Thank you, ladies, for that song this morning. I love that song. Keep asking, keep trusting, just keep praying, right? We serve a God who is real, a God who loves you, a God who wants to answer your prayers, and often we don't get any answer because we don't ask like we should. Thank you so much for that song this morning, ladies. If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Isaiah in chapter 58, Isaiah chapter 58. And that's where we will spend the day. If you'll stand with me, we will read the entire chapter together this morning. If you are able, just out of respect for God's Word, we're just going to read Isaiah 58, and then we'll begin breaking down what God has for us. says in chapter 58, verse 1, "...cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God. They ask of me the ordinances of justice, they take delight in approaching to God." Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure in exact all your labors. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness ye shall not fast, as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free? and that ye break every yoke, is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house, when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily, and thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward. Then shalt thou call, And the LORD shall answer, thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, and putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity, and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fell not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places. Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honorable, and shall honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you just for the many benefits and just blessings, the benevolence that you show to us at all times, Lord God, and Lord, we're wholly unworthy of them. Help us to study the things that you do have for us though this morning and help us to understand them and understand your will for us to receive them, Lord God, and help us to just make note of them and make changes in our lives according to your will. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, please be seated. So again, we are focusing this month on prayer and fasting, and we skipped ahead a few chapters from chapter 55, and we are looking now at chapter 58. So just as way of review, I suppose, Isaiah has 66 books in it. The first 39 chapters are kind of a mini Old Testament, representing the 39 books of the Old Testament, and they are a lot about the sins very specifically being committed within Judah, what God is going to do because of those sins, and yet giving them an opportunity to repent. And so in that perspective, it looks a lot like the Old Testament in that it is speaking about the law, right? And they are violating the law, and because they are violating the law and doing so with intent and not repenting, God says, okay, judgment's coming. It's time to get right and serve me. And so we learned a lot from those chapters and how that we need to change some things in our lives. We move on to chapter 40, and for the next 27 chapters therein, we read chapters that are more messianic in nature. They are representative of the New Testament, and there is a picture of Christ in pretty much every chapter therein. And they are prophecies that are more uplifting. They are more based on grace and more based on mercy. And you see a lot more of that in it. And again, you see Jesus Christ, the prophesied Messiah within those chapters. And so you think about all that, that's a broad layout. And we have been looking for the last several weeks now at chapters 40 through 66. We've been working through them mostly in order, skipping some here and there as we don't have time to get through them all this year. but in them we see a lot of mercy. Chapter 58 is a little different than the rest of these chapters in that it's kind of just all about prayer and fasting. Yes, it talks about the sin of Judah still, it talks about sin that we may have in our life, and it talks about things that God wants us to change and benefits that he has to offer, but it's more of just kind of an instructional chapter as you read through it. And so this chapter stands out as different in that it's really just about fasting. And so we're looking at that today. Now, we think about fasting and where in the Bible does it command us to fast? Right? There's not a place, right? There's no command in the Bible that says thou shalt fast. Fasting was not commanded in the Old Testament in any explicit terms, but the principles of fasting start to be found in the Old Testament. You find them first as you study the Day of Atonement, which each year, there would be a day set aside when the high priest would go into the temple, and he would make a sacrifice for the tabernacle, he would make a sacrifice for the priest, he would start with himself, and then for the tabernacle, and then for the priest, and then he would make a sacrifice for the congregation. And on that day, the people were to afflict themselves. And that's what you read about it. Each time you read about the Day of Atonement, the people were to afflict themselves on that day. You don't really get a full picture of what afflicting themselves means there in the law as you read it specifically, but you can go to other places in the Bible, Ezra 8.21, Psalm 35.13, and these few verses here, verses 3 and 5 in our text, and you will find Either the word afflict, deny, or humbled in each of those verses all comes from the same Hebrew word anah, which means to kind of deprive. And it goes along with that same word afflict, or to deny, or to humble. And in those verses, you see that as they afflict themselves or they humble themselves, they do so with fasting. And so whether or not they were specifically supposed to do so on the Day of Atonement, we don't know, but there is a causal link in their minds, the Jewish people's minds throughout the Old Testament, that when they afflicted themselves, it was associated with a fast. The people of Ezra, right? They're gathered there by the river, and they want to make it to Jerusalem once again. They want to get back, but Ezra's ashamed to ask the king for an army because he's talked about how good his God is. So they say, let us afflict ourselves and fast. And so we see a picture of this idea of afflicting ourselves in the Day of Atonement. We see the people starting to understand it and beginning to do it. We see a second example of fasting in the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We think about the Passover, the children of Israel, they are there in Egypt, and God's going to do this wonderful work on the last plague of Egypt. They're going to put the blood of a lamb on their doorpost and on the top part of the door. angel comes, a death angel comes and kills the firstborn child, and then Pharaoh and the Egyptians decide it's really time to let the Israelites go, right? And so they say, get out, get out now. We don't want you anymore. Our firstborns all died, leave. And they're rushing them out the door. And the Jews, they don't have time to make any bread, so they just have to eat flatbread along the way. Maybe this is where pita bread got invented. This could be the foundation of the tortilla. We don't really know. But anyway, so they go out and they have this unleavened bread and they eat it and God says, now every year on the same day, I want you to remember what I did. And one of the ways you're going to remember it is there's going to be this feast of unleavened bread and for seven days you will eat nothing with yeast in it. They're not going to have any bread with it. And so, they're fasting something, right? They're fasting leaven, they're fasting yeast, they're not having any, you know, bread that you would butter, right? I mean, they're just having bread that you put fajita meat on. They're