It's always a blessing to be able to preach. It's something I really enjoy doing. It's amazing how the Lord just uses you. I don't know why He's using me. I'm just humbled every time. I'm humbled by how God has blessed in my life and blessed in my family's life. I enjoy it. If you have your Bibles, I want you to go ahead and open your Bibles to 2 Peter 3.18. 2 Peter 3.18. And just hold it there. I'm going to do something. This might be the last time I preach after I get done with this one, I don't know. I'm going to show you something here. We're going to have a little bit of fun. I want you to understand that. It's OK to have fun. It's OK to laugh, all right? It's OK. But we're going to turn this around, and you're going to be able to see something maybe in your life that you need to change, OK? So I guess before we do that, I want to sing a song. And I asked Kayla if she could play it for us. There's a song, it's called Read Your Bible, Pray Every Day. How many of you know it? It's Read Your Bible, Pray Every Day? Because you know that one? All right. Well, we're going to sing that. And when you sing that song, you say, Read Your Bible, Pray Every Day, and you'll grow. All right? So you'll start standing up real slow as we say grow. But then it gets to the verse, forget your Bible, forget to pray, and you shrink. All right, and while we're doing that, I have two Bibles here. I'm gonna ask Camden and Noah, come here a minute, please. If one of you will take the black Bible, this is gonna be for a boy, okay? We're looking for a boy that is sitting up there listening, they're obeying, they're watching, they're learning, and this is for a girl, okay? I want you to take one of them to Mrs. Weber, okay? And you are looking for either a boy or a girl. All right, I want you to do that. Kim, if you have the black one, I want you, are you going to take care of that one? I was going to say take it to Miss Powers. All right. You all are watching for somebody. I went at the end after it's all finished. If I forget, preacher will remind me. we are gonna give that Bible to somebody, okay? How many of you, I'm just curious, how many of you can say, I do not have a Bible? Raise your hand, raise your hand if you can say, I do not have a Bible. Thank you, you can put your hands down. Just curious about that. All right, we're gonna go ahead and sing this song. Noah, why don't you come up here and help me with this one? You all follow Noah's instructions here. He knows this song. Yeah, you do. Once we start singing it, you'll know. Sit down. Read your Bible. Pray every day. Pray every day. Pray every day. Read your Bible. Pray every day. And you'll grow, grow, grow. And you'll grow, grow, grow And you'll grow, grow, grow Read your Bible, pray every day And you'll grow, grow, grow All right. Let's do forget your Bible. You're ready? Forget your Bible. Forget to pray. Forget to pray. Forget to pray. Forget your Bible. Forget to pray. And you'll shrink, shrink, shrink. And you'll shrink, shrink, shrink. And you'll shrink, shrink, shrink. forget your Bible, forget to pray, and you'll shrink, shrink, shrink. All right. Thank you. Now, you can have a seat. You know what? I'm going to illustrate that a little bit. If you forget your Bible, thank you. If you forget your Bible, you start to shrink, shrink, shrink. Oh, no, not again. No, you've got to keep this in your mouth. Oh, you've got to keep it in. Oh, here we go again. You want some treats? All right. I say it's treats like a dog. I mean, it's been so long since I've had a child. Hold on. Be patient. Is that good? No, you stop throwing stuff. You don't throw anything. Here, here. Stop. Oh my goodness. You know what? You're not going to get any more treats if you're going to throw them. Are you thirsty? It's not your diaper, is it? I don't know. Here. Here. Have some water. Is that better? What are you doing? Listen. You know what? Let me sing to you. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. You know what? We laugh at this because it's silly, isn't it? It is. It's silly. All right, you're going to have to get over yourself a little bit. Listen, you just keep that in your mouth and hold on now. Thank you. It's silly because here he is with this huge head and this little body, not to mention This baby is married. And he's got a goatee. So anyway, when you look at this, it looks silly. It looks silly. But you know what? We laugh because it does look silly. But however, many so-called Christians look just like this. They do. They look exactly like this. They act exactly like this. Did you see when he didn't get what he wanted, he just threw it? He gets mad. How many times do we Christians come to church and we sit in the pew and the preacher's up here preaching and the Holy Spirit starts convicting our heart and we get mad? So you know what we do? I don't care what he says. As you walk out the door, you might have something to say to him. You know, I didn't enjoy that message. You say, people don't do that. Yes, they do. They really do. They do. And these people call themselves Christians. You know what the problem is? Either A, they're not a Christian, or B, they're a baby Christian. They're acting like a baby. In 2 Peter, 3.18 The Bible says, "...but grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord our Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen." You see, the Bible says that we are to grow in grace and knowledge. If we don't grow in grace and knowledge, this