Men All Alone

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I'm thankful to be able to come before you men this morning and this afternoon.
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And don't misunderstand me.
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I love men.
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I love women.
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As Brother Mike alluded to my wife, there is nothing better than a wife.
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But I love men.
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And I think this is something great.
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I think this is something that is sorely needed in our day, even as Brother Keith alluded to, where masculinity and being a true man is almost snubbed at and looked at as if it's a dying breed.
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And I will say this even before we begin.
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A true man of God is a mighty weapon, a mighty weapon in the hand of God.
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So again, I'm just thankful for you to be here today.
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The subject for our message this afternoon is men alone.
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And as we begin to consider it, I do want to mention what has gone on before in the previous sessions.
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And I kind of knew that it would happen where I would get up and some of what I'm going to say is overlap, if you will, of what Brother Mike has already brought to us and what Brother Keith has brought to us.
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And I always enjoy listening to Brother Mike, because if you ask Brother Mike about a scripture, you better be ready for about 42 other scriptures, because they're coming.
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And again, even today, you could not mistake the scriptural proof for what he presented to us.
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And I think about Brother Keith, and Brother Keith will make you squirm.
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And if you think about it, it's good to squirm.
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So again, what I say this afternoon is in part overlap.
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But these areas that we're considering, men at home, men at church, men all alone, well, it's about men.
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So it should overlap in a lot of the different areas.
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So with that in mind, I'm going to ask if we would, just to set our minds and our hearts right, let's go before the Lord and ask His blessing.
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Our Father in God, again now, as we gather together in the name of Christ, as we bow before you, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, as we come in the name of Christ, we ask you, Lord, to be with us, be with our thoughts, be with our minds, Lord, be with our lives, that we would become more and more the mighty men of God, even as David was surrounded by his mighty men.
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So as we see the Lord Jesus Christ as the true David who sits upon the throne, may we become more and more his mighty men.
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And may we go out conquering and conquering for Christ.
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May, even as John the Baptist spoke, that you must increase and we must decrease.
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So bless our time, and may what is said and what is thought, may you bless it in a way that we would become more and more like the Son of God who so loved us that He gave Himself for us.
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Help me, Lord, now, for I am in great need of you, as we all are, in Christ's name, amen.
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So the title of the message is Man Alone.
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And even as Brother Keith alluded to, that someone might be confused as to what that means, man alone, that you might begin to think, well, are we gonna talk about lonely men? And that's not really the intent this afternoon.
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I do think that would be a worthy subject in and of itself, of how it is to be a man who's alone and how to handle that situation.
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But let me say this as we begin.
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Any man, every man, who is truly in Christ, who is truly regenerated by the Spirit of God, possessed by the Spirit of God, that man could never truly be alone, agree? Because that's an impossibility because it goes against the very nature of regeneration.
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It goes against the very nature of the work of the Spirit of God within us.
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So as we think about man alone, it certainly couldn't just be thought of as far as a relationship of a lonely man because that man in Christ is, again, never truly alone.
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The Spirit is the one in the person of the Father, the Son, and the coming of the Spirit of God that is the friend that sticks closer to us than a brother.
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And that you and I must see him as our comforter, as our friend, as our teacher, as our counselor, as our Lord, as our master.
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So again, as you and I pilgrims through this world, through this, what I say to myself many times, this ball of dust towards eternity, that we would realize that we are never really alone.
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And thank God for that.
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For if we were alone, we would be dead in sin, and that would be the worst of all situations to find ourselves in.
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So again, just let's think about where we started this morning and where we are now.
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First, we had Brother Mike, and he brought to us a message concerning the relationship of men at home.
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And it really is a message and a reality that the man at home is involved in many relationships, certainly the relationship of wife, certainly in the relationship of children.
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And so there's a very close link between the relationships that are given in the home.
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And so Brother Mike brought that out very clearly.
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And then we heard from Brother Keith, and his message was concerning the relationship of men in the church.
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And again, there it is, the relationship that in the home, it has to do with those that God has given in the immediate family.
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In the church, it has to do mainly with the elect of God, that you and I are in a relationship with those that have been called according to the purpose of God.
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Man Alone this afternoon is, what I really wanna do is try to give us some thoughts about how are we to consider ourselves, how do we consider ourselves as naked souls before God? How do we consider ourselves as those who are absolutely exposed in every way before God? That he not only knows us, but he knows the very thoughts, the very intents of our hearts.
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And I'll say this, if we lay hold of that, it's an astounding truth, brothers.
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Thought about Psalm 23, that famous psalm, that well-known psalm, that psalm that's so often repeated in so many different settings, and particularly as one leaves this world into the next, and how you can almost go anywhere in the world, or anywhere in the world where there has been a release, if you will, of the Bible, and you will find that people will be able to impart, quote, at least, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
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If you read that psalm, brothers, you will find that it's a one-on-one relationship.
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Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
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And if you read that psalm, what you will find is, again, that one-on-one relationship.
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It's him, and it's us.
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It's me before him.
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That great man of God, Job, said this.
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He said, does he not see my ways and count all my steps? Does he not see my ways and count all my steps? Brothers, we could very easily deceive others.
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We cannot deceive God.
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The light and the darkness are all alike to him.
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So this subject, this thought of man alone, or me before God, is a tremendous subject and one of great importance.
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That same saint of God, Job, said, he said, naked came I out of my mother's womb, and what? Naked shall I return.
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There it is again, one-on-one.
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Let me ask this question as we try to develop some thinking.
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And it might seem like a bit of an odd question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.
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If you were in a position to do whatever you wanted, I mean anything, if you were in a position to devote yourself, dedicate yourself, spend the time on anything that you wanted, no restrictions, let me ask you a question, what would be your answer? Now that might perhaps seem a hard question to answer.
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Even as Brother Keith brought up, and Brother Mike alluded to, we live in a world where it's so full of things to do, and especially as men, we're often overwhelmed just with the issues of life.
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I laugh, we had four, and love them to death, but thank God they're gone.
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And I walk through the store with my wife, and I see a man with his wife, and I see him with a trail of little chickens behind him.
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Four and five kids, and two of them hanging off this side, and one hanging off the other side.
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And I said to my wife, look at those people, and she says, where do you think we were? We had four in pajamas at the same time.
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So I know that to think about some of the things that we would choose is very difficult.
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There's relationships of the house.
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There's relationships in the job.
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There's relationships in the church.
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There's relationships in the community.
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There's relationships in the society that we live in.
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We might never really have time to even give it such a thought, but I'm gonna ask you the question anyway.
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If you had free reign to make a choice of pursuing anything, what would it be? Would it just be hunting, fishing, car restoration, travel, cooking and eating? Well, I thought of trying to think about things that we all kind of gravitate around.
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Me, if you asked me from that list, I'm going fishing.
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I mean, I could fish from morning till evening, rinse and repeat.
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I love God's ocean.
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There's something about being on the ocean that just makes me like a flower that hasn't had water for a while.
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So what would it be, brothers? You have free choice, free will, free reign.
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What would you pursue? Sometimes people call it their bucket list.
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It was not really my intent to try to find out your hobbies.
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I've already told you what I would do, but I wanna use that and try to springboard off of that to help us and to ask us to think about men alone.
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And as of yet, I've offered no scripture, so I'm gonna ask you, if you would, to turn to the sixth chapter of the book of Hosea.
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Hosea chapter six, read a few verses as we continue to consider our relationship with God alone.
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In the book of Hosea, in the sixth chapter, I'll just read with you the first three verses.
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Hosea chapter six, come and let us return to the Lord.
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For he has torn, but he will heal us.
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He has stricken, but he will bind us up.
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After two days, he will revive us.
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On the third day, he will raise us up that we may live in his sight.
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Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.
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His going forth is established as the morning, and he will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.
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This passage, as well as the whole book of Hosea, as Brother Mike even alluded to before, but this chapter is worthy of gospel exposition all by itself.
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But I wanna focus in on a few words of it to try to open up further the subject of man alone, man naked before his God, man one-on-one, if you will, the ultimate mano y mano.
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And it's the words that are in verse three where it says, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.
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That in these words, we find the key, I believe, a great key of how we are to handle this subject of being naked before God.
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I do not believe this is a suggestion.
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When it speaks, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.
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I think there is ample scriptural evidence that could be drawn out and exposed very clearly that as men before God, pursuing the knowledge of God, is a command and not a suggestion.
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God does not make suggestions, brother, God speaks.
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And that when we read these words of pursuing the knowledge of the Lord, it is not something that you and I can lightly write off or say within ourselves, well, if I have time, that sounds like something I would do, but you know, I'm really not sure I have the time.
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Now, I'm no Greek scholar.
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You check with Brother Keith and Brother Mike.
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Brother Keith spins my head on a Wednesday night.
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We'll be sitting there and he'll be talking about something and all of a sudden, he goes off and he's talking 16 sentences in Greek.
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Then he comes back to English.
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I'm no Greek scholar and I'm no Hebrew scholar, but I know this much from what is in this passage when it says, let us pursue, and I read the New King James, by the way, so in your translation, it might not say pursue, although in a number of translations, it does say that.
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But when it says, let us pursue, it's an imperative.
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It is something that is binding.
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You see, this relationship of God and man or God and woman, but this relationship that God has with us as his creation is an absolute relationship.
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None can escape it.
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Listen, you could leave here today and never come back.
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You could leave a lot of relationships alone and never have to worry about them again.
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You could run to the other side of the earth and get rid of certain things, but here's the one thing that you and I can't do.
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We cannot run away from God.
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Man, he says, if you hide in the heavens, I'll find you, you'll find me.
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And so this whole thought of pursuing the knowledge of God, it's a command and it's a command for good reason.
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It's because God is God.
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As living souls before our creator, before our sustainer, before our judge, we for ourselves and for his glory ought to be continually occupied with pursuing the knowledge of him.
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Remember who this is, brothers.
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This is not a God of wood or a God of stone that we serve.
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This is the living God.
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This is not the God of man's imagination.
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This is the one who is.
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This is the one who alone inhabits eternity.
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This is the one who alone dwells in the light that no man.
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So when we read something like this, where it says, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord, it is an imperative.
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Not only is it an imperative, brothers, but it's something that we ought to do continuously.
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Now, it doesn't mean that in order to pursue the knowledge of God, we got to abandon all relationships.
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That would be against the reality of scriptures.
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It's not as some would try to say, well, I'm gonna pursue the knowledge of God, I'm gonna go live on the mountain, I'm gonna contemplate God under the tree, and I will divorce myself from everything that this world offers, therefore I will pursue the knowledge of God.
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Do that and you'll be in sin because the scriptures never sanctioned such a life.
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As we heard already, God gave us relationships.
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We can't abandon those relationships and then try to cover it over by saying, well, I just need to be alone with God so I can pursue the knowledge of him.
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But here's what I do think it means.
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Knowing God, that's what Jesus said life was, right? This is life eternal, what? To know thee the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.
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That this pursuit of the knowledge of God is to be the absolute priority of our lives in the midst of all other relationships.
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Now you might say, well, you know what? As we hear often, well, if you're a pastor, if you're an elder and you don't work out in the marketplace and you're supported by the church, well, you have time to do all that.
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But not me.
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Well, let me tell you this, brothers, I can remember as well as some of you others that maybe have had your kids grown up and left, I can remember working two jobs, sleeping in the car for two hours, driving a truck in New York City and sleeping for two hours, getting in the truck again, going back out to New Jersey, coming back, sleeping in the car just to keep my family fed.
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And then I still was serving as an elder in the church.
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Probably not my best days.
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But my point is that this pursuit that you and I are to have as we consider it is something that ought to captivate us.
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It is something that ought to overtake us.
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In other words, men, we ought to be preoccupied in knowing him.
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Not knowing about him, in knowing him.
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Men ought to know their God.
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Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.
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The word that is used in the New King James for this is the word pursue.
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And it does carry the idea, it's a verb, and it carries the idea of action and a continual action, not a one-time event, but something that is to continue on.
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So I looked up the meaning of the word.
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Again, I'm not a Greek scholar, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but there are some great tools out there, brothers, I'll tell you that.
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And looking up the word, I found out that the word that's used here, and some translations will say follow instead of pursue, let us follow.
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But the word that is used in the New King James is pursue, and it carries the thought sometimes of persecuting something.
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Even as a lawyer would seek to persecute and prosecute the defendant.
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It carries the thought of chasing something down, of hunting it down.
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I read in one place where it says it means to dog after something.
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It carries the thought of being relentless.
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Let me ask us this afternoon, are we relentless in knowing God for ourselves? Not knowing him for this relationship or that relationship, although those are needed, but knowing God for ourselves, knowing who he is, and knowing who we are in the light of who he is.
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Are we relentless? Or is it a side job? I looked up where this word is spoken of elsewhere in the Bible.
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One of the places which I thought was interesting is that this word in the original that's translated pursue here is the same word that is used when it speaks of Pharaoh.
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When Pharaoh had let the children of Israel go to worship the God of Israel, and as soon as he had let him go, he then regretted it, turned from it, and it says that he pursued them.
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Remember how he pursued them all the way to the Red Sea? Pharaoh was hunting them down.
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He was dogging after them.
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Nothing could interfere with Pharaoh.
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Remember, the chariots, everybody, follow the children of Israel.
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Pursue them, and it wasn't just a pursuit that was to be given up somewhere.
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It was a pursuit that had to be accomplished.
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You and I need to pursue for ourselves as naked souls before God, the knowledge of God, and that pursuit is to be an eternal, I believe, an eternal endeavor.
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Which one of us would be so foolish to think when we get to heaven, we're gonna walk up to the Savior, we're gonna look him eye in his eye and say, well, I know you and you know me.
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Brothers, men, in our relationships and for ourselves.
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Are we pursuing God with awe? Are we pursuing God in a way that it affects our minds, our hearts, and our lives? Or are we just busy being religious? You see, it gets pretty pointed, doesn't it? You can't escape it when you put it in the right light.
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Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet I will fear no evil.
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And guess what? On the other side, we're gonna enter eternity.
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One-on-one, you're not gonna take your buddies with you.
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Praise God, you might see them on the other side, but they're not going with you.
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So I ask again for us to consider this.
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Is it our lifelong pursuit, brothers? Or is it just a side hobby that we take up on a Sunday if we're really spiritual on a Wednesday? And if we're super spiritual, maybe even a third time during the week? I was thinking about what happens when you get on a plane.
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So I used to travel a lot, fly every week, and you get on the plane, and as it's going down the runway, that same safety message comes up.
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Same one about buckle your seatbelts, and make sure your tray tables are up, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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But the last thing that they always say before the plane takes off is, in case of an emergency, oxygen mask will drop from the top compartment, and they don't need to fully inflate.
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And then they'll say this at the very end, they'll say, before you seek to help anybody else putting their oxygen mask on, make sure you put your own on.
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And I thought about that, I always used to think about that, how in the reality of it all, if I can't take care of myself, how will I ever take care of someone else? Listen, friends, brothers, men, if we're not pursuing God, then how in the world are we ever gonna lead anybody else to do it in the relationships of life? How am I gonna lead someone if I'm not being led? How am I gonna impart wisdom if I'm not pursuing wisdom? How am I gonna point others to truth if I'm not pursuing the truth? You see, my friends, brothers, it's so connected, it's vital, it's most practical.
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Let us pursue the knowledge of God.
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There are so many things that seeks to distract us from that.
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We've mentioned a few already.
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Some of the things that will enter in and the devil will whisper in our ear and the world will be more than happy to contribute to dissuade us and to, if you will, distract us, some of them are legitimate and some of them are illegitimate.
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So I began to ask myself, what are some of the reasons that could people come up with for not pursuing the knowledge of God? And oh, by the way, brothers, is not God worthy? But there are things that'll speak to us in the quiet of our ear and in the busyness of our life about how, yeah, that sounds real good to know God for myself, to pursue him, to realize I'm one-on-one before him, but sometimes it'll come this way.
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Well, you know, I have a lot of people that depend on me.
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And I gotta make sure that I'm providing for them and you know, and that's true, I just don't have the time to pursue the knowledge of God.
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I just gotta take it in slow and small portions because I'm just too busy elsewhere.
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You know, my wife, her honey-do list is like that.
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My kids, you know, they need attention and certainly they do and certainly, listen, if you got a honey-do list, do it.
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Much better to finish your honey-do list than to leave it unfinished.
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But you see, sometimes that's the way it'll come to us.
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It'll appear, well, I have to do this and I have to do that.
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Or it could be, you know, I have to keep my mind as was brought up, I have to keep my mind at work.
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I gotta make sure I'm sharp.
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I gotta make sure that I'm up to date and up to speed.
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I just don't have time to set aside to really pursue knowing God.
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And brothers, I'm not talking about pursuing facts.
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I always remember, throw a rock at me if I stay over an hour, please.
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But I always remember, I remember there was a man who was on Broadway in New York City.
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And his whole skit was, he'd come out on stage and he'd repeat verbatim the Gospel of Mark.
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He'd just come out, they had a chair, he'd have a glass of water, he'd started Mark chapter one and he'd just, just from memory, speak the whole thing.
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Ended in Mark 16 and everybody clapped, thought the guy was fantastic.
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Well, one day they did an interview with him.
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After this, the reporter said to him, well, you must be a very sincere Christian to have been able to memorize the whole Gospel.
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You must really know a lot about God.
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You know what he said? He said, I don't know anything.
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He says, I'm just doing it for the money.
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Is that how we're pursuing God? Just for a different reason than he's worthy? Just so that we might gain something other than the knowledge of him? Listen, there are many, many godly things that you and I need to devote our lives on as men.
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There are many things that you and I neglect that we ought not to neglect as godly men.
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But I will take this stance that the one thing above all that we should never neglect is knowing God for ourselves.
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And knowing him more and more today than we knew him yesterday.
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And pursuing it, hunting it down with all our energy.
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Seek you first the kingdom of God.
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Seek ye first.
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There it is.
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It's inescapable.
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How would we rate ourselves? How would you rate yourself in your pursuit of the knowledge? Well, let me put it to you this way.
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Does Christ captivate you? Does the truth of God's holiness and righteousness and immensity and beauty and goodness and all the attributes of God, does it captivate you? Or is it just a side job? Part of the issue I really believe is that too often we think that getting saved is the final stop, right? You gotta get them saved.
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We say that.
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Let's see if we can get this person saved without ever defining what saved means.
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What does saved mean? I'll tell you what I believe saved means.
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It means rescued from death that I might know God, that I might know him for his goodness.
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There's a saying, and I'm sure many of you have heard it before, a lot of truth in it.
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It's just a saying, but nevertheless, and the saying is, he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
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He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
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Begs the question, what's worth keeping and what's worth losing? I'll tell you what Paul said.
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Paul said, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge.
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I wanna know more of him, don't you? I wanna see him higher and more exalted, don't you? I wanna behold him in all his glory.
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I wanna be like Moses.
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Lord, show me your glory.
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Please, Lord, let me see your glory.
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We should be those brothers, men, who pursue it.
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It should be the great charge of our own life.
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One of the reasons I really believe that there are problems in the churches with men, and I believe there are, is that men, for a multitude of reasons, believe they only have to know so much and do so much and accomplish so much.
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Brothers, I don't believe that's the true position.
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I believe that when it says we ought to pursue the knowledge of God, that it means we ought to count everything but loss for the excellency of that knowledge and desire to have it grow brighter and brighter.
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Remember what the Proverbs says? It says, the path of the righteous is a shining light which shineth more and more unto that day.
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It's a great charge.
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It's a great charge that we have, brothers, isn't it? There's no joke.
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It's not easy to dismiss.
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I've got relationships at home.
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I've got wife, my wife, my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
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I've got relationships at church, the elect of God, the people of God.
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I've got all these outside relationships that are constantly pulling after me.
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I got work, I got community, I got political issues and societal issues and all that.
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I just don't have the time that I need to pursue the knowledge of God.
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I think one of the devices of the evil one at times is to cause us to think that as long as we're doing something, we're doing the right thing.
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Long as we're doing something, as long as we're showing some effort towards pursuing a greater knowledge of God that we're on the right path.
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Let me ask you a question to think about.
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If it was just a matter of as long as you're doing something, you're on the right path, what if the thing that you're doing is the wrong thing? What if the road that we get on to get to a certain destination is the wrong road? What if we get on the wrong road and guess what? We put the pedal to the metal and we're going down and we're moving along and get out of my way, I'm going somewhere, I'm pursuing something.
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What if we're pursuing the wrong thing? Will we not do damage to ourselves? Will we not do damage to those that are in the car with us? Will we ever get to where we ought to be? No, go as fast as you want, hard as you want.
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You're pedaling, if you're rowing against the wrong, if you're rowing in the wrong direction, brothers, you're never gonna get there.
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Listen, that's why I say, let us pursue the knowledge of God.
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Can you tell me that I will be wrong if I pursue knowing Christ? Not knowing about him, but knowing him more and more, knowing what he commands of me, knowing what he desires of me, knowing what he wants me to do.
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We talked about it today.
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I don't know what the Lord wants me to do.
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I don't know the will of the Lord.
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I'll tell you the will of the Lord in a general sense.
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It's our sanctification, right? Well, how do we get to our sanctification? Do we order it? Does it come by Amazon? I remember a long time ago, I heard a preacher say, as he looked out and saw people in their lack, if you will, of desire to know God, and he was thinking about what Jeremiah said, where Jeremiah says, we need to plow up our own hearts.
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This preacher was there and he was getting it.
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And he was pointing to people and telling them they needed to get a pick and shovel and dig up their own heart.
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Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.
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His going forth is established as the morning.
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He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.
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So I want to try to give us just one or two other things to think about as how that is to be accomplished.
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In one sense, I think there is certainly, many things that we could say are standard.
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But in another way, we're all created differently and there are different ways for us to pursue God as long as we're pursuing God in the right way.
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Hope that makes sense.
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That we're not all, in many ways, cut from the same cloth.
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But I want to make two suggestions to you and ask you to think about them.
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Two suggestions on how we can pursue the knowledge of God.
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And with the caveat of this, no matter what we do, unless the spirit of God blesses, it's done in vain, right? It's the spirit that quickens, the flesh profits, nothing.
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So it's not just energy, it's gotta be spirit empowered.
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But let me make these two suggestions.
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The first one is this, and I ask you to seriously think about it for yourself.
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How much time do you spend alone with God? I ask you to weigh it out, brothers.
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My background is, I was brought up as a Catholic.
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I was an altar boy, I did the mass in Latin.
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Went to a Catholic school, got my knuckles and other parts of my body beat endlessly by nuns.
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One of the things I remember at the Catholic church was those dang rosary beads.
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You'd have to take out those rosary beads and then you had to touch every button and it was the black one for the Hail Mary and the other ones for the Our Father and you had to go through this whole, I forgot how many, I think it was like 60 or whatever.
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You had to go through the whole thing.
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And if you were really bad, you had to go second time around, it was like crazy stuff.
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And I remember how that was taught of as prayer.
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But that's not really prayer, is it? What is prayer? Prayer is communion with God.
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How much time do we commune with God, brothers, for ourselves? How much time do we spend out in the wilderness with God? I don't know about you, but I read in the Gospels where it says Jesus whole days in prayer and I'm like, I think so often we think if we prayed for five minutes or 10 minutes straight all of a sudden that the heavens are gonna open, the angels are gonna come down and clap.
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How much time do we spend in prayer, brothers, men, for ourselves, for our wives, for our children, for discipling, for the church? How much? Well, you know, we pray before every meal.
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By the way, I have nothing against praying at every meal, but I find it sometimes a little bit disconcerting.
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I'll see people come into a restaurant and they'll pray over the meal and then I'll see them in a different setting and they're eating potato chip here and a cookie there and I've always wondered why don't you pray before you have the potato chip? Why do you always pray at the big meal? Why don't you pray with the cookie? I'm not against the prayer, please don't misunderstand me.
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What I'm saying is how much time is really spent by us because I will show you this, a prayerless soul will be a dry soul.
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A prayerless soul will be a dry soul.
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Some of us are dry because some of us are prayerless.
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Some of us can't relate to so many things about the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom because we've never really spent time communing with him about it.
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I talk to people at work and they'll come up to me and say, you know, did you watch so-and-so's show? And I'll say, huh? They'll say, well, he did something Wednesday night at nine.
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And by the way, you know, this show's on Thursday night.
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I don't like lost, I live in a bubble.
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I watch Animal Planet and Law and Order, go figure.
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But they know everything about that, they know every sports score, they know who's in the March Madness thing, they know the 64 teams, they know this, they know that, they know nothing.
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And they spend no time praying for you themselves or others.
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You see, the reality of it is, as we weigh ourselves before God by ourselves, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, brothers.
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You can't hide.
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Something to consider.
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So one suggestion would be, in order to pursue the knowledge of God, we better find time to be alone with God.
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And isn't it glorious? You could be alone with God in the middle of 100,000 people.
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Isn't that wonderful? Isn't it great that you could be alone with God and be as busy as anybody on earth and you could still be alone with God? But then there's also those times to set aside to be alone with God.
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Let me ask you that, brothers.
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What's your time schedule for prayer? Is it on Wednesday night? Is it on channel two, five, seven, nine, four? How is it? Is it early in the morning? Is it late at night? Is it in the middle of the afternoon? Well, you know, I really don't, yeah, sometimes I could pray to, brothers, I say, if we're gonna pursue the knowledge of God, we gotta be like Daniel, man.
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You gotta open them windows and get down on our knees.
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Do we really commune with God? Here's something else that I would suggest.
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And again, just two simple suggestions and then we'll begin to close.
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Not only pursuing the knowledge of God, but knowing Christ, knowing what pleases God, knowing what displeases God, knowing of His glory and of His goodness and of His mercy, that prayer is such a vital piece of our walk one-on-one before God.
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But let me ask you this.
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And again, as I said in the beginning, there's a lot of overlap from Brother Mike and Brother Keith's messages.
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But let me ask you this.
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How much time do you spend alone in God's Word? How much time do you, for yourself, spend alone with God's Word? How many of us would feel comfortable if all of a sudden it was a meter over our head and all at once the dial was gonna go this way or that way? How many of us would say, hey, you know, you can, I don't mind what you see, as far as our own personal study? I will say this.
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Some are given in one way and some are given in another way, even as concerning the Word of God.
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That's why when you hear someone preach, you'll hear someone preach this way and you'll hear someone preach that way, because some people are persuaded this way and that way by propensity, by personality.
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So I understand there's different levels, if you will, that God gives, and some are given to a deeper dive in the Word of God.
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As I said, I could ask Brother Mike, I know I could ask Brother Mike a question about a word and man, he'll give it to me.
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Whereas I would, for myself, brothers, honestly, I'll look it up and I just don't have the propensity to dive that deep.
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I wish I did.
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That's why I need him.
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So I understand that, but here's the question.
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How much time do you spend alone with God in his Word? See, the angels are agreeing with me.
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Seriously, brothers, let me put it to you this way.
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Let me ask you a question.
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What's your personal library look like? What does your personal library look like, brothers? Do you and I make use of those that God has given throughout church history? Do we make use of them that God has graciously allowed them to give us insight that God gave them? Or the men that write today, that write some things that are astoundingly great and good? Let me ask you a question, brothers, again.
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What does your personal library look like? Well, what do you mean? I got two Bibles.
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Goody for you.
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This world, and maybe I would think you would agree, especially in America, we are captivated by this man cave thing, right? Everybody gotta have a man cave for your man.
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Men will spend millions of dollars and countless time in setting up their man cave and making sure they got every helmet or every logo or every car or every super figure, and I'm not mentioning any names.
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You know, I got Superman from 1972.
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He's still in a box.
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Well, here, seriously, I believe a man cave for a godly man ought to be a library.
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How's that? I'm not saying you shouldn't have a man cave, but I say you should have a library before you have a man cave, or your man cave should be the library, and that's exactly the way it is in my house, and I have two sons, and my boys are big boys.
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I got a master chief in the Navy, and I've got a lieutenant in the fire department, and I got another one who's a welder and a mechanic, and they come over to my house, and they all got man caves, and I'll even go in there once a while, they'll come to my cave, and all they see is books.
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They're like, Dad, you gotta have a man cave.
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Here it is.
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Seriously, how much time do we have? How much effort, material, money, desire do we have to study God's word, both his Bible and those that he's gifted with? You see, my friends, my brothers, men, we ought to be men.
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We ought to chase God down.
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We ought to do those things in our life that when people come to see us and see how we live, in the broader picture, because we all have our days, right? We all have days we wish no one would see us, even though we know God sees us, but when they see us in our broader life, they see that, they see that we're men of prayer.
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They see that we're men of the word.
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They see that we're dedicated.
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They see we're hunting it down.
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We're dogging after it.
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Always used to trip me up when I first came to Christ, people would say, well, you know what? I remember even the people I knew, the guys I hung out with, for that matter, and my family, and they were trying to say to me, I came to Christ, and brothers, I don't know about you, just my own testimony, I was like Saul.
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I didn't come like Lydia, like a gentle breeze, no, no.
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I went, I got knocked down, woke up, I'm ready to roll.
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And I can remember even my family saying, you know, this is good for you.
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This is better than what you were doing.
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But take it easy, take it easy, you're a little bit crazy.
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And I was, and I thank God for it.
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Listen, I've been in Christ 45 years.
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I can't get enough, how about you? I'm not settled down, I don't wanna settle down.
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I wanna know Him, I wanna know more of Him.
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I wanna pursue Him, I want Him to reveal Himself to me.
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I want Him to pour out of me.
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I said to myself this morning, I'm not gonna get excited.
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I'm gonna ask you to turn to a scripture and close it.
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In the Gospel of Luke, Luke chapter 12.
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Luke chapter 12, and I just wanna read a few verses.
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Ask us to think about this.
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In Luke chapter 12, verse 34, we read this.
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It says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
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But now read with me a little bit further.
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Read what it says, and consider it for yourself in light of this.
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Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning.
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And you, yourselves, be like men who wait for their master.
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When he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks, they may open to him immediately.
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Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching.
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Assuredly, I say unto you, he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat.
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Who will come and serve him? Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning.
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And you, yourselves, be like men who wait for their master.
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Brothers, how we doing, man? What do people really think about you? They'll see your imperfections and, oh God, forgive me for all those things that I do that are wrong.
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And I do them before my kids sometimes, and I do them before the people I work with.
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I do them with strangers, and I'm so ashamed of myself at times.
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But I'll tell you this, there's not a person that truly has been around me for any amount of time that does not know I'm chasing God.
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Get out of my way, if you will.
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And I'll never get where I wanna be, but I'm hunting now.
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And I want this to be said to me, of me, that my waist was girded and I always had my lamp burning for the knowledge of God.
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So may God bless us, brothers.
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May we remember what Jesus said when he said, occupy till I come.
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And that when that day comes, and it comes, right? It's gonna come for everyone here.
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Young, old, healthy, sick, wise, not so wise, every one of us shall one day breathe our last.
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And then we shall be one on one with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
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And we shall, listen, men will laugh at it today, but every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord and we shall give account of ourselves.
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Praise God, never for judgment if we're in Christ, for our judgment is gone.
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But for what we have done, with what has been entrusted to us.
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May God help us.
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Amen.
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Let's pray.