You are called to be a carrier of God's presence wherever you go, shifting the atmosphere of your home and neighborhood through your relationship with Him. Surrender your heart, relationships, and fears to Him today, allowing His fire to consume what holds you back from true discipleship. Don't just seek what He can do for you, but offer yourself fully to Him so you can walk in His glory without fear of man.
What is up, Real Church? Thank you for tuning in to another Real Church podcast. Today, we're gonna talk about the Valley Of Baca becoming "streams of living water". If you never heard of the Valley Of Baca, you wanna lean into this 1 today. My name is David John Phillips.
I pray you walk away with a deeper understanding of who God is, how much he loves you, and who you are in him. God bless and enjoy. Father, we thank you for who you are. Oh, we thank you for your goodness. Oh, we thank you that you keep revealing yourself more and more to us deeper and deeper as we seek after you.
And we see who you are more and more clearly. Thank you, father. *Lord*, I pray that today, everybody under the sound of my voice walks away seeing you more clearly, seeing your goodness and seeing your love more clearly. Lord, I pray that everyone under the sound of my voice is impacted by your love in a way that shifts everything moving forward. More in line with you, Father God.
Song for eternity. *Lord*, I pray people under the sound of my voice give their life to you that need to. Lord God, I ask you to reveal yourself. Shift everything. In Jesus name.
Amen. You can be seated for a moment. I'm a keep the band up here this time. We're gonna go back into worship soon. You might wanna move this back though because I do tend to go around.
We're in a series titled the glory of living. My name is David John Phillips. I have the honor of being the pastor here. Thank you for coming. Today is I had planned on preaching a different message and just felt like it was necessary to dive down deeper into some things that we've been talking about.
So So I'm going to. I'd encourage you to go back and check out some of the the messages, but we've been talking about glory. Glory being, you know, growing up in church and everything, I never really had a good grasp on what glory was. Glory is who God is and what he does on display for all to see. And he wants to everything exists, everything that he created exists to manifest his glory.
Everything he created exists to show the goodness of the creator. And you are created in his image to be an a representation of him, to express in your daily life who God is and what he does for the whole world to see. Colossians-1:27, I guess 1 27, says Christ in you, the hope of glory. God's hope of being glorified throughout the world is putting Christ in you. To display, to put on full display who he is and what he does, which is amazing.
And we talked about an environment necessary for his creation to live in. He said, fish, the the environment for them to display the full glory of God he put in them is water. Birds, the environment for them to display the glory of God that he put in them as air. Mankind, the environment that he created for you to display the full glory that he put in you in order to glorify him is his presence. He created mankind, placed him in the Garden of Eden, a place of his unbroken presence.
They walked with him in the cool of the day. We talked about this. But then mankind sinned, and there was no longer unbroken *presence* between man and God. So the father loved the world. He loved mankind.
He loved you so much that He sent His 1 and only Son, so that whoever would believe in Him would not perish, would not be separated from His presence for eternity, but would have eternal life, which means knowing God. He didn't just we we said this last week, he didn't just send Jesus in order just to forgive you of your sin. Yes, he did. But it was in order to clean the inside. It was order to restore your value.
See the Garden of Eden, we talked about was a it was also called a temple, a sanctuary. It was a place where his presence rested, and he sent Jesus to restore your value, and to make you clean, and to make you into his son, the father's son, so that his presence could rest in you. So that you could be a temple, a sanctuary, a place where God's presence is inside of you, and you once again have unbroken relationship with the God of the universe. That is what he created you for, and that is what he restored you to in Christ and in Christ alone. And is then we said he commissioned you.
Just like he commissioned Adam and Eve in the garden. Fill the earth and subdue it. Take this place of my unbroken presence and fill the earth and bring out my presence. You're a carrier of my presence. Everywhere you go, take my presence with you and subdue it.
Bring it under the control of who I am and fill the whole earth with my glory. And then he commissioned you saying the same thing Jesus said, fill the whole earth, make disciples of all nations. Amen? Same thing as a carrier of his presence. The question is, how do we take what's in here?
