The King Who Drifted - Chronicles of the Kings (Week 3)

In Week 3 of Chronicles of the Kings, we look at the life of Solomon, a king who began with a heart devoted to God but slowly allowed other loves to take His place. Through Solomon's story, we are reminded that even good things can become dangerous when they become ultimate things.

Watch as Pastor Andrew Strand takes us through Week 3 of Chronicles of the Kings and discover how God calls us to remain fully devoted to Him.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, man, wasn't it great seeing that video from Kids Camp? Let's give it up for all the volunteers, all the parents, all the college students, high school students that went. Thank you guys. Amazing. Welcome, those joining us online. Glad you guys are with us. Turn in your Bibles to 1 Kings. We're in 1 Kings today. We're in a series called The Chronicles of the Kings, and we've been looking at the Kings. You've been hopefully reading. We have a reading plan for you to read about the Kings before you come to church. If you don't have one, there's one in the fore you. Grab one of those on one of the tables. Just get one on your way out. We've talked about King Saul, the first king of Israel. We've talked about King David. Today we're going to talk about King Solomon, the king who drifted. So we're going to look at 1 Kings chapter 3 and then over at 1 Kings 11. So stand with me for the reading of God's word. 1 Kings chapter 3. We're going to just read the first part of this verse and then move to chapter 11. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David, his father. 1 Kings 11, 1 through 4. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall you, for sure neither they shall with you, for surely they will turn your heart after other gods. Solomon clung to these in love. He had seven hundred wives, everyone say, Uh-oh, who were princesses, and three hundred concubines say, Oh my. And his wives turned his heart. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord as his God, as was the heart of David, his father. This is the word of the Lord. Everybody said? Amen. You may be seated. I enjoy reading uh biographies. Uh years ago, I had a mentor who uh told me I needed to do something with my time. I had finished seminary and had a lot of time on my hands at that point where I needed to engage my mind. He said, Hey, find a type of book you like and like just read all the authors of that, or find a genre and become an expert at it, or whatever. So I just, years and years ago, I started reading biographies, and I I've read a lot of interesting biographies about presidents, uh, generals, uh, people of faith, and even business leaders. And one thing that is common among all these stories that I've read over the years is that people are more complicated than we like to admit. Can we acknowledge that that's true? Uh we like to put people in boxes, the good box and the bad box, right? That's kind of simple. It it may, if someone's, if we like them, they're good. If we don't like them, they're bad. That's kind of how culture works, it's kind of how politics works, it's kind of how, like good, there's good, and then there's bad. And um, and how many of you know that's it's a lot more complicated than that? Um, we like to put put people in these categories, but I was reading this one I was reading recently, it was on John D. Rockefeller, who turns out people have some pretty strong thoughts about, I discovered. I uh he was obviously a Titan in the oil and gas industry, which is one of the things I like to read about. Since you guys all work there, I want to know a little bit about what you guys are doing. Um he became dominant in the oil industry, and there's there's certain people that think he was a cutthroat tycoon who manipulated his way to the top, not considering anyone else. Other people say, no, he was a Sunday school teacher who was philanthropic and gave most of his wealth away. He loved God. But how many of you know, if we look deep enough, there's probably some good and some bad in any of these people that we look at? And how many know that's true of ourselves? Look at your neighbor and say, there's a little bit of good and bad in you too. Go ahead and tell him. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, you know that to be true. Like, it's a little more complicated, right? It's a little more complicated than you're good, you're bad. Uh, we we like to throw those labels around, it makes life simple for us. But if we're being honest, if we're being transparent, when we read stories like this, we see a little bit of them in us. We see a little bit of the bad in us, and we see a little bit of the good in us, and we can identify it if we're being really transparent and honest. And this is true of any of the kings that we've studied or will study. As we look at them, we can see some of ourselves in them. Solomon, and the title of this message, was a king that drifted. He started out strong. Matter of fact, in chapter three of 1 Kings that we just read, it said he loved God in the same way his father, the David, the king after God's own heart, loved God. He he loved God so much, he was devoted to God, he did incredible things. Matter of fact, what God was so pleased with Solomon that he appeared to him in a dream and he said, Solomon, I'm gonna give you anything that you ask for. And he could have asked for money, he could have asked for power, he could have asked for anything. And instead he said, God, would you give me wisdom? Would you give me the discernment and wisdom so that I would know how to lead your people well? And that pleased God so much he gave him everything else as well. He was hard after God, he loved God, but we see that later in his life he drifted away and eventually was distant from God. It's interesting, much has been written about Solomon over the years, and iron uh very interesting, many artists had made Solomon their muse. Uh he was in the Renaissance period especially, uh, he was sought after. Uh paintings of Solomon were sought after by kings and by various leaders uh who, in governmental leaders, who wanted who wanted uh artists to go ahead, and that's how artists really survived is somebody rich would pay them to do something, and then they would have something impressive in their court. They'd have something impressive in their house for everyone to see. And they would ask for Solomon. They would ask for stories from Solomon so that that when people would visit their house or visit their court, they would associate the wisdom and the prosperity of Solomon with them. And so as a result, we have a lot of Renaissance art and other art that came out of uh the story of Solomon. So you're gonna see some of that here as we learn a little more about Solomon. Solomon was the second son of David and Bathsheba. Many of you know the story of David and Bathsheba. They had another son, and this son would be King Solomon. He was the third king of Israel. Matter of fact, um Israel was uh united under King Saul, under King David, and under Solomon. Every king we talk about from here on out, there was a divided kingdom. It was Judah, the southern kingdom, and the northern kingdom. So we're tracking two different kings at that point. But he, Israel was united under and he led for 40 years. That's a long time. That's a long career. 40 years. Uh uh the he was a builder, he built the temple. Matter of fact, uh, not only did he build the temple, he built uh houses and infrastructure all throughout Jerusalem and other places. He was uh a builder, he dedicated the temple to God. Interesting, the temple, uh, when you read through scripture, is a theme throughout. Uh where is God's presence going to rest? We see God's presence on a mountaintop and fire in the Exodus story. We see uh through the Exodus there's a uh a move to a temporary temple, a tabernacle, and God's presence was there, and it was signified by a pillar of fire at night and a cloud, a cloud by day. Uh and then and then uh here we have David had a heart to build the temple of God, a place for God's presence to reside, instead of a roving, moving tent. But but God wouldn't let David build it. So Solomon built the temple. It was named Solomon's Temple. Eventually, that temple would later on be destroyed, and they would be carried off into exile much later, hundreds of years later, and and a new temple would be built by Nehemiah and Ezra and that crew that came back from the exile, and it was a smaller temple, and this is the temple that Jesus would have come and visited in the first century. When he went to the temple, that's the temple he would have gone to. Eventually, that too was destroyed. And this theme of temple is all throughout the scriptures that we read. It's the place where God's presence dwells. But even a few weeks ago, as we preached about Pentecost, uh, that there's something unique that happened at Pentecost. After Jesus was risen from the dead and the Holy Spirit was poured out on all his followers, there were these weird tongues of fire that rested over all the believers. What is that? Why are there tongues of fire? That's kind of weird. It it looked like something was just hovering above them. What was that? Well, fire was always associated with the place where God's presence dwells. It was on the mountain, it was in the tabernacle, it was in the it was in the temple, and now what is amazing about Pentecost, as well as the gifts of the Spirit and the Holy Spirit being poured out, is that the followers of Jesus now become the temple. The place where God's fire of his presence dwells. So now the temple is not just one location in the Middle East, but the temple is everywhere where the body of Christ is. Everywhere there's followers of Jesus. You carry the presence of God with you. Isn't that amazing? Well, this all began. Solomon built the temple, the place for God's presence to dwell. He dedicated it to God, you see, there in the picture. He established international trade. Uh there's uh famous stories and stories in scripture, the Queen of Sheba and others coming to hear of and listen to Solomon's wisdom and see all that he was doing. There's dignitaries that would come regularly. He would engage with Egypt to trade horses, uh, Lebanon for cedar. He established international trade. Matter of fact, some of his 700 wives, which are said 700 princesses, were actually from other nations by which he was securing economic ties. This is what was one of the things that was happening. It wasn't just that he had a capacity, a great capacity for women, although I think he did. Um it's that he's building international ties and an economic powerhouse. He organized the government. Matter of fact, there was he divided them up into 12 sections, and the government was known for being well-run during the 40 years he was king. He his reign was marked by peace and prosperity. Um there was there was relative peace. There was squirmishes here and there, but there was there were good things that were going on, peace and prosperity. He was able to judge when people had difficult things. He would bring them to him and he would judge, like you see in the picture here. Um He wrote or inspired Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and a few psalms, what we read. Some of those he directly wrote, some of those he inspired. Some of the Old Testament scriptures you read are written from Solomon in his wisdom. Matter of fact, in 1 Kings 4 32, it says he also spoke 3,000 Proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. Has anyone wrote 1,005 songs? So all of these do not survive, but we know some of them do through Proverbs, Psalms in Song of Solomon's Ecclesiastes. Yet somewhere in this amazing life, somewhere along the way, during his 40-year reign as king, seeing God's provision, protection, receiving God's wisdom, building God's temple, serving God's people, enjoying God's blessing, he started to drift. What I've discovered over the years of serving in ministry is that most people don't deliberately walk away from God, they drift away from God. There's a few that maybe there's a traumatic event in their life or something happens and they just go, I'm not gonna believe in God anymore, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna fellowship with God. But most people, most people begin to slowly just drift away from God. And all of a sudden, they were close and now they're not. They were tight with God, now they're distant, and they're living for self. I was thinking about this, and I got a pilot friend to help me think through this reality of what it would look like if a uh you were taking a airplane from Midland, Texas to Miami. You wanted to go to the beach, you were excited about that, and you were gonna go to Miami. That'd be so fun. But let's say you were 90% correct, but you were just 10% 10 degrees off. Just a little bit, like you got most of it right. Live 90, like 90% right. But if you're just 10 degrees off, you would not end up in Miami enjoying the beaches of Miami, but you would get to go to communist Cuba. I mean, a a little deviation, I mean, uh the a little misalignment can produce major deviations. Isn't that true? This is true in anything. It's like, hey, that's mostly right, and you end up in a place you don't want to be. This is where I don't think Solomon wanted to be in the place he was in at the end of his life. I don't I don't think he wanted to be turning away from God and all that he had built. I don't think when he was young, he would say, Yes, I want to do really good for a long period of time, and then I want to start drifting away, and I want to eventually get to a place where I am an idolatress and an idolater, and I'm worshiping the idols of my wives. I don't think he planned on that, I don't think he intended on that, but that's exactly what happened. Because when we make small decisions, they affect our future. Decisions about who we marry, decisions about who we hang out with, decisions about who we partner in business with, decisions about who gets our time and our energy and our affections, all these small decisions can affect where we end up with God. That's what happened to Solomon. And today I want to just share four lessons that we can learn from this. How did Solomon drift? How can we learn from that today as believers? Let me give you four. Number one, don't drift happens during good times. You'll notice things were great with Solomon. It was a time of peace and prosperity. Everything was going great. I mean, people were coming to him, seeking his counsel and wisdom. The people of Israel were coming to get judged and find out his wisdom. There was so much going on. The temple was being built, he had his own private house being built. He was building a house. Can you imagine? Hold on, building a wife, uh house for 700 wives. I mean, like it's like, I like a modern home. No, I want a Victorian. Can we do French country? No, no, no. All the problems, all the problems. He built his house. He built all these things. Things were relatively going well. And it's when things are going well that you begin to drift. It's when the business is going great. It's when there is no lack in the in the finances. It's when everything seems to be going smooth and you're not in a really hard shard spot. Uh, and and all of a sudden you find yourself kind of pulling away from God. You don't plan on it, you don't want to. Because when things are bad and down, you're at the bottom, you're reaching out for God, you're crying out to God. But when things are good, you think, hey, things are good. Think I must be doing good because things are going good. But how many know just because things are going well doesn't mean you're doing well. And just because things on the outside seem to be fine doesn't mean things on the inside are fine. And this is what happened with, this is what happens with with Solomon, and this is what can happen with us. We start, we start, things are fine. So you know what? If if if I was in desperate need, I'd be at church, I'd be worshiping God, I'd be in there, but you know what? Um, I'm gonna skip this week, or you use your time with God, you're gonna like, you know, I'm busy. I I can't tell you how many vacations we had, where I had these big aspirations of spending a lot of time with God. But how many know it's like on vacation when you're out of your routine, you're like, look up three days later, like, man, I haven't gotten the Bible yet. It's these devil children that keep me from God. That's especially when they're young, you know? It's like, oh my gosh, I I thought I have these aspirations, but then we don't, like, because things are good, you're in vacation, you're enjoying life, and man, this is this desperation for God. And when there's no desperation for God, oh, watch out. That's that's when the drift can begin. Two be careful of what or who you love. Verses 1 through 2, it says, Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women. He did not, it was, he was cool with all of them. He just loved women. From the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel. Now, what's important about this, I want to point out, is that God was the ruler of Israel, but they demanded a king. No, give us a king like everybody else. So God said, okay, and in Deuteronomy 7, you can go read this later, but in Deuteronomy 7, God says, if you're gonna have a king, here's the rules for the king. Here's what the king must do and not do. So what is happening here is there's a quote from Deuteronomy 7. Here's one of the rules for that the king of Israel. You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn your heart after their gods. But Solomon clung to those in love. Oh man. He loved them. Now, I wouldn't say he loved them in the same way God loves us, or the way love is described in 1 Corinthians 13. I think he loved them for what they did for him. I think he loved them because of the maybe the prestige uh that that was brought to him and the alliances that they provided him. I think the the the the the economic advancement that they brought to him, maybe the pleasure or desire that was fulfilled by him because of them. I don't know that he loved them in some sort of sacrificial way, the way God loved us, but he loved them. They had his time, his affections, and his emotions. This is important. How do you know what you love? Here's how. How do you know what you love? It's what occupies your time and your attention and your affections. That's how you know what you love. You can say you love someone, but if you never spend time with them, they never have your attention, and they never get your affections, you're just saying it. Does that make sense? You you we can love, and I'm not, you don't just love people, you can love things. You can love your bank account, you can love how people perceive you, you can love uh your the way others perceive you. You can you can love uh you can love hobbies, you can love golf, you can love fly fishing. Oh, I love fly fishing. I don't love it like that, but I I do like it a lot. What is it that you like? Do you like things? Do you like people? Do you what is it does it have your what what do you think about when you're at the in your day? What does your mind drift to? What has your affections? What gets you angry and upset if somebody tries to take it? Like that is what you love. And this is what happened with him. Be careful with what you love because we think the world wrongly assumes that we have no control over what we love. Oh my heart just loves I'm I just couldn't help it. I love this person. Yeah, but they don't believe in God and they're, you know, they're crazy, and they always drag you down, and you're always drunk at the end of the night. I know I can't help my emotions and my feelings. I love them. Bull. Bull. I know arranged marriages, people that chose, did not choose each other, that love each other. Uh now, I will say this one arranged marriage is funny because it was an Indian couple on a flight. They had the window and the aisle seat, and there was a seat I was on in the middle. I said, Do you guys want to sit together? They're like, No, we're fine. I'm not sure. To come to find out they had an arranged marriage, they did love each other, but they just really had a preference of where they were gonna sit. Like you have a you have you have an ability to put yourself around people, and when you hang out with people, you learn and you grow in love for them. So if you're around the wrong person or the wrong people, you will grow in love for them, and they could affect you in a deep way. You have control over who and what you love. If you love golf, and golf is keeping you from your family responsibilities, and golf is keeping you from hanging out with with the Lord because Sundays are for golf, and uh, you know, whatever the case may be. Pick pick a hobby. And and you love those things, and and it like you can stop golfing, and you know what? You will not love golf as much when you stop golfing. When you hang out with someone else, you you you start, you be careful who you love. There's a there's autonomy over this. You are not a victim of who you love. You choose who you love and you choose what you love. So, number one, be careful of good times. Number two, be careful of Who or what you love? Number three, who or what you love will turn your heart to God or away from God. Who or what you love? 1 Kings 3, 11, 3 says, he had 700 wives who were princes' 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. I don't, first of all, some of you are like, man, that sounds great. Some of you are like, that's the worst nightmare I've ever heard of. I can't handle one wife, let alone 700 wives. How does that happen? Some of you ladies are like, man, that's not bad. I don't only have to deal with him like once every other year, you know. That's not bad, but I get all the things the king gets, you know. I'm a queen, yeah, that's cool. That might not be a bad deal. These women, it was warned in Deuteronomy 17 before Solomon was even born. When he began to give them their heart and he loved them, they began to turn his heart away from God. He uh it's it's not just that he loved the pleasure, although that's part of it. Maybe he loved the power and the alliances and the the money and economic prestige it was bringing. Maybe he loved, he he loved what they did for him, whatever the case may be. Maybe it was because he was able to look at me. I've got this huge kingdom and this huge harem, and this is what a real king does in today's day and age, back in that time. And Solomon began to live a self-referential life. It was all about him. Everything in his life was about him and reference to him and what he thinks and what he felt and what he wanted. And this is the opposite of the life that he started out with. He started out devoted to God. God, I want, I, he could ask for anything. You know he said, give me wisdom to lead your people well. That wasn't asking, that wasn't a self-referential life. At the end of his life, it was about him, what he had built, what he had done, and who he was with, and his wives, and anybody you're with can pull you away from God or to God. Man, I have had the honor of being with people over years that pull me to God. I've been in conversations, I can tell you about a conversation I was in just two days ago with a with someone I fully respect, a pastor who I fully respect. And in that conversation, both of us were in tears, and in that conversation, he was bringing me closer to God, not further away. There's people in your life that when you pray with them, you talk with them, God, you're like, you're inspired to go further with God. You're inspired to follow Jesus, you're you're ready to go. And there's others that you feel like they're drawing you further away. And some of those others might be family members. That's what's tough. It might be family members, it may be a coworker, it may be a friend that you've hung out with in a social setting, and they're taking you away. Whoever you choose to love will either bring you closer to God or further away from God. So, what do you love? Who do you love? Finally, fourth lesson. Who and what we love directly impacts who and what we worship. Who and what we love directly impacts who and what we worship. Look at verses four and five and skip down to eight in 1 Kings. It says, For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart after other gods. His heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David, his father. For Solomon went after Bash Torah, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. Skip down to verse 8. And he so he did for all his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrifices to their gods. He would have never imagined in his early years that he's joining his wives and sacrificing to false gods. Idolatry, false worship. Some of us read scripture and we think it's silly a little bit, right? We look at that and go, man, how do you how do you bow down to a pole? How do you develop a golden image and worship it? That's so stupid. Like you read it and you kind of judge these guys, let's be honest, you judge some of them. Like, that seems foolish to me. But I just wonder how foolish they, if they were to look at us, how foolish they would think we are, that we spend most of our days in front of something uh in front of our phone uh versus in relationship with one another. I wonder how silly they would think that instead of engaging each other, we hide behind our computers online. I wonder, I wonder how silly they would think we are. See, idolatry is whatever you spend your time and your attention and your affections on, though that is exactly not just what you love, but what you love is what you worship. What you love is what you worship. You say, I don't, I don't worship this hobby. Well, if you get your time, your attention, your affections, you do. I don't worship, some people worship their children. They think their children are the best thing in the world. And just if you think so, just ask one of the counselors. They'll probably correct your view. You think like and they get your time and your affection, your attention. By the way, your kids should get a lot of your time and your affection, your kids, they're your family, but they're and they're amazing children, but they're a horrible God. And you should never put that on your children. Your children shouldn't be your God. They're not your savior, they're not your savior, and if you put that on them, that's on you, not on their failure. That's on you. Lifting up, lifting up work as a God, getting up every morning, it gets all your energy, all your affections, all your time, and you're stressed out all the time. And if it's taken away from you, you kind of look like Gollum from Lord of the Rings, right? That's what happens when you take someone's idol away, they manifest. What you love and who you love impacts very directly what and who you worship. Because who or what you attach yourself to can cause you to drift from God. It's a relationship, a friend group, a success, money, family, whatever it is, it can drag you away. And this is what happened to Solomon. He went from devoted to distracted to drifted. Devoted loved God. I want wisdom. I'm gonna build your temple. I'm gonna write the scripture. The distracted. Ooh, look at these ladies. Yeah, come on over. Look at this money, look at this power, look at all these things they represent. Eyes off of God, eyes off of him. Let me ask you a question today, church. What are you attached to? There's unhealthy attachments in us sometimes. What are you attached to? And how is your attachment impacting your fellowship with God? Is it drinking you closer to God? Or is it drift making you drift away from God? And I want to just say, if you find yourself drifting from God today, you're like, you know, I kind of identify with that. I think there's there's an answer for it. And it's actually right here. Because who we who we are, who we love is who and what we worship. The answer, I think, is twofold. It's number one, to detach yourself. This is hard to detach yourself from the thing that you love. If you have a hobby and you've discovered that you love it too much as an idol, you need to cut it off. It can be good things. It's not all bad things. You just gotta go. It's gotta go. I've been in a marriage situation, someone golf, every waking hour is taking someone's time. You gotta give it up. Well, maybe couldn't you, can you, can