You're listening to a message from freedom Fellowship, a nondenominational church in small town Wisconsin, bringing light and truth to worlds in need.

Why don't we just get right into scripture this morning? Psalm 1139, seven through ten. Psalm 139, seven through ten. It those of you that brought your Bibles. It's about the dead center of the Bible. Read the Scripture, just these three passages, and then we'll talk about it. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. Verse nine.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there.

Your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. Okay.

The Scripture teaches us that the presence.

Of God is everywhere. We can't escape the presence of God. We can't oversleep the presence of God. The presence of God is everywhere. I'm going to ask a real serious question. Why can't we find it? Why can't we find it this morning? If the presence of God is everywhere, you can escape the presence of God. If it's on the highest peak, Mount Everest, and the deepest depth of the ocean. Why do so many people have a hard time finding they're not seeking God? Yep.

Amen. Why can't we find him? That'll wake us up. Yeah. Why don't we look at Mark, chapter three, verses seven through eight. Here a great crowd is gathering up around Jesus, and they want him to perform miracles. He's going through the towns and the villages and all the sick people are coming out, and they're all trying to just touch a piece of his garment so they would be healed. And Matt's crowds are coming out, and this is what we're going to be looking at here in Mark, chapter three, seven through eight. Matthew.

Mark, chapter three, seven through eight. So Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. When they heard all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem. I don't even know how to pronounce that name. Idymia. And the regions across Jordan and around Tyre. Here's the inside on. Here's what's going on.

Everybody wants to touch Jesus. Everybody wants to experience Jesus. Everybody wants him to take care of the mirror. They want a miracle from him. Masses of people are coming out for that miracle. Church, are we just looking for the show? Listen, church, are we looking for a show? Are we looking for. I don't know the circus to come to town. Are we looking for? I don't know.

What are we looking for? A lot of people were coming to Jesus for their healing.

They were coming, hey, Jesus, heal me. Or other people were there just to watch this healing. And that was the magnitude of people. It wasn't just all the sick were going to him for healing. It was the magnitude of people were going there to watch a show, watch Jesus heal somebody. Curious.

And yet the word of God teaches us that his presence is everywhere. We can't seem to find him.

We've been coming out to the show. We've been looking for God, and yet.

We'Re missing it somehow.

Why do most kids that go off.

To college or hit that age not come back into the church until after they get married and have kids? And many of them never come back.

Because they got sick and tired of just the routine of going to church.

They got sick and tired of just.

Singing songs and listening to another message. It didn't seem to apply to them. And even when they seen miracles happen in the church.

It was just the show versus.

Truly seeking him.

Psalm 27, one through four. Pastor Jana was right. We need to seek him, and then we'll find him.

But the question is, what are we truly seeking?

What are we seeking?

Church.

Do we have it on the screen?

The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me, to devour my flesh. When my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.

Though.

An army besiege me.

My heart will not fear.

Though war break out against me.

Even then will I be confIdent. This is King David.

One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek. That I may dwell in the house.

Of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. What are we seeking? We need to be seeking out a relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

No matter what's going on in our.

Life, we need to understand the most important thing is our relationship with Jesus. People are looking for Jesus to perform miracles. They're looking for Jesus to take care of everything. Instead of getting your focus right on what's the most important, your relationship with him.

If your relationship is right with the.

Lord, what do we have to fear? Do we have to fear death? No. Eddie once said to me, said, don't threaten me with a good time. I never forgot that at a men's meeting. One time we were talking about the fear of death and he said, don't threaten me. What a good time.

What do we have to fear?

We don't have to fear death, okay? Persecution. If our relationship with God is right, all those arrows that are flying at us, we know that we're covered underneath the wings of the Lord, right in Psalms 91. We know that God has it, but our relationship has to be right.

If you come to church and you've.

Prayed to God for a healing and you haven't received that healing, what's your relationship like with God? Even the Great apostle Paul prayed for the thorn in his side. Thorn in his flesh is what the word of God said.

And he played three times and he.

Said, you know what, Lord? Your grace is sufficient.

