went to the same school. So they never taught us much, or we just wasn't willing to learn much. I remember Juanita. She just passed away, Miss Juanita, my first-grade teacher. She come by one day, and we were supposed to be writing her letters, and she took a ruler, and cracked me over the fingers and said, You can do better than that. And so I tell everybody, she ruined me for life. My penmanship has never increased and got any better. They said, You should have been a doctor, the way you signed. Yeah, I said, Yeah, but them doctors can spell those words. The reason I can't and you can't make it out because I can't spell them and I want you to know I can't. So we were really successful, Uncle Wendell and I, when we went to school. Yeah. I tell everybody we was a little slow. And I said we really, and I'd make a joke about this, but I say we really had to ride the short bus to school. And so some people come up afterwards and they say, Brother Doyle, did you really ride the short bus to school? I said, On the bayou where we live, there was no long buses. Everybody had to ride the short bus. My daddy, when he was coming up, there was an old man by the name of Volo Guidry, and he would come down the levee and pick up all the kids along the levee road and the river road. And my dad said it'd rain, and it'd get bogged down pretty easy. So it would get to slipping, and he couldn't go anywhere, and he'd tell him, boys, get out behind the bus and push so we can get y'all to school. My daddy said, instead of pushing, we held back. He said, because we held back, that old bus just bogged down further and further. And so Volo said, Y'all going to have to go home. We can't go to school today. That's the kind of intelligence we grew up around, amen? And so I'm glad that God has chosen the foolish things of this world. We really were honestly foolish in this world. We did not meet the grade. We were not great excellers, but God calls people who have to depend on Him to get it done. If you're really overqualified, God probably can't use you. And he'll spend a lifetime, preachers will, trying to get qualified according to the rules of men. But God said, if you'll surrender to me, I'll put on your heart what my perfect will is. And then as you surrender that to me, and by faith, trust me, I will bring it to pass. Got it? It's Him. Everything we do is not started in denominationalism. It is starting in a personal relationship with Christ, in the secret place of the Most High God, getting along with him and allowing him to speak to your heart because God has a perfect will for everybody in this building tonight. Before he saved you, he already had a perfect will for you. He knew what he wanted to call you to do. He's just waiting for you to get in tune with him so he can tell you. I mean, when God called me, I had passed the fourth grade with 21 Fs on my report card. We were very intelligent back then. They let me go to the sixth grade and they said, Now, Doyle, you're going to have to slow down. You're one of them advanced students. We want you to stay back and be a teacher's aide. So I had to stay back because them other old dumb girls and boys had to go on because I was so smart. I was privileged, see? I was special. And God called me to preach knowing that. I said, Lord, they tell me you ain't never made a mistake, but I'm beginning to wonder about you because I don't qualify. And when you tell people you're called to preach, everybody around you wants to tell you where to go and how to get qualified. One old preacher, and he meant well. Wendell and I sat under him for years. He said, Well, you need to go to the seminary. I said, Well, I would, but I can't spell that word. And come to find out, God said, Man wants you to go to the seminary, but I'd like for you to take a trip to the cemetery because you're going to have to die in order for me to live. 2,000 years ago, He died so that we could live. Tonight, He asked us to die so that He can live. When that old temper comes up and you understand the cross, you pick up your cross, and with the help and strength of God, you deny yourself and follow Him to be His disciple and they will not see you, they will see Jesus in you. And so you have to understand that God's ways are so different than man's ways. They're just different. God has set up such a system that has put us in an impossible situation. God said you've got to be righteous to go to heaven. Then he gave us ten commandments that we couldn't keep. And then he said, Your righteousness, if whatever you produce in your own nature of the flesh, your righteousness is as filthy rags in my sight. So when I looked at the law, I understood what sin was, and I said, God, I done done them all. How can I go to heaven? It's an impossible situation. But if we could get people to see how impossible it is for them to get saved, it would cause them to turn to their only hope, and that's Christ, and accept him and allow God to put God's righteousness and Christ's righteousness on their account, and they would be as accepted in heaven as Christ is. And you didn't even do anything to earn it. He just gave it to you. He said, Son, you're so dumb. Son, you're so poor. You're so unrighteous and wicked. No matter how many times you get baptized, no matter how many times you join the church door, You can't go to heaven without Christ. And it took a lifetime just about to convince me of that. I tried all the religious activity. I joined the church. I got baptized several times. But there's not power in the tub, there's power in the blood. And I had to understand that Christ was my only hope because God in heaven had put me in an impossible situation to get to heaven. I could not get there on my own. And I had to understand that Christ, you're the only way, you're the only truth, you're the only hope. And I put my faith in you and what you've accomplished for me on the cross. And I'm just going to get in on what you give me. because there won't be nobody strutting around heaven saying, let me tell y'all what I did to get here. My Bible said we're on our face before the throne praising and worshiping God because we know then and only then will we know why we're there. And it wasn't us. It was totally Christ. So the apostle Paul here in the book of Philippians. I've tried so many things, and what I'm telling you tonight, most of them I have tried and failed at. So I want you to know I'm coming from the experience of failure, not success. Okay? This is what you're not supposed to do. All right? I want you to notice the apostle Paul here. The entire book is, the theme of the book is joy. And when you understand the circumstances Paul was in, you have to understand that happiness depends on happenings, but joy depends on Jesus. And no matter what's happening, you can still have the joy of the Lord. because He's one steady constant. My plans change, people's plans change, but God is the constant in my life, and He's there, and He's going to take us right on to eternity with Him, and when the world is on fire, we're going to be in His presence. He never changes. Modern man has come up with all sorts of ways to explain him. How can you explain God? The old black preacher said to him, his deacon came to him one time and said, Reverend, where did God come from? And the old preacher said, Well, the Bible said he came from Mount Timon, and the word Timon means nowhere. He came from nowhere. And that deacon said, You've got to explain that a little bit better. He said, Well, you see, the reason he came from nowhere was because there was nowhere for him to come from. And coming from nowhere, he stepped out there where there was nowhere to step, and he reached out where there was nowhere to reach and caught something and hung it on nothing and told it to stay there. Well, that makes perfect sense, don't it, brother? You can't run your Christian life on reason, human reasoning. Forget it. God honors faith. God honors faith. And so I want you to understand that how Paul got the joy of the Lord and how we're going to get it is, number one, to become a sold-out Christian. Got it? Now, America knows very little about being sold out. And so, I wish we could learn what they learned in Acts chapter 2, that neither said all of the things which he possessed was his own. See, he possessed them, but he didn't own them. There's a difference between owning something and just possessing something. But God allows us to possess some things, only we're managing it for Him. But if you own it, you ain't going to be able to manage nothing because all your decisions about doing that is going to be selfish and self-centered. You have your affections are on things. You find your joy and all your excitement in outward things. And when they're threatened, your joy is threatened, your happiness is threatened. But if you ever get them all on the altar and back off, you said, Preacher, my children, I just can't surrender my children. I thought that too one day. And you know what God said to me? He said, Doyle, I can take them any time anyway. Why don't you just lay them on an altar and back off and pray for them? And so I had to surrender them to God. I had to surrender everything. I might have told this before, but I'm trying to hurry, and I close several times because I like to see the smile on your face when I say I'm closing. I had bought a Browning .30-06 rifle. And I began to pray and seek the Lord, and the Lord said, Doyle, you love that rifle too much. And so I said, well, Lord, it's a Browning. It was actually made in Belgium, God, but nothing I told God affected him. He just kept on convicting me that that was something that I put too much attention on and that I loved, and it was taking away some affections that I could put on him. So I said, Well, Lord, I'll just surrender it to you. And God said, No, that ain't good enough. I want you to sell it. So I got the word out I was going to sell it, and my dad found out about it. He said, I want to buy that rifle. I said, okay. So I sold it to him. He used it a few years, not much, but a few years he used it. And he said now, when he got ready to die, he said, I want your son, Daniel, to have that rifle. I said, okay. So he passed away. He gave the rifle to my son, Daniel. Well, Daniel lived in Dayton, Ohio. And he kept it several months, and he called me one day and said, Dad, he said, in the city here, people breaking into houses all the time. I'm afraid they're going to break in and steal that gun. Would you mind coming by the next time and bringing it home with you? I said, Well, I'll pray about it. No, I didn't say that. Now, here's what I want you to see. Guess who possesses that gun? And guess who can shoot it any time he wants to? But guess who don't own that gun? It is so tragic that we're so eat up in America with materialism that God can't get us to advance very far spiritually because we're hanging on to a bunch of junk that ain't never cost us nothing but heartache. Problems and worry and fear. God said, if you'll just back off from it and give it to me, I might let you keep it, but if I don't, it'll still be okay. John Wesley's house burned down one time and the ladies came by and said, Mr. Wesley, we're so sorry your house burned. He said, oh, don't feel sorry for me. He said, it wasn't my house. He said, it was God's house and he can burn his house down anytime he wants to. He wasn't affected by it because it was surrendered to God and it didn't affect his walk with God because God owned it, he didn't. He only possessed it. We're strangers and pilgrims. Strangers because we're not home and pilgrims because we're going home. And hold the things of this life loosely. because God wants you to put it all on the altar and surrender it all to him and thank him for whatever he lets you possess in this life and use it for his honor and for his glory. So to be us, to have the joy of the Lord, Paul had to be a sold-out Christian. Notice in verse 21, chapter 1, verse 21, "'For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Now, when you talk about living for Christ, that's one thing. But when you talk about dying for Christ, you got serious. You done got serious. Okay? Paul said, for me to live, if I live, I'm going to represent Christ. I want Christ, as he said in the sentence before that, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. He just wanted Jesus to be exalted. That's all he wanted. It didn't matter if he died or if he lived. So he sold out to God. Romans 12, 1, "...I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." I want to stop there right quickly. Many people pray and try to sacrifice for God. But in the Old Testament, and it carries over into the New Testament, when they put a sacrifice on the altar, the only way they knew that it was acceptable unto God was when the fire fell and consumed it. So you've got to admit there were some sacrifices made that the fire never fell on. There's a lot of people who look like they're sacrificing, but they've never given it all up to God, just a half sacrifice, just part of a sacrifice. But I'll go wherever you tell me if you'll let me pick the place. Amen? It's different when God's in charge. And so he said, I want you to present your body a living sacrifice. So here's what, holy and acceptable. I believe when the Spirit of God fills a man or woman, I believe that the power of God comes upon them and the fire of the Spirit of God comes down upon them and they're clothed with an anointing from God, power for service. And when they anointed that boy in the Old Testament, a prophet, a priest, a king could not take his office until he had been anointed with oil. They took that cork out of that big jug and they poured it over that horn of oil over his head and it ran all over him and all down to his feet. Now, not only did he know that he was anointed, everybody that saw him knew he was anointed. If you will have anointing that other people can't see, you probably hadn't had the fire fall. That means that your sacrifice, is not acceptable yet unto God. But when men and women sell out to God, God begins to put his finger on things in their heart and in their lives that they love more than they love him. You'd never say it, you'd never admit it, but in your heart, there are some things that you love more than you love Christ. So to get to that point of the fire falling and the Spirit of God filling, it happened to D.L. Moody, it happened to all the great men of the past, Charles Finney. Great men talked about a time when they sold out to God and the power of God came down upon them in such a way that He manifested and made Himself known to them in such a way that Christianity was no longer theory, but it was reality. Those disciples preached until they had to kill them to stop them. Why? Because what they had, they had not been taught by man. They had experienced from God. When you experience the filling of the Spirit of God and God's power on your life, you won't be bashful about what to do. God will lead you, God will teach you, and he will make you extra effective in the work of God. Whatever your call might be, you may not be like the other people around, the other people in ministry, but God's got something for you to do, and whatever he wants you to do, he will touch it when you do it. So sold out. Didn't write quickly. Paul, to have the joy of the Lord and to maintain it, he had to see life from God's perspective. Now here's where we get all messed up, because we pray a lot, and then it doesn't get answered, and we get awful discouraged. Amen? And here's why. Psalm 37, Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Here's what I believe. If I'm delighting myself in the Lord, I'm in tune with heaven. Right? And the Holy Spirit is able in my spirit to burden me with what his will is for my life and what to pray for as we ought because we know not what to pray for as we ought. Under the influence of the old nature, we're lost as a goose in a thunderstorm, and we're not able to pray for anything, and it never comes to pass because it was never the will of God. But he promised, if you ask anything according to my will, I'll hear it. So I got to thinking one day, Lord, why should I waste all these prayers? Let's just get in tune with you, and you tell me what to pray for. Amen. I wasted a lot of breath on people that nothing happened because God had not put them on my heart. And so I began to pray, and Lord, one of the first people that God laid on my heart back in those days was Brother Wendell. Now, that was an impossibility, totally impossible. I said, Lord, this is Wendell Dizzletail. but God began to burden my heart. And God said, pray, pray and pray. And several years passed, but I'm telling you, he's closer than a brother to me. I'm telling you, I love him like a brother, better than a brother, most of them. But he called me one day And I had went to witness to him. I'd been praying for him. Well, he fell out of a cooling tower, crushed his hip and knees and everything. It's all broke up. Went into the hospital. I said, Where's Wendell Dizzletail? She said, Can't you hear him cussing down there? We can't give him enough morphine to shut him up. So I go down there and Wendell looks up at me and says, What are you doing here? I said, I come to pray for you. He said, well, you better get to it. I said, I am. So I prayed for him. He was in no condition to listen, but I went him over to another hospital, and when he went there and got to explain the plan of salvation to him and pray with him, and he said, I don't, I just don't see it. I said, okay, that's fine. What I want you to do, I'm going to pray for you. You know what I've told you. I'm just going to pray that God will show you what he wants you to do. And I don't know how much longer it was. It wasn't long. He calls me. I'm in Mississippi. And he said, I said, When? What's going on? He said, Doyle, a whole lot's going on. I said, Well, what is it? He said, Last night I asked God in my heart, He said, uh, Rose tried to call you, got the wrong number, and I told that woman I got saved. And Wendell, when he got saved, he got saved, and he would witness to the devil if the devil would stand still long enough. But I am so proud that God saved him. But I had to, God had to put him on my heart. And I had to trust God for him. And I had to pray, God, do something, God. Do something to wake him up, dear God. And I ain't getting no glory from nothing. It was all God. I'm telling you, I wouldn't take no credit for converting Wendell DeSotel. I'm gonna give it all to God, because it was God. And so learn. And here's what I want to cover with you right quick, and I'm almost done. And that is, we must learn to see life from God's perspective. Notice in verse 12, But I would ye should understand, brethren, of chapter 1, that the things which happen unto me have fallen at rather for the furtherance of the gospel. Now we've got to understand here, Paul has gone to Rome, because the church at Philippi was under the dominion of Rome and they were governed by Rome. So Paul gets it on his heart, if I could go and plead my case of Christianity to Caesar and all those that are in government and explain to them and make them see what Christianity really is, they may lighten up on us and I could preach the gospel without being tortured and tormented. That's why he went to Rome. But when he got there, he found out that there was even some in the church that were against him. And so he's by himself. So they lock him up in his own hired house, his rented room, and every six hours they put an elite soldier, a guard, on him and chain him to the apostle Paul. Somebody said, poor old Paul. I say, poor old Roman soldier. How'd you like to be a heathen and be latched into Paul for six hours a day, hear him pray, hear him talk to God, feel the presence of God? And he led some of those people to Christ because he closes the letter out by saying, and they that are of Caesar's household greet thee. Now, Paul would have rather walked in the front door and preached the gospel. but instead God locked him up and sent him out through the back door. We have to learn to think God's way. We got a lot of plans, but God has the plan that works. He said, "...which ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happen to me have fallen out rather for the furtherance of the gospel, so that my bonds," he's changed, "...my bonds in Christ are manifest, are made known in all the palace, and in all other places." They were talking about Paul all over town and all in the palace, and they probably had never mentioned much about Christianity at all till Paul got there. But he said, it's been made known. My testimony has gone out through and they're talking about me all over. And many of the brethren of the Lord who act in confidence in my bonds are much more bold to speak the Word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife and some also of goodwill. The one preaches Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds." I mean, they were just, in spite, they were trying to aggravate Paul and put more pressure and problems on him. But notice Paul's attitude. "'But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel, what then, notwithstanding every way?' Whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached. And I therefore do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. You serve God long enough, you're going to run into some people that you don't agree with on everything. Pastor and I was talking before church, There's been, we both came from backgrounds that if you did anything different, you was totally X'd off. They didn't want to have nothing to do with you. And so, and I said this, I started preaching some Church of Gods, preaching some Pentecostal churches, not many, but a few. Pentecostal said, What are you doing in a Baptist church? I said, well, what are you doing in a Pentecostal church? I said, it could be that the Pentecostals and the Baptists need exactly what I'm preaching. But we jump back if there's any difference because we're not spiritually mature enough to accept people who are in the faith that we disagree with. And my Bible says, only by pride cometh contention. And I'm not talking about you ought to compromise your conviction. I preach in all these churches. I've never changed what I believe. Had an old Pentecostal come up to me one time, a preacher, and I was preaching on Acts and how they were filled with the Spirit of God. And how in Acts chapter 2, the Pentecostals take and run with it and say, well, everybody that's filled with the Spirit speaks in tongues. Well, I said, if you'll notice, there was no need of an interpreter. They didn't have to have one. because the Holy Ghost, they were preaching the Word of God in their own language, and they were hearing, people from other countries