fasting in a way, they're depriving themselves of something that they would have normally eaten. And so, in these two holy days, we see God setting in place a pattern that helps the people to see that giving up something would reinforce looking to Him. Okay, so on the Day of Atonement, they were to afflict themselves to remember their sin. Right? They're to afflict their souls, they're to fast something, they are to give up something, and it's to remind them to lament and repent of their sin, which would encourage them to not sin going forward. So you see a benefit in fasting therein. The Feast of Unleavened Bread is kind of the opposite. There they are reminded to fast, and as they fast, they're putting away that leaven, and it reminds them of the wonderful power of God. And for that week, they are supposed to focus on the wonderful power of God. And as they are fasting and praying, they would begin to realize His power again as they perhaps had let it go throughout the year, perhaps even calling upon Him more than what they had been previously. And so you see this, right? I mean, you see these examples of it. You see how it starts to work out. We know that the Jews prayed and God answered their prayers, right? There's a lot of prayers that are recorded in the Bible. We could think about the prophets and priests and all of their prayers. Well, we might be like, well, they were the interceders perhaps. But we know that there's a lot of prayers that God answered of men. We could think of Jephthah's prayer for victory. and his awful vow. We can think of Hannah's prayer for a child. We can think of King David's prayers in many regards to defeat foreign enemies, to help his family in lots of other ways. We think of Solomon's prayers regarding the temple, Hezekiah's prayer to have his life restored so that God would not take it, and so on and so forth. But when there was an urgency in prayer, we often see fasting associated with it in the Old Testament. There's something they wanted and they felt like they needed more of God. And so we think about Hannah. She fasted food before she went to the temple. Or we could think about David when he fasted for his child and he would not eat or drink, right? He is there in sackcloth and ashes. We think about the Ninevites. Jonah, right? Jonah in the belly of the well. And he goes into Nineveh and he preaches repentance or destruction. And the people of Nineveh, they fast. And so we see fasting. We see it throughout the Old Testament. We see it throughout the New Testament. Fasting was something, again, that's never required of God on a personal level. There's no, thou shalt fast, other than the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It's not a call personally to fast in the Bible. Today in the New Testament, though, we read about fasting and we know that the full power of God is not realized but through prayer and fasting. We think about the apostles. Some of them are up on the mountain with Jesus Christ and the Mount of Transfiguration. He comes down. Others of the apostles are there. And a man brings his son that is afflicted with an evil spirit that is both deaf and dumb. And so this child, he can't hear, he can't speak, and yet he's got this evil spirit within him, and Jesus goes to them, and he says, what's going on? He says, well, I asked your disciples to heal my child, and they could not. And so Jesus, he cast out the spirit, and later they go back to him, and they say, why couldn't we do this, Jesus? And in Mark 9, verse 29, he gives this response. This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting. And so we see that prayer and fasting is a special thing before God. And we think about it and it focuses our attention more on Him. It grows our faith in Him as we rely on Him rather than those things we want. It helps us to be reminded to pray more. And we know that God notices it. God notices our fast. We see that over and over in the Bible and we see His various responses to it. In the text before us, The people understood God's power and they're pursuing it. Doesn't mean they're doing it right, but they understand His power and they are pursuing it, but in their pursuit, they become discouraged. Verse three, wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou see us not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast, ye find pleasure, and exact all your labors. And so, we see that they were fasting, they expected God's power, but they're discouraged because they're not finding it. And now God is helping them to see what's really going on. And so God sends Isaiah to them so that they can see a truth. They're not going to like the truth that they see, but they're going to see a truth about fasting because he is going to speak about it. God is going to talk about the fast his way. Notice what it says in verse 6. Is not this the fast that I have chosen? What does that tell us? That tells us that God chose a fast. There is a fast that God wants. He's not commanded it. He says, I've chosen it. If you're going to fast, this is the way you fast. And a lot of what he's about to rehearse are things that he wants us to do every day. But if they are going to fast other things, they have to get some things right first. And so their fast really doesn't mean anything because they don't have the basics down yet. And so he is going to rehearse to them the basics of really Christian living before fasting is going to make a difference. And so we see some details about fasting in this chapter. Now within this chapter, God reveals a whole lot. We could spend weeks studying this chapter. It's an incredible chapter. I encourage you to read it maybe a few times this week. I think it'll really help you when you start to think about the idea of fasting. Today, despite all the nuances, we're going to focus on two things that I think stick out a lot. I have two points, but they both have five sub points, okay? So the two points are this, the five benefits of fasting, and the five requirements in fasting. So we see that first of all, we're gonna look at the five benefits in fasting, and then we're gonna look at the five requirements in fasting. So first of all, the five benefits in fasting. The benefits of fasting are really astounding as you read the word of God. Again, you just think about Jesus Christ saying, if you guys had prayed and fasted like you were supposed to, you could have cast this devil out of this young child, right? And we read other examples of God speaking about, Jesus speaking about how fasting is important to us. And so we just think about that from a kind of high level and we see that it's important. But in verses eight through 12 of our text, we'll see kind of a summary of benefits that God gives that are found in fasting. And so, again, think back of just trying to piece this together so we don't spend weeks on it. Verse six says, is not this the fast that I have chosen? And then he tells them a number of things that we're gonna come back and look at. You don't need to do this. This is how you need to fast. This would be correct. Go to verse eight, and then it says, then shall dot, dot, dot, right? So verse six says, if you will fast like this, Verse eight starts to say, then I will do this. And so we're gonna look at the then I will do this first, then we're gonna come out, come back and look at the if you'll do that. Okay, so God, he has benefits in fasting. There's more than five in here if you wanna really break it down, but we're gonna look at five of them. I think they'll be a blessing to us this morning. So the first one, verse eight, then shall thy light break forth as morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily. So the first benefit of fasting we see is a promised healthy life, right? We see healthy. That's all I have for my point, just healthy. We see it says, thine health shall spring forth speedily. Now you think about