In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the importance of prayer and its transformative power in the lives of believers. He emphasizes that the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the Beatitudes, is meant for those who have a deep hunger and desire to live with God. The preacher highlights the significance of surrendering one's life to God and offering it completely to Him. He then delves into the Lord's Prayer, explaining that it is a model for believers to approach God and understand the power and glory of prayer. The sermon concludes with a prayer for continued guidance and teaching in the area of prayer and a transformed life.

Matthew chapter 6, verse 9, it says, And after this manner, therefore, pray ye, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Let's pray and we'll look at this together. Father, how we do want to thank you. Praise you, Lord, for your wonderful love for us. Your great desire, Lord, to work within our lives in every way necessary. Washing us, cleansing us, drawing us to yourself, wanting to encourage us to work so deeply within our lives. Lord, to teach us to pray. And the power of prayer, the wonder of prayer, the glory of prayer. Lord, that we would realize what it is that you have offered to us when we would learn to pray. And Lord, we thank you for this way, Lord, that you told us when you pray, pray in this manner. Come before my Father this way. And if you will, we'll understand so much. And we ask, Lord, that as we look at this prayer, that you would continue to teach us and affect, Lord, this whole area of our life. And if prayer has changed and strengthened, certainly our whole life will be as well. So Father, lead us, feed us, we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Of Jesus again, wanting in the Sermon on the Mount, what it is all about is this wonderful message given to people that want to live with God. The Sermon on the Mount wouldn't mean much to a lot of other people, but for somebody that has a great hunger, a great desire to see their life transformed, to live before God, that's what the Beatitudes were all about. The transforming life, where I really surrender mine and I offer it over and I give it to God. I let him fill me with his love and give me a new heart. A new life where he's really beginning to live wonderfully in me. And then as we continued on in chapter five, Jesus spoke of the areas of our life that somehow or another, once I come to the Lord and I offer myself, he, of course, will take the offering. He, of course, then will take the surrender and he'll begin to work. But then there are things that can derail that. Things that can get in my life and get in the way that just simply shove him right out. And being the gentleman that he is, Jesus, he'll step out. He'll just step over to the side. If there's something there, where I want to take control. And so in chapter five, he spoke to us about the areas that we seem to be so predictable almost, just knowing the human nature so well, as Jesus knows it, of course, knowing our temptation towards anger and how easily we can just be put off by people or frustrated by the issues of life and the dilemmas. And we can just get so angry at it and angry at our brother. And Jesus, so he tells us, don't do that. Let me rule and let me reign or he deals there again with areas of my covetous, lustful heart, knowing my nature, if I can take control and where the enemy would tempt me and to draw me away from God and to draw me into this life and out of the place of blessing with God, of a surrender to him, where I take my life, back into my own control and I decide I want to run it. And then he goes, of course, through this whole list of things in chapter five, there of areas where the battle really goes on within the Christian life. Then as he goes on here in chapter six, he goes on with some wonderful practical areas of maintaining a right relationship with God. And so he says, don't go do your gifts. Don't do your service. Don't do your ministry to be seen of men. You know, you're there to minister to God. And when I realized, Lord, you are the one I love. You are the one I serve. You're the one I live before. You're the one I give my gifts or my time or my energy or my service to, whether it's recognized or responded to by men is irrelevant. The fact that you have taken my life, you've become my Lord and my savior. I love you and I'm forever indebted to you. And I just love responding and giving back and serving and ministering. I can't believe you allow me to give of my time or my energy or my effort. Who cares what human beings would think about it? And so he says that when you give, don't do it to be seen of men. That's hypocrisy. And it'll always derail you. It'll get you out of fellowship with God. Then he says, when you pray, don't again do that for you to be hypocritically seen of men that they'll think, oh my, how spiritual they are. But rather than that, he says here, when you pray, he says, pray after this manner. And in here, the Lord is giving to us kind of an approach, I suppose you might call it to heaven, a way just