How could he say that the Lord's grace is sufficient when he is going through this great trial in the flesh? Because his relationship with the Savior was right.

I know that the marriage relationship is more under attack than any other relationship that we have on this earth. You know why? Because the marriage relationship mirrors the relationship that Christ has with the Church or with us. Those of you are married. What's the most important thing in a marriage? Relationship. Come on. There's some people that married intimacy. That's excellent.

Spending time, communication, which all boils down to what relationship?

Your relationship with your spouse needs to be right. Everything I heard, communication intimacy was two that just stuck out. That's all about relationship. You're not going to have a great.

Sex life, married people.

If your relationship isn't right, you're not.

Going to have great communication. If your relationship isn't right, we have.

To have a proper relationship with our spouse in order to have the relationship that God wants us to have. And here's the neat thing. If our relationship is right with our Lord and Savior, we're going to look at this. It will carry on to all other aspects of our life, and the most important relationships with our spouse will be right. If our relationship with God is right, if you're working on your marriage today and you're here and you're asking for a miracle for your marriage today, I'm going to tell you to get your relationship with God right. Stop pointing a finger at your spouse.

Or even pointing a finger at you. You can go to counselors and say, hey, you got to take responsibility for what you did and you can go and point the finger at your spouse.

Stop it. Today we're going to take a pause on that. We're going to focus on our relationship with God first and watch how that will carry over into our relationships with our spouse, with our children, with our coworkers. In the teaching so far this morning, the first thing I started out with was what? The presence of God is everywhere, but yet we're missing that relationship.

In the Garden of Eden, when man.

Walked in the garden, what did they do? They talked with God. They were in the presence of God.

And then sin entered into the world. They noticed they were naked, they covered themselves, and they hid from the presence of God.

You know how silly it is to hide from the presence of God? We look at it with the little fig leaves that they covered themselves up, and they're hiding under a buSh. And we laugh at it, and you.

Say, how ridiculous it is.

The same is true today. The same is true today. We can't hide from the presence of God. He's everywhere at all times.

He's here. He's everywhere.

That's what the word of God teaches. But yet we don't dig in to that intimacy that God wants us to have with him. We miss it. We don't sense his presence in our life. And we go through life just beating each other up, or worse, just getting into a routine of life. And you just get up, brush your teeth, go to work, go home, turn on TV, go to bed, get up, go to work. God wants more for our lives. He wants us to have a deep relationship with him, a relationship that we can truly be intimate with him, a.

Relationship that we can walk in communion.

With him and conversate with him. Let's look at what this looks like. Okay? Ephesians, chapter four, one through three. Here we go. Here's Paul speaking as a prisoner for the Lord. Then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. We're called Christians, are we not? Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, okay, church. We want to experience the presence of God in our life. We want to walk with intimacy. We want to have the relationship that God has desired us to have. First thing we need to look at is our walk with him. Are we humble? Who wants to be humble as a humble? People get beat up, but are we humble? Are we humble enough to own up to our mistakes? Are we humble enough to ask for forgiveness when we need to say, I'm sorry, I'm growing in this church. We will miss God's presence in our life if we let pride take over.

Pride is the first sin. Satan had pride. He thought he could be like God. That's what he's been telling this lie for all these generations since man walked this earth. We can be like God. Hey, you're worthy of praise.

You're worthy to be.

Appreciated or whatever it is. Paul, who wrote two thirds of the New Testament, he didn't even consider himself worthy of the calling that God laid before him. How's our walk? Is it walking with humbleness? How about this gentleness?

Are we kind?

Do we speak with. Are we kind? When we speak to people? I like to use the marriage relationship because people can relate to scripture when we talk about marriages and God uses marriages to mirror himself to us, are we walking humbly and owning up to our spouse when we did something wrong and saying, I'm sorry, please forgive me? How about gentleness? When you're in that heat of the moment where you're disagreeing, I wouldn't call it a fight. I would just say at a heat of a moment of a disagreement, are you walking with gentleness? Honey, I love you. I'm there for you. I can tell you're upset or do we're like, you.

