Lee Morris - Our Father

Uh, okay. Let's pray for a minute.

Father God, I just thank you, God. I just ask for your presence to come into this room, Lord God. That you would give us an understanding of the words that we're about to teach, Lord God, of the scripture that we're about to go over, Lord God, of the idea and the concept of what it is for you to be our father and to be holy. Come into this place. Let the words of my mouth, meditation, my heart be acceptable and pleasing to you, my rock and my redeemer, making all of us a pure heart and a right spirit. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

I'm in this, I'm in this new, somewhat new. Did he stay? Ah, that's why you're supposed to call and do an intake. Uh, I'm in this new place where it's like I don't even want to start teaching unless I can feel him in the room. If that makes sense. So, I looked down at this and I remember Ryan Wilson, whatever he was here, he said, uh, he asked me, he was like, "So, you're you're burnt out on the God thing?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "Well, when you were teaching, you were like, you know, you're tired of the same thing over and over again." I'm like, "No, no, no. The Lord has had me teach the same thing over and over again for six years. I gave the fun stuff to Antoine when he started working with us. You know what I mean? Cuz at least you get to it dives in a little bit. But this is what he gave for me to teach to break out our father who is in heaven. Holy is your name, right?"

And and I I think the most important thing I can say is if you can grab on to the our father part then and wholly and completely with everything that you are then you'll have an understanding of the entire book. The entire story. It's a it's one story. You just need to know it's one story. It's not it's not three different stories or two different stories. It's one story and all of it points back to a good and loving God. Every bit of it does. Uh about him chasing creation, about his patience not being exhausted, about him being a a God that's full of wrath still today. But he pours it out on the cross. That he knew what it would take for us to be fully reconciled as a good father. that in it he purchases us back into original created value. And and not only that, but even at a higher place of sonship.

Isaiah 57:15 says this, "For this is what the high and exalted one says, he who lives forever, whose name is holy. I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit. To revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite."

So, right, some words that we may not understand. What is contrite? If you're going to stand back there, I still need you to pay attention to what's going on up here. I can appreciate the respect of standing up if you're getting sleepy. So I thank you for that. But just try to stay engaged. Uh so what does contrite mean? Do you know what contrite means? Broken. It means broken. Look the last class it says uh uh I'm lost and I need help. That's a place of be of contrition. That's a place of being broken. It says I don't I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where I'm going. I need help. Some of us get pressure from outside sources, right? Probation, jail, family. And so it's not necessarily that you've been broken, but you've exhausted all your options and we're at the last stop on the street, right? And a lot of times we're the last house on the block where where people come when they got nowhere else to go. And in that place that that can be the humility, the lowly in spirit. The lowly is humility. So just because you may not be broken, your willingness to say, I'm going to come in. I don't have nowhere else to go. I'm going to do what y'all say. That is a place of humility. And that's what he's talking about. I live in the high and the holy above all things in the heavens. Whatever that may look like or be like, but also with the broken. Who here came in broken? Who here came in just lowly? There's some of us that do, right? It's like, I just don't have nowhere else to go, but I don't feel like completely broken. That's okay. I do believe that the progression of our our maturity goes from broken to humble. Uh to actually to choose to operate in a place of humility, to choose to lay down our life. That word contrite is like broken to pieces, man. And I have no way to put myself back together. There's something beautiful that where God says, I live with the ones that are broken and the ones that are humble and nothing else. Nothing else in between. There's something beautiful in that because I know how to engage with him. I know how to bring him into the room.

The the the beautiful part about that is if his word is real and if what he says is true, then I have to surrender to that place and say, "God, we just need you." There's nothing I can teach. I can only read I can only I can only reveal to you what I feel has been revealed to me. And it has nothing to do with me. There's scripture that says uh you you give what you've been given. How can you even boast in it if you've been given it? Right? A lot of I think a lot of teachers are trying to give you they hold themselves in a higher esteem than they should because the reality is every bit of understanding we have has only been given to us by God by revelation by trying to get to know him and then that he reveals himself to us and so we can't even boast in what he's given because it's only what he's given.

Our father who is in heaven, holy is your name. So, so he lives above and with the broken and the lowly. How can I bring him into my circumstance then? You know what I mean? It should give you like a little template. How can you bring him? If that's the case, how do you bring him into your circumstance? You That means you have the ability. What do you Anybody have the microphone? You got the microphone. Is it on? Pride. Pride's raising his hand. We don't know where this is going to go. Could go anywhere with pride. By acknowledging that I'm never going to get to a place where I've arrived. I'm always lost in each day. I have to. That's that's really good. That's humility, right? So So I always try to keep it super simple so that it's a broad brush. So the broad brush says this either I acknowledge that I can't do it on my own, that I'm not succeeding by myself, brokenness, or by just simply acknowledging that he's God and I can't do it on my own, which is humility, right? So I can bring him into any circumstance by just surrendering to the fact that he's God and I'm not. There's power in that statement. You're God. I'm not. I need him right now in this room. I need him right now in this class. I need him. My hope, you know, we got a new guy here. And my hope is that he catches what he needs. And he haven't been here long enough. Probably didn't even know what he needs yet, but he's here. You guys that have been sitting here, that have been staying, you're here, right? Who faces up next? We got a couple for the fourth time. Third time. Third time. My bad. Third time. The second time cuz I only third two days. Fair enough. Fair enough. I just need him. I just need him.

I have this real desire for us to circle up our chairs and not do it like a classroom right now. There's few of us, you know, and I don't feel like this overwhelming anointing to keep going in what he's what what I have in front of me. You know what I mean? I don't feel his presence on it in a tremendous way. And it may be just cuz I've got a lot going on or or and it's hard to connect in the midst of my crisis. Sometimes it's hard to connect. I'm better I'm the way I operate. I'm better at standing on what I know to do. And I can just stand cuz I can do that. I can persevere. I can just stand in what I know to do versus uh having a broken moment where I'm weeping and crying and expecting to jump in that. I'm better at just standing like I know you're God. I know you got me. Does that make sense? And that's just easier for me. And so like right now and I don't feel like an overwhelming broken circumstance. Does that make sense? Like I just got a lot of stuff going on. So I keep diving into this, right? Pointing to where he lives and dwells, what the throne room looks like. That's what the next scripture is about. That he's there all the time. There's angels that are designed just to worship him in his position of holiness. And what does that even mean? Does Can anybody give me a description of what holiness is? What does it mean for God to be holy? Because it's a big it's a far concept. You got you got have to get a mic, Luciano. Uh for George. All knowing and forgiving. So I So I is that what holiness is? Let's look at a definition. I I do know he's all knowing and forgiving. I also know that he's amazing and merciful and good because it says that he lives in the broken and the lowly, right? Which is just an example of his great goodness. Let's look up the description of holiness real quick, which I should know by now. The state of being set apart, consecrated, or dedicated. Well, this is in reference. Holiness is the state of being set apart, consecrated, or dedicated to God. Characterized by moral purity, sanctity, and separation from sin. So, I'm assuming that it would be characterized by moral purity, sanctity, and separation from sin. But the reality is we have a very limited understanding of all of that. I feel like. I believe it's way more than that. And so because that's all human understanding like what is it for him to be God, right? It's kind of the Marian Trench thing that to have a reverend all and not fully understand what it is for him to be holy but know that he meets me in my low place and he has a desire for the best things for me. Right? So it's only my own interpretation of what it is. And there's, listen, I got hit, there was a clip of me the other day where I started talking about eternity and how we exist in eternity and I got hit with the blasphemy. Like, well, Ephesians 2:6 says something different. And so, it's like I would rather admit it honestly like I have my own ideas of what God's holiness is. I have my own ideas of what it is for him. But I think it's so far above what what we can imagine. It's like uh it's like if there was something that was absolutely pure that in the face of anything that wasn't pure that that purity would devour everything that's impure. And I can only I when I picture in my mind it's like uh have you ever seen them heat up metal to where it's molten metal like liquid just liquid hot lava looking stuff? That's what I can imagine in my mind of his holiness. It's like the perspective is it's this thing that's this deep burning where nothing can exist except the purity of what it what it is which it was he's the creator. So the purity of but if it comes in contact with anything else it would be a consuming fire. It would instantly consume whatever it was and separate the stuff that's impure from it. And so that's my idea of what his holiness is. That's in in my limited understanding, in my own capacity. And then to understand that, wrap my mind around that, that he would come into my circumstances. And then if I'm willing to surrender to his holiness, he would drive out and devour anything that wasn't holy, that he would come in and he would sanctify me, that he would make me whole, he would make me pure. That he has a lens that he looks through that's the blood of Jesus that then allows me to step into being his righteousness. And it forces all those impurities out. And I'm going to scream the whole time. The whole time I'm being separated from it. I'm I'm going to resist it. Even if I don't want to resist it, I'm going to resist it because it's just in my nature because I was born in this. Ain't that crazy?

I don't understand it either. And I And that's okay. That's okay. I know that he's good. That's what I know. Last night we went I had to take my wife to the hospital and then we get in there, we're getting her checked in, whatever, and I get her in a seat and this guy, this old man is just like trash talking the whole whole emergency room, right? And uh he's like, "What are you in for?" She's like, you know, this is He's like, "You got chest pain?" And she's like, "Well, that's why our PA came cuz he's like, "Good job. Good job on the chest pain. They're going to get you back quick." and he was, you know, just this whole thing. And so we started talking to him and he had said that basically like his case manager got to his hotel right as he was about to slit his wrists and he was about, you know, and it just got started going through this process and and I I get to watch my wife move in compassion to draw out that this old man's just lonely. in the midst of her own pain and suffering and what she's going through, she begins to minister to this guy that's in there. And I and I start thinking like, what if what if what if our call to suffer is for small moments of real ministry? What if all of what we're going through was for a moment of minister to that guy? And then we ran into y'all remember uh people Shannon that worked here. We run into him. His daughter goes to Hardin Simmons. She got hit in the head with a ball or something. I'm not for but they were worried she had a concussion. So we got to kind of love on them and miss her them for a minute. And I'm thinking what if that was the purpose of it? What what if what if so our limited understand of of holiness means we have a limited understanding of our calling. Which means what if every bit of our life becomes purposeful? Even if even the physical sufferings of illness and everything else that that in that moment if we remember who we are and who he is that we are called in those moments to minister and and and I think that's what it is. I think we want it to be easy. I think we want it to be this good cush life. And I think there's a part of that, right? I have a joy that's set so far above me that that if that if I'm focused on it, it supersedes any uh anything negative that can happen, right? Cuz I know that those things are meant to happen. 2 Corinthians 1 says that like we suffer so that we can comfort others in their suffering. Like that's the part of it that we've agreed to. I know I'm going off on a a little bit of a tangent, but we agree to that. You might want to understand what we're agreeing to. You know what I mean? We got to understand what are we agreeing to. What if you're called and you're called to Cuz this is the truth. Let me ask you a question. Did you suffer before you knew him? Huh? Go ahead. Give him a mic. Yes, sir. I was going to say maybe uh like it was just a whole bunch of pain without purpose. But now that I know Christ. It has a purpose. That's the point. That was exactly the point I was going to make. Yeah. This is the truth. My life was hell before. Yeah. And now I realize that my suffering can bring freedom to others. Yeah. Because it's purposeful. Because you can see if I if I watch you endure, if I watch you have a revelation, it gives me hope that maybe maybe that's available to me cuz it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense in this the midst of it for there to be joy and and and other things. You know, we we're laughing and cutting up last night. My sister brought us some snacks. Thank God I was starving, you know, and we begin to have this conversation and and it's and and and I look up cuz they're talking. I've already heard my sister tells very detailed stories which I've heard. So I put I may have put an earbud in and uh but I look up and I see the five or six people around us very intently listening to her share these revelations that God gave her over that weekend retreat that she went to. And so I'm just watching them listen to the whole conversation and realize that we were called there last night and we ministered constantly even without knowing it. It because we're the ministry. We're going to cut my class. Well, we're going to cut the camera part short. Yeah, we're going to kill the camera.