How Do I Have a More Consistent Walk with God?

Brethren, we come back from the feasts, richly blessed by what we experienced at the Feast of Tabernacles this year, enjoying the fact that every day for eight days we're able to go to services. We're able to sit down there in our chairs, watch and listen as people open the Bibles, their Bibles, and they teach and instruct us. We were instructed, we were inspired, we were stirred, we appreciated the special music. We enjoyed the fellowship of the brethren. It's very easy when you go to the feast to get on a spiritual high. Your whole game of life is upgraded when you're at the Feast of Tabernacles. We come back from the feast and, hey, we're back in the world, aren't we? And it's awful difficult at times to try to recapture all that inspiration we had when you're with a much larger group. Wisconsin Dells, here we had 750 people. We average 700 every day. The music at the feast in the Wisconsin Dells area is just so wonderful. The orchestra and the choir are just so inspirational. But we come back here, we've got 23 people singing today. So it sounded a little different than when you got a crowd of 700 people. That hadn't been said. Let's turn over to Romans 12. I want to read this to you, but I want to read it to you in the New International version. I don't normally quote the New International in the New Testament. It is not the best translation for the New Testament. It is a very good translation for the Old Testament. But when you're talking about the law of God in the New Testament, they take a number of liberties. And they stop. In this particular passage, I think they have the wording done very nicely. This is Romans 12. Where in the New International it says, Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. Keep your spiritual fervor. Brethren, isn't this something you and I want to do? We enjoyed the feast, we were inspired and stirred at the feast. I don't know what goes through your mind when you're at the feast or when you're listening to sermons. But when I'm listening to sermons and they really got me, I find myself saying, Yeah, Randy, let's do that! Let's go! I can change! I can do this thing! Just give me an opportunity! If I think I'm yielding to God at a certain percentage, I can get that up a few ticks. Sure, I can. No reason I can't do that. You're probably thinking along the same line. We come back home and it's different. We're in Satan's world. We want to keep up our spiritual fervor. Let's turn to Revelation 2. Revelation 2. Here we're going to see one of God's most beloved churches. The church era, as I should say. God has one church, but this particular era was really special.

The very first church era, the Ephesian church era. We read here in verse 4, where Jesus Christ says to that church, Nevertheless, this is Revelation 2.4, I have this against you that you've left your first love. You've left your first love. So even though Christ loves His church, loves these people, He kind of rebukes them for leaving their first love. He implies that He expects us to walk in the same kind of walk when we first came into the church. Where we couldn't get enough prayer, we couldn't get enough study, we couldn't stop listening to the things of God and people talking about the things of God. But something else got into their lives that distracted them. Chapter 3 of Revelation. The last of the church eras, the church at Laodicea. Revelation 3, verse 15. Again, all in red lettering here in my Bible. Christ says, I know your works that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were cold or hot. So then because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. So here you see Jesus Christ talking to believers who have become lukewarm. He says, you know, your condition makes me want to vomit.

Now, that's not very politically correct. But neither was it when Jesus Christ looked up here and said, get behind me, Satan. So there's a time where we need to really speak straight from the shoulder. And Christ is doing that here. He wants to wake this group of people up and get them back where they need to be.

Now again, brother, I have to ask myself, no one here gets a free pass, you need to ask yourself, where are we in our relationship with God? Are we maintaining our spiritual fervor? As I made mention at the Feast in Wisconsin-Dells, you take a look at prophecy regarding God's church, and you see two different photo albums of God's people. You see one photo album where they're coming and overgrowing, they're doing all the wonderful things that they should be doing. And yet, on the other hand, you see another group where Christ says, well, when I come, will I really find faith on the earth?

That's in Luke 18 and Matthew 24. It's the Christians betraying one another in their love-turning cold. And then you've got what we see here in Revelation 3 about the Laodicean church. And you and I will be in one of those photo albums. And you and I are making a choice by the way we live our lives as to which of those photo albums we're going to be in. Now, I saw this interesting story, and I don't know if this story is true or not. I tried to verify it one way or another, and I simply couldn't. So this story may be an urban legend, but it goes to illustrate the point I want to make here.

The story goes this way. Have you ever noticed how circus elephants are tied to tiny stakes? Even the biggest elephants don't pull out those stakes, though they easily could. Why? The story goes that when the elephant is a baby, it's tethered to a small stake, yet in that case, as a small baby, the elephant doesn't have the strength to pull that thing out of the ground.

And so as the elephant grows, it looks at that stake, and in its mind it says, you know what? There's nothing I can do about the situation. And they don't try to move. The question for us is, are we frustrated about our lives, and are we having a very little sense of guilt in our lives, because we have tiny little elephant stakes that are tying us down.

And we're not moving forward. We're not meeting the goals we set for ourselves. We don't fulfill expectations because we've got these tiny elephant stakes. Again, I don't know if that story is true or not, but it does serve to illustrate a point. We want to be Christians full of zeal. When the resurrection comes, when we come up in the resurrection, we don't want to ask ourselves, is this the first resurrection, or is this the third resurrection? Does God look happy or not? If He's not looking too happy, you think, well, you know, this is going to be a very short time here.

Now, to help illustrate the point, let's take a look at somebody in the New Testament. We don't read a lot about it, but it's an interesting story. Go to Colossians 4. We're going to have to do a little bit of detective work and kind of go through the Scriptures and pick up a thread here about this individual's life.

Colossians 4. In verse 14. Now, Paul is in prison. Colossians is one of those prison epistles. It says here in chapter 4 and verse 14, Luke, the beloved physician and Demas, greet you. Now, we know quite a bit about Luke, but I want to focus in on this man by the name of Demas. As we go through and look at a few Scriptures, we're going to find that this Demas was with Paul during some of the darkest times in his life.

They stood shoulder to shoulder through probably some persecution, through privation, through some really hard times, through difficult times, through really good times. Let's take a look at the book of Philemon. The book of Philemon. Just before the book of Hebrews, a little tiny book, just one chapter. Philemon was a runaway slave. And Paul was writing to him in behalf of the slave and accept him as a brother. But notice what it says here in verse 23. Epiphorus, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you as do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow laborers.

So here you've got the faithful five. Faithful five. Paul wants to talk to the brethren and just encourage the brethren and say, you know, there's these people here and they support me. They're in there with the work, doing the work with me. And mark these people in a positive way. So here we see that Demas is right there doing things with Paul. There's not a whole lot more we can say about Demas, other than what we see here in 2 Timothy chapter 4. 2 Timothy chapter 4. Now this is toward the very end of the apostle Paul's life.

Paul is going to be beheaded not too long after we close this particular book. And, you know, it's in some ways enlightening to think about Paul's life. All the people he helped, writing a large portion of the New Testament, helping you and I in our walk with God through his writings, all the people he was there to encourage and so forth. When Paul's end came, he was by himself. When the man took the axe and cut off his head, he was undoubtedly by himself, other than with the executioner.

None of the people he had helped were there to support him. And now notice here 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 9. Be diligent to come to me quickly, for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world and has departed for Thessalonica. So here's a man who was standing shoulder to shoulder with Paul, went through all sorts of difficulties, challenges. They shared so many meals around the campfire. They enjoyed good masculine humor. They were there for one another. But then something happened in Demas' life where he went back into the world. Something happened in his life where he no longer had the spiritual fervor.

What was it? Was he offered a plum job and a multinational corporation? You know, as they're traveling around the Aegean, they're going from country to country, quite literally. Was he offered something really sparkling? Did a friend say, hey, look, I've got a timeshare condo over here on the Aegean. It's really beautiful. You need to see this place. What was it? Well, we will never know. But the question for us, brethren, is how is our walk with God? How consistent is my walk? How consistent is your walk with God? And that's the theme of what I want to discuss with you today. If you'd like to take notes, you want to write something across the top of your paper, write this question. How can we have a more consistent walk with God?

How can we have a more consistent walk with God?

We've just come back from the feast just a couple of weeks ago. We had the Feast of Tabernacles. We think about the Kingdom of God. But the question I'll put to you at this point is, how are you doing with your personal kingdom?

You're probably thinking, I don't have a personal kingdom. Yes, you do. Your home, your car, your checking account, the way you live your life, the way you work with your mate, the way you work with your children or grandchildren, this is all a part of your kingdom.

Are you taking care of your kingdom in a godly way? Are you setting godly examples today over in Ann Arbor? We had the blessing of children, three beautiful little girls, just really pretty little girls.

I was telling the group that when my daughter was that age, they didn't have these little bows, things that you put on the little strap with the little bow. My poor daughter, when she was little, she was blonde, toe-headed, and she had an awful lot of hair for it to show up. She always looked like she was Tweety Bird, big blue eyes and no hair. These little girls, they had a nice little bow and looked so nice and feminine and everything. All of them were really nice up there. We had to turn our noses inside out as we were asking the blessing on them. How are we working with our kids and grandkids? This is all a part of our kingdom. Are we faithful in the way we show love toward our mate? Are we faithful as we show love to our children? Especially when they look at us, when I was talking to the people in Ann Arbor, I said, there's a reason why we do the blessing of children in front of the congregation. I said, God has a responsibility. I went through God's responsibility. I said, we in the ministry have a responsibility. I went through that. I said, you as parents have a responsibility in raising those children. But I also said, we're doing this publicly in front of the congregation. We as a congregation have a responsibility to those little children. When those little children are growing up in the congregation, and they see Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so, and they maybe see us out in the world someplace, at a shopping center or someplace, what does our example say to them? They say, well, I saw Mr. So-and-so stumbling out of a bar. Or, I saw Mr. So-and-so, and he was helping an elderly woman into her car. Or an elderly man into her car. How are we managing our little kingdoms? Well, God's going to say, well, to that degree, is what you're going to do in the kingdom of God. So, how can you and I have a more consistent walk with God? Five points. Five points. Number one. Seek God with determination. Seek God with determination. Some time ago, I gave a sermon, and my wife always teases me about, I guess, mentally, I don't have a conception of time. I'll say, well, something happened two years ago, and she'll say, Randy, that happened like six years ago. Or I'll say, well, was this last week? She'll say, no, it wasn't. That was ten years ago. But not that long ago, in my mind, I gave a sermon where the title of the sermon is, Where Your Attention Goes, Your Energy Flows.

Where your attention goes, your energy flows. Where is our attention, spiritually speaking? Because wherever our attention is, that's where the energy will flow. Is our attention on seeking God with determination? Colossians chapter 4. Let's go back there. We were in that chapter just a little bit ago. Colossians chapter 4.

In verse 12, Colossians chapter 4 and verse 12, there's two different sections of Scripture I want to read here. One in Colossians, one in 2 Timothy. Then I want to come back and kind of talk about both together. Colossians chapter 4 verse 12, Epiphras, who is one of you, Epiphras was a member of the church there in Colossae, Epiphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you always, laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. So here it says, he labored fervently in his prayers. I want to keep that in mind, that phrase, laboring fervently in prayer. Let's add to that something over here in 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 15. 2 Timothy 2 and verse 15. Where it says, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Rightly dividing the word of truth. But be diligent in our studies. So diligent that we can rightly divide the word of truth, that we know our Bibles. Now, one of the comments I made in a sermon there at the Dells is, years ago I used to think, well, okay, I need to structure my life so that I put God first. And if I put God first, everything else is going to fall into place. And for a long time, I thought that made sense. And then I got to thinking about it. And as I made mention at the Dells, in my mind, maybe not the way you would think about it, but in my mind, I was reducing God to a line item on a schedule. God shouldn't be a line item on a schedule. Where I'm going to put God here, and everything else on schedule will follow suit. Think about this, brethren. The people you love most in your life, your mate, your children. Do you think about them that way? Well, I've got to put my wife... I've got to get so much time with Mary yet. If I give my half hour here, then I've done my work. No. Those of you who are grandparents, is that the way you think about your grandkids? Well, little Susie here, I'll spend this much time with little Susie. And if I get that much time in, I'm good. No. You want to spend oodles of time with little Susie. You want to spend oodles of time with your mate, with the people you love. We don't reduce them to some line item on a schedule someplace. The same thing is true in our walk with God. In our walk with God, we want to pray and discuss things with God fervently. We want to look into this book and labor diligently. We want to have a tremendous relationship, a one-on-one personal relationship. We talk about this phrase, having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. What does that mean? How do you and I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? By spending the time in prayer, by spending the time in study. In prayer, we're speaking to them and study. They're working with our mind to help us see what we need to be seeing. I would hate to think that any of us will come up in the resurrection. God the Father looks at us and says, who's that? Oh, God, you're joking. Who is that? It's me. What do you mean, me? Well, you didn't really talk much to me. You really didn't study. You didn't really go out of your way to worship me or to praise me or to do the things I've asked that any son or daughter would do with their dad. You just weren't there.

So, we want to be more like David. You take a look at the Psalms. You see, a man who loved the things of God. He sought God with determination.

And he wrote about it. It was a part of his life. You know, it says over in Matthew 6, Where your treasure is, your heart will be also. Where is our treasure? Where is our treasure? Because that's where our heart is. That's where I got that idea. Where the attention goes, the energy flows. From that particular verse, Matthew 6, verse 21. Seek God with determination. James 4.

James 4.

Verse 7. James 4.7.

Therefore, submit to God and resist the devil, and he will flee from you. When you look into the original tongues here, the words submit and resist are military terms. We need to submit. We are soldiers. We are Christian soldiers. We submit to our commanding general, God the Father. And then we are a part of a resistance movement. We think so often about World War II and the various countries and their resistance movements. I tend to think about the French and the French resistance during World War II. But we are resisting the devil.

Brethren, think for a moment about... I was thinking about my life, where I have fallen short, where I have not been the person I need to be. And you analyze that, and where does it start? Where is that first line of defense? That first line of defense is up here. Is it not? It's in our mind. It's in our mind where we say, you know, I shouldn't really be toying with this in my mind. It's really explosive. I'm pretending to go the wrong way. I'm angry with the situation.

Now I'm getting angry with the people. Now I'm really getting more than angry with the people. I'm taking really bad thoughts toward those people and so forth. But it all begins right here. If we resist at the get-go, if we resist at the very beginning, then... and don't allow the thinking to go south, go sideways on us, then we can do what it says here.

Verse 8, draw near to God and He will draw near to you. You know, Wayne was talking about that, about godly sorrow. There is a golden sorrow that the world talks about, golden repentance, and there is a fool's gold. The sorrow of the world produces death. Because in so many cases, it's nothing more than just emotionalism. So how do we draw near to God? It says here, at the rest of verse 8, Cleanse your hands, you sinners.

This is how you draw near to God. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. So it's a matter of our hearts, our minds, our hands, you know, what's in our thoughts, what's in the way we handle our lives.

Then, as Wayne was pointing out in his message as well, not quoting this particular verse, Lament and mourn and weep. Spiritual mourning. Looking at where we're at. Understanding where we need to be. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Wayne gave an excellent message today. One of the things that he made mention in his sermonette was, it's better to go to the house of fasting than to go to the house of feasting.

I quote that when I do funeral services. Especially when there's a funeral service where I've got to go out to the cemetery and there's a committal service there at the cemetery.

We're going to bury somebody into the ground. And I'll use that scripture. Solomon, the wisest of men, says, you know, it's better to be here at a grave site than in a hospital when a little baby is being born. Why would Solomon say such a thing? Why would he say such a thing? Well, the reason is, when you've gone to a person's funeral, you know what that person's life, what he did in his life or her life. You know how much they were able to accomplish, what they did. That they left a legacy for their family. And when a little baby is born, you don't know whether that little baby is going to be another apostle Paul or Adolf Hitler.

You don't know. So that's why it's better to go to the house of mourning because there you can celebrate somebody's well-lived life. And so it's good to go there. It's good to think those thoughts. And as Wayne was saying, there are many times when I've done funeral services where I'll say things and people come up to me and say, you know, that really meant a lot. You know, I've got a loved one who's on the brink of dying and I would like to know that there is a resurrection. I really don't believe much in God.

The idea of a resurrection, that does something for me. You never know what those thoughts will, where that will take somebody. Deuteronomy 4. Deuteronomy 4. And verse 29. Now, a little bit of background here in Deuteronomy 4. God is telling them that if they don't obey Him, if they don't have a consistent walk with Him, then they're going to find themselves in a very bad way.

So the context here is people who are not following God as they should, very dire circumstances, but now I want you to notice where there can be a change here. Something positive and encouraging. Verse 29.

So, brethren, I ask you, as I've asked myself, where are you spiritually right now? I don't care how bad things may look in your situation right now. And, let's be honest, your mate probably doesn't know where you're really at spiritually. Your kids probably don't really know. There are times when people can really put up a good show. A nice, Sabbath smile, a handshake, things can kind of look nice.

But you know in your heart and mind where you stand.

And if you're not where you want to be, if you think, you know, maybe you get depressed and, well, I've got that little elephant steak, I can't really do anything about my situation. Yeah, you can. It says right here.

When you're in a bad situation, if you seek the Lord with all of your heart, all of your soul, you will find Him.

Our God is a God who enjoys repentance. The angels sing it with joy when you and I change and turn around and do what God wants us to do. Don't think that, you know, you're in a desperate situation and it can't be changed. So point number one, seek God with determination.

Point number two, ask God to search your heart.

Ask God to search your heart.

That's a... it takes bravery to do that. Because when you're asking God to do that, then you've got to be able to say, well, okay, I've asked the question, now do I have the courage to listen?

Do I have the courage... it's easy to talk, but do I have the courage to listen? Let's go to 2 Corinthians.

2 Corinthians 6.

2 Corinthians 6 and verse 16.

2 Corinthians 6, 16. And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people.

So the Bible is very clear. It tells us that we are the dwelling place of the living God.

Now, a number of you have been in my dwelling place.

I have been in some of your dwelling places. And when we think about dwelling places, we think that, you know, there's always a nice part that people see it as they're kind of passing through the homeless. You've got some visitors. And you've got parts of the home that you don't want people to see.

You know, you've got the attic where you throw stuff. You've got the basement where you throw stuff. You probably have next-door neighbors. Maybe you yourself. You can't use your garage because it's full of stuff. Right? Clutter.

But, you know, brethren, sometimes we're the same way spiritually.

We don't want to deal with certain things in our life, so we throw it upstairs.

But we throw it in the garage. We throw it in the basement. And we walk away because we don't want to deal with it.

We have to ask God to search our hearts. And then we've got to be courageous enough to listen when He speaks to us.

Psalm 139.

I know a little something about cluttered basements.

Psalm 139.

Verses 23 and 24.

Psalm 139. Verse 23. Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my anxieties.

And see if there's any wicked way in me. And then notice. And lead me in the way everlasting.

It's not good enough that, you know, the Psalmist here says, you know, I want to have you search me. Well, that does no good unless some action is going to take place. Search me and then leave me.

And so he's saying here that, you know, you show me what I need to do and I'll do it.

There'll be an action list here.

Brethren, have you found yourself in your spiritual life with periods of dry, meaningless, fruitless prayers? Have you found yourself in situations where your study is just not engrossing you at all? That just kind of you're doing it by the numbers, but you're really...it's not a fruitful study?

Have you found yourself in periods like that? I have. I think most of us in this room have. But I think, brethren, if you and I think about it, one of the reasons this may be is because you and I... it's a warning signal to us. It's a warning sign that too much spiritual clutter is piled up.

And we need to clear away some of that clutter. We need to go in, have God search our heart. Then we need to start throwing stuff out, dealing with the situation.

Over the years I have worked with other people in church. And I remember one individual... excuse me... one individual where we actually had to go in and help this man clean up some of the clutter to the place where it was hard walking through a room. And so we would clean up an area and say, now we want to see it this way when we come back next week. We'd come over once a week. And for a while that spot there was... maybe a five by five spot that part was clear.

Then you go back next week and you want to clear out another spot. But then after a while, you know, well, you know... let me come over to your place again and we'll work on your house. Well, no... And then, you know, maybe a year later that you get back to visiting or whatever. Those two areas that were cleaned out, they're full again. Newspapers, anything you can think of. Well, that's how our life gets when we don't deal with issues.

We need to allow God to help us to deal with the issues in our life. Psalm 19, verse 12. I'm going to read this in the Amplified version. Psalm 19, verse 12, where it says, Who can discern his lapses and errors? Clear me from the hidden and unconscious faults. Do we have lapses? Do we have hidden and unconscious things that we do?

Sure we do. We all do. Again, I don't think any of us have a free pass on this. Mark 4. Mark 4. Here Jesus Christ is going to give us some very wise counsel. Mark 4. Every bit of counsel Christ gives us is wise counsel. Mark 4, verse 19. My Bible all read lettering. In Christ says, Mark 4. 19, And the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things, entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

So again, we're asking if your prayers or your study is unfruitful, they go nowhere, they're not inspiring you, they're not encouraging you, let's take a look. All of us. Me, you, everybody. Look at verse 19. The cares of this world. In other words, the worries of life.

Or a lack of faith. Faith is a multifaceted subject. Today, with those three darling little girls we had over in Ann Arbor, we were in faith, looking to God to protect those little things and to the harm that might come their way in this horrible world we live in. And we have faith that God will protect those little girls. So many times people think of faith in terms of healing.

Well, yeah, we can have faith for healing, but we need to have faith towards salvation. We have faith that God will not only protect us, but we have faith that God will provide us. Everything in our life is a matter of faith. And maybe in some areas of our life we've got very strong faith, but there may be areas in our life that really are quite weak. And in those areas, Satan understands those areas.

Satan knows its craft. He knows how to get at us. He knows where we live. And if you're living someplace in a glass house, he understands that. And he'll wait to the most opportune time for him, the least opportune time for you to throw a rock at that glass house. The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, where our priorities are on the wrong focus. We're focused on the material things. We're focused on the around, not the above. In Revelation 20, verses 7-9, you see that group of people after the millennium is over, after 1,000 years of the rule of Jesus Christ and the saints, where the world is one big Garden of Eden at that point.

Satan is let loose between the millennium and the Great White Throne Judgment Period. There's a gap in there. We don't know how long, because there's a gap between those two periods. Satan's let loose. And what does the Bible say? It says, people as numerous as the sands of the sea are deceived by Satan, and God has got to take them all away.

Now, those people were concentrating and thinking about the around. Oh, I've got such a lovely home. It's a beautiful day. I've got a wonderful family. None of those things are wrong. But when our whole life is geared toward the physical and the around, and not the above who gave us all those blessings, then that becomes a curse. That becomes a curse. So we want to make sure that we are focused on the right thing, and that's the God who gives us all these blessings. And then the last thing it says here in verse 19, for other things entering in, choke the word. We live in a very distracting age. You've got TV, you've got all the electronic gadgets. To me, it's interesting. You go to a restaurant, and you can see people there sitting, maybe just a couple. I don't know. Maybe they're texting one another. They're both a little hand. Their fingers are just going a mile a minute. I was watching one young lady the other day, and I thought, I've never been able to move that quick. I think she was like 60 in a man. I thought, you couldn't pay me to move that fast. If she gave me a million dollars, I couldn't move my thumbs that fast. And you wonder, our people, we don't have the relationships with one another. And they've done studies. We are developing a whole generation of young people, and as we use those various gadgets, there's a portion of our mind that is not being developed, and that's the portion that deals with how we reason. We're kind of sidestepping that whole portion by being so reactive to these games and all the gadgetry. We wonder, why do kids make such a bad choice as well? They're hurting themselves in a number of ways.

So, number two is to ask God to search your heart. Number three. I'll probably take you a little bit over time today. I'm on Wisconsin Del's Feast time. Number three. Seek to know God. Seek to know God. I've told people in the past that I sincerely mean it. When you take a look at the great men and women of the Bible, there's nothing saying your name can be mentioned right along with them. Nothing at all. God doesn't play favorites. He's no respecter of persons. If you're in there yielding at 98%, if you're there giving it your all, we're not talking about your abilities. Some of us have more humble abilities than others. But we're talking about your desire to yield and how you're actually doing it, how you're living your life before God.

If you're giving it almost everything you've got or everything you've got, there's nothing saying you can't be as well known in the kingdom as a David or an Abraham or what have you.

John 17.

John 17.

But in order to be there, there's something we need to do.

John 17.

And this is eternal life. What is eternal life? This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Boy, you talk about a priority statement. You talk about something we need to zero in with laser-like focus. That if we want eternal life and we want the best life, we want to be the closest to God, we have to understand our need to know Him, to seek to understand Him.

When you read the writings of David, one of the things that strikes me is, he follows the laws and keeps the laws of God, and as he's doing that, he understands that he's observing spiritual machinery and motion.

And as he's observing how things work on a spiritual basis, he says, you know, our God, He's really magnificent, isn't He? Look how He's designed this. If I treat my wife or my son in a certain way, that's the way God tells me to do it, there's such a good response with that. Or if I follow this writing over here, that writing over there, and I watch how things unfold, it is such a wonderful thing to see. Psalm 55. Psalm 55, talking about David. Here's a psalm of David. There are times you say, well, I'm a busy person. David was king. Are you busier than a king? I doubt that you are. I doubt that I am. Psalm 55 and verse 17, where it says, evening and morning and at noon, three times I will pray and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice. He had matters of state. He had an army. He had all these things He needed to do. And yet He had time, three times a day, to get down on His knees and converse with His Maker. You take a man like Daniel. Here, Daniel had the position of a prime minister. He was in several governments over the course of his life. He spent time in prayer. Matter of fact, they wanted to kill him because of his prayer life. People spied on him. And finally, when Daniel got winded, but he said, oh, you want to see what's going to happen when you spy on me? And so he went back to his room, to his place he was staying. He said he opens up the shovels, opens up the windows, and he says, you want to spy? Go right ahead. Take a look. I'm about to kneel down and pray to my God. Then, of course, I throw him in the lion's den. He's not hurt. He knew God. He knew how God works. He was a friend to God. God was a friend to Him. As I mentioned before, we left for the feast. Talking about Jesus Christ's perspective at the time of the resurrection. How Christ's heart and mind are just so excited with the fact that all these people that Christ had known over the years, they're now being resurrected. There's Abraham. Oh, I love talking to Abraham. There's David. David's singing me another song. There's Sarah. There's Deborah. There's Mary, who was my mother, who raised me as a little boy, who, when I fell and skinned my knee, got me back up and cleaned me off, gave me a little bump on the high end and got me going again. The woman who raised me. Jesus Christ wants to think the same way about you. Looking forward to your resurrection. Never wanting us to be separated from Him ever again. Jesus Christ. Look at Mark 1. Mark 1. Here we've got the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus Christ. Christ was very busy. He had to fulfill every single Old Testament prophecy. He had to establish the New Testament church. He had to train His apostles. There was a lot on His plate. Add to that, you talk about stress. As I've mentioned in the past, He wasn't able to relax for a single second. Because every second of every minute of every hour of every day, He was a target of Satan the Devil. If He would relax just one second, if He would relax just a little bit and allow Himself to sin, then He wouldn't be anybody's Savior and He would lose His eternal life. Very busy. Notice Mark 1. 35.

Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed into a solitary place, and there He prayed. There He prayed. He made time for His relationship with the great God. He made time for that. So, number three, seek to know God. Number four, thank and praise God. Thank and praise God. In a very real sense, God doesn't need that from us, but we need to do it. If we want to have a consistent walk with God, it's good for us to be thanking God for things, to be praising God for things, because it means that our minds are focused on the things we're thanking Him for. We're focused on the things we're praising Him for. It teaches us all sorts of wonderful lessons. I'm not going to turn there, but in John 4, verse 23, it says, God wants us to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Mr. Armstrong said that he spent fully 50% of his prayer life in thanksgiving and praise to God. I think I tend to come up short on that, and I need to keep on working on that. It's so easy for us to say, gimme, gimme, gimme. We're like little kids at that. Gimme, gimme, gimme. But we need to thank God for what God has already given us, for what God has already done for us. Psalm 100. Psalm 100, verse 4. Psalm 100, verse 4. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. Now, his courts and his gates, you might just stick in your notes there, Revelation 4. Revelation 4, you see the throne room of God. Every time you pray to God, you're entering his gates, you're entering into his courts. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name. Again, brethren, this is also you and I prosper spiritually. So we have a more consistent walk with God, because we're thinking about all those wonderful things our Father is doing for us. Study the Psalms. Learn how David thought and how he responded to things. Lastly, number 5. Maybe I will get you here out on time. Be sure to obey. Number 5. Be sure to obey. We spend our quiet time in prayer to God. We spend our quiet time in study with the great God. In prayer and study are so important, but God wants to see what we do after we pray and study. Are we just a lot of show and no go? Where are our hearts? We have to do something with what we know to do. John 14. John 14. John 14, verse 21.

He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.

Not only knowing, but doing. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. So here we see something very important. The keeping of God's commandments. Chapter 15. Verse 10. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. So again, something for us to do, Christ says. Verse 14. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. We want to be the friends of God. We want to have a walk of God. We want to have a consistent walk with God. Final Scripture for today over here in James 1. James 1.

Verse 22. James 1.22. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues in it, is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word. This one will be blessed in what he does. Brethren, our blessings are not a matter of superstition. Today, as I was going through the blessing of children, I made a special point of saying that the blessing of children is for those children who have a guardian, have a parent or a grandparent, or a caregiver who is in the church. We don't just go into the highways and boughies and bring everybody in and ask a blessing. That would be superstitious. The blessing, as you see in all of the Scriptures, is where we keep God's ways. That's where the blessing comes. The blessing is because the parents teach the children. The blessing is because the ministry teaches the children. The blessing is because the congregation teaches the children about the ways of God. Children out in the world don't get that. Now, there will come a time when they will get it, when their opportunity comes. But here we see where God wants us to be doers, looking into the law, understanding who and what we are, and then doing something about it. So, brethren, today we've taken a look at a question. The question is, how can we have a more consistent walk with God? I've given you five points. 1. Seek God with determination. 2. Ask God to search your heart. 3. Seek to know God. 4. Thank and praise God. 5. Be sure to obey God. I believe very strongly that if we do those things, we will have a more consistent walk with God.