to simply come before God. And it'll get me in the right place when I do pray and make prayer powerful and exciting, make it something wonderful and thrilling. A lot of people, I think prayer is either miserable or it's boring or it's monotonous or it's routine or it's repetitive. And oftentimes it's because it's very powerless. And it's just something we do out of spiritual obligation, not because we really think it'll work, not because we really think it's going to change anything or do so much for us. And usually that's based on our own experience that oftentimes prayer hasn't worked and it is routine and it is monotonous. And we do that. And the reason it happens that way is I think we're not praying in the right manner, not coming before God as we ought to come. But if we came in this manner, it opens up a powerful dimension of prayer. And so here Jesus, when he says, when you pray, pray in this manner. And so often when we pray, and the reason it's boring is we come and say, dear God, have you seen the paper today? You know, or something. God, have you seen the world today? Have you seen my world? Have you seen my problems? Have you seen my trials? Have you seen my home? Have you seen my husband or my wife? You'd be miserable too, you know, or whatever else it is in the, you'd feel hopeless too. And, but here Jesus is saying, he says, if you want to change in your prayer and you want to have something that's powerful and something exciting, he says, you pray with this way. Don't come to God with the world. Come to God with himself. You come and say, our father, which art in heaven. You come there with just a full on appraisal of who he is, not your world and your life. But you come analyzing in a sense when you begin to pray, don't worry about yourself and your world and your trials. He's going to get to that later on in the prayer. But he says, let's stop. Let's start with heaven. Let's start with the whole place you want to go and you want to be forever and ever. Let's gaze into that. Let's dwell upon it. The one who sits, you know, in heaven, the ruler of it, your father, the one that rules and reigns within heaven where all power and all majesty and all glory are subjected and from him and come from him and are surround him. And that's when he says, would you, if you want to pray and you want an effective prayer and you want a powerful and you want to enjoy it, you just begin by opening your eyes when you come in to heaven and you start looking around and you begin to see what you see. And so he says, our father, we're charged in heaven. And that we looked at a couple of weeks ago. But now as we go on here, he then says, Hallowed be thy name. And here is something that again, we don't use the word. So it's one of those things that's very easy to almost skip over. But I think personally, this is one of the most magnificent parts of prayer. And certainly of this, of the approach to prayer in the sense there of what transforms, I think makes prayer as powerful as it can possibly be. And that is that when somebody is able to come and say, Hallowed be thy name and know what it means. The word is, it's from Haggios or Hagazio where there's several different words, essentially the same root word used in the Bible. It always means holy or holiness or saint or sanctified. There is how it's translated in the Bible. And it's speaking there of somebody that is entering into essentially a holy place. In Hebrews 9, 12, it says neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place or the hallowed place, the sanctified place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. And here it tells us there about Jesus that through his work on the cross that he was able there, you know, to, he entered in there by his own blood but there is the way that's opened up for you and I that once we come to Christ, we now have access into this holy, hallowed, saint, sanctified, you know, place that he offers now to us. And the word there, it's used many times in the New Testament there, but it means in Romans and Corinthians and many wonderful ways there. But in Romans 15, 16, Paul writes, he says being sanctified by his Holy Spirit. And here the word again, saint, sanctified, it means there the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit upon the heart, the sanctifying influences of the blood of Christ upon the heart. What it is there is that here Jesus said, when you pray and you come there and you're saying, holy is your name, we're now coming before God and we are putting him in this wonderful place there of holiness, which essentially when they're holy or sanctified, it means to make separate. It means to render separate or to render as holy and to be entirely set apart. Jews also means to consecrate or to devote, to be set apart from anything common unto a sacred use. And here when something is holy, it means there simply that we are now taking, we're saying holy is your name, we are taking God and his person, his being, his identity. When the Bible says in his name or talks about his name, it is like in Philippians when Paul says, at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. It's