And verse 8 is, For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth. And to him that knocketh it shall be opened. So that's what I pray for all the kids, they keep seeking God. Because it's a personal thing, he says, he that seeketh findeth. Right? He's teaching every one of us. So now I'm growing up in the church. Back at that time there were some godly men that could pray in power. Old Charlie Woodard and James Clark. Today I'd compare them to Keith and Brother Luke growing up here. But they would stand up and pray for pastor before the church, before we get started, you'd feel the unity and the power of God in their prayers. I'd never been around any church like that before. Most time one man would pray, the rest of the church is silent. But here, everybody prays. And I love that about our church. So those were the people that I looked up to. And I wanted to be one day. And I feel like the Lord's let me taste a little bit of that, but I'll just still think about the things that God kind of showed me growing up. My life verses are Romans 12, 1 and 2. And that's, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is a reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. And so, you know, I'm young, trying to learn, trying to find God's will, right? Seeking all this. But those scriptures right there, they always pull me back. I mean, my whole life. Another verse that I learned pretty young was Lamentations 3, 27. And that one says that, It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. And so I was growing up, I didn't understand then what that meant, but that just made me try that much harder to do what I could, which is my calling, you know, was to pray. And that's what I was working towards. But all you children and young kids, it's a lot easier when you don't have a family and all these things tying you down and things in your mind to serve God. You can get patterns and things in your life of your study and your things established before all that if you start serving Him now. You're not just saved to be saved from hell, you're saved for a purpose, to do what we do and work for Him. After that, I was just thinking on here going through my life. Around 2006, I think, was the Ralph Sexton tent meeting that we had here at the Cabo County Firegrounds. And man, God got on us to pray. Some of my friends, Jesse was one of them at the time, wasn't boyfriend or girlfriend or nothing like that. We were just friends from different churches. We got together and God laid a burden on us to pray. And he just knit us together, even after the tent meeting was over with. We would go to Poovey's Chapel weekends there and we'd pray there. We'd go up together at times with the kids and stuff from the church here to Cool Springs. That's up on the parkway up past Deep Gap. And God would meet with us there. He answers some mighty prayers in my life. He cleansed my heart from... from things that even after you're saved, there's wickedness in your heart. He has to clean things out of you. He's done some of that up there, and I thank God for it. I mean, there's patterns and there's places in your life where God does specific things for you that you've asked for, and it just blesses my heart. You don't forget those places. They're just ingrained in you. So we're still praying together. We're doing all these things. And then one of the first trips I went to Myrtle, Mississippi, that was with a prayer retreat with Daniel and my dad. I don't know that the whole church went on some of those earlier ones, but God put a love in my heart for that place down there and in prayer. All y'all that have been down there, y'all know what it's like. It's just a different thing. But I went down there for some of their youth camps that they still had and things for a while. And in some of that, that's where God laid on my heart to get Jessie the quilt and eventually to ask her to date me. And then up at Cool Springs was a time in prayer, it was up there, and God had told me it'd be okay to ask her. And I pretty much asked her to marry me when I asked her to date me because I told her, in my mind, I would never attempt to date anybody that I wasn't willing to marry, right? You're looking for somebody that you're compatible with. And if there's any doubt, you don't need to go forward, right? And so we've been friends for a very long time. I could hear her pray. I knew she knew God. I mean, God, He yoked us up. I ask her to date me there, and then later on we go to Myrtle later, and I end up asking her to marry me at Myrtle in Earl's church there down in the carpet right up there at the communion table. But the Lord just works all that out. All those things when you're younger and you don't know what to do, you didn't think you knew the will of God, those verses come back to you, right? And the whole time He's been leading you, and He just puts it all together. But it's been... So that was back in 2010. We went one time after we were married. and then had to go finish school. You know, you start life with kids and all that, and we've done different things. So this is the first time we've been back since, I