You're welcome to Let's Go, where you will hear about lives that have been transformed by the power of God. You'll see and hear real stories of real people going to real places far away, whose lives are changed as God uses them to impact the lives of others for His glory. Get ready to see people experience God's love and power. Let's go. Hello everyone and welcome to Let's Go. My name is Tony Nardella and it's a pleasure to be here with you again. On today's episode, I will be teaching on the joy of discovery in God. I know most of us realize that our God really wants to talk with us and reveal Himself to us. Yet many of us don't hear Him as much as we might like. In this episode, we look at some powerful keys to opening our hearts for God to reveal more of Himself to us. It's my prayer that as we watch this message, it will stir up our childlike faith and curiosity so that we will seek God as never before. So come on, let's go. All right, so part of the downside of going on a trip like that, like we do often is we get to miss church here, which is not fun, and we get to miss our relatives and our friends. And one of those things that we miss a lot is our grandchildren. And so yesterday, I called my son to see if I can work out some time to see our grandkids and he says, "Well, yeah, dang, we hung just a few minutes," and then I promised, "Molly, I'll take the three kids out for a nature walk. Come on with us." Yes. So I got ready, went out with them and, you know, I mean, the kids are eight, five, and two and a half. So this was quite a walk, as you might imagine, right? So focusing a little bit on Kate, I already seen Annie and Henry since we got back, but I hadn't seen little two and a half-year-old Kate, and little Kate, you know, she's, she's still in diapers, and she's just dawdling down the trail, you know, and she tells us that she looks up, you know, and we're just, you know, it's a forest, right? Tree. Look, Papa, a tree. Hey, and she just kept repeating that, you know, and then goes down the trail a little bit more, you know, and she pins over, and the trail had turned you into, like, little white stones, little tiny ones, which she thought they were shells, and she's picking them up, just shells, you know, and she's exploring them and looking at them, you know, and then walks a little bit further, and there's this leaf about this big, you know, and she picks them up, "Papa, look, a leaf, a leaf," and she starts playing with it, and she rips it, and she's curious, you know, and she's exploring it, and she's checking it out, and that was just adorable, you know, and it is not what the way kids are, right? They just can't wait to learn anything. In fact, I was playing with her a little bit. I says, "We were walking by some lakes," and I says, "K, we're going to go find the alligators?" Just, "Yeah, find alligators, chomp, chomp." But, you know, this just fits so well into what I feel like Lord wants me to share today, and that is God loves to reveal things to kids. He loves to reveal things. You know, why is that? You know, maybe part of it's because they're just so curious. They want to know. They're hungry to learn, and that's a wonderful thing. Let's look at Matthew 11 and 25. Now, this is an interesting passage. Thank you, Ben, for being the Bible guy today. So, up on the screen, you will see shortly where it says, "At that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children." Isn't that interesting? There are delights to reveal these things to little children, but, you know, there's a flip side there, do you see it? The flip side is that people that are wise, people that think they're pretty smart, he hides it from them, and hiding there is like an affirmative word, but he goes out of his way to keep you from seeing it. Ooh. All right, but if you have the curiosity and the simplicity and the humility of a little child, he will reveal these things to you, and in context, what was this he was revealing? If you look earlier, the passage right above it, I mean, Jesus is given a hard time, actually, to the cities where he had done his miracles, oh, and the concept of being that if I reveal myself to you in a big way, and you still keep living like everything's normal, like nothing needs to change, and you're in trouble, I mean, Jesus is not somebody that, you know, you, I mean, it's one thing if I meet somebody on the street and they don't impress me or whatever, and I just don't ever think of them again, but when you meet Jesus, you know, when he teaches words with authority, not like the teachers of the law, right, when he makes blind people see and laying people walk and dead people live, that ought to get your attention, that ought to make you not just be thinking, wow, what does this mean, but also, how can I learn from this, who is this guy, who is this, that little kid inside of us ought to say, man, I want to know more about this person, I've never met anybody like this before, so just jumping right ahead here, so, you know, it's an interesting thing to learn about God, isn't it, that, I don't know, I guess I see this sometimes in relationships, if somebody feels like they're not being paid attention to, if they're, that they're being even despised, you know, they're, they're not going to go running up to you and say, hey, you know, do that to me more, you know, they're probably just going to slide out the back door, you know, we can't quench the Holy Spirit, right, and it's an, it's an interesting thing to observe about God, that even though he's forever handing, holding out his hands all day long to a disobedient and obstinate people, as the scripture says, I mean, he's always extending himself, he's always revealing himself, but there comes a point where he says, man, really, you don't, yeah, really, all this good I'm showing you and it doesn't peak your curiosity just a little bit, but I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but it's a, this is an interesting thing. In fact, if you go to Luke 19, just to seal up this little rabbit trail, Luke 19 verse 43, now this is Jesus talking to the religious leaders, the Pharisees, right? And he says, for the days will come upon you when your enemies will sit up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. Yes, and tear you down to the ground, you and your children with you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation. Now, there are times in all of our lives when God really shows up. There are times when it's undeniable that God had something to do with my survival. I mean, we're just talking about Ben and what he'd been through. I mean, rather Ben, you have a visitation. Yeah, right? You know, I mean, Emily and I, 35 years ago, we had, we were in such a pit of despair in our, in our marriage was a disaster and God showed up and we're here today. Gosh, 45 years in marriage. What a saint. She is. He's easy to live with for me. So being dull, being, having a lack of curiosity is not being like a little child. Right? A little child. I mean, our little Henry, he's five years old. I mean, he has the darnedest questions about all kinds of stuff. He reminds me of his father when he was that age, right? Mike's big question was always, why? We five years old. Well, why is the sky blue? Why is this? Why is I mean, he just had an insatiable hunger to know. And that's the people that God loves to reveal to. And that's what we need to be, right? So let's talk about this, for example, in a mission trip context. A lot of you guys have been on mission trips. You know, that's kind of one way that we heard from the Lord years ago when we was playing at the church that he was going to help disciple people here, bring them closer to him, teach them his ways. So like, how many of you been on the mission trip? Give me a hand. One, two, three, four, five, all this. Yeah, man. Okay. How many of you have gone on an airplane for the first time? Have, yeah, everybody, just about everybody. Everybody's everybody's been on the plane. You know, I remember the first time I went on a mission trip with my pastor, he made sure I sat by the window. Was he wanting me to see? Was he going to be curious? I mean, you know, that feeling was, you know, forget all the turbulence and all the fear flying. I want to see what's down there. Man, look at those cars, man. They look like little matchbox toys, you know, people can't hardly even see them when you're high enough, right? So there's that love of learning. When you go into a new context, like when Emily was talking about when we just came back from Eastern Europe and we're in Moldova and, you know, I, you know, what language should they speak here? Oh, well, they speak Russian in this part and they speak Romanian in that part and they do worship songs in the churches in both languages. But I mean, it's, you know, you're just your head spinning. Well, what did they eat here? What do they do here? What's the differences? I mean, most people there that we saw didn't have these things. They had cell phones, but didn't have smartphones. You know, it was just there's always differences. And I'm always kind of trying to zero in on what those differences are. So I can see, you know, I can understand more about the people. And that when you go on your when you went on your first mission trip, you look that you let you know, what's the strange food, the strange language? It's hot here. It's cold here. The air's too light here or it's, you know, whatever. When they tell you in Guayaquil, Ecuador, even though it's 100 degrees and there's no AC in the car, you can only crack your window that much because you want to make sure you don't get robbed. You know, it's that kind of stuff. I mean, and it's intriguing. And you're asking these questions into your head, well, why do they do that? Because at first, when you see you're driving in a car and you see it's 150 degrees in this car, there's no AC on and they go, I got the window cracked a little bit. What, you know, you know, there's so many things, there's such a flood of variables coming at you. You can't ask questions on all of them right away. And that's how it is with God. He is so big. He is so huge that you could spend the rest of your life asking him questions. And you'll never have enough time to absorb all the answers about who he is. And she had no idea what I was preaching this morning, say it like that, nor I, which he was saying. I didn't. God wants us to ask he wants us to be curious. He wants us to not just kind of just, oh, this is all I need to know. I got my ticket punched. Now I'm going to go to heaven and everything's cool. No, in fact, one of the things we heard the pastor, John, is say the guy that preached here in March or early April that we went to Moldova with. He said, if Jesus's life was only about the cross and the crucifixion and paying the price for our sins, then why didn't he just come for one week instead of, you know, make himself known for three and a half years? He's because he wanted to give an opportunity to us to know him, to learn his ways, to ask him questions, to get to know God better. And I'll get to that a little bit later in my scriptures here. But this curiosity thing is a big deal to God. It's a big deal. And, but religion, I'll go off on a rabbit trail here, religion is man's way, in my view, of making God manageable so that we don't have to ask many questions. We just do everything the right way. Enough robotic religion, right? So when we go on mission trips, those of you who have gone and those of you who have heard testimonies, sometimes we see things overseas we don't see here. Now I'm getting into the supernatural realm that Emily mentioned, right? Now we do see supernatural things. We see healings, right Ben? I mean, we see all kinds of stuff. Your daughter got healed last year. Was that last year about a year ago? Man, that was incredible. I mean, we see stuff here, but it was like the volume of miracles that you see on a mission trip many times. It's just mind numbing. But if you'll take the time to meditate on these obvious signs, the signs are meant to point you somewhere, right? They're not just meant to, oh, what an interesting event. I mean, it's like he's every miracle of God is a communication to us. And when you get, when you take a week out of your life for maybe nine days and you go down to Peru or Ecuador or wherever and you see these things happen, it's like, why does this telling me about God? What does this tell me about how he wants us to act? What is he telling us about how much he loves us? How much he cares for us that especially among the poor people he does these kinds of miracles, right? I mean, we saw a woman get healed in a rehab center this last week. She had pain for three years. I don't even know why it was in her leg. And we prayed once and nothing happened. We prayed the second time she got healed. You know, and I heard learned later that she was a dropout who'd come back to the rehab center. So you're thinking about people that we might write off as useless, but God doesn't count him useless. You know, he, he holds the, the poor and the afflicted very close to his heart. So, you know, that's one thing you can learn about God when you see these things happen on a regular basis. You know, I can go on for hours. You've heard me go on for hours about things like we, you know, we've seen on trips, but now you're having your own experiences and you're, you're saying, you know, that's true. So, Joni, when are you going? I'm sorry. How, how? Yes. Hey, let's talk about demons for a minute. No, seriously, you know, sometimes people here, when I talk about the things I've seen on mission trips, they think that I'm out of my mind when I talk about demons and they always ask me, why are they manifesting? They're not here. Well, you know, you, you just don't know how to see them. Maybe they're a little bit more sophisticated here, but oh my gosh, the things that we've seen. And when you see the devil make a show and then just then the mere mention of the name of Jesus and poof, they go. I mean, that tells you a little bit about God's authority, doesn't it? But if you're not alert, if you're not aware, if you don't have a joy of discovery or of learning, that is just going to go right over your head and you're not going to catch it. You're going to miss the day of your visitation. So I would suggest that we should put ourselves in situations where we can see God's love and power, his salvation made manifest among us. Why? Because if you want to know God better, and I think we all do, that's why we're giving up our Sunday mornings, if nothing else, right? Because there's no better way than to see what he does. Scripture says, the reference is Matthew 720 by their fruit, you will know them. God's not just talking about false teachers, he's talking about everybody. He's talking about himself. You want to know who God is? Look at what he does. You want to, you know, you want to experience who God is. Listen to what his word really says and let it watch his word change things. For the word of God is living and active and it's sharper than any double edged sword. I mean, it cuts, it does stuff. God's word does not come back empty. There's a whole big, wonderful God out there to know. You know, people talk big, but it's the ones who do big that are the possessors and not just the professors, right? So when you see God do stuff, it makes me ask questions. I went on my first mission trip, who I was in the jungles of Peru with a team with my pastor. I was just a guy on the team, you know, and I was one of several people that was down off the platform, paired up by twos, to pray for people when they came forward. And it was healing night and there was a thousand people in this jungle hut and steaming hot, skittas everywhere, and people are streaming forward because Pastor Kenny is an annoying guy and they needed healing. You know, you give an altar call among poor people in any country that I've ever been to and they come for healing, they come forward. And wow, there was a line, there was a testimony line that Pastor Kenny got up on the front first bank bench and then on the other side was his translator and then he was pulling up people one by one who had gotten healed and having them testify into the microphone. This went on for 45 minutes and the woman that we sent up there that we that basically prayed in her own recovery of sight, she was blind, right? He didn't even know that somebody that was blind got healed in his crusade until we were on the airplane going home. I mean, this is just amazing and it was all poor people. This woman, you know, I was helping somebody pray with her on, you know, she's she's on the ground. I mean, she's just stretched out and she's crying out to God. And God, how am I going to help my kids if I can't see? You know, first mission tripping, that's heartbreaking stuff, right? And so, you know, we prayed a little prayer and you know, but then she's just groveling it like it's coming from way down here, you know. And then all of a sudden she gets up and she says in Spanish, "Mascalaro, mascalaro." That means more clear. She sees more clearly. And I told the lady I was praying with at that moment, it says, I think that, you know, I think that means more clear and and it doesn't doesn't it remind you of the story with Jesus praying for the blind guy, you know, he says, I see people walking around like trees and then Jesus prayed again, he got his sight. And so, I said, if Jesus has to pray two times, maybe we have to pray three. But we didn't have to. We only had to pray twice. And that woman got up and wow. I mean, so what does it say about God? I mean, come on, we've got to ask the question, what does it say about God when he stoops down to make us poor people great? I mean, he stoops down from heaven. You know, I mean, any other being of that kind of power in my, I mean, any of them would treat us with contempt. But God doesn't treat us with contempt. He delights. He lives with those who are broken and contrite and spear. Those are the ones he doesn't despise. All right. I mean, don't we want to get to know him better? What does Jesus say at the end of Matthew 11 after that verse I read earlier? He says, come to you, come to me all you who are labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, girl, I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I mean, what kind of God is this that says I'm humble, I'm meek and I'm humble, and I'm not going to put too much on you. Any fear that we might have of going to him, because what he's going to do to us or ask us to do, I mean, that ought to just disappear, because he's just so good. He is never going to burden us with anything that's harmful to us. He may ask us to sacrifice. In fact, that's kind of the Christian walk, isn't it? To pick up our cross daily and follow him? Why aren't we more curious? Well, something I've noticed as I've gotten older, and I think everybody here is getting older too. Yeah, but especially those of us who've earned a few gray hairs, you know, kind of can leave that whole section out, you know, but you hang around long enough and these things happen. I've noticed that I've become a little bit more risk averse. I like to play it safer. That's the tendency. And I've always been this crazy guy that goes out and mission trips to places where nobody wants to go and neighborhoods, nobody wants to preach in, and then I meet somebody like John L, who tells the pastors on his first mission trip, I don't want to preach in your church. Just send me out to the worst drug infested neighborhoods. Let me go door to door. Who is this man with this red cape or whatever? Or who he is an animal. That is a delicacy to our friends in the areas of western South America. Yes, so you know, this risk adversity, I want to maintain my security bubble around me. That becomes higher priority than adventure. And making sure I don't spend too much money because, you know, so I'm kind of circling the wagons a little bit. You know, you kind of know that feeling. But if you don't go places you haven't been, how are you going to learn anything new? If you watch the same old news channel, how are you going to hear anybody else's opinion? You might actually, besides getting totally disturbed in your spirit, you might actually learn something new. I know I hate it. I mean, I just hate switching channels, but that's a whole other thing. I do though try to read things. I don't get quite as emotionally perturbed when I get on the internet and I read the news and I know it's coming from different angles and I go, okay, I see where they're coming from, maybe a little bit, but they're still wrong. You know, can also come, our being risk averse can come from a fear. It can also come from just, I just don't want to hear anything new. You know, I know at all, I've been around the block a few times. Dangerous. Compare your 60 or 70 years with God's infinity or Satan's thousands, right? There's just no comparison to what we can learn from God. I just love that you started with that from Britain. The idea of, yeah, you've got your list and I've been doing that for a while. I finally figured it out. He says, you know, God knows what I need before I ask it and I'm going to talk to him about it because I do need answers, but he wants to show me stuff that has nothing to do with getting answers to my questions. He wants to show me things about himself. He wants to reveal more of himself to me, but I got to have ears to hear. I've got to want it. How about you? When you first got saved, was there just like this burning in Utah? I got to read the word. I got to know the word. I got to pick up the Bible. I got to read it. I got to go to church. And I remember I understood almost 0% of what I was reading. Does anybody with me on that? He started reading the Bible the first time, and you know, you know, I was a law student. I figured I know how to read, but I remember thinking to myself, there's something missing here because I am not understanding what I am reading, and he's talking and playing language, and I still don't understand it. And you know what that caused me to do? That caused me to do something that we all need to do more of. It caused me to ask. Pray. Lord, would you give me one paragraph I couldn't understand? Lord, would you give me one sentence? Lord, how about three words? You know, how many times I prayed that as I was going through the word in my early years, and I still do that on stuff that I, but you know, he responds. He gives revelation, and when I would ask that, all of a sudden the light bulb would go on and go, it may not have been all of what I was hoping for, but even it was just a little tiny bit. It was Rama. And you know what that's called? That's called communication with your heavenly Father. That's a relationship. It's not about following rules. It's about having an encounter with the living God. I trust that today's episode stirred up your faith and curiosity about letting God reveal more of himself to you. Let's not settle for what we know about God already. Let's open our hearts and fresh surrender to his spirit so he can increase our understanding of who he is to us and how much he loves us. No matter how many years we've read our Bibles, God has so much more that he wants to share with us. So let's get curious and call out to God like never before. You know, he's so good. He's so loving and he's so merciful, and he isn't trying to hide himself from us. And we want to encourage you to come back next week for the second part of this message on the joy of discovery in God. Also, if you'd like to know more about Let's Go and Our Ministry, I encourage you to check out our website at www.heartoftitus.org, which is on the screen, or our YouTube channel, Heart of Titus. There you will find more resources that will help to build your faith in our Lord Jesus. Thank you again for being with us today, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Let's Go. [Music]
