The Time In Between

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

The words shall be in thine heart

He comes out of the worship with the confession that drives the day: "I don't ever want God to think that somehow I'm independent and that I've somehow got it all together and I don't need His help. I found one of the most powerful prayers that I have ever prayed is simply when I lift my hands and say, 'I need You.'" He honors the pastor — absent that morning: "Give honor to your wonderful pastor. I love and appreciate him so much, and I sure wish he was here today" — and reads from Deuteronomy 6, beginning at verse 4: "'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day' — think about them while I'm talking to you and then go home and never think about them again. Let it go in one ear and out the other and have a little church and go home without anything changing in your life. Is that what it said? No. But He said, 'These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children. Thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house... when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, when thou risest up. Bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates.'" Then the second text, Acts 2:46-47: "And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." The subject: "The time in between. The time in between."

Scriptures: Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Acts 2:46-47

The cycle of victory and defeat

"I lived my life for a while, especially as a teenager, this way: where you get in a cycle of victory and defeat, victory and defeat, and victory and defeat. And after you go in that cycle enough times, you start believing that there's no way out of it." People get a touch on Sunday and by Tuesday night are "right back needing help out of the same thing that they just got help out of." Mercy is not rationed: "It doesn't matter how many times that happened, God always wants to help you again... Aren't you thankful today that God doesn't say, 'Boy, I helped you the first time and the tenth time and the hundredth time. Now you're on your own'? No. You're looking at a church full of people today that's here because God said, 'I'll give you a thousand chances, and I'll give you two thousand chances.' Do I have a witness in the house today that could say, 'I'm here because I kept finding mercy'?" Then COVID taught him what assembling is worth: "Before that happened, pre-COVID, I thought I had an appreciation for church... You don't know what you've got until you no longer have it. And I'll never forget in those months — we started live streaming, and we even had some parking lot services. And I found out that, boy, sitting in your car and honking the horn, it ain't quite the same as being in the building and getting to say amen... It's a whole lot easier when there's some people in the building with their hands raised and with their mouth open and they're ready to worship." Private prayer is real, "but there is an atmosphere that is created when the people of God assemble together that cannot be exactly duplicated on your own... You get something in church that you can't get on live stream. You get something in church you don't get by yourself." Asaph is his witness, retold: envying the wicked prospering "messed up my mind... It didn't turn around for me when I got with my buddies and started complaining about it. It didn't get better when I went and seen a counselor or I seen a psychologist. But he said it all turned around for me when I got up and I went to the house." His parents' rule: "If you're having a good day, you need to go to church. But if you're having a bad day, you still need to go to church."

The Friday his father was diagnosed

"I remember the day after my father had been struggling for quite some time with his memory and things that were just going off in his life. And we were praying and hoping that it was not what it ended up being. And I remember on that Friday when my mother came in and told me that my daddy had a very progressive form of dementia, and that it would not be but a few years at the most and my daddy would no longer be with us. I remember on that Friday... I wanted nothing more than to go off and to be by myself and just start feeling bad for myself and asking why God would let this happen to me. But I remember we had church on that Friday night. And I could hear the voice of my mom and daddy as they would tell me, 'No matter what's going on in your life, you go to church. You don't get your help anywhere else.'... I don't remember what they sung. I don't remember what they preached. But what I do remember is lifting up my hands and feeling the anointing of the Holy Ghost fall on me and having that blessed assurance where I knew it may not turn out like I wanted it to, but I know as long as I've got God, as long as I'm in the church, everything is going to be all right."