were hearing it in their language. So they want to take and run with that and say, if you're filled with the Spirit, you're going to speak in tongues. They said to me, have you ever asked for a tongue? I said, no, the one I got's got me in enough trouble already. I don't need no another one. but to get over to Corinthians, then he lays a law down. If you're going to do it, there has to be an interpreter. And if there's not, shut up. That's the quick version. Don't speak. So when somebody tells you, I just couldn't help it, I just couldn't help it, listen, my Bible tells me that the Spirit of the prophet is subject unto the prophet. You can control it. So don't try to force everybody into one little block. When we talk about the filling of the Spirit of God, I'm talking about empowerment for service, not to glorify or magnify one little gift. No, no, we're not worried about the little gift. We're worried about the big giver. Make a big deal over one little gift. And you may not like that, but that's okay. I love you anyway. And you do have the right to be wrong. I want you to know that. All right. So God began to show Paul. Paul began to see life from God's perspective. He learned that all things work together for good. And Brother Riley, what I had a problem with for years was that things wouldn't work out like I planned. You know? I said, This can't be of God. And so it just wouldn't work out. And so I was so frustrated because I just knew what God was telling me to do. But somewhere, I got my wires crossed. And Paul said, All things work together for good. So if you sell out to God and you run down a blind alley somewhere, get up, ask the Lord to forgive you, learn what you can. When you get up, pick something up with you and get back in the fight because he forgives. Thank God you even tried. And don't let the devil condemn you and bring that condemnation on you because something didn't plan out like you thought it should. Learn to see life from God's perspective. He's in charge of it all. I don't know if you know this or not, but he don't need us. I know that's a blow to your ego, but he don't need us. And so learn to see what happened to Joseph. Oh, Brother Joseph. Brother Joe got all messed up, and they got his brothers mad at him, and they sold him into slavery, told the daddy he had been killed. Well, he gets way down in Egypt. Now, I love Joseph because everywhere you put Joseph, He's like a cark on a fishing line. Pull him down to the bottom, turn him loose, and he's going to pop up on top. Every time. Where'd they put him? In the bottom. He had to learn from a sovereign God what it was to be happy on the bottom. He had to learn to accept that if God, this is your lot for me for the rest of my life, I surrender. If you're getting glory from me being on the bottom, I'll do like that old armadillo, I won't swim, I'll just crawl the bottom to the other side. If that's what you want. Because after you pass Calvary, you forfeit all your rights. to be anything or have anything. After you pass Calvary, it's no longer about you. It's all about Him. And so he learned to see life from God's perspective. Then I want to close with this right quickly. Verse 19, he recognized where his supplies were coming from. Where I was headed with Joseph was, they came to Joseph and they thought he was going to kill him. And he went in front of them and said, You sold me. You thought you sold me, but you don't understand. God sent me. Whew! Many times, this ain't what it looks like. This just ain't what it looks like. Joseph, you'll never make it out of that. We went from the pit to Potiphar's house to the prison, further and farther away from the vision that God had given him when he started, but God had to discipline him, and God had to break him, and God had to show him that God was in charge. Amen? And he said, You didn't sell me. He sent me to save much people alive. So learn where your supplies are coming from. Verse 19, For I know that this shall turn to my salvation, Paul said, through your prayers and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Paul said, We're not looking to people for help. We're just looking to God. And I tell you, people can really disappoint you. They can really disappoint you. I've had people promise me as soon as they got their money, I was going to get most of it. And they must have never got it because I never got nothing. They mean well. One preacher in Texas said he had somebody come to his church, was in the oil business. And he said, Preacher, he got so excited about the church and everything, he said, Preacher, the next well I drill, I'm going to give it to the church. He said, No, you won't. He said, Yes, I will. Oh, he said, No, you won't. He said, I'm telling you, I will. He said, Well, give me the last one you drill. Amen. If you are giving move, give me one you already have. We're always quick to give off somebody else's money, amen? We're always very liberal with somebody else's money. But he said, if I'm going to maintain this constant in my life, this joy, this constant joy, then I'm going to have to recognize God will use people, but they're not the source. I am. And I will use who I want to. And I will use the person that brings me the most glory. Usually it's not a big, rich person. Sometimes it's just a widow woman with a few mites. I didn't notice this for a long time, but when Jesus was watching them take up an offering, and the Pharisees and Sadducees came by, they were very proud, very religious, dropping all that money in there and letting everybody see how much they were giving, that a little widow stepped up there and very cautiously took two pence. two mites and stuck them in the plate and moved on. Jesus