Peter Roselle: God’s Word Directs us to Hidden Treasure (Psalm 19:11 MSG)

00:13 - And not everybody likes that, right? Because if you’re married, you know, it’s really easy to shift the blame of the thing you’re talking about to your spouse.

00:21 - Come on, I do marriage counseling. Don’t be a holdout on me here.

00:25 - They call that blame shifting. Well, if she would just do this, no, no.

00:30 - Look in the mirror and what can you be working on? And all the women said? Amen.

00:36 - (congregation applauds) Well, if you would just do this? It’s not about the nail.

00:44 - You’ve seen that, I hope you’ve seen that video.

00:50 - So we have to look in the mirror and I would say that starts with the morning altar.

00:56 - That’s your place of prayer, where you get alone with God and I’m going to highly, highly recommend you do it first thing in the morning because that’s setting your whole day.

01:05 - And if you start out thinking about God and asking Him to be with you every second of every minute of every hour of the day, your chances go up for success and the kingdom.

01:15 - If you leave without praying, you’re victim to your flesh and your emotions and you get caught up in that spin of that swirl.

01:22 - And now there’s something before you know it, your emotions have you pinned against the wall and you don’t have your feet on the ground.

01:29 - So prayer is so key. And don’t think of it as bringing a list to God.

01:34 - If I can help you on that one, for me at least it was no doubt.

01:37 - I’m not bringing a list of God. My list starts with help.

01:41 - We can all pray that one. And if you say help, what’s wrong with me, God? He’ll say, “Oh, glad you’re asking.

01:48 - I’m happy to show you. “ That’s part of looking in the mirror.

01:52 - And if we know that He loves us, whatever He tells us is going to be good for us.

01:56 - Just like any good mother or father would do for their child, right? So these are just some verses from the message translation.

02:02 - You probably know the verse if you’ve been a Christian any length of time where it says; “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you all Lord”, right? That’s from this Psalm 19.

02:13 - And I put “win the war for your altar” because I want to try to burn that in that there’s a competition between good and evil for your altar and the betrayal that Tim was talking about is so kind of universally a difficult thing to deal with because we trust people and then we get betrayed and we’re angry not just with them, but we’re angry with ourselves because we allowed it to happen to us and we should have known better.

02:38 - And you look at yourself in the mirror and say you’re such a looser that you could let that happen to you.

02:42 - And God’s saying, “No, no. I’m not saying that about you. ” So you shouldn’t be saying about you what He’s not saying about you.

02:49 - Let it all agree. But I would think, with the amount of distractions that are available to us today that we don’t all have this really healthy morning altar.

02:59 - I want you to win the war for the altar, is what I’m saying.

03:02 - You will flourish as a Christian at a higher degree if you start your day giving Him the first minutes of the first hours of your day in prayer.

03:10 - And whatever that means, shift your schedule if you have to, start on your knees and if you can do communion, that’s a great thing to do.

03:18 - Let that be the first thing you do, so start with the communion.

03:20 - I want to commune with you today Lord, not real big, complicated religious ritual.

03:25 - It’s just acknowledging Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that brought sin into the world.

03:32 - I’m eating your flesh and blood here represented Lord, not the real thing, but I’m going to prove that I’m going to reverse their bad decision and say that I need your knowledge of good and evil, not mine.

03:44 - So you’re reproducing a meal to reverse the curse of that sin that they brought into the world.

03:49 - And here he says… Maybe I jumped ahead one.

03:53 - Yeah, there it is. This verse 11. God’s word warns us of danger and directs us to hidden treasure.

04:01 - You see how this girl Lourdes, at Family Success Center was a hidden treasure.

04:06 - And because Carolyn’s here opening up every day, let me tell you.

04:09 - If I have to go to work every day and know that I was going to have to move homeless people aside from my front door, that would be a little discouraging, but that’s who we’re here for, right? That’s the purpose of the ministry.

04:21 - But if you’re not seeing much results or the grants are getting turned down or whatever’s happening to cause you, you need an offset.

04:28 - You need a reminder. And we did a video with Carolyn to help her promote one of the fundraisers she was doing.

