Hope Church LV Sermons
Time with the Father
Next weekend is a significant milestone for us as a church family. Next weekend, we begin our last series as a portable church. Amen? That's a significant milestone. Next weekend, we're going to begin a new series simply entitled "Not by sight." Ordinary people. Extraordinary faith. We're going to begin a series next weekend studying straight through a chapter in the Bible that is a famous chapter in Scripture. Anybody got a guess with that title? What chapter we're going to study through? Hebrews 11. It's known as the Hall of Faith. The 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews walks through story after story of ordinary people just like you and me who had extraordinary faith and an extraordinary God. And because of that, saw God do unbelievable things in and through their lives. And we just thought it very appropriate as we take this next step as we begin to move towards moving in a permanent campus that we go back where we began. In 2001, in February of that year, 18 people gathered in my home and we started a Bible study that ultimately that later on that year became this fellowship. And when we began that Bible study together, we walked straight through Hebrews 11. And we did that because we at that point were stepping out on a tremendous journey of faith. There was just a small group of people gathered in the living room desperate for God, trusting and believing that God had called us to something significant, but it was only by faith that we stepped out together. And we thought it very appropriate as we now are 10 years old and we see a lot more people than just a small group and we're moving in a permanent campus. We thought it very appropriate for us to remind ourselves that we are just as desperate for God today as we were 10 years ago with 18 adults sitting in a living room beginning this journey. So we're going to look at some principles of faith as a family of faith as we move towards this significant next step. We're going to begin that next weekend. So, what about this weekend? What are we going to do this weekend? Well, I was praying about that and really wrestling before the Lord about what to do this particular weekend because we knew we were starting that series next weekend and we knew we had David Nasser coming last weekend. So, Lord what do you want us to do this weekend and it was actually Tuesday of this week. I was on an airplane headed down to Tampa, Florida to go and preach at a missions conference on Wednesday evening and I was very torn in my spirit because on Wednesday evening I was preaching at a missions conference while the New York Yankees were praying the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the city where I was. I looked at the pastor and I said, "How do you plan a service on the last night of the regular season of Major League Baseball?" He said, "Oh, there's a game tonight and I thought, "My Lord, I'm in the wrong church, man. I can't even believe. He doesn't know that." But I was on the plane headed down to Tampa to go preach this missions conference and the Lord laid a verse on my heart and I got my Bible out on the plane and I opened it up and I just started reading this verse over and over and over again. And God just really spoke some truth into my heart out of a very simple verse of Scripture. If you have your Bible, I want you to turn to the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. We're going to read one verse, it's verse 35. Mark chapter 1 verse 35 says, "In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went to a secluded place and was praying there." I want you to read it out loud with me off the screen. You ready? Here we go. One, two, three. "In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place and was praying there." Simple verse of Scripture. Describing a single act in the life of the Lord Jesus, but as I read it on the airplane this week, I was blown away by the reality of what it described. This simple verse of Scripture describes Jesus' intimate fellowship with the Father. I want to give you a reality on the screen. You may not have thought of this before. Everything Jesus did, he did out of the overflow of intimacy with the Father. When Jesus was on the earth, he was 100% God, but he was also 100% man, and in his humanity he chose to live in complete dependence on the Father. To the point that everything Jesus did on the earth, he did out of the overflow of intimacy with the Father. Let me show it to you in another place in Scripture. Over in John chapter 14, Philip comes up to Jesus, and he says to Jesus, "Jesus show us the Father." And here's how Jesus responds in John 14, verse 9, "Jesus said to him, 'Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Philip?' He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in me does his work." Here, Jesus said to Philip, "When you hear me speak, it's not my words. It's the Father's words in me. As I live in fellowship with the Father, the Father speaks through me." Jesus said, "Philip, when you see me work, it's not my works. It's the Father at work in me as I live in dependence on him." Jesus, in his humanity, chose to live in dependence on the Father. Giving you and I, a perfect example of what a life following Christ is to look like. But I want to ask a question. If Jesus and his humanity needed time with the Father... Now, you know where I'm going with this, right? If Jesus and his humanity needed time with the Father, how much more do you and I? We're talking Jesus. If Jesus needed time with the Father, how much more do you and I? I really believe what I want to share with you this weekend is it's significant. It may not have the wow factor, but it's as significant as anything I'll ever teach you. Here's what I believe. If we live out what I'm going to share with you this weekend, our church will never be the same. Our church will never be the same. If you and I walk away from here, if hundreds of us walk away from here this weekend, with a passion to spend time with the Father, let me tell you what's going to happen. Our families are going to be changed. Our small groups are going to be changed. The way we live out our lives to reach our lost friends and neighbors is going to be changed. The way we serve in the body of Christ is going to be changed. Why? Because it all happens out of the overflow of intimate time with the Father. So a couple of reasons I'm doing this this weekend. Number one, I'm doing this because we have a lot of new believers in our fellowship. We have a lot of people that came to Christ last weekend. We've got a lot of people that have come to Christ over the last several months. And the understanding is you begin a journey with Christ. The importance of time with the Father is the most important lesson you can ever learn. But I'm also doing this because as we begin the next decade of ministry together, we just finished decade number one, as we begin the next decade of ministry together. Listen to me. I want everybody to look right here. The greatest thing, any one of us, me included, the greatest thing any of us bring into this fellowship is our intimate love relationship with the Father. Period. It's not our gifts. It's not our abilities. It's not our resources. It's not our creativity. It is time with the Father. Let me, let me give you a life-changing reality up on the screen. We've looked at this many times, but I want you to see it. Everything Jesus desires to do through my life, He will do out of the overflow of my love relationship with Him. I want you to read that out loud with me off the screen, whether you're here or in Boulder City. I want you to read that out loud. You ready? Here we go. One, two, three. Everything Jesus desires to do through my life. He will do out of the overflow of my relationship with Him. If you believe that, say amen. Then what's the greatest thing you and I can do? Have a love relationship with Him where we're pursuing time with the Father. If you're a small group leader in our church, the greatest thing you can do for your small group is to spend intimate time with the Father, because everything God wants to do through your life as a small group leader, He will do out of the overflow of what He's doing in your life as you spend time with Him. If you're an usher or a greeter in our church, the greatest thing you can do is spend intimate time with the Father. If you're serving in a homeless ministry or working in the music department, or if you're a mission team leader, or if you're serving in the family ministry's area, the greatest thing you can do is spend time daily with the Father. Because everything he desires to do through you, he does out of the overflow of his relationship with you. Let me ask you a question. What's one of the most difficult things as a believer to do with regularity and consistency? Spend time daily with the Father, right? Everything tries to steal that away. Every other situation in circumstance in life tries to rob us of that. Why? Because the enemy does not care what we do as long as we don't do that. Why? Because everything else flows out of that. So I want to give you a two-fold statement. Here's the first part of it. Jesus spent time with the Father. Jesus spent time with the Father. Now I want to give you five aspects right out of this verse of His time with the Father that are extremely applicable for us this weekend. Here's the first one. The time He spent was intentional. Look at the verse. If you have your Bible, I want you to keep it open to Mark 135. I'm going to keep going back to it over and over and over. We're going to just pick this verse apart. We're going to pick it clean, all right? In the early morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up. He got up. There's an air of intentionality about His time with the Father. As a matter of fact, in the Greek text, that phrase got up is active and not passive. It doesn't mean something just woke Him up. It wasn't that an outside force came and said, "Hey, you need to get up." No, it was an active decision. He got up. There was an intentionality about spending time with the Father. The word intentional means to be done on purpose or by design. Let me ask you a question. Are you intentional about spending time with the Father? Do you have a plan to spend time daily with the Father? Or is it just one of those things? Well, if today allows me the opportunity, well, I just didn't have time today. Jesus was intentional. The first thing the verse says is, "He got up. He had a plan. He had a design." I want to put a quote up on the screen by my name, Claude Cranford. You've heard me quote him a lot. I want to give you a few of his quotes tonight. Here's one that Claude spoke into my life years ago. He said, "Every morning, lean down arms upon the windowsill of heaven and gaze into the face of the Lord. So wrote some lover of Christ long ago describing what we often call a quiet time of devotion for centuries. Those who have truly sought to know God intimately have found it imperative to set aside some time in each day to focus their attention and affection on Him." You study church history. You study the history of Christianity all the way back to the time of Christ. Let me tell you what you'll find. A consistent design in the life of believers to carve out time to spend daily with the Father. There is no substitute in the life of a believer. It was intentional. Number two, the time he spent was in the morning. Look what it says. In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up. Now, before you stop listening to me, I'm not here implying that the only time we can spend time with the Father is in the morning. But I am saying it was the pattern of Jesus. Jesus spent time with the Father in the morning. And here's what I think we need to take away from that. The time that you and I set aside to spend with the Father does not need to be time left over. It needs to be time that is a priority in our lives. Now, you can establish priorities in your life that don't necessarily have to happen in the morning. But if you're not careful, if you spend time with God daily and you're one of those night people, the likes to spend time with God at night, if you're not careful, what we wind up doing is simply giving God our leftovers at the end of the day when our mind's not sharp. We're not thinking clearly. We're ready to go to bed and we're just trying to get this done so we can end the day. The point of the life of Jesus is it was a priority. And let me say another thing about why I think it's significant that we make it a priority time in the morning. It's imperative that we fix our heart on God every day. Let me show you a verse of Scripture that might surprise you about yourself. It shouldn't, but maybe it will. Jeremiah 17, verse 9, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick who can understand." Here's what that means. "Your heart and my heart will lie to us." It will tell you this is what you need to be happy. This is what you need to be satisfied. This is what you need to be content. This is what you need to really live and enjoy life. Your heart will lie to you and tell you all kinds of things. Why? Because our heart is affected by sin as sinners, as fallen human beings. We live with this nature that the Bible expresses as our heart that is bent towards doing opposite of what God would have us to do. And every day it's imperative that we fix our heart on Him. Let me show you another quote by Clyde. Look at this on the screen. "If we do not fix our hearts on God in the morning, they will fix on the first thing that comes along. When temptation comes, our hearts will fix on that and we will sin. Or when an opportunity comes along that may not be God's will, our heart will fix on that opportunity. Then if we go to God at all, we go not for guidance, but for permission." And there's a vast difference between the two. It's important that we understand this principle of fixing our heart on God. Again, I'm not saying you can't do that at night. You can, but you need to make sure it's a priority, and you need to make sure that every day there's an element of your day that enables you to fix your heart on God. And I'll just be honest with you speaking from my own personal experience. When I don't spend time with God in the morning, those are the days I struggle with my flesh more than any other. When I don't spend time with God in the morning, my flesh, my heart wants to wrap itself around things. That's just how wicked we are. My eyes tend to wander, my mind tends to wander. I tend to have thoughts I shouldn't have. If I don't fix my heart on God in the morning, Jesus' time was intentional. It was in the morning. Number three, it was without distractions. You hear what it said next? "In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house." Now, it's interesting in the original Greek, the word house is not really in there. That's something that the translators have given us. They've implied because of the verb that is used here. It's literally just one word. It's just the word "go away." And the principle is, Jesus got up that morning and he left. He went away. The Greek phrase really is a compound word that means "to go away from." And the principle is that Jesus wanted solitude with the Father. He moved away from distractions. How many of you know what it is to get up in the morning to spend time with God? And then all of a sudden, man, there's one distraction after another. The phone's going off. The email's dinging in. The iPad's saying you got a message on Facebook. I mean, there's just distraction after distraction after distraction. And before you know it, 15, 20, 30 minutes are gone. You haven't spent any time with God, but you've returned a few social media messages, right? We all live there. Listen to what Henry Blackaby says, "Among the enemies to devotion, none is so harmful as distractions. Whatever excites the curiosity, scatters the thoughts, disquiets the heart, absorbs the interest or shifts our life focus from the kingdom of God within us to the world around us." That is distraction. The world is full of them. Our science-based civilization has given us many benefits, but it has multiplied our distractions and so taken away far more than it has given. So let me ask you a question. What distractions do you need to remove to spend time with the Father daily? What distractions do you need to remove? What is it in your life? You know what it is. You know what that thing is that keeps you from spending time with the Father. You know what the enemy uses. The principle of the life of Christ is we got to get the distractions out. Why? Because everything God desires to do in our lives, He does out of the overflow of our relationship with Him. It's that important. Number four, the time He spent was alone. Jesus got up, left the house and went to a secluded place. The word secluded is a word that means