Spend Much Time in Secret With Jesus Alone

Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we have another day to come to you. Thank you for your faithfulness up until now.

Thank you, Lord, that you've given us breath to come here and seek you. Lord, thank you that you still speak to us. Lord, and we do want to meet with you here today.

Thank you for the songs we sang. Lord, we ask your spirit to come and minister to us and show us where we have hard hearts. Show us, Lord, where we have not been seeking you or even turned our back on you.

Lord, I do want to lift up the brothers and people who have decided to go and serve there in Jamaica. I pray for safety and I pray you would lead them to places of need and open hearts. Lord, we also want to praise you for bringing Dennis and Grace here, Jared here safely, and Stephen and Trevor, getting them here safely, Lord.

Lord, we just want to ask you now to minister to us. I pray for my brother, Roger, that you would use his mouth, his heart, his mind right now to bring forth your word, that your Holy Spirit would bring conviction among us, and may we be doers of your word. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. You may be seated. Thank you.

All right. Well, good morning. It's good to be with you.

Welcome, each one. About a year ago or so, I got an email from one of my fellow phone team members, Ernest Strubar. He used to be Oklahoma.

Now he's up in Alaska. He said there's a ministry he'd like to introduce the rest of us to. It's called Serve India Ministries.

And he said there's this pastor called Ebenezer Samuel that was there visiting him. And he had started this ministry to send pastors into the country of India. India is the largest country by population now.

And he passed up China here not terribly long ago. But he said the pastors that he's trying to send, we can actually sponsor them for a certain amount. And he says it's a really powerful ministry.

He says you all should investigate. Well, at that point, I signed up, started getting the newsletters. And then just about a month ago, he sent me another email.

He says, hey, he's coming to Oregon. Or one of the representatives, his name was Chris, the guy that was coming to Oregon. He says you should really go and visit him or maybe even have him in your church or something.

And so I got an email from him. He says where he's going to be. Well, he's at Brownsville last Sunday night.

So after last week, a week ago in the afternoon, I went over to listen to this man and hear about the report of what he's doing. He was actually at, I think he was at Fairview in the morning, Brownsville in the evening. I think he's over at Riverside this morning, and then over at the John Day Fellowship by this evening.

So he's visiting different churches around. And anyway, as I was listening there, somebody had asked me the question, is this an Anabaptist ministry? As far as I can tell, it's not specifically Anabaptist. If anybody was wondering that.

Over in India, they don't necessarily maybe have the same divisions that we have here, Protestant, Anabaptist. I suppose there's probably Catholic over there. But he did give a report on how it's possible to sponsor these pastors.

They would get five different pastors together for $40 a month. They were able to give them some training, send them out. Five pastors in a group sends out to five different villages, starts churches.

This ministry provides tools, gospel tracts, Bibles, bikes, gives them support if they lose their life, gives support to the widows and orphans that are left behind. One of the questions along with denominations, well, what about things like that are important, like non-resistance? He brings up this. He says, you know, over there, there's Muslims, there's Christians, and there's Hindus.

Hindus are the largest, Muslims are second, and I think Christians are number third in India, but they're quite a ways back from the other two. But he says, when persecution comes and fights happen, the Hindus and the Muslims, they'll fight each other. They'll defend their rights.

But these Christian pastors, they don't. They do practice non-resistance. They may not have the word non-resistance, but they practice it simply because their goal is to reach their neighbors.

They want to reach them with the gospel, and so they love them. They don't fight back. They go into these new communities, and often, he says, this is a really common thing.

There's a miracle that happens when these pastors go out back to the big cities. There's always a Christian church, and most of the big cities of India right now, there's at least some kind of a Christian witness. But most of the people live out in villages, and in these individual villages, many of them have never heard the name of Jesus one time.

But they go into these villages, and they start sharing the gospel, and people come for prayer, or they just, maybe they just meet someone who needs prayer. And over and over again, there's a powerful miracle that happens that opens the door for the gospel. Somebody who everybody knows is sick gets healed, and people come flocking to listen to this person preach about Jesus.

But he says, you know what's interesting? Often, that's the last miracle in that village. There's only one miracle that opens the door for the gospel. Maybe two, maybe more, but usually just one.

And after that, the miracles don't keep on going. They don't have a Benny Hinn experience where everybody comes up on the stage, and they're slaying them in the spirit, and all that. That's not what goes on.

God's using these miracles to open the door for the gospel. And then often, that's it. And he said, Chris, the man who was talking, he said, he says he's a little careful where he shares this, but he says there's even been people raised from the dead at the beginning of some of these ministries.

He said, back during COVID, there was a Hindu village, and a man died. It must have been a well-known people. A lot of people came together for the funeral, and they didn't know what to do.

They didn't know how to have a funeral. So there was a Christian pastor that had just come in there. They said, will you please come and pray for us? And so this pastor comes up in front of this group of people.

