The Prepper Broadcasting Network - 2024.01.10 - Reliance - Clean House

Episode Date: January 14, 2024

God Bless the Menking Family!!!

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak, and blameless when you judge. 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 through 10. and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness that the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me by your generous spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you. Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise. For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it. You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart.

These, O God, you will not despise. Do good in your good pleasure to Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem. Then you shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering. Then they shall offer bulls on your altar. Father, thank you for your mercy, your righteousness, your faithfulness, your loving kindness, your long suffering towards us. Thank you, God, that you do and have and will wash us clean.

and have, and will wash us clean. Thank you, God, that you call us to come to you, to reason together with you, to understand, Lord Jesus, that you have laid down your life as a sacrifice to atone for our wrongdoing, our sin, the sin against you, and that you wash us whiter than snow. Lord, we endeavor to follow your will, knowing that it is your will for us to be clean, for us to be cleansed, for us to be purified, for us to be sanctified, Lord, and that you are calling us into something deeper with you this year, 2024. God, I pray for your blessing over this broadcast, over me, over everyone listening, over everyone, Lord, who will hear these words. God bless them. Holy Spirit, be with all of us, Lord, as we seek you and seek your kingdom first and foremost. Move us forward, Lord,

in your will, in accordance with your desires. Give us new hearts, clean hearts, God. Let us be firmly established upon the truth of your word and let us pursue everything that you have given us and called us to do in this time in which we live. Lord, open our eyes, open our ears, open our hearts. Give us a greater sensitivity to your still small voice. Holy Spirit, guide us and lead us in the way that we should go into all truth and righteousness and judgment. Lord, save and protect our families. Let this be a year of tremendous breakthrough, of restoration, of your power being displayed. Lord, you said that we will overcome the enemy by the blood of the lamb and by the word of our testimony. The blood of the lamb is already beyond powerful and standing by. And Lord, give us a greater strength in our testimony of what

you have done in our lives. Try us, Lord. Search us. Know our hearts and our thoughts, and Holy Spirit, bring them to mind that we would repent, that we would be cleansed, that we would take action, that we would move forward, that we would seek you and seek your face and your will for our lives. God, we love you. We bless you. We thank you, Jesus. We pray your blessing over this broadcast in Jesus name. Amen. Before we get started in talking through some of the verses in Psalm 51, I want to first and foremost make an apology to the listeners of this broadcast and to everyone at the Prepper Broadcasting Network. I took a break from producing these broadcasts when my third child, our daughter, was born almost three months ago. And I have every week since then put

a reliance recording on my schedule, but because of tutoring and a variety of other reasons, I just managed to push it off. I managed to place it into the next week and the next week and the next week, fully intending to go through with a plan to get back in to recording and everything else like that. But because of bad habits and just because of laziness and intransigence, I just didn't get background to it while I was busy with my family and with my work schedule. But those are all excuses. But those are all excuses. This show and this opportunity given to me by I hear all of the messages sent from James that he and many other people are blessed by what I'm doing in this format. And I just got stuck into a pattern of pushing it off. And it's something that I ask for forgiveness for because the opportunity to bring everyone this commentary

and spending this time together with you, pursuing the Lord and going into his word is something that shouldn't be taken lightly in the way that I did. And yes, it's very easy to say, oh, you know, it's okay, Steven, you had all these other things to attend to. And all that's, all that is true. It's not something that I'm making light of my obligations, but the, the true fact is this should have been more of a priority for me, and I could have made it more of a priority. It's not as if I was tutoring 24 hours a day or with my family 24 hours a day. There's certainly times when everyone was asleep, and I was watching silly YouTube videos instead of going about doing this. And part of that is not heeding some advice that I had given to people on

this podcast on in this format, where I'd say, you know, don't let anything hold you back from pursuing the Lord, especially this idea in your own mind that you're not in a, you know, a worthy state to do these sorts of things. I mean, obviously we should be endeavoring to get things right, and we'll touch on that here in a moment when I'm done with this interlude, but it's not a sufficient excuse. When we sin, we are in a situation where we need to go to God in a spirit of repentance to receive his forgiveness. to go to God in a spirit of repentance to receive his forgiveness.

