You Need to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit

Praise the Lord. He knows how to speak to us and help us. The title of my message is, You Need to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit.

I started putting this message together a week or two ago and I was really blessed Thursday night when at least a couple of staff members came up here and called on you men to cry out for the Holy Spirit. Right? You remember that? And it caught my attention because I knew what I was going to be speaking on today. So we're in John 16 and working our way through the life of Christ and this is part of the farewell discourse, which we started a few weeks ago, John 13 to 17.

And as Pastor Nate brought out a few weeks ago, the purpose of it, Jesus said, is in verse one, I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away, to keep you from falling away because there was a danger of that, a real danger. Now this Greek word for falling away is scandalizo. It's where we get the word scandal from.

Scandalizo is used a number of times throughout the New Testament, like for instance in the sower and the seed where Jesus was talking about those who the seed had been sown on rocky soil and they sprouted up and it looked very promising. But when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word immediately, they fall away. Scandalizo.

Luke's version of that, which apparently Jesus gave on another occasion, it wasn't persecution or tribulation, but it was temptation that caused them to fall away. And Jesus, when he was talking about the church in the last days, said many will fall away. That's what became known as the great apostasy.

So Jesus is aware of what's going to begin within a couple of hours as he's giving this. It's very ominous looking. And the disciples are going to experience a tremendous shock, even though Jesus has warned them what was coming.

You know, you can't really be prepared until you see it. They're going to see Jesus arrested, beaten, and hung on a cross to die an agonizing death. That's all going to happen here in the next few hours.

And then on top of that, they are going to have to live with the reality that that very well could be what's going to happen to them as well. They probably were mostly concerned about their own physical well-being. But Jesus was mainly concerned about their eternal souls.

That's what he was concerned about. He did not want them to fall away. Now there's a basic five-step formula you see in stories over and over and over again through scripture.

I'll give you the five D's that I came up with. Deadness, danger, desperation, demanding, and deliverance. Wow, isn't that powerful? I better explain that to you.

Deadness meaning, you know, in the biblical times, especially the Old Testament, the people would just get so far away from the Lord that they were spiritually dead. Now the disciples weren't spiritually dead, but they weren't exactly brimming over with the life of God either. So there was a deadness that was going on in their souls, and that creates danger.

The disciples were in imminent danger right then. And when you're in danger, that creates desperation. And desperation is what helps you to fight your way out of the malaise of spiritual apathy.

And that is what causes you to demand something from God. And I don't mean like an arrogant person comes up and demands something. I mean you won't take no for an answer.

I must have what I need from you, Lord. And then the last one is deliverance. God always answers a cry like that.

Always, always, he answers those cries. And the answer in this case is the Holy Spirit. Jesus has been talking about the Holy Spirit throughout the final discourse.

It's one of his themes. He's interlocked, interweaving different themes throughout these chapters. And he's talked about the Holy Spirit before.

And one of the main functions of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer is to bring conviction. Well, what is conviction? To have a conviction about something means to firmly believe it to be true. Right? To firmly believe it to be true.

So to be filled with the Holy Spirit means that you will have a firm conviction established within you that sin is ugly, selfish, and abhorrent to God. And to be filled with the Spirit means that you will have a firm conviction inside you that God is good, that he's righteous, and that his intentions towards you are pure goodness. And you will have a firm conviction established inside you that one day you will stand before God and you will give an accounting for all that he has given to you and all that he has taught you.

That is strong inside you, the more of the Holy Spirit you have. We need a greater conviction. And that greater conviction is exactly the thing that will create the determination inside you to fight for a pure heart and a pure life.

Something has to shake you out of the terrible, horrid apathy that keeps you bound up in sin. So if the Holy Spirit's going to do all that for us, why aren't we really crying out to God to baptize us, to fill us with the Holy Spirit? That's really what I want to talk about a little bit here this morning. Let me just give you some reasons that came to me as I sought the Lord over this.

The first one would be that we don't cry out because of our lack of faith. We want faith to be this benign belief that, you know, what scriptures say about God, it's all true, you know, and Jesus comes to save our sins, the blood covers our sins, and you know, if you just kind of acknowledge that and go to church and stay in the Christian crowd, you know, you're in. That's the way we want faith to be.