health and one of the things, if not the thing that most people will pray for the most in life is their own health. It's natural, right? It's of great concern to me when something is off with me. And it's of great concern to you when something is off with you. If our health is off, it changes everything, does it not? I mean, you wake up with a headache, and your day is different. You may have had all these plans for the day, and you wake up with a bad headache or a migraine, and all of a sudden, you're like, my level of things that I'm going to do, the number of things that I'm going to do just got boiled down to like three. I'm going to try to get rid of this headache, and I'm going to try to survive. And if I can make it to work, great. And that's it. All of a sudden, your day got changed. You wake up, and I don't know, different time, you look real fast, and all of a sudden, you're like neck stuck. You get that crick in the neck, right? And then you, hey, brother Doug. You know what I'm saying? You don't even want to turn it. It hurts. Or you're driving to work, and you're afraid to drive because you're like. Please don't let anybody be there, I'm just going, right? And you change lanes, whatever you gotta do. You know when something is off and it changes everything. Seasonal allergies, man, our eyes get all puffy, our nose, we can't breathe, we're laying asleep at night, trying to sleep at night, feels like we're drowning, right? You dream that you're in a bathtub and your head's being held underwater and you wake up like, just trying to get a breath because of your allergies are killing you. And then there's more severe things. We think of chronic pain. or weakness as it starts to ravage the body. We think of arthritis, heart problems, lung problems. Countless diseases afflict us. And when we have these things, we are miserable, right? We just don't want to function or it hurts to function. The normal things that we once did become a chore. And so what do we do? We naturally turn to God. It's easy to pray about me. It's also easy to pray about those we love when they fall ill. Often when those around us are sick, it afflicts us as frequently, not as perhaps severely as it does them because when they hurt, we hurt. When they're in pain, we're in pain and we feel helpless and we wish we could just take their sickness upon us. We want to do something and so we pray for them because we love them. And God is reminding us here, one of His things that He is in control of is health, right? God can heal anyone. God has that ability. The state of a person may be, humanly speaking, very dire, but God can heal with a thought. We find in our text that often the reason He does not is because of our failures. our failures in prayer and fasting in the way that we should. Certainly it may not be within God's will to heal every person because he is God and he is sovereign and he knows what's best for you. And he knows the ultimate effects and he knows how something that afflicts you may lead someone else to the Lord. He knows all of the pieces we don't see, but he is a God who does want to heal you and when it's within his sovereign will, he can and he will. But often it appears in this text that he does not Because we're not in a place to be healed. Because we have sin in our life, because we are not fasting the way that he wants. But we do see in this text this wonderful thing that if we will, if we'll fast the way that he commands, then it says he will bring forth our health speedily. Our health shall spring forth speedily. So that's the first benefit we see. The second benefit we see is we're protected. We are protected. God goes on in that same verse, in verse eight, and he says, thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy re-reward. Now, what does that word re-reward mean? How do you even really pronounce it? It's really, it's almost a tongue twister, right? So you think about that word though, and I decided to look it up in the modern Webster's dictionary, and what does it say? Obsolete. since this word is no longer in use in the English language, which I thought was kind of funny. But anyway, in archaic English, in English, you know, at the time, 1611, when the King James Version is written, it means rear guard, the rear guard. Now, who in here was in the military? Few of us, all right, I was, some guys over here, this guy, gentleman over here. And so I was in the army and you are in basic training and they teach you all of these basic, you know, kind of maneuvers, right? And who was army or National Guard or something like that? All right, you guys, the wedge, right? The walking wedge, the wonderful thing you drill over and over again, along with several other formations. So in the wedge, you have, I need like four people up here is what I need, but, Do I have time for that? All right. Give me four young guys up here. All right. Will you come up here? You were in the army. That's perfect. Brother Winter, you're very young. Come on. All right. Brother Joel, you're close to the edge. I need one more. All right. Christian, come on. You're like right in the middle. I gave you the hardest one. All right. Very good. All right. You're in the army, so you can be point, OK? So very good. Exactly. All right. All right, now just kind of stand behind Brother Ron over there, kind of in a V, right? All right, now these guys are way too close. Come on a little more. We don't have space to space out. Yeah, you can be there. You guys there. And you're going to be kind of over here, OK? So often it's uneven. Sometimes it's even. Sometimes I'd be on this side. Sometimes not. So this guy in the front, though, I mean, this is just basic, right? So we have, like, intersecting lanes of fire. We're walking. We're trying to make our way somewhere. We want to defend ourselves from the enemy. So we're going. So the team leader is up here. He's in the front. Sometimes he might be in the two position. And then you have another guy behind him so that he can kind of call out commands to him to direct, but also direct people back here, whatever. So he's going forward. He's got his M4 or whatever. He's probably an M4 because you're in the front, right? So you got it. And he's walking down. This guy's probably got a SAW. You may have a SAW, too, depending on who else is with you, right? Maybe you're a grenadier. So there we go. Way too much information for you all. OK, I know. Just brain's working right now and it happens. So he's going up here. And he is team leader. So he's going where we're going. He's got basically a 90 degree sector of fire. So he's maybe from that pillar over there. to about that window over there, right? That's his lane. That's what he's covering. That's what he's looking at. So he's got this lane. Brother Joel right here, he's over here and he's still walking forward. He's not trying to take his lane. He's canted a little more. So his lane's like maybe from, it's intersecting with his lane of fire, right? So he's at the window. He might be at this light behind it, okay? I know this doesn't make any sense, it's okay. So he's got over there and then you know you'd have another guy and another guy and so you're covering all your lanes but there's always cross lanes of fire so that you can cover as much as possible and you generally will have two on one, right? And so we start walking like that and this guy's he's doing the same only on this side he's covering over here. Christian is what we would call the rear guard. The rear guard has more territory to cover than all of these guys. Right? Because everybody, OK, all in unison, let's go. Ready, march. Here we go. There we go. Forward, march. All right. All right. Ready, halt. There we go. Perfect. So now we have everybody here. They're walking. And again, Brother Joel should be looking slightly this way. You're going to have to do push-ups if you keep doing that. Brother Ron, you