Don't talk to me like that.

If we're honest with ourselves, most of the time we come back with the second response versus gentleness. Receiving with a spirit of humility and gentleness. See, pride will puff up. And if we go through life where we think that we deserve something and we don't get it, we can pout. Caleb had a tournament this Saturday. They played five games. They started eight in the morning and they finished at 05:00 at night. I'm the assistant coach.

I don't know what that looks like yet. I'm still trying to figure that out. It's a tough spot to be in because you see in mistakes from the kids. And I want to correct the mistakes, but I don't know if that's my role, but I can encourage them. I can lift them up. But one of the things that I was noticing was I noticed kids, this is high school basketball that were stars in 8th grade, played every second of the game in 8th grade. Now playing high school ball and I'm sitting on the bench and these kids were downcast. Their heads were between their knees, upset because they didn't get to play.

Coach, if you would have played me, we would have won. Maybe what they're thinking instead of encouraging the team when the team did well, they just sat there on their hands, and they were upset because they didn't get to play. And I'm thinking about our walk with Christ. We have to walk in humbleness, gentleness. And when you hear another one that's mentioned here, I think this really applies to those kids on the team. Patience. Be patient. When I first got involved in ministry and I knew God called me to be a teacher and a preacher of the word of God, I wanted to preach, I wanted to teach, I wanted to lead.

I felt that I had all the answers in the word of God, and I wanted to share it. I went to the pastor and I.

Said, here I am. Look at me.

He said, oh, that's great. What do you do for a living? Well, I started painting to pay for college. Many of you heard this story. I started painting. He said, well, go paint the garbage disposal, the fence around the garbage. So if you go look out there, there's a fence that goes around the garbage. Go paint that. At this time, I was working for the Paps family.

Paps Blue ribbon beer. I was working for a member of that family, painting kitchen cabinets with oil and really high end brush work on the kitchen cabinets. And they said, go paint the garbage disposal. I wish I could say my first reaction was, that's great. I'll go do that. I wanted to serve. I wanted to preach, I wanted to teach. I wanted to do different things.

I didn't want to be a painter in the first place. But at least when I'm painting, I'm working on high end homes and doing high end work, and this is, like, beneath me. I remember going at the time Sarah and I were dating, and I remember talking to Sarah about it, and she's like, what's your problem? You're an able bodied young man. It's something that needed to be done.

Do it.

Don't complain to me. I was like, ooh, that's interesting response. I wanted somebody just to complain about. So I painted the garbage fence, which led to painting the hallways, which led to painting the bathroom, which led to painting the entire church. But guess what was happening while I was painting? I was around the pastors. I was around the leaders. They'd buy me lunch, and I get to talk to them. And I started building that relationship with the leaders, with the elders.

And finally an opportunity arose in the church, and they asked me if I wanted to walk in that opportunity. I said yes, and I've never looked back. Church, we got to be patient. We want to experience the presence of God in our life. And it doesn't seem like you've been given me, Lord. You've given me all these gifts and all these talents, and yet I'm not being used. I think of King David, who was anointed king of Israel, and he's hiding in a cave.

He's getting persecuted by King Saul, by the Philistines, by all these enemies. He's surrounded by enemies all around him. And he's the king. He's the rightful king.

And he says, I'll be patient. I'll wait on the Lord for the Lord's timing. Then the other thing we see here in Ephesians four, how about unity? Oh, the enemy wants to break unity so much in your home, husband and wife are divided, and that unity isn't right. It really puts a lot of stress on your kids in the home. The enemy is constantly working on these areas. He's working on our humbleness. He says, you deserve it. He's working on our gentleness and saying, how dare you talk to me like that? He's working on our patience, and he says, nah, you deserve this.

I think about those kids that were superstars on their team last year, sitting there next to me on the bench, not playing. They weren't crying. But the closest thing to crying is you could possibly see. I felt those kids weren't united with the rest of the kids on the team because they're like, I can play better. Especially when the one kid that was playing just shot his 20th three pointer and only hit two of them. Hey, I can shoot, too, coach. We want to be in the presence of God, and yet God is all around, and we're missing it. We're missing it because we're not seeking after him, because we're seeking after all the wrong things.

We're seeking after things to glorify ourselves instead of glorifying Christ's kingdom. And the enemy is working on us.

In these areas, church. We got to recognize it as attack of the enemy.

So, how's your walk with God this morning?

Where are you at?

In humbleness and gentleness and patience and unity. If you're struggling in those areas, you need to say, you know what, Lord? Your presence is all around. I want to seek you with my face. I want you to just touch me and be in every aspect of my life. Maybe, just maybe, you're struggling with patience because God's trying to grow you in patience, and maybe he just puts you around the people that maybe irritate you a little bit so you can grow in that area. Maybe pride is starting to rise up in you, and you just had to be knocked down a notch a little bit.

See, God is perfecting us.

The Bible calls it sanctification. I don't use a lot of big.

Words, but I'm telling you that we're being sanctified daily.

God is chipping away at this flesh of ours because he wants us to be fully, fully surrendered and devoted to him. All right, Hebrews 1315. This is how I believe we can truly enter in the kingdom of God. This message was just based as I was looking at King David's life, I was looking at Psalms, and I was looking at King David's life and how he went through persecution, how his family was a mess, and yet he always sought after the presence of God, and he just desired God in everything. And I was just thinking about what King David did in his life, to be called a man after God's own heart. Hebrews 1315. Hebrews 13, verse 15. Okay.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer.

To God a sacrifice.

What does it say?

Sacrifice of praise.

The fruit of the lips that confess his name.

Sacrifice of praise.

Ooh. What do we want to do? First thing, we want to grumble and complain. Instead of Alec fearing a sacrifice of praise, I told Caleb there was 400 and something like 75 kids in my class that when I went to school, five boys from my class made the varsity basketball team out of 475. You play in home school league and.

You get to play high school basketball. Everybody gets to make it. You got to start looking at this as a privilege to be able to play basketball, because there's a lot of kids that were a lot better than you that I played with that never got the opportunity to play high school.

Basketball because they weren't as good as the next guy.

It's a privilege. So what we have to do is start learning to praise God in everything in our life. A sacrifice of praise. I like the word sacrifice there. You're not going to want to do it. Do it anyway. Get up in the morning and say, thank you, Lord, for this opportunity that you give me today. Thank you, Lord, for my spouse.

Thank you, Lord, for my kids. O Lord, thank you for the opportunity to do this. Instead of grumbling and complaining about how hard it is or whatever, say, thank you, Lord, that I can do this. Thank you, Lord, that I live in a free country. Thank you, Lord, that I.

Whatever you fill in the blanks.

We have to start offering Christ a sacrifice of praise.

As I was getting prayed for this morning, I wrote this down one of the guys that prayed for me said, as more I learn about the Bible, the more God speaking to my life, I believe it's. And I believe this is of the Holy Spirit. He said, I see through the Bible people that had belief, and then they did something with their belief. They followed. Do you know how hard it is to follow when you don't believe in.

What you're asked to do as a coach? You want the coach to believe as a coach. You want every person on that team to believe in the mission, which is to win the game. But when there's kids on the team that don't believe you can even win, what happens? You lose or those kids shouldn't play. You have to have belief that you're going to win. And if you have belief that Christ is already victorious, which the Bible has said, then why aren't we following him? Because we get so self absorbed with what's going on in our world that we miss it. The first way that we get out.

Of our own way is by praising God. I believe as a coach of this church, the pastor of this church, I believe one of my roles is to help take our focus off ourselves and put our focus on our Lord and Savior. We do that by praising him for who he is and what he's done. We walk in humbleness. We walk in gentleness. We walk in patience and unity. And no matter what we're going through, we give him praise.

How can we give him praise? Because we know, going back to Psalms 139, which this sermon was based off of, 139 seven through ten. Let's look at Psalms 139, 13 and 14. We can praise God because who made us? God made us. And how did he make us? In his image and likeness, fearfully and wonderfully made. And even gets into this a little bit. Psalms 139, 13 and 14.

I'll turn there. I can get there quick. Psalms 39. All right.

For you created me in my inmost being. Who created you? Did God create any scrubs? Absolutely not.

Perfection. For you created me in my inmost being.

You knit me together in my mother's womb. Did you have a choice? Did you have a choice in the way you were made? Did you get to pick the color of your skin?

No.

Did you get to pick if you would be six foot six or five foot nine?

No.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. God knows us.

He knows who we are. He made us. He knit us together. We can praise him because he didn't make no scrubs. He gave each and every one of us the abilities that we have.

There is only one of you in the entire world.

Even if you're an identical twin.

Your identical twin is probably like a complete different personality than you. You might have some of the same genetic appearance, but you're going to be totally different. God has made each and every one of us.

So stop comparing ourselves to other people, church, and just start doing what God has called us to do.

To walk with him. I love nature. Just the Church, you know this. I love nature. I like being out in nature. And I think what I like about being out in nature the most is I can slow down my mind and just focus on the beauty of God's creation instead of the busyness of work, the meeting that I have, that I don't want to go to this or that or whatever is going on. And I can just stop down and say, wow, that cardinal is up here. That is beautiful.

That Blue Jay is beautiful. And the way those squirrels hop around is incredible. And I can't believe that God has allowed me to see a family of raccoons. I can't believe how beautiful they are. And I'm sitting there and then I start looking at an oak leaf and I saw how long and beautiful and jagged it is and a beautiful maple leaf and the difference between the two and the difference in the bark. And I'm just thinking, you know what?

God created all these things for my pleasure. I'm just going to sit and enjoy it and be still thanking God for.

Who he is in my life.

So we have to practice praising God. And we need to learn to be still and learn to listen to what.

He wants to teach us. This is what the Spirit was teaching me this morning. Believe and follow. The Holy Spirit spoke that through a brother as he was praying for me this morning. Where's our belief? Is our belief focused on ourselves or is our belief focused on our Savior? And are we following him now? We want to be recognized or we want this or we want that church? That's the lie of the enemy church. We need to learn a lifestyle of praise. We don't just come in on Sunday mornings and praise God. We need to praise God in all circumstances of our life, even those thorns in our flesh.

That seems like God doesn't answer, but he does. He says, my grace is sufficient.

We need to learn to be quiet.

And still and look for God in everything because he's around everywhere. Look up to the heavens and see the stars and try to count them.

Go to the beach and see if you can count the sand. Look at the beautiful trees.

And you say, wow, all the leaves are gone except for a few trees that have some leaves up. Look at the deer, look at the animals and say, God created all this. And then just say, you know what? Thank you, Lord, for the presence that's in my life. I was thinking about this song, Lord, I'm sorry, Lord, for the things I made it. It's all about you. It's all about you, Jesus. You know what's going to break our fellowship with God? Philippians 214 I'm going to close. We can go to Philippians, chapter two, verse 14.

It it. Ephesians, Philippians, do everything. What does it say here? Without complaining or arguing. 15 is great, too, so that you may become blameless and pure children of God without a fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe. Lord, help us. I'm going to close in prayer, Lord, to help us to stop complaining. Lord, help us. Lord.

Pride can creep up in our lives so quickly, Lord, especially when we know we're better than somebody else, or at least we think we are. Lord, help us. Help us to humble ourselves. Help us to walk in gentleness and patience and unity. Lord, you're all around us. You're all around us.

Your word taught us that your presence is everywhere. We can't hide from your presence. You're everywhere.

So, Lord, help us to walk with you. Help us to have a heart of praise. Help us. Help us, Lord, to be still. Open our eyes and see the blessings that you bestowed on each and every one of us. Lord, work inside our hearts into areas of murmuring and complaining. Lord, I pray that we would give them over to you and just leave them there. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Thanks for listening to today's message. To get in touch or donate, please see the links in the show notes. God bless.