Okay, I wanted to spend a few minutes tonight just thinking through four different categories as it relates to preparing our hearts and our minds for the meeting coming up this weekend. Our October meeting is always a It's always a blessing and a wonderful time to be able to spend together. We have the opportunity to have an invited speaker to come in, Elder Jeremiah Bass this weekend, and to bring four messages to us. Also have the opportunity to just have more fellowship than usual with one another, but also with others who will be coming, who will be visiting. And so I just want to think through four ways that we can prepare for that, four things we ought to be preparing for to maybe get the most out of this opportunity. So, number one, if we're thinking about coming together this weekend, We need to be preparing our hearts and our minds to receive the Word. We're going to come on Friday night, Saturday morning, at least we have the opportunity to, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning. The Lord is going to give us four different opportunities to be fed. If we aren't careful, we will squander all four. So we want to be intentional about how we approach that. Look in Psalm 19. Psalm 19. In Psalm 19, I just want to read verses 7 through 11. This is what David says about the Word. He says, The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, buy them as thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward. Well, the truth is, right now, in our body, there are a lot of different needs. A lot of different needs. And God can use his word to meet every single one of them. There are some who need to be converted. There are some who need wisdom. There are some whose hearts are heavy and need to be made to rejoice. Well, the Word can do all of that. God has a purpose as His Word is sent out. And that purpose is fulfilled every time He sends it out. And so we want to make sure that as we come and we gather together, I mean, we can we can, you know, take a couple of different perspectives on on a meeting like this. We could think, well, you know, we're going to be swimming in sermons this weekend anyway. So surely out of four, I'll get something. Or we can come recognizing. That the Lord is going to or at least He's giving me four opportunities to be fed. And I want to come and I want to receive the Word and what He has for me every time I can. Think about it this way. Look in Luke 8. In Luke 8, we get the parable of the sower. Luke 8, verses 5-8, it's the parable. It says, "...a sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock, and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. And other fell on good ground and sprang up and bear fruit a hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear." So Jesus gives this parable about a sower sowing seed that falls on four different kinds of grounds, four different outcomes. And then the last thing he says, is that he who has ears to hear, let him hear. Okay, that's the parable. Then his disciples come and ask him for an explanation. What are you talking about? And he gives it, starting in verse 11. Here's the explanation. The parable is this. The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear. Then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they which, when they hear, receive the word with joy, and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they which when they have heard go forth and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life and bring no fruit to perfection. But on that good ground are they which in an honest and good heart having heard the word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience or endurance." This is enduring fruit. So this is the explanation of the parable. There are some who receive it, Satan snatches it out because it doesn't penetrate the heart. There are some where it falls and it gets choked out. There are some where it falls on stony ground and it doesn't really take deep root. And then there are some where it falls on this good ground, it's received, it brings forth enduring fruit. So that's the explanation. Then, verses 16 through 18 is the application. Here's the application to the parable. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed, but setteth it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light. for nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed, therefore, how ye hear, for whosoever hath to him shall be given, whosoever hath not from him it shall be taken, even that which he seemeth to have." So we get this parable of the sower these different grounds. You can do a lot of different things with that. You can go a lot of different directions with that. The application that Jesus makes with this parable is this. Take heed, be careful, pay attention to how you hear. We can be careless hearers. We can have divided minds, divided hearts as we come and listen to the Word. bring distractions in with us. Now, whenever I say that, I don't mean, sometimes this has been said, probably well-meaning, but foolishly stated, that whenever you come into sanctuary, you need to leave all your baggage from the day or from the week at the door and just come in. No, bring all that stuff in with you. And then let God minister to you through the Word. Hear. Take heed to what's being said. Be an attentive listener. Be an engaged listener. Receive the Word. And come with the intention not just to hear, but to receive, to do, to bring forth fruit. Again, God has a purpose when He sends His Word out. You don't know exactly what that purpose is. but we know how He wants us to listen. We know how He wants us to receive. So, as you prepare your heart and your mind for the meeting, don't come preparing for a sermon marathon thinking surely out of four sermons something will stick. Come ready to listen. Taking each one as a new opportunity to receive a word from God. You know, we really are privileged to be able to have a weekend where we can have the word unpacked for us four times in three days. A lot of places you cannot do that, whether we're thinking about it being illegal or just not having the opportunity. And so let's come ready to receive the word. Secondly, let's come preparing our hearts and minds to engage in fellowship. Commonly, these things are called a fellowship meeting or an