it's literally translated in the New Testament over and over and over again with the word wilderness or desert. It means He went to a place by Himself. What's the point? What am I trying to say here? Here's what I'm trying to say. This is not family Bible time. This is not even prayer time with your wife. I'm talking about you alone with God. If Jesus needed to be alone with the Father, how much more do you and I listen? If I'm going to love my wife as Christ loved the church, let me tell you what I need to do. I need to move away from my wife to spend time alone with God because the only way I can love my wife is Christ in me loving her through me in a way that I could never love her. I'm not saying that family Bible time and praying with your spouse is not wonderful things to do, they're great things to do, but they need to be on top of your time alone with God. Number five, it was consistent. It was consistent. Mark doesn't really tell us, but in Luke chapter five, we get the idea when Luke, the gospel writer, says Jesus Himself would often slip away. It's in the present act of tense. It means it describes an ongoing continuous pattern of His life. He would often slip away to the wilderness to pray. This one in Mark 135 was not an isolated incident in the life of Christ. It was the consistent pattern of the life of Jesus to remove distractions, get away by Himself, get alone with the Father away from everything else and spend intimate moments in fellowship with the Father. I want you to, I want to put those five words back up on the screen, but those five words, intentional in the morning without distractions, alone, consist the pattern of your life. Now here's what I want you to do. I want you to lay those five words down on your life. Do those describe your time with the Father? It's intentional. I've got a plan. I've got a design. It's in the morning or it's a priority time in my day when I'm fixing my heart on God. I'm removing the distractions in my life so that God has my complete and undivided attention. I'm by myself alone before God so that God can speak into my life. It's consistent. It's not the exception. It's the rule. It's the pattern. Jesus spent time with the Father. Let me give you the rest of the statement. Jesus spent time with the Father so that the Father could accomplish His purpose through Him. Jesus spent time with the Father so that the Father could accomplish His purpose. Do you remember what we said at the beginning? Everything Jesus did, He did out of the overflow of intimacy with the Father. Jesus maintained the heart of the Father through spending intimate moments with Him in prayer. Let me just give you quickly a couple of examples. Turn over your Bible to Luke chapter 4 and Luke chapter 4 and verse 42. The Bible says, "When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place." Now Luke doesn't tell us what he was doing there but this text is the same time as Mark 135. So he went away there to pray and the crowds were searching for Him and came to Him and tried to keep Him from going away from them. Let me show you something here. What would you and I have done right there? Here's Jesus the preacher, Jesus proclaiming the gospel and here come the multitudes saying, "Lord, if you'll stay welcome here you preach, we'll bring our friends." You know what we just said? This has got to be the will of God. I mean, they're coming by the thousands. People are begging me. They've chased me down in the wilderness just to come hear me preach. This has got to be God's plan to start a church right here. Yeah, look what Jesus says. He said to them, "I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also for I was sent for this purpose." How did He maintain the heart of the Father by spending intimate moments in fellowship with Him? Later on in the same gospel Luke chapter 6 verse 12 it says it was at this time He went off to the mountain to pray and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. Started at night, went all the way through the morning. There's a way to make it work at night, right? You just start at night and carry it all the way through the morning. Verse 13, "And when day came He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them." You see that here was Jesus calling the first twelve disciples. How did He get it right? He spent the whole night in fellowship with the Father so that the Father could accomplish His purpose through Him. Now I'll say it again. If Jesus, the Son of God who was 100% God in the flesh, if Jesus needed time along with the Father, how much more desperate are you and I? If you believe today that we are desperate to spend time with God based on what we've already looked at, would you just hold your hand up? I mean it's pretty evident when you look at Scripture just hold it up for a minute, hold it up. Now put it down. Does the life that we live demonstrate the desperation that is so obvious when we see it in Scripture? Do I have a plan and a design and a passion to spend time with the Father? Let me give you the life application. Put it up on the screen. I must spend time with the Father so that the Father can accomplish His purpose through me. I want to read it out loud. You ready? Here we go. One, two, three. I must spend time with the Father so that the Father can accomplish His purpose through me. If you believe that's true, say amen. All right, then I want to close by asking one final question. How? Vance, you've made the case from Scripture. I believe it. How do I do it? How do I spend time with God? And I want to give you three practical steps to spending time with God. Here's step number one, establish the proper