is what we look like. It is. Every single person in this room can be right there. I have been right there. It doesn't matter who you are. It could be the pastor. He can be right there in certain situations in his life. It really, I mean, it applies to all of us. And you laughing and you say, you look silly. Yeah, you do. You do. Let's have a word of prayer. And while I'm praying, Camden Noah, will you take care of that? Father, I thank you for giving me this message, Lord. I thank you how you've placed it on my heart. And Lord, I pray that they will open up the hearts of everyone here, Lord, that they will see that they need you. Lord, that they need to stay in your word, Lord, that they need to grow. Father, help us not to be as a baby Christian. Lord, help us to grow in your grace and in your knowledge. And Father, I thank you for all that you're going to do, Lord. I thank you for what you've done. Lord, I pray that you'll just continue to be in the lives of these children. Lord, I thank you for a place, a Friendship Baptist Church, Lord, that loves these kids. Lord, a place that has opened up their doors and brings these kids in so they can hear about you. Father, have me behind the cross. Lord, don't let me say anything that you wouldn't want me to say. Lord, help me just to do it for thee. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. You see, when we're talking about growing, we've seen a picture of a baby and how that baby looks and how that baby acts. We really need to be careful in our Christian life, how we are acting. You know what, when you come to church and you get off the bus, young people, when you get off the bus, you come in here and you're sitting here and you're laughing and you're poking against somebody and you're taking their attention away from the preaching going up here. Do you know what you're doing? You look just like that. You do. I'm gonna even go as far as say that during the preaching service, if you have to get up every time that there is preaching to go to the bathroom, right there, that's why. You're a baby Christian. You don't understand. I'm sorry, it's the truth. Actually, I'm not sorry. It's the truth. We need to grow and knowledge and grace. If you turn your Bible, 1 Samuel 3, 1 Samuel chapter 3, preacher was talking this morning when he was preaching he was talking about how Samuel and you know he was talking about how the brothers and how they you know how Samuel had to realize that he was going to stand for what was right. And I already had this marked in my Bible and I really enjoyed that. Just kind of solidified for me. And the Bible says in verse 19, chapter three, verse 19, and Samuel grew and the Lord was with him. Listen, if you grow, the Lord is going to be with you. The only way you're going to grow is by growing through reading and hearing the preaching of his word. That's how you grow. You see, what happens is you hear the preaching of his word and you have situations that come up in your life. And God has to use some of that preaching to remind you, listen, you need to trust God. You gotta trust God. That's a hard thing to get people to realize is it's trusting God with everything. I wish I could teach people and tell people that. My sister-in-law, we were traveling back and forth from MUSC when Tammy had the heart transplant. We were traveling back and forth. And my sister-in-law, we would talk to our family as we would travel, kind of giving them an update since they were in Virginia as to what was going on with her. We were traveling and we had her on speakerphone and we were talking to her and told her about Tammy was getting ready to have a heart transplant and we were going through all that. She said something, she said, ''I wish I had the faith that you had.'' I said, ''Oh, man.'' I said, ''You better be careful saying that.'' I said, ''You better be careful.'' She said, no, no, I really wish that. I said, you don't really know what you're asking for. I said, you start praying that way, and you better be ready. You better be ready. She said, no, seriously, I wish I had the faith that you all had. Shortly after Tammy had the heart transplant, She went to the doctor, and the doctor said, there's something wrong with your thyroid. We have to take a look at it. My exact words to Tammy was, here we go. You better be careful what you ask for. She went to the doctor, the doctor come back and she told her that she had cancer in her thyroid. They said that it may have spread and she didn't know what she was going to do. She reached out to, there was some, Part of her family wanted her to make a decision to go the health route, where you eat so much green foods and so many healthy foods that you are so healthy that the cancer can't grow. The other route is have some type of chemo or something. She called me and said, what do you think about that? What do you think I should do? I said, I can't answer that. I said, but I can tell you need to do it God's way. You need to pray, and you need to do it God's way. My brother just kind of acted like there was really nothing going on. He didn't act too concerned about it. And that kind of concerned me a little bit. And we just started praying with her. And never even told anybody that we were talking to her about it. She went to the doctor. after they did surgery and removed what they thought they could remove the cancer. They removed as much as they could. They said that they needed to talk with her because they're