same way. OK. I'm going to drop you guys right here. All right. Christian, though, he's got to stay going forward, but he's got to cover the back. And you'll notice that he's got like 180 degrees back here. Everybody else, the further we go back, they never really get further than about 90 degrees to where they are. They might come back a little bit. So this guy, this rear guard, is really, really, really, really important. Why? Because it stops the enemy from sneaking up behind them, right? I mean, and they're going, and they're walking, and somebody could come in from anywhere, right? They could come from any direction. And the rear guard has a lot of responsibility, right? I mean, he's not leading the group like the guy in the front is, but he is protecting from anyone who might come up. And without them, all of these guys would be in danger. And so this is a vital, vital, vital position. All right, thank you, gentlemen. If you guys will go sit down now, thank you. So you think about that now, and God is saying, if you will fast my way, I will be your rear guard. Now, when we think about that, think about the position God is saying he takes in your life. There's a lot of things that we need to watch out for in life. There's a lot of sin that can creep out. There's a lot of problems that can come in. There's a lot of things that are very preventable in our life. There's a lot of temptations that are there. And God says, if you will just focus on me the way that you are supposed to focus on me, I'm not gonna let anything sneak up on you. What a blessing that is. If we will just put our mind on him, when we have a relationship with God the way that he wants, he's always wanting to protect us, but often we don't receive that rear guard position because we're ignoring him. It would be like they're continuing to march and we just left rear guard there on break, right? And he's there and we're off and we're marching and marching, marching and the rear guard's left behind. We don't have anybody covering us before we forgot about him. And God's saying, don't forget about me. Trust in me, look to me, understand what I'm commanding of you in this fast, look back to me in the way that I'm saying, and you'll be protected. And so we see we can be healthy, we're protected. The third thing we see is we are answered. We are answered. Verse nine. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer. Thou shalt cry, and he shall say, here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity. So God next reminds us that when we pray as he desires, and the way that he commands, that he will answer. When you call, the Lord shall answer, it says. When you cry, he shall say, here I am. The prayers of a Christian are never in vain. When you talk to God, God does hear. What a wonderful thought. It's not he might hear me, right? And sometimes we pray that way. Man, I hope the Lord hears. No, if you are saved, God hears, right? Barring there being sin in your life, and we'll get to that in a little bit, God hears when you pray. The all-powerful, almighty God who created everything that is hears you very specifically when you talk to him. There's a great peace in knowing that when we pray, God hears anything we say. But the greater peace comes from the fact that He will answer. And that's what He tells us. God answers, again, in the way that He knows best as our Father. He answers in a way that is good for us. He answers in a way that is for His glory, but He knows what's best. But no, God doesn't answer because you're begging to Him. He answers because He's your Father and He wants to answer. He is your heavenly Father. And it may not be always the case that we get what we want. It may not be the case that what you want is best for you, but He's your Father, and He knows that, and He's looking out, and He's saying, look, I know you want this, and I know you're asking for it, and I know you desire it, and I really want to give it to you. If there was a way that this would be for your benefit, I would give it to you. And if it is for your benefit, and you're asking the way that He says He will give it to you, And so he answers many of our prayers, and if we trust him, he will often give us those things that we desire. We're calling upon him for a job, and he gives us the job that we need. We call upon him to reduce our workload, and he reduces our workload like we need. We call upon him for needs, or to have direction for the next step, or to bless us with our desires, and many times he does. And God has blessed me in answering prayers over and over again, and I trust if you are faithful to God and serving Him and praying, He has answered prayers over and over and over again. But sometimes He can't. Not because He doesn't have the power, but because He knows that it's not necessarily what's best. He knows that it may, in fact, cause you pain, and it may cause you a lot of suffering, but look what He says. He says, when we cry, He says, here I am. So yeah, he wants to answer your prayers and he will always answer it. Sometimes the answer may be no, but he says when we cry, when we are in distress, even though we may not get what we want, he says, I'm here. I may not be able to give you what you want right now and you may not understand it right now, but I'm here. He says, I'm here to comfort you. I'm here to help you. If you will just keep looking to me, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. He says you can cast all our cares upon him because he careth for us. And he'll listen to us as we cry to him and cry out in tears and he will comfort us and his comfort is like no other. God himself is there. He in the person of Jesus Christ has felt every pain we have felt. He's known pain further than what we have known. He's felt betrayal. He's felt sorrow. He's felt heartache. And he feels our pain, and he's touched by our infirmities. And when we cry to him, he is there hearing and listening and comforting. And so we have a God that answers. The first thing is we see that we are guided. We are guided. Verses 10 and 11. And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday, and the Lord shall guide thee continually. The Lord goes on and tells us that if we fast in his way, he will help our light to shine. But how does he do that? He does that by showing us the steps to take, right? God wants to use you. He wants to lift you up. He wants to make you a lighthouse in this world. He wants you to have a position in his kingdom that is very important. But for him to do that, he says, you have to follow me. And if you will turn your life to him, he will guide you. In prayer and fasting, you can know what God wants for your life. You don't have to doubt it. You can absolutely know the next step he wants you to take. We gotta silence the voices in our head sometimes. We gotta make the world around us a little more mute than what it is. And when we still our lives and focus on talking to him and focus on fasting in the way that he desires, we can hear his voice. God himself will speak to you. He will talk to you. He will not just give us one step, although it may only be one for now, but He will guide you continually, it says. God wants you to know what He wants for you. He's not trying to hide it. But frequently, we fill our lives with so much static, with so much noise, that we don't hear what he wants. We're so busy on, okay, this is what I gotta do at work, this is what they're saying at school, this is what I'm trying to get accomplished, and it's like all of these things are going on in our head, and because of that, we only know what my plan is next, and we miss out on what God's plan is. So we don't hear from him. Often our prayer lives, they don't even lead to us hearing from them because our prayer lives are at best emaciated and at worst they are non-existent. Prayer is the way you talk to God. Prayer is your direct communication with God. It's not an item to be checked off in the day. I woke up and I read my Bible and I prayed. I spent 10 minutes on reading my Bible, I spent 10 minutes on praying and poof, I'm done. I mean, what kind of relationship do you have in life that is based on a clock? I mean, if you're married, oh, I spent one hour with my wife today. Okay, we're done. Good luck, Chuck. I mean, it's gonna be bad. I mean, what friends do you maintain? Well, you know, it's Monday and I texted him at three o'clock again, we're good. And yet sometimes it seems like prayer can become a checklist item in our lives where we're not really spending time with God. But prayer is to be a dynamic relationship with God. My relationship with God's not any different than my relationship with my wife in that I need to spend time with him, I need to talk with him, I need to show him that I love him, I need to express feelings to him, I need to engage in all of these things with him. I need to praise her, I need to praise God, right? I mean, it's very comparable, obviously in a much different way with God, but it's a good picture of what our time with God should be like. It's important to block some time off for him, right? I have to block time off for my wife every day. If I don't, my kids won't ever let us speak to each other, right? I mean, they got a bedtime, why? So that we can spend time together. I used to think that bedtimes were to help kids grow, and I think that's all a lie that they put in like the McGraw-Hill books. Look, bedtimes are so that husbands and wives can have time together, okay? Otherwise, you don't get any relationship time with your husband or wife. That's just the truth of the matter, OK? It is what it is. I can't prove that, but I'm pretty sure that's somewhere in there. So you have to block that time off. You've got to spend time with him. But then when you have other time, you still give it to him, right? I have time with my wife. We block off a certain time at night, and it's our time. But I still call her. I need to talk to her. I want to talk to her. I miss her. I just want to send her a note, right? Whatever. It's not, okay, this is your block every, no, I want a relationship with her, just like I want a relationship with God, so I have a block of time where I pray every day, but then I pray a lot to him throughout other times, right? I just, I wanna have that good relationship with him. It's important. Prayer takes time. Think about Jesus. He woke up a great while before day to pray. That indicates it wasn't a short thing. We can think about David, and at morning and at noon and night would he pray according to Psalm 55, 17. In Psalm 119, 164, we see in addition to his three prayers a day, he praised God seven times a day. He talked to God, he loved God, and we see a lot of David's prayers being answered. We think about Daniel and how that he was threatened with a lion's den, and yet he would pray three times a day. Moses went up to a mountain twice for 40 days to commune with God. We think about men who got to see a lot of what God wanted with their lives, who had His direction, right? I mean, I don't think any one of us would doubt that Daniel or David or these other men, they were doing the will of God. No, they knew the will of God because they were seeking it. And if we will do this, God will guide us in a truly magnificent way in our life. As you follow, he will guide more and more. As you take one step, he'll show you another, and then another, and then another. And if you will follow, you will begin to see God's Glory and seeking endeavor for you if I can say it that right, right? He's trying to use you to glorify himself and he's gonna take you places that you may not ever think you would go, right? You have this track in life. I'm gonna go down this way I'm gonna do this and this and this and this then God says yeah But why don't you just step over here for a minute? I want you to do this, right? You're you're just business minded and you you know You're raising a family or you're focused on this or that and God says yeah But I want you to be a Sunday school teacher. Would you do that? ooh Okay I'm with these kids, now what? And then you get to lead that first one to the Lord, and you're like, woo-hoo! I mean, you're excited. Another soul's going to be in heaven because of you. And you're starting to get involved in that Sunday school class. And now you're leading songs to them, and you're doing different things with them, and you're all excited about it. And then God's like, hey, I got something else for you. You know how you were singing to those kids in class? Why don't you join the choir? Okay, how's this gonna go? And you do it. And all of a sudden you're like, man, I never saw myself teaching a Sunday school class and singing in the choir. And you're going down there and you're like, okay, God, look, I'm doing what you want. And God's like, you know, you hear in the Bible a lot about the great commission and how I'm supposed to reach people for the Lord. Why don't you actually tell somebody? And you're like, oh, hmm. He said, I want you to tell somebody. And you may stay in the choir slot for a while. You're doing these two things, and I want you to tell somebody. And then God's going to lay the hammer on you, right? Because you're not doing it. He's going to thump you on the head. He's going to whack you a good one. And either you're going to get it or you're not. Some people, they don't get it, and they just get hurt. And they step back out of the choir, and they step back out of Sunday school. And they're back on track just doing their thing, missing the blessings of God. Other people, they're finally like, I'll give out one track. And if I don't die, I might give out a second one. Right? And so they go, and they're like, Here. All right. But they did it, right? They broke ground. Groundbreaking things have happened. They've given away a tract. And now they're like, OK. Holly didn't throw it back in my face. So maybe people weren't going to shoot me the first time like I thought they were going to. I'll give out another one. Right? And they give one out another time. OK. And then finally somebody's like, hey, could you tell me a little bit about your church? And they're like, huh. That's weird, right? And you manage to get your church, Kurt, right? Address. They talk to somebody, right? And all of a sudden, like, then they're out there, they're getting more comfortable with it. And all of a sudden, this person who just kind of thought, you know, I'm just gonna go through life and, you know, I might be in church, all of a sudden, they're winning people to the Lord and they're getting excited about serving Jesus. And it can lead in all sorts of ways, right? All of a sudden, God's like, well, I got a new job for you now, and he's gonna bless you maybe with a new job, or whatever the case may be, he's gonna, oh, he's gonna bring you a wife now. That might be a good thing, right? So, you know, whatever the case may, God just blesses in ways when we follow him over and over again. Maybe you gave that track to the person who was gonna get saved and come to your church, and all of a sudden, that was gonna be your wife. I feel like we had somebody tell us they did that a while back. I can't remember who that was. Somebody I was talking to not too long ago, they led their wife to the Lord. There was a guy at Lighthouse who did this, Jim Bingham. He was an incredible man, older man. He stood out at a Kroger parking lot, and he would put tracks on every car, and we're always like, Jim, you can't do that. Okay. And then he would just go back and do it. And then, you know, when he wouldn't do it, he would just stand out there, like, in the parking lot, looking for people to walk to their cars. And then he would go to them and say, listen, you need to get saved. You're on your way to your car today, but do you know you're on your way to heaven? And he would start sharing the gospel. And he led a lady to the Lord. And a few years later, his wife died. And a few years later, that lady was his wife. That's pretty cool. What if he had never told that lady? And you just begin to see that if we will follow God's guidance, if we will take the next step that he has for our lives, it begins to be good. And you get to see this path in life that you wouldn't have ever realized if you had not done what God said. And it'll take you to some incredible places. The fifth thing we see is that we get to be fat. Just like our message last week, we keep going to fat. Last week, I preached a message that we decided as a church, collectively, needs to just be renamed Fat Dog Life, okay? Because who are the happy dogs in life? It's not the skittish emaciated dogs. It's those fat, happy, golden retrievers that are thumping their tails on the ground. They have everything they want. They are satisfied. And here again, we see kind of the same phraseology in verses 11 and 12, and it says, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fell not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places, and shall raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in. And so we see that God wants us to take these steps, and then he goes further and says, I want to satisfy you in every way. I want to make your life good. I want to make your life blessed. God did not create you to torment you and make you miserable. He created you to make you happy. He wants you to have that relationship with him, and he wants it to be good, and he wants to bless, and he wants to work, and he wants to show you things. And you're going through something, and you're like, man, this is so bad. But you're looking to God, and God says, yeah, it may be bad, but let me show you what I'm going to do. It's going to be good. You've got to go through this season, but when you come out of that valley, you're going to be on a mountain. And it's going to be awesome. God wants to make us fat and happy. That's our God. He loves us. And so with those things, we see five wonderful benefits of God. And I'm already like, man, time is just getting away. So to have those five benefits, God gives us five requirements that he desires. And so let's go through these. Let's try to get through these quickly. The first one. is repent of your sins. Go back to verse six now, right? So God says, then I will do all of these things. Then I will give you these blessings. Do you want these blessings this morning? I think we all do. If you don't, you're crazy, right? You should want the blessings of God, especially these five. These are incredible things that he offers us. How do we have them? Verse six, is not this the fast I've chosen? Is this not what I've said? Is this not the thing that I want? This is what I want from you. This is what I expect you to do. Number one, loose the bands of wickedness. So A, repent of your sins. Repent of your sins. If you are in sin, quite simply, God's not hearing your prayers. Whether you are saved or unsaved, when we are in sin, God is not hearing our prayers. The next chapter over, Isaiah 59, one and two, tells us this very clearly. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is it your heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear. Right, in sin, right, if you're a lost person, there's only one prayer of yours, and that's the prayer of repentance, calling upon his name for salvation. And if you don't know that you're on your way to heaven right now, if you want these blessings, there's only one way to have them, and that is by understanding that you are a sinner, you are completely separated from God, and unless you call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to save you, you will suffer in hell for all eternity. But if you will repent and call upon the name of Jesus, he will save you. It's simply trusting Him. He has done everything. He died on the cross. He took your sin, your guilt, your judgment all upon Himself and that one redemptive act. And if you will call upon His name, He will save you. If you'll repent of your sins and trust Him, He will. But those of us who are in sin, as Christians, we can get into sin, too, and God doesn't hear our prayers. Again, that's the antenna of Isaiah 59, one and two, where he's talking to believers, and he says, look, if you're not hearing, if you're not receiving answers to your prayers, there's probably a problem in your life, and that problem may be sin, and so you must get the sin out. And so we gotta confess that sin. You know that if you're in here, if you're saved in here and you've been saved for any while, you know what the Bible says, right? We're not to be in sin. And when we are in sin, we have to get it out. We got to confess our sins and thank the Lord. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. The second thing is, found there in verse six after that. It says, loose the bands of wickedness. Then look what it says. It says, to undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free. And then it says that you break every yoke. But look at this. I want you to see we are to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free. What is that a picture of? It's telling us that we need to stop wasting our time judging others, right? These Pharisees, they were very good about oppressing people. The Jews at this time, whether it was very physically in their servitude of other Jews that were indebted to them, or if it was in regards to the law and how that they would try to force other people to live as you would go further in time. And so you see that that's what they are doing. They are oppressing them. They are putting a heavy burden upon them. And you think about that and we're like, well, we don't do that. Yeah, we do. Most of us, most people, most Christians are very quick to call out other people's sin. We're more than happy to judge them and criticize them for how they are living as a believer. Why? Because it makes me feel good about me. It makes me feel like a better Christian. If I can magnify their faults and magnify my righteousness simultaneously, I look like a really good person. And do we not do that? we perhaps wanna also help other people recognize our goodness. So we're like, hey, did you see her? Did you hear what he said? Right? And now we are trying to get other people to see our goodness. And it really is just judging other people. And God is telling us here through Isaiah that when we do this, it's gonna stop us from receiving the full benefits that God has for us. Now think about practically how this works. Last week in here, give you a personal example so you don't feel attacked and then I'll attack you with other examples, okay? So last week we're in here and I was begging for people to come out and canvas with us on Thursday night or to assemble John and Romans. I mentioned it probably more times than you want to remember last Sunday. I have a burden for souls. I want people to be saved and if we're going to reach more people, we frankly have to have more people come out. And yet when Thursday came around, there were nine people out canvassing primarily men who are normally out canvassing, and there was another eight who were here assembling John and Romans, those who are normally here assembling John and Romans. There were 98 people in church on Sunday. There were 17 out on Thursday. And I think that, and I know there were some others that would normally be here who had other plans, and I get that, but it's easy for me to judge and be discouraged, right? I mean, I think every pastor probably has this thought. You see that happen and you're like, I'm a failure. Like, why won't they come out? And then we're like, man, they hate me. They all hate me. They won't listen to me. They don't respect me. And all of these other thoughts and what's wrong with them, they're never gonna come out, nobody's ever going to change. They just want a different pastor. I don't know, like, it's just, we're humans. We have thoughts like this. In reality, I know I'm just privileged to be able to pastor this church. And I am not to judge you. If you don't come out, if you don't tell other people about Christ, that's between you and Christ. He's gonna judge you. My job is just to keep encouraging you. But if I focus on judging you, and I focus on that mentality of I'm a failure, I'm a horrible pastor, everybody hates me, it's going to cause me to lose those blessings in a very practical way that we see. How do you have a fat, satisfied life thinking everybody hates you? Right? But why do we get like that? Because we judge other people. We judge what they're doing and then we kind of broadcast different scenarios that reflect on us in some way or another. And so, when I judge somebody, it prevents me from receiving the satisfaction that God wants. And yours does too, right? When you judge somebody, right? Why do we have to sing this today? Brother Papke, why'd you pick this song today? Right? I hate this song. Well, if you have that attitude, rather than just singing praise to the Lord because there's a song to sing in front of you, it stops you from worshiping God, right? It stops you from focusing on the message. In that song, you miss a blessing because you were judging someone or something else. Right? It doesn't affect Brother Papke that you sit there and stew in your pew, not liking the song that he picked. He doesn't even know it unless you go tell him afterwards. And if you go tell him afterwards, you're just a bad person. Okay? I mean, that just is what it is. But it does, it hinders us. Or, you know, you want to criticize someone for how they're dressed in church or how they're dressed outside. I can't believe they would wear that. And then you're critical of them and you're like, well, what does that matter? They shouldn't have been dressed like that. Well, maybe they shouldn't have been dressed like that, but you're not their master. And what it may do is it may prevent you from having a relationship that God intended you to have with that person, right? Because you're casting some sort of negative thought upon them. And so now all of a sudden you're like, No, right? And they're like, hey, how you doing today? You're like, fine. And they're like, oh, she's a little bit touchy, so we're going to walk over here, right? When God may have intended you to be friends and strengthen one another, and maybe even if she does or he does dress in an ungodly way, your influence would help them to dress that way, and you can stop judging them in your mind. Or whatever the case may be, right? I mean, you can pick anything that we may judge people for, their job, their hair, their smell, how they drive, what they drive. I mean, how they talk. You know, those northerners, they talk way too fast. I mean, you can judge people for anything you want, and it will put up some sort of distraction between you and that person. Which is why Jesus says in Matthew chapter seven, verse one, judge not that ye be not judged, right? We're not supposed to judge people. It's God's, we are his, he is my master. I have no other master. You have no other master. It's God, I'm not to judge you. Look, I'm supposed to try to influence people, I'm supposed to try to help people, I'm supposed to try to encourage people, I'm to love people. I'm not supposed to judge people. But Christ is telling us here, or God is telling us here in this text, that when we judge people, we lose the benefits. We gotta stop judging people. The third thing we see is we gotta break away from the world. Again, there at the end of verse six, and break ye every yoke. What yoke? What was Israel yoked to? The world around them. They had God lead them in miraculous ways, right? But what did they want? A different leader. God got us out of Egypt. God got us through the Promised Land. God got us into Israel. God has defeated enemy after enemy. We want God? No. What do they want? Give us a king. They wanted to be like everyone else. God defeats all their enemies, and what do they say? Give us idols. Let's worship other gods. They were only supposed to marry one another like God commands, but they see the girls and the guys from other countries, and what do they do? They marry those that don't believe in their God. They're carried away captive, and they're allowed to return, and so few of them ever do. What were they yoked to? They were yoked to the world. And the same applies to us, we're yoked to society, right? We have this problem wanting what the ungodly people have. And when you want what the ungodly people have, you'll get it, but you'll lose what God has for you. The world promises you joy, but it's gonna leave you broken. That's just the truth of the matter. The world promises satisfaction, but everyone around us is constantly searching for something. The world makes all sorts of offers, but it never follows through. But when we as believers live like society lives, God will remove his hand of blessing from our lives. He'll say, look, if you want that, you can have it, but you also get everything that goes along with it. You have to make a decision. To get what the world has, we have to quit relying on Christ. If I really want what the world has, if I want wealth, I can get wealth, but to get it, I typically have to stop relying on Christ. God may bless you with wealth, that's very true, but often, we're like, well, I need more hours, so I will forego this, and I will do that. I'll cut back on family time, and I'll cut back on church time, and I'll cut back on Bible reading time, and I'll work more hours, and we're giving up on God and the things that God wants, pursuing the money that we want. And he's like, yeah, you can earn that. That's fine. But you won't have my blessings to go with it. You'll be miserable. You'll get what you want, but you're not going to want what you get. And when we as believers live as society, that's exactly what happens. If you want God's promises like they are given in this chapter, you have to break that yoke with the world. If you want the blessings of God, you must decide that you will pursue God no matter what the world thinks. Right, you have to redefine what cool is. I don't know, is cool a word they use still anymore? I don't know, I was a child of the 80s, and things were cool when we grew up. I mean, they were probably groovy at times before me, and swell at times before that, and what are they today? I don't know. But whatever they are, like, we need to redefine what being cool is, or swell is, or groovy is, or whatever those things, stupendous, right? That's probably the word of the day. Whatever things are, we need to redefine them, why? If you find what God wants cool, you don't need anything else. It's so easy to do right when I think this is the definition of cool. You know who I think the coolest people in the world are? The people who do the Bible. It's awesome. I haven't always been a pastor. I was a lawyer before this for a Christian place, but before that I was a lawyer for a secular place. know what it's like to work with people. Before that, I did plumbing. You want to see some foul-mouthed people, some vile people? Be a plumber, right? I mean, I think of other trades that I've had. I've worked at a loading company for semi-drivers. I can be some pretty vile people. And all of our professions, whatever they may be, you probably have some You know, if you're not working in a church or you're not sheltered in a type of environment like that, you probably are around that. And so you understand that people in this church, they have careers, right? That they work in these different fields. And you're probably surrounded by these same people. Who are the coolest people to me? The people that are working