walk up to somebody and be rude with them, But we've kind of gone asleep. The church has gone asleep. There's some stuff this world's doing that ought to just turn our stomachs. I'm not going to get in the pulpit and bring it all up. We don't need to regurgitate that kind of stuff. But folks, sin is still sin. And it ought to bother you if it bothers the Lord. It ought to bother you if it's against the Bible. If it affects your children, it ought to bother you. If it affects your family, if it affects your country, it ought to bother you. It ought to rile you up a little bit. It ought to stir you up. You'll notice another sign in verse 15 is foolish living. Just walking around living like a fool. And that's tied into verse number 16. Time wasting. Think about the things you've done this past week. Out of all those things that you did, what out of those things will last at the judgment seat of Christ when you see the Lord? Look, I know you got to make a living. I know there's duties that we have to do. And by the way, when you do those things in the Christian life, all ground's holy for the Christian. When you work, you ought to work for Jesus Christ. And God's giving you that job, have a good testimony. God may have you there as a missionary for those people you work for. They're watching you. And God has that for such a time as this. So when you look at your life, you need to say, okay, what did I do and how did I do it? So when I stand before Jesus, he says, well done thou good and faithful servant. So redeeming the time, are you a time waster? What things are you doing in time that glorifies God? And then verse 17, imprudent choices. He says, Don't be unwise. You need to know what's right and what's wrong. You need to know what God's will is. People are just walking around without a clue. This guy walked around he had this little button on it said BA IK. Somebody says what in the world does that mean BA IK goes boy he says it means boy am I confused. They said don't you know confuse a spell with a C not a K. You go see there. See how confused I am. That's how this world is, they're just walking around and they're just going through life, just trying to make, I don't know what they're trying to do, have a little fun here, have a little fun there, make some money, raise some kids, do some things, and in the end, spiritually, as a child of God, what is all of the, how's that gonna play out when you see the Lord? And that's the question we need to ask ourselves. If you're just going through life and you're just breezing through life, that's a sign of slumber. Look over in Romans 13, here's God's alarm clock, Romans 13. I'm kind of glad we didn't have the early sunrise service this morning, because it's kind of tough getting up that early. I know these guys came in here and cooked. I think they had to be here at five, and used to, they had to be here at three or four, right? So they got a little extra hour of sleep this year. But look at God's alarm clock. Romans chapter 13, the last part of the chapter here. Look down in verse number 11. And that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. And he's talking to Christians here. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believe. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. So you thought you had the first part right. I'm not out doing all the drinking and the party. What about the envy? See, some of those sins are deeper than just outside. Verse 14, but put you on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. God's alarm clock. It is high time, he says, to awake out of sleep. Knowing the time. It's nearer than we believe. God says, wake up! You know, the night is far spent and the church age in the Bible is typified as night time. It's dark times spiritually in our world. I mean, I think all of us, even people that aren't saved, oftentimes will admit that things are bad. They have a sense of morality. They know that some things that are taking place in our world and in our country are just bad and wrong. And as they look, and even if you're a young person here this morning, you know some things are bad. Some of you older people, you never would have thought we would be this far down the road. It's kind of like the things get nearer, and nearer, and nearer, and nearer, and he says, hey, you better wake up. The trumpet's gonna sound, the time's coming, salvation's getting, our salvation, Jesus Christ is coming back on schedule, and it's getting closer, and closer, and closer, and closer. Don't you hate it when you wake up 10 minutes before your alarm clock? Anybody else do that other than me? And you look over Oh, man, and you try to sell I'm just gonna get 10 minutes and then you can't fall back asleep. Or your dog wakes you up 30 minutes before the alarm clock. That's my case. Now you know what you can do? You can turn the alarm clock off. I'm not a TV preacher. You can't turn me off this morning. We're live and in action. If you're at home watching TV, you can flip that thing on a game somewhere, you know, or just turn the thing off. You can turn it off, or you can do this. Now we got some folks that used to live in Alaska and said, do y'all