not sure that they got all of the cancer cells. When she went back to the doctor, she had been praying about trusting God. And I had been talking to her. Tammy had been talking to her. about it, she learned a God in heaven that loves her. Doctors came back and said, well, yeah, you do have the cancer cells in there, but right now we're not going to do anything because it's a slow growing kind. And it's really not that big. You see, she had to learn to trust God. You better be careful. But in the other part of it, I told her, I said, listen, you are going to grow. You're going to grow. If I had to describe her, she went from being this baby Christian to a grown Christian. When she calls now and we talk to her, she talks to my wife more than she talks to me, but she'll call. And the other day I was listening to my wife. She had a message and she was listening to it. She was talking about the glory of God and how God has been using different situations in her life. You see, she's growing. She's starting to understand. It's great to see. Samuel had to grow, and he grew in the Lord. And you know what? In 1 Samuel 3.19-20, and Samuel grew in the Lord, and the Lord was with him. But listen, God did not allow any of his words to fall to the ground. Think about that. If you trust God, none of his words will fall to the ground. You know, that kind of makes me want to do this, man. We need to start searching this book and find out, what does God's word say about me? What does God's word say about you? What does it say about children? I mean, I know we all say that verse, children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor thy father and mother. We all know that, which is the first commandment. We all know all this stuff. What does it really say about children? You know, if you go start looking back and you start getting into the Bible, you might be shocked at how old some of the people were that were not baby Christians. There were some people in the Bible that were eight, 12 years old. Why don't we have that today? Why is that? Why do we not have that today? I'll tell you why. A lot of it is because we've allowed so much world to come in here. It takes away from us spending time right here. It's sad. I'm just as guilty right here. I have a work phone and a personal phone. That's why. You may ask, how can I grow? 2 Corinthians 6 says, Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. How do you grow? First of all, you have to accept Christ. You have to be saved. You're not going to grow. You're going to stay a baby unless you accept Christ. Today is the day of salvation. You have to accept Christ. You can't expect to grow if you haven't taken that first step. Many people accept Christ as their Savior. They understand that they have to accept Christ, and they accept Christ, but you know what? The reason why they don't grow is because they kind of leave out Psalms 119, 11. Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. You know why it's important that you all come to church? Do you know why we are so excited about the four girls that came for Sunday school and they were here? Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. You say, well, good night, you all had communion. You know what? They heard some Bible. They're here in church instead of out there running around doing whatever. We need to read, we need to study, and we need to meditate on God's Word. And I use that, when I say meditate, I don't mean all this other nonsense that the world believes in meditation. That's not what I'm talking about. There's the world, like I said, we are so bombarded with this stuff. It's the world. And it keeps us from God because remember, God can't be, he has to turn his back on sin. God can't look at it. His son already paid that price, I get that. But if you're sinning, you're not gonna be in fellowship with him. If you're doing things that you should not be doing, you are not going to be in fellowship with God. Can't happen. It will not happen. I'm serious. There's no way, if I'm not in fellowship with God, that I could stand up here, open up God's word, and preach this book, and do it with the power of God, if I wasn't in fellowship. There's no way. When a preacher has to study day after day after day, this is how you know that you have a pastor that is in tune with God. It's because when he's up here preaching, and he's preaching the Word, you can see his heart. You can, but it's not really his heart. See, he's a Christian, which means he's Christ-like. You're seeing the love of God for people and for people to come to Christ. That's what you're seeing. The love of God through him. God calls you into that. God calls you to, God gives you the ability to do it. You have to use your talents for Him. You see this young lady right here can play this piano and does it beautifully. But not one time do you hear her over here playing anything that is the world's music. Why? Is because she's dedicated that Her talent to God. I didn't have to ask her if she did it. I can tell because I watch. When I come in here and it might be after some of y'all left, she might be in here just playing or practicing. She does that because she loves the Lord and she wants to serve the Lord. She's giving her talents to the Lord. What are you doing with your talents? What are you doing with your treasures? Are you taking time to read the Bible? Are you taking time to study the Bible? You can go to the dollar store and you can buy a copy