Now I'm talking to those that are "born again". See there's a lot of people I'm not gonna go there yet. Carrier of his presence, how do we take what's in here? And when we walk into a place, the environment shifts. When we go home, the environment and the culture of our home becomes subdued because we're there, subdued by the presence of God, and it becomes a place that reveals his glory.
How do we take what's in here, being born again in Christ, where we're in unbroken relationship with Christ, and when we move to a new neighborhood, the neighborhood environment begins to shift because we're there. Amen. Our family reunions begin to shift because we show up and we walk in the room. The culture of our job, our workplace begins to shift because we didn't leave the Holy Spirit at the door and say, hey, I'm going to my work environment but now I'm gonna pick you back up when I walk out. No.
We brought him with us because we're a carrier of his presence, aware that he's with us wherever we go. How do we get the environment of God's presence, his peace, and his nature, his joy from in here to change the environment out there. I'll show you what I'm talking about. In Psalm chapter 84. I love the piano behind me.
It's awesome. How lovely Psalm Psalm 84, how lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty. My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. When you're born again, God changes your heart, gives you a new heart where your heart cries out for him to know him more deeply than ever before.
Gives you changes your heart from a heart of flesh to a heart of stone, Ezekiel says. *Born again*, brand new heart. Now I can go there. There's a lot of people that have experienced Jesus, and he's even done miracles for them. They've even ate at his table, but yet don't have a new heart.
Have never been born again. They know the church lingo. They can sing the songs and raise the hands and speak the language. But they've never been transformed on the inside. Let me give you an example of that.
Think about the people at the that Jesus fed. Jesus fed 20,000 people in the 5,000 men, it was about 20,000 people. Jesus fed them. There was the crowd they were with him. And then they followed him to another place asking him for more food.
And he said, you don't you don't really want me. You just are following me because I filled your belly, because I made you feel good, because you came to church and you experienced a goosebump and you had an experience of Jesus without really knowing him and you keep coming back in order for an experience but not really to follow him. And and you know what he said to those people? He said, eat my flesh and drink my blood. That's what he said.
And they turned and they left. You know what he was saying? He's saying, yeah. I'll do stuff for you because I'm good, but it's not about what I can do for you, it's about me. Are you following me for the food or you're following me for me?
It's all about me. It's all about Jesus, not David. It's about Jesus. And when it shifts from what he can do for me to who he is to me, is he my Lord? That's when you become a disciple.
That's when your heart is transformed. That's when you enter into relationship and everything begins to change on the inside. If it's just about a Sunday morning and looking good on the outside in order to to make other people think that you feel good, you need to be born again. You need a new heart. My heart cries out but it also says, my soul yearns for you.
That's my mind, my will, my emotions. They yearn for you. I desire to know you. I desire to experience. I want to think about you.
I want to think about good things because you're God and God is good. I want my emotions. I want to submit how I feel in the moment to who you are and follow you. My mind, my will, I wanna choose to walk with you not because I'm in some dead religion because I but has I have a live relationship that impacts every aspect of who I am because I'm born again. I'm new.
I'm not just coming to church to be seen. Do you want to be the type of Christian that changes the environment around? Guess what? I wanna I wanna let you guys in on a little secret. That's the only type of Christian.
My heart cries out for you. My soul yearns for you. Now listen to this. It says, my flesh cries out. Wait a second.
When we talk in the church and read Galatians and we're like, you know, we say, wait a second, the flesh is sinful and it's gonna constantly be against, and yes. Yes. And your flesh can cry out for God. Your flesh is meant you are created. Spirit, soul, and body, your body to cry out for him.
To cry out for righteousness. Knowing who you are, right standing, right being leads to right doing. Your hands, your eyes, your lips, your tongue, every aspect of who you are crying out for righteousness sake. Crying out to see him and experience him in you and through you to the world around you. Taking the Garden of Eden, his unbroken presence that he put inside of you and making the world around you that because your heart, your mind, will and emotions and your body cries out to see and experience Jesus in you and through you.
These are the people. Verse 6, as they pass through the Valley Of Baca, everybody say Valley Of Bakkah. Bakkah. They make it a place of springs. The autumn rains also cover it with pools.
The word Bakkah means morning. Hebrew word means morning, tears, sadness. Seen a lot of that. It's also a place, by the Bakkuk, a place where there were willows. The type of willow we're talking about, it was arid and dry.
So it's a dry place of mourning. There's a lot of people who are and people who are living in environments of dry places with deep mourning, even if they look smiley. And it says, they, those whose heart, soul, and flesh cry out for God, They walk through the Valley Of Baca and they turn it into springs of life. Places of springs and pools. What is a spring?
A spring flows up from the ground, from within. They're transforming lives everywhere that they go. That's awesome. Notice, it doesn't say God. It says they.
Why? Because God's doing it in them and through them. He wants to use you to change the Valley Of Baca around you into springs of life. Amen. How does that happen?
How do you how does that happen? Just stick with me. *Philippians-2 says, therefore my dear friends, as you have Philippians-2:12*, as you have always obeyed, only in my presence, but now much more in my absence. Once again, not only when you're around the preacher do you try to look like a pretty Christian. Not only when you go to church and you you put your Sunday best on in order.
No. No. We're talking about even in my absence. Even when you're not around the pastor. Even when you're not around the the the super holy people that you're worried about them seeing you and being Even when you're not around Sunday people.
When you're on Monday nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights, when it's the opportunity to go and do something else. Hey, even in my absence, as you have always obeyed here and there, everywhere that you are, that's real guys. Real Christianity, you're the same everywhere you go. As you have always obeyed, it says, **work out your salvation** with fear and trembling. For the 1 who works in you is God, to will and to act according to his good purpose.
So God is working in you. He's transformed the inside of you because of Jesus. He's transformed your heart. Everything that you are, his presence is in you, giving you the desire and the ability. Then he says, work out what he's placed in.
Not in a I'm not scared. There's no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. Fear has to do with punishment. It's a deep, utter awe and respect of my heavenly father.
He's my friend. He's my father, but he's also the creator of the universe. He's the creator of the uni he made all of this with his mouth, with by speaking. There's a deep sense of, oh my gosh. Wow.
It would be like if if your best friend in the world walked in the room and he was the governor or the president of a nation or the state walked in the room and you're friends with him, but at the same time there's a deep sense of awe and respect. There's certain things that because he asked you to do it, you'll do it. Because you value the authority that he has, the position that he holds, who he is, what he's done, what he's been through. Yeah? Yeah.
There's a deep sense of and even to the nth degree, oh my gosh. The God of the universe lives in me because of Jesus. And he's my friend, he's my father, but he's my savior, he's my Lord, but he's also the creator of the universe. I don't want to not waste Work out. What does it look like?
I'm almost done. *Romans-6* Verse 12, it says, therefore, do not let *sin* reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer everybody say offer. Offer. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer say offer.
Offer. Offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and offer. Offer. Every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. Why do we do this?
Because we are those who have died to sin, have been set free from it. That's what Romans-6 says. I am if you've been born again, you are free from sin, Romans-6. You those who have died I'll just read it so that if you haven't seen it in a while. Verse 7, Romans-6:7, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
You're free from it. Sin is still very much alive. The power is still there. But you, if you've been born again, if you've been changed, you've been given a new heart, you're free from it just like I'm free from this microphone. Right?
I'm not I'm not a slave to this microphone. I chose to put the microphone on. I'm choosing to use it right now. I'm free from it, but the microphone is still a real thing. It's right there.
Make sense? Do not offer. Okay. The word offer there, it's like old testament sacrifice. You offer a sacrifice, a "burnt offering".
The sacrifice was to be consumed. Okay. Let me tell you this. Anything that you offer yourself to, you are consumed by. Do you understand?
You offer yourself, you offer a part of yourself, your eyes, your hands, your mouth, you offer it to sin, you will be consumed by that thing that you offer yourself to or that part of you to. It will be consumed by it. What does the word consume mean? 1 of the definitions of consume is squandered, wasted. When you offer yourself or a part of yourself to sin, you are wasting what God put in you and created you for.
He created you to display his goodness, to display his glory, to display the characteristics of who he is through your life. And when you offer a piece of yourself as an instrument of unrighteousness, of sin, you are wasting away. Stop. I told this in the dream team because my wife said it earlier and it hit. Example of offering a piece of yourself to say, why do we listen?
There's a lot of people that listen to songs that talk about women being whores in female dogs. You're offering your ears to something that God didn't say. Women are created in the image of God. Offering our eyes to watch shows and movies that are degrading the value of marriage and excusing it as it's good art. It's art that was not created by the great artist, by God.
Therefore, it's magnifying evil. And you're offering your eyes as an instrument of unrighteousness, and you are wasting that. And your eye is our eyes are the the "lamp of the body". They're supposed to be singularly focused on Christ. When our eyes are filled with darkness, the Bible says how great is that darkness?
But if they're filled with light, then your whole body is full of light. We want to offer every aspect of who we are to him. It says, don't do that but offer don't offer your the pieces of yourself to sin, but offer them as instruments of righteousness. What does that look like? If I have an itch on my arm, without thinking about it, my hand scratches it.
Right? You know why? Because it's been trained to. It's in the habit of scratching the itch. These are instruments of scratching.
Right? For so long, our body has been an instrument of unrighteousness, of sin, of gossip, our mouths of gossip, our our eyes of unholy, our ears, every aspects of our feet, every aspect of who we are has been offered unknowingly to waste away and promote something else. But we are because we're born on the inside, *born again our heart now sanctifying*. We're being changed, being made new in our mind, will, and emotions, and making the instruments of our body. We're retraining them to be instruments of righteousness.
To be hands that lift up and praise the name of the Lord Jesus. To be mouths that lift up and encourage instead of degrade. To be eyes that only seek out righteousness so that our heart and our mind is filled with righteousness in order that all of who we are, our heart, our soul, mind, will, and emotions, our body cries out for our our God so that where we go could be transformed into places of his presence. There are multiple type of people in here. There are people in here who a lot of what I'm saying is foreign to you, But your heart is crying out to know Jesus because he loves you.
And whether you've been going to church your whole life and just play in church, It doesn't matter what position you had. I was preaching at a conference in India with 280 pastors. And God told me to give an altar call. Said, God, there's there's pastors here. He said, give an altar call.
There's people in here that have been "playing religion" their whole life, and they're just seeking a position. They were never seeking me. They know what to do, but they didn't know who I am. There are people in here like that. 5 pastors gave their life to Jesus.
We're born again. Some people in here know a form of godliness but don't know him. It's time to be born again. Mister Jerry Hunter, where are you? Jerry and Heidi, would you stand up, please?
Would you come up to your to these front 2 seats? Just just the front seats. It's fine. You guys see them? They're awesome.
If you're that first person that I talked about, if you're in that group of people in here, when we start singing and *worshiping* Jesus, the king of kings and lord lords, of I want you to make your way to them. They're gonna lead you into a relationship with Jesus. If it's too loud in here, they'll take you out. They want to lead you into a real relationship where your heart is transformed from the inside out. There's another group of people in here.
Yeah. You can sit down. The next group of people is a group of people who've been born again. They're sons and daughters of the most high God. But you've been caught offering aspects of who you are to unholy things.
And your the instruments that God gave you to be used for righteousness, you've been using them. You offer them to other things. That word offer there, do not offer your your flesh or your body as instruments of unrighteous, it's a it's in the present tense means continual. Meaning, sin's gonna constantly the enemy's gonna constantly put sin in front of you in order to make it look like the healthy option. To make it look like what is most beneficial in the moment, in order to get you to offer yourself to it.
He can't make. The devil can't make you do anything. Don't say the devil made me do it. And you know what? Your heavenly father doesn't make you do anything either.
You choose it. What are you offering yourself to? There are many people in here, maybe most, who there's aspects of your life that you need to offer to God. As we worship, I want you to do that. What I what I when I lift my hands, I'm saying I surrender.
Some of you need to say, I surrender my eyes to you. I surrender my heart to you. I surrender my relationships, my friendships, my marriage. I've took it as my own and control. I surrender where I go, my feet to you, my mouth.
Whatever the Holy Spirit tell you, you need to offer that to him. So he can instead of it being *consumed* and squandered by evil, God can consume it with his fire, redeem it, and then use that aspect of who you were and now it's transformed in order to impact those around you. Amen. The third group of people in here are people that's just like, man, I wanna be that guy. I wanna I wanna change that Valley Of Baca into into spring of life.
God, would you give me a deeper desire to seek after you? I wanna go after you with all I am, and the thing that's holding you back is the fear of the people around you. Inside you're like, burning. I want that. I want that.
And I want that. And when the Holy Spirit leads you to do something, you're like, but they're looking at me. But they're gonna think I'm crazy. But they might persecute me. They might talk bad about me.
They might not want to be my friend anymore. You know what the Bible says? Blessed are you who are persecuted for my name's sake. There's a promise. If you follow Jesus, you will be persecuted.
And if people aren't talking bad about you, maybe you need to follow Jesus a little more. That's good. Amen. Maybe you need to offer yourself to it. Maybe you're people pleasing too much.
Because guess what? You're a son of God and a daughter of the most high king. You're loved by him. And those people that are talking a bad bad about you, deep in they desire, their heart is crying out for you to really live it out because they need to see it. They need you to love them more than loving what they think about you so that they can be transformed.
They just don't know it yet. You know what I want you to do? As we sing this song, I want you to I want you to worship with all of your heart. I want you to declare him as the Lord of your life. Ask him to give you a desire to seek seek after him.
Don't log don't know no longer beg him to take anything from you, but those things that you were begging him to take, offer them to him as a sacrifice to be consumed by him. I wanna invite you to stand. We're gonna worship him. Jesus, Lord of life or Lord of our life. By the way, when an offering, a burnt offering was taken on the altar, the fire was supposed to continually burn.
It wasn't supposed to go out. 1 of the ways that they kept it burning was they combined the burnt offering with a fellowship offering. The fellowship offering was an offering of praise. It was an offering of thanking God for what he's done in their life, or thanking God for how he delivered them, or thanking God for helping them to make it through and finish something. You wanna keep the fire going in your life?
Praise him in the midst of everything? You wanna keep the fire going in your life? Never forget you're standing with him, that he loves you and he cares for you? Never forget your identity, who he says that you are? Though a righteous man may fall 7 times, he gets back up and keeps going.
Why? Because he understands who he is or she. 3 people. Which 1 are you? I want you to do those 1 of those 3 things.
I'm a warn you as your pastor or the visiting guides those that are visiting or the guy that's just speaking the word of God to you today. I wanna warn you. Do not walk out of here without responding. This is a wake up call. Do not walk out of here sitting in your seat doing this, fighting what God's doing in you.
Whatever he's if he if he says, sing. If he says, lift your hands. If he says, stand there and speak to him. If he says, just listen. If he says, get on your knees and cry out to him.
If he says, go run to the the altar. If he says go and and let them lead you to a relationship with me because you've been playing religion. What if whatever he says, I want you to respond. He deserves a response because he should be honored and respected. *Lord*, I rip religion, religious mindset, fear of man be gone in Jesus' name.
Holy Spirit, we we welcome you here. We ask you to move. And if you need prayer, Courtney and I are here on the front. We wanna pray for you. If you need to be led to Jesus, Heidi and Jerry are here.
If you just need to do business with Jesus, do it. If you need somebody to help you, look to the people beside you, ask them to pray for you. If they don't know how to pray for you, take them at your hand and lead them to Jerry and Heidi so they can lead them to Jesus. Let's worship him together. Thank you for tuning in today to the Real Church podcast.
I pray that you walk away from today encouraged with a deeper of how much God loves you. If you'd like to connect with us, we can't wait to reach out to you and pray for you. You can go to www.realchurch.us/connect. And then also, if you would like to give to what God is doing in and through our ministry, you can do so at www.realchurch.us/giving, or you can text any amount to 84321. And then just search in the link that comes up.
Search for Real Church of the Lord. God bless you, and the best is yet to come.