That's the only thing that can move us from a state of sinful nature into a state of being made clean, of being cleansed, of being purified, of these sins being washed away. And so I had, for a period of time, failed to heed my own advice there. And for that, I apologize. my own advice there. And for that, I apologize. And so as we get into 2024 here, we're already 10 days into it as of the recording of this episode, I wanted to update you on a handful of things and express my repentance and to ask for your forgiveness for not producing more of these broadcasts. It's something that is going to change in the days, weeks, and months ahead. And I look forward to bringing you more commentary on what the Holy Spirit leads into important and proper discussions of practical discipleship because I believe wholeheartedly that we have been in the middle of a critical time

for some time and that we're in a situation where there should hopefully be an urgency on people's hearts to get right with God and to be firmly established in the faith and to pursue the Lord more deeply because of everything that's going on around us. So with that in mind, I appreciate your forgiveness and your consideration here. And I rededicate myself to the commitment to this broadcast because it really is a tremendous opportunity for me to be able to have a platform to sit here and to unpack some things in the word that the Holy Spirit has brought to my attention and to speak to all of you. You are precious brothers and sisters in Christ. And if you do not yet follow

the Lord, then I welcome you to these conversations. I pray that you would hear the gospel and that you would repent and believe on the Lord Jesus for your salvation and that we would spend eternity in heaven together, enjoying the Lord in an ever increasing and ever expanding glory and joy and just things that are unfathomably good and worthy and pleasant and righteous and loving. And to be a part of that communion with you would be just an unspeakable joy to know that you are with the Lord and that you are following him. So let's talk a bit about Psalm 51 in the context of a word that the Holy Spirit gave me for this year. If you have been with us for some time on Reliance, then you'll know that at the beginning of every calendar year, I take three days to do a liquid only fast. And I seek the Lord and ask for a word of guidance for the year. And I've done this every

year since 2017. And the Holy Spirit has never failed to deliver on his response to this effort of going into a time of fasting and prayer, even during the times when I would say I've been less diligent on the prayer side than I needed to be. And what I can tell you, and the Lord, of course, works differently for every single person. But for me, what will continuously happen during these times is that I'll get something dropped into my spirit, usually a word or a phrase, and it's just something that sticks. And it's not something that's part of my normal lexicon. And so it's recognized as something that I am not bringing forth myself. And it's not as if

I hear an audible voice. There's just a persistent reinforcement of a thought. And then as I pray into it, it gets unpacked more and more in terms of marching orders and things I need to be on the lookout for, things I need to be doing, things I need to have as a guiding measure. And every single year I can point back to the word that I've gotten at many different instances and say, okay, this is an unfolding of this particular principle. It guides what I do, what I'm paying attention to. And for me, it's been a critically important spiritual discipline. And it has, like everything that God promises in his word, borne more and more fruit as I continue to engage in that spiritual practice. And I dedicate myself to it even more. But what I can say is even from the first year, even from the get-go, it was something that

enriched me and brought about in my spirit a greater degree of conviction and appreciation because as much as we can read the Bible, there are ways to read the Bible without it really coming alive. There are ways to engage with things intellectually. But from a discipleship angle, if we are not going to put these things into practice, then we're not going to see all of the power and all of the fruit of the Holy Spirit that we want. And when we do see these things, when I do see God responding to these prayers,

when I do see him giving me a word that then comes to fruition in different ways, not in the sense of foretelling future events, but in terms of giving me the kind of guidance that his word promises, something that is clear and distinct for my own life and potentially for the benefit of others, distinct for my own life and potentially for the benefit of others, that gives me an even greater devotion and even greater foundation of faith of knowing that the word is true and that when I am earnestly seeking something from the Lord and not putting preconditions on it, when I'm just saying, Lord, what is it that is your will? Then he is just and faithful and true to deliver this. And so if this practice is not something that you've ever done before, then pray and ask that the Holy Spirit would lead you into this or something like this. You know, there is no, I'm not advertising a formula

or some special mechanism for getting what you want to spiritually. All I'm saying is that fasting is a commonly instructed spiritual discipline. It's something that Jesus did. It's something that we should be doing as well. And it's a way to navigate our landscape and to quiet our mind and to hear from God. And this is particularly true for me because, you know, at least in the context of my own home, I find that my wife is more sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit than I am. And so the fasting really does help me to break through there a bit. And it's not as if it's some, again, some formula, some prescription, but if you haven't done something like this and you want to hear from God, I would strongly encourage you to go about something in a similar direction, of course, at the leading of the

Holy Spirit. So what normally happens to me is that on day two or day three of my fast, in a time of prayer, I will get something and it will, and it will stick. But this time around, my wife was joining me in the fast. She's, you know, we currently have a newborn, so she can't fast from all foods entirely. So she was doing more of a Daniel fast where she was restricting her, uh, her dietary input. And because of all the extra prayer cover that I was getting, and because of my wife, I believe fasting alongside of me, I actually got this word on day one at the very beginning as I was walking down the stairs first thing after I woke up. And that's a little bit unusual. And I

would attribute it to the prayer cover, but it allow me more time to pray into the word after I'd receive it. Of course, a couple times a day I had to fight off the temptation to say, well, you got the word already. You know, you don't need to fast for the rest of this time. After all, it's fasting to receive a word and, you know, mission accomplished. So why don't you just go on about your business? But, you know, I was pot committed at that point in terms of saying, like, look, this is the discipline. I'm going to stick to it.

There is there is more to come in terms of the unpacking of that word. And I'm not going to fall victim to that temptation, because according to First Corinthians 10, every time there's a temptation, God has made a way out of it. And so I was able to fortunately quickly recognize that as, you know, not a, not a legitimate way to go is just my own, my own mind, uh, trying to, uh, trick me into breaking my fast without, without proper reason. And so I was able to put that aside and complete the fast. And I want to tell you that the word that I got for this year was clean house. Now, when I presented this to my wife, I had to do so in kind of a careful fashion because it's not

just about the physical cleanliness of our own home. Although we did right before this fast begin to implement a routine with our children who are four and two. So this is a work in progress, by the way, of saying, well, after you clean or after you play with a particular toy, when you're done playing with it, let's put it away. And we're doing that imperfectly and step by step, but we're just trying to implement those sorts of routines. And I don't think that the word was just a subconscious manifestation of that. I think it was just, we're, you know, trying to go in this direction and the Lord was able to distill this and the Holy Spirit was able to give me something that really applies in all areas of

our discipleship and our walk with Christ. And so from my vantage point, we need to think of a handful of key biblical principles here. So number one, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, the home of the Holy Spirit, so to speak. And so when we say clean house, it's of course not just a physical thing, although having a clean home in terms of the actual physical objects in there is a good idea. I would say that the first and foremost implication here is just we need to get everything on the table. We need to give God access to everything in our hearts. Everything has to be subject to his scrutiny and his correction.

And we've said this many times on previous broadcasts, but all of us have things that the Holy Spirit is bringing to mind now already actively. It's just stuff that we already know, things that we have to put aside and things that we have to take up, whether it's a bad habit, whether it's then picking up more Bible reading, more prayer, more connection to fellow believers,

being more proactive, engaging in requests for forgiveness from people who we've wronged, anything that we already know. I guess my point is that we shouldn't need to be digging too deep to find the things that we need to clear out or the things that we need to pick up. They're likely already there in our consciousness. And if we say, well, no, everything's going perfect 100% of the time, then we're certainly deceiving ourselves there. And if you do happen to be in that situation where you're like,

I've gone through all these disciplines, I've done my best at that, and I can't think of anything or the Holy Spirit isn't bringing anything to mind right away, then even if you're in that spot, and congratulations, that's a wonderful place to be in the Lord, I would say that we should go the full distance in terms of Psalm 51 and Psalm 139 and say, Lord, just try me, search me, know my hearts, know my thoughts. He already does anyway. But if we allow him to bring these things to the forefront, things that, you know, we haven't received correction for, things that we're just not aware of, things that are not on our radar,

