I praise the Lord for another opportunity, but I could just sit back and keep on enjoying what I've been hearing tonight. All the singing, the messages in the songs, that's what counts. A lot of times we have a lot of, you know, At least I catch it on the radio sometimes. It's a racket instead of a music, instead of a message, you know. I like them old songs that had, that God inspired the writer to write something that was coming right out of the book. Reminding us of that which God has for us one day. God has given me a thought, a different thought from one I've never used before, but it's getting in tune with God. We as individuals have to be in tune with God or we're not going to hear prayers answered. We're not going to get to see Lost soul saved. All of that which we've enjoyed in the past, we're not going to get to endure until we get our hearts in tune. All you musicians, you know what being in tune is. When you're out of tune, nothing sounds good. I've watched and listened to people play over the years. My wife had an uncle. He loved to play and sing, but it wouldn't take him but just a matter of minutes. If he couldn't get the guitar in tune, he'd lay it down and quit. He would not. If it had a bad string, it really wouldn't get up to the were he wanted in tune, he wouldn't deal with it. And that's the way God is. He's not going to deal with us till we get our hearts right. We've got to get our hearts right. And I know from my own experience over the years, there's been times that I would be in a real dry place spiritually, and I'd try to pray, nothing happening. And most of the time, well, I'd better just rephrase that, every time it was me, there was something wasn't right. And I know I might have mentioned it, year before, but I know one time I was at work and I was working on an assembly line. I was a group leader on the assembly line. I was keeping parts to the girls that were working on the line and I was running around and I just, I was just in terrible shape spiritually. I said, God, what's wrong? I'm sorry, whatever I have done, whatever is causing my problem, I need help. He said, get rid of your music. And at that time, I had country music going. And it wasn't gospel country either. It was a carryover from before I really got my heart right with God. And I dragged out that music and listened to it. God said, get rid of it. And I got rid of it. And whenever I did, it was like you had lifted a ton off of my shoulders. And God gave me back. that spirit that I was desiring to have going inside. God was ready to do his part whenever I got my heart right. That's the thing that God has laid on my heart that we need to get in tune. We need to get tuned up. If you've ever been around a person, I know you've Most everyone of you probably have if you've ever worked out in public. You work with somebody, they come in on a sour note every day. They're mad. It's like they're mad at the world. They never have anything good to say. Their speech is just a hateful way of speaking. Sometimes they call themselves Christians. I've worked around some like that. And I say, God, what can I say to do? How do I need to go about witnessing to this person to help them see what they're doing? And God always has the answer. And it's great whenever they get in tune, and it makes your work Being around them, it makes it a whole lot nicer to be in that position. God has laid some scriptures on my heart. I've jotted them down to keep from having to hunt to find them. The first is some scripture that we've heard preached from recently, but God laid it on my heart to read it again, so I'm going to read it. It's in Genesis 46, where he was speaking to Jacob. Jacob had some issues in his life, God was trying to get him on track. Like he has to do sometimes, he had to get him pinned down. And whenever he got him into the position where he could talk to him, here in the first verse of the 46th chapter, and Israel took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba. and offered sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac. And God spake unto Israel in the visions of night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, here am I. And he said, I am God, the God of thy father. Fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will make of thee a great nation. And I will go down with thee into Egypt, and I will also surely bring thee up again. And Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." The words that God has really put on my heart is, I will. How many times do we say, whenever God asks us to do something, do we say, I will? Or do we say, oh no, God, I can't do that. Well, just like Jacob here, he had to trust God. And many times, God is just asking us to step out, take a step out by faith. And He will go with us, He'll be with us, He'll give us the words to speak if it's to witness to somebody or if we'll just say, I will. And God has a purpose and a plan for every one of us here tonight in this building. You might say, well, I'm old, I can't do anything. Yes, you can. God has something for every one of us every day to do. And we're not going to be real happy communicating with Him until we get in tune and start doing what He wants us to do. You say, well, I'm old, I can't get out and go like I once did, but I bet you could pick up the phone and call somebody and just encourage them. You'd be surprised at the people that just need a little encouragement. And if you don't like to do that, just go to a hospital or a nursing home and just volunteer a couple of hours every day or whatever you can stand to do. And just encourage those people that are so discouraged. Many times there are good Christian people in nursing homes. They don't have any family. They're one or the other. The maid is already passed on and they're just there, don't have any children. They're the last one of the family. I've run into a bunch of those. They don't have anyone to just encourage them. You just see their face light up whenever you stop a moment and just say, how are you doing today? Is God blessing you? Do you know the Lord? And boy, when you hit that note, if they know the Lord, they'll light up and they'll bless you more than you'll bless them every time. I've found that to be. But God is just wanting us, each one, He says, I will. I will do what you want me to do. And pray that prayer, God, what do you want me to do? And I have done that, and immediately God put it on my heart what he wanted me to do. Sometimes it wasn't something I really was wanting to do, but I found out And I'd already read where he'd already told me he wasn't going to leave me or forsake me ever. So whatever he told me to do, he's going to go with me. And that's what he'll do with you too, if you'll just step out and do whatever God wants you to do. And you'll get a blessing. He'll start feeding you spiritual blessings that you've been through a dry spell, not had any. Kind of like when your garden or your lawn's dry and you want to see some rain on it. Whenever he starts sending some spiritual blessings, it's just like a good rain coming into your heart. Bless you if you'll just step up and do what God wants you to do. While I'm hitting that point, now in the church it's time for electing some new people, electing some people, those that will help do different things, everything from teachers, assistant teachers, There are just different jobs here in the church that need somebody to step up. Sometimes we forget that the people that are doing the carrying the load are mainly the older people, the older class people and young people. You need to step up and learn to do. jobs that God will bless you if you'll do it. Just keep that in mind. Ask God if there's something that he needs you to do here in the church. Whatever it is, it'll be something you can do. He's already got you equipped to do it. You won't even have to Go practice or go to school, somewhere to learn. He'll be right with you and help you do that which he wants done. He'll be with you all the way. It's many times that God has things for us to do and we listen to the devil. He's the one that steps up and he will hinder you from doing what God wants you to do. In Psalms 40, the 8th verse says, I delight to do thy will, O God, yea, thy law is within my heart. And that's what I want. I like Him. in my heart every day. Every day that he lets me get up, I know that one day I won't get up. I hope the day that I can't get up that I've already exited this body and gone to the other side, what y'all were singing about, heaven, that beautiful place. I know it's got to be a beautiful place just from what little he has put in my mind to think about how beautiful it is. I'm sure if he was to pull back the curtain tonight and let every one of us see it, Especially with the upper class, we'd say, God, I want to go right now. I don't want to wait another minute, another hour. But God is in the business of doing exactly what He's promised us. Whenever I started studying a few days back and just looking at the times that he said, I will, and look at what he promised the person that he would and he did. And he will still do the same for us today that he's always done. We keep saying we want to see revival, if we want to really see the revival. if we just get our hearts right. Get in tune. I've seen it break out. I've been in churches and people say, well, there's just so many of us and we won't never all get our heart right. You don't have to have 100 people in a church to start a meeting. Sometimes it's just a small prayer group. I've been in churches. I was in a church at one time that the men of the church, they go to the back of the church out in the woods and pray. If it wasn't raining or snowing, even if snow was on the ground sometime, they'd still get out there and hug them trees and pray. And whenever they come back in the church, it was on. A lot of times they had more service than a lot of times we have inside the church. They had it out there in the prayer grove, praising God and thanking Him for what He had already done and what He was going to do. And by the time they got in the church, when the preacher got up, he had to stay out of the way because they were having and the altar would be full of people. Just because God was doing exactly what He said, I will do. And if we will do what He says, then He's going to do for us too. Over in Psalms 143.10, you find the writer here writing. He said, teach me to do thy will. For thou art my God, thy Spirit is good. Lead me into the land of uprightness." Asking God to direct him and to lead him in the right way to where he would be right, be in tune. what God's will, as I've said, keep repeating. He will do exactly what he says. He has a divine relationship that he wants to have with us as individuals. Sometimes we say, well, I'm waiting for somebody else to get excited, waiting for somebody else to get blessed. If you do that, you may never get blessed. You've got to get in tune yourself. God will bless you sometimes when there's not another soul around. I get blessed. I'm not as emotional as a lot of people, but sometimes I can't do anything. I just get, and I get that way at home. If I can't get blessed at home, I don't want to get blessed at church. I want to get blessed wherever I'm at. I've been blessed. I got one morning washing dishes, and I got to thinking about those older ladies in the church where I had been at one time, and they'd talk about washing clothes down by the creek, In their pot, water pot, they didn't have washing machines. They had to boil their clothes. And they'd get to talking about God had blessed them, and they'd get to shouting. And there was two of them lived pretty close together. And one of them would get started shouting, and the other would go help her. I said, whenever she's getting blessed, I'm going to get blessed too. So they just get together and have a prayer meeting in the middle of the day. And I was washing them dishes and it was like a cloud come down over me. And I can't explain it. You just have to It's one of those things you just have to enjoy. I can't explain it in words what it was like. God said, I thought, He just whispered in my ear, I'm going to give you some of what they had. And He did. It's a wonder I hadn't tore up them ditches and broke them up or something. Anyway, God gave me up. a little touch of what them ladies, I was just younger at the time, and I wondered what it must have been like, you know, with them in their body, what they were feeling, but God gave me a little touch of it. So I'm longing for more of it. Over in Matthew, the 12th chapter, 50th verse said, for whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same as my brother, my sister, and my mother. And I'm sure each of you, over the years, in time, you've been around people that that were so spiritually minded, and your spirit and their spirit would just blend together, and they were just like people I've met people out of town. And talk with them a little bit, and it was just like people that you've known all your life because of that spiritual connection that God has for us. He will bless us with it, whenever with other brothers and sisters, wherever we are. But he said, in that special word, in that verse, just like the others I've read, like the previous one, thy will, and this one is thee will, of the Father, that's His will, to make us have that experience of being with others. Over in Romans, the 12th chapter, first one verse there. Well, I'm sorry, I thought I had that one written down. But anyway, it's Christian life. and service is what it's about. It's what the verse is about. It's about our Christian life and our service to the Lord. He asks in that verse there, I jotted some notes, it says, present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. That's a little more than just saying a little, now lay me down to sleep prayer. You've got to come clean and whenever you come down to present your body as a sacrifice to God, you've got to back off your will and say, God, your will. Come in. Take over. and do what I need and he will come in and do it. I'll tell you that he will. He'll give you something that you can't explain. He'll give you a spirit, a peace that you can't really explain to somebody. I know when I Finally, back in my younger days, I finally submitted and come and just completely backed my will off and said, Lord, I'm tired of this life that I'm living. I'm trying to live between two. I'm trying to listen to music I don't need to be listening to when I should be keeping my mind on your songs, songs about you and just things like that, you know. And whenever I submit it, God put a peace in my heart that I cannot explain. I can't really give you a good definition of what it feels like, but I'll tell you whenever you've got it, you've got it. The devil is not going to get in your way anymore because as quick as the devil starts coming around, I start talking to the Lord and I say, He's back again aggravating me and I tell Him, You just well go, because I can't sing, but I'm going to sing Amazing Grace to you, and he'll disappear. But God is still on the throne. He's never changed. And this day and age, and the world over, is just so sin-cursed. I never dreamed to live to see it happen the way it is the world over. And it's not just in America. The same things that's going on in America is going on around the world. Countries that you never dreamed where they're destroying their babies, were all of the things that America is doing. And I guess a lot of these countries have watched and listened to the news here in America and learned, maybe. But these sins, when you study the Bible, they've always been. All sin started in the Garden of Eden. The sins that's come down from that time, they've just increased as the world has been populated, but God destroyed one whole world of people to clean it up one time, and He's going to destroy it again, according to the Scriptures. But the next time He destroys it, it won't be inhabited like it is today from what I've read. I may be misunderstanding it, but God is going to take care of it. He's going to take care of the mess that we're in. But the thing for us is to ask Him, what is your will for me? What do I need to be doing now? You young people going to school, God will have people that He'll want you to encourage, witness to, give them the love that they need, tell them that Jesus loves them, and where they can enjoy some love. A lot of kids today, a lot of young people, even grown married people I run into, they don't have love in their heart. They never grew up that way. They grew up in broken homes and bad situations, so they don't know the love that God can give and will give them. Whenever they do get their hearts right, they have a joy that, as the Scripture says, is unspeakable. They can't explain it either, you know, just exactly what it's like. We just have to get our will out of the way and get God's will ruling in our lives. Over in John 8, 34, Jesus answered. He was answering many times. If you want to really get a good education in the Bible, just sit down if you've got a red letter Bible, that word Jesus is speaking. Just sit down and read everything he has answered to the people, chapter after chapter, and just see. You can get a college education in the Bible just by reading what God has answered when he said no, and what he's asked the people to do, and the main A question has always been, will you accept me? Change your will. Take my will. Get rid of your will. Submit. Jesus answered there in John 8, 34, Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is a servant of sin. You know, sometimes we like to blame somebody else for something that's happened or something that we do. We say, well, it wasn't my fault. So-and-so caused me to do this or that. I know back when I was a teenager, even back then, things would happen and it was never my fault. It was your fault, you know. That's the attitude. We've had that over the years. It's just an attitude that the devil has always put in the young people's mind. It's not my fault. It's your fault. It's somebody else's fault, the government or whoever. It's not my part. Old Romans 6, 16, it said, no, you're not. that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, His servants you are to whom you obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness." So, Jesus passing the word down into Romans, or where Paul was writing, telling him, And he was preaching it to the people to obey, obey God, obey. And that's where we are today. That's where we are as individuals. We've got to single ourselves out and get ourselves in tune with God as an individual. Over in 1 John 2.17, the world passed away, and the lusts thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. So if you want to see heaven, and if you happen to not know the Lord as your Savior, and you want to go to heaven, you've got to surrender to God. You've got to bow your head and ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart. and take over. And we need him as individuals every day that we already know him, we still need him to be in the driver's seat, so to say. He needs to be leading and guiding and directing us in everything that we go about to do. I guess I'm Consider me crazy if you want to, but I take off down the road sometime and I say, if I'm going to Asheville or Hendersonville or wherever, I say, God, which road do I need to go? He'll say, go so-and-so. I was going the other morning to the hospital and coming out of Hooper's Creek the way I come, I come down go toward Skyland. So I've got two ways I can go. I can go on Sweden Creek Road or I can go on Hendersonville Highway. Hendersonville Highway is most of the time the highway that you would say I don't want to go that way because of the traffic. People, they drive like they do in Atlanta and some of the bigger towns. That morning, God said, go Hendersonville Highway. And I pulled down to the light there at Skyland to get on to Hendersonville Highway. There was a red light. When that light turned for me to go, I went all the way to Biltmore with green lights. And I thought that I was running a little bit late, but when I got to the hospital, I was way ahead of time. But God said, I took care of you. I said, you did. We talked. He talks to me. And if he's not talking to me, then I want to know what's wrong. That's the message that God has given me. Maybe it's a little bit scattered, but I hope that I have gotten the point across of what He has said. I will, if you will. And that's the message tonight. If you're here tonight and don't know the Lord as your Savior, I beg you to come to the altar I'll talk with him, Pastor will talk to you, other people, whoever, we'll pray with you till you can get up and say, I will go with him.