think, 2010. But God really just blessed us down there. He put a lot of thoughts and a lot of Scripture in my mind. I'll go ahead and share some of these Scriptures. that God's always kind of kept near to my heart. But 2 Chronicles 7.14, and this is in the new tabernacle back there on the back wall. And another one here is James 4.17. This one's a little bit different direction here, but it says, Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. And I've thought about that a lot growing up as a child and things. A lot of people will get saved and they'll be happy being saved, right? They won't go out in the world and commit wicked sins. They don't want to sin, right? But they'll neglect to do that that's good, that God's laying. He's wanting you to be closer all the time. And that's really, I mean, I've failed. I've sinned in that a lot. But the Lord blessed me at Myrtle and helped me want to be close to Him more than I ever have. But 1 Peter 2.9 is the next verse. It says, But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light. And I just thank the Lord for those things that he laid on my mind there and helped me. And then we'll go to the things that God really had me pray for myself down at Myrtle. And I told the church there, the mind, that's my biggest battleground. And a carnal mind's enmity with God. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. And that scripture has always been in my heart. Renew your mind, right? I don't know how to do that without God, right? Right, re is like over and over again, right? So I think about memories, things in the past, but it's not just those things in the past. He refreshes that, he brings upon, he builds on top of it, right? And so he really done that for me. That was my prayer that he would help my mind. I've not got to get off of him since I've been home. I'm telling you, my kids and my family have seen it. I can't half eat. I've been there when I sit still, the TV's on, something else is going on, and I've been focused on all this this whole time. He'll be a witness to a guy this morning. When he's on your mind all the time and he lets you, it's like that communion in prayer. You can do things you can't normally do. Right? And this flesh is weak. It's tired. But God's helping me right now. I mean, I'm telling you, being in his will is the best thing ever. So he's helped my mind. And along with that, Saturday night. God give me some words He wants me to share with you here. And it just blessed my heart. It's only something that I could understand and I hope that I'll be able to explain it to you here. But Brother Brandon, if you would pray for me and we'll keep going here. But just pray that I can get my mind right and bless y'all. Oh God, we'll be done. Help us now. Oh God, you have your willing. Oh God, help us show up together. Help us fill your power, your presence, dear God. Oh God, pastors pray for God. We pray God you'd unleash God on this place, God. Yes, Father, hear your people. Oh God, thank you, Lord, for all you're doing. So the thing that I kept thinking about, and I told Brother Jay this when we was walking back out of the church there at Myrtle, I was like, man, I just feel yoked up. Y'all knit together, I think is what I said. And then Brother Richie, How did he word it? Woven together, I think, maybe is what he said that Sunday morning. But I was just thinking, and in my mind, I was like, what scripture is with that? I've heard something with that before. And it's Ecclesiastes 4.12, right? It states, and it's just the last half of the verses, all I needed to bring is a three-fold cord. It's not easily broken. Right? And so in that, most of the time that I've heard that explained to be like your husband and your wife and God. You've got God wrapped up, right? You're unified and all that. But this is a little bit different. What I was thinking about was a rope, and my experience rock crawling and playing around in the woods and all that kind of stuff. Winch rope, right? It's what you use to pull a load, to pull a burden. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here, but he didn't mention a cable or a chain, a twisted rope, right? It's a three-fold cord. Three-fold cords are special. That's not saying they're not twisted. A twisted rope, when it gets a load on it, it tries to untwist. It stretches. It don't move a load. It's weaker. The more cords and things that you have bound together, the the stronger that they are. And it takes the hand of someone that's making a rope maker to make a rope specific for that purpose, right? A rock climbing rope don't work. All these other kind of ropes don't work. It's a specifically made thing to pull that load. So I was just thinking about that rope. The rope maker has to select those individual little fibers that he wants to be in that thing. They're formulated specific to be in that place. He lines them up, he gets them in order, puts them in a place. Okay, you understand, the rope is a type of the church, is what I feel like in this. And that all those individual strands get lined up, get pulled the same direction. Okay, then he takes in those little