as the Holy Spirit brings these things to mind, we have to put ourselves in a mindset and an attitude that we want our house to be clean. And after all, if attitude that we want our house to be clean. And after all, if we don't want our house to be clean, we can choose to reject that prompting of God. We can choose to keep it in a state of disorder and disrepair spiritually. And many people are stuck in that situation for a variety of different reasons, perhaps just not wanting to give things up because of concern about the consequences or fear that it can't be done. But I can promise you, and I'm promising this to myself as I say it, that whatever God has for us is more than worthy of giving up anything that's

finite, that we even might think is good, but that in oftentimes we know is bad. And God is also worth us picking up things that he says are good for us, even if we understand that there might be some immediate negative ramifications of this. So when it's all said and done, this spiritual component of cleaning house, we've done broadcast before of taking a spiritual inventory. The same thing is true here. The same thing is true now. And ultimately, I think there is a degree of insistence, a degree of quasi urgency here. And again, this could be for the sake of being prepared for something bigger. It could be in reference to being prepared for something challenging. It could be in preparation for something downright disastrous. Like this doesn't necessarily carry with it any portents

about our own individual futures in the micro or in the macro. But after all, isn't it good advice anyway? Regardless of our assessment of are things going to go well, are things going to go poorly, are things going to go really poorly? Don't we benefit from being in right standing with God and having a clean house spiritually in any of those cases? And isn't it a good strategy, a dominant strategy, even something that works out regardless of what path unfolds, something that is more beneficial to do than not in any case, regardless of what results? I would argue, yes, that's certainly what game theory says. But even without a game theory perspective, let's say we just think of it as God as being

ultimately worthy of everything. And he is. He has shown us love that we don't deserve, grace that we could never even imagine, and hope and a promise for a future of eternity that is so preposterously beyond our conception in terms of its joy and the magnitude of what it consists of for us that can't we just say God is the perfect, greatest conceivable being? And shouldn't our primary strategy, shouldn't our primary focus be on him and being conformed to his image? He's given us that promise. We don't have to be stuck wherever we are. We don't have to be trapped. We don't have to be imprisoned by the things that so easily beset us.

God wants to set us free and how much good is in that gift and in that desire of the Lord. So when we think about spiritually, we need to clean house. I would say that we should think about what we are eating and drinking and consuming in terms of media and entertainment. I think everything just has to be on the table here. It would be better for us to be spiritually healthy, for us to be physically healthy, for us to be mentally healthy, and not just healthy, but prosperous and thriving. And we can only do that once many things are stripped away. And so for me, I'm endeavoring to make substitutions and cut things out entirely when they're just clear things I spend time on and had been spending more time on this past year that are not additive. They don't do anything for me that makes me

better and better able to follow the Lord and everything else like that. And so, you know, we're talking about silly YouTube videos and being undisciplined with my diet and exercise plan and, you know, being lackadaisical about prayer, even when I say I'm going to pray for someone, you know, praying for them, but, you know, not really being fervent and not really being dedicated. You know, we should all be moving forward to a place of greater strength. Jesus should be moving us from image to image and from glory to glory. All of these things should be true. And I would encourage all of us to think about this word, clean house. And I would ask the Holy Spirit, where do I need to clean house? We need to be in that mindset of allowing the Lord to direct us

this year, because if we surrender our purposes and say, God, I want whatever you want, give me the strength to believe, help my unbelief, give me the strength to say yes when you bring about your correction, and then we actually go through with it, and then we actually apply the correction of the Lord from his word directly through his Holy Spirit and we make changes. Then there will be more of that. That process can go faster and faster. It doesn't take God long to wipe away, you know, a couple days or one week or a month or a year, even 10 years of missteps. He can cleanse us and he can make us white as snow in an instant, but we have to have contrite hearts. We have to go to him in

surrender, understanding that he is the one that is going to make us clean. It's not by our own effort, but that his power and his grace making us clean should then move us to acting appropriately as he transforms our desires, as he transforms our heart, as he transforms our thought processes. And so I would encourage you to pray into that word with me and see how it can be applied in your own life. So I'm going to read again from Psalm 51. And I would ask you as I'm reading this to be attentive to what the Holy Spirit is bringing to mind. So I'm going to start in verse 7 and I'm going to go through to 13. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners shall be converted to you. Think about this. Think about this in verse 12. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. When was the last time that you were overcome with joy

