Amen. Amen. Wonderful. Thank you for that so much. Thank you, ladies. Appreciate you. And the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is the precious darling Son of God. Cleanseth. Cleanseth. Isn't that wonderful? Hey, Brother J.C., you doing okay? Good, good. We prayed for you this morning. Amen, we love you. Good to see you, brother. Amen. Well, it's good to see all of you here tonight. Appreciate the Lord's help this morning. I just tried to continue to think upon that verse more today. And I wish sometimes I could get out what God's put in my heart. You know, God will work it into your heart and it seems like sometimes it's difficult for it to come over the way that God put it in your heart. But the idea, the thought of meditation that I had upon that verse, be steadfast, therefore As God gives us the victory, excuse me, as He has given us the victory, the victory is ours. He followed that up right from the previous verse. It said, O grave, where is thy victory? So victory didn't go to the grave. Victory was given to me and you. And the grave will not hold us, right? And so we've been given the victory. Therefore, be steadfast and unmovable. always abound in the work of the Lord. And the last part of that verse, sometimes I think we, I didn't get to, for as much as you know, that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Here's one thing I have found out, I'm not gonna preach that again tonight, but I did wanna make this one statement on the last part of that verse. There's one thing God has proven, that it may not happen in your time, and on your schedule, but God Almighty will come through when He's ready to come through for you, right? And so what He's exhorting us to do is to just remain faithful at what we know to do at the time. Be steadfast in what we do know, unmoved from what we do know. And it seems like, well, we get in our mind, well this isn't working. This isn't helping, I'm not gaining any ground. How am I going to get out of this spiritual hole that I'm in? I can't, I've heard people tell me this, I cannot get myself out. You ever heard people tell you that, that have been in some sort of depression or spiritually they've been in some sort of backslidden condition, I don't know the proper name, but, and I've heard them tell me, I can't get myself out of this hole. You ever had anybody tell you that? You ever felt like that? Well that's true, you can't get yourself out, right? The Lord will have to deliver you. But you'll never get out rejecting the light and remaining in the darkness, right? That's why the Bible talks about in that verse, Satan has blinded the minds of them that believe not. They want to remain in darkness. It's not that they're unable to believe. They could believe, but they don't want to. They remain in darkness. That's what the next part of the verse says, lest the light of the glorious gospel, right, should shine in unto them. They want to stay in darkness. They don't want the light to come in. And so Satan works extra overtime on them to keep the light away. There's something extremely valuable about the light, is it not? So as a lost person, if the light of the glorious gospel would shine in unto a man, and he could believe it and it would change his life, and it would change him and make him a new creature, how much more is the light precious and valuable to me and you as Christians? We have to stay in the light. We're not children of darkness, we're children of the day, and we have to stay exposed to the light. And so my point is this, what Brother Lance was mentioning for this come moving forward, a lot of times I have been in places in my life that it didn't seem like what I was doing was working. I was waiting for some miraculous snap from heaven to just—and sometimes that may happen, but oftentimes it's just staying faithful at what you know to do is right and just staying in there, and God will deliver you. But if you get the idea that, well, this isn't working, I'm just going to quit, I want to try to exhort you again tonight. Don't get in a position where you think that you just got to quit. that it's not working, that it's not happening. How many of you have been through a situation that you went through, maybe it lasted years, and you went through that situation and all through that time you had preachers telling you, well, just pray. Well, heavens to Betsy, I've been praying, I mean, good night, you know, but that's all they can tell you is, well, just pray. But that's all you can do is just pray. God will have to deliver you. Now what if you think back in your life to the time you went through something and it drug on and drug on and drug on a year, maybe two years, and you're in this type of condition, whatever the situation may have been in your life, what if you were to quit a day before? God's delivered you, what if you were to quit a day before that? I want to exhort you, whatever you do, do not quit. Just keep on doing what you know to do is right. God will deliver you in due time. He will. Or you'll die and not have to worry about it anyway. Right? God is faithful. And God, if we know how to give good gifts, how much more shall He not give us? God is not against anybody in here. Now His face is against them that do evil and the workers of iniquity, that's different. If you're saved in here tonight, I can show you one thing, God's not against you. You're His child. And how about this idea? Has anybody ever had this thought in their mind? I'll never get back to where I was. Now don't raise your hand but have you ever thought like that? I can remember a time in my life I was, I felt like I was on my spiritual A-game or whatever you want to call it. I was on fire for God, I was just a spiritual, I felt like maybe I was even filled with the Holy Spirit, I was just on fire for God, faithful, man I was doing so great and now I've gotten to a place, now here's how the enemy wants you to feel, like you can never get back there. So that you'll just say forget it. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, you know what encouraged me on the way down here, you know what I was thinking, Tyler, on the way to drive down here? I'm tired of talking to you, I've talked to you all morning. Cody, you know what I was thinking the whole way down here? You know what I was thinking the whole time, you know what I was thinking? Don't try to guess, because it could be anything. But I was thinking, not only can you get back to where you were, you can be better off than you ever have been. Now that is the mercy of God. Not only will he restore, the years of Logan say, not only will he restore my soul, not only can you definitely get back to where you were, you can be better than you've ever been. Now that's what the Bible says. Job was better in his later end than he ever was in the beginning. Job knew something about God he never knew before the fire started falling. He knew God in a way he would have never known Him. You can't even get the word perseverance without the word severe. And we get in our minds that God's abandoned us and we'll never get back to that place. I'm here to tell you, you can not only get back, you can be better for God than you've ever been. Don't let the devil lie to you and tell you that's what he wants you to think. I'll never get back to where I was. That's a lie. God will forgive you for Christ's sake, and you can be better for Jesus than you've ever been. Isn't that encouraging? That encourages me. I tell you, I've not been the greatest Christian that's ever walked this earth, and I'm glad to know when I go to God, I find a forgiving, loving Father that's ready to restore a man and make him better than he's ever been. That's a miracle to me, brother. That's something we get stirred up a little bit about. Not because we're great Christians, but because of how terrible that we are and we serve such a great God. Don't get in this hole and think you'll never get out. That's not true, unless you quit. If you quit, you'll never get out. Just don't quit. What are you talking about, quit going to church? Our minds always often go there. That's not what I'm talking about. I know people that have quit and they don't miss a beat when it starts to come to church. You know you can quit and still show up here. Isn't that right? You might as well just be at home watching, you know, Fox News. I wouldn't recommend CNN. You can quit and show up here. You can look the part. You can dress right. You can look like there's nothing wrong and in your heart you've already quit. What about with sin? What about with sin in our life? How many of you fought against something that's been in your life and you've wanted to get rid of it for God and you fought against it? I know old timers, you talk about smoking, you know, they talk about smoking. You know, I don't know what it is in your life, there's all kinds of things in people's life, but you know, there's sins that people battle against, isn't that what the Bible tells us? It's different for everybody. Lay aside, if it wasn't true in your life, you're just a liar. We've got your sin, you're a liar. So we've all got it, right? We've all got sin, we've all got problems. And the Bible says, if we've all got these issues, lay aside the weights and the sins that so easily beset you. So we've all got them. And it's different for everybody on every different level. But have you ever so far, you've battled against something so much and it just felt like, you know what, I'm tired of fighting against it, I'm not winning against it. Have you ever felt like that in your Christian life? I know when I first got saved, there's a lot of battle, a lot of things God took from me. I didn't even have to battle it. I never worked on having a proper mouth and not saying things I shouldn't and all. God took a lot of things just out of my life. I didn't have to work on it. But then there were some things I had to just labor and pray and ask God to help me and clean me up and get me right and, you know, all those things, you know, and it was a battle. It seemed like you were never going to overcome it. Well, that's a lie. You won't overcome it if you quit. Don't just give in to it. I'd die fighting against it if that's what it took. Keep on fighting. That's what I'm trying to get at. Keep on battling for the Lord. Be steadfast and unmovable. I want to be that kind of Christian, don't you? I don't want anything to knock me out. I want to stay steadfast and unmovable, abounding in the work of the Lord. Because you know why? The next verse, now He's already given us a why and the whole chapter is a why. The whole chapter says you're gonna be raised incorruptible. That's good news for somebody like me. I hope I have a better looking body than I got. I'm on a six pack abs on mine. I'm about tired of what I got. So he's give us a whole chapter of why and then he ends it, Brother Reed, he ends that chapter saying your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Isn't that wonderful? Don't grow weary and faint in your mind. Keep on fighting, keep on going. I'm not gaining any ground. You don't know that. You may be on the verge of the biggest breakthrough in your Christian life. I wouldn't give up. I'm not going to give in to the enemy. Now I'm telling you that's the kind of attitude you're just going to have to have. You're just going to have to set your faith. I'll tell you one thing I'm going to do by the grace of God, I'm not going to quit, I'm just going to stay faithful. And it don't look like it's paying off much now, but just give it a little time. God will come through for you. He just doesn't do it in our time. That's our problem. If God doesn't answer what all I'm wanting Him to do in a certain amount of time, I just, well, I guess it's no good. It's just not even worth talking about. Just give up. You think God's just, you're praying and it's just God's not even listening to you? He don't even care. God's hearing your prayers. He's going to answer it in His own time. So you know what He exhorts us to do? You know, Brother Lance, before I come, I was reading this verse right here. Ask, seek, and knock. That's all in the present tense. That is a continual action. That verse is saying to me and you, no matter when we read that verse, ask. Seek, knock, it's just as true when it was written back years ago, it's just as true as they read it a hundred years ago. Ask, seek, and knock ten years ago, ask, seek, knock today, and if you read that verse tomorrow you know what you need to do, keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking. God will come through for you. I am telling you, I have been through this, not as long as some of you have, but by the grace of God, I've been through some things. And if there's one thing I've ever seen from God is that he will come through for you. He careth for you. Man, that encourages me. You don't ever get to a place, if you're breathing tonight, you are not too far away from the grace of God. God's able to restore you again. God's able to save you. If He's able to change a man like that, surely He can restore you back into the fold. Don't give up. Don't give in. Don't quit. I don't know how many people give up on going on visitation and trying to win souls because they're not seeing a great response from people. Well, you're going to be discouraged if you're serving God for the response you get out of people. Try preaching when people fall asleep. If I was preaching for the response I got out of some of you, I'd have quit years ago. We're not doing it for the response we get out of people. If you never say amen again, I'm going to keep preaching and keep proclaiming the truth of the Bible as God gives me grace. And in Christian service, that's the way you've got to be as well. Some fervency in your service. I don't care if that preacher quits, I'm going to still be here after he's gone. Amen. Hallelujah. Some of you are thinking, I wish he'd quit tonight. Hey, I'm telling you, it's encouraging to know that, you know, that the Lord stands ready to forgive you. I don't know, I don't know of anything, two things in the Bible, I don't know if there's anything that a Christian can do to turn his father away. Now, Brother Mark, there's some things our kids could do that would really hurt our feeling. It'd really hurt us, wouldn't it? Lance, you men, Brother Paul, there's some things our kids could do, really, but they'll always be our kids. This kid right here in the front row, one of these, God forbid, could go astray, but if you take blood from that kid 50 years from now, you're gonna find my DNA coursing through his veins. He's mine. And this one's as smart-aleck as I am. You can't deny him. He's mine. I don't know where Taylor got her good looks other than mama, so I can't take no part in that. You'll always be my son. It don't ever change with God. If you've ever been his son, you shall always be his. Hallelujah. How many of us wouldn't be ready to receive our kids right in over anything? How much more does your Father in heaven want to tell, hey, listen, folks, God, I'm telling you, God's a merciful God. If I'd have gone through what David had been through just by the time you get to 1 Samuel chapter 30, all he did was try to serve God. All he did was try to love God. All he did was try to soothe Saul's evil spirits because he got full of the devil. All he did was try to do right, tended to the sheep, slayed lions and bears, cut the head off, was ready to kill every one of Goliath's brothers too. He'd have killed everybody. He wasn't one of these flimsy little old fellas. He was a man of war. He was a man. And you couldn't—all he did was try to serve God. He didn't bring—now, you get on down through his life, and he made some decisions when he quit, when he sat down, when he wasn't fighting anymore, that he saw Bathsheba. A child loses its life, a man, a husband loses his life. Look at the detriment that comes down the hill when he takes his eyes off of what God had called him to do. He was a man—he was a war man. He was a man that was to fight. And you get into chapter 30, he'd run, had to run, had to flee, and he goes on down through there, and it talks about they wouldn't let him fight against Saul. He was going to take up arms against Saul and join in with the Philistines. He's a man that wanted to fight. I wouldn't want to fool with David, Cody. He would, he'd hurt me and you. He was a man. He was a fighting man. I like fellas like that. Don't you a little bit? I like a little fight in somebody, brother. I can't do it, but I like fellas that can, you know. Anyway, get on down through that chapter, so he returns home to go back to Ziklag, and he gets there, and the Amlekites have overthrown everything, destroyed everything. So what does David do? My soul's coming after me. My whole nation's turned against me, nearly all of them. You know, all that he had been through. Now the Philistines don't want me. They're just trying to push me off in the corner and get rid of me somewhere. So I go back to that place and then God lets the Amalekites come in and steal both of my wives. Now who in the world wants two wives? I don't know. I don't know if the mother-in-law was alive at the time. Maybe the only reason he thought that was a good idea, but no. So he goes through there and both of his wives are gone. They took everything, destroyed everything in the man's life that he had, and he didn't have much. He had to run from home. Now I don't know about you, but if I had been serving God, doing what David did, and then God let all that befall me for nothing, I didn't do anything wrong. David didn't do nothing wrong. then God wouldn't even let him kill him. He could have killed Saul on two occasions. And God wouldn't even let him do that. Oh, man, I've been in some situations I think, God, if you'd let me I'd like to smack that fellow one day. Some people about the only thing they'd answer to is somebody smack them around a good time or two. Don't do that, Cody, that's a joke. and he goes home, everything's gone. You know what David did? He didn't just sit down and say, you know what, this Christian life thing is too hard. God's let all this befall me, everybody's turning on me, this and this situation and Saul's trying to kill me, I didn't do nothing to hurt anybody, all I tried to do, all those things he could have said, you know what he did? He just gathered up in a group, went after the Amalekites and went back and got everything he lost. You'll find David doing what God called him to do, he stayed busy, he was a man, he was a fighting man and he was gonna fight and he was gonna do right and you couldn't have took that out of him until he got to a place where he began to win too many victories. And then the victories, I think, got him to a place where he'd become idle. And he didn't quit in the sense of he'd give up, but he quit in the sense of where we're talking about always abounding in the work of the Lord. We don't need a bunch of idle time in our life, right? That's not good. Gotta stay busy for the Lord, because the best of Christians can be gotten to, right? And so I said I wasn't gonna do it, and I just did it. Be steadfast and unmovable. Always abounding in the work of the Lord. I wanna do more this coming year than I've ever done for the Lord. Amen. So I just wanna tell you, I don't know where you're at, where your heart is, it's not my place to, but this much I can tell you based on experience is that you can get back to where you were and beyond if you want to. Now there are castaways, shipwrecked of the faith, but they headed headlong into that full knowing where they was headed. And some of us have had enough light and truth preach us we know better than what we're doing and we know the life that we're living is not yielding the peaceable fruit of righteousness. It's not right. And God's not going to let you get away with it. So be better to just abound in the work of the Lord, wouldn't it? And be steadfast. Let the world think what they're gonna think about you and just serve God, amen? If so be that you have been there. Now, can I, let me just end, let me just end tonight with, turn with me if you would. Let's turn back to, Let's turn back to 1 Peter. Amen. God just won't let me say anything. I'm thinking of everything to try to say back to you, brother. God won't let me do it. God's protecting you, brother. Hey, God knows how to humble a person. I was telling somebody I shouldn't have told this, but I think it was last year. I've been a very athletic person. You wouldn't believe it if you see me now, but in my life I was a pretty athletic person, and I got on the hoverboard about a year ago, and that didn't go good. I can honestly say I've never traveled six inches on the hoverboard. I went from this position to immediately straight down, and I never went six inches forward other than my leg going straight up in the air. Pitiful. These bodies are absolutely pitiful. Now, before we were so rudely interrupted, I don't think God's gonna let me go here, folks. I just don't think the Lord will let me. Let's just turn with me to 1 Peter. Just read this. We've gone through and gonna look at the last part of 1 Peter, and we've been through the work of Christ and the working of the Spirit, and we'll end this chapter. on the Word of God, the Word of God that is enduring forever and will never fall, never fail. All flesh is 1 Peter 1. Verse number 21 said, who by Him do believe in God that raised Him up from the dead, gave Him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren. See to this now, you're going to have to make, this is not going to happen automatically in your life. The ability is there. The possibilities for you to do so are there, because the love of God is shed abroad in your heart, but you'll not automatically love, you'll have to work at that, right? So see to it, see to it that you love one another with a pure heart, and see that you do it fervently. That's the end of verse number 22. And then let's just deal just for a couple of minutes, being born again. not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." We could go back in Scripture, and I won't do that now because I was going to just end with the Word of the Lord, but let me just say something in verse number 23. The Bible says, being born again. I just want to take just a minute before we go home tonight and to talk to you just a minute from this verse here about being born again. Salvation has been cheapened in our day, and it's nothing like a new birth. It's nothing more than a flippant little thing. You can chew bubble gum and be fine, and it never affects the emotions. It'll never trouble you in any way. It's just something you can sign up for, like you would sign up for the Masons or something. It's not been so cheapened in our day. But the Bible refers to salvation as being born again. This is something that's radical. You ladies that have born children into this world, I don't know how you do it. When my first child, my wife gave birth and she's a little bit off rocker a little bit. She never took an ounce of pain medicine. Every one of our children. She just did every one of them all completely 100% naturally. I'd have had 14 IVs in me full of every drug you could imagine. No way would I have signed up for that, especially after the first time. But it is a radical thing that happens. You know when a woman's travailing in birth and pains. It's a painful—I wish we all would appreciate our mothers a little more than we do for what they've done in bringing us into this world, right? They have gone through great pain and affliction in birthing us into this world just like the Lord Jesus did birthing you again into the kingdom of His dear Son. He went into great agony and pain and was killed and I say killed loosely, he gave down his life willingly, but he was cruelly nailed to a cross and had an agonizing death and a sense of pain and fleshly things that we talk about, but he went through those things for you so that you could be born again. This is something that's radical. It is a new life that has never had life before. It's never had a past before. All it has is hope of a future and growing. And I'm telling you, when I got home, there was no doubt in my mind that we had a newborn baby in the house. Now listen, your mother loved you all and just crying to her, just warmed her little heart. It made me want to set you outside. That's what I wanted to do with it, Brother Reid. Somebody shut that thing up! Crying and screaming and crying and just, oh, and then they get colic and they just scream and they cry and they scream and they cry, but there is no doubt in the world that there's a brand new baby in the house. This is what the Bible is likening salvation to. It's like being born again, literally, to the degree that they thought, well, how am I going to enter a second time into my mother's womb? Because they were thinking, you know, the physical mind that they had. Touch, taste, see, that's all they knew. And we know it to be spiritual. But being born again is a radical transformation. It is God making your soul over, I'm telling you, even more radically than your first birth ever was. He formed man out of the dust of the ground. He's reformed you out of complete corruption. He's made you accepted in the Beloved. He's made a newborn Christian something that he's never been before, something Adam was not in the garden. As far as I know, Adam was not a holy habitation of God. As far as I know, Adam in the garden didn't possess God Almighty, the all-powerful, eternal God of heaven in his mortal body. For we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Something out of never was have you been born again. You've been born again. You've been radically changed. You've been made new like you've never been before. That's salvation. That's God birthing into you things that'll accompany that. A love for God, a love for Jesus, a love for the Word of God, and a love for His church. There's no doubt in the world that there's been a newborn baby been born. Man, I gotta say, there was no doubt in my life somebody knew had moved in. Amen? Brother Mark, somebody knew was calling the shots now, and I was glad to let him do it. Being born again, that's one of the most beautiful, Brother Hicks, that's one of the most beautiful words, two words, but it's a word, born again, for us, that I've ever heard in all my life. Born again. Brother Ben, all that old stuff passed away, all that old sin, all that old way of life, and all things have become new. And can I ask you something? Have you ever, have you ever been born again? I was at John Wesley or was it George Whitefield, was it George Whitefield, somebody help me, that preached you must be born again so many times, I think it was Whitefield, I can't remember now. But they kept asking him, why do you preach you must be born again, he said, because you must be born again. Are you saved? Have you ever been born again? Do you know what it's like for God to completely I'm talking beyond a renovation, everything that you were is dead and you have new life in Christ Jesus. So that to this degree, if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Something that radical, the power to overcome. We know we've passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. If any man says he loves God and hates his brother, he's a liar. The love of God does not dwell in a person like that. Because the Bible says you're a murderer if you hate your brother, you're a murderer and we know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. That's what the Bible says. I hate that person. That's not a good testimony to you. Do you have a love for the brethren, a love for God's church, a love for the Word of God? You know what the Bible talks about here in this verse? Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God. It'll go on into chapter number two, and therefore, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow, thereby There's a yearning in my heart, and I don't mean, I hope you don't take it as I'm trying to lift myself up, I'm not trying to do that in any way, I'm just trying to, this is just, I'm trying to use my own experience, that's what I know. I had nothing for the Bible. I'm not sure I owned one, and you know, my nana bought it for me, it was an NIV, and she had bought it for me long, back when I was probably six or seven years old, and it was a keepsake that my wife had to get out of the keepsake box. That's where my Bible was, in a keepsake box. I didn't care what the Bible said, I didn't really care what God thought about me. But there came a night when I cared more about what God thought than what my mother thought, than what my wife thought about me, or what my children. Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation not to be repented of. Have you ever had godly sorrow? Have you ever stopped to think for a minute, what does God think about what I'm doing? Look how I've offended God. It goes beyond young people, it goes beyond your mom and dad. We get disappointed but I understand what you do. I'm shocked that some of you aren't worse than you are in the day that we live. It's a miracle of God. We understand it, we've been there. I've been a 16-year-old boy before. I know what a 16-year-old boy's got going on. But this goes beyond daddy and offending daddy. This is a holy God in heaven for whom you will stand in front of one day and he will say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. But Lord, I've been to church all my life. Hey, they were casting out demons in His name, doing a whole lot more than some Baptists were doing. And He said, I never knew you. And that's just my question tonight, I just, I want to ask you. It's not an attack, it's not a, well I, nothing in my heart would ever want to attack anybody. I want to see you get saved. I know what God will do for you, I know the joy that'll be in your life. Have you ever been born again? Preacher, I don't know. I pray God you get that worked out, I really do. The only thing worse is just not knowing whether you're safe or not, that's a miserable place to be. Have you ever been born again? Has God ever made you a new creature? There's this much I can tell you, nothing else in this world will ever matter but the answer to that one question. Have you been born again? The most important question in your life you can think about, everything else will perish and vanish away. But there'll be one thing remaining that will never be shaken and that are those that are in Christ Jesus. And the only way to be in Christ is to be born into Him by the Spirit of God. And so if God spoke to you and working on you in conviction and power, there's a reason. The devil will never tell you you're not saved. Why would he tell you that? He'll never tell you you're saved either. He wants you constantly confused. Right, he's the author of confusion. But why would he tell you you were not saved so that you would start seeking to be? Right, that's not the way he works. I think that's the greatest need of our hour. If back in the times of revival in this country, R.G. Lee can say that probably 90% of the people sitting in his Southern Baptist churches were lost, I'd hate to know what the percentages is in our day. Have you been born again? I pray you have. For the Bible said that Jesus was delivered for our offenses. He appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin forever. He came into this world with one thing on his mind. God took upon him the form of a man and came into this sin-cursed world to die for our sins, according to this Bible. Went to the cross, died the cruelest death that's probably been recorded in human history for an innocent man that had never done a thing in this world wrong. Willingly laid down his life and gave up the ghost by his own power so that you could have life. Was buried and rose again, ascended to the Father in heaven where he's ever seated, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. That's the gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation.