← The Wake-Up Call
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Hey, good morning, sower nation.
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It is Friday, March 13th, the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is
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your wake up call.
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Now, lots of good things in store today.
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You see the chair here? You know who's going to join me later. But let me tell you who's sitting in that chair right now.
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Jesus. I like to think of that as the chair where he's sitting here just encouraging us. So I'm delighted to be in this meeting with him and with you and in the word of God. So let's dive right in today with consecration. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Yes, Jesus, we belong to you. And we are praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. You know, today I'm gonna be over in Jackson, Mississippi. A dear friend first. Got to know her through the wake up call and some friends in my church here in Gillette. Betsy Cox, she was promoted to glory earlier this week. And she, we, we. When I first met her almost three years ago, she had just been diagnosed with stage, I don't know, it was bad ovarian cancer. And she just fought a good fight, the good fight for the past three years. And ultimately I don't want to say cancer won because cancer lost. Jesus won and she is standing in his presence. But she asked me here near the end if I would do her funeral. And it just seemed right to me
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in the Holy Spirit.
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And you know, Betsy was, she went too soon. She's, I don't know, 62, maybe too soon. Wonderful family, Robin and Courtney and Andrew, her two adult children. And boy, we're gonna miss her. But we're gonna do our best today to, to celebrate her good life. She was the real deal, a real Christian. And so pray for for us today. Pray for this family and that we can do her justice and that we can lift up the risen Jesus Christ. He's going to be there. So today's entry I'm dedicating to her. It's entitled Jesus likes you. And our text today is Matthew, chapter 3, verse 17. Hear now the word of the Lord. And a voice from heaven said, this is my son, whom I love. With him I am well pleased. The word of the Lord. Now consider this. Years ago, around the turn of the century, I found myself way over my head in A situation well beyond my pay grade. I was the pastor to the speakers and worship leaders for one day, a massive, solemn assembly of college students. As tens of thousands of them camped out in the surrounding fields awaiting the coming day, the leaders met together for a time of consecration.
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Let's just say I was the only
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one in the who's who circle of leaders you had never heard of, and it was my job to lead them in this time.
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I was.
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Louie Giglio invited me to be the pastor to the leaders and the worship leaders. And so there we were. You know, Chris Tomlin. This is back before he was Chris Tomlin, Matt Redmond, David Crowder, Charlie Hall,
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Christy Knockles, Beth Moore, John Piper.
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So many Damian Boyd. So many great luminary leaders still leading today were there, and I was supposed to be the one leading them.
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So over the next couple of hours
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that night, before we started, I prayed for them one by one, anointed them with oil. It was consecration time. Now, as we were finishing up, young prophet type Neil. It was Neil McClendon, a guy who everybody loved, but they also just had a kind of a fearful reverence around him. He was a prophet type. He was a truth teller. And you didn't know what he was going to say ever, but you knew it was going to be the truth. So Neil walks up to me
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and
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I'm like, oh, man, He's. He said, I got a word for you. And I thought, oh. He motioned for me to hand him the anointing oil, and he invited me to kneel. And then Neil began to anoint and pray for me. I got down low to the ground, just kind of bracing for a stern word from this man known for speaking the straight, hard truth. I'd be lying if I didn't say that he was also a man of profound love. I will never forget what he prayed over me that night because it changed my life forever. Neil, he said, john David, you need to know that Jesus loves you. But you need to know more than that. Maybe you think he has to love you because he's Jesus. He does love you. But you need to know that Jesus also likes you. He enjoys you. He likes being around you. He likes you so much that he considers you a friend. And there's one more thing you need to know. Jesus loves you. Jesus likes you. And Jesus wants you to know that he's proud of you. I mean, something. Something broke in me that night. It was my brokenness. I realized I was still trying so hard to. To be. To do more, to be better. To please God. And that night I received the blessing of knowing in a deep place that God was already pleased with me. And then it hit me. This is the Father's blessing over you and over me. Straight from the baptism of Jesus. You are my son. You are my daughter. He's saying, I love you. You are my beloved. He's saying, I like you with you. I am well pleased. He's saying, and I'm proud of you. Everything I thought I understood about consecration shifted that night. I had thought about consecration as my initiative to show God I was serious about him. I realized it was God's initiative to show me he was serious about me. I had thought of consecration as my commitment to God. I learned instead, it was God's commitment to me. That was the beginning of a change that is still changing me. It will change you too. Will you dare to fathom it? He says by name now your name. I love you, I like you and I'm proud of you. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for your son Jesus and Lord Jesus. How can we thank you for the blessing of your baptism and for making it our baptism too? By your poured out spirit, we are washed by your favor, blessed by your
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affection,
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and delighted by your joy in and over and through us. And we're praying in your name. Amen. Our journal prompts today, have you received the blessing of these words that the God who made you not only loves you, but also likes you? And not only does he like you, but he's also proud of you. And you're thinking, maybe. Well, you obviously don't know me.
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You don't know what I've done, what
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I've been through, what kind of record I've got on me. And I'm like, yeah, I may not know you, or I may I, I
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don't know your record.