04:34 - And the lady that was doing it, doing the filming was a friend of mine from New York who wasn’t a Christian.

04:40 - And he was really impressed. And they were doing the interview and Carolyn was behind her desk and this lady said to Carolyn, “What makes you get up and come every day? Like what, what drives you to keep coming back here?” And I know she wasn’t expecting that question.

04:55 - It’s “Jehovah Sneaky,” strikes again. And she went to answer and all she did was cry.

05:03 - And that said volumes, right? Like, I’ve got a burden for these people.

05:08 - This is who God has called me. This is my tribe.

05:12 - These are the people that I’m going to minister to, so there’s no question about whether I should or shouldn’t be here, I know I should be here.

05:18 - Is it easy to get the discouraged? Yeah, but then you get stories like the one we said today and say, “Yep, that’s it.

05:24 - I’m going to open the doors again and I’m just going to show up.

05:26 - I’m going to do my part, I’ll be here and never know who that hidden gem is going to be. “ That’s what he said.

05:33 - He directs us to hidden treasure. God’s word warns us for the danger of the world but he’ll direct us to hidden treasure.

05:40 - Otherwise, how will we find our way? Or know when we play the fool? It’s a great morning prayer.

05:47 - “Clean the slate God. So that we can start the day fresh.

05:51 - Keep me from stupid sins. “ That’s the message Bible, right? It’s just getting right to the point.

05:57 - From thinking that I could take over your work.

06:00 - Guilty. I don’t need to pray, I know what to do.

06:04 - Arg! That’s pride. That goes right back to the knowledge of the tree of good and evil.

06:10 - No, I don’t know what to do as good as you do.

06:14 - So I’m submitting myself to you and I’m not going to to take over your word.

06:18 - “Then I could start this day sun washed, scrubbed clean of grime and sin.

06:24 - These are the words of my mouth. These are what I chew on and pray.

06:29 - Accept them when I placed them on the morning alter. “ That’s the best picture I can give you, right? The words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you oh, Lord.

06:39 - Start your day in prayer. If you normally get up at 6:05, get up at six o’clock.

06:47 - Whatever it is, this is too important not to make this a daily discipline.

06:52 - And once you start seeing how your day goes better because you’re asking and you’re inviting him in and you’re getting through scriptures and words and people, you start getting a prompt to call somebody.

07:04 - That’s the Holy spirit. Telling you, “This person needs to hear from you.

07:07 - Give them a call. “ Don’t battle it around in your brain, just do it.

07:11 - And you start to recognize His voice. “These are the words that I chew on and pray.

07:17 - Accept then when I place them on the morning alter, Oh God, my altar rock.

07:23 - God, the priests of my altar. “ Let’s stand.

07:27 - I love this language. My altar rock and the priest of my altar.

07:33 - And you know, you’ve probably heard me say this is not a stage, this is an altar.

07:39 - We’re not here to perform the way you would perform on a stage.

07:42 - We’re here to minister and it can start to lose some of its value but if you know anything about the old Testament altar, they were bringing valuable things there to die.

07:53 - You couldn’t just bring a second hand, broken legs sheep, right? You brought the best and you were saying, “Lord, I give it to you.

08:01 - I’m giving you my best because you gave me your best.

08:04 - You kept me alive. You kept me safe.

08:07 - You got me out of Egypt. And I don’t want to forget that that’s where my root system is.

08:12 - So my altar rock is the Lord in the morning.

08:15 - And there’s something about starting there in the day that prompts you to want to listen to worship music all day.

08:22 - It prompts you to want to stop and take a break and walk outside and just pray on a nice day and look up at the Lord and say, “Just checking in Lord, like frustrated over that last phone call I just had but I don’t want to be that kid that’s stuck on that loop.

08:38 - Being held to the wall by my emotions. I want to guard my heart.

08:43 - And I want to know that I’m following after what you say to do. “ I’m telling you this probably that sounds like a pretty basic message, but I think it’s one of the greatest ways for you to grow as a Christian.

08:53 - Is just win the war for your alter. .