of the Word of God for a dollar. No, it's not going to be leather bound. You know what? If this lady right here wrote me a letter, by the way, I'm pointing at my wife. Don't want you all to think I'm pointing at somebody else. If she wrote me a love letter, would it matter what she wrote it on? No. I don't care if it's on a scrap piece of paper, if it's on a napkin. Sometimes when she packs my lunch at work, she'll write a little note in there and put it in my lunchbox. I don't care what it's on. You see, it's the words that I'm reading that mean something to me. It doesn't matter if it's leather-bound and, you know, got goat skin. It doesn't matter. This is a nice Bible. My kids got it for me, my wife. I almost got in trouble, my wife. My wife got this for me. But you know what? You can go to the dollar store and buy it for a dollar. Cheaper than you can buy a candy bar or even a soda right now. Why don't we have a Bible? It's because you're right here. It's right here. See, you don't know until you come to church and you hear preaching and God convicts your heart. Maybe you're just waking up and realize, you know what? That's me. I'm right here. I'm like a baby. I'm like a baby. We need to surrender to God's will for your life. Romans 12 says, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove which that is good, acceptable, and the perfect will of God. You want to know what God's will for your life is? Surrender to Him. That's His will for your life is to surrender to Him. You surrender to Him and He'll take care of the rest. I'm serious. He will. You say, what did it take for you to be in God's will? I had to surrender. Had to give Him everything I had. Had to surrender. When you start meeting people that surrendered everything, they will bless your soul just being around them. They are an encouragement. because they've been through it. They've been through it, they understand. That's why it's such a blessing for us to have a pastor that was a missionary. See, a lot of people don't understand that. The only reason I get a little glimpse of it is because my sister and my brother-in-law were our missionaries. So I get a little glimpse of how they're living by faith and that they just really have to trust God and how people treat them and where they stay and the province chambers that they've stayed in. I've heard stories about some of them, you wouldn't put your dog in, but you're gonna put a missionary that is preaching God's word in. So I get a little bit of it. that he's talking about, but it's such a blessing to have a pastor that has been in that field. It really is. It's also nice having a pastor that's been through some hard times. Because when I'm going through hard times, he can encourage me. You see, he uses the things that he's went through to encourage other people. And in return, he encourages me. Now, we are doing the same thing. I can't tell you the number of people that call this young lady right here on a daily basis. To the point sometimes I'm like, who is calling you now? But you see, she's showing them God's grace. She's been through it. And people want to know, how did you do it? How did you do it? You did it by not being a baby Christian, by growing up. You see, when you start to grow up, you've got to clean out your closet. The closet. You know, if I had the same suit coat that I had on when I was in high school, you all would laugh. Because I would do this right here, and it would split down the back. I weighed 154 pounds when we got married. I was skin and bones. I kind of looked like Camden. How much do you weigh now? 160? I weighed less than you when I got married. If I still wore those same clothes, I would look silly. You all would laugh. So when you accept Christ as your savior and you grow up, why do we go back over and put on the world? Why? Don't go put on the world. Put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, put on the whole armor of God. That's what you need to put on. You see, we get into this thing where we accept Christ as our Savior and then we go home and we start to get in the world's, we start putting on the world's clothes, we start listening to the world's music, we start playing the world's games, we are hanging around the world's friends, and then Sunday rolls back around and we feel dirty. And you wonder, am I saved? Well, you know what? If you've accepted Christ as your Savior, once you're saved, you're always saved. You can be plucked out of God's hands if you meant it when you accepted Christ. But see, the problem is, is you've been over here wallowing in all this hogwash, if you will, and you're wallowing in it, and then you're dirty, and you come back to church on Sunday, and you feel like you are a mess. You know why? You're over here, you're back to a baby Christian. You see, we're supposed to be different. We're supposed to not be in that world stuff. We need to get new friends now. We need to start opening up this book and following what this book says about our lives. If some of you would get a hold of that and would start doing it, let me tell you what, we would have a revival in this church because we had young people that would surrender to God, get down on their knees right here and say, God, I'm sorry, please forgive me. And they admit it and they understand that they have to ask God's forgiveness. And God forgives them. And then God starts using them. It doesn't just stop with the kids because the adults are in the same exact place. The Bible says in Proverbs 28, 13, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whosoever confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Man! That's all you gotta do is ask God for your forgiveness and forsake it. Put it away, get away from it. God will bless you when you do that. God will start using you. There's so much potential in this room. There's so much unused potential in this room. You say, why is that? Because you're covering up your sin and you shall not prosper. Because you won't confess it, you won't forsake it. So guess what? God can't have mercy. Talk about opening up your eyes. All we need is for people to start getting on their knees and confessing their sin and forsaking it. That's what America needs. You see, 2 Chronicles 7, 14, if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, right there's the problem. Humble yourself. That's a problem. Because it's not easy to sit here and say, I'm wrong. Lord, whatever you want. It's not easy. But once you do it, let me tell you what, it's worth it. You'll find out. Humble. Humble. And I'm not telling you that because she's my wife. I watched God knock her down on her knees. And God knocked my knees from underneath of me. And He humbled us. Let me tell you what kept me from getting saved. Pride. I was too worried about what everybody thought. My mom was the secretary of the church. My dad was a deacon. My dad was a youth pastor at one time. I was scared to death what people would think. That's from the devil. You know what would have happened if I would have got to heaven? Or if my parents would have been in heaven and I didn't show up there or I didn't go there? They would be so disappointed. They would rather me get it settled and know where I'm spending eternity than to play this game that everybody plays. You see, I had to humble myself. I had to humble myself and say, It's all about you, it's you. I have nothing to give. I have nothing. If you've ever heard the story of our pastor or his dad, they had nothing. They weren't rich, they weren't famous. Many times when you deal with people that are missionaries, you'll find that they are the most humble people because they've had to humble themselves and they had to rely on God. There was nothing else. It was God. You get to the point where you don't know how you're going to feed your family. But story after story, you'll hear of, I don't know how I'm going to feed my family. And all of a sudden, somebody comes out and knocks on their door and has a bucket of KFC there. God takes care of you. God will supply all your needs. That's in the Bible. But you have to humble yourself. You have to humble yourself. I'm almost finished. You see, you need to ask God to forgive you, and you need to make sure that you clean out your spiritual closet. You need to clean out your closet. There's not a person sitting in this room right here, right now, under the sound of my voice, that doesn't have something in their closet that they need to clean out. Not one person in here, including me, because before I could preach this message, I had to clean out my closet. And I'm preaching right now, and you know what? I'm about ready to clean some more in my closet. That's what it's about. But you have to first accept Christ as your Savior. You have to acknowledge the fact, are you saved? If you died right now, Where would you spend eternity? I want you to think about it a second. Do you know for a fact if I died right now, I would spend eternity in heaven? Or is the answer, I don't know where I would go. I don't know if I would go to heaven or hell. Let me tell you, you came to the right place. There's people in this room right now who are praying for you. Maybe you're sitting here and you say, man, when I look at my life, I'm like this baby throwing a fit. I need to grow up. I need to grow up. I need to get on my knees and I need to ask God forgiveness. I need to confess. You may tell you something, you got to humble yourself, which means when I get ready to give the invitation, you can't hide that fact that you are humbling yourself. That's a problem with our churches. When the pastor gives the invitation, we're too good and too self-righteous, if you will, to humble ourselves in front of people that's supposed to care about us. So we sit right here in this pew and we say, you know what? I'm not going up here. I don't want people to see me kneel down. You know what? I'm just going to pray right here. Lord, please forgive me. You see, you've got to humble yourself. It's okay to come up here and kneel down and to spread tears right here. That's what it's for. You've got to humble yourself. When you accept Christ as your Savior, you can't just sit here and be like, give the invitation, Lord, please forgive me. I just want to be saved. You can't do that. The Bible says you have to humble yourself before men. You see, when you're truly ready to get saved, you could care less what anybody thinks. You don't care. When I was ready to get saved, I didn't care what my parents thought. I didn't care what my wife thought. I didn't care what my kids thought. All I knew was I didn't want to go to hell. And if I didn't ask Christ into my heart, that's where I was going. I had to humble myself. Where are you at? Do you need to ask God to forgive you of some sin or are you going to stay a baby? Do you need to clean out your spiritual closet? Heads bowed, eyes closed. Nobody looking around as she gets ready to come and play.