Behind him is the coffin, or maybe just a platform. Usually, they bury within two days, because they don't have a bombing. And he's looking out across the people, and he says, OK, we're going to pray.

So he tells everybody, put your hands together. So they all put their hands. Now, close your eyes.

They close their eyes, and he starts praying. And when he stops praying, he opens his eyes, and everybody just has a shocked look on his face. And he's looking, what's going on? Turns around.

Here, this man has sat up. And everybody starts rejoicing. And whatever they do, when people sit, I've not been in a service like that myself, but whatever people normally do in a situation like that, they did.

But then two little boys up in the front, they raise their hand, they said, hey, we have a confession to make. We didn't close our eyes when you told us to close our eyes. We kept our eyes open to see what was going to happen.

Now, keep in mind, this pastor was not praying for the dead man. He wasn't praying for the guy to get raised. He was praying for the people so they would get saved.

He was praying that they would come to Jesus. But they said, we kept our eyes open. And all of a sudden, we saw these two shafts of light come down.

And this guy sat up. And then the light disappeared. They think it was angels.

He says, and once again, that testimony, everybody heard about that. That church exploded overnight. People were coming to see this man who was once dead.

He also tells the story of a trip he took to India himself. Chris did. And he took his 16-year-old son along.

And they were, it says his son is a little bit bashful, a little bit unsure of himself. But in one village, there was a group of people came. And they wanted to hear, I mean, they wanted to be prayed for.

And there was too many people to be prayed for. There was a few pastors there that were traveling. Chris was there.

So he says, well, I can pray for somebody, I guess. And then he asked, can you pray for somebody? He said to his 16-year-old son, I don't know, Dad. He said, what do I do? I don't know the language.

Well, just pray for her. Just pray in English, even though you don't know the, if she does, can't, you know, this person can't understand you. And so they all had a, you know, the one lady that the 16-year-old was praying for, she was acting a little bit weird, a little bit funny.

They couldn't quite figure out what was wrong with her. But okay, so he prayed with her. And Chris prayed with somebody else.

And the pastors were praying with different people. And finally the service was over. And the pastor there in the village said, why don't you come into my little house, just a little 10 by 10 room.

And we will, we'll have some supper. So they got in this, packed into this little room, started having supper. And all of a sudden they hear a commotion outside and the people are coming and they're saying, hey, can you come out here? So they poked their nose out.

They poked their, they all poked their noses out the doors, I guess. And what's happening? They said, we want to know who prayed for this woman right over here. And well, the 16-year-old boy, he sort of looks a little bit shocked.

He said, well, he finally raised his hand. I guess it was me. Well, this woman was deaf.

She was stone deaf before tonight. And now she can suddenly hear, and she's got this big smile on her face. And, and she's, she's all excited that now she can hear even though she couldn't before.

Once again, people heard about that. They came, a church started in this village. And, you know, God is at work.

God is building His kingdom. And He's, He has different ways of doing it. This is, this is one ministry that I now see a little bit why my friend Ernest was excited about.

When we were there at that, at Brownsville, they gave a, there was a little video that they showed, a little five minute video clip. And I, I asked Chris, I said, is that video on the website? Can we go there and watch it? Can I share it with my church? He said, no, but I have a little thumb drive you can have, return it to me sometime this week. So he gave me, he gave me his thumb drive, put it on my laptop, put it on my other computer.

And then on Tuesday morning, we met for coffee and I gave him back his thumb drive. And that's where I heard some of these stories. He shared some of them, some of them in the service, but some of them we talked about in person.

All right. Just a little side note there. I have a text I'd like you to read, but it's not in the Bible.

It's in the song books. If you get your song books out, I'd like to read this text. Turn to number 696 in the purple song books, Hymns of the Church.

It's a text that's been going through my mind recently. And it's in verse 2, number 696, Take Time to Be Holy, well-known song. But in verse 2, it says, take time to be holy, the world rushes on and in the next few words there are the ones I've been thinking about.

It says, spend much time in secret with Jesus alone. Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone. I'd like to ask you, everyone that's here, is that you? Do you spend time alone with Jesus? Time in secret with Jesus? Do you spend much time with him? Or do you spend any time with him? Sometimes we have fears that go through our minds.

Maybe they even turn into nightmares if, you know, nightmares are not necessarily reality. Sometimes I hear that so-and-so has gotten cancer and didn't even know they were anywhere close to having, they didn't, nothing was wrong until all of a sudden they went to a doctor and it's stage four and it's progressed all this way and a fear starts to come into my mind, maybe I have cancer. I bet I do.

I bet it's not, I don't feel anything, but I bet I'm in bad trouble. Or a brain tumor. I hear of a brain, oh yeah, I bet I have a brain, I've been forgetting some things lately.

I bet I have, something's wrong. And these fears start going through my, these nightmares start going through my mind. And then I realize God's telling me, hey, look, you got enough problems to deal with without creating them in your own mind, okay? Just deal with the problems I give you, when I give you, when I, I'll give you grace for the fears that come or for the realities that come, but I'm not going to necessarily give you grace for all the fears you hatch up in your own mind.

So, okay, I need to put those to rest. But sometimes there are fears that come true, nightmares that come true. You know, driving through Eugene and see multitudes of people and think a lot of these people are going to end up in hell.

That's not just a irrational fear. There's biblical basis for believing that. And there's some other fears I have that it feels like I need to address as well.

One of those fears, one of those nightmares is this, is it possible that there's people right here in this room today, regular attenders, people that are members in good standing here at this church who never spend time alone with Jesus? Is that a real fear? Is that, is that something I've just simply hatched up? Or is that something that could actually be possible that there'd be at least one person here who doesn't spend much time in secret with Jesus alone, or maybe doesn't spend any time in secret with Jesus alone. They never actually talk to God, never really open their mouth all alone and pray to God. Is that possible in a church society? Is it even likely? That's my nightmare.

That's my fear. That's a fear that I have. Maybe this person is even someone who says, you know, I know I need to have my devotions.

You know, I made a commitment to Jesus. So they, they have a quick little Bible reading, maybe throughout the week. Maybe they have a little bit of read a little devotional page, but they actually don't open their mouth and talk to God.

Now, why, why is it? Well, I don't know. You could say, is it, we heard about, I think this morning already about hidden sin. Sin will keep us from praying to God.

Maybe it's simply, they don't know how. They've never had that. Maybe there's too many distractions.

Maybe it's a matter of not getting up in time so that you have time to do it. Maybe sleeping too long. Maybe they just haven't set aside enough time ahead of time so that they can pray.

But is it possible that that fear could become reality? That there's people here that do not spend time alone with God. Now there's no way for me as a pastor here to know if it's true or not. I don't have a, you know, I don't have, we're talking about stuff that happens in secret.

There's no app on the phone that we can say, everybody needs to get this app. And this is going to monitor you and make sure that you didn't, you know, you didn't skip a day and not spend that time in secret. But now, you know, my fear.

Now, you know what my nightmare is. Maybe your question is, well, why would that be such a nightmare? What's the big tragedy of having one person or more than one person here that doesn't spend time in secret with Jesus alone? Why would that be such a tragedy? Well, it's a tragedy because God has given us several, a number of thermometers, gauges, we could call them, for our Christian life that we can check ourselves and say, do I really have a relationship with God? And this is one of those thermometers. You know what a thermometer is? We used to have one on our porch at home and it'd be hanging there and that thermometer, you know, the mercury would go up and down and it would tell us what the temperature was outside.

It didn't change the temperature outside. That thermometer had nothing to do with it, but it told us what the answer was about the temperature outside. And some of these thermometers God has given us tell us whether I'm really in Christ or not.

Do I really have a relationship with Him or not? Here's some of the other ones. This is one of them, but some of the others are from, in 1 John it says, hereby do we know that we know Him if we keep His commands. That's a temperature gauge.

It's a thermometer. It'll tell us, hereby do we know that we know Him if we keep His commands. He that saith, I know Him and keepeth not His commands is a liar.

So if we don't keep the commands of God, that's a warning sign to us that we're not in Christ. Here's another one. Hereby shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

Do I have love for other believers? If not, that's a warning sign. It's a gauge. It's flashing.

It's saying, wait, are you sure you have a relationship with God? Are you sure your name's in the book of life? Are you sure you're ready to die? Here's another one. If you love the world and the things in the world. It says the love of the Father is not in Him if we love the world and the things in the world.

These are, again, gauges that we have, thermometers that give us warnings about whether we really have a relationship with God or not. And again, when I ask you whether you regularly go into your closet and shut the door and pray, I'm not necessarily asking you whether you get answers to those prayers. That's a different question.

I'm not really asking you whether you enjoy going into your closet and praying. I'm not really asking whether you hear God talking back to you or not. These are all good questions, but that's not my question right now.

My question is, do you do it? Do you really pray to God every day in an unhurried way? Now, Jesus had an example for us. Jesus, first of all, gave His command, Matthew chapter 6. He says this, "'Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to your Father in secret.'" And He gives a promise, "'Your Father will reward you openly.'" So the reason I'm preaching about this is because I want rewards for you all. I want me to have these rewards.

I want you to have these rewards. And God wants you to have these rewards. And Jesus wanted you to have these rewards.

That's why He commanded, "'Go into your closet and pray.'" The question is, did Jesus practice what He preached? Well, sort of He did. There was only one problem. He didn't have a closet with a door.

So when He wanted to pray, He had to make up His own closet. He had to go away into the wilderness to pray. Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, it says in Mark 1.35, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where He prayed.

Luke 15. But so much the more, there was a fame about Him. The multitudes were following.

What did Jesus do? And He withdrew Himself into the wilderness and prayed. He didn't have a house, a place to lay His head. He didn't have a house with a closet that He could call His own.