Well, let me ask you some questions. If someone really believes what the Bible says about God's hatred of sin, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that person to avoid it with all their heart? And if a person really believed what the Bible says about the goodness and righteousness of God, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that person to really love the Lord and to really trust Him? And if a person really believed what the Bible says about judgment, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that person to do everything within his power to live a life pleasing to God? So maybe faith is a little deeper and a little more than we have thought it to be in the past. About 15, 20 years ago, I did a really deep study on the word faith and scripture.

I mean, I spent, I don't know, I can't really remember, but it seems like months, at least weeks, really studying out everything the Bible said about faith. And I came away with some convictions about faith and what it looks like in a person. And I'll give you three that I wrote down at the time, created a sermon out of it sometime in the past, I don't know when it was, but a person who has a saving faith in God will live in the reality of God and His kingdom.

You know, when you have that kind of faith in God, you go through your daily life aware of the unseen realm and aware that God is watching you. There's a relationship there. That's what saving faith is.

It's not just going to church on Sunday and believing certain things. It's going to come out in your daily life if you really have faith in God. And a person that has faith believes in the good and merciful character of God.

How does that come about? Through relationship. Because He's real to you, your eyes are opened and you see what He's really like. You're not just taking secondhand information from a sermon or from a book you read or something.

He's becoming real to you. And as He becomes real to you, the reality of what He's like cannot help but to grip your heart and affect your life. And if a person has saving faith, they are going to live their life with the conviction of these things.

You will see it. You will hear it in their voice and the way they talk and the things they talk about, the things that are important to them. It will just be coming out of them, a person who has saving faith.

Now, the opposite of that, of course, is unbelief, right? And unbelief is when God is tiny. You know, and I've said this many times, you'll hear it many more times during your time here, no doubt, that, you know, when you're walking with the Lord, He becomes great inside you. Your inner life becomes full of an awareness of God and you become tiny.

And the opposite of that is when you're full of yourself, God is tiny. And when that's the case, the things of the world seem so important and His commandments seem inconsequential. Not that big of a deal.

What are you making such a big deal about, Pastor Steve? Well, I'm paid to, okay? You need a greater faith than you've had in the past, man. You need a greater faith. You know, the problem with faith is it's kind of a catch-22 with it, because to have greater faith means that you have to cry out for it.

The problem is you don't cry out for it because God is small, you know? And it becomes a catch-22 where you feel like you're never getting anywhere. But you can, man, you can. And that's what I'm here to tell you about this morning.

You can. You can break out of this malaise and this apathy. You can come into the things of God.

You know, I know men to this day, went through the program 20, 30 years ago, still going around the same mountain, still living a life of futility and defeat, still blaming everyone else but themselves for their problems, especially God, still suffering the consequences of their sin. Why? Because of unbelief. Because of apathy.

Because they're unwilling to fight their way out of that spiritual malaise. Secondly, we don't cry out for God because we have a lack of consecration in our lives. In scripture, consecration means separation from that which is common or profane.

There's a separation. It's other than, it's different. You're away from the profane, the common.

And I'll tell you, nothing will stifle a hunger for God as much as worldliness. The spirit of the world is suffocating in America. But in large part, you have control of how much it's going to affect you.

You don't have to be given over to the world. You don't have to indulge in all the entertainment and all the stuff that gives the enemy leeway into your heart. You don't have to indulge in that.

I mean, we're going to be affected by the spirit of the world at some level, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming to you. You know, this theme of worldliness, it's the word cosmos in the Greek. Jesus mentions it 40 times in this sermon.

40 times. I bet you didn't even notice it. 40 times.

Because to Jesus, he sees what's happening. He's going to tell these men who come to arrest him in a couple hours, this is your hour, the hour of darkness. He's going to say that to them because that's what it is.

The spirit of the world is going to come in and destroy the Son of God. It just didn't realize it, meaning Satan, did not realize that it was all part of God's plan. Anyway, probably 20 years ago or something, I wrote Intoxicated with Babylon, The Seduction of God's People in the Last Days.

And you guys, I think they get it in the second phase, right? Is that still true? They keep weeding all my stuff out, you know. Pretty soon it's going to be something different. I read this quote one time.

This isn't actually in the book, but this was written by a man in the 1800s. An Anglican pastor wrote this, Anglican bishop Richard Trench. He said, describing Cosmos, he said, "...all that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitutes a most real and effective power, being the moral or immoral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably to exhale." Man, that guy captured it.