not like we're going to go to heaven. There's going to be a great big name, J-E-S-U-S and we're going to bow. Oh, there's the name. No, when it says at the name of Jesus or something in his name, it means all that he is. It's something there that here when it says, hallowed be thy name, it's an instruction. Jesus is saying, you want to pray and you want to pray powerfully and wonderfully. You want to begin to love prayer. You do something where you take God, you take my father and when you approach him, you realize he is the God of heaven, of all supremacy and he is utterly separate. He's in a realm of his own. He's absolutely set apart from anything and anybody and anywhere, anything at all. He's in an entirely different place. The antonym for the word holy essentially in the Greek for it, it means profane, unclean, to be polluted or stained. But here there's a world essentially that we live in that's polluted, it's stained, it's corrupted. The environment that you and I are living in and one of the most important things for a child of God, living in this planet, living in this world, living just the life that we have in a corrupted world, a polluted world, a stained world, is here Jesus said, when you learn to pray, you come before my Father and you realize there is a place entirely unpolluted, uncorrupted, separate, a realm of its own, as if to say, this is what every child of God needs if he's going to love praying. He's got to have a place that his heart essentially in prayer, it escapes to, it enters into, that's another world. It's another place. It's another kingdom. It's an entirely different realm in and of itself. And I think this is something here, Jesus said, when you pray, you've got the purpose. He says this manner, I want you to learn this manner of prayer that you essentially, when you come before God, you deliberately, purposefully, by design and personally, that you make a separate place that God and God alone, his realm, his place, high and far above anything corrupted, anything polluted, anything else that he is so high and he's so above it. If you don't have this place that God is in and that where he dwells and you don't recognize this is who he is and you don't purposefully, you know, approach him this way, you'll lose one of the most practical and powerful aspects of prayer because you'll relegate God down to the level of your trials. He'll just be another of other things to think about in this world. And here Jesus is saying, God has to be in a place of his own. And then when you pray, you enter into his place, you enter into his throne, you enter into his presence there. That's essentially what it means. And we need to see to it ourself that when we're praying, he says, you must do this because you see, the wonderful thing is, is that when we consciously, deliberately come before God and first thing we want to do before I even bring my issues and my problems and my trials, is that I bring his glory into view. I bring his majesty into view, his power into view. All these things that can seem so big when we're walking around this world, seem so powerful, seem so influential, that can overwhelm us at times. Here, Jesus, he's telling us here, before we get to these things, he says, first of all, you get to the real thing that's overwhelming God. You come before the one that is really big, the one that is really powerful. These other things, they've got to be subjected to him, but they can't be until first you see him for who he is. That's what he means when he's saying, Hallowed be thy name. There, when I come and I develop a place within my heart and my approach and my appreciation of God, where he's sanctified, he's set apart, he's holy, he's high, he's lifted up, he's beyond anything else. And there's no trial, no burden, no struggle, no issue, no person or anything and ever in life that can touch his majesty and his glory and his power and his might and his holiness. And when this begins to happen, when somebody begins just to come there before God, we may start off and be driven into his presence because we got trials. And there's something that seems at the time, oh, so difficult. It seems, oh, so impossible. It seems like such a heavy burden that we're being driven to prayer and so overwhelming at the time. But when I begin to pray and the very first thing that I do is I begin to look up and I begin to dwell on who he is, then everything else has to take a subjective place. It now has to be relegated to a lesser because it is lesser. But here, Jesus said, when you pray, you've got to do this. You've got to bring him into this realm and where he has a world all of his own. One time, and it's been a number of years ago, but it's been brought back to me by the Lord a number of times since. I haven't had a lot of visions, but one that I had that was very clear to me. One time I was praying and there was something at the time that just was such a trial and such a struggle. And I'm going back and forth, you know, kind of with God on this thing. And as I'm doing it, I have this just clear picture that comes into my heart, my mind. And I'm literally, I'm wondering what this is because I'm watching a dump truck. I think I don't know if I told you this year or not. And if I have, just bear with me. I've been flying a long time. Okay. But the I haven't landed yet. But anyway, but I, I'm, I'm, I'm watching this dump truck and it's making its way up and through this hill. And it's driving along and it's out by, you can hear by the engine, the way it's grinding, the way it's struggling to get up this, this, this hill. And it's just full of trash. This dump truck is. And it winds its way up and it goes around the end of this last corner and has this terrible time kind of getting up there. And then as it turns around it, all of a sudden you realize, well, it's a dump truck and it's just pulled into a, you know, huge dump site. And then the dump truck, it turns around and it backs up. And then as it backs up, you hear the hydraulics going as it's lifting up this big, you know, the, the dump in the back there as it's winding and it's lifting all the weight of it. And it's dumping it all out as it's kind of pulling away. And then next thing you know, the, the motor goes down and the engine, you know, starts to drive off. You can tell this heavy load is off of the dump truck and it's driving away. And then as it's driving away, as in a look, and there is this picture, I mean, in this fellow driving, it looks out and it was me. And he looks out and he waves and you know, just kind of as he's pulling away, driving off. And then as he drives off, I wonder what is this? Well, then the picture goes back even farther and the dump, in the dump site is heaven. And it's the throne of God. And there's these feet sitting there and this little teeny, you know, right at the feet of this dump site. And as he's sitting high above it and I look back and there's the Lord looking down, you know, at me. And as I'm looking at this thing and wondering what is this? The Lord spoke to my heart and he said, that's you. That's you. That's your prayers. That's what I think of them. All these things, you know, and with all this weight of the world that you've got on you and it's so big to you and your engine is just bearing down under it, trying to get in there and trying to dump all this stuff and you feel so good. You drive off. OK, I left it all with God. And now he's got it to resolve. Then the Lord spoke to me and he says, you know, instead of backing into heaven and dumping your stuff, if you'd come in face first and saw my glory, you'd have a lot less trash. You'd have a lot less worries. You'd have a lot less trials. And essentially to me, that's what Hallowed be thy name is. It's where I want to come in. I want to see him. I'm coming into heaven, not just because it's the giant dumping spot of trials and the burdens and it's the big trash heap of junk. It is that it's wonderful that we have a place to take our sins and our trials and our burdens and don't get me wrong, he wants all of that. He loves all of that and he patiently, wonderfully does. After we drive off, he works and he cleans up stuff and he goes through all of our burdens, all of our trials, all of our life and he wonderfully does it. Nothing wrong with that. We'll always have that. And even the person that has the full frontal approach to heaven still has trials and still has prayer that he needs to lay before God. But I'm just simply saying that here Jesus is saying, you know, you would love, love prayer a whole lot more if what it really was was coming in before God instead of just a dump site, instead of just to where now you just got to get here. Where do I take all this trash in my life? And when we sat there and really learned, this is what he wants us to do. And when we are coming, say our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Holy, separate, undefiled, high, lifted up and glorious are you. That right there, I think, is one of the most powerful things that can ever happen. Because when God becomes holy in our life, not only are we doing, you might say him, just the honest right of which he has, but we also do ourselves a wonderful favor because God has a way of making holy what appreciates his holiness. When I do the business of setting him high and lifted up, he seems to love to take me and set me up with him. When I'm sanctifying him in my heart, he sanctifies himself in mine. When I'm lifting him high and I'm loving his power and I'm loving his strength and I'm loving his glory, he has a wonderful way of sharing his power and his love and his strength and his glory with me. When these are the things that we really long for, when these are the things, this is where prayer is really, I think, gets its greatest power. How do I come before God? What am I doing when I'm coming in before him? What is on my heart? What is on my mind? Do I love and appreciate him? Is he somebody so high and lifted up and so wonderful that my life has got to come and be with him with or without the trials? You know, through the years and being around here in the 70s, I don't know, you know, you're always asked, you know, about the Jesus movement and Calvary Chapel in the days before and during the tent and after and things. And it's always been kind of a subject and there were no question some pretty awesome and wonderful things happened. But to me, one of the things that I, my greatest thoughts about the whole thing is in a sense, like I looked at a few weeks ago at Isaiah, when Isaiah, he said, in the year the king Uzziah died, I see, he said, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And there he looked and he saw the seraphim with six wings, with twain they covered their faith, with twain they covered their feast, with twain they did fly. And as he looked at these glorious beings and he watched them as they just seemed to just fly back and forth across of heaven and around his glory. And he said, then this glory of God just began to flood the whole place. They just fill the temple and there's a smoke. There are just this wonderful thing. And he was just drawn into it. He saw God and then the virtue of seeing God, it transformed his life, transformed him from his burdens and his trials, his struggles, his dear friend, Uzziah, the good king had died, who he'd been so close to and something died. And at that point, when something died and a burden came and a trial came, of all times, that was the very time that God chose to reveal himself in his holiness and his glory and his majesty there to Isaiah and to me. One of the things that I think is one of the most powerful things that ever happens to anybody, a new Christian, a child of God, any Christian, is when we find there that when we come before God and we let his glory fill the temple, we let his glory and we're the temple today, of course, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and there's something there, God, your glory, I want to see you high and lifted up. Hallowed be thy name. Holy is your name. And I think one of the things that I'm remembering back and sometimes back in the tent or in other places, I can sometimes remember we'd have worship services that would go on and they would be so powerful. Something just in and of itself, it was like you did such an experience of worship that sometimes you'd be standing there, you'd be worshiping and in between songs, it'd be dead silent, there'd be hardly a word uttered, but yet no one almost even want to open their eyes. God's presence seemed to be so powerful, you're afraid you'd see him and die or something. But there was a, it was such a sense of God working, being in our midst. And to me, that's what happens when people are honestly looking and they're separating God from all else. There is something they have finally discovered that's holy, that's worthy of being set in another dimension, in another realm, in another place. I think, you know, when I look back and realize in the seventies, when things were going on with the hippie movement and during Vietnam and a lot of unhappiness with the country over various reasons or whatever, but then there was the free love and the hippie movement and there was the drugs and the marijuana and the hashish or heroin and other things that were going around and Timothy Leary, back east, the professor was, you know, with LSD saying, you know, what a tune in, turn on and drop out or whatever. And the whole thing just became the psychedelic world. And you are going to enter into this and find this great peace. And you're going to find this whole new place and this whole new experience and this great, you know, out of body, spiritual time. And the hippie movement kind of got all caught up in it. And there was going to be great peace. The soul was going to enter into peace. Do you remember the peace sign was everywhere? Everywhere. I mean, you had people had tie dye shirts with it. They had jewelry with peace signs. They spray painted it on their Volkswagen buses. It was on freeway overpasses. They made book covers for school with a peace sign on it. And it was merchandised in every way you could possibly do it. And it was everywhere. People saying peace. We're going to find this, this psychedelic world and realm of peace. And we're going to enter into it. And a lot of people by the millions look for it. Couldn't find it. They went to the love-ins and the parties and the drugs and all of that. And all it did was finally, you know, it was like King Uzziah started dying. They began to realize it doesn't work. Instead of free love and a wonderful hope and a joy and a peace and a new realm that the soul was looking for, that they were finding what ended up happening is there was unwanted babies and venereal diseases and drug addictions and overdoses and broken lives and families. And destruction all over. And it came crashing down. But it, but for many, for thousands it seemed there is Uzziah was dying is the hope of this world was dying. Next thing you know, they found there's another world. There's another place I can give my life. I can offer myself up. There is a place that is high and lifted up and it's God's realm and it's holy. And when people would worship in time, they'd come before God and there was something there of an offering and of a sacrifice of themselves that