in these environments and maintaining their testimonies. How awesome is that? And often they're made fun of, right? I have a cousin and an uncle that are both in plumbing, and my cousin that's in plumbing, they're both good godly men, but my cousin in plumbing, he has his own business now, and my uncle's like retired. So anyway, he's just living the good life. So my cousin though, I mean, people know he's a Christian. It's just, like I worked with him for a long time and, you know, people bring up spiritual questions to him. Why? Because they know he's different. Because he lives like that. It's refreshing. Those are the people I want to hang out with. And everybody else is like, I just want to be me, and we act like all the world around us. There's not too many people that are individual enough to say, I just want to serve God. But if you want God's blessings, you've got to live like the Bible is cool. We've got to break away from the world. Fourth thing is, we've got to love like Jesus. Verse 7, is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, And that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house, when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh. So what do we see here? We see a command that really is representative of how Jesus lived while he was here on earth. When Jesus was here, what did he do? He fed the poor. If he didn't have anything to feed them, what did he do? He turned something into food and fed them. Or he multiplied food and he fed them. Whatever Jesus was gonna do, he just does. He was willing to help anybody. He went to those who were in need. That was his ministry on earth. He loved people and he went to them and he helped them. And when he was done, People came to him and they needed help and he helped them. And when it was time to go to bed, Jesus stayed up and he helped them until so much so that his friends and family came to him and said, he is beside himself. He's gone crazy. And Jesus says, nah, I'm good. I'm going to heal a few more. He gave himself to showing love to people. And we live in a world where this feels dangerous. It feels dangerous to love people, right? We can think about the homeless population and how they are often begging for money, and we don't even know if they are in need. They may have made this own lifestyle choice, and often we are on guard in those situations, and we should be. We should be prudent, and we should be wise, and we should use discernment, but we shouldn't be so scared that it would prevent us from showing the love of God. Because people need Jesus. But if they're ever going to find him, they need to see what he is really like. And often Christians neglect showing people this type of love to those who need it most. Jesus came so that people can be saved. He came and showed love in ways that people had a hard time even considering. Think about him touching a leper. I bet his disciples were for like weeks afterwards, we're gonna stand back here to see if he gets it. Right? Or it touched being among the unclean or doing the other things that he did. And yet Jesus showed love over and over and over again. And he went out of his way to do it, a long way out of his way oftentimes to do it. I gotta go through Samaria because there's one lady that needs to hear about it. Are you willing to go out of your way to show love to people? Because we need to be. Are you willing to give of your talents, of your finances, to give in any way you can because people need to see the love of Jesus? Look, God did not spare His only Son because He loved us that much. And when Jesus came and died for our sins, God said He's going to highly exalt Him. Now, think about that and just think very illogically. If God has commanded you to go into all the world and preach the gospel, if he's commanded you to be a light in this world for him, do you not think that he will likewise reward you? He's not gonna reward you as high as Jesus, obviously, but do you not think he's gonna reward you? Yes, he is. And there's several rewards the Bible talks about, but God wants you to show his love to people. It needs to be in you so you can show it. So we must love like Jesus. And the last thing is, we gotta love church. Look at verse 13. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. This last one is one that's come up a lot in the book of Isaiah. I feel like we've talked about the Sabbath over and over again and what it means. But as we study holiness over and over again, over and over again, God brings up His holy day. There's no holiness without the holy day. You can't be what God wants and not be in church. And God really nails it down here. He says, I mean, you read through this verse. He says, the issue with people giving their time to God on Sundays is that they are unwilling to give him his time because they are focused on their own pleasure. I mean, that's what it says. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath from doing thy pleasure on my holy day. That's what he says. not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words." That's rough. He says, if you're not in church like you're supposed to be, it's because you enjoy things more than you enjoy God. I mean, he's just calling us out for it. He's just saying it like it is. And verse 14, you know, it's connected by that colon there, reminds us that this is part of receiving the blessings that he has for us. So if we can turn away from that, right, if you'll turn away from the way you see the Sabbath right now, if you'll turn away from focusing on, oh, I just came to church, now the rest of my day is for me and it's for my pleasure, if you'll get away from that and realize this is God's day, then shall thou find delight, and then shall thou delight thyself in the Lord. and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth. And I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father. What does that mean? Well, think about what Jacob got, right? Jacob said, I will serve the father, I will serve God, and as he did, God protected him and God guided him and God answered his prayers and God made him fat. All the things we see, right, all the blessings we see in this chapter, Jacob had them all. And he said, if you will do those things and if you will go to church and you will follow all of these things that I've commanded you, you'll have his heritage. You'll get to live like Jacob. But when we skip church, we're doing our own ways, finding our own pleasure, speaking our own words, and missing out on what God has. This chapter's incredible. I love this chapter. There's much more, again, we could go into, but God speaks and tells us of the great benefits of fasting. And before we ever even get to, I'm not gonna eat, or I'm gonna put on sackcloth and ashes, or I'm gonna give up television, whatever, he says, listen, There's five pretty simple things that we gotta do. And if you want my blessings, they are there for you, and my blessings are really good. And I just talked about five of them. There's well more than five in this chapter. Do you want God's blessings? If so, then you gotta do what God asks. They're not difficult things. They're just hard for our flesh to accept. Do you want God's blessings today? If so, they're freely available, and you can have them. I ask you to bow your heads and close your eyes at this time. If you want these blessings and you're not receiving them and you see something that God has spoke to you about, one of these five things that He has said, look, you got to do this, we have this altar right here. And the altar is a time of just accepting what God has spoke to you about, coming to Him, bowing your knee before Him and saying, God, I've messed up and I'm going to get it right. And if that's you this morning, would you come to this altar? You can come now, you can come while I'm praying, you can come while Miss Holly plays the invitation here a minute.