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I know Jesus, though, and he's not loving us based on the quality of our performance or not. It's not based on our good behavior or our bad behavior. It's based on his love, his character, his goodness. It's in his nature. And see, what he's wanting to do is give his nature to us. And it starts with his love. You have to receive it. You can't earn it. You can't measure up to it. You can't measure down to it. You can't measure below it. You can't measure above it. You have to receive it. You have to receive Him. And that's what he's here asking you today. Can you. Can you receive that from Me today,
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I. I've told you before already on here, I go over this every single morning myself.
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That baptism of Jesus, that's my baptism. That's your baptism. Why did he do it? He did it to fulfill all righteousness. What does righteousness mean?
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Dikaiasune.
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It means approval. The approval of God.
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He wants to give God's approval of
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him straight to us unconditionally. And you know what that leads to.
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A lot of times we think, well,
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I gotta change before I can get that. I have to repent before I can get that. I'm like, no, you actually can't change until you get that. You can't repent until you know that you don't change in order to be loved. You can only change when you know you are loved. That's how it works. So receive that love. It's a free gift. He paid for it on the cross. In his blood is irrevocable, unconditional, covenantal, unbelievable. And it's yours for the taking, for the receiving. And then, my gosh, that goes into your life, changes you. You begin to willingly want to grow. Your life becomes a burning bush in the world. You, you become a change agent. That's what we're doing today.
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All right. Are you ready to sing?
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I thought so.
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Okay, it's time to sing today. Who's ready to sing?
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I am. Brother.
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Dad's ready to sing. And this song is an old, old song.
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Sweet Hour of Prayer. If you got your grandparents with you there, go get them because they'll know exactly what this song is.
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What's the number?
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The number is 4:40. Sweet Hour of Prayer.
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There's three verses. We're going to sing them all. Three. And we're going to, you know, today in the wake up call, we're, I'm just, we're just kind of lingering at the baptism of Jesus, where God's his father said, this, my son, this is
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my beloved of whom I am well pleased.
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And you know, I translated that in today's entry. I say, you know what that means? It means I love you and I like you and I'm proud of you.
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Amen.
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And that's what, that's what you and
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me and you need to know from God.
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We need to know it from God. And as we know it from God, we can flow it out to other people, right? Because it's not based on how good we did or how bad we did. It's based on how good God is and how much he loves us.
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And that'll change your Life, if you can believe it. If you can receive it.
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And that's what a sweet hour of prayer is all about, isn't it? Going to that place with God.
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And you.
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You start to talk to him. You start to pray, and you look up and a whole hour's passed.
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You didn't even know.
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You still haven't finished the cup of coffee. I don't think those will help you. Those are my glasses. No, they're weak. Yours are strong. I know you're struggling with them, so. But these are weaker than yours.
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All right.
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You ready to sing?
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Yeah.
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Sweet hour of prayer Sweet hour of prayer that calls me from a world of hair and bids me as my Father's throne lay all my well wish is known in seasons of distress and grief My soul has often found relief and often came and tempt a snare by thy return Sweet hour of prayer Sweet hour of prayer Sweet hour of prayer the joy I feel by bliss I cheer to those whose anxious fear Is prone With strong desires for thy return when such a haste to the place where God my Savior shows his face and gladly takes my description there and wait for thy sweet hour of prayer Last verse. Sweet hour of prayer Sweet hour of prayer Thy angel blind perdition bear to him whose truth and faithfulness engaged Awaken soundly bliss and whence he bids me seek his base Believe in word and trust his grace I'll cast on him my every care and wait for the sweet hour of prayer Amen.
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Amen.
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You know, it's worth getting up an hour early to have an hour of prayer, isn't it?
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It sure is.
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And I told you before, dad, but that's where I learned. This was that day when I woke up an hour early and I saw you down in the den with the coffee and the Bible, and you were praying.
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Oh, thank you, God, for putting me down there.
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And that's where I started reading the Bible and praying every morning.
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Well, that's a. That's a witness.
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That's a witness. People are watching, paying attention. Yeah.
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And you know, you could have been reading something ugly, but you weren't, so.
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Well, gang, it's Friday, and it's time to get out there on the fields. A lot of you are going through a lot of things, but you know what? People you're coming across are going through them, too.
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That's right.
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And the Lord can take what you're going through and actually turn it into a blessing for somebody else.
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Just be ready just to reach out.
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You know, sometimes when you reach out to others, you forget about what you're dealing with.
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Right?
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And it's.
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It's kind of a mystery how that works.
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But when you reach out to somebody else, believe me, they don't forget it.
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They don't.
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They remember it.
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There's a lot of people in the world that feel very alone.
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That's right.
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And you just.
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Just a word or two is all it takes.
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Don't underestimate the power of a smile,
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of seeing them, of acknowledging them.
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That's love in simple form. It's not hard, but sometimes we get busy. Sometimes we're overwhelmed and weighted down. Just look up. Just look up.
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Say come, Jesus, because this is who he is. And if he's in you, that's who you are.
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Amen. Thanks. Thank you, Jesus.
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So it's time to hit the fields for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.
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And I'm David Walt.
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You see, we got our seeds, and we'll see you on the field.
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Field.
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Amen.