But He found a place all alone to pray to God. Luke 6, again, and He came to pass in those days, He went out into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God. Why did Jesus do this? Well, this was the night before He called His disciples.

He wanted wisdom, I guess. Who do I call? Who do I not call? So He spent all night in prayer to God. In Matthew 4, He went into the wilderness to fast and pray for 40 days before His own ministry began.

After John the Baptist's death, He heard that John the Baptist was dead. And in Matthew 14, He again withdrew to pray after feeding the 5,000. That was quite a strenuous experience.

You know, Jesus was a person filled with grace and truth. Grace was flowing through Him, but it didn't stop with Him. It flowed out to the people around Him.

And I think when He did something like the feeding of the 5,000, I'm guessing He was exhausted and knew He needed more grace from God to come into His life. So once again, after feeding the 5,000, how do you have 5,000 people to go home so I can have some quiet? Well, He managed somehow. He got the 5,000 people to go.

You've had your supper. Now it's time to get going. Well, now His disciples are still there.

He still wants some quiet time. So He says, I'll tell you what, guys, you know about boating, right? Okay, you guys get in a boat and head out across the lake. Now He's got some quiet.

Well, it didn't last terribly long because a storm blew up and He had to walk out across the water and calm the storm and that kind of thing. But He was looking for time to spend time alone with God. Now, why did Jesus do this? Why did Jesus commune with God in this way? One way we could say, well, He wants to set us an example.

But was there more than that? You know, I think Jesus really enjoyed His time alone with God. I think also He needed His time alone with God. I think He was a channel that God was using to pour grace into this world and He needed that grace, He needed that power that He received from these alone times so He could do what God had called Him to do in the ministry times.

And I just want to take this opportunity to you as an individual, I say you as a congregation, but let me just say individually, every set of ears that's here, I want to encourage you to truly spend time in secret with Jesus alone. And if you're not in the habit of doing it a lot, then do it some and then move too much. That's the word, that's what it says here in this song, take time to be holy, spend much time in secret with Jesus alone.

And you know, I know how life goes. If you start by aiming this big, it's going to keep shrinking. You aim this big, it's going to keep shrinking.

So aim big. The bigger you aim, the larger will be left over after all the interruptions come. So I don't know what you can do, but some people have made it a point to say, okay, we're going to have a morning devotion.

Some people say we're going to have an evening devotions. What if you would aim to have both? What if you would aim to do like Daniel three times a day, morning, noon, and night? He was pulling away from whatever distractions he had, whatever other of his responsibilities he had, he would step aside and he would say, I'm going to spend time in prayer. And then if one of those gets canceled for some reason, some emergency in the king's palace comes along or some idol that, yeah, whatever they had back there in Babylon, Daniel would still, he still had two left for that day.

Now he didn't even let, you know, he didn't even leave, you know, even what was it, a threat of lions and all that kind of thing. That didn't stop Daniel, but sometimes maybe there's things more serious than that, that might stop us. Okay.

So, um, the more you time you set aside, the more time you're going to have. So I want to encourage you take time alone. Don't let a single day pass without spending real time alone with God.

Don't let any excuse keep you from it. Now it's about this time in the message that I started to think of a problem and some of you maybe are thinking of it. I asked the question, but wait a minute, time alone can be dangerous.

Last time I preached been an, I don't know, a month or so ago, I talked about desires, especially, you know, desires, uh, sexual desires and, and the trap that they get so many people in. And you know what that, when that comes a lot of times it's time alone, time in secret and secret time has been the downfall of so many people. So why should a preacher stand up here in the pulpit and encourage you to spend time in secret when so many people have been lost spiritually because of time in secret.

And I'll have to admit, I struggled with that. I struggled to know what, what do I even do with this thing? People have their, you know, their phones or their computers and they get all alone and, and, and, and they fall into sin in, in, in the area of pornography and other things. And so now should I tell people to spend time in secret when that is really where most sin happens these days, time in secret.

Let's, let's just pause a little bit. We're going to talk about this problem, this plague that has come. Here's an article I just pulled out of a magazine here, how to leave porn behind.

My older sister sat across from me at the Taco Bell. This is written by a man named Samuel James. She said, my sister sat with me at Taco Bell.

Listen carefully. She knew I was lying, but she was too concerned to be angry as she questioned me about the double life I'd been living and which I had been unwilling, which had been unwillingly exposed to my family and friends. She calmly heard my lies and told me she knew better.

For years, I'd been hiding beneath the identity of being a pastor's kid in a church worship band. While yielding myself totally to pornography, I was broken, but not broken enough. And I was still trying to put up a crumbling facade.

And I'm just going to pull out a few little excerpts from this article. She says this to him. She says, I want you to pursue a radical lifestyle of repentance.

He says, this frightened me. What did she mean? Yes, I knew I had to repent. Yes, Jesus had used this destruction of my life to show me his gospel in a saving way for the very first time.

But that idea of a radical lifestyle of repentance scared him. He's asked this question, why are so many losing this battle? If you had asked me, I would have said that my life was just fine as it was except for the pornography. That's what he would have said.

My life's fine except for this one thing. Here's another excerpt. Many Christians are fighting a losing battle with pornography because they're trying to remove the sin without adopting a radical lifestyle of repentance.

Many Christians are losing a battle with porn because they're trying to remove the sin without adopting a radical lifestyle of repentance. Here's another one. They really do want it gone, but they want everything else to stay where it is.

They really do want it gone, but they want everything else to stay where it is. And then they're perplexed why it just won't work even with accountability partners and internet filters and everything else they put in place. It just hasn't worked.

He asked the question, how badly do we want to win or how badly do you want to win? If you're in a losing battle against porn, let me exhort you as a fellow fighter by God's grace, you need to make radical changes in parts of your life that you might not intuitively think need changing. And then he mentions different things. He talks about our job.

He talks about our hobbies. He talks about one guy who was spending hours a day on what he thought was harmless video games. But that life of seclusion was leading him to sinful behavior.

He was trying to negotiate with his old habits instead of infusing them with radical repentance. His three hours of daily gaming were not neutral. They were actually artifacts of a cloistered lifestyle that had been tailored to resist the valuable means of grace in the fight against lust.

And then he says this, repentance brings us gain not lost. One of the most helpful pieces of counsel I received was that I could start cultivating the skills, ambitions, and opportunities that God had given me instead of merely sitting on the couch, retreating from life out of shame for the past. And so just in closing, he says, Jesus offers us more than a cleansing purge.

He offers us eternal springing fountains of Himself that spill into every well in our heart. Trust me, whatever you lose in radical repentance is not something you want to keep. Radical repentance begins and ends with delight.

Delight in God. Delight in what He loves. Delight in good gifts.

And delight in His promise to never cast you away or leave you. Go to Him radically. There is delight in God, and that's what He wants to give us.

Another thing I picked up, or got this as an email actually, was a conference. There's a conference coming up in Pennsylvania here in January, January 16 and 17, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and it's called Pursuit of Purity Men's Conference. And there's a number of different sessions that are going to be happening.

And as I read these introductions to these various sessions, I just thought, you know, I don't know how many people are going to go from Oregon, probably not any, at least not very many of any, are going to get on an airplane and fly to this men's conference in Pennsylvania. But I thought, you know what? These introductions to these sessions that are coming up just by themselves edified me. So I'd like to share them with you.

So session number one, I don't know these men that I know of. I mean, if I've ever met them, I don't remember. First one is a talk by Phil Hershberger, and the talk is called Desiring God, Serving Satan.

Desiring God, Serving Satan. Can you relate to wanting to do what's right and still continually failing? Maybe you desire God, you want to serve Him, you go to church, you're involved in ministry. From the outside, it looks like you have your life all together, but under the service, you're filled with hidden sin.

We can convince ourselves that the good we're doing outweighs the bad. We deceive not only those around us, but we also deceive ourselves. Until we come to complete brokenness before God, we'll continue to desire God but serve Satan.

The next talk by the same guy, Phil Hershberger, is called Bondages You Never Recognized. When we struggle with hidden sin, the sin that we view as being the worst is the one that we'll put our focus on. We desperately try to quit viewing porn.

We try everything to overcome masturbation, lustful thoughts. We wish we could kick the alcohol, tobacco, and food addictions. Through all our efforts, we often miss what's really holding us in bondage.

The sins we're committing are often a result of unrecognized pain or hurts in our lives that we're trying to avoid or forget. This topic is to encourage you to explore your heart for strongholds that you may not be recognizing. Third message is called Dating Relationships With Purpose by Duane Martin.

It's common for older people to encourage youth to keep their courtship pure. But what does that really look like? How can I know if my courtship is pure? Where's the line between pure courtship and one that isn't? How can I keep my courtship pure? These and many other questions are very real to many of you, but maybe the ultimate question that we should be asking is, what's the purpose of my dating relationship? Then there's one for married people by Joel Yoder. Marriage, delight myself or deny myself? Which one is it? Or is it both? Is one the result of the other? If so, which one's come first? It goes on to say many people are confused about marriage and says what that's going to be about.

Marriage, delight myself or deny myself? And then finally, actually, no, there's two more. Here's a testimony of how God changed my life. This is by Calvin Weaver.

And he says, at some point in life, we've all carried the weight of a past that we believe divines us. This is how I'll just always be. Living a life of moral purity is impossible for me.

This topic is my personal testimony of how God through Christ changed my heart, proving that a transformed life is possible for every single one of us, no matter what our past looks like. Then the final message, thirsting after righteousness. This is by Lee Zimmerman.

He says, as you prepare to leave the conference, what are you thirsting after? It's common to feel refreshed and motivated to try harder in your own battle for purity. But do you really desire righteousness? Or is it really just an easy life without the consequences of sin that you're desiring? That's a good question. Do you really desire righteousness? Or is all you desire just an easy life without the consequences of sin? This message is a call to check our hearts and be honest with what we're really thirsting after.

So those six or so messages, again, they're coming up in January. I don't know if anybody will go, but at least we can be thinking the same questions that are going through our mind, be challenged by the same thoughts that those men are going to be facing. The goal of the men's conference is to encourage men to walk in freedom from sexual sin and other sinful addictions by offering teaching sessions, small group breakouts, and creating an atmosphere that's safe and encourages sharing.

It's our prayer that everyone that attends will leave encouraged and motivated to make a difference in their own churches and communities. And by the way, I should say this now while I'm thinking about it. If anybody wants a copy of this so you know what the information that you do want to either listen in or go to, I can give you a copy or send you the email.

I think it came through on Plain News if I'm not mistaken. We are living in unprecedented times. Sexual immorality is destroying our society and flooding our churches.

Images that were once considered too shameful to even speak of 100 years ago are now carried around in the pockets of our youth. Pornographic content is easier to find than Bible. And our churches are filled with members that sit in the church pew on Sunday and commit adultery with 100 digital women during the week.

Faithful men are more desperately needed today than ever before. Are you going to rise to the challenge? God's will is going to be accomplished. The world is coming to an end.

God has called us into His kingdom for such a time as this. We encourage you to rise up and join the remnant of God's people that are remaining faithful and to fight for purity until God says the time will be no more. So back to the question, should I really be encouraging people here today to spend time in secret? If time in secret is such a trap for so many, if time in secret is the very avenue where sin is happening and where the devil is having a heyday, should I then be saying time in secret is a good thing? And again, this is something that I have to be honest in.

It's a little bit of a dilemma. But I would like you to picture three different men, three different people, you could say. And we're going to start with this man.

He's lost in sin. And here's where he's at. He spends time in secret, but he's not living in victory at all.

He's living a wicked life. And we'll just call it this one, I'll abbreviate it, time in secret to sin. Okay.

So time in secret in order to sin. That's what he's doing. That's how he's spending his life.

He's spending lots of time in secret, but he's sinning, sinning, sinning. That's his life. Okay.

And then he hears the gospel and somebody witnesses to him and tells him you can be forgiven. And he knows that this time in secret is a downfall for him. And so he moves to another box.

He moves to this box and he's going to call it no time in secret. He knows time in secret has been a downfall for him. And so he takes away all secret time.

He surrounds himself with people all the time. Wherever he goes, he always brings somebody along just to watch over his shoulder. You know, when it comes to computers and all that, there's always somebody there with him when he has a computer on.

And he spends lots of time socializing. He fills his life chock full of activities that are just keeping him active. You know, maybe it's work.

He works extra overtime. He works long hours. Maybe it's sports.

Maybe it's hobbies. And he's doing this in order not to fall back into this category here. And there's a sense in which I applaud that effort.

But my question is, is that where God wants us to stop? Because there's another one that we heard about in that song, another box that's called much time in secret with Jesus. Much time in secret with Jesus alone. And I'd like you to answer the question, which of those three boxes really can say they have a relationship with Jesus? It's good to break away from sin.

But what about this one here? What about the time in secret with Jesus alone? And then I have to ask another question. And I'm not sure this quite applies. I struggled.

Do I bring this up or not? But in Revelation chapter three, there's three different temperatures of people. Remember what they are? It talks about people that are cold. It talks about people that are hot.

I'll just put those up here. Cold, hot. And remember what the last one was? Somebody say it.

Lukewarm. So cold, hot, and lukewarm. Now, if we're going to say, well, which of these three are cold? Which is cold? Which is hot? And I think it's pretty obvious which is cold.

It's this guy right here who's just spending lots of time in secret in order to sin. We say, well, I think I know what the hot is too. That goes over here.

Okay. That's the guy who's on fire for the Lord. He's spending time in secret with God.

And that only leaves the last two there. And so I'm going to go ahead and connect them even though I realize that somebody who's on a journey might not necessarily be, you know, maybe that's not quite accurate. But at the same time, let's not be content to be here because finally the only one of these three that really has a relationship with God is this one here.

The one who actually spends time in secret with Jesus. And so I guess we have, you know, we have this choice that we need to make with our time. And we have 24, every one of us has 24 hours a day, unless it happens to be time change Sunday, then you got 25 hours a day.

But how do you use that 24 hours? What are you going to choose to do if you're making choices? There could come a time in your life, you won't have the choice. Sometimes people get put in prison and suddenly their choice to spend time with their hobbies isn't even an option anymore. Their choice to spend time sleeping might not be an option.

Voice of the Martyrs did an interview with a lady named Sister Tong. She was in China and they went and interviewed her because she had recently got out of jail. See, she was put in jail because she was inviting people into her home to worship the Lord.

Well, the Chinese authorities didn't like that, so they warned her. She didn't listen to the warnings, so they threw her in jail. She got out of jail six months later and they said, can we interview you? And she said, well, yeah, come interview her.

So the first thing they said with a lot of sympathy in their voice, tell us about this time in prison. Talking through a translator. She gets a big smile on her face.

Oh yeah, she says, that was a wonderful time. She just had a big blowing smile on her face about the time she spent in prison. And they looked at the translator and said, are you sure you got that right? Maybe something got lost in translation.

I mean, this was after all a Chinese prison, not a pleasant place. But no, it was right. She was absolutely sincere.

She said, God minister to my heart while I was there. There was peace in my heart that I never had before. Even in the midst of suffering, she said, there in prison I had the opportunity to share the gospel with people I never would have had before.

Being away from her family and church was difficult, but for this Chinese Christian, the presence of Christ and the opportunity to minister in his name made even a communist prison a wonderful experience. Instead of seeing hardship when she was sent to prison, she saw the opportunities to witness and a chance to experience the closeness of God's presence. You see, she was in the habit before going to prison of spending time in secret with Jesus alone.

And so when all of a sudden she had a lot of time to spend in secret, it was a gift. It was not a trial, even though I'm sure it was a trial, but you know, there was things that she had to go through, but it was a time of joy. And afterwards she would witness about that.

So in difficult times, what should we do? Seek God's prayer through faith and through reading his word. I remember my own life, probably one of the most influential messages that I ever heard, or series of messages maybe, but there was a message called Protection from Backsliding by Keith Daniel. And he was warning against backsliding.

He said this about this idea of backsliding. He says it's so much more difficult for a backslider to find vital reality with God than even for an unbeliever. An unbeliever lost in sin, never made a commitment to Christ.

There's a lot of barriers to overcome to bring that person into what he called vital reality with God. But he said it's even more difficult for a backslider. And so he's warning against backsliding.

He made this comment. He's warning people about backsliding. He says, there's some things you need to do to backslide.

He says, if you do these things, you will backslide. But you've got to do them if you're going to be a backslider. One of the things he said you need to do to be a backslider, he says, if you enter into your day without soaking yourself in the word of God, you will backslide.

If you enter into your day without first soaking yourself in the word of God, you will backslide. He told the story of himself as a young man and went to this Bible college. And they were teaching these young men to study the Bible and to preach and to go out and witness.

And there was a prison, a boy's prison not very far away. And they said, you're going to go to this boy's prison. You're going to share the gospel.

And so Keith Daniel, he was taken to this boy's prison. And the warden took him up to this one cell. They said, these are the worst of the worst here.

There are about 20 guys in there. A lot of them have committed murder. They're bad guys.

And he says, we're going to go in there. Actually, you're going to go in there. And he did.

He pushed him in, shut the door, and he walked away. And here's Keith Daniel standing in front of these 20 guys. They could see he's afraid.

They start laughing at him. All these 20 boys, they just start laughing and carrying on and pushing each other. And Keith starts pleading with them and saying, hey, there's a hell.

And he's trying to come up with words to get their attention. And nobody's listening to him. Now, just not long before this, Keith Daniel says, I went through my own personal calvary where God really broke through in my own life.

It was an incredibly painful time. But now here he is in front of these guys and trying to communicate with them the gospel. And they're not listening.

They're tussling with each other. And he just cried out to God. He says, God, I need your help.

And suddenly, these boys started listening to him. And suddenly, they were weeping. And they were just like the spirit of God came on them.

Six of these boys got saved right there in that session. Keith Daniel left. He went back to the college.

That evening, they got a call from the warden. He says, who was it? Where's that young man that preached to these boys? He says, I want him to come back and preach to the entire prison. And we got several hundred people here to listen to him.

He says, I'd like him to come back tonight. And so the leader of the college says, come on, Keith. We're going.

He says, I don't have a message. I don't have any notes. And it's OK.

Just come. God will minister. He'll tell you what to preach.

They went back to the prison, stood in front of the whole group. And he preached to this group of people and invited them to salvation. Out of these hundreds, there were a lot.

I forget what the percentage was. But dozens and dozens of these boys came to Christ. And they started praying with him.

But there's too many. They couldn't pray with each one. They gathered some Bibles around and tried to give these Bibles.

But finally, they had to go home and say, I mean, there was just no way to really give them any kind of discipleship there in that prison. But they went home and just said, we'll have to leave the results with God. Years later, he was back in that same town, Keith was.

And he was walking down the streets. And a man who came walking up to him says, hey, are you Keith Daniel? He says, yes. He says, well, do you remember me? You probably don't.

But I was one of those boys that was in that prison that came to Christ. And he says, really? He says, are you still walking with God? Yes, I am. Did you have your quiet time this morning? Yes, I did.

He says, so you never backslid? Keith, didn't you know? None of us ever backslid. Every single one of the boys in that prison are still walking with the Lord today. They made a commitment that day.

None of us ever backslid. Keith Daniel says, really? I can't believe that. How is it possible that nobody backslid? What happened? He says, well, there's one thing you said.

You had some final comments as you were getting ready to walk back to that college. You got up in front of the whole group and you said this. You held up the Bible.

And you said to this group of people, you said, this book is the source of your survival. You looked us in the eye and said, the devil's priority is going to forever be to keep you from soaking yourself in this book. As long as you never, ever enter your day without soaking yourself in this book, you will never, ever backslide.

As long as you never enter your day without first soaking yourself in this book, you will never backslide. We all heard that and we took it seriously and none of us have backslid. We're all still walking with the Lord.

Keith Daniel said there's three things that you need to do to backslide or three things you do that if you don't do that, that you should do it, if you don't do them, you will backslide. First one, if you never enter your day, if you enter into your day without soaking yourself in the Word of God, you will backslide. Second thing, if you enter your day without unhurried communion with God in prayer.

And we've been talking about that. If you enter your day without unhurried communion with God in prayer. In Thessalonians, it says pray without ceasing.

He says, you know what, do you think that says, is there an equivalent in the Old Testament? He says there is. There's an equivalent verse in the Old Testament to that verse, pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing seems extremely radical, but he says back in the Old Testament, there's an equivalent verse.

He says, I bet you would never think about it, but it's the one back there in Genesis talking about Enoch. It says, Enoch walked with God. Enoch walked with God.

He was a man who knew God. He experienced the daily presence of God. Prayer, and then finally, he said the last one is witness to everyone you meet.

Don't enter into your day without soaking yourself in the Word of God. Don't enter your day without unhurried communion with God in prayer. And finally, witness to everyone you meet.

And I think I shared last time, you know, that I just, well, about these Amazon drivers that are making a steady stream into our driveway the last number of weeks. And, you know, sometimes they come in and I think, wow, that guy, you know, they'll, they'll leave it on the porch. And usually they do.

But I keep, you know, once in a while, I think maybe I should go out and give them a track. Well, last night was like one like that. And so I went out and gave this guy a track, you know, and I thought about the few, the numbers that I'd already missed probably even yet that day.

But the one last night, he says this, I handed him the track. I said, it's a gospel track about Jesus. He says this, he says, I really need this right now because some of the things I'm going through, it was the one, Jeremy's track on change your allegiance.

So I said, well, hey, check out that website at the bottom. You can, you can, you know, get more help there if you want. So maybe you'll get an email from, I don't know.

But the middle one, again, I want to talk about that, especially prayer. Do you really pray to God? Do you pray habitually to God? It starts out as a discipline. What's a discipline? Discipline means you have to push yourself into it, but it becomes eventually a habit.

And we need to remember the reason for this. You see, we need to talk about purpose. What is our purpose for existing? A man lacking purpose will distract himself with pleasure.

Without a clear sense of purpose, we seek temporary distractions to fill the gap. Entertainment, shopping, eating, YouTube shorts, browsing, porn, games, Snapchat, snacks, eBay, hunting videos, edging, Facebook, football. Do these things provide real fulfillment? After an hour of scrolling, do I feel alive and awake or do I feel dull and dead? Do I feel energized and like I'm going somewhere? Purpose gives life direction.

Without it, we wonder aimlessly, looking for satisfaction and other things. Focus on your purpose and the distractions will lose their power over you. Jesus has called us into His kingdom and offered us the greatest purpose imaginable.

Focus and disciplined or aimless and distracted, which will I be? That was from the pursuit of purity on a Cloudvale group I was on. So what is your purpose? You see, there's some things in life that fulfill the purpose that I was called to do and some things I enjoy that maybe they can help with the purpose. You know, the other night we had a volleyball game and I enjoy volleyball and we played some basketball.

I enjoy that, but that's not my purpose in life. You know, there's things I enjoy listening to. Maybe, you know, an audio book about some historical event.

That's fun to listen to. It's not my purpose in life though. We could talk about other hobbies that we have and they're fun.

They provide distractions, but those are not my purpose. But when we spend time in prayer, when we spend time in the Bible and we spend time in witnessing, those things that contribute to my purpose. So what's your purpose? Answer that question and you'll be well on your way to determining what am I going to do with my time.

We talked about the fact that this time and secret is a thermometer, but I have some good news. It's also a thermostat. See, a thermometer doesn't change the temperature, but a thermostat does.

And a lot of the thermostats we have today, they're both. They tell us what temperature it is, but they also allow us to change the temperature. You can change your temperature by the time you spend with God.

So I'm going to ask you a question. I'm asking you individually. Are you a true Christian? Is your name truly in the book of life? If you were to die today, do you have the assurance you'd be right with God? Use the thermometers that God's given to examine ourselves.

If you're not, then use the thermostats He's given you to get right with God. Seek the Lord. Repent.

Use these same thermostats. If you are right with God, use these same thermostats to pursue Him with all your heart. Keep in mind what your true purpose in life is.

Let's bow for prayer.