groups of those strands, he weaves them, right, amongst themselves. That's what he was doing with us. And the way that they're made, they're like a Chinese finger trap on a winch rope, okay? You pull on that Chinese finger trap, and all those strands get tighter and tighter together, and they're stronger. They're bonded. Their bond is tighter when that load's on them, all right? And that load, that's our prayer bird, and that load is that desire that God's put in us, those things that we need to see for our lives. And glory to God. This has blessed me so much. I might be out of order here and all the stuff, But so that rope is made specifically for its purpose. It's hand selected by the rope maker for that particular situation, right? Okay, let's go. So when you rig a rope, right? If you just have a rope, can you pull a load? If you just have a rope, right? It's gotta be anchored to something, right? It's gotta be anchored on one side. On the other side, you're gonna have a winch or you gotta have something that can pull, okay? So I think about that thing that you're gonna hook to. You don't hook to a dead tree, right? You don't hook to a little rocket smaller than your Jeep or whatever you got stuck, whatever that load is, right? So you need something that's solid. And I believe that's the word of God. That's the truth that Jesus Christ, right? That's what that represents. And then what bonds you to that truth? to that word, to Jesus, you've got a hook on the end of that rope, right? That's what you use on that end. I believe that's a symbol of a pastor, of the end of the rope. On this other end, you've got the winch. This is the part that blessed me real good, too. But that rope can bear that load, but that winch, right? It's got to have power to it. Right? Most winches I know of are electric. You can't see all those electrons and stuff working all the time, but when that switch gets flipped on, It's going to move. That power gets transmitted from that winch into that rope. That load, it might pull and be hard for a little while, but they're sized. When you buy a winch, it comes with a rope that's sized to handle the load that that winch, the power that winch can put out on it. I don't know if y'all are getting this, but the Holy Spirit is that power. It's that electricity. It flows, it puts that burden on us and that power that it has can move that burden that we have. And it's moving it directly in line, straight through the church, through the power, through the man of God to the truth, right? It's pulling them closer and closer together. It's trying to get it to a stable place where it's not stuck, where that burden can have some freedom, some release of that burden. I mean, I was laying in my bed at two o'clock or probably two to three o'clock Sunday morning and all this stuff from a verse is a threefold chord, okay? So we got our burden, right? That's that load that we're trying to pull. That could be sin, that could be lost people that we're thinking about. It can be whatever you need to put there, right? The church has to bear it. Right? All the things have to be in order for it to work. Okay? So, our rope. We've got to protect our rope. Okay? I love my church. Sometimes our rope's got frayed. Okay? Sometimes it's drug in the mud. Okay? When a rope gets drug in the mud, I have to picture that as sin. Right? It can coat it. Right? Those individual fibers, that mud seeps in and causes friction in between those fibers. We don't want that friction. It weakens the rope. And over time, if you don't clean that rope, there's going to be a weak spot there. It's going to fray. There's rocks and things that can be obstacles in the way when we're trying to pull. It can cut the rope. There's outside sources that can cut the rope. So we've got sin. We've got all these other things. But the glorious thing about a rope Right? It says the threefold cord. It's not quickly broken. It can be broken. Right? It's different than a chain. A chain link, you say you're only as good as your weakest link in your chain. If one link in a chain breaks, you can't use a chain no more. The church isn't like that. It's just like it's rope. Right? You can have weak strands and things, but you won't have the capacity that you could have to pull a load. But the church is still gonna pull a load. Okay? So here, this right here just blew my mind. So there's those if your rope if you pull a load and it's too hard. This is say you've broken. OK. The sins come in right. It's hurt the rope that ropes broken into it severed. You ever got to have two pieces. We've got a short piece of rope long piece of rope. All right. God can mend a rope. He can mend a church. The person that knows how to work this stuff can do this. The way that it works, I've done this myself, that's why I can explain this, so hopefully y'all can understand it. You have to take, it broke in that severed place, whether it's sin, whatever broke that thing. You take the two ends, the frayed ends, you'll clean off those pieces that are injured, that are dirty, you'll wash that thing. You can take the short piece, and the way that you fix it is the