Meeting with God

Well, what is the most important priority in your life today? Is it fun and leisure? You know, a lot of people live for the weekend, live for the time when they can get off and just have fun. And really, that becomes the most important thing in life to some people. What about you? Is it maybe your job? Is that the last thing you would miss or neglect would be your job? Obviously, there would be financial repercussions if you did. And so, certainly, that's understandable to some extent. But is your job even more important to you than anything else in life, including your relationship with God? Where do the priorities land in your life? For some of you, the most important thing in your life may be your family, your spouse, your children, your parents, most important thing in your life. And certainly, that deserves the place of a very high priority in our lives. But I want to ask you this morning, what is your highest priority? What is your ultimate priority in life? And I would suggest that for all of us, it needs to be our relationship with God. If the glorious omnipotent, amazing God that we just heard about is not the first priority in your life, then I want to encourage you today, challenge you today, plead and urge you today to make him the ultimate priority in your life. Actually, I think there's a new player on the block as far as priorities in our lives. I read an interesting article this week. Actually, a survey from a research firm called EMarketer. And they said, we spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media. Five and a half hours a day, more than half that time on mobile devices. In one recent survey, female students at Baylor University reported using their cell phones an average of 10 hours a day. I'm not going to say anything about guys, girls, you know, this is one of those things. I just said it, didn't I? We check our cell phones, 221 times a day, according to this research from EMarketer, 221 times a day, an average of every 4.3 minutes. And they say the number is probably actually too low because we tend to underestimate the amount of time we're on our mobile phones. The amazing thing is that our transportation into the digital age has been so fast. You remember, don't you, that the first touchscreen smartphone, forget the blackberry, that was the dinosaur, the first touchscreen smartphone came out in 2007 with the iPhone and then a year later the Android system. And so this is really fairly recent technology, but it has become all consuming. In fact, this survey says that smartphones went from 10% to 40% market penetration faster than any other technology in history, any other consumer item in history. Amazing. So maybe that's the new player on the block. Maybe that's what we worship more than anything else is our screens. We certainly spend a lot of time on them and so I wonder what that says about our priorities. If God is to be the ultimate priority in your life and in mind, then would it not stand a reason that we cultivate some time with Him, that we spend some time with Him? Obviously, whatever is a priority to us, we spend time on great gulps of time. But if your relationship with God is, and I believe it should be, the ultimate priority of our lives, then what are we doing to develop that? What are we doing to show that it is the highest priority in life? What are we doing to cultivate and develop our relationship with Him? I would suggest that the best way to do that is a meeting with God. Now some people will call that quiet time, some people will call that your devotions. I'm just going to call it this morning a meeting with God. We are and have been for some weeks now trekking with Moses through the wilderness following His journey with the children of Israel through the book of Exodus. This morning we come to a major significant event in Exodus chapter 19. It is a time that God set apart for Moses and for the nation to meet with Him. In fact, that meeting goes all the way through chapter 34. 16 chapters and get this, 11 months. 11 months of Israel's journey through the wilderness is spent camped here. This is significant, this is important. God has something special to say to us, not just Israel, but to us from this. There's much we can learn from this story about how to spend time with God. Moses at Mount Sinai, I believe, illustrates some keys to meeting with God. If God would take 11 months out of Israel's history and their journey to the promised land, and 11 months out of their leader's life to focus on this one thing, then it shows the significance of it, not only for them as a nation, but for us as His people today. So what does it mean to spend time with God? How do we cultivate time and relationship with God? What do we do? What are the keys? Well, let's work through what God did with Moses and what He expected Israel to do. And maybe we can learn something about what it means to meet with God. The first key to meeting with God is a place, a place. Look with me at chapter 19 of Exodus, verses 1 and 2. On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt, on that very day, they came to the desert of Sinai. After they set out from Refidim, they entered the desert of Sinai and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. God brought them to a place, and that place was in the desert at the foot of a mountain, in front of a particular mountain, a mountain that would become known as Mount Sinai. It is a significant spot, it is a significant time, God would keep them here for 11 months. And use that time to focus their relationship on Him. He would develop in these 11 months, his relationship with his people is Israel. Now, he had brought them out of Egypt, he had redeemed them from slavery, set them free from their bondage, but now they are to understand what it means to really become his people. In these 11 months, God will make a covenant with them. In other words, He will draw them into a relationship with Him that is structured by His promises to them. So God brings them into a covenant relationship with Him, and then He will give them their worship system, and the way that they should come into His presence and worship Him, all of the patterns they are to use in the tabernacle, which signify the way they are to come into His presence, He will explain all of that to them, how to put all of that together, and then He will establish their social and moral constitution, if you will, the structure of their law, which dictates and defines and helps them flesh out in daily life what their relationship with Him looks like. And so all of that is accomplished in these 11 months. It's an impressive time in Israel's history, a critical time, when He shows them at this place, we're going to do some work here on our relationship, but it needed a place, and Sinai was really an impressive place. I want to show you a couple of pictures. The first one is indeed an impressive view of Mount Sinai. You can see right here it is. Mount Sinai is really one of a series of peaks that jut up out of the wilderness, measuring some 8,000 feet, and you can see the strategic location here, this great valley where 2 million Israelites would have been camped, at the foot of this mountain, and God would call Moses and others up on the mountain to meet with Him. It is such a significant place that a group of monks have many, many centuries ago developed a monastery there. Look at the next picture. This monastery is somewhere around 5,000 feet right below the peaks of Mount Sinai, and in fact in this monastery they have focused on copying manuscripts of the Bible. Some of the New Testament copies go all the way back to around 300 or 400 AD. Some of the oldest copies of the New Testament that we have came out of this particular monastery. It is an amazing place. God also highlighted this place, this place of solid granite peaks with the blazing sun, different times in the day creating different hues of color on those mountain peaks. God also highlighted this place with special effects, which not even Hollywood could match. You talk about being covered with a cloud, lightning and continual thunder and fire on this mountain, symbolizing the presence of God and a loud trumpet blast, which was so loud it caused people to tremble. These are amazing special effects. This is an incredible place. What God is doing with this place is He is saying, I brought you here for a special purpose. That is to cultivate, develop our relationship as God and His people. What does that mean for us? Do we need to go find a mountain somewhere or a cottage by a lake or some kind of special place? I wouldn't suggest that it needs to be that dramatic, but for us, like Israel, we need a place to meet with God. Could I suggest this to you very practically that you find a place where you can meet with God? Again, it doesn't need to be dramatic, but it needs to be a place where you meet regularly with Him. You know the place. That is your place where you get alone with God. It may be a place in your home, where you find that you can be alone with God. A particular desk, a particular chair, a particular room, or a part of a room. It may be the kitchen table before it becomes a beehive of activity. It could be anywhere. It could be your office. It could be your vehicle. It could be anywhere that you meet with God. It is a place where you know you can go. And that place becomes special to you because God uses that place to highlight and develop and grow your relationship with Him. I don't think I'm making too strong a statement here. If you do not find a place, you probably will get very little in developing your relationship with God. If you just kind of try to do it on the fly, shoot up a prayer here and there. Catch a few verses of Scripture off the radio. You're probably not going to really develop as deeply as you could your relationship with God as if you have a place where you go to meet with God. Regularly, consistently. I want to urge you this morning, be firm, be deliberate, be uncompromising in finding you a place where you can meet with God. That implies that you also have a set time. That kind of goes along with it. If you have a place where you meet with God, you need a time when you meet with God. A specific time and you find whatever's best for you, it would be wrong for me to try to legislate a particular time morning, afternoon, evening, whatever, middle of the night. That's up to you. You find the time when you are at your best and can really get along with God. But it may mean you need to offer your schedule. It may mean you need to stop watching sports center or co-bear so much every night and get up earlier the next day. It may mean that you need to carve out some time from the busyness of your schedule to be able to spend time with God. How important is it to you to develop your relationship with God? If it is important and it should be, then you need a place. But there's another key to meeting with God. Not only a place, but also preparation. Preparation of your heart to meet with God. The interesting thing to me is that God brings them to the place and then he spends the rest of this chapter instructing Moses as to how to help the people prepare to meet Him. We were talking 22 verses, 23 verses, to explain to them how to prepare themselves to meet God. This is all before the meeting takes place. They've got to prepare themselves to meet Him. So, for Moses and Israel, the rest of the chapter becomes a preparation for what will take place in meeting with God. I want you to see how God tells them to prepare because I think there's some lessons for us to learn here as well. Four elements of preparing their hearts. The first is a willingness to obey. Look at verse 3. Then Moses went up to God and the Lord called to Him from the mountain and said, this is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on Eagles, wings and brought you to myself. That's a description of their redemption. The deliverance from their bondage to Egypt. And what he's saying to us would be something like this. You know how I brought you out of your bondage to sin and the curse of sin in your life and the condemnation, the guilt of sin. You know how I brought you to myself through faith in Christ as your Savior. You remember that. You know that. You are now my people. But we're going to work on the relationship to deepen it and the very first thing you've got to do. Look at verse 5. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and said before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together. We will do everything the Lord has said. So Moses brought their answer back to the Lord. Notice the first thing after being reminded of their redemption of their salvation, he says now the first step in deepening the relationship to get yourself ready to meet with me is a willingness to obey. You've got to obey everything I have commanded you to do. And if you do that you will be a special treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. By the way Peter uses those same expressions of the church in 1 Peter 2. Very same expressions. So we can also be those treasured people of God with a growing, developing, deepening relationship with him that he can then use us to be his people in this world. If we first of all prepare ourselves with an attitude of obedience, a willingness to obey, a heart that is inclined to do whatever he says. So before you rush into the presence of God, pull out your Bible or your devotional book or whatever you use and say I am going to dive into it here. Before you do that, maybe you need to take a little bit more time and say Lord, I want to prepare my heart with a willingness to obey you. Whatever you show me in your word, give me a willing heart to do to obey. So the first step to preparing ourselves is a willingness to obey. The second is a sensitivity to hear. Look at verse 9. A sensitivity to hear. The Lord said to Moses, I am going to come to you in a dense cloud so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you. Then Moses told the Lord what the people had said. Notice God says to me, I'm going to speak to you. The people will hear me speaking with you and will put their trust in you. The people need to hear what God is saying to Moses and through him thus to them. Now when you get your heart ready to come into the presence of God and you say Lord, I am willing to obey whatever you tell me, God will speak. God will speak through his word. God will speak deeply into your heart. So you need to also come with a heart that is ready sensitive to hear, that you're ready to listen to whatever God is going to say to you. That's so important. But there's a third element of preparation and that is the cleansing of the heart. The cleansing of the heart. God told Israel that they needed to clean up before they came to him. Notice this is very literal for them in verse 10. The Lord said to Moses, go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow have them wash their clothes and be ready on the third day because on that day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. So they're still getting ready for the meeting. The meeting hasn't happened yet. They're still getting ready and he tells them to wash their clothes and to consecrate them which simply means to set them apart with a special focus on what's about to happen. So skip down to verse 14. After Moses had gone down the mountain to the people, he consecrated them. In other words, he created a particular focus on what was about to happen and set them apart from everything else. Minds off of everything else. Focus on this. And notice in order to do that, they washed their clothes. In verse 15, then he said to the people, prepare yourselves for the third day, abstain from sexual relations. God wanted their entire focus to be ready for this meeting on him. Nothing else should be in their hearts and minds or their focus for these days of preparing themselves to meet with God. Now all of this outward setting apart themselves for a particular focus was really designed to highlight the need for them to focus their hearts. Certainly that's true of us. We may also use outward things that we may put away for a time or outward ways of symbolizing for us what it means to focus our attention, to focus our heart. But it's really all about our heart being focused on what God wants to teach us, to show us, to say to us. The outward cleansing just shows the focus of the heart. So if we're going to meet with God to prepare ourselves, we need a willingness to obey a sensitivity to hear and a cleansing of the heart. But then there's something else that we need and this may be the one that's lacking the most. And that is a deep respect for God's presence. Israel was told to have a deep respect and a lot of the pyro techniques and a lot of the special effects were designed to point out the reverence they should have for God. Look with me please at verses 12 and 13. We skip those verses. Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them be careful that you do not approach the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain is to be put to death. There to be stoned or shot with arrows not a hand is to be laid on them. No person or animal shall be permitted to live only when the ram's horn sounds along blast. May they approach the mountain. Now this is serious stuff. Don't come near the mountain until you're given the signal to come. If anybody touches the mountain, they die. And then looked down at verse 16. On the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace and the whole mountain trembled violently. Can you imagine that scene? Smoke, fire like a violent earthquake just on that mountain. Verse 19, as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him. And then in verses 20 to 25, there's another reminder to the people, don't come near the mountain. Don't touch the mountain. Why all of this? Why all of these strong warnings? Why can they not even touch the mountain? Why if that happens will they die? Why all the smoke and fire and violent shaking? Why all of that? To show the awesome holiness and majesty of God that He is entirely separate from us, that we dare not treat Him casually, but we respect Him, reverence Him, recognize His greatness, His holiness, His awesomeness, that a recognition of who He is, inspire like it did in them. All reverence, respect, what the Bible calls fear of God. We need that kind of respect and reverence for God. So what does all this mean to us? As Israel is carefully instructed how to prepare themselves to meet with God, what does that mean to us? We also need preparation of heart and life to come into the presence of God. Listen folks, we don't just strut into the presence of God with a shrug on our shoulders, our hands in our pocket, look in the other way, say okay, let's get at it. That is no way to treat a holy God. And yet much of our approach to God is just about as casual as that. I'm not talking about contemporary worship. One of the criticisms of contemporary worship is that it is too casual and people dress too casually. Well that's just externals. I'm talking about where your heart is. I'm talking about when you come into the presence of God, where is your heart? Is your heart glib? Is your heart just a casual, flippant, buddy, buddy kind of relationship with God? Or do you really recognize who he is? I love the expression. I think it was attributed at least in my reading first to Vance Havner, the old country preacher from North Carolina that made quite a splash on the national scene. He used the expression playing marbles with diamonds. And he would say that too often in Christianity we're playing marbles with diamonds. We don't recognize what we're dealing with. We don't recognize the value, the holiness, the majesty of the God we're approaching. And we're just playing with spiritual things. When really we're dealing with diamonds. We had an interesting article this week about a young man. This actually happened in 2012. The 19-year-old young man from Washington state named Dakota Garan, who was charged with stealing a rare coin collection worth about $100,000. He had completed some work for a woman in her home just north of Portland, Oregon. And afterwards she reported that their family collection of coins was missing. And it was a really great collection. It included a variety of rare valuable coins including Liberty Headquarters, Morgan Dollars, number of coins dating back to the early 1800s. Well this guy just saw some money. He didn't have any idea what he had his hands on. You know what he did with that rare collection? Took his girlfriend into a movie. And he paid for the movie in quarters some of which were as valuable as $68. And then he went and got a pizza. And given out these coins for the pizza, he used the coin to pay partly for his pizza. And then he had a pizza, a Liberty quarter that was worth $18,500. To buy a pizza. He had no clue what he had his hands on. And I'm convinced that a lot of times when we come into the presence of God we have no clue who we're dealing with. If I could use the expression reverently we have no clue who we've got our hands on. We don't have a clue who we're dealing with. And we don't understand the reverence and all that we should come into the presence of God with. So yes, isn't it worth the time to come with a heart that is willing to obey, prepare ourselves with a heart and an ear to listen, to cleanse our hearts of unconfessed sin like James says, getting out the weeds of sin so that the ingrusted word can take root. And do its work. Isn't it worth the time to clean up a little bit? And isn't it worth the time to think a little about about who God is and respect his reverence, his holiness? Isn't it worth the time to do that? Now I know we need to balance that awesome fear of God with the recognition that we are invited to come boldly into His presence. But please don't misunderstand that boldness. When the writer of Hebrews says, therefore come boldly into the presence of God, he's not talking about coming flippantly or casually. He's talking about having the right to be there, which is given to us through the blood of Christ, the mediator between God and man, the one who opens the veil between God and man through His blood and His death on the cross, because of that we don't have to shrink back from coming into His presence, but we do need to realize who He is. We do need to understand the greatness and the holiness and the majesty of our God. Our approach too often is quick and snappy and slap on the back kind of buddy buddy. Let's get this deal done and get on with life. That's our approach too often. Can we wear you see that in the Bible? Look at Isaiah as he comes into the presence of God. Christ out woe as me. I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Look at Ezekiel as he comes into the presence of God. Flat on his face as he sees that awesome revelation of the majesty of God. Daniel 9 and 10 loses his strength, collapses as he sees the greatness of the awesome God. What about Peter who recognizes that he's in the presence of deity when he sees Jesus on the shore and he takes his clothes off, jumps in the water, swims through and falls at his feet? What about John in revelation when he sees that awesome vision, the revelation, the revealing, the unveiling of the glory of Christ and he falls at his feet, he says as though he were dead. That's the way I see people coming into the presence of God in the Bible. None of that slap happy big buddy kind of stuff. We need, we need to recognize the awesomeness of our God. I love what C.S. Lewis said in his book. His autobiography about his marriage, surprised by joy and his marriage to Joy Davidson. He describes some of the struggles he was going through with his life and he reminds his readers of a time when he was a young boy. He says at a young age he learned that his mother was dying and all I could remember was that somebody had told him that prayers offered in faith would work. And so he prayed that God would heal his mother, his mother died. So he prayed for a resurrection. He prayed for a miracle. And then this is what he says in the book, surprised by joy. He says, I had approached God or my idea of God without love, without awe, even without fear. He was in my mental picture of this miracle to appear neither as savior nor as judge, but merely as a magician. And when he had done what was required of him, I suppose he would simply well go away. It never crossed my mind, C.S. Lewis says, that the tremendous contract which I solicited, talking about coming into his presence in prayer and asking the Holy God something, he speaks of a tremendous contract which I solicited, says it never came to my mind that this tremendous contract which I solicited should have any consequence beyond restoring the status quo. In other words, God just fixed my stuff and will be good. You can leave me alone then. I won't bother you. Just fix my stuff. And that too often is how we approach God. Rather than taking the time to develop a willingness to obey a sensitivity to hear, a cleansing of our hearts, a deep profound respect and reverence and offer who he is. You see, before we ever come into his presence, before we ever open our Bible and pray, maybe we need to do little heart work to prepare ourselves for that meeting with God. But then quickly, and you're more familiar with these so we can cover them fairly quickly. There are two other keys to meeting with God. Yes, there has to be a place, there has to be preparation, but then there needs to be a passage, a passage. And I'm not talking about a passage through life. I'm talking about a passage of Scripture. You need to get into the Word. If you read the 16 chapters, chapters 19 through 34, you will find that the purpose, for Moses and Israel, the purpose of this 11 months, and why he called them to this mountain, why he called Moses on top of the mountain, was to give them the Word. Not some vision, not some experience, but the Word. I mean, think of it. The very first thing he does in chapter 20 is he gives the 10 commandments. Then in chapter 21 to 23, he gives them their civil and religious law written down. According to chapter 24 verse 12, this was all to be inscribed. Not just the stones that he inscribed himself, but Moses is to write all these laws down. This is God's Word to you. Then in chapter 25 to 31, he gives them the instructions for the tabernacle, the ministry of the priests, the Sabbath day, and all the other worship systems of Israel. And that is all to be recorded and preserved. He is giving them his Word. What's the purpose of this place? The purpose is not just the fire and the smoke and the pyrotectics and the special effects. That had its purpose to draw their attention to God, but the reason he brought them there was to give them his Word, to make his covenant through Scripture with them. And that means for us, well, that means we need to get into the Word. That's how God will speak to you, is in His Word. Now, you know, it is part of the reason why we come together on Sundays and even Wednesday nights and in small groups and Bible fellowships. The reason why we do that is to get into the Word. And it's part of our responsibility as pastors to feed the flock, to feed you with the Word of God. But you must learn to feed yourself on the Word. There was a remote tribe of aborigines in Australia discovered their civilization discovered by archaeologists. And they were able to piece enough together from both their written history, what they could find of that, and their customs that they found in the things they had left behind. But they were able to piece together a very interesting fact about these Indians. They would dig out kind of a round bowl in the sand, fill it with hot boiling water and stick their meat in it. That's how they boiled their meat. But in the process, the meat became infiltrated with lots of grains of sand. And so they discovered as a result of that that most of these adult aboriginal Indians, by the time they were 30, they had lost all their teeth because of the grinding of the sand in the meat. So they discovered they had as a custom that the children who still had all their teeth would chew the meat and hand it to the adults to swallow. Try that one on sometime at home. It was necessary for them. It's the only way they could get that kind of protein. But it wasn't very good for either them or their kids. Some of us do the very same thing with the Word of God. We are totally expecting someone else to chew it up for us and then just feed it to us. It's all prepared, it's all chewed up. Ready? Here it is. Lay it out on the table. Now here we go. You just swallow it. That's great. There's a place for that. But you need to chew up the Word yourself. You need to feed yourself. You need to be able to take nourishment from the Word. Every day you need some nourishment from the Word of God. Could I just give you a few simple suggestions that may help you get started. If you're not already into this discipline, if you're just getting started, let me suggest first of all you use a modern translation so that you can understand the English. It's written in English that we speak today. Let me also suggest that you pick a book like First John or the Gospel of John or Philippians to get you started. Please don't say, okay, I'm going to start reading my Bible. I'm going to start with Genesis 1. You get to Genesis 5 and so, so big at so and so and so and so died and begatin' the lived and you're thinking, oh man, what in the world? Then you get the tabernacle in Exodus and by the time you get to Leviticus you're saying forget this. Now if you've been in the Word for a while, you'll know there's a lot of good stuff in Leviticus. But if you're just getting started, start with something that's not quite as tough as that kind of stake, okay? Start with something like John or First John or Philippians and start reading. And then please just take a few verses a day. Did God ever tell us in His Word that we have to read the Bible through in a year? That's a great thing to do, but you don't find it in the Bible. You don't have to do that. Just take a few verses. Don't feel under the pressure. Oh man, I got to get through this whole thing in a year. So and so did that. So what? Just take a few verses. Take a small section and it would be much better to chew it thoroughly. Read it aloud. Read it slowly. Read it thoughtfully as if God were speaking those words directly to you by your side. And make it personal. Make it personal. Ask yourself some questions. Questions. Is there a sin here that I need to avoid? Is there a promise in this passage? I need to keep? Is there is there an example I need to follow? Is there an attitude I need to change? Is there something I need that I can see here that I need from our life today? Make it personal. Don't just read for the purpose of reading. Make it personal. Apply it to your life. Get started reading the word. You need a passage. And then finally, you also need prayer. The fourth key to time with God is prayer. For Moses and Israel, if you read all those chapters through chapter 34, you'll find that at least seven times Moses goes into the presence of God and talks with him. Twice here in chapter 19, once in chapter 32, actually twice in chapter 32, once in 33, twice in 34, seven times at least. He goes into the presence of God and they talk. Moses talks with him. What does that mean for us? We have a tremendous need to talk with God, to spend time and prayer with him, to see his power come into our hearts and lives, to gain wisdom as to what the next direction should be, as to what his will and purpose is for us, to gain the peace that we need to battle through life and its difficulties. We need prayer to be able to have time with God, to gain insight, to pour out our hearts to him about the difficulties we're facing, the struggles in our lives. Good. Let's give you a couple again, very practical suggestions. If you're not used to really having time regularly in prayer, could I suggest that the best thing you can do is do whatever it takes to be able to focus? You know, I know if you've spent any time trying to cultivate time and prayer with God, you know that the greatest enemy is distraction. Your mind gets off on something else, what you got to do today, what happened to you yesterday, oh what so and so sad or dead, and your mind just starts wondering. So do whatever it takes to focus your mind. And that may mean for some of you need to pray aloud. You'll wake yourself up a few times doing that, but it may mean you need to pray aloud. It may mean you need to do some things to stay awake, like get a cup coffee first, or go on a brisk walk before you spend your time with God. It may mean that you need to make a list to be able to keep your mind focused as you pray for needs. Whatever it takes, keep your mind focused. Read another interesting statistics when I was looking at that E-market survey. You know our attention span has dropped from the year 2000, from 12 seconds to 2015, eight and a quarter seconds. Our attention span. And it's all because we are so used to short bursts of things. You know, short burst commercials show flashes of pictures. And so we're used to these short bursts of things that we don't have to focus on very long. The average YouTube, the average that people will watch, according to that survey, is 2.7 minutes as long as you'll go. The average number of words you'll read without turning it off is 593. And I could go on and on with the statistics from that survey. It's amazing how our attention span has dropped. And so for you to spend focused, quality, extended time and prayer, you're going to need to do some things to keep yourself focused. So whatever it takes, whatever it takes, keep yourself focused on your time with God. Now it has been my prayer this week that God would grab your attention. And I hope he's done that this morning with some very practical ways that you, just like Moses and Israel, can begin to develop and focus your relationship through finding a place and preparing your heart and getting a passage in front of you and spending some time and prayer. I hope that God's grabbed your attention. That's good for him to grab your attention and to cause you to want to do that. But it's better to make a definite decision today and act on it. Dreaming about how wonderful this sounds will not get it done. The best of intentions, as you leave here today, will not, will not help you to grow in your relationship with God. So I'm going to ask you to make two very specific decisions right now. Number one, decide this morning that you will act, that you will start developing a meeting with God. Decide it this morning. Write it down if you need to. Decide it this morning. You're going to do that. And then number two, make a plan today. Decide this morning and make a plan today. The Saturday afternoon, the evening, whenever you get the opportunity, but do it today. Make a plan. You say, John, what do you mean a plan? I'm talking about deciding what your place is going to be. Where is your place going to be that you meet with God? When is the time going to be that you meet with God? How are you going to prepare your heart before you come into his presence? Pick a book that you're going to start with and start making a prayer list. That's what I mean. Plan ahead. Don't just dream about how wonderful this sounds and yeah, it's important and I'm going to do that someday. It will never get off the ground. Make a plan today. Decide today. Decide this morning. Make a plan today. How are you going to do this? Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. It is so rich. We revel in the opportunity to learn from you, to see you at work in our lives. Thank you, Father. Speak to our hearts. Speak to us very precisely. Lord, I pray that you will motivate us and that we will act on that. To decide this morning that this is important enough to focus on to do and that we will make a plan today as to how we will meet with you. Lord, you are absolutely holy and you are the most important priority we have. We know that. Help us to show that in the way we allocate our lives and focus our attention to meet with you in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.