27 Minutes to Change Your Life

0:00Mark 9:29: 27 minutes to change your life

Amen, hallelujah. Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 19. I’m not — Mark chapter 19, there aren’t 19 chapters in Mark. Making up all kinds of stuff this morning. Turn to Mark chapter nine. We’re just writing Bibles up here, amen. Mark chapter nine, and we’ll look at verse 29 here in just a moment. Today, we are continuing a series we’ve been in. We’ve been talking about one of the values of our church, which is we are rooted in the Bible. We are rooted in the Bible. Now this series, the value is we’re rooted in the Bible. The series has taken on a little bit different tone in that we’re really talking about how you can hear from the Lord.

Somebody say, “I need a word.” You’ve never said anything truer than that, amen. You need a word from the Lord. And so we’re talking about how you can get a word from heaven yourself. And so this morning, I’m going to do a little less of a sermon. Those things tend to sneak up on me and the preach comes on me occasionally, but I’m going to do a little less of a sermon and a little more of a workshop with you on how to actually spend time with the Lord in a way that you can develop your life to hear from heaven. And so what I’m going to talk to you about today is 27 minutes to change your life.

27 minutes to change your life. Somebody shout 27. 27 minutes to change your life. Let’s look at Mark chapter nine, verse 29. It says, “And he said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’” That’s it, that’s all I’m going to read. And we’re going to come back to it at the end of the message. 27 minutes to change your life. I regularly listen to four preachers. Three of them I’m hyper tuned in with. One of them I’m keeping an eye on and I’m checking in with every few weeks. But I’ve got a handful of preachers that I like what they do. I like how they preach and I want to be connected to the way that they are in the pulpit.

How many of you know you don’t get better on your own? Sometimes you gotta partner up, and I partner up through YouTube, hallelujah. And so, in fact, when we came here, we sowed seed into one of those preachers. We said, “I want some of that to be released in our church.” And so I’ve got four preachers I stay hooked up with, three of them all the time, one of them occasionally. Well, last week I happened to on Monday say, let me check out the one that I only check out every once in a while, the one I’m not listening to as regularly. And I turn on his message on the podcast in my car and he preached some stuff very similar to what I preached last Sunday, which is interesting to me.

I’m not particularly brilliant and that’s not what I’m trying to portray here. I’m attractive, but not brilliant. It hurts when you laugh. But it was interesting to me because I don’t really hear a lot of people teach this stuff the way I teach it. And I find that the Lord doesn’t typically just speak to one person on earth. It spreads around. But when you can hook up with a couple of them people, that’s an encouraging thing to happen. So he was preaching a lot of stuff very similar to what I was preaching last week, but he did do something that I see lots of people do.

3:41The Bible and the Spirit in concert

And that’s, he found himself where I think most people find themselves, in this conflict between being led by the Holy Spirit and reading the Bible and obeying the Bible. Almost as if at times they’re warring against each other. And Jesus really told us that there would be two entities that would communicate everything that you need to know about the Lord. Jesus said to the Sadducees one day, he said, “And he said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by—‘” Oh, I’m sorry, that’s my first Scripture. This is Matthew 22:29. I can’t read off the screen or I’ll mess up.

I’ll read whatever’s in front of me, amen. Give me Matthew 22. Yeah, there we go. “But Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.’” You know neither the Scripture nor the power of God. Two entities: the Scripture, the Bible; the power of God, the Holy Ghost. Those are the two things that are communicating to us what we need to know about God and from God, amen? But a lot of times people seem to be trying to balance what’s going on between these two entities. It’s almost like people struggle with the relationship between the two, because you’ll hear people say things like, “You need to be led by the Spirit, but the Holy Spirit will never tell you anything contrary to the Bible.”

So now we’re policing the Holy Spirit with the Bible, which — if the Holy Spirit is saying a bunch of stuff that’s not in the Bible, one would wonder if we’ve got to go back to the beginning of the equation and ask, are we hearing the Holy Spirit? But here’s the reality. These things are not in conflict. You don’t have to be an arbiter of peace between the Holy Ghost and the Bible. They’re not in conflict, rather they’re in concert. The Holy Spirit and the Scripture are in concert. You’re going to find out by the end of this series how powerful that principle is.