goal. Look on the screen. The goal is to know God by spending time with Him. That's it. Listen to me, the goal is not to read through the Bible in a year. Okay? Look, nothing wrong with reading through the Bible in a year. Hey, do it in a month. I read it as much as you want. Nothing wrong with one one-year Bible plan. Those are awesome. But the goal is not to read through the Bible in a year. The goal is to know Him by spending time with Him. The goal is not to become a theologian. The goal is not to be able to answer every doctrinal and theological question. The goal is to know Him by spending time with the Father. The goal is not to be sure I read at least a chapter every day. That's not the goal. If you're going to really spend time with God, it's important that we have the right goal. The goal is simply to know Him. So the only objective is to spend time with Him. The primary way He's given us to do this is through His Word. God gave us His Word so that we can spend time with Him. But you have to be very careful or it becomes about reading chapters and finishing books. It becomes about how far did I read? How much did I read? Did I read Old Testament, New Testament, Psalm, Proverbs? Did I get through my list today? That's not the goal. The goal is to know Him by spending time with Him. That's the first step. Let me give you the second one. Prepare your heart. Prepare your heart. There are three key words that I put on the screen, prayer, faith, patience. I'm going to explain what those mean. When you sit down to spend time with God, step one, after establishing your focus, knowing what you're there to do, step one is to prepare your heart and it begins with prayer. Don't rush in to your time with the Father. Before you read the Word, stop and begin. You do it in your own words. We begin with something like this. God, I need you today. God, I need to spend time with you today. Lord, every, some days I have to do it. Lord, everything in me wants to go start my day. God, everything in me wants to go start checking off my list of things I got to get done today. Everything in me is ready to shift into gear number two, but God, I need you. So Lord, would you steal my heart? Sometimes I'll pray a verse like Psalm 119 verse 18 where the psalmist said, "Open my eyes that I might receive wonderful things from your law. Pray." Then the second word is faith. And by faith, I mean faith in his presence. By faith, acknowledge God's presence. Here's what I mean by that. You're not just reading the Bible. You're spending time with God. And listen, our atory said it best. You don't have to conjure up the presence of God. You don't have to set the mood. You don't have to light a candle. You don't have to get music playing in the background. To us, you're in God. Listen to me. God is there. And sometimes it helps me when I sit down, I open my Bible and I say, "God, I need you today in Lord by faith." I just want to acknowledge that you're here, whether I feel it or not. Some days they'll be more emotional than others. Some days won't be an emotion at all. But God, by faith, I just acknowledge you're here. And then number three is the word patience. Patience. Take time to focus on the Lord. Let me give you some practical ideas. Before you launch into your Bible reading, let me tell you what I do. Sometimes I'll turn on a worship song. And I'll just use that not to try to conjure up God's presence. No, but to try to get my heart still. I don't know about you, but I'm type A. I wake up every day with a list. I got stuff, man. I got to get done. And if I don't get some stuff done today, I feel like I didn't make it. I didn't do good today. So from the moment I wake up, man, I wake up singing. I'm a morning person. I wake up alive to the world and I'm ready to go, get after it. And sometimes I just need to steal my heart. I listen to a worship song or I'll get a devotional like my utmost for his highest by Oswald chambers or experiencing God day by day by Henry Blackaby or mornings and evenings by Charles Spurgeon. I'll grab one of those devotions and I'll just read some of those of you right now. I'm reading the book The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. Unbelievable book. I've read it before and I'm reading it again as like revival all over again. I'm reading this book and I'm using a few excerpts out of that book every morning to kind of just prepare my heart. If we're not careful, we just sit down and immediately start reading so we can get it done. Sometimes it's good to just stop and prepare your heart. Third step, enjoy his presence. Same three words. Prayer, faith, patience. Let me tell you what I mean. Once you've prepared your heart, once you've acknowledged his presence, then you begin to read the word. Listen, you need to read the word conversationally. Here's what that means. If you're reading in the Bible and there's a promise, you stop and you talk to God and you claim it. God, I know you wrote that for me or I claim that promise for my life. God, I pray that promise today over my children. And you know what begins to happen? Instead of just reading the Bible, now let me tell you what I'm doing. Through the Bible, I'm having a conversation with God. I'm spending, if there's a promise, claim it. If there's a sin, confess it. Sometimes you're reading the word and God will just put his finger right on your heart. Hey, the time to deal with that is not later. The time to deal with that is right then. When the Spirit of God begins to talk to you about something right there, you just stop and you say, God, I realize that's not me. Lord, I need to be that. But God, you know my heart. God, Lord, I confess that to you. Lord, I know it's only by you that I'll live that way. If there's a command, submit to it. If you're reading in Scripture and you come across a command, you just stop right there and say, God, I submit to that. Or even though everything in me wants to do something else, God, I yield to that. And Lord, I know today you're going to have to remind me of that over and over and over because I know how fleshly I can be. But right now in this moment, Father, I yield to that. And let me just say this, if you're reading the word and there's a question, ask it. Sometimes you read the Bible, it just doesn't make sense. You know who the first person to call is, not your small group leader, not your pastor. Let me tell you the first person to call is, your father. Lord, I don't understand that. God, will you help me? Lord, I know it's not a problem with your word. I know it's a problem of my understanding. God, and you know what happens as you read the word this way? Now you're not just reading some Bible verses. You're spending time with your father. You're having a conversation with God about his truth. Second word is faith. Let me say it this way. You need to read the word with an awareness of God. But listen, read it with an awareness of his awareness of you. Here's what I mean by that. The best illustration I ever heard. Imagine that a man has a son going off to college. And the son goes off to college and the dad thinks, you know, man, I need to write my son a letter. One of those, here's how to live your life letters. And so the father sits down and he writes this letter and he puts it in the mail to his sons back in the old days before they had email and all that. He puts it in the mail. And then his business sends him on a trip and he winds up in the town where his son's in college at his son's house when his son walks in from the mailbox with the letter. And the son sits down in the chair and opens the letter. And the father sits down on the arm of the chair with the son. And the son begins to read. And as soon as he begins to read, the father says, wait a minute, let me tell you what I mean when I said that. Son, let me tell you how that applies to your life. That's the image you need to have in your mind every day. Because let me tell you what you got. You got a letter from your father telling you how to live life. And every morning you get to sit down and open that letter and he is with you. And as you begin to read that letter, the father will speak to your heart and say, son, daughter, let me tell you how that applies. Let me tell you what I want to change in you today, to conform your life to the truth of my work. What is that? That's faith. I'm reading the word with an awareness of God and with an awareness of his awareness of me. And lastly, patients, don't be in a hurry. The only limitation in your time with the father is time. There's some mornings, obviously you can see this weekend, God starts speaking out of one verse. Some mornings in my time with the father, I don't get past one verse. What did you read today, one verse? Wow, you didn't read a whole chapter? It's not the goal. The goal spent time with the father. You may read half a verse and God may break your heart. It's okay to camp out there. I encourage you as you spend time with God, you pick a book, pick a book in the Bible and you just start chapter one verse one. And you set aside some time, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever you decide to set aside, I encourage you to at least try to set aside 20 minutes as a starting block. You just start chapter one verse one. You do what I've said. God, I need you to speak to me. Lord, I acknowledge your presence. You prepare your heart. Then you start reading through that text. You conversate with the father about that text. Let me tell you when you stop, when the time's done. Some mornings you'll read a verse, some mornings you'll read a chapter, some mornings you might read two or three chapters, some mornings you might read six verses. And when you stop, you just mark it right there next morning, you pick back up right there. Good morning, Lord. And when you're done with that book, the Bible, you know what you can say? Lord, I sure enjoy studying that book with you. That means you learned everything that was in the book, but it does mean you sat at his feet and you listened to him as he spoke into your life out of that text of Scripture. Let me give you four final thoughts. I'm just going to mention them. Set a time. Be intentional. Set a time. Don't say I'll get to it because if you do, you won't. Set a time. Aim for quality, not quantity. Don't hear this message and run out of here and say, I'm starting tomorrow with two hours. You'll burn out. Don't do that. Aim for quality, not quantity. Number three, don't stray too long from the gospels. My pattern is I'll study through a gospel, then I'll maybe go read a couple of other different books, one of the Old Testament, then I'll go to one of the New Testament, then I'll come back to a gospel, then I'll go to some of them, then I'll come back to, why? Because the gospels give us the life of Christ. And lastly, enjoy his presence. Listen, you need to be comfortable in the presence of God. One final quote from Clyde, for the Christian, his entire life is to be an intimate walk with God. But that intimacy is developed one day at a time. As he sets aside each day some increment of time exclusively for communion with his God, there is no substitute for this time. This is where intimacy begins. Are you spending time with the Father? [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]