live up there where it never gets dark? I don't know how I can handle that. I guess what you have to do is pull the shades down. Even though it's light outside, you pull the shades down so it's dark, or you do like I do. I like to put one of them masks on. Yeah, man, put a mask on everything's blacked out. And then you can't see no light comes in and wakes you up and startles you and you're just it's dark and you go to sleep. You get on a plane. That's the best thing to do pull the little thing down. You don't want to see the tops of clouds anyway, pull the thing down, put the mask on, sit back and put in some preaching and you're good to go. We do those things oftentimes so we can stay asleep. And spiritually, I think a lot of people, they pull the covers up, and they're covering up with things so they can stay asleep. Because nobody wants, you know, when you're a teenager, your parents come in there, get up! And they pull the covers off of you, pull the blinds down, the sunlight comes in, and there you are, you know, having to wake up at 11 o'clock. But we use those covers and we just keep them over us so we can stay in a slumber. And I think as Christians, what we do a lot of times is we just, we don't want to face the morning. And then you got to look in the mirror. And it can be rough in the mornings, right? And you got to go, yeah, I guess I do need to brush my teeth today. Yeah, I think I'll use mouthwash today. You gotta get a shower. And so as Christians, I think if we were to look at our lives that way, we would say, what's God's alarm clock? God says, I have an alarm clock. One of them's right here, this book right here. If you'll get in this book, what it'll do is sometimes you read it and it'll say some things that you're like, wow. And the Lord will say, yeah, I'm talking about you. And you're like, man. Because all of us have areas that we've kind of, we get dumb to, or we get, not dumb, but numb to and deadened to. And we think, oh, that's somebody else. No, that's not somebody else. That's you. And the Lord uses us to stir us up, to wake us up. You know, the longer you sleep, the harder it is to get up. A lot of times. You just keep sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. You have to be stirred. Paul told Timothy, you need to stir up the gift of God. And Peter, when he wrote 2 Peter, he says, I'm writing this epistle so I can stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. I'm not trying to get on you this morning and say you're just a bunch of dead Christians. That's not what I'm saying. I'm simply trying to stir you up because it's easy for all of us to just kind of slumber. Just to kind of sit back, we all like a nice comfortable pew, and we all like a nice comfortable bed, and we all sometimes like to take some time just to rest. And if we do that spiritually, you know what happens? The world just keeps coming in and coming in and coming in. Next thing you know, he says, you've got all these covers on you, the covers of immorality, the covers of bad choices, the covers of lust, the covers of laziness, all kind of covers of sin. And he says, you got to cast off the works of darkness. Pull the covers back. Now come over to Revelation chapter three. So we got to wake up. But another thing I think we all have to do is we have to watch out. Look in Revelation 3. In Ephesians, he used this analogy and he says, Awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee the light. See that you walk circumspectly. So that's to be on the lookout. to be on the lookout, to be watching. The Bible talks about us anticipating Christ's return. The verse we read in Colossians 3, when Christ who is alive shall appear, then shall you appear. So we appear with Him in glory. So we're looking for Him and we're watching for Him and we have to be on the alert. And all of us, we have to look at our own lives and say, okay, what areas in my life is just crowding me in too much to where I can't see Him? And in the Bible, the press would get in the way and all the people would get in the way. Zacchaeus, you heard about Zacchaeus, he was the little short guy. And he couldn't see Jesus and he wanted to see Jesus but he couldn't because of all the people. People sometimes will get in your way of seeing God. And all this stuff gets in the way, all these distractions get in the way and he had to climb up in the sycamore tree so he could see Jesus. And so we have to examine our lives and say, I've got to look out where in my life, what's putting me to sleep? Or what's putting the covers over my eyes? What's causing me to be dead toward the things of God? Look at Revelation 3, verse number 1. And then to the angel in the church of Sardis, write, These things saith he that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars, I know thy works, that thou hast the name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. you know it would be terrible for some Christians that maybe they're not, they're saved but they don't know a lot of the Bible and they're not familiar with the Lord's return. That's going to really shake them up when the rapture happens, isn't it? They're not going to know what happened. I mean the Lord's going to come back. The Bible says He'll descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, the trump of God, the dead in Christ will rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. He says, in a moment, the twinkling of an eye, the last trump, the trumpet shall sound, the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. This mortal shall put on immortality. So the Lord's gonna come back, and the Bible says our vile body will be fashioned like unto his glorious body. We'll be taken up to heaven, given new glorified bodies, and we'll see the Lord face to face. I hope I'm alive when that happens. If I'm not alive, I'm still going up, because the Bible says the dead in Christ will rise first. So I'm going up either way. But I like to be alive when it happens. I like to cheat death. That'd be a blessing But can you imagine somebody that has never studied the Bible? Maybe they're not familiar with that that thing happened if they're saved that thing happens boom They're like what in the world's going on then they see the Lord. They're like, whoa Lord's like yeah now we're going to this place called the judgment seat of Christ like what's that? You are a steward. You've been entrusted with some things and I saved you and I gave you life I gave you the brain that you have I gave you all the talents and abilities I gave you the privilege of being born in America. I gave you the privilege of being here where this church was, and I put this in your life. Now I want to see what you did with it. Well, Lord, I thought I was forgiven. Yeah, you're forgiven, but we're talking about your stewardship. The things that you've done in the body, whether it be good or bad. Let's examine this. You talk about somebody who doesn't know that, catching them off guard, man. You ever remember those pop quizzes in school? Okay, we're having a quiz today, and you're like, Because I was one of those, I always liked to know when the quiz was, so five minutes before the test, I could cram for the test, right? Amen. You just memorize all the answers real quick, and then you're good to go. But when you have those pop quizzes, it catches us off guard, because we're not watching for it. Just like you're going down there, and you know your speed limit's 55, and you're doing 64. Then you're just easing on up, and then you're just not watching. Next thing you know, you're in the 70s, and there's blue lights behind you. And then you didn't realize it went from 55 to 45. Then you're 70 and a 45. And I'll add one more on it school zone. Your tickets going to be close to $483. I don't know how you don't ask me later. I know that. So what happens? You just don't watch. You're just going along. Not paying attention. And so the exhortation to these folks at Sardis is you need to be watchful. And in our Christian life, we need to be introspective. We need to examine ourselves. Sometimes it's a little difficult. You come to church and a preacher begins to point out these things and it gets a little uncomfortable. Maybe the Holy Spirit uses a song or uses somebody singing a song or a message and he begins to really push on that thing and it's like, man, I don't know about this. That's for our benefit though. because if you can watch those things and God will begin to point those things out, you can give the attention that's needed for that. Notice in verse number one, he says about this, that they had a name that they live and they were dead. Now, this is a good exhortation for some of us. Maybe you've been saved for a long time and you've kind of gotten sleepy in the past few years, kind of slacked off a little bit. Well, you know, memorizing Bible verses is for the kids in school. I think Brother Chris and them, they're Sunday school, they had a big long verse. I saw it the other day, Nehemiah or something, you know, like that long, you know. But, you know, it's not just for little kids. It doesn't hurt us to memorize verses. You can start off with John 11, 35. Jesus wept. Work your way up a little bit, you know. But those things are good for all of us. And sometimes we live off the past. We live off the reputation of our name. Yeah, we're Christians. We've been saved for so many years. He says, hey, you've got a name that you live. Everybody knows who you are, but you're not doing much with it. The North Star, the polar star, is 33 light years away. So it takes 33 light years, it takes 33 years for light to get to Earth. That star could blow up, blow away, and just go out and dwarf or whatever happens and it could be gone. And we wouldn't even know it until 33 years later. You might be shining off of a brilliant past. And that's something we want to watch for. Are you still getting something from God? Are you still alive? Or are you just kind of shining out maybe from years and years ago? I don't want to be a dead star. shining solely out of a brilliant past. One preacher said this, he had a church that wasn't so lively, and he was diagnosed with cancer and all this, and he was kind of writing out how his funeral was gonna go, and he wrote up this little poem, he says, tell my church when I am dead that they should shed no tears, for I shall be no deader then than they've been for years. You know, we make fun of those things, but really, he says, you have a name that you live, and you're dead. That's something you don't want to be called by the Lord. You don't want the Lord to look at you and say, you know, you're not alive. You're not doing anything for me. You're just a has-been. You're dead. Notice verse number two, deficient. He says, watch and strengthen the things that remain that are ready to die. You don't want to be deficient. Verse number four, he says, you have a few names in Sardis which have not defiled their garments. You don't want to be defiled. You don't want these attributes by the Lord saying, look, when I see you, I'm just looking at you have a name and that's about it. What can we do about it? Verse number three says, remember therefore how thou hast received and heard and hold fast. First thing to do is remember, if you've been saved a long time, and maybe you've kind of gotten sleepy over the past few years, and maybe you've slumbered, and maybe you haven't given attention to reading, exhortation, and doctrine like you should, and maybe the Lord isn't as real to you, and you're just kind of dead. If there's that deadness in your life, you need to go back and remember when there wasn't a deadness. Remember when you were excited about church. Remember when you were excited about reading your Bible. Remember when you anticipated memorizing the next Bible verse. Remember when you anticipated talking to somebody about the Lord, and you didn't mind handing out a gospel tract, and you actually thought about it, and you prayed over people that needed prayer, and you considered other people, and you looked for ways, okay, Lord, I know I'm out here working and doing whatever, but how can I serve you today? Lord, show me you were alive. That's a live Christian life when you walk in the Spirit and you say, okay God, show me what you're doing today. God's in the presence. God is eternal. You know, we see everything horizontally, but for God you can flip it up vertically like that. He sees it all at the same time. He says, I am that I am. And God's in the present. And sometimes we're just always on the, well, I'm sorry to, you know, remember years ago, Lord's like, we're done years ago. We're living right now. What can you do today? God wants to minister in your life today. He wants you to be alive in Christ and serve Him. Oliver Cromwell, the protector overseas, he was in a situation where he needed money and so forth for funds and for fighting and all those kind of things. And the only precious metal they could find in the cities were the statues of the saints. He said, well, let's melt down the saints and put them in circulation. That's what we need to do, we need to melt down the saints. We need to be in circulation. In other words, you need to be being used. If you just let something sit, the Bible talks about something being settled on its leaves, you know? You take that stuff, if you take juice or something and you shake it up, you stir it up. And sometimes we need to look at our lives and say, okay, Lord, I need to be stirred up a little bit. He says, remember from whence thou are fallen. Do you have a time you can go back to? If you do, this is a sign that things may not be as great. If you have a time you can go back to where things were better between you and the Lord, that's a sign that things aren't where they need to be. Because we ought to be getting closer and closer to the Lord. You know what? I want to have a great church service this morning. I'm looking forward to the 11 o'clock service. You say, I thought 10 o'clock, I'm going to be done and go. Don't leave. This is just the, I don't know, warm up, prelude. You know, you anticipate instead of saying, well, I remember we had a great revival meeting and I remember those songs. Don't just always remember. Let's see about what God can do today. Remember, he says, from whence thou art fallen. And then he says, repent. Repentance is something we should all practice. It's not just for lost people, it's for saved people. We should always repent of things. When the Lord says, hey, this isn't right, we need to say, okay, Lord, you're right, that's wrong. And so you're right, and I want to be right. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Get it right. Repent. You're going in this direction, you're just going along, getting sleepier and sleepier, and slumbering, and sleeping, and getting tired, and you say, you know, this ain't right. The Lord's done too much for me. Just turn around. There's some folks over there that are still excited. There's some folks over there that are reading their Bibles. There's a church over there that still has service. They ain't going to have it on Sunday night this week. Sorry, church. There's somebody that still loves God, so I'm going to move over in this direction. I need you, whether you realize that or not. We need each other. We encourage each other. So he says, remember, he says, from what's fallen and repent. Repentance. I'll close with the illustration from a couple of illustrations from the Old Testament, one in the Old Testament, one in the New. Ezekiel 