← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
God Is Sweeter Than the Sweetest Treat
00:13:47
Though candy is super yummy and sweet, thank you for being sweeter.
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Sower Nation. It is Sunday, February 1st, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your Wake Up Call. Have a very special guest today. I've been promising you a surprise as all kinds of people read the Wake Up Call. People of all ages from all over the place. And I got an email the other day from a mom and she starts telling me about her daughters who all listen to the Wake Up Call. She, she said one of her daughters is, is in kindergarten and you know that they want to listen to it as they're going to sleep. And if they go to sleep before the singing, they say, can we hear the singing in like, wow. So I'm like that. That encouraged me, of course. And then she, her daughter Abigail, who I don't know must be 10 or 11, I'm not exactly sure, but she said Abigail is a writer and she's written an entry for the Wake Up Call. I said, no kidding? Would you send it to me? And so she sent it pictures of the handwritten entry and a picture of, of Abigail. And that is those pictures are in the email today. And we are going to have. I wrote her back, I said, you think Abigail be willing to do a little video recording of her entry? And I'm delighted to say she did. And so I thought, you know, why not? But it's just a blessing to see seeds take root in the young. And the initiative that she's taken here to do this, it's not very long, it's very profound and it'll be a big blessing to you all, to all of us on this Sunday morning of the first day of February. I'll come back on at the end with some notes. Here we go. Welcome, Abigail, to the Wake Up Call.
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Hello and welcome. I'm Abigail and this is your Wake Up Call. I'm going to be with you throughout January along with J.D. wall. But you have me today. Let's get started. Wake up sleeper and rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. I lift up my heart for you. I give my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, I belong to you. I pray in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. So today's message is God of Sweden and the Swedish treaty. The first scripture reading is John 3:16 and that reads, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, for whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. That is John 3:16. It is a verse the kids at my Church memorize. Now in the passage it says, for God so loved the world. Let's sit on that a moment. Now here is where the title comes in. God gave us his one and only son. That proves that God is sweeter than any tree. Let's move on to passage number two, Luke 1, 30, 34. But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary. God is very pleased with you. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son. You must call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High God. The Lord God will make him a king like his father David of long ago. The son of the Most High God will rule forever over his people. They are from the family line of Jacob. That kingdom will never end. How can this happen? Mary Asked the angel. Asked the angel. I am a virgin. In this passage, God was extra sweet to Mary. This part of scripture also shows that God is a miracle worker. I wonder why God chose Mary to be the mother of Jesus. Now that's a journal problem. Lets pray. Loving father, thank you for being a wonderful and very sweet God. Though candy is super yummy and sweet. Thank you for being sweeter. Amen. Wow. Wonderful. I will see you later. Thank you. Have a wonderful morning.
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Well, thank you so much, Abigail, for leading the wake up call today. Our first kind of youth version, let's call it. And it wasn't just for youth. It was for the whole Sower nation. You know, people often say our children are the future of the church. I'm like, no, that's not right. They're the church right now. They're the present of the church. And to the extent that we are bringing them, you know, into the action of church in the present, yes, there'll be the future. So this was a small effort on our part to do just that today. Now just got a few, just few notes for us going forward. We as you know, I'm going to be off the wake up call beginning tomorrow through February 16th, 17th. I think Ash Wednesday's February 18th, where we're going to start Jesus asking in the journey to the cross for Lent. But in these next couple of weeks, I'm delighted that we've got Andrew Forrest who is going to be leading us. Y' all are going to like him a lot. He's, he's a, a preacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Asbury Methodist Church. He's an author. He's one of my favorite preachers. Guys, I'll just say it. He's an author. He's written a book with seedbed called Love Goes first and it's all about how do we deal with the toxicity of our time in the way of Jesus. The book is right on time and he's going to be leading us over these next couple of weeks on the wake up call. We're going to be doing a course with him soon. You'll hear more about that. That's Andrew Forest starting tomorrow. And then of course we're jumping into Jesus asking and love for you guys to grab a, a copy of that book. I'm looking around on my desk. I don't even have any in front of me. I've given them all away. But we'll put a link to that. Probably saw it in the, in the header the last Days. But, but it's going to be a good artifact to have in your hand. As we're going to walk through the wake up call with this content, I'm really eager to begin sharing it. We're going to go deep and the three transformational questions of Lent. And then on the other side of that we have an Easter series. It'll start up on April 6th and it is going to be on the letter to the Ephesians. And we call the series Unpuzzled. Just I want to encourage you to start praying for that series. You know you get, you put a lot of energy in getting to the cross. That's wonderful. The best energy needs to be put into on the other side of the cross and the resurrection head into the the day of Pentecost and that's what we've got a six week series every. We're just going verse by verse through Ephesians and we've got a brand new resource that we're going to be releasing. I've wanted to do this for a long time. We're finally getting to take our first swing at it. It's a wake up call workbook. Okay. It's going to have all the content that will be going through that I've written is going to have journal space on all the pages. Plenty of space for writing, making notes, dealing with journal prompts. It's going to have a weekly group study session. So if you wanted to, to bring this into a class or a small group or a midweek evening session, Sunday morning Sunday school, it would be perfect for that. And I'm going to be recording some short weekly teaching segments just right here in the seat house that will go with each of those weekly group discussions. And so you know there's, there's maybe some pastors out there who are like this sounds right for our church for Easter the season following Easter Sunday Eastertide and it'd be perfect for a local church and I'll I meet with preachers every Tuesday and we work on sermons alongside the Wake Up Call. We'll be doing that through those those that those weeks after Easter. I'll be doing it all through Lent. A lot of churches are jumping into Jesus asking with us. So there's that. Just a couple more short bits here while I got you here this Sunday morning. You hear the hammering outside y'. All. I've I've been eating my words on this snowpocalypse. It is pretty hard. I made some ill advised comments that I didn't think any of it was going to happen. But yeah it did. We're still snowed in in Gillette. We're having church but today I'm actually in Fayetteville, Arkansas preaching at Christ Church of Northwest Arkansas. I'm looking forward to that. If you're in the area and want to join us just look up their service times online in Fville, Arkansas. But I keep wanting to push on you send me your new word for the New year. And by that of course I mean a scripture text, a verse, a couple of verses, maybe a short passage that the Lord has highlighted for you and says we're going to walk with this word every day of 2026. It'll be a compass heading and I've told you mine is James 3 verse and it's already deeply challenging me and guiding me and I want a new word for the New year for you and I want to know what it is. I got a little brief link in the bottom of the email today. You click on it and take you two minutes. Tell me what it is I'm going to be sharing out soon. The kind of the top 20 or 50 or whatever we can come up with if we've got a lot of people sent to sent them in so that's that's new word for New Year and and I always want to keep pointing you to the conversations on our YouTube. You know I'm visiting with all sorts of pastors and authors and leaders and all sorts of folks that are you'll find interesting and encouraging and sowing seeds into good soil. You can find that on our wake up call YouTube channel and we'll link to that one. Got some new ones I've just done that are coming out love. I would recommend checking out the Andrew Forrest one and one we did lately. That's already there is Rich Wilson Very good one about college, the college age population and how we can come alongside them as spiritual parents and as local churches and really sow into their lives and find that our lives get sown into all the more. Anyway, that's enough from me today. Thanks for bearing with me. Thanks for being with me through Proverbs. I think I'll send out a little survey asking for your feedback on Proverbs and and now's the time, guys, to be praying about who to invite to join us for Lent and maybe even grab an extra book for them. Who can I sow this invitation to Journey to the Cross this year? It could mean everything to that person. So let's do this. Looking forward to it and I'll see you on the field for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.
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