said she gave more than all the rest. Listen to me. The lesson is this, that God measures giving not by how much you give but by how much you keep. Wow. Wow. I'm getting under conviction now. But all I know to do is sell everything and give it to God. That's all I, for 52 years I've preached and I've tried to give everything to God. We were able, Brother Sam was here, we were able to raise over $100,000. for the orphanage. They're fixing to finish the last story and get the children in it. We should be able to feed, clothe and school over 800, I mean 80 orphans. And so it's all been, I couldn't depend on this denomination or that denomination because I never could live up to their qualifications. They said, we would support you, but here's a list. I said, check that one off. X that one off. I ain't qualified for that." But they got to be so nitpicky before they're going to give to the work of God. God said, if you'll give, I'll bless you. God said, I'll touch your heart. You give what I tell you to and I'll measure it. It may not be much, but it'll be measured by what you kept for yourself. Paul, how do you have the joy of the Lord? You must be sold out so your affections and your feelings are not bothered with an ever-changing economy and world. You must be sold out. Everything belongs to God. Whatever you have, he's let you use it, and you're to manage it. One day we will give an account to God for the way we've managed the things we not own but that we possessed. We will give an account. And then learn to see life from God's perspective, and then learn where your supplies are coming from. We've got to get people back to trust in God. We've raised a whole generation of people who know God in theory, but not experientially. And you can't convince anybody about the God that you just know theoretically, but you can if you know him experientially. Those disciples, Peter denied the Lord three times, but after they experienced God, they had to kill him to shut him up because when they preached, it was reality. They said, Well, Peter, do you think we need to promote Peter a little bit and encourage him so he can go out and preach? After God met with him, he said, You do what you think's right, whatever you want to do, it'll be fine. Kill us or put us in prison, whatever. But we have got to tell the things we've seen and heard. And our generation has seen so many, so few miraculous things from God happen. I'm not talking about from men. I'm talking about from God that we really have not seen anything and we ain't heard much. because we have so few people that will sell out enough to get in tune with God to hear something from heaven. So God help us to understand, hang on to that constant thing in our lives. If they take it all away, we have him. If we have to move under an oak tree, it'll be him. I've been waiting for this a long time, if we had to put a headlight and hunt rabbits at night. I've been waiting for that to happen, Wendell. I was 20 years old before I found out you could hunt in the daytime. Wendell was 30. Lord have mercy. I was the biggest outlaw in the world. But God saved him and changed him. I pray that you'll understand that to get your focus off of this world that's ever-changing and anchor your spirit and your soul on that which never changes, that which money cannot buy and death cannot take away. Anchored in Jehovah, while the eternal ages roll along the years, We'll be praising and worshiping Him. When the sands of time have blown over the garbage heaps of our vehicles and our homes that we spent so much time trying to build and pay for, but when the sands of time are sweeping over them, it's just going to be you and God. Just you and God. So it'd be good if you got real acquainted with Him now. Let's stand. The invitation tonight is this, God, make me thirsty. When God filled me with His Spirit, I asked the Lord, This is so wonderful. This is so good. How can I tell people about it? And the Spirit of God spoke to my heart and said, Doyle, you can't tell them. I want you to preach and I'll anoint and we'll make them thirsty because a thirsty man or woman will give their last dime for a drink of water. And our problem in our churches today, there's no thirst for God. There's no seeking God. One sin that we have in our churches today is her laziness after God. Nobody seeks God. Hardly anybody seeks God. But just remember, before salvation, Christ was the seeker and you were the object. And after salvation, you become the seeker, and God is the object. You need to know Him. You need to have a burning in your heart like the apostle Paul had. Oh, God, that I may know Him, that I may know Him, the power of His resurrection. The fellowship of his suffering. Didn't matter how much I have to suffer, God, if it'll get me to know you in a more intimate way. That's what I want. Are you tonight that thirsty? Are you tonight willing to say, God, I don't really know and understand everything you said tonight, but Lord, something awoke in me tonight. And the Holy Spirit created a thirst in my heart that I want to know you. I want to be able to get out on my knees and have nothing between my soul and the Savior. To be able to speak the words in prayer as God puts them on my heart. Trusting Him to bring it to pass. We make excuses and say, God, we don't have this and we don't have that. We don't need that if we have God. He will send it if it's in His will. I'm praying for this work that the power of God will rest on this place. And they will come from the north, south, and the east, or west. And they won't come to bring God, they'll come because God is here. Lord, the only promotion we need is you. For it was noised abroad that Jesus was in the house.