annual meeting, something like that. Well, it is a tremendous blessing to be able to come and to receive the word, but it's also a tremendous blessing to be able to come and fellowship with God's people. That's something we enjoy on Sundays. That's something that we enjoy on Wednesdays. but we're gonna have the opportunity to be able to spend the weekend together with our church body as well as others who are visiting that we don't maybe get to see quite as often. When I say engage in fellowship, you ought to engage in fellowship because it's gonna be a spiritual blessing to you. But on the other side of that, when we, this is older and younger, you know how this goes, when you see someone who isn't engaged with anyone at all, take the initiative to engage that person in fellowship. We could stop now and many of you could tell stories about either yourself or people that you know who came to a meeting, and the Lord used that meeting to have a life-changing impact on them through a conversation, through a sermon, through friendships made, something, okay? So let's be intentional. about visiting with and having spiritual fellowship with one another and inviting those visitors in, engaging those visitors who may not be quite as familiar or quite as plugged in as we are. A couple of passages here just as far as the blessing of engaging in fellowship. In Proverbs chapter 27, Proverbs 27. Verse 17. Iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. As we interact with one another, as we engage with one another, we can be a tremendous blessing to each other through conversation. If you back up a little bit in verse 9, it says ointment and perfume rejoice the heart. So does the sweetness of a man's friend by party council. OK, this is just through conversation. We have the ability. We have the opportunity to. Edify build up, bless one another through the fellowship that we have over the weekend. Proverbs 15. Proverbs 15. Verse 23. A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth, and a word spoken in due season, how good is it? Just these ways that fellowship can be a blessing. Now, it may be at this point that you think, well, all that's good and well, but how do I have, you know, I'm not an eloquent person. I'm not even a person that catches the cues to these kinds of things. How am I going to have the word in due season to speak? How am I going to rejoice someone's heart with hearty counsel? The truth is, as it relates to engaging in fellowship, this is not something that's rote. In other words, you can't plan it out ahead of time. So the best way for you to set yourself up to have this sort of an impact on somebody is to just simply take an interest in somebody. Just take an interest in them. Ask them some questions about how they're doing. Engage in a normal conversation and see how the Lord takes it. You might be surprised. He may not do anything that you think is earth-shattering. And what you think is a common conversation might be a very impactful, engagement with somebody. Now, you've heard this story already. This doesn't really have to do with engaging in fellowship, but of the ways that the Lord can take things that we don't really think are that impressive and use them in big ways. If you've been around Brother Zach very long, you've heard him tell the story of whenever he was going, I can't remember where he was, but he was preaching in somebody's house and they had a group of folks there. And he said he started to preach to this group in a house, and he said it was just the worst sermon he'd ever preached in his life. He said he was just very low when he got finished with it. He didn't feel any liberty. He didn't feel like he could get anything out. It was an embarrassment and a discouragement. And then he said, years later, A lady came up to him and said, hey, do you remember me? And he did not. And the more she described herself and said, hey, I was at that house that time that you came to preach. And he thought, good grief, what's she going to say about this? And she said, the Lord converted me that night. Under that message that you preached. And of course, if you know Brother Zach, then you know at this point. the excitement starts to roll in as he tells the story and the tears start to flow and all those kinds of things. Here's the point. God can use our clumsy attempts at trying to engage people in fellowship. One way to guarantee, one way to guarantee that none of these things happen is to just withhold yourself from everybody in the meeting. And so I would encourage you to come ready to engage in fellowship. Third, so we said number one, come ready to receive the word. Number two, come ready to engage in fellowship. Number three, let's come ready to humbly serve. There's going to be a lot of service opportunities that we have over the weekend. There's already food that's more than likely already been prepared, or at least it's about to be. Food to prepare. There's going to be tables to wipe. There's going to be trash to take out. There's going to be kids to wrangle. There's going to be all kinds of things that can be done. Here's the challenge that I want to give on that. Make it your goal to make sure it's not the same three or four people doing it all, all weekend. The only way people get worn out with this is if there's two or three people trying to shoulder the whole load. So everyone doesn't have to do everything if everyone will try to do something. there's different things that you're gonna see. So whether you're a young man or a young woman or you're an adult, if you're a young person and you go to the bathroom and you notice that the trash can is overflowing, God gave you two hands for a reason, okay? Pick the bag out, put another one in, and take it to the dumpster. It's not that hard, and you will be serving. As you see that it's time to wipe down tables, let's jump up and try to knock that out. Let's make sure that we don't have the same two or three folks doing everything. Let's come to serving. Mark 10. Mark 10. This is what Jesus says. In Mark 10, verse 42, Jesus called them to Him, His disciples, and He said to them, you know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them, but so shall it not be among you. But whosoever will be great among you shall be your minister or your servant. and whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be the servant of all, for even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, to give his life a ransom for many." Jesus says, here's the example, the Son of Man did not come to be served, excuse me, to serve, to give his life a ransom for many. So this weekend, you have an opportunity not just to serve the body, but to serve those who will be coming in those visitors who are coming in to enjoy the meeting with us. If you see something that needs to be done, I would encourage you to do that and try to make it a point to serve in some capacity. So number one, receive the word. Number two, engage in fellowship. Number three, humbly serve. And then number four, I want to encourage you to intentionally encourage. Okay? Intentionally encourage. Be looking for opportunities to encourage your brothers and sisters this weekend, particularly, and this is really particularly what I'm thinking about, Brother Jeremiah Bass and his family will be coming. They will travel a long way to get here. There are some challenges that go along with their traveling. They have a special needs daughter who requires just some special care. And so it's going to take some work for them to be able to make the trip as a family. They're excited to do that. And then Brother Jeremiah is going to be preaching and bringing four messages to us. Well, here's what I want to encourage you to think about. Do not just assume that they know that you're thankful that they're here. Don't just assume that. If you're blessed by the message that Brother Jeremiah or the messages that Brother Jeremiah brings, don't just assume that he knows that you know that. He's like any other pastor. He preaches a lot. And in order to get ready for a weekend meeting like this, on top of the normal responsibilities that a pastor has, he's put in a lot of thought, a lot of effort, a lot of work. So I would encourage you to be intentional about encouraging him and encouraging his family as they're here. population, I guess, that I would say you ought to encourage if you get a chance is encourage those young mothers with young children who attend. You know that's a challenge. It's always a challenge. And it's a worthy investment, young mothers, for you to be here. But I also know it's a real challenge. And so I want to encourage you in that. that one of the greatest blessings that you can leave to your children is just this normalcy that when we're having things at church, we're gonna be a part of it. When we're having a weekend meeting, we're gonna be there. When we meet on Wednesday nights, we're gonna be there. When we're here, we're gonna meet. That's just normal. That's a blessing of a habit for you to instill in your children. So 1 Thessalonians chapter five would be, A passage I would go to for that. 1 Thessalonians 5. Verse 11. It says, that word comfort can be translated in courage. Wherefore, we could say, encourage yourselves together and edify one another even as also ye do. This is a command that we would encourage one another, that we would speak words of encouragement, that we would be intentional about that with each other. Also, Hebrews chapter 3 verse 13 says, but exhort. This is an encouragement as well. Exhort one another daily while it is cold today. lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Now, this is the kind of encouragement that is encouraging someone to stay on the way to continue to remain faithful. And there's very various areas that we need to continue to remain faithful in. But encouragement is something that God uses that is to instill courage, to instill strength in someone. And so those are the four things that I would just encourage you to be thinking about as you prepare your hearts and your minds for this weekend. Come ready to receive the word. Come ready to engage in fellowship. Come ready to humbly serve and come ready to intentionally encourage one another. I think if we can come and we can have those four things in mind, then the meeting will be a blessing for everyone. And if everyone has these four things in mind, then it really assures that everyone gets to participate in everything that's actually going on. So there are going to be times where during a meal, you get to enjoy long conversations with your friends that you hadn't seen in a long time, and that's good and that's right. Just don't make it every meal. Let someone who's typically serving sit down and enjoy the same thing. There's going to be times again where you've got a lot of conversation going on and young folks, this is probably more pertinent to you, although it can be with adults, where you've got a lot of conversation going on and there's some young person that just feels out of place and they're not engaged with anybody. Well, I'm not saying you have to make them go from not saying anything to saying everything, but invite them into your circle. Invite them in to enjoy the fellowship that you're having with everyone else, even if they're not even saying anything. If they're just brought into the group and brought into the conversation. And then really, let's all be praying that the Lord would bless each of us to be ministered to by the Word this weekend. We need it. We need it. We come before God as needy people. And the Lord knows how to apply His Word to our hearts in ways that no one else does. And so let's be praying that the Lord would bless us in that way. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time that we anticipate coming up this weekend. Lord, there's going to be a lot of work that goes into that. There's a lot of planning. And it'll be a busy weekend. And so I pray that you would bless us to come. Ready to receive the word that we would come and give heed to how we hear as your servant brings us The word over the weekend. I pray that we would come ready to engage in fellowship and the blessing of being able to interact with and fellowship with your people Lord, I pray you'd bless us to come ready to humbly serve that we would look for ways to to serve while we're here and that we would Take part in that and then I pray father that you would That you would bless us to be intentional about bringing encouragement To brother Jeremiah and to those who might need it. I Pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen