Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of Psalm 27:4, where David expresses his singular desire to dwell in the house of the Lord and behold His beauty. He challenges listeners to approach this verse with fresh eyes, recognizing its depth and the radical commitment it requires. Bickle highlights that this 'one thing' lifestyle is often domesticated in modern culture, yet it is a divine invitation to a deeper relationship with God. He encourages believers to contend for this reality, understanding that it is not an automatic state but a result of years of seeking and pressing into God. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a radical re-evaluation of priorities, urging individuals to make the pursuit of God's beauty their primary daydream.

I did, I mean I'm glad that this verse is familiar, but the downside is, is that it's so familiar around our missions base that it doesn't always move people's hearts. This is such a significant and important verse to what the Holy Spirit is doing in the earth today, and I'd like you just to try to hear it for the first time or hear it in a fresh way. It is absolutely filled with revelation. There's layers and layers of meaning to this one simple verse, Psalm 27 verse 4. King David said, one thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, number one, and then to inquire in his temple, to receive divine information, to receive prophetic instruction. So he talks about two things, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and then to hear from God, to be fascinated by what he sees about God, and then to receive clear instructions on how to live and on how to act and to go forth in ministry. The power of this verse, or this principle of David's life, is the two words, one thing. Because David was not exaggerating, this was real. It's so easy to kind of broad-stroke this reality and to kind of make it tame, to domesticate this verse, to one thing really means many things. Because in our spiritual family here, all of us are committed to this one thing, but this one thing lifestyle is rare in our midst. Because we've domesticated, we've tamed this verse. This is a very challenging verse. This is the verse that tears at my heart and the Spirit cries out, Mike, you have not yet entered into the fullness of what I've called you in this verse. And so I just want to ask you to ask the Holy Spirit to speak this fresh, and to not speak it in a tame or domesticated way. The power of this passage, its radicalness, but its power, its glory, is in the narrowness of what David is saying. Its offense is in its narrowness. Its dilemma is in its narrowness. This creates a dilemma in life when we try to actually walk this out. As long as it's a poster in a conference, it's not a problem. But when it becomes a Holy Spirit invitation that dovetails into a mandate, because it's an invitation, but there's those in this room where it's grown from an invitation to a mandate. The Lord wooed you, you said yes, and the Lord said something like this, well if you're gonna be that way about it, now it's a mandate. He brings the thing up a notch. If you're gonna say yes, then he's going to actually meet you and take you serious in this. To many it's an invitation, but to some of you it's a life mandate, and it's serious, but it creates a dilemma. How do you do this? How do you make it work in an environment with social dynamics, and just the natural dynamics of real life in a fallen world? And I have found that one of my most challenging things as a believer, wanting to follow this, is how do I make this work with real time and money and expectations? How does this really work? And you don't want to take your cues from our culture, because our culture will always tell you to be a person of many things, even though you, the culture will allow you to use the language of one thing, as long as you don't really do it. People don't mind this being preached. What people mind is when it's lived out. It's not offensive proclaiming it. Matter of fact, it's kind of cool. I mean, we get 10,000 plus young people gathering because it's cool. It's radical. We want to be cutting-edge, and people are not disrupted by the proclamation of it. What is disruptive and offensive is when a man or a woman gets a vision to actually, in time and money and reality, walk it out. Because then it troubles the people that are near you. They're like, well, what do you mean? Where do I fit? How does this work? Wait, wait, wait, wait, settle down. David didn't really mean that. Now, David's gonna preach, he's gonna speak about this verse in the age to come. This verse is not, it was not exhausted when he died physically at 70 years old. When David said this one thing, I will desire of the Lord, I will seek all the days of my life, he meant forever. Don't put 70 years there, put eternity. David will be seeking this in the Millennial Kingdom and then the age to come after that. This is an eternal reality to King David. This is an eternal reality to the people of God. I want to enter into now that which I will do far better in the age to come. Beloved, we will dwell in the house of the Lord. We will behold the beauty of the Lord forever. This is the wisdom of God in the New Jerusalem to actually walk out this verse in reality in the New Jerusalem. Revelation 4.8, we know it well, it's the four living creatures, there's seraphim, there's different ranks of the exalted, there's different high-ranking angels described in the Bible, there are seraphim and there's cherubim, there's archangels and others as well, other dimensions of mighty angels, the Bible talks about. Well, the seraphim are the highest order of the angelic host and we only know of four of them in the entire eternal city in the New Jerusalem and they're called the burning ones. That's what the word seraphim means, the burning ones. In Revelation 4.8, in Isaiah 6.3, chapter 6 verse 3, they are before the Lord night and day, they never ever cease to cry out, holy, holy, holy, which could in a practical way mean transcendent beauty, transcendent beauty, they're talking about God's holy otherness, that he's completely of a different order than the rest of creation. And the part that strikes me in Revelation 4.8 is that they never cease, they never cease night and day, they are doing Psalm 27.4 forever and ever. Now my point isn't to so much say that's what we will do forever and ever in the full sense the seraphim do, my point is to say that in God's wisdom, beings exist in the wisdom of this kind of occupation forever. The highest ranking angelic beings are nearest God and they are most occupied with God's transcendent beauty. David was only functioning in part of this wisdom in his natural life. He says this one thing I have desired. I have desired. There's many desires in the human heart. We have many desires and David didn't say it's the only thing he's desired, what he was saying it's the premier thing that he desired. Now that is a statement with, that's a powerful statement. There is a certain amount of a rigor in David's life that's implied by that statement. David didn't show up one day saying the thing I desire most is God. This is the confession of a man who had made many decisions throughout his life that brought him to the place I'm estimating he's probably in his forties when he's writing Psalm 27. I'm going to tell you why later if we get to it. Why I think he's in his forties when he's writing this Psalm. But my point is this statement one thing have I desired of the Lord this is not an automatic statement. This is a statement that is the fruit of years of pressing into God. Some people think that they read the verse, go to a prayer line, someone lays hands on them and then they automatically have this abiding reality in their heart. No. David contended for this type of lifestyle. He pressed into God and he said Lord I could just imagine him in his younger days saying I want to have a an activity in my heart that is wholly yours O God. I want to be completely yours. And the way I read this verse is it was a great hour in David's life where he could speak this with truth. In his earlier days he might have said the one thing that I hope to settle in my life is that I will desire you above all things. That I want to have a sustaining grace. I want to be able to abide in this place for decades. So David in his I'm guessing his mid 40s has developed to a place in God where this is a reality. But don't think this is an automatic reality because it is the confession of your mouth. It is the confession of our mouth with sincerity. I don't mean it's a false confession. It's a real confession years before it's an actual sustained reality in terms of the way we carry our hearts. For years in my spiritual growth I wanted to have a certain activity in my heart towards God that I did not have. And I fought for it. I contained and I contended for it. And after some years I began to have a new activity of the Holy Spirit in my soul. And I want far more. I don't know where I'm at in the journey. I'm not one to really measure myself on that. I just know that that this is not an automatic statement of just a David when he was the shepherd boy in Bethlehem. This was something that was worked in him by the Spirit over time. One of the great pains that I have as a pastor for 30 years is how many 20 year olds I have seen in 30 years that are fiery for God. And by the time they're 30 or 40 they're through disappointment, disillusionment, the rigors of life. It's a memory of them pressing into God. And they were aiming for this kind of reality but it was still a goal not a reality in them. So I want to submit this to you. This verse is not a reality because you joined the IHOP missions base. It might be a goal at this season of your life. But for David to say this is real and the Spirit to bear witness to it, this is a remarkable work of grace in a man, especially an Old Testament man, before the New Covenant. He says this one thing I've desired of the Lord. And the word that I put over the word desire, this was the primary daydream of his heart. This was the dream of his heart. Now we all have many day dreams. Some of our daydreams are dark daydreams of sin. We have daydreams of grandeur, of honor, of how right we are and great we are. All those things. And then there's holy daydreams. And my prayer is that the Holy Spirit would begin to give you more and more holy daydreams where, and this is what David's talking about, where the desire, the daydream of your heart, the primary one, not necessarily the only one, but really the primary one, not figuratively the primary one, the primary dream of your heart is to be wholly given at the heart level in quest of the, of encountering the beauty of the Lord. When David talks about beholding the beauty, he's talking about experiencing it. He's talking about studying it, that's the beginning stages of beholding, to study it out, to seek to observe it in the Word and in creation and just by the Spirit. And what I mean, David looked at the skies, he looked at creation, he looked at God's handiwork in history, as he studied history, he could see God's hand, he studied the scriptures, just the realm of dreams and visions, the Spirit's language to the, to the heart and the, in the revelatory dimension, he would, he would receive insight, he would study. Study is the, an observation, focused observation, sustained observation is the beginning steps of this beholding process. And a lot of people are waiting for the revelation to break in on them, they want to skip the study, sustained concentration, the focus, the feeding of their spirit on it, and they want to skip that and go right to the, to the powerful release in their heart and it doesn't happen that way. The beholding has stages to it. And in David, Psalm 19, he looked at the skies, to the glory of God, and in the word glory and the word beauty, many places, particularly in book, many times in the Old Testament, particularly in the book of Isaiah, are synonymous. When he looked up and he said, I behold the glory of God in the sky, it would be accurate to say that he beheld his beauty and his splendor in the sky. We behold God's beauty when we, when we meditate as anointed observers of history. We can look back at history and see God's hand in history and we can see his handiwork in the way the nations have been led. Even our little bit of information, most of us don't know that much about history, but even a little bit, it's awesome when we ask God to give us the ability as an anointed observer of history to see his beauty. We say, see his beauty all through creation, not just the sky, the way our human bodies made. That's what Psalm 139, David was captured on the glory and the beauty of God in the way that his body operated. He just said, it's wonderful, it's too wonderful. Your leadership over my life, it's just too wonderful. We see his beauty in the Word of God. We see his beauty, again, I'll say it again, through the work of the Spirit, dreams, visions. There are so many dreams and visions the Holy Spirit's giving, not all of them, that people claim are from the Holy Spirit, but the Lord is really uppering the amount, I mean, increasing the amount of activity he's giving in this arena. It's remarkable in a global way, and he's speaking about his beauty, even in revelatory ways, and in dreams and visions and those kinds of things. He's showing us his beauty. So first we study it, we observe it, we focus on it, we dialogue about it with one another after we study it. We carry, we speak it back to God in worship and prayer, and little by little, these small times of focus from the heart on the subject of God's beauty, it begins to form as the real substance of the revelation of the beauty of God in our heart. It becomes real, and we feel the power of it in our emotions. So the very word, beholding the beauty of the Lord, again, implies process. And David went on the process. Psalm 145, in verse 5, I don't have it in the notes, I haven't got to the notes yet, you know how we do this, we just kind of go for a while and then skip a bunch of the notes and we'll end on time, but I'm just totally enjoying myself here. I love this verse. But Psalm 145, verse 5, David said, I meditate on the splendor of your majesty, because I meditate, I study it. There's several times in the psalm, David says, I fill my mind, I study your ways. It takes time. Of course, today we have the added dimension of videos, or I guess that was my day, DVDs today. I mean, we have the media, is what I'm trying to say. We have the media. It is remarkable what the Lord is giving His servants through, that's coming through the media. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just living color right in front of us and this thing is exploding. And we see His beauty in history and in creation and just the works of His hands. And King David said he studied it. We have to study it. It's not enough even just to go to the prayer room. We have to go to the prayer room having filled our mind. The beholding process isn't just the receiving of the impact, it's the process before we receive the impact and the tenderized emotions and the heart revelation. We've studied, we've observed, we filled our mind, and beloved, it takes time to do this. It takes time. That's kind of the downside of this reality. Again, the upside of it, it's so romantic, it's so glorious to talk about Psalm 27 4, but you can't do this on the run. You can't do this as an additive, as an added kind of supplement to a crowded Western world lifestyle. One of the dilemmas that I've seen in the IHOP community in the last seven years is that people live a certain way for years. They see the IHOP commercial, so they move to Kansas City and they add seeking the beauty of God as a supplement to a already established paradigm of how life should operate. Does it work? You can't add this as a vitamin. It has to be, it's a radical new view of how life is carried out under the whole, the leadership of the Holy Spirit. It's radical. I want to challenge you tonight to the radicalness of what this verse is talking about. This is not a vitamin, it's not a supplement, it's not an add-on. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll join a worship team, I'll be a prayer leader, I'll sit in the room and add on this to what my already crowded, overflowing emotional hard drive that's already completely full. I'm just gonna add the glory of God onto it. I have found that as the Holy Spirit challenges me to be a man of one thing. And I find the challenge in every season. I feel his challenge, his zeal. And sometimes again that invitation, it's gone from invitation to mandate to I mean it. You're now, you know, there's a time in our life where we're, where I don't know if I'll say this exactly right, but there's a time in our life where we have a certain freedom to come and go as we want. But there are those in our midst, there are those that are out there where you've matured past the coming and going as you want and now you're the Lord's bondservant. You've given over your rights to come and go when you want. Paul the Apostle talked about this in 1 Corinthians 9. He goes, you know, some guys preach and they choose to and hey, they get a reward. But he goes, not me. I'm under compulsion. He goes, I'm in trouble if I don't. He goes, I'm not just a free man walking around in the grace of God. I am a bondservant. I'm under compulsion. I've been enlisted. I've been mandated. I'm living in a different way for the age to come. And he looked, even in the midst of the body of Christ, as strange and as odd. 1 Corinthians 4 verse 9, Paul said, I'm a spectacle to angels and to men. Angels and men. Men and angels. Look at me and go, what manner of life are you living? I want to ask you, are you a spectacle to angels and men? Meaning, do even the angels take a step back at your lifestyle and say, what an unusual work of God that's happening in that young man, that young woman, that old man, that old woman's life. A spectacle to angels. 1 Corinthians 4 verse 9. Paul said he was. And what he meant by that is that his resolve in God was so different than the common way that even the angels paused and went, my, this is unusual. And certainly men, it was a spectacle to men. And of course men called him foolish. Most of the kingdom of God, even the prayer movement, is so much like the rest of the Western world that we look cool, not offensive. My goal isn't to be offensive. That's not the goal. My goal is to be, is to give myself wholly to God. But I want to assure you that the man or woman that does this, it will be disruptive to those near them. It is disruptive. And I don't mean because they're carrying on in strange ways, because the decisions they make are so different than that that are known in our culture. It's, it's just odd. King David said in Psalm 119 verse 96, another verse that I don't have on the notes here. Psalm 119 verse 96. He said, I have seen the consummation of all perfection. What a statement. He's talking about the New Jerusalem. I have seen, Psalm 119 verse 96, the consummation or the fullness of all perfection. He goes, I've seen the realm of the city of where we're going, the New Jerusalem. That's really what it's saying in New Testament language. The throne of God, Revelation 4, the consummation of all perfection. And my theory is that David sees the consummation of perfection. He sees the fullness of beauty around the throne of God. He sees the living creatures, night and day. They never cease. And he said, I'm going to live in part like that. I can't live in the fullness like that. I don't have their, their capacities. But I'm going to set my heart, even in these days now, to go after this. Now David didn't attain to a sustained reality in his 40s, except he was doing this in his 20s and 30s and even earlier besides. It says in paragraph A, Psalm 27, 4, gives us insight into the heart of the one that was called, that God called, the man after my own heart. Beloved, we want to take serious when God calls a human being, the one that's doing what's in my heart. Whoa. Now will, will that hold up on the last day in David's life? Yes, it will. I am confident that on the last day when David stands before the Lord, the Lord will say, a man that did what was in my heart. That's what we want to do. Our problem here, we have a decided disadvantage in history. We got great advantages and in real disadvantages, is that we are right in the middle of the Western culture and the church in the West has a secular Western spirit on it. The church does. And the counsel and the wisdom and the paradigm and the daydreaming of the church is other than where David was going. And so if we take the counsel and the approval of those among us that are fervent, it's probably only about halfway to where David was seeking to live. There's a verse in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 12 and 13. 2nd Corinthians 10, verse 12 and 13. David said, I mean not David, Paul said that if we compare ourself by ourself, we have no understanding. I don't want to compare myself to the group on the other side of town. I don't want to compare myself to you. I don't want you to think I'm fiery for God and then me to buy into it. I appreciate different ones encouraging me and say, hey you're going hard for God. I appreciate that. I actually like that human dimension. However, I don't take it as though it means God's gonna say it. What ultimately means something to me and of course to you as well, is if God says this at the end of your life. But we're in the midst of a culture where many of the brightest ones among us, I'm talking about the whole Western world, are so in a different mindset. They have such a different daydream in their heart than this. They would say if it was truth, the tenth thing that I want with all of my heart is to gaze on the beauty of the Lord. I want an anointed ministry first. I want certain dynamics in my family second. I want certain dynamics in my economics third. I want certain honor and friendship dimensions fourth. I want certain health and physical dimensions fifth. Okay Lord, you're six. That's not bad. That's up from ten. But the daydream of the heart is other than what David describes here. The primary daydream of their heart. The thing that brings them anxiety is not are they doing this. It's where their money is, where their favor is in ministry, where their relational dynamics are. That's the thing that brings them anxiety, not this. Because the primary daydream of their heart is other than this. And that's many of the bright ones in our culture live like that. And then they're the ones telling us we're doing great. Beloved, don't, I mean, receive the encouragement, but don't take it too much to heart. I told one guy, he told me I had to kind of mellow out a little bit. And he says, you don't have to do that prayer thing so much. He said he was preaching grace to me. And I've heard this for so many years, for 30 years, I've had men of God preach grace to me to quit praying so much. And I'm trying to pray twice as much. I'm not trying to pray half as much. I'm trying to find grace to pray twice as much. And they're preaching grace. Why pray half as much? I've had a 30 year dilemma with this that I'm very, very familiar with. So when a guy comes to me and puts his hand on my shoulders, hey bro, you know, I love it. But you know what, the Lord just ain't take liberty. I said the liberty I'm trying to get is liberty from darkness and passivity. I don't want liberty from from pursuing God. I want to go after it. And the guy goes, hey man, grace, grace, grace. And very confused is the doctrine of grace in the Western world today. And I told the guy, and I've stuck with this line, I like this line. I told him, I said if your vote counts where I'm going, I'm gonna listen to you. But if your vote doesn't count where I'm going, and I'm going to the judgment seat of Christ, I'm not listening to you. If you can assure me your vote counts, I'm really gonna listen to you right now. But if when I stand before God and they don't call you up and ask you to speak into the evaluation of my life, sorry. I've got one moment on the earth called 70 years. I am not taking a chance with your counsel. Okay, let's go to Roman numeral two. Paragraph A. This is where I talk about David wrote the psalm in his 40s. You can read that on your own. You don't have to read it right now. Because it matters, because it gives you a perspective is that he wasn't a 16 year old writing this. He wasn't an 80 year old either. Well, he died at 70, couldn't have been 80. But again, I want you to remember David was writing a reality that he would live in forever. When he says I'm not gonna depart from the house of the Lord, he meant, I mean to dwell in it all the days of my life, he meant that the verse in Revelation 3 12, where Jesus said that the overcomers will be pillars in the temple, and they will have access to the temple. Their assignment will be in the temple of God all of their days. When it says they'll never leave the temple, I don't think it means they never physically leave it. It means their assignment, their divine assignment and commission is in the context of the eternal temple forever and ever as a reward for living as an overcomer on the earth. It's kind of in the same spirit as the verse we have in the prayer room in Ezekiel 44 verse 15, where it says that the priests, the sons of Zadok will be in the temple even in the age to come. It's because they were faithful in this age. And the point being, David was actually talking not just about how he lived on the earth, he had the age to come in his mind as well. Because I want to, I want to live in a way where I'm making choices now that God remembers, that really make a difference in the age to come. Okay, where do I want to go now? Let's go to paragraph G on top of page 2. Jesus talks on the same theme, this one thing. Paul the Apostle, you know, of course, in Philippians 3, 13, he says the same thing. This one thing I do. Mary of Bethany, we know it well. Luke 10 verse 41, this one thing Mary has chosen. Jesus affirmed this narrowness of this offensive lifestyle. I mean, it is offensive. It really is troublesome. And only the violent can take the kingdom by force. It is violent to the person trying to walk it, and it's disturbing to the people that they're connected to. It's violent. Jesus said John the Baptist was a man of spiritual violence. It didn't mean that he was violent to people physically. It meant that the decisions that he made in his inner man, the best word for them, Matthew 11, 12, it is spiritual violence. Jesus said that man was violent. The decisions he made in his inner man, the best way to describe it is violent. He spared nothing. And Jesus said in Matthew 11, verse 11, he was the greatest man ever born of a woman, and he made decisions so radical. And again, in our context, it's so hard. I mean, just for years I've been told how on fire I am. But I'm told it mostly by people who are cold. And they're saying, you're on fire. I think, well, you know, again, I don't say nothing to them, but I think, I'm not comforted yet. I don't have a sense of certainty in my spirit that because they're saying it, it's true. I don't want to be more on fire than somebody else. I want to live in a way that is really walking out the Psalm 24, Psalm 27 for lifestyle. Paragraph G. Jesus promised anyone who would seek his kingdom first, he would add things to them. He would add them. He says, we know the verse. Seek first the kingdom. Seek first the pursuit of righteousness in your own life, and then to minister bringing other people into righteousness. The pursuit of righteousness in your life. This is a centerpiece, Sermon on the Mount. Make the experiencing of the, of the kingdom of God. God and his kingdom. The reign of God. The kingdom of God means the reign of God in your life. The authority of God in your life. The authority of the Holy Spirit. And the pursuit of a breakthrough of righteousness at the heart level, and then the anointing to bring this righteousness to other people. He says, you make that the first concern of your life. You make it the premier daydream of your life. The premier dream of your life. The premier thing that you're troubled by. That, that the premier thing that you're disturbed, that you're, you have a holy anxiety. Oh God, am I sure is this happening? Am I really doing this? Am I getting the fullness of the breakthrough that you're asking me in the realms of righteousness? The Lord says, this becomes the first thing. He goes, I promise you the other things I will give you in my timing and in my way. I promise you I will. What happens is that we go for the other things, and the other things, he's not talking about sinful things. He's talking about the legitimate things of life under God's blessing. The legitimate blessings of God under the leadership of Jesus are the other things. So don't have a list of, of the other things somehow being less than. They are, they're, they're wonderful divine blessings. He goes, you lose yourself in seeing the kingdom of God, the authority of God touching your life, your inner man, your mind, your emotions, the authority and the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the word of God being established in you, and then getting a breakthrough in righteousness, and then getting the grace of God to bring it to others as well. He says, I promise you, Jesus says, I promise you I will give you the other things. Many H believers seek the other things first. They don't even know it, because our culture's blinded us. They don't even know it. The other things are their primary anxiety of life. Just, you know, if you could just take stock on your own heart, in the last 30 days, what have you had concern and turmoil about? Well, the money, my body, my relationships, my love life, my future, my anointing, my ministry, my place. The Lord says, keep going, keep going. You haven't hit it yet. You haven't hit where I want you, I want the primary preoccupation. The thing you're most sick over in terms of concern is, is the reign of God increasing in your inner man. Oh yeah, yeah, well yeah, I want that. Sure, I want that. I do the IOP thing. Yeah, I want that. But our hearts are weakened when the other things gain a tendency in our life as the primary passion. Our relationships are weakened. One verse I don't have here again is 1st John 1.7. 1st John 1.7 says that if we walk in the light, we have fellowship in the light. You know, every now and then I kind of take a five minutes and talk about this because I have such energy about this. Is that one of the great problems in the Church of Jesus Christ and our nation is the lack of connectedness. I hear it everywhere. I don't feel connected, don't feel connected, don't feel connected. And so people normally look at the organization of the ministry. If the organization could help connect me. As though organizations connect human hearts. They don't. Organizations don't bond with people. People bond with people. Organizations don't. And I've heard this for for 30 years of ministry. I mean just everywhere. East Coast, West Coast, North, South, East, West. I don't feel connected, don't feel connected, don't feel connected. And I understand that and I appreciate the dilemma of it. But we're looking at the wrong place. It's not the organization of the org chart of the ministry. That's not how you get connected. It says 1st John 1.7 says it. It says if you walk in light, you have fellowship. You have connectedness. And that fellowship is in families, marriages, ministry staff, friendships, marketplace. The fellowship. Put the word connectedness. Because it takes the entrance of light in the human spirit for spirits to connect. It takes a supernatural release of light. We have to walk in light. And it isn't walking in light means we're honest with one another. That there's a dimension of light where we're talking about our heart. That's light. That's that's a good part of light. Another dimension of light is that beholding the glory of the Lord. Beholding the beauty of the Lord. The light of God actually touches our spirit. Our spirits are invigorated with light. Then we can bond. I've watched it for years. I've watched so many marriages in years. Where the goal of their life, they want to extract life out of one another. But neither of them have any life to give. Life comes from another source. And John 1.5, not 1st John 1.5, which I said a minute ago. A minute ago I said 1st John 1.5 and 7. And this is John 1.5. John said, and the life is the light of men. The life comes. The life in our spirit comes from light touching us. So I've watched this. I've watched so many ministry teams. And I've watched relationships and friendships trying to bond, to have fellowship, without light being the primary thing that they share between one another. They're trying to bond on the basis of what the media tells us, that we bond. We bond by light. Light bonds us. Light is where the life is. And if we get more people connected to light, I mean, you could always improve the org chart of a ministry, but the org chart is what connects people. They don't like, I fit in the chart there, okay, I go to that home group, and they go to home groups, and the people in the home groups are all disconnected. It takes, because spiritually, people with light connect. People without light increasing, they don't bond to people. They don't bond. And I just look across the body of Christ. It is a chronic problem in our nation. I'm sure it's all around the world. And it's where so many are wearied by it. And the answer is lives of fasting and prayer. That's where the bonding comes out of. Not that the bonding earns it, but the bonding, I mean, the fasting and prayer earns it. The fasting and prayer, and the word, and the obedience positions ourselves for light, and light always causes bonding. Light always creates bonding. We're getting our bonding models from the media. We watch the movies and then figure out how to bond. Our bonding comes from the light of life that enters the human spirit. And David's talking about that right there. Psalm 27 4. This one thing. I gaze on your beauty. There are so many benefits to the kind of spirit, and the kind of mind, in time and in eternity. There are so many benefits to the man or the woman who has light enter their spirit. They have benefits in this age, and they have benefits in the age to come. They're truly remarkable. I've done a fair amount of marriage counseling over the years. And more times than not, it's two people staring at each other, gazing into one another's eyes, looking to extract life from each other. Life they don't have. And I've said this a thousand times. I say, here's what you need to do. You need to quit staring at each other. You need to put your arm this way, and stare at the light of Jesus, and go after Him. Lose everything after that person, and you will fall in love on the pursuit of abandonment that way. If you quit looking that way, and you look this way, what you end up is two ticks, no dog. You end up, that is so much relationship. Two ticks, no dog. Two people trying to suck life out of each other, and the life is over there. It's the other person that has life. His name is the Son of God. They go, well, what if we don't? I go, listen, I promise you, you seek the kingdom. You will be, all of it will be added to you. All of it will be given to you. The human spirit isn't made to be able to look away from Him, and to work. We have to look unto Him as not kind of, not kind of enough to get saved. We have to look unto Him with all of our heart. King David also said in Psalm 34, verse 5, he says, they looked unto the Lord, and they were radiant. Their hearts became radiant. That's the principle of light. Their hearts became radiant. I have here in G, many good things designed by God, many good things designed by God, that were designed by God to be necessary, to be secondary, easily becomes primary in our Western culture. Because our Western culture is founded on a sense of entitlement and idealism. And idealism is a nice word for fantasy. Our Western culture, it's so media-driven that, especially in this last decade or two, you know, back in my day, they only had three channels. How many remember the day of three channels? Okay, there it is. Fifteen over, there you are. You know, Ben Cartwright was the main guy. I mean, he was the guy we waited for on Sunday night. Three channels. The last 10 or 20 years, and in the next 20 years, it's gonna be, I mean, they, they grow up from the womb, all of their life inundated with images and images are telling them how life works. And those images, the Lord can really use them, but there's so many images we grow up with, it is just, it is a complex reality. That we end up, we end up creating our expectations and our entitlements and our idealism on these images that aren't truth. They're not the truth of the Word of God. The images don't tell us to deny ourself and live abandoned this way, to lock in and run this way. The images tell us in completely another message. We end up with two ticks, no dog. I really mean that. With sucking life out of each other in friendships and in ministry relationships and then father-son, father-daughter marriages, all kinds of dimensions, they just wear out because there is no life inherent in the human spirit. There is no life. I'm talking about the life quickening Zoe of God, the life that comes from God. It's a gift, it's light, it's life, and this is where God is taking his people. I want to ask you, ask the Lord, I have here an H, to reveal to your heart how much fantasy you're pursuing and how much you're really seeking the kingdom of God first, or if, are you really seeking the kingdom of God first, or is it third or fourth or fifth? What is the primary dream, the daydream of your heart? What is the primary thing that your stomach gets churned up about? I don't have a spirit of prayer, I don't have a revelation, it's not happening, I'm not connecting, I'm sick about this, I've got to connect more at the heart level with God. No, that's that comes down the road, many would have to say. The primary daydream of their life is their position in ministry, or their place of economics, or just, you know, that whole list, whatever, go through it again. Now my point isn't to tell you how bad you are, that's not my goal, this is such a glorious liberation. I'm not doing it perfectly, but I'm certainly going hard after it, and I want to go harder and harder and harder. I want to live in the light and the life of God in this age and then the age to come. I'm gonna ask the Holy Spirit right now, we're gonna end right now, I'm gonna ask the Holy Spirit, worship team coming up, to speak to us. Lord, how much, how much light are we living in? Are we seeking the kingdom first, for real, for real, really first? Are we one thing, people? Are we really beholding the glory of the Lord as the one thing? Is this really? Lord, talk to us. Talk to us. What area of our life is higher in our priority than this? I'm gonna ask you all over the room, just take a second, to actually, I dare you to ask that to the Holy Spirit. And the longer you've been in leadership, the harder it is to ask that question. Because the longer you've been in leadership, the more familiar with the Bible, and just the more automatic our responses that we know the answer. I ask the Lord that sometimes, and it shocks, you know, it's like to really ask the question, like that's a vulnerable place. I mean, to really quiet down the motor on the inside, say, Lord, just talk to me. Am I really seeking the kingdom first? Am I really a man of one thing or a woman? Am I really seeking the light, for real, as my top priority of life? If not, shock me now, Lord, don't shock me then, shock me now, talk to me straight right now. I invite you to stand. I want to invite anyone that you feel like the Lord's just stirring you. He wants to make you a man of one thing, a woman of one thing. He really wants you to be, for real, for real, a person of one thing. Bible style, not Western culture style. I mean, the real biblical one thing. Not just a little more fiery than the group down the road. That means nothing to me, nothing. If the Lord's stirring you right now, hopefully all of you being stirred a little bit right now, but I'm talking about to where you're thinking, I need a real change in this. I mean a real change. My ministry is clearly number one. It's not really not, it's not beholding the Lord. I'm not studying and searching it out and filling my time. I'm kind of doing that on the run. I'm not really giving myself to this. If that's where the Lord is speaking to you and you like prayer, I want you to come on forward, or if you just want to be alone with the Lord, come up here and just say, you know, I just want to be alone for a few minutes without my neighbors kind of being next to me right now. I just want to talk to him. Beloved, what I've said tonight, I mean I haven't said it all perfect by any means, but the general theme is life and wisdom to you. It is your liberty. It is your glory. It is your eternal reward. It is wisdom. I am trying to do this. I have areas in my life I'm not doing it.