He got it. It's very hard to articulate something like that. What is the world? It's hard to, I mean, I wrote a whole book on it and still didn't feel like I got it, but that's as good as you're going to get in one little statement.

It's the spirit that Satan fosters amongst mankind, which compels people to focus on the temporal instead of the eternal. Gets us to think always about carnal pleasures instead of eternal realities. This spirit hates Jesus, hates his disciples, and is going to do its utmost to destroy Christianity before it even gets off the ground.

But of course, little did it know that the Holy Spirit was going to do something different. This is the spirit that is constantly, unrelentingly trying to draw you into itself, man. Learn to fear it, learn to hate it, because behind that syrupy, sweet, intoxicating smile is a foul devil that wants to destroy your life and drag you into hell.

Number three, the third thing I want to say is that we don't cry out more because of our lack of fear. In the 2017 Pure Life Conference, the theme of it was the fear of the Lord. And I gave a message that year, and I've said some of these things.

I'm going to just express them. You guys wouldn't have heard any of this. But I said, I opened the meeting, the first meeting this way.

I said, if George Barna took a poll of American Christians about what they most fear in life, I suspect it would look something like this. Number one, fear of suffering and death. Number two, fear of losing one's job and or financial security.

Number three, fear of rejection or humiliation. Number four, fear of the uncertainty of the future. Number five, fear of failure.

But where, oh, where is the fear of God? Where are the men of God who cry out, my flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments. You know, the dictionary says that fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, whether the threat is real or imagined. God put that distressing emotion in us for a reason.

Because when we come up to dangerous things, we need that adrenaline to shake us up out of that malaise and cause us to take the actions needed, right? Fight or flight. That's what adrenaline does for you. So fear is a good thing.

And when it comes to spiritual realities, it also serves an important purpose. God wants us to have a certain degree of fear of Him, of judgment, of getting away from Him, a fear of sin and what it can do to us. The very opposite of a cavalier attitude.

Why don't we fear the Lord in America? And I'm going to tell you one reason. One of the reasons is this, because one of the great falsehoods being taught in the church in our day, actually not taught, but I'm going to explain myself here in a minute, is what I would call hyper-grace. And that message is basically kind of what I said before.

You go to church, you believe in God and all that stuff, and you know, God just kind of, it doesn't really matter so much what you do, because you're all, we're all going to go to heaven anyway, right? And then we'll be righteous when we get to heaven. That's kind of the unspoken message of the hyper-grace teaching. Why do these men teach this? Because it's the sort of message that packs out churches.

This is what people want to hear. They want to believe that they don't have to answer for their sin. They want to believe that God's happy with us, no matter how carnal and worldly our life is.

They want to believe that they can have this indulgent lifestyle and heaven too. I was talking to Dave Ravenhill a couple of nights ago, and he pointed out a Martin Lloyd-Jones quote that he ran into. And so I found it, and actually he sent it to me.

And let me just read it to you. He's talking about false teachers and what they're teaching. He says, there's no straight gate in it.

There's no narrow way in it. The falseness of it is to be detected by what it does not say, rather than by what it does say. And it's just at this point that we realize the subtlety of the situation.

Any Christian can detect the man who says outrageously wrong things, but the vast majority of Christians today do not seem to be able to detect the man who leaves out vital things. We have somehow got hold of the idea that error is only that which is outrageously wrong, and we do not seem to understand that the most dangerous person of all is the one who does not emphasize the right things. Are you getting what I'm saying here? You know, it's, well Dave was saying, and I can't remember how he said it, but he was basically saying, yeah, we hear all about the love of God, but we never hear about the holiness of God.

We hear about His compassion and His mercy, but we never hear about judgment. That's what I'm saying about the hyper-grace movement. It's this over-writing message out there.

Why is that message out there? You know, a lot of it is just, a lot of pastors are trying to do the right thing, but the truth is if they brought the unvarnished truth to their congregations, they would be kicked out of their churches. And so a lot of them have to find, you know, ways of slipping it in a little bit here and there, but the problem is the overwhelming desire out there is don't tell us that stuff. We don't want to hear about the cross.

You know, many people claim to want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but I wonder if they really knew what that meant, if they would want that. You know, we need a powerful infilling of the Holy Spirit. I need a greater infilling than I have currently.

We all do, as Pastor Jordan was saying, but that means having our idols exposed and dealt with by the Lord. To have the Holy Spirit in a greater measure means having our pride smashed. It means giving up the self-life and learning to be selfless and caring about other people.

It means to renounce the love of the world and to love God instead of the things of this world. In fact, it means to be hated by the world and the worldly-minded. And I suspect there are those in here today that if you really understood what it meant, your cry would not be, God, fill me with your Spirit.

Your cry would be, God, spare me from your Spirit. But I do believe that there are those in this room today, and I believe this, you, whoever you are, are the ones that this message is for, because I believe the Lord is speaking today to certain ones. I don't know who you are, and what I'm talking about is there are those inside you, there is that unrelenting cry to have more of the Lord.

You're not, you're not, you're learning, I should say, to see much more than you thought you were coming here for. You're getting a side of that, and you want more. The fourth thing I would say is that we don't cry out for the Holy Spirit more just because we don't sense our need.

We have a lack of need. You guys are, while you're here, this nine months, that seems like nine years to you, no doubt, you are blessed in many ways. You know, it's a closed community, which means that whenever, you know, in the past when you would get tempted, or you'd have some impulse to go get into porn, or go get into sexual sin, or something, you could just do it.

You'd find a way to do it, but you can't do that here, and that's a blessing. It's a wonderful blessing. You know, it gives the Lord nine months to cleanse all that filth out of your mind.

How many of you want that out of your mind, right? And being separated from it is a blessing, because for nine months, the enemy is not going to be able to do that to you, and it gives you time to establish a devotional life. The thing that's going to carry you through your relationship with God that's real, it's the thing the Lord has given to you, that will take you all the way through into a life of victory, all the way. And it's going to give you time to develop a godly lifestyle, instead of a half-hearted lifestyle.

And of course, as the things I've been sharing, your time here, the reality of God is going to be stronger. How many of you have been here for five months or more? Do you feel like God is more real to you now than when you first came here? That's good. Do you feel more separated from the world than when you came here? Is the fear of the Lord starting to take root in your heart? A little bit? Okay, so all that's good.

That's why we have it set up this way. We could have just had it to where you just come in, and you know, oh, you can leave and go do whatever you want, no rules. Wouldn't that be great? No, it wouldn't.

You wouldn't have came here if it would have been that way anyway. But there are two negatives I need to touch on. You're not facing the consequences of your continuous indulgence in pornography and sin anymore.

You know, you're being separated from it, and so because you're being separated from it, you're starting to lose that sense of desperation that caused you to come to Kentucky, of all places. I mean, you had to be desperate, right? I was desperate, and the problem we have had ever since we started this residential program 35 years ago now is guys get here, and over time, you know, they're getting further and further away from the thing that caused all the problems in their life, and so increasingly they're just feeling more relaxed and less hungry, less desperate. So that's a danger for you in this place.

And also, you're in these meetings, you're in the Word every morning, you're in prayer every morning, you're in a godly atmosphere. Everywhere you turn, you're hearing the message to walk with the Lord in this place, right? It's a godly atmosphere here. The presence of God is here, and the tiny little negative to that is that you can easily... How do I say it? Think you're somewhere you're not.

It's a danger. Now look, if you're responding to the Lord, men, if you're responding to the Lord, by the time you finish this program, you are going to be a mile or two down the road. You know, you are going to make real progress, and you're going to be ready to face the rest of your life in victory, but you're not 20 miles down the road.

You understand? You're a couple of miles down the road. It's real. What God is going to do inside you is real, but you're not way down the road.

You're not where Pastor Ed is, or Pastor Nate, or Jordan, or these guys, and so you can get kind of overconfident and get out of here, and then you start kind of taking it easy on yourself. You know, you're fighting for something in this program. You're fighting against your flesh and all that.

You're fighting to have a life in God, but if you go home and you give up on your time with God, you give up on your consecration, you know, you're going to end up with nothing. Worse than if you never came here, because now you're held responsible for what you've been given and taught. In Luke 11, Jesus said, if you want the Holy Spirit, ask, seek, knock, and really the Greek or not, yeah, Greek grammar means more appropriately, ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking, and he goes on to say, if you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? All right, now I'm going to end with a little bit of my testimony.