was so wonderful, so powerful. I remember in the eighties, I was asked to go to Japan of all places, but asked to go to Japan to speak to a group of pastors. They had been over here and wanted the hippie movement in the Jesus movement in Japan. And they'd been over, they bought the tapes and the music and, you know, invited a few drug addicts to come over and give testimony and everything they could import. You know, the Japanese seem to be good at this stuff. They look at America and if they want something, they come and get it and go back home and make it better and sell it cheaper, you know, and, you know, when they're done with it and they were doing that, but it wasn't working. And so they asked me to come over to speak to these pastors. What did, you know, we're doing all, we got the music and we got the tapes and we got some bona fide converted drug addicts and hippies here that are giving testimonies and stuff isn't happening. And I went over with them and I said, you don't understand that isn't, that isn't what happened at all. That's just some external conditions but it could happen with anybody, anywhere, anytime, anyhow, but what was happening is that there were people that were coming before God and they discovered he was high and he was holy and he was worthy of their entire lives and he was in another realm. And they put him there and they offered their lives and there's this wonderful sacrifice that was happening. I remember talking to him and telling the story of Abraham. You hear Abraham, you remember, of course, when in Genesis 22 when the Lord came to Abraham and he told him, he said, Abraham, and he says, take now thine son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac. And he says, you'll offer him as a sacrifice unto me in a place that I will show thee the place whereof. And so Abraham packs up and he heads off and he's on his way, leaves his men there down at the base of the hill and he takes Isaac and they're on the way up to go to for this offering, for this sacrifice there that and Isaac turns to his father on the way up and he says, father. And he says, we have the fire and we have the wood, but where's the burnt offering? Where's the sacrifice? And here, here, even Isaac knew there that for worship to happen, one of the things that was always required in the Old Testament is there had to be an altar. And there had to be as this altar was placed, it was built and you did just maybe, maybe only a few stones. It could be the simplest things at all, you know, just kind of stacked up and there was an altar that was built and there'd be fire and there'd be wood. But the most critical thing, worship didn't happen. God wasn't high. He wasn't holy. He wasn't lifted up until worship happened. And the most critical aspect of worship was that then God was so high and holy that there was a sacrifice. There was an offering. And Isaac knew, he told his father, he says, we have the fire and we have the wood, but there's no offering. Where's the sacrifice? We can't worship without that. And of course, Abraham turned, he said, God will provide, which obviously and wonderfully he did as the story goes on. But that's the critical thing. That's when worship never happens until you build an altar. But one of the things an altar, in fact, did the word altar in the Hebrew, it means slaughter place. You never, you never thought of worshiping God. He never thought of approaching God and coming before God without building an altar. And in an altar was an altar until it was a slaughter place. You could have fire and you could have wood, but it meant nothing until something was offered up. Something died. Something was being transformed. Something was given up. Something was laid out bare before God and was given over to him in death. And that was, that's when something, when God is holy and when he's high and when he's hallowed be thy name, somebody is coming before God and they're offering up. And the poor, the Japanese pastors, they had the fire and they had the wood. You got some good fire here. No question about it. And you got some fine wood. But what is happening here and what makes revival, revival, what makes powerful people, what transforms people powerfully is when they find there that they come and God is holy and he is high and he is magnificent and he's in another realm. And when that is understood and when we come before God, if we come and we want to pray and we've got fire and we've got the wood, but I wonder how many times God would look and say, well, you got, you got some fire and you got some wood. Where's the offering? Where's the sacrifice? And there's nothing slaughtered. If there's nothing dying, if there's nothing really coming of your heart being given up, you lose the power of it, the magnificence of it. What makes it so wonderful? I'm sure that, I wonder how many, you know, that would be here tonight that you yourself can remember times in your life that were absolutely transforming. You stood, tears just uncontrollably could pour down your face. Your arms just went up. Your head went back. There was a worship and there's a praise. There was a magnificence. There was something holy happening. There was something high. There was something, Hallowood was his name and a life was being transformed. And as their life was being transformed, as the offering was put upon the altar and holy was his name, you walked out a different person. Sometimes we can still go on after that and the music's fine and we get the fire, we get the wood and, you know, we got a great group up front. Every key is hit. Every note is right. They all strum it. They're all in harmony. But we're not. We've recovered. We're okay now. Life's better. It's not, oh yeah, I remember those days all right. But you see, I was really in trouble then. I needed God, I'll tell you. Oh boy, I was really messed up. I'm doing pretty good now. Not great. I still got a bunch of junk in my dump truck, for sure. But the issue isn't, is pressing. Somehow or another, I can get by without offering. I can get by without sacrificing. Get by without an altar, without a sacrifice, without a slaughter place. But when we come and we realize long within our heart, God, that does not only you a disservice, it does me a disservice myself. To me, when somebody knows that's what it is, high and holy and magnificent is his name and is everything about him. When those are the things that are pressing. When those are the things that I long for and nothing else belongs in his place. That's what it is. How many times is it that we pray and we're actually, we're talking to God, but he's on the same level of all of our trials, all of our problems. He isn't high anymore. He isn't holy, isn't sacred. He isn't set apart. In fact, he's even right in the middle of our problems. Sometimes we can't even find him in the middle of our problems. We got all these things down here that are defiled and polluted and corrupted. And then he's, he's in here somewhere and we're saying, God, help me through this. Help me with this. God sits there and says, you put me up there first. You put me up high. I want to be in another realm. It's not just for me. It's for you too. It'll do yourself a tremendous service when you find there that, you know, you come and I'm in a different world than your wife or your husband or your children or your health or your finances. I am in a place all of my own that you have developed and that you live in. And then you start there. And then after you see me now, let's, now we can go back to the list. But then each one of those, you know, you'll have a sense and a power about it and a capacity of God to deal with it. I think many times I meet with people as well, they're struggling. They have ongoing, reoccurring things in their marriage with their children, with this and with that. They always going back and forth. Never ending problems. Been struggling with lust for 25 years and 95 years or wherever since the day I was born, I suppose, you know, or whatever else. And these unending trials and problems that people have. And I think one of the great reasons that these things are unending is because God isn't in his right place. But when he is high and when he is holy and we long, as Chuck was mentioning this thing on Friday night, to be pure. The only way that anybody becomes pure is you worship one who's pure. The only way we end up ever being separated from a world that's corrupted is that we worship one that is uncorrupted and he's high and he's holy. And here Jesus is saying, when you pray, you, there is a place offered to a child of God the world knows nothing of. And it's high. And it's holy. And it's powerful. More powerful than any other thing in the world. And I think God has this way. I don't know how he is with you, but I can tell you how he is with me. He lets me know when he's tired of competing. He lets me know, I mean, in no uncertain terms sometimes. When I'm going, I'm murmuring, God, you know, and I got something there. He lets me know, at least I ought to know better. And he tells me, what are you doing with this? I'm not, I don't even want to talk to you about it. At least how I think he talks to me. Maybe it's just my own nasty way of talking to myself back. I don't know. But it seems like the Lord sometimes is saying, you, you've, you've relegated me down to the level of all these things and all that. I'm no bigger than any one of your problems. And the issue is, I don't want to answer you until you put me where I belong. Then I'll put those things where they belong. You want me to put them lower, but you, the issue isn't for me, for them to get lower as you put me higher. You put me higher. You'll see what can happen. Well, I can see we're never going to get to the kingdom coming or as willing being done because I'm out of time. But the, but let me just leave it here. When I look at this, I can't. But how often it is that we can have things going on within our life. If the doctor, this all by itself is enough for tonight anyway. If there would be something to me that every one of us would just realize how many things, how many times we need to come to God and give him a no competition clause in our spiritual contract. God, you don't ever have to compete with anything corrupted, anything fallen, anything natural, anything finite, anything human. You're in a realm of your own. And when I come to you, I want to come to the God of gods, the glory of glories to heaven. I want to come to the seat of your throne and to a place of power. I need that. And I want that in my life. And you are it and you have it. And therefore, I want to dwell there. And I don't want you to come down here. I want you to teach me how to come up there and to rise above these things, because they'll always come. Now and then I find myself to where something happens and the next thing I know, I'm disheartened in something. No, God, I don't. I can't do what you know, and you murmuring and complaining. And more often than not, the Lord just saw it looks means as well. I guess I'm no bigger than that. Is that is that how big I am today? And then you start thinking. Like just today, Brian could tell you about it if you wanted. But sometime once in a while, something just happened and it just takes the wind out of you. Absolutely takes the wind out of you. Some stupid earthly human thing. And the next thing you know, I'm walking along and there's Brian and I got to tell Brian thing or two, you know, and things. And you do. You realize who God isn't these days. Do you realize what's wrong with God? Something's really wrong with him. That's what you're saying. I mean, I didn't say that. You never do that. You're far too spiritual to accuse him directly. So you indirectly by by your trials are so big. That's how you indirectly accuse him. But then the Lord has to take you aside and say, who am I? And to me, when he when comes there and he says, I want you to offer yourself afresh. I want you to come and realize who I am. I want you to see me. And then I can work. Then I can do things. Then I can help with your home, your marriage, your family. When you and I are coming, say, Lord, have you seen that woman I married? I'll tell you, I don't know what's wrong with her. I can't understand what's wrong with this woman here. I just all I don't just want a new set of golf clubs. That's all I've ever wanted. And she's all hung up on other stuff like, you know, diapers for the baby, you know, and stuff like this food to eat. You know, as if we got, you know, in what we're now we're arguing over golf clubs and go to that. She needs to be hit upside the head with something. Go tell her, God, you know, or something. And I think God looks at us sometimes that that is as we bring our dump truck up and we're unloading stuff and saying, God, take care of my husband or my wife or my children. And I think God, he'd love just to say, and you don't know how to pray yet. But when you can say, hallowed, holy, high, magnificent is your name. Let's pray. Father, as we come before you, Lord, we do just pray that you would be in a place in our life, Lord, where you are high and holy. And Lord, may we be ones that we are determined in this life while we are always still human beings, far from perfect, unholy in ourself, Lord, there'll never be a time that we don't have to come and offer our lives to you. There'll never be a time where there's no need of a slaughter place. There'll never be a time in our life where there isn't something of ourself that still needs to be given to you, still needs to be offered up. There still needs to be all the way through our life, no matter how long we've known you, no matter how wonderful life is or what pressures aren't devastating our life. Lord, you are always worthy to be worshiped and loved and adored for who you are. And you are one that is worthy that every time we come, Lord, help us to build an altar, a slaughter place. And Lord, maybe tonight some of us need to come and say, Lord, forgive me, I've put you down. I brought you down to the level of my trials and my burdens, I've made you common. I've made, I've relegated you to that which is just passing and human. You're of another realm, Lord, and you're worthy when I come before you that I'm absorbed and I've caught up in your presence and your power. Lord, I have a strength to draw from. I have a love and a hope to live in. I've got a renewed presence that can dwell within me. And Lord, may we know this. May we find ourselves, Lord, living with you and before you as you long for it. Lord, maybe tonight some of us, we just need to come and just take, Lord, that of our own life. There's the fire. Oh, we can sing fine. We've got the wood, it's blazing. But where's the sacrifice? Where's the altar? Where's the slaughter place where something is slaughtered? Some darling product of our own flesh or of our own world or of our own kingdom. Something that we want and must have, Lord, to be able to come and say, Lord, I want you. You're in another realm. I want you as king and majesty. Father, help us. Thank you, Lord, that if we can learn this, what a powerful effect it can have on our life when we not only know you're in this, but we keep you in this and we pray this way. Teach us this manner and keep our lives before you, offered and sacrificed. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.