But today I just want to tell you this level of hearing from the Lord — this is what we talked about last week — that the Holy Spirit is speaking to us at this level by bringing the Scripture to our memory, amen? He’s drawing the Scripture out of our memory and he’s communicating to us that way. How many of you have seen the movie Transformers? Y’all don’t act like you haven’t seen it. It’s one of the biggest movies ever. More of you have seen it than are raising your hands. I won’t judge you, I promise, but how dare you, right? Listen, I can’t endorse it as your pastor, but I will just say Ashleigh and I saw it in the theaters and we were sitting there going, this is way better than we ever thought it was going to be.

It was a moviegoing experience. And in Transformers, there’s a big yellow robot, big yellow Transformer, his name’s Bumblebee. Bumblebee can’t talk. Something in his little robot body is broken, amen? And he can’t talk, but he can communicate through the radio. Well, let me just tell you, there’s nothing broken about the Holy Ghost, but the way that the Holy Spirit communicates at this level is he gets you to tune in on some things that have been said in the Scripture and he’ll give you specific instruction for your life and your situation. And again, let me remind you, four levels of hearing from the Lord.

The first one was you can hear from the Lord through preaching. That’s the first level. The second level, through the Holy Spirit bringing the Scripture to your memory. This is really the level where you get to start hearing from the Holy Spirit on your own. You don’t have to have a mediator to hear from the Lord. At level one, you gotta have someone to help you out because you can’t listen to preaching without a preacher. Gotta have somebody else. But at level two, you can start to have the Holy Spirit communicate to you personally. So if you’re seeking guidance, or you’re in a situation that you’re worried about or you’re trying to figure out, and suddenly the Scripture starts to come to mind out of nowhere, I would pause, I would pay attention.

That’s probably the Holy Ghost talking to you, amen? So this puts us in a little bit of a paradigm where if we take in less Bible, we give the Holy Spirit less opportunity to bring things to our remembrance. The Bible does not say that the Holy Spirit will download the Scripture into your brain. So you’ve gotta have some encounter with the Scripture to some degree for the Holy Spirit to have something to draw on, amen? So you gotta at least have a pass through. Some of y’all could use one, amen? Man, y’all gotta respond a little bit today on the laughs.

I need you to be charitable in your giggles. Be a giggle giver in Jesus’ name. Or else I’ll keep saying dumb stuff like this through the whole morning. But the Holy Spirit will bring it to your mind. So listen, pay attention, because when you have less Bible, you’re giving him less opportunity. But when you have more Bible, you’re giving the Holy Ghost more opportunity to speak to you. And today I want to teach you, I want to talk to you about how to build that library for the Holy Spirit to draw on. To, in essence, build the vocabulary that the Holy Spirit will use to communicate with you.

9:241. Read the Bible for 15 minutes

And it only takes 27 minutes a day. Somebody say 27. All right, number one. It’s the first thing you need to do. If you want to spend 27 minutes a day with the Lord in his presence, building his library, you need to read the Bible for 15 minutes. Read the Bible for 15 minutes. John, how do you feel if I take off? I got John on the camera this morning so I can do things like this. I’m off my leash, amen. Y’all aren’t having no fun this morning. I’m going to tell you what, I’m going to start giving y’all candy when y’all walk in, try to hype y’all up. I’m going to give you all the dyes in it too, to get you hyper, amen.

Everybody gets a mint when you walk in from now on, amen. So 15 minutes in the Bible every day. Did you know it only takes 12 minutes a day to read the Bible in a year? Only takes 12 minutes a day. So why 15 minutes? Because I know some of y’all need an extra three minutes. Amen. So 15 minutes a day. Now I’m going to be a little less systematic. I’m just going to kind of hit you with a bunch of thoughts today. You need to be writing, okay? Grab that little note thing in the seat back in front of you, write some of this stuff down, write it on your phone, amen.

Take this, because it’s going to help you. One of the biggest misconceptions people have about reading the Bible that holds them back from engaging in time in the Scripture — big misconception, biggest one I’ve ever encountered — is most people think they need to understand the Bible to read the Bible. Imagine walking into your high school science class and the teacher say, “Don’t use this textbook until you can pass the test.” That makes no sense whatsoever. You do not need to be able to understand the Bible to read the Bible. In fact, you need to read the Bible to understand the Bible.

Here’s some more for you. You’re probably not going to understand the Bible the first time you read it. You’re going to end a pass through the Scripture going, “Well, I’m going to trust that preacher that it was helpful, because it sure doesn’t feel that way.” In fact, all you’ll do the first time you read the Bible is find all the verses you’ve heard. “Oh, there it is.” In fact, I knew somebody who started reading the Bible one time, and she had gotten saved dramatically later in life. And she said, “I feel like I need to read the Bible.” And some lady in the church said, “Just start in Matthew.”

And so she started in Matthew and she read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and by the time she got to John, she said, in the middle of it, “I’ve got my hands in the air going, where is Noah? This is the same story on repeat,” amen. And we really do get into this thing in the Pentecostal church where we talk about daily bread. It’s kind of a misconception. We get out there and we talk about daily bread. Every time you go to the Scripture, you’re going to get your daily bread. You’re going to get what you need from the Lord every time you open the Scripture. In fact, we used to have little Daily Bread booklets.

I haven’t seen one in years, but we used to have little booklets that said Daily Bread. But we treat reading the Bible like every time you get into it, it’s going to be a spectacular spiritual experience. But here’s the reality. You’re going to have good days and you’re going to have bad days in the Scripture. Good days and bad days. In fact, this week on Monday, I was reading the Bible and it was a bad day. I quit early. I said, “I’m not going to read all the way through. I’ll pick back up tomorrow.” It was a bad day. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday were all normal days in the Bible.

They weren’t particularly good. They weren’t particularly bad. But Tuesday — Tuesday, I walked out of my Bible reading with a revelation that I could only articulate through like a calculation, like a formula. I wrote a theorem, folks, on Tuesday. You’re going to get the Mondays, you’re going to get the Tuesdays, you’re going to get the Wednesdays, amen? Hallelujah. So, have you ever heard this? How do you eat an elephant? Anybody know? One bite at a time, amen? The Bible is 750,000 words. It is an elephant of a book. You have to eat it one bite at a time.

13:54Read it three times

So let me manage some expectations for you. First thing you need to know is that when you read the Bible, you’re probably going to have to read it three times for it to really start making sense. Nobody talks about this. Everybody talks about how 15 minutes a day, it’ll change your life. Not for three years it won’t. And don’t be discouraged by that. You’re tilling up the ground of your life. You’re tilling up the ground of your soul. You’re tilling up the ground of your spirit when you get into the word every day. But I promise, on the back end of that thing, the Holy Ghost will start to talk to you in ways you don’t even understand.

In fact, I was shocked one day to find out that this is actually a biblical principle, to read the Bible three times before you really get something out of it. And I found it in Exodus, because Moses is given the Ten Commandments three times. Moses is given the Ten. Now, most of us think he’s just given the Ten Commandments once on the mountain, he comes down. No, he’s given the Ten Commandments three times. First, he’s given them in the hearing of all of the people of Israel. That’s through the preached word, by the way. That is level one of hearing from the Lord.

The second time he receives them, he goes up on a mountain because he decides he’s ready for more of the Lord. By the way, this is only for people who are ready for more of the Lord. If you want to live and just be a cultural Christian and show up once in a while, knock yourself out. But this is for people who really want the Lord. And so he goes up on the mountain and the Lord carves out two stone tablets and then writes the Ten Commandments on it. He comes down after this experience, sees what’s going on with the people of Israel. They’re worshiping an idol.

He gets so mad. He throws the Ten Commandments down on the ground and breaks them. He’s so transformed by his time in the word that he throws a temper tantrum. Say amen or oh me. The third time he goes back up on the mountain, he has to carve out the stones himself. But the finger of God still writes the Ten Commandments. There’s a lot I could teach you on this and I’m going to just blow past it today. But the third time he gets the Ten Commandments, he comes off the mountain and he comes down. He sees people doing this right here. He’s thinking, “What is that?” Until Aaron hands him a black t-shirt and says, “Put this over your face.”

His face is shining in a way that it is disruptive to the people around him. The glory of God got on him the third time he got the Ten Commandments. I’m telling you, there’s something about getting through the Bible three times. It will change your life. And I know if you’ve never read the Bible, you’re going, “Three times?” Yeah, three times. It’s not that hard. That’s the other thing. Write this down in big, bold letters. It’s not that hard to read the Bible. You know why it’s not hard? Because they write it in English. It’s not like you got to take it to Spanish and translate it and get it back.

It’s it. I mean, even if you don’t know what it’s saying, you know the words written on the page. Amen. It’s written in English, hallelujah. And I will just tell you, if you want to read it three times, the best way you can do that is get on a Bible reading plan. Now I tell people to read the Bible three ways in the first three times. First time is read it cover to cover. Genesis to Revelation. Just read it straight through. Get the lay of the land. I wasn’t planning on telling you all this. It’s kind of like doing a puzzle. You lay out all the puzzle pieces.

First time you read the Bible, you’re just laying everything out so you can kind of see where everything is. Okay, Josiah is over here and David’s over here. Moses, Noah. Okay, Ezekiel. All right, Elijah. Okay, I’ve got — okay. I’m kind of getting some pairs. Jesus and Peter. Okay, I’m figuring out where everybody is. Okay. The second time you read it, read it in chronological order. Just go online. Say, “I want to read the Bible in chronological order.” It’ll give you a plan. Download that thing. And when you read it in chronological order, what happens is it’s like putting the edges of the puzzle together.

You get a good framework for how the Bible operates. Chronological order — by the way, the Bible is not written in the order of events. But if you read it in chronological order, you actually see how things happened in order. And then the third time you read it, just read it any way you want. And what’ll happen is those puzzle pieces will start to fill in and you’ll start seeing the full picture of Scripture. Oh, I’m a poet and didn’t know it. Hallelujah. And last thing I’ll say is faster is better. Faster is better. First time you read the Bible through, I think one year is good.

But if you can read it in six months, these three times, that’ll maximize your life. By the way, I’m just trying to help you maximize. This ain’t like — this is going to be a strange sermon. I’m already feeling it. It is a strange sermon. I’m a strange preacher. Amen. Hallelujah. I’m okay with that. Praise the Lord. Big tip for you. Big tip. When you read the Bible, get you a physical Bible. Get a physical Bible. There’s nothing sacred about it. I do find it helps, though. Get a physical Bible. And if you’re not a great reader, or if mornings aren’t great for you and you want to do it in the morning, add an audio Bible in.

And you can use your phone for an audio Bible. YouVersion, the Bible app on your phone. It has tons of free audio Bibles. You can read along with the narrator. Amen. Hallelujah. You know what’s great? You also get to read along with the author, the Holy Ghost. Amen. Feeling like preaching a little bit.

19:212. Pray for seven minutes

Number two. Number two, pray for seven minutes. Pray for seven minutes. Pray for seven minutes. Why? Well, it’s less than 10 and more than five. Real spiritual answer here. Pray for seven minutes. Now, I just want to say this. I have been shocked over the years by the negative reaction on seven minutes I get from people who pray zero minutes.

Seven minutes is not a prayer time to roll your eyes at. Seven minutes in prayer will change your life. It will change your life. In fact, if you pray seven minutes a day, do you know that you’ll pray a little over 42 hours a year? Would you want to mess with somebody who prays 42 hours a year? I wouldn’t. Praise the Lord. And this is how you do it. Very simple way. Write these things down. Start with a little prayer list. Just like a Bible reading plan, you need something to help you get through. A little prayer list. And this is what goes on it. Number one, you thank God for one thing.

One thing. Not 15 things. Because sometimes what we’ll do is we will try to thank God enough to ask him for whatever we want to ask him for. We’ll try to twist his arm. But also, what’ll happen is when you start trying to create these huge lists of gratitude — because let me just tell you something. If you’re starting your prayer journey, you’re probably not that grateful of a person anyway. That was a good place to say amen, but everybody felt that in the soul apparently. Hallelujah. Let me give you another chance. If you’re not a person of prayer, you probably aren’t that grateful anyway.