upon reflecting upon the salvation that God has provided for you? It is so mind-boggling that we can autopilot through our days, and we don't acknowledge what's going on and we don't really see that reality. We just say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess that's the thing, but I have all this other stuff to attend to. When we stand before the Lord and when we enter an eternal state of communion with him and when we look at the state of affairs that we've found ourselves in, I mean, apart from being just so grieved by our own attitudes, aren't we going to feel a little silly? Especially knowing the promises of God, what's written there, what's concrete there, what Jesus said, what we can place our faith in. We have placed our faith, our full trust in Jesus.

And we should understand what he says about these incredible promises, these joys. Shouldn't there be joy in our hearts, joy in our spirits because of the salvation of God? We are saved, brothers and sisters. We are saved. We are saved into an eternal promise, so precious, so magnificent, such a treasure. And Jesus taught about this frequently. And so there was a wonderful recent video about heaven by Pastor Gavin Ortland. I'd highly recommend his YouTube channel called Truth Unites.

And he talked about an exercise where he said, like, all right, it's going to be a discipline of mine to think about heaven every day until it makes me happy, until we experience this joy of our salvation. And I think that's a wonderful exercise. I'd highly recommend that recent video if you haven't seen it yet, because it's so encouraging and something that's important to keep in mind. And I think about the disciples. I think about what waking up in the morning would have been like for Peter or John or any one of these, the women, anybody who had

seen the risen Lord. And you go to sleep and then you wake up the next day, whether it's the day after, a week after, a month after, you wake up and I'm sure for a moment, you have to think to yourself something like, was that, was everything all a dream? Were these last years, was this last week just a dream? Surely this is too good to be true. Surely this is, like, I imagine being in that spot and feeling like I would have to actively remember and convince myself that what I had seen, I had actually seen.

You know, witnessing not just these miracles that Jesus performed, but the resurrection itself is speaking and fellowshipping with the risen Lord, hearing from him, I mean, it goes a long way to say that the most common secular argument against the historicity of the resurrection here, like in terms of their explanation about this transformation, the disciples' beliefs that, you know, had nothing like a physical embodied resurrection in history as part of their theological understanding. There's a genuine, real, multiply attested, essentially 100% accepted transformation of these disciples' beliefs, becoming fervently convinced that Jesus was raised from the dead. And the explanation that is given is essentially a group hallucination hypothesis.

Everybody just, for whatever reason, whether it's emotional distress or otherwise, they hallucinated these appearances, but nobody really doubts that they suddenly and sincerely came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead. And so I you know, I, I, I honestly understand. I'm sure it must have felt like that to some of them at, at some points, you know, even I can every, every so often the thought occurs to me, like, is, is this, is this really true? It's so good. It's so wonderful. It's so marvelous. It almost seems like quote unquote, too perfect to be real. But then I go back through what I know from scripture. I go back through the evidence. I go back what I have seen in my own life and what I have seen with my own eyes and what I have experienced. And I know and

I say, yes, this is real. And it shouldn't just be an assent to this to say, oh yes, I acknowledge that this is real. Like what could be more joyful? What could be more just unspeakably, unimaginably hopeful and beautiful and good and virtuous and right full of love, and all of the things that all of us are so desperately created to need. And understanding that in verse 12, David writes, uphold me by your generous spirit. The spirit is so generous in the sense of having unlimited resources, unlimited patience, unlimited love. He will give us everything. He will give us everything that we need. And I would say, brothers and sisters, that we need this joy of salvation in our lives. And if we are earnestly pursuing having a clean house along all of these different dimensions, that the joy of the Lord is something that will naturally

follow. And we need the joy of the Lord. And I could even say it should supernaturally follow because having joy in this time, in this generation, having joy is a supernatural thing. I guess you could have an insane, a mentally ill or an incorrect perception of joy that's either brought on by extremely toxic hallucinogenic chemicals or by some other concoction, but real, genuine, heartfelt joy. When you look around at our culture, I think joyful would be on the list of the least five words most likely to describe our culture. So if we have genuine joy, then that should be setting us apart. It should be motivating us. It should be oozing out of us. It should be uncontained. It should be these rivers of living water that the

Bible promises. And it has to be supernatural. We're just not going to be able to bring ourselves into a state of joy without a recognition and help from the Holy Spirit as he reveals these things to us. But brothers and sisters, the joy of our salvation should be engendered multiple, multiple times over by the things that we already know, by the things that we're already aware of, by the things that we maybe in some cases have repeated so many times that it's just lost its luster. But we are saved. We are delivered. We're cleansed. We're healed. We get a new start. We get a new heart.