37 is an illustration. Back in Ezekiel 37, He gives an illustration of a valley full of dry bones. And he brings Ezekiel there, and Ezekiel is looking at this thing, and he sees this huge valley full of dead bones. I mean, just dry, dead, dried up. And Ezekiel's standing there, and he knows that there's problems with Israel, which is the northern tribes, and then Judah, the southern tribes. Israel's gone into captivity, and now Judah's gone to Babylon. The Lord's showing him this, and he's showing that as a type of the picture of the nation of Israel, and he says, Ezekiel, can these bones live? And Ezekiel just looks up to the Lord and says, thou knowest. Ezekiel really don't know. He looks at that vast array of bones and he says, I don't know if it can live or not. Oftentimes, that is our take on things, even when we look at our own lives. Maybe it's been year after year after year, or month after month after month, and you say, man, I've been so out of the Bible, or I've been so out of church, or I haven't been in fellowship like I should. It can't ever change. What happens in Ezekiel 37? The Lord says, Ezekiel, step back, watch this. And that wind begins to blow, which is a type of the Holy Spirit of God. And that wind blows across that valley, that dry valley. Christie and I drove across the, right across the Mojave Desert back in California there. We watched the temperature go from 100 to 106. And that night, it was in the 70s. But you go across that thing, you don't see grass and all this stuff. It's just dry, just dirt. You're going across that, and it's just mile after mile after mile of nothing but just dryness. And Ezekiel sees that valley, and it's just dry, and those bones have been dead for so many years. And he says, watch this. And the wind begins to blow, and the Spirit of God begins to move. And then he begins to see the Lord put sinews and flesh on those bones. And then the whole body is there. Then the Lord breathes into that body the breath of life. And then that whole thing rises up. And Ezekiel couldn't even believe what his eyes were showing him. He was seeing the nation of Israel resurrected is what he was seeing. Now let's fast forward to the tomb of Lazarus. Four days have gone by and here's Jesus coming into town. Martha runs out first and she says, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died. He goes through this whole thing, I'm the resurrection and the life, and she doesn't understand it. You can tell from the context. She's too busy working, not worshiping, back whenever Jesus would come to their house, and she didn't understand anything he was saying. Well, after he goes through some things, she leaves and calls Mary and says, go see him. And Mary comes out there, and Mary falls down, and she says the same exact question to Jesus. Lord, or not question, but statement. Lord, if thou had been here, my brother had not have died. But Jesus doesn't go through the whole doctrinal dissertation with her about the resurrection and the life. He just looks at her and then he says, where have you laid her? And then where have you laid him? And he goes over there and then the Bible says Jesus wept. And you begin to look at those two women and you look at the same exact two questions. What is the difference? Well, if you go back and look in that passage, Mary was weeping when she fell down at Jesus's feet. I believe when he saw those tears, it touched him and he went straight to the tomb right at that point. It's a big difference between Martha and Mary. Mary had the tears and Martha didn't. He said, preacher, I just don't think that it's possible for me to have revival in my own life or resurrection in my life. How serious are you about it? If you're real serious about it, he says, remember and repent. If you're real serious about meeting the Lord and you want to do business with the Lord, He'll come down and He'll blow in that dry place. That's the devil telling you you can't get right. Don't listen to that. You're walking around here and God will forgive you of sin. God will cleanse you. God will restore you back into fellowship. If you're willing to do what God tells you to do, God will meet right back up with you as a believer in Christ. But I believe He's looking at that heart to see if you have those repentant tears. And so if God's dealt with you today, this would be a great day Easter morning, resurrection morning. I hate the word Easter. Resurrection morning. Say, you know what, Lord, I want some life in me again. I want some spiritual life in me. I want to be serving God like I'm supposed to. It'd be a great day just to dedicate your life to that. We're going to close with a word of prayer. And I'd like to just encourage you, as we're dismissed in prayer, to maybe pray this prayer with me. Lord, I want the Spirit of God to move in my life again. Lord, I want to feel the life of God and not a deadness and a dryness. God, I'm asking you to blow through my life and to forgive me of sin. And Lord, I come to you the best way I know how, wanting my fellowship restored and revived. And I'm trusting what your word says if I confess that you'll forgive. And I thank you for your restoration.