Amen. Some of y’all catch on quicker than others. Hallelujah. But thank God for one thing. And the reason is, is because you can get in there and start thanking God for stuff that you don’t even care about. And you’re not being grateful. You’re just being pretentious. You thank God for something you actually care about. Something that actually matters. Then after you thank God for one thing, write a list of three to five things you want to see God do in your life. Three to five things you want to see the Lord do in your life. Measure them. I would also encourage you, keep it in your immediate sphere.

I’m not saying the Lord doesn’t hear it. I just don’t know how effective your prayer for some Middle Eastern government to do X, Y, and Z is going to be on your own. But pray for something you’re going to see in your sphere. Pray for your children. Pray for — here’s a good way to pray. Here’s a way to think of it. I just feel like the Holy Ghost gave me: pray in a way God could let you down. Because some of us pray stuff that if it just kind of worked out, we would say that the Lord answered our prayer. But if it didn’t work out, the Lord didn’t really not answer our prayer.

We pray real vague, and prayers you can’t really monitor in any way, shape, or form. And look, here’s the thing. I want to give God honor in everything that I do. I want to give God praise. I want to give him glory. But there is a point at which you do want to sit back and go, “Okay, the Lord did it or he didn’t.” And I’m just not one of those people — if I’m praying for somebody who has cancer, I don’t want to be saying, “Well, the Lord healed him after 29 rounds of chemo.” I want to give the Lord an opportunity. I want to take it to the throne and say, “God, I want you to do it.”

And I want to be able to either say, “I saw God move here” or “I did not see him move here.” But when God does specific things, when God answers specific prayers, he sets himself up for incredible glory. And God will do things for you if you’ll get honest enough and true enough with him, because he’ll do it — not because — he will do it because he loves you. He will do it because of the cross. But there’s a good case to be made in the Bible that he will do it for no other reason than for his namesake. So give God an opportunity to bring glory unto himself by showing his power in your life.

Three to five things. And now, seven minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but let me just encourage you, if you are starting a prayer journey, it’s going to take you a little while to figure seven minutes out. You will find two minutes and 15 seconds in, you have said everything you’ve ever known on the planet to the Lord. You’ll start reading bills to the Lord at that point. “Well, Lord, I’m seeing here on the light bill, what is this surcharge, Holy Ghost?” And so in seven minutes, you gotta fill that in. But for those of you who’ve been praying for a long time, let me give you two tips that have helped me to expand my prayer time over time.

The first one — I’m not getting into this today, I’m not going to teach on it. I’m doing a big series on the Holy Ghost in the beginning of the year. But one way you can do it is you can pray in the Spirit. I’m going to tell you right now, you can fill in your prayer time by just partnering with the Holy Ghost and praying in tongues. You get you a lot of time in your prayer time that way. Okay, so that’s one way. The other way is to pray the Scripture. It’s to pray the Scripture. And this is something that I do every morning. This is actually the way I like to pray the most. What I’ll do is I’ll just open up to the Psalms, and it helps that I’ve got a Bible with notes in it.

So I kind of know where the hot pockets are. You know what I’m saying? But I’ll start to just read through and just pray the things that are written in the Psalm right here. I just turned arbitrarily. It says, “My heart overflows with a pleasant theme; I address my verses to the King.” Lord, I thank you that I can come before you boldly before the throne of grace because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. I don’t have to just walk out here and say things about you. I can say things to you. See, I’m ready to pray right now. So I’ll just start to pray the Scripture.

You’ll find yourself go from seven minutes to 30 minutes, lickety-split. How long is a good time? Like if you were to really break out of seven minutes, 15 minutes, and you’ll probably take your whole subdivision for Jesus Christ. I mean, I’m serious. There’s a lot of boldness that comes from the secret place. Amen.

25:253. Worship for five minutes

Number three. Number three, you need to worship for five minutes. Worship for five minutes. You read the Bible for 15, pray for seven, worship for five minutes. Why five minutes? Because most worship songs are five minutes long. This ain’t rocket surgery.

Amen. Nobody? I hope y’all are laughing on the internet today. Praise the Lord. Drop the laughing emoji in the comments. I need your help today. Amen. Worship. I feel like he’s coming to town, folks. Amen. Hallelujah. Worship for five minutes. Worship. I like to do this for two reasons. Number one, for me personally, I was a worship leader for years. I’m obviously — I’m a pastor. I’ve been in the ministry for so long that oftentimes I don’t get to participate in the moments of church. I’m aware during worship. I’m thinking, I’m processing. I’m just — I’m doing what God’s called me to do, but I’m here to labor in the harvest.

Amen. And so I’m kind of alert and doing my thing and I might not be as engaged as you have the opportunity to be. And so I like to end with worship because it gives me an opportunity to make that music portion we do in the service not just the opener for the preaching, but an actual time that we get to come in and make much of Jesus Christ. Somebody say amen. Amen. The second reason that I like it is that it helps, especially if you’re getting started. If you’re getting started with reading the Bible, getting started with prayer, maybe you’re not great at it.

Maybe you’re reading the Bible for the first time and it ain’t making no sense. Maybe you’re starting to pray and you’re done in a minute and 17 seconds. And you’re ending those moments and you’re going, “I’m not getting anything out of it. I don’t feel like I’m putting anything into it.” Well, at the end of your prayer time, you get to do exactly what preachers all over the world get to do. They get to land the plane and say, “I need the band and the singers to come up.” I’m going to say that one day, amen. I’m just going to say it in faith. I need the band to come up to the stage right now in Jesus’ name.

But you get to do the same thing. And then right there at the end, while you may be weak in your Bible reading and weak in your prayer, you get to call in the reserves and get a little bit of help. And you can turn on one of those songs that blesses you and causes you to magnify the Lord. You can turn that thing on and you can lift your hands to heaven and you can sing and worship right there in your room, your car, wherever it is that you find a good place to seek the face of the Lord out. And you’ll end strong and encouraged. And how many of you know when you end well, you’ll come back the next day.

You’ll anticipate the next day. So end with worship. This is 27 minutes that will absolutely change your life. Now, let me give you one tip before I move on. And that is, when you’re picking worship songs, try to find songs that magnify Jesus and not yourself. We have come through this season in the church where, Lord, we’ve been singing about ourselves. In fact, some services I’ve been in, we sang about me the most, the devil second, and Jesus got some honorable mentions. I actually had an older lady at our church in North Alabama — and I’d gotten together with all of our seniors one day and I sat down at the piano and played.

We just sang and we worshiped. I’m going to do that a little bit moving into the next year. I just haven’t had time yet. But all of our seniors in the church, you’re going to get a little bit of time with me singing some old songs and having a good time and eating sandwiches. Hallelujah. It’s going to be good. And maybe some Holy Ghost hot dogs. In Jesus’ name. And she — right before I went over and sang, she had made a comment to me and I didn’t particularly care for the comment. So I wanted to dig to see how this might get a little ugly, ‘cause I was curious. Let’s see what I was dealing with.

And she had made some comment to me like, “I just love it when you sing those old songs.” And I thought, “Well, what do you say? You saying you don’t like the new songs?” And so I said, “Well, why do you say that?” And I thought she was going to say, “I just don’t like all these drums and the guitars and all this stuff.” And she goes, “I just like being able to sing songs about the Lord.” And I thought, what a referendum on the state of our worship ministry in the church right now, where we sing it. Now I will tell you, I think we’re turning the corner a little bit. Some of these newest songs are actually starting to talk about the Lord again.

Like we showed up to make much of him. How about that for an idea? Amen. And so I’m excited about that, but find you a song that magnifies Jesus and doesn’t talk about you. And I’ll just tell you — and this might be your favorite worship song. You don’t have to talk to me about it. I don’t have to talk to you about it. We don’t have to let anybody know. If I’m getting in your Kool-Aid, I’m sorry. But we got this song that it goes, [worship] The whole thing is about how you do it.

When are you going to do the thing that you do? You just singing about this, whatever this is, it’s how I fight back. Why don’t you fight the battle and make much of Jesus. Amen. Hallelujah. All right. Y’all like that song apparently. Amen. All right.

