Dads, take note. There is a princess tea
party. Daddies, take your
daughter. I'm gonna see if my 26 year old daughter wants to
go. And this
is the first Correct me, Pastor Will. This is the first time we've done a
sing along since we did Beauty and the Beast. And there's nothing like being
in this room with 500 people and being in the cast. I
got to be the father of Belle. And you hear all these
kids singing, you forget you're doing a play. You're like,
oh, new kids. So daddies, bring your daughters.
Oh, my goodness, what a joy. We have been
talking about the greatest story
ever told. Now, we've told stories, but really,
it's like Pastor Barbie said Thursday night, the greatest
story is about Jesus Christ. And
so all of the stories that we have told, they all
weave together in this amazing way from
Genesis to Revelation, to tell the story
about God and what he's done through his son Jesus to
redeem us. So every story may be unique in its
own way. And you, you have a story,
people think, well, they finished writing the Bible 2,000 years ago,
and so the Bible's stopped writing. No
Acts 29 keeps going. Because we
have stories, we have miracles in our lives. There are things going on
in your life that God is writing your story day after
day. And it's your privilege and your honor to be able
to share your story. So I would challenge you, man, if
you're bashful and you're introverted like some of our
congregants and pastors are, be bold and share
your story. When he puts you in that position, you don't have to just go
around blabbing all the time, but be sensitive to the Holy Spirit,
that when you're in a moment, a kairos
moment, a God moment, to tell your story.
Young man, how old are you? 18. 18. Do you know Jesus Christ, your
Lord and savior? Yeah. What's your name? John. John,
there will be moments in your life,
young man. Are you still in school? You graduated?
Are you a senior?
Your last rodeo, big boy? There are
people. Where do you go to school? Smyrna. Smyrna High School.
Bulldog.
You're graduating class, probably about four or five hundred kids in it.
There are kids in your graduating class that need to know the Jesus you
know. And I believe God will put
kairos moments for you at a lunch table or in a
chemistry class or whatever your courses are, or in the
courtyard, in the quad, or at a pep rally. I believe, John, that
if you will listen to the Holy Spirit that dwells within you. And Jesus said
that he dwells within you, that if you'll listen to him
and share your story, your story has the power to
impact and change a life. Do you know that if your story
only brings one other person to the salvation of Jesus Christ,
it's well worth everything you've gone through? Some people think we got to
win hundreds and thousands. No. What if your life only touches one?
That's one more in the kingdom. Share your story, young man. Be bold.
Don't be bashful. When the opportunity comes and you feel the Holy
Spirit move on you, you do that.
I got notes. We'll get there.
We've talked about Noah, we've talked about Joseph, we've talked about
Elijah and Elisha, which are some of my favorites. Back in October,
Pastor Kevin sent out an email to the staff. He said, hey, send me three
or four of your favorite Bible stories. Here's where we're going next year and
I'll put out the sermon schedule. And here's where disobedience will get you in
trouble.
I knew everybody would want David. David's one of my favorites.
Joseph's one of my favorites. And if you love Joseph, you need to be here
on Thursdays. We still got five
more. We got notes. You can catch up. You can go on YouTube and all
this stuff. And here, Pastor Barbie by the needle. It's been powerful. This is
my second or third time I've heard her teach it and it's
powerful. But I just figured, well, people
will write in and I'll just take whatever Pastor Kevin give me.
Not a good idea. Yes, ma'.
Am. Wrong thing I received. I hear you, Connie.
Laugh at me. Now. I
received an email on March 28th at 8:59 from Pastor Kevin
that went something like this. I would like you to share the story of
Hosea on September 7. Are you available to
do that? Fifteen minutes later, at
9.14pm, I was dumb enough to reply, yes, I'd be happy to.
Seven minutes later, he replies, awesome. With a thumbs up.
And I began to think, awesome.
Why didn't I send the answer back in October? God. I
could have talked about to the pit, to the prison, to the palace. I could
have talked about the transfer of the mantle. I could have talked about Mark.
I could have talked about a lot of things. What's the age demographic? Let me
look at my room. I'll be polite. Cause there's some younger ears.
I get to talk about a lady that has a very.
She was known as a P and a P she was promiscuous
and not a very good lady. And I thought, oh,
great, that's. Mm. Hallelujah.
You know what? I
won't tell you names, but I struggle with
this. First of all, I didn't do anything in the month of
March. And then somewhere around April, I started reading Book of Hosea.
And then May, I started writing notes. June, I got a little
serious. August, I got real serious
and I thought about some of the things I was going to share. And I
said, I don't need to share that. I don't need to talk about those things
in my life. And I just really felt
impressed by the Holy Spirit. Yes, you do. And
I shared them in first gathering. I'm going to share them again today.
I really struggle with it because
it talks about how I
prostituted my walk with God. And I
want to tell you, after the service over, I had a person that came down
and said, I went through that when I was that age.
I had another person come up and said, God
sent you an email in March. I found out about a month
ago. And I'm going through that situation in my
life right now. God has a way of using the things in
our life if we will allow him. We have to be open,
John, and transparent and be willing to share. Amen.
So stand with us and let's read a couple of scriptures.
Help me, Mary. There we go. One more,
one more. There we go. All right, let's read. But I have
this against you that you have abandoned the love you had
at first. Remember therefore, from where you have
fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first.
And from Hosea, I will betroth you
to be. Pardon me. Let's start over. Cause I got hung up on
Betrothed. I like it. Betrothed. Don't read Betroth
Satraps. That's the inside joke with me and Joseph.
I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you
in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will
acknowledge the Lord. There should be a W.
Forgive my spelling. Mary works wonders, but she can't read my
mind. Father, I thank you that you are in laughter. Laughter is
a medicine. It heals us. Lord, I thank you that we have
stories to tell and things that we can share. The Lord ultimately
is about your word and your truth. So Lord, let your
truth be heard and let your word go forth. Let it penetrate,
break, heal, and restore places in people's hearts.
Today, in Jesus name And you may
be seated in the presence of the Lord. We used to say that in the
80s. Be seated in the presence of the Lord.
Justin's got a group. The dad. Where did
Justin go? Dad bod. Cosplay
boy, I tell you. And it's something else. Some of you in
this room are part of that. Cause I see your pictures. Yeah, I see you
over there. We got Spiderman and Batman and
Strange Men and I mean Dr. Strange, whatever.
But they'll show up to the movies when Marvel, I guess
they're Marvel people. They might do it for dc, but they show up for the
movies and they dress in these characters and man, everybody just
loves seeing them and doing that. I'm a movie junkie. I love going to
movies. I love watching movies. My favorites are the 70s and 80s. I love
spaghetti westerns mostly. I like a good war movie here and there.
I'm not a rom com guy. I'll watch them because
I'm married. And if you're married, you
better watch them too. We got Hallmark and Hallmark, whatever the
other one is. And Lord, you can have a
Christmas. Nevermind. They're already playing
Good Gracious in Pumpkin Spice movies. But anyway,
same story, different people. Mostly same people. Anyway,
but I love movies. I love the. I grew up in
my favorite thing. I was 14, 15 years old. Drive with a per
minute. I got a hardship license because my parents divorced when I was
young. So I had a hardship permit at 14 and I could drive.
Imagine that. Hey, who said
One of you? Yeah, but anyway, we go to the
Bijou Twin on Wade Hampton Boulevard.
And I loved it because back in the day, that's when the guy goes. It
was 1964, you know, it was that movie guy, whatever.
He's long gone now. But I love those things. So
here we are, it's 722 B.C. we're going to look at
today's passage like it was a movie because it helps it come alive to me.
So if you're with me, just to set the scene.
Hosea lived in the northern kingdom of Israel.
There you go. And this was about
200 years after it had broken off and splintered
from the southern kingdom. Judah. If you go back
to 1 Kings 12, you can read all about it. It's about 33, 34
verses. Not gonna take the time now, but go back and do your homework and
read that. But Jeroboam and Rehoboam, they were
the opposing kings. And basically what happened? The king from
the Northern kingdom, his counselor said,
hey, why don't you Take it easy. Your dad overtaxed and
he made it hard on everybody when he was king. Lighten up a little bit,
Give them a little grace and the people will respond and they'll follow you
and everything will be great. So he thought about it for three days. Why is
everything three days or on a Tuesday in the Bible? But anyway, he thought
about it for three days and I guess it was a Tuesday. And he
came back and he did just the opposite.
He raised the taxes. He made it even harder on the people. And so they
rebelled. They had this revolt and it just. And so the
kingdoms tore apart and Judah was its own. And then you had the
northern kingdom. So Hosea
was a prophet to Israel, the northern kingdom
that was in rebellion. Because not only did they rebel, not only
did they not appreciate what was going on,
they wandered from God. See, there was a reason that the
Lord had Israel in the Hebrew nation before they
actually became Israel, to keep separate. It
wasn't because God is racist. It wasn't because it wasn't
inclusive. It's because he wanted them for
himself. You will be my people. And I want you to
be. I want to be your only God. And God was a jealous God,
not jealousy in the terms of sin, but he wanted everything.
He wanted their hearts, he wanted everything that they were, and he
wanted to be everything to them. But they
would intermarry and they would follow. It always led to following
false gods and then idol worship. And so this is
what's going on. And God speaks through
Hosea. Now, we've talked about some prophets, Ezekiel, and
we've talked about Jeremiah and Hosea.
Listen, it's an honor
to be considered an apostle, a prophet, a pastor,
a teacher, an evangelist. Those are part of the giftings that Paul
writes about and talks about. You better be very careful.
You better be very careful about what you tell
God you want to be or want to do for the kingdom.
Because it's one thing to have a card that says, hi, I'm
prophet Alan Smith. They do that a lot.
But boy, when you are a prophet of the Lord,
it can be very challenging. It can be difficult. It can be hard.
Talk to Ezekiel, he had to lay on his side for a year.
Talk to Jeremiah, he was in captivity.
Talk to Daniel, talk to some of these guys that had to do hard
things. It wasn't
glamour from a stage, it was being in a lion's den. It
was being put in bad situations. So here comes the Lord to Hosea,
and he tells him this in Hosea 1
1. Here we go just.
He's one of the main characters. Think about,
he's in his bedroom and the spirit of the Lord speaks to him in the
night, in a dream maybe. Who knows? It said,
when the Lord first spoke to Hosea, he said this to him.
Go and marry a promiscuous wife.
That's what Hosea probably said. He was probably
Lord. And he hears it again.
Go and marry a promiscuous wife and
have children of promiscuity for
the whole land has been promiscuous by abandoning
me, the Lord.
So Hosea goes and he marries
Gomer. Shazam. Some of y' all old
enough know he married Gomer, the daughter of
Dibliim. And she conceived and she bore him three
children. And boy, they had some names, and their names were because
of some pretty serious situations that they represented
that was going to come. That's not the kind of.
How many. How many are married? Give me an amen.
Some of y' all need to get happily married. How many are happily married? Say
amen. There you go. How many would like to be married?
Mary sue, question.
If you would like to be married, would you just want to hear the
Lord wake you up one night and go, hey, Joe, Hey,
Sally. Go marry a promiscuous person.
That's not on the top 10 list of qualities I would like in a wife.
Right. But that's what the Lord told him to do. And so he goes and
he takes Gomer to be his wife.