you, could it, could I golf one day again? Maybe. If you can make it not a God and just something fun you enjoy. If your whole family doesn't have to bow to it, maybe. Well, you might have to cut off a relationship. Yeah, but this is a friend. What are they gonna say? And what are my other friends gonna say if I cut off this relationship? Well, it doesn't matter if they're drifting you away from God, your relationship with God is more important than what everybody thinks. So, some of you, if if you find yourself drifting, number one, what do you need to detach from? Maybe a person, it may be a thing. And then two, worship. Everyone say worship. Worship, oh man. Worship realigns our affections to him. When we come into a place like this and we just sing, even if we don't feel it at the moment, we sing and we proclaim. And worship, it's important. When you see the word worship in the Bible, oftentimes it's not just it's not just singing. Most of the time, worship is when it's used in scripture, is not about your voice at all in that way, it's about serving. Sometimes serving and singing are synonymous, but all of it's worship. We worship God through service and we should worship God through our voice and singing. But there's something about going, I'm going to realign my affections to God through worship. I'm gonna serve him. And some of you have gotten out because you've things are good, so you're not serving God. And some of you uh you just got busy, so you're not serving him the way, and you're not worshiping him. And so when you begin to serve and worship God, I'm here for God, I'm doing it for him, I'm lifting up my voice to him. He's the only one I'm here to please. And if I get nothing out of it, it's okay. I'm just going after him because he's worthy of it all. When you begin to do that, man, God shows up. And well, he does a miracle, and here's a miracle he does. He realigns your affections as you give him attention and time. And as you do that, whether it's maybe as you read the Bible, as you pray, whatever, God begins to realign. Let me just tell you, worship is the answer. Because you end up in a place of false worship if you continue in idolatry. I love what N. T. Wright says in the day of the revolution began. The primary human failure is a failure to worship. We begin to worship in Romans 1, created things instead of the Creator. We begin to worship all the blessings God gives us instead of the one who gives the blessing. We begin to worship all the things He can do for us instead of Him for who He is. See, worship God, worshiping God, humans are fulfilled, and they're fulfilled what they're created for. But when we worship anything less than God, it brings humans deconstruct. This is what happens. We deconstruct. When we worship anything other than God, deconstruction comes not far after. We can learn a lot from King Solomon. He did a lot of good things. He walked in wisdom, he built the temple, he wrote scripture. I think Ecclesiastes was probably at the end of his life, looking back, saying, hey, this wasn't so great. But he didn't finish well. And looking back throughout the kings of Israel, we would have been the closest one that later prophets would say was in the line of King David bringing about the kingdom of God. There was peace and prosperity. He was in the line of David. Is he gonna be the Messiah, the one that saves us? Ultimately, no. Solomon failed at being the Messiah. There's no way he could be the Messiah. But there would be a king in Solomon's line who had not just build a temple for God's presence to reside, but who would expand the temple beyond the building, making every believer a temple in which his presence resides. And that's Jesus. The one true, better King. If you find yourself adrift today, let me just encourage you. I want to pray for you. And I think the great thing about Jesus and the Holy Spirit He gives us where His presence resides is that He's not as far as you think. Because He never left you. You've just turned away from Him. And so it means He's only one turn back.

unknown 34:58

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

So I want to lead you in a prayer. If you would bow your heads with me and close your eyes, if you're here today and you say, you know, Pastor, I um I feel like I'm I feel like I've drifted some. I can relate with what you're saying, and and um I want to I want God to do something in that area. If that's you, I want to pray for you, and I want you to stick your hand up as an act of surrender, so for me to pray and just stick it up boldly, like you actually want to, not like a wuss, but like a real man, uh real woman that says, Hey, I'm surrendered to you. And I want you to keep it up for a minute while I pray, and I want you just to say, God, I repent and I turn for my idolatry, for loving things that are short of you, for giving my heart to anything but you. And I ask you to take my time and my energy and my affections, all that I am. And I, Lord, ask for you to give me the strength to detach from the thing or the person or the things that are taking me away from God right now. And with my open and outstretched hands, I surrender and worship to you. I give you my affections and my thoughts. I remember that you're the one who saved me, and you're the one who didn't have to pull me out of the miry clay. You're the one who didn't have to. I didn't deserve it, but you gave me forgiveness, and you gave me life, and you filled me with joy, and you gave me your presence. So I receive it today. Let off my lips be worshiped. Let my life be a service to you. Lord, I thank you that you're nearer today than ever. And I ask this in the name of Jesus, and everybody said, Amen. Amen.