30:48Power from the secret place: Mark 9

This is the last thing I want to tell you. I’m feeling fun now. All of this, this 27 minutes, it all works together in aggregation. Meaning that it’s little parts coming together and making a whole. It’s little parts coming together. In Matthew chapter nine, verse 29 — we can put that on the screen and just leave it up here.

Matthew 9:29. And Matthew 9:29, this happens after Jesus comes off the Mount of Transfiguration. He comes off the Mount of Transfiguration and he’s been alone with some of them. I’m sorry, did I say 22:29? Matthew 9:29. It’s the last verse that’s in the presentation this morning. Oh, Mark, I’m sorry. That’s why I’m throwing you off. I read it. It doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes. That’s another good one right there. You can make mistakes, even if you’re a Bible reader. Amen. So Mark 29 — or Mark 9:29 — happens when Jesus comes off the Mount of Transfiguration.

He’s been with his disciples. He’s with three of his disciples. He’s had a major moment happen, a spiritual moment up on the mountain. And he comes down and he walks into a situation that any church leader would love to find themselves in. He finds his disciples and the people they’re ministering to in a screaming match. They’re screaming at each other. And he comes down and goes, “What in the world is going on?” And the people start to tell him, say, “Well, your disciples came over here to cast the demon out of this boy and they can’t do it.” And once he gets everybody calmed down enough, he casts the demon out of the boy.

He looks at the boy. He says, “Come out of him.” And the spirit comes out. That’s all he does. He speaks to it, comes out. Later that night, the disciples are sitting around the table for dinner. And one of them gets enough courage to lean over to Jesus and say, “So how did you get that demon to come out and we couldn’t?” And Jesus answers with this statement right here. He says, “And he said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’” Now, some of your Bibles say “prayer and fasting,” but I want to encourage you — I want to make this more accessible.

It is a well accepted fact that the most reliable manuscripts do not include “and fasting” in either Mark or in Matthew. And so we know Jesus said that this kind doesn’t happen — it doesn’t come out by anything but prayer. Here’s what’s interesting. This has always fascinated me right here, is that Jesus gives them an answer that does not mirror what he did. He says, “This kind doesn’t come out—“ He didn’t pray. “This only comes out by prayer.” Jesus didn’t pray. Jesus doesn’t strike me as a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of leader. But Jesus says this kind only comes out by prayer.

What Jesus is telling them is that there is some power that you can only operate in if you have some history in the secret place. You have to have some time that you have spent with the Lord. In fact, what you’re doing is you’re harnessing the power of God in those moments. You go into the secret place with God and you’re charging up your battery. You’re building up your reserves for when situations and circumstances demand that you respond not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. And at times, not even just in the Spirit, but in power. But you’re building your reserves there.

27 minutes with Jesus over time. It’s a little over — it’s almost seven full days of the week, in fact, but it’s a little over 160 hours a year that you spend with the Lord. And by the way, Bible reading, prayer, worship — these are not individual things. They are, and we treat them that way. This is a composite whole of being in the secret place with the Lord. Talking about spending 27 minutes a day with Jesus. Now this is going to help you if you’ll practice these things that we talked about today. Some of y’all are looking at me like, “That’s it?” Yeah, but I’ll tell you what, I might’ve just preached the single most important thing some of you’ve ever heard.

All over the earth, I have had people engage in this model. Some pastors who confided in me and said, “I don’t pray, I don’t read, I don’t have any time with the Lord behind me. I’m dying out here. I have no idea what to do, because everybody else has put it behind a veil.” And they talk about praying, but they don’t talk about praying. They talk about reading the Bible, but they don’t talk about reading the Bible. And then we wonder why people solely depend on coming to church for their spiritual growth. It’s because it’s the only thing we can figure out what to do with.

We’d show up at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday. It’s the only thing that has any clear instructions. So this is going to help you. That’s what I’m wrapping up here. But we’re talking about the second level of hearing from the Lord. The second level where the Holy Spirit brings the Scripture to your remembrance, and that coming to your mind, you will know it is divine instruction. You will know it. You will know. You will know. And this is going to help you with that. But I want you to know, while it’s helpful for level two, it is absolutely crucial for level three, which I’m going to talk to you about next week.

37:01Levels, requirements and the real spiritual

It is crucial for level three. It is required for level four. And the reason I’m using that language, to give you a little precursor into next week — since I became a senior pastor and stopped caring about countdown clocks. Good night. I promise I’m going to get back to 30 minutes by January. I’m going to lose 50 pounds and I’m going to get back to 30 minutes. Amen. Praise the Lord. But the reason that I’m being very particular in saying that there are requirements, there are levels, is because we have allowed people in our churches — God forbid, some of them in our pulpits — to run amok, to talk about having a word from God, hearing from God, prophesying this, that and the other.

And we have held them accountable to nothing. We are in a day and age — and I want you to know it is not unique to this time particular, but it is enhanced in this time — we have people who will get up and preach and do not know the Bible at all. You can download it from the internet. You can rip it off from somebody else. And I don’t have a problem with people preaching other people’s messages and taking other people’s. I don’t do it. I actually think it’d be more work to try to preach somebody else’s message. I’m getting this stuff on my own. So I might as well just go with a simpler source.

It’d be like having a well in your backyard and then driving to Iowa to get water. It just doesn’t make sense. There’s a well back there. I got a well. Amen. You know, you have access to a well. What I don’t want to do is, as we get into the time in our church where I’m able to unleash — see, I’m not even preaching the good stuff yet. I’m just preaching some foundational values to help make sure we’re all on the same page. I figure if I preach some of this stuff up front, I don’t have to chase around and correct silliness when I actually start to rend the veil in front of you a little bit.

So I’m just kind of setting expectations and foundation. I think it’s important. But if we don’t hold ourselves and hold people accountable to say there are levels to hearing from the Lord, we will tolerate all kinds of nonsense. We’ll tolerate all kinds of mess. We’re not going to be that church. We’re not going to be that church. I’ve decided to pastor you people. I’m not going to blow in and blow out on Sunday and get out here and then just accept whatever nonsense happens. All Scripture is inspired by God, profitable for correction, instruction, reproof. Let’s use the Bible that way.

Let’s get in line. Let’s hear from the Lord. We don’t have to run off into nonsense. We don’t have to romanticize. This was a word I couldn’t articulate a few weeks ago, but I felt it in my spirit. We do not have to romanticize the spiritual when you can actually just have the spiritual. And the funny thing is, is the spiritual is a lot less romantic than what most people want it to be. I’ll just be real straight with y’all. I was real underwhelmed with my baptism in the Holy Ghost experience. Anybody with me? I thought I’d fly through seven walls, praying in tongues going, “Hey, I think that’s Chinese.”

I didn’t have that moment. And I’ve got friends that have. I know somebody who said, “I was down in the altar one time and heard this person screaming some gibberish. And about two minutes later, I realized it was me.” I didn’t have that experience. It was natural. It was normal. Every time I’ve seen God do breakthrough, natural and normal. God will move in powerful, but pragmatic, normal, comfortable ways. We don’t have to sit out here and romanticize spiritual stuff when we actually can tap in to the source. I believe that what I’m teaching you right now will dramatically increase your quality of life.

And I felt like I really — I’m just talking to you for a minute. I felt like I really heard from the Lord in the last few days, speaking of it being normal. A lot of times, I actually don’t even know this stuff’s happening. I’m just in my room. I get it. I come out and then we just live life. And I’m storing this stuff up kind of like what the Bible says about Mary. I just treasure it up in my heart and move on. But I really felt like the Lord spoke to me this week, because I’ve been trying to figure out, what am I going to do? What’s the thing? What’s the thing?

What am I about to do in this city? ‘Cause I didn’t come to play around, by the way. I’m not here to mess around. I’m here to take the city for Jesus Christ. And I felt like the Lord really put it in me. My job is to help people improve their quality of life through Jesus Christ. In fact, I had this little phrase come to me that you’re probably going to start hearing more and more next year. That Jesus makes life better for anyone. Jesus makes life better for anyone. Anyway, I’ve just talked a little bit here at the end. How many of you love the Lord? If you appreciate the word, give him praise.