I don't think I've ever really shared this before. In 1992, Kathy and I found out about the Faith Homes, and that's a little ministry north of Chicago, and we heard that it was a powerful, or no, what was it called? A spiritual powerhouse is what we were told about it, and we went there for a visit, and what we found in that place were people who were full of the Holy Spirit. Now, by 1992, I'm just trying to help you to understand where I was at.

I had been free from sexual sin for seven years, okay? May of 85 was the last time I ever fornicated, and so I had been free for seven years by that point. I had preached in churches all over the country. I had been on more national radio and TV shows than I can begin to remember.

That was my life back then. I was constantly out there, and I had a certain... I did. I had a passion for God, and it came through in my preaching and stuff, and people were affected by it, but you know what? It didn't mean anything, because I was still very much full of myself.

I could preach. I could be on TV, but to live with a bunch of sex addicts, who I really was, I couldn't escape. I couldn't hide who I was.

I was just full of myself still. Think of this, six or seven years down the road from now for you, that's where I was in regards to sexual sin, but there is so much more to the Christian life than just overcoming sexual sin, and you know what? I knew I was in trouble, and I was desperate. I was desperate, and when I saw what I saw in that place, I saw people who had a quiet fire for God, and I wanted what I saw.

Kathy and I both, we wanted what we saw there, and I started crying out to the Lord, and I would just... It was inside me constantly, constantly, day in, day out, God, I've got to know you. Lord, please, I have to come into a real life in God. I don't know how to love people, Lord.

I need your love. I feel like the answers I have are just kind of like head knowledge, Lord. I need to walk in your wisdom.

I need a greater infilling of your Holy Spirit. Lord, please, please fill me with your Spirit. I would cry out like that to the Lord day in and day out, asking, pleading, seeking, knocking, always asking, asking.

Why? Because I was desperate. I knew that I did not have a life in God like I should have, and I certainly didn't have much at all to give to other people. I mean, I could tell them the right answers.

We had biblical counseling established from the early days. I could preach with passion, but to love people, to care about people, to intercede for hours for people, I didn't have that, and we just kept going, making trips up there. I'd go up there for usually three weeks at a time, two weeks at a time, and I'd be there just pleading with God, please, God, please, please, please, please, God, and those answers didn't come right away.

I mean, He was answering. I just didn't see it. In fact, it would be years before I started realizing, wow, God really has been answering that cry in my heart, and you know, I had originally written at the altar of sexual idolatry in 1987, and it was just this little thin book.

You can actually get it on eBay and stuff now. It's a little blue thing, but within, let's see, I would say it started in 92, going there. Within a few years, that book had doubled or tripled in size.

I had written Intoxicated with Babylon. I had written Living in Victory and other books and stuff, and God started using us, this ministry, in a much more powerful way. God, people would come here and would be just in awe of the presence of God in this place.

Why? Not because I'm anything. That was, it's the opposite of that, but I understood where to go, and I wasn't going to be denied. That's what I mean about having that desperation that puts a demand in your heart to God.

Lord, I will not take no for an answer. I need you to do a deep and powerful work inside me. I'm tired of this half-hearted Christianity.

I'm tired of being a spiritual loser, Lord, someone who doesn't have anything to give anybody, and God answered that prayer. It just came and came in many different ways. He gave us experiences that were unbelievable, the things we experienced with God in those days, and the things He allowed us to do over the years since then.

Tremendous, tremendous things. You know, at the time I was crying out, I didn't have much faith. I remember a time when I felt like my faith was hanging by a thread, but you know when you're desperate, you don't even think in those terms, because desperation, you have nowhere else to turn.

At least that's the way I saw it, and I want to tell you something. I hope you will believe what I'm about to say is that God answers every prayer. He answered every prayer, every cry.

All the times you guys have gone to altar calls, even in the past before you came here, it didn't feel like anything was changing. You don't understand that God was preparing you for something. He was preparing you for the day you would come into this place, and the Lord would be able then, finally, to get you separated from all the junk and be able to minister to you heart to heart.

He has answered those cries that were in your heart. You wouldn't be here if there wouldn't have been a cry in your heart for freedom, and He is here to answer those cries, and He will give you so much more than you thought, and that's what happened for me. I just knew I needed the Lord in a greater way, but I had no idea all that He was going to give us and bless us with.

I had no idea, and I just want to invite you guys, just like I said before I started sharing this message, I want to invite you to cry out to the Lord for a fresh infilling of His Holy Spirit. That is a prayer that God wants to answer, men. He wants to answer it.

I wish you could know how great His heart is to answer that cry, but don't think that a 10 cent prayer, don't expect a million dollar answer. You know, you have to start crying out to the Lord. Reagan, why don't you come on up here.

I want to give you the opportunity this morning, let's all stand up. I want to give you the opportunity. This isn't going to be an altar call like normal, you know, come up and repent, and you know, all that stuff, but I do want to open this altar for any who want to start crying out to the Lord.

This would be a good time to do that. Just slip out right now if you want to, and come down here. Father, I want to come into your presence by the blood of Jesus, and I want to pray for these men.

Lord, your word says that if we pray according to your will, you hear us. And if we know that you hear us, we know we have the request that we've asked for you, Lord. And I know, I know that what you have in store for these men is more than they can even comprehend.

And I ask you, Lord, to fulfill your promises and your purpose in them. Lord, we, we have allowed the devil to fulfill his purposes in our lives, his ugly, selfish, corrupt purposes. We have been willingly led.

And God, I believe that when we cry to you, you are saying, enough, enough. Now it's my turn to fulfill my will in their lives, Lord. And I pray that you would do it.

I pray that you would fulfill your purposes in these men's lives. I pray, Lord, that at this moment you would begin a process, Lord, of completely overturning all of the works of the enemy, all of the deeds of the devil, all of his lies, all of his schemes. And I pray, Lord, that you would begin to fulfill your promises in these men, that they would be godly men, that they would be upright, that they would be courageous, that they would be humble, that they would be lovers of good, that they would be lovers of righteousness, that they would be a witness and a testimony in this world for the glory of Jesus Christ, that they would become trophies of your grace, that they would be cleansed from every dishonorable thing and become vessels for honorable use, set apart as holy, ready for every good work.

I pray for that, Lord. I pray that you would baptize these men in the fire of the Holy Spirit for the cleansing of their body, the cleansing of their soul, the cleansing of their mind. Lord, I pray that you would consecrate these men to your will, God, your good and pleasing and perfect will, that they would become men of God, they would become men who know how to lead wives and children and friends into a life of righteousness, Lord, they'd become avenues of mercy in this world, Lord, that you would find in them a vessel that the Spirit can pour through.

Lord, I pray that these men would be filled with the knowledge of your will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that they walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to you, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power according to your glorious might for endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who's qualifying them to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Lord, I pray that you would reveal to them the hope to which they've been called. I pray make it so real in their life, Lord.

Jesus, you know we've blinded our eyes, we've stopped up our ears, but Jesus, I pray that you would begin unveiling to them what you've called them to, what the riches of your glorious inheritance and the saints really are, and the measurable greatness of your power toward us who believe. I ask you for this, Lord. I pray, please, put in them a fighting spirit.

Please, a fighting spirit that we wouldn't be meant, we would not settle. Lord, you know we settle. We settle for less than what you are offering us, and I pray that that would change today, Lord, and that we would become men who are pursuing a heavenly calling, who are fighting the good fight of the faith, who are taking hold of the eternal life to which we've been called.

We're fleeing youthful passions, and we're pursuing godliness. I pray for this, Lord. Put a vision in these men's hearts and minds, Lord.

Put something eternal in them. Lord, we need, please, I need it. I need a greater vision of what you're calling me to, Lord, so I don't waste my life on things that don't matter.

Jesus, I know, I know, Lord, you're willing to do this, and I ask you for it. I ask you for it, Lord. Please, please, mold these men into the vessel that you're calling them to be, Lord, and I ask for endurance, just, yeah, what Pastor Steve was saying, that perseverance, that relentless cry.

I pray, Lord, I didn't have that at all, not a bit. I pray, Lord, put a relentless cry in us for more of you. Never satisfied, Lord, please make us men like that who are never satisfied until we reach the full measure of the stature of Jesus Christ, Lord.

Always upward, always onward, I pray, Lord, put that in us, and I thank you for it in Jesus' name. Like I said, I believe that there were certain ones in here that God was speaking to, especially, I'm sure that all you guys that came down here are responding to the Lord in some way, but there are some who are going to be that, what Pastor Nate just prayed. That's going to be your story next week, next year, 10 years from now.

God bless you all. You're dismissed. You're dismissed to continue to cry out to the Lord.