long piece, you'll pierce the side of that long piece. And all those frayed ends, you tuck through to the center of that long piece, and you stretch them up in there till all those frayed ends, all that stuff, they're hidden back behind inside that long piece. Okay? So, I think about how God, how He forgives us. His side was pierced for us. And sometimes that sin, there's got to be forgiveness, there's got to be reconciliation to bond the church back, to do those things, right? So, but that gets tucked right into the center. And it's covered up, it's hidden, right? It's protected inside. of that rope. And then this other end, this freight of the long rope, it's not just a short rope, right? It does the exact same thing. It's pierced into the side of that short rope, and it gets pulled, and it's hidden. And when you repair a rope properly, okay, you got to take your hands, you got to work it. After you get them tucked in there together, you got to get all them fibers lined back up and stretched back out. And once you've repaired a rope, it's actually twice as strong in the area that is broken than it was before, right? So you hardly ever have a rope ever break again in that place. And I just thank the Lord that, you know, seeing those things that we think have messed up stuff, right? God can mend them, right? And that's His desire. He wants us to be useful. And I feel like, I mean, if you had a piece of rope, okay? That short piece, right? That rope could work without it. You could tie, you could mend that and leave that little piece hanging, right? It could be gone. But that rope ain't gonna be as long as it used to be. It's not gonna reach that burden that it needs to reach, right? You might could get there, but you gotta rig it a different way. You gotta pull up more work. God wants that rope to be full length and be full strength. And I just think that He can show you these things. So let's just keep going on here. I got a few more things. But we just think like, Even in the best conditions, there's some loads that we're pulling, right? We can't bear them, right? Our rope's only so big. We've only got so much power that the Holy Spirit can put on us. If he puts too much on us, we'll break, right? But there's a way you can take a rope and you can get some more power. And I didn't know this, God didn't show me this till Sunday morning. You ask us to fast. on Fridays. And I believe that this is kind of a symbol of that. Because there's things you can do to get you some more power. A pulley. If you put a pulley in your system with the same rope, with the same winch I'll teach you in school, you can get twice the power of what you'd had before. And you know what you call a pulley in rock crawling lingo? It's called a snatch block. And I just think about God. And when we're pulling that load and we think it can't move, we don't know what to do. He can come by and re-rig us. We honor Him and faster do those things that He wants us to do. And He can give us more power than what we can do on our own, right? And we can pull that, you know, it's his load, it's his burden, right? We're trying to do what he wants us to do. He's the one that's hooked up the winch. He's the one that's put the man of God in the right place. And hey, that rope, when it's got a load on it, I just thought about the man of God thing again here, but it's got to pull in line. You can't pull a rope in a curve. When it's got that load on it, it's pulled perfectly straight in that direction of that truth, pulling it to Christ. OK. Y'all OK with all this? This feels really weird. But bless me. But the last thing I got here is a sheath. So not the whole rope, not for every load. You've got different situations. Some are real far away. Some are up close. OK? So all the winch rope is not pulled out at the same time. Right? You only see as much as you need to see. Right? And I believe that's a type of the church that the man of God or the prayer warriors, a lot of the people that are in positions of leadership. But they're exposed to the ailments a lot more than the rest of us. And the way you protect your rope and you take care of one is that first 20 or so feet, they make a sheath that slides down over top of it. I just think about the man of God just trying to get to those centers and to do that, he's got to go to those places. And it's like those rocks that would normally scratch that cable or fray that cable, that sheath there, it protects it. That main cable don't ever get hurt. I think of a hedge of protection. I think of the angels around us and around the church, and we pray it over those that are in leadership. So, the goriest thing about all that, is that that rope that's bound up, it's back there on that winch, right? It's in there tight. It's still working. That load runs through the whole thing on one end to the other, right? It ain't slipping. It's back there with that Holy Ghost, with that power, right? It's pulling it in. That rope is concealed. Those that are in the church that are praying, right? They're back there. They're doing work more than what a lot of people would ever imagine. They're not heard. They're not in the front, in the limelight, right? Glory to God. I think about Terry Herman. He blesses me. I know he's prayed for me. I feel it. I think about Leonard and Teresa. God, they bless me. But when that load, sometimes that load can get released if we're going to go to another one or something. God don't keep that same stress on us all the time. But I thought about when that winch gets wound back up, that sheath, that covering, right? It wraps back up and covers the whole thing. And it's sitting there ready for when God says, hey, here's your burden and you need to pull it. So I want to have a clean rope. I want to have a rope that's serviced and ready, right? When God comes and He's wanting to use it, He ain't going to go to a muddy rope. I mean, if I'm going to go pull somebody out of the mud, I'm not going to pick up one that's frayed. I'm going to go to the one that's trusted. I know the power's hooked up to it, right? It's got that anchor. It's anchored back on Christ, on the truth. Thank the Lord for helping me. This is kind of fun. I was dreading this. I'm telling you, I've been sick. I've not been able to eat. I thank God. Maybe I can eat some pizza. Sometimes you preach and it's war. Sometimes you enjoy it. Like that old Paul over there in the book of Acts, he said, I'm making myself happy and giving this testimony. You can talk yourself into joy. Amen. Wasn't that good? Their whole life goes back. Sister Jessica, I know you wouldn't have known it at the time when they were over there praying, trying to represent their school. and everybody up front of us smoking dope, drinking all that stuff, and they just begging God to move. And then Brother Max over here, you've been up on that mountain with us a lot, haven't you, before? So he's giving his life to God. There's no substitute for that. No substitute. Giving God your life when you're young, because there's an added blessing to it. So we have seen the benefit of that. And I'm going to remind her and him, all that prayers that went on back yonder, Ah, I go through life and the Lord don't remind me of things a lot of times. But in the last week, more than I can remember in a long time, the Lord's reminded me, all them times, climbing all over in Blue Ridge Mountains, all these churches, all them places the boys used to go. We'd have whole weeks of prayer. We'd pray all night. Oh God. We'd get up there. Man, I've been up there many times on Blue Ridge Parkway by myself. I know there'd be bears all around me. It didn't bother me none, because I felt such boldness in God. And the Lord let me know, I ain't forgot all that you put into it. I've not forgotten. But I draw on that now. When he brings it to my mind, bear the load in your, you know, bear the yoke in your youth. And Max and Jessica, you ain't forgot that? You ain't forgot them times? No, sir. Me and old brother Nicky and Terry Dietz and Freddie Helms, especially them, we wore Nicky's car out. We about beat the floor out of that thing. I'm telling you. Man, we get to playin' music, get to shoutin', hittin' the top of that thing. It's a wonder it survived. Oh God, we'd go up there to pray and kill possums on the way. Possums look like rats they don't deserve to live. No, I'd let them live now maybe. But all those times, all those times. Man, go up there, go up there in the daytime. Go up on that mountain, pray hours all day long. Man, when I was up there one time, I wasn't there, I was coming up there and a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses come up there. Heard them guys up there prayin'. They gonna go up there and straighten them boys out. And they in there in the Holy Ghost. I hate to stay on that mountain long, but we've had some times, man, and you get in the battle of this thing and you about forget them. Then the Holy Ghost starts taking you down memory lane, man. Lord, God. Boy, I'll tell you one thing, that road up there used to not be kept smooth. It had nothing but ruts in it. I remember the first time God ever really got on me. Man, I'm talking about over 40 years ago. I run down that road, wide open face I go. God on me, I felt like Jay Hughes' chariot. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. And I ended up under an apple tree down there and across the road in a field. And all them ruts. Oh yeah, if God get on us, we'd run up down that mountain. We'd take, listen, we'd take our hands, going after God and dig big old holes in the ground, praying and going after the power of God. All glory to God, I just failed it. Man, God said, I remember that. Now I remember that. He remembers. You won't go for God in vain. You just stir me up about that stuff. Because I know they put some effort in it. So you go out there and myrtle, and all that gets stirred back up in you. And then God takes you even to a higher level. And what it is, it's not that we've never been there, we just need God to keep us there. And the Lord's about to wake up the sleeping John. Oh yeah, he knows how to wake us up. How to get us back on praying ground and authority and power. I mentioned this down there, I'm gonna say this, we're gonna go. I mentioned this down there and it's on me so strong. And I'm gonna have to preach a different sermon. I was preaching on John 17 and it hit me so strong how God has chosen to use human instrumentality. It's God's way. Don't try to figure out why, because you ain't. If God could not draw a straight line with a crooked stick, he wouldn't use nobody, because we're all crooked in our nature. Oh yeah, at the best, we're still just men at the best. No matter who the best men are, at our best, we're still just men. And God uses that. And God don't have to. He don't have to. Man, I thank y'all for praying, man. Praise the good name of the Lord. I've worked up the most sermons in two days. I probably have my whole life. And I just about done with seven sermons on Gideon, almost to the end. And that set my soul on fire. Man, God didn't have to use him. Hillary proved that when they killed, when they had those clay jars and had the trumpets and the light in the jar, and they had the torch in one hand and the trumpet in the other hand. And back then, if you had a trumpet, only officers had trumpets. And usually there's a thousand men behind every trumpet. Ain't God smart? 300 men blow the trumpet. Well, they thought they surrounded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers. and the Holy Ghost turned them on each other. God started manipulating their mind, and they thought the enemy was charging them, hits their own brother in battle, and they killed each other. Well, they didn't kill each other, 125,000, 15,000 fled. And then they ran out, I mean, old Gideon, he fought the whole crowd of 300 men. The rest of them in and go, out in the desert. Amen. He went in the desert on a horse with no name. No, they wasn't riding no horse. But, God didn't have to do that. God loves that. He so loves us, He wants us to partake in His victory. He loves that. God loves it when He uses somebody. When He comes on them to pray, to witness, to preach, whatever, God loves that. He yearns for that. Why? Because He wants to bless you. There ain't never been a kid on a ball field, if they got a daddy or mama really loves them, they want their kid to do good better than that kid wants to. You know why? Because they know the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. They know what it means to do good in front of everybody. That parent knows that. And they want it for their children. God needs something to work with. When we won't pray, we're not giving God anything to work with. Because God uses prayer. And if you're not a biblical ignoramus, you know that's right. God uses prayer. God needs my prayer. God needs something to work with. That's God's way. God needs me to preach. He needs something to work with. God needs you to witness. He needs something to work with. That's the way it is. That's the way he gonna do it. So when the devil steals our prayer life, we're not giving God nothing to work with. You say sometimes God just moves anyhow, and he does in his mercy, but how much are we not getting because we ain't giving God nothing to work with? Ain't that what he said? You said it, brother Max, resent your body, live and sacrifice. Give God something to work with. I don't care who it is. You want to talk about baseball players? What about Babe Ruth? What about Joe DiMaggio? What about Mickey Mantle? What about Willie Mays? Barry Bonds? Mark McGuire? Sammy Sosa? Hank Aaron? They all had a ball bat. Gotta have something to work with. God needs something to work with. Hey man, I'm not feeling it, buddy. Give him something to work with. It'll pay off down the road. Some days you pray and say, I'm wasting my time. Yeah, who told you that? Yeah, the one that told you you're wasting your time knows you ain't wasting your time. So pray it up, and thank God, believed up, so you're ready to go up, stand up, speak up, amen. For the glory of God. Thank you, Brother Mike, that was wonderful. That was just wonderful. And he's probably meditated that on that all ever since Saturday night. Didn't you stay up halfway through the night? Four o'clock you went to sleep. Yeah, that sounds like me. But a lot of times, sometimes later than that. But ain't that good? Give God something to work with. Get full of that Word. Get full of that Word. Get full of faith. God needs your faith. Yeah, God can do it without you, but He ain't going to. He ain't going to. God ain't gonna send revival except through people. Amen. And when we just do our little part, he does a whole bunch and adds to it. And our little old part, you give God your little old dollar and he'll add 10,000 to it. He might add 100,000. He just wants that little part. He ain't asking for everything. He just wants that little part of obedience. Amen. When you first start out tithing before you start giving tithes and offerings and special gifts and all that stuff, you start out with 10, he's letting you keep 90%. He's just taking 10. And if you're just faithful in that, you're gonna have more with the 90 than you would have had with 100. God knows how to stretch things. Amen. How's your truck? You're suburban. Does it? I was hoping it was something simple.