A powerful move of God cannot sustain a prayerless life

Here is the turn the whole sermon hangs on: "Don't be convinced that it only matters what happens in church and that it does not matter what happens when you're not in church. I remember going through a span in my life where I started thinking that as long as I come to church and I worship and I praise, it really don't matter what I do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday... But I want to tell you something I have discovered: a powerful move of God, no matter how good it is, cannot sustain a prayerless life. I don't care how good the deliverance is that you get on Sunday night. If you get up on Monday and you don't want to pray and you want to do the same habits that got you messed up before and you want to go down the same road that got you in the mess you were in before that God just delivered you from, I'm telling you it's not going to matter how good the breakthrough is. You've got to make up your mind: deliverance, I may get it here, but if I'm going to stay delivered, I'm going to have to do it on Monday and Wednesday and Friday and Saturday." God can meet four different needs in one service — mind, body, finances, marriage — "and in the same service, hearing the same songs, hearing the same preacher, God can be over here and work on one situation and be on the opposite side of the building working on another." But he watched a young lady in his boyhood church come in bound again and again: "She would come in... possessed with all kinds of devils and spirits. Come down to the front. I literally one time seen her slither like a snake... The ladies would get around her and they'd start praying, and all of a sudden... she'd start speaking in tongues, she'd get to smile... You want to talk about a makeover transformation? Watch somebody that's bound get free." Then she would drift back to witchcraft, be gone for months, and return bound again. "You know what I finally realized? The problem is not what's happening when she's in church. The problem is what she's doing when she's not in church... You getting what you need in church is not going to override your lack of prayer this week." Most of life is lived between services: "The majority of our life is lived outside of these walls... The key is we've got to get something in here that will sustain us while we're not in here... Some of you are going to be fighting some big devils this week. You don't even know what's coming. That's why I've got to get something today that when the devil comes knocking on my door, I've got what it takes to say, 'No, I'm okay.'" And the church's own readiness is at stake: "I wonder what would happen if we didn't have to pray the same people through every single service. I wonder how many people are not getting what they need because you're the key to help them get what they need, but because you're not prayed up. If I'm not prayed up, I can't help you get prayed up."

Take it home with you

As an evangelist he has changed his aim: "It's so easy to push for what seemingly is a response in the altar, and then as an evangelist you leave and you forget, hey, these people still have real life to deal with... I can't judge a move of God based on only what happens in the altar... Today I want to preach to you the key that's going to help you come back tonight, and come back Monday night prayer, and come back Tuesday night midweek, and be able to go all the way from Tuesday night to Sunday morning and say, 'I got delivered last week, and I'm still delivered today.'" Walking with God "was never supposed to be up and down and up and down... it ought to be a steady climb." The arithmetic is against the part-time life: "We're talking 66 books. We're talking 1,189 chapters in that book. And we think we're going to get everything we need in an hour-and-a-half block three times a week?... What makes my shout powerful when I come to church, what makes my dance powerful when I come to church, is that I've got a prayer life and I've got clean living backing up what I'm doing when I come to church. I can't shout over sin... Really, the victory we experience when we come to church should be an overflow of our personal prayer life and consecration that we've been doing all week long." Pentecost itself is the pattern, and he walks the chapter: 120 in one accord, the sound from heaven, cloven tongues, all filled — "I'd like to see 120 get the Holy Ghost" — then out the door talking so loudly the city heard its own languages; Peter's "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel," the conviction, "Repent, be baptized, every one of you... and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. The promise is unto you, to your children, unto all that are afar off" — and 3,000 added the same day. "Oh, that we would get the revelation: it would have never happened if they would have left church at church... This Holy Ghost was never intended for it to be like a light switch, to where when we walk in the door, flip it on, and before we go back out, we flipped it right back off again. This whole Jekyll-and-Hyde, like I'm this person in church, I'm this person out of church — that ain't no walk with God... It was supposed to dwell in them, every day. I serve a God today that when you walk into your house, you've got enough Holy Ghost to command 'peace be still' over every spirit, over every voice." The appeal is domestic: "Your whole world would change if you would learn to take this Bible home with you... Sir, instead of you sitting at home looking at sports and looking at the news, if your babies would hear you in there praying... Mama, your whole world would turn upside down if you learn how to shut off the voices and say, 'God, I want my babies to hear me praying. I want them to see me reading my Bible.' This is how you change. And this is not just how you change — it's how you stay changed." And the standing close: "I'm not interested in something that only helps me in church. God, give me something that's going to help me through... I want us to have a good altar call today, but even more than that, I want us to have a good week. I want you to have a good Monday. I want you to have a good Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday... God, give me what I need to make it through this week." His last exhortations run over the closing song: "You don't have to go back to being defeated this week. You can live in victory... I'm going to stay touched. I'm going to stay healed. I'm going to stay free... God wants to help you not just get delivered. He wants to help you stay delivered."

Scriptures: Acts 2