Now, some people think this is a dark story
and it's getting off to a bad start. I would tell you that
the genre of this movie is not a rom com, obviously,
but I would call it a love story. And I'd call it
a love story not because of Hosea and Gomer,
although that becomes one. But the love story
is God to his people. God
is so faithful and God is so
passionate about his people,
the people of Israel at that time. But you right
now, that he not only will go,
he already has gone to the furthest of measures
to win you back. Cause see, when you read this story of
Almost Said Homer and Homer and Goziah,
too many. The H and G is too close. When you read this story,
it's not the prettiest of stories. They get married,
they have these three children of promiscuity. And after
a season, she leaves him.
And not just leaves him. It's one thing to leave. She
leaves him and goes to another man,
a married man, and becomes an adulteress
on top of everything else. She was
now, the way I read Scripture, he could have just
said, I'm done with you and give her a writ of divorce
and been done with her. But that is not what God told him to do.
Because God was trying to show Hosea, I think,
the depth and the pain that he was going through
with the loss of his people, through what Hosea was going
through with Gomer. I think he allowed Hosea
to walk through that pain of having a
promiscuous wife, having children, through promiscuity, having a
wife that left him and went into
adultery, so that he would truly understand the
heartbreak that God the Father felt over his people.
Sometimes we think we know how God feels. Oh, you know,
oh, the Lord, it grieves the Lord,
you know, it's heavy on the Lord's heart. Yeah, it is.
Do you really understand how heavy sometimes? Because we like
to say things, but we don't like to bear things.
We like to put the words out there. But
Pastor Barbee was talking Thursday night about praying for a situation.
And she was saying how, yeah, we just pray sometimes and Lord bless them
or whatever. But then she got into a thing, she said, but we ever get
to this posture where it's like, dear Lord Jesus, whatever it
is that they have need of, I pray that you would bless them. Whatever is
coming, intercession and carrying the weight
of what somebody else is walking through, that's the heart
of God because that's the heart he had toward us. So I
believe Hosea walked through those things so that he could truly understand
the heart of God. Like I said, Hosea
was the son of Bera, and
he was also. You know, I look at the Bible sometimes and I get
linear. I like things to just be straight and even. And no,
don't give me hiccups and curves and stuff. Just make it all be nice and
even and clean. But you know, sometimes scripture's like a bowl
of spaghetti. Hosea was also a prophet
at the same time as Isaiah was in the same time that Amos
was. So they were all ministering to the Northern and Southern kingdoms
at the exact same times. And they had different words for
those in authority over them, but it was the same God giving the words to
those because he was reacting in different situations through the northern
and the Southern kingdom. But God was trying to
create reconciliation. God was trying to bring
redemption about, but the people were too dumb
D U M B to hear it and
receive it. Because guess what, we're hard headed. I'm sorry y' all
aren't. Cause I'm Hard headed. And I
don't listen all the time like I should to hear the Lord
speak. None of y' all are, but I know I am. I mean, it's
plain as day. You remember the. You remember the story. I don't know if somebody's
doing it. I should have put that one on the email too. Where the hand
writes on the wrong mini. Me neither.
It's right there. And he still couldn't get it. That's me in my
life. Been that way for most of my life.
I was born in a small town in South
Carolina. I've been born and raised in church my whole life,
except for about 24 months, 23 months.
A Christian family, but a dysfunctional family.
We were at church all the time. Sunday morning, Sunday night. That was the thing
we used to do back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. You'd have church on
Sunday night, 6 o', clock, and then after church was over, you hung around the
altar and had afterglow where you prayed and invited the Lord to talk to you.
And then after that you went to the Dairy Queen, get ice cream. They know
that. Cause they're much older. I'm just trying. It's not in your history books. I'm
trying to get y' all kind of. And then
Wednesday night. She knows. And then you had two revivals. You had a
spring and a fall. And you better be there Thursday, Wednesday through Sunday.
So that's how I grew up in church. And
everything seemed fine in our little family.
Grandfather was a pastor. He died the year before I was born. My grandmother took
the church for the next five years. Some things happen and
she was asked to step down. So we moved to first assembly of
God and went there till I went to school in 86 in
Florida. But like I said, my parents divorced.
Separated when I was 12, divorced when I was 15. I was on my own
at 16. But in that time frame, like I said, everything seemed
fine at church between Fred and Lewis or between Fred and Sharon.
But in the car ride home and behind the doors, it wasn't.
Things weren't fine. And I had a
father that didn't discipline. He
punished. And there's a difference, dads. I had to learn that with
my son because
until he was seven, I punished him too. I swore that I
wouldn't be my father. But you know, there's a scripture that talks about
curses that go to so many generations and blessings. If
you don't break that curse, you will carry it out.
And I swore I'd never do that to my Children. But I did that to
my son till he's seven. Till a brother says, if you keep doing it, you'll
drive him away from God and you'll drive him to hate you. And I had
to learn the difference between punishment and discipline.
Discipline is handling whatever the situation is. Do you know that? Boys
will be boys and do dumb boy things.
And some of them don't deserve a beating. They just
need to be, hey, knucklehead, straighten up. But
there are things that do need some corrective measures.
And sometimes it is a spoon or a belt or a switch,
but it's not 10 or 12 of them. It's just one of them. Get their
attention right. And then what I love, I've
seen some parents. Boy, I wish y' all had been parents when I was little.
Not just so I wouldn't have had that in my life, but to teach me
something. I've seen parents that will do a
corporal punishment and then they'll get right down there on the bed with
them and pray with them. Now, Kirk, let's ask
the Lord to help us to not tell lies anymore. Because God
said that we're people of truth and
correction.
Here we go.
About 9 years old, I had a 14
year old neighbor that molested me. We'll just say it that way.
And that took about a year and a half of my life. And that
situation in my life started me on a Road at 10,
11 and 12 and 13 years old. Age of pornography
and promiscuity that a 10, 11 year
old, 12 year old boy don't need to be doing.
And when I thought I got it taken care of and I thought I prayed
through and I'd go to the altars at youth group and I'd go down on
Sunday nights for prayer and do all those things and pray and think I was
clean. But I never confessed it to
somebody. I never told somebody
about it in my life that they could help me to. To
uproot those seeds in my life that
were starting to produce harvest in my life that I didn't want
and a harvest that would come to affect my marriage
some 20 years later. Folks, when we
walk in a garden of sin and we plant
seeds and we prostitute our faith,
we walk in promiscuity. We don't walk in relationship with
God. I love a word that Pastor Barbee says, para
Theos, to walk with
God, with God, arm in arm that
embrace paratheos. We
don't get those seeds uprooted before they take root. They
start growing things that we don't want in our lives that will could
potentially ruin generations down the road.
That situation. Showed up nine years later
in my marriage. Showed up several years later. Nine years into my
marriage. We were
youth pastors at a church in Antioch. We helped lead
worship at that church in Antioch. Pastor Justin said the
other Sunday, A couple of Sundays ago, you don't just wake up and have an
affair. He's right. You don't.
In my incidents, it took about eight to nine months of
flirting with disaster and not fleeing from
temptation. Started out holding hands in the prayer circle
before church, and then it started out hanging out
at their house because he was a drummer on the road. So Renee and I
became. It was her best friend. Yeah, I know. Throw rocks at me
now. I know you wouldn't have liked me 36 years ago.
I don't like me now sometimes. But I'm not that guy anymore.
Because God can redeem just like he redeemed
Gomer. But now we tell
people at 36 years of marriage, we've had 33
happy years and three living hell. And they were
because I had to build trust. I had to earn that back.
You might be in here, and you might know what I'm talking about. That's why
I'm telling you. See, everybody that stands on this platform
or behind a pulpit, we are not perfect people.
In fact, sometimes we feel like we're the most
unqualified to stand in this place
because we. Oh, God.
Because of the things of our past. But there's a different
but God that comes into play because that but
God is the one that intervened and saved our marriage. Because
before we said I do, we sat in Ashawnee's parking lot and said,
I don't care what happens. Whoever's wrong, we do
not get a divorce. We will work through this, and God will be in the
middle of our marriage. And if it wasn't for that woman over there holding onto
those words, I wouldn't be here. But God.
So whatever your situation is,
I brought one. No, I didn't. Anybody got a phone? I know Pastor Barbie
told you not to have one. Now we'll see. Pastor Barbie.
You guys right here. Y' all can just. You guys right here.
I know y' all think this is important in your life.
TikTok, Snapchat, every other flip,
flap, whatever. They're on here,
get off of them.
It'll lead you straight to hell if you let it. This
in itself is not a bad thing. It's a form of communication. It stores
information. And it can be A safety net to your parents and people that you
need when you need them. But when you got idle time, the
Bible said idle hands. Don't be sitting here
scrolling and I'm not looking at your stuff, baby. Don't be scrolling and looking through
this stuff. Cause I know what pops up on mine.
And you don't need to see it. You don't.
Because it'd break my heart
for things that happened to some of y' all because of people and predators.
Get off of it. Find
this thing. Why don't you scroll through these
pages? Why don't you read through these pages and see where
there's life?
Because that'll stop you from being a person of
promiscuity with your Lord. Come here,
Kirk. He's not God. But playing
the role of God, if
this is the Lord, just walk somewhere.
I'm kind of going that way.
But if I don't get
here
and stay right here with God,
guess where I'm going to go? I'm going to flee
toward temptation. And he can't cover me over here
because I'm not under the shadow of His.
You got to be lockstep with the Lord. Thank you, Kurt.
Somebody tell me what time it is. I'm off my notes.
1214 worship team.
Make your way.
Look around the room.
We brought in
500 new chairs of the week.
Oh, Lord. Every time I think about it, that
40 foot sea trailer. Oh, Lord. Ted Gertz. God bless your
heart and your back. There's
about 450.
There's five in the room now. There are 500 seats in
this auditorium.
We've started balancing out our services. First Service is
about 115, 120. This one's about 250 or so.
There are empty chairs in this room.
Some of them are written on those blackboards out that hallway.
Some of them you work beside. Some of them you go to school with.
Some of them you just meet in the marketplace.
I dream of a day where every. I want it to be so full in
here. I want you to come in. If you're not in here by 10 after
you're standing up.
Not so we have a million and three quarters
budget. Not so that we can invite 5,000
people on Fall Fest. Not so we can run six
shows of amazing shows sold out every time. But because
those are souls that need to come into the kingdom of God.
Pastor Kevin's challenged us to have tears for the
lost. And we ought to. You know why?
Because I was lost.
I know what it is to run From God, for 22 months when I
was growing up, I was the perfect little church boy. When I ran for those
22 months, if you could smoke it, drink it, or do it, I did it.
And I remember a Tuesday morning in March, I worked at the
night shift in Nissan. Got my shower, and I went
to wipe the mirror so I could shave. And the condensation
had blurred the mirror, and all I could see was a blurry
reflection of myself. And I just heard the
Lord tell me, that's not who you are. That's not who
I made you to be. And
in that little bathroom on 104 Lake Farm Road, right over there
by Nissan, wept before the Lord in that
marriage. And I said, if you will take me back,
I'll not run. I said that.
Then in 1998, I had an affair.
You didn't say all you want to say,
but until it gets here,
until this changes, until. See, we talk a lot about in this
house, we don't want your money. We want your.
We don't want your servanthood. We want your. We don't
want your fill in the blank. We don't want it. What
we want is we want your heart.
Because that's what God wants. Scripture says the heart is deceitful
above all things. I thought I was making a
commitment to God, but my heart was not ready. My heart
did not put its yes on the table. It
took a broken marriage and three
years of restoration for me to
see what I did to my wife and what I could have put
on my children. Because I'm the one that did those things.
And I'm the one that could have caused a curse from generation
to generation. And I don't want that for my son and daughter
in love. I don't want that for future grandchildren.
I want my life to be one that is of a heart for
God, that I'm walking parathios so
that I run in step with God, so that I can bring a blessing from
generation to generation. I told John,
what if it's one
I'm not? She'll watch it.
When my daughter came to tell me that she felt the Lord
leading her from here, she came in my office and she
said, daddy, I need to talk to you. And I said, as a pastor
or as a father? She said, both.
I said, well, talk to me as your daddy first.
And when she told me, tears welled up in my eyes. And I just told
her, I don't like this. This sucks.
That's what I say. If you don't like me, then don't like me.
But I always had visions of being in a
church when I'm old, with my children and my
grandchildren and seeing them in the house and
worshiping and serving. That was my dream. That's what I wanted.
But I had to realize she's not my daughter.
She's his daughter. God has no grandchildren. I
stewarded her life for however many years. And I have
to have the same posture with her as my own theology.
I have to be willing to let her go. Because what if
Chelsea goes to that church and she may be there
a year, five years, I don't know.
But what if one person, one
one person hears her story and gives her life to Jesus? Is it
worth it, Alan? Absolutely.
Absolutely. We gotta be willing to share
our story. And we can't prostitute
our walk with God. We are either in it
or we're not. We can't do this. I'm 60.
I can't do it either. We can't walk
one foot in and one foot out. It doesn't work.
It'll create strain. It'll create cramps and pain
in your life that you don't want. You either have to be with God or
you're not with Him. There is no pink in the
kingdom. We are crimson like sin. Or we're white as scar,
white as snow. You gotta be with him.
This song they're singing, that verse
when it gets prone to wander.
That's me. However many years
it's been. Since 1999. Had it up.
Thank you. Have I walked a perfect
Christian life? No, but I'm doing my best. I am
doing my best to be right here. Sometimes I
fall a little, but I try to grab that coattail so I can get right
back up there with him. Because I don't want him to leave me.
Because I know what three years of heartache was. I know what the heartache
of molestation is in my life. I know what sin will do in your
life. And I don't want it. I want the blessing of
God. And the blessing comes when you're walking with him. Because
he's a redeemer. Let me read you these four things,
Mary. You can put it at the end.
Jesus,
thank God. We'll get there. And we don't need these anymore.
No matter how many times Gomer left him and all that she did, Hosea
pursued her relentlessly.
At one point, he gathered all that he had, everything he owned
to buy her back. Just like Hosea. God has given everything
to get us back. He gave his all in his Son Jesus, for
you and for me, redemption is
always, always possible.
The second thing is this. God's love is unconditional. It don't matter
what you have done or been in your past. His
love is unconditional even
when we are unfaithful. Israel
was unfaithful, yet God still pursued her. And he
went through Hosea and made him marry a
prostitute to show him his
pain so that he would give the message to the people.
God's love is unconditional. This love is not based on the actions of the
recipient, but on the unwavering, steadfast love of the
one giving it. With those who are going to pray, come forward.
The third thing I want you to know is acknowledging our faults,
our sin. I don't make mistakes. I don't make.
I don't have issues. I have sin in my life and I've got to get
it right. And acknowledging my sin will lead to
transformation.
And finally, faithfulness is more than just
actions. It's about the heart.
So I guess that's our altar call today.
Where's your heart?
Am I all in? Am I prone to wander?
Do I need to be fettered? Here's how I
fetter. I hide thy word in my
heart that I may not sin against thee.
They're going to lead us in this chorus, this hymn.
Maybe you know what it's like to go through
some of the things I've shared. Maybe you've gone through darker things.
I'm going to tell you there's no distance from God further than
right now for your life. It's this moment
that you have, this kairos moment for you. As they play. Would you
come forward and allow these to pray with you and minister to you?