We can go to God and have the damage and the stains of our sins removed, not only knowing that that can happen, but that God wants to do that for us, that he loves us, and that he demonstrated that by sending Jesus to the cross. And so as we go ahead into this year, understand that our salvation should be joyful. Understand that the Holy Spirit is generous, so generous, so, so generous. Hasn't he been generous to us? Hasn't he been generous to you? Then what is the response to this? In verse 13, I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners shall be converted to you. Why? Because the ways of God are good and perfect and righteous and joyful and loving and generous and redemptive and transformative and powerful and powerful.

transformative, and powerful, and powerful. We can go to people and we can say, I was what I was, but by the grace of God, I am no longer what I am. I was blind, but now I see because of Jesus, because I've placed my faith in him. He has cleansed me and he has not made me my faith in him. He has cleansed me and he has not made me righteous in myself, but he has clothed me in his righteousness so that God can see me as he sees his son. And I have the promise of knowing in the beatific vision, I will see God as he is. And I will see God as he is and grow deeper and deeper into that for all of eternity, not just with me and God, but with me and all of my brothers and sisters in Christ. All of you, I pray that all of my children are there. I'll be there with my wife, with my deceased ancestors who are in Christ. We'll be there with all of us. All of us will be there with God. And it should be our fervent desire from that to bring as many people into that fellowship as

possible. And regardless of what we do, brothers and sisters, regardless of what the Holy Spirit leaves you with from this message, I just pray that you would join with me in this desire to clean house physically, nutritionally, from an exercise standpoint, from an actual clean home standpoint, and above all, from a spiritual standpoint. This is a year of taking these things more seriously than you ever have before. And if you have taken them seriously in the past, wonderful. It's time to redouble our efforts. It's time to pursue God the way that he deserves. It's time to restore the joy of our salvation and understand the generosity of his spirit and his desire to work alongside us. It might seem like finding a needle in a haystack, but God already knows where

the needle is. Whatever needs to be done, God will give you the power to do it. He will give you the supernatural ability. It will strengthen your testimony. You will be able to speak to others about what God has done in your life. And people will see that and they'll say, where is this joy? Where is this joy coming from? It's something that I want. It's something that I need. It's something that I am desperate for. So brothers and sisters, as we go forth into this new year, again, please accept my apology for not being as consistent with these broadcasts. It's an opportunity that I failed to take advantage of for a season, but it's something that I am making a part of this endeavor to have a clean house here because this is an open door that has been given to me by the grace of God and by the generous people at PBN. And I endeavor to

use this platform to the full advantage for the glory of God. And I pray that you would join with me in this effort to go to the Lord, to seek his guidance, to allow the Holy Spirit to bring everything to mind and for us to once and for all clean house. God, thank you for your word. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you that you answer prayer. Thank you, Holy Spirit, that you guide us. Thank you for the ability to come before you in a spirit of repentance and to be cleansed. Thank you for your forgiveness and for your love and your goodness and your mercy. Lord, show each and every one of us what it means to clean house. And as we take steps in that direction, Lord, I pray that you

would reward with blessing those who are obedient to that instruction and who are following that word as your Holy Spirit leads. I pray that you would create a virtuous cycle where you would encourage them more and more., would motivate them to do more in this area that everyone hearing this broadcast would be stronger for it and would be more motivated for it, would be more joyful for it. Lord, all to your glory, Jesus, for you are worthy. You are worthy of it all. You are worthy of everything. Thank you for your promises, Lord, and let this year be a year of clean houses, breakthroughs, and of tremendous advancement for your glorious kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen.