How Is Your Heart?

ISS there there, Proverbs 4 and 23, I'm going to read very familiar scripture, and then also Jeremiah 17-9, for my message today that I feel like the Lord has for us. Proverbs 4:23 says, "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." Out of it spring the issues of life. And then Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?"

For a little while this morning I want to speak simply asking the question: How is your heart? How is your heart?

Many in the room know that I worked in the medical field before I went into full-time ministry, and specifically my field of study was radiology. But even narrowing it down more, I was a medical son grapher. I did ultrasounds. Layman's terms, I rub jelly on bellies and other various parts of anatomy. Doing the OB ultrasounds is — maybe bothersome as this may sound — was my least favorite of the ultrasounds that I did. It wasn't that I didn't like babies and didn't like life, but it was just not what I enjoyed the most. I really loved working in with the vascular surgeons and working on the arteries and the veins and shunts and rewiring things that were in there. I enjoyed working with the biopsies and those, the more difficult task. That's what I enjoyed. But I did spend a number of years working with the OB doctors, doing the 18 to 20 we ultrasounds, the gender reveals and all those things that were there, and those things were special.

I bring that up for this reason: because I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of times, maybe even thousands of times, as we were confirming life, that there would be a heartbeat that would be detectable at five weeks. Now, medically, around the 22, the 22 day mark, there's something that takes place inside of your body that's called the atrial kick, and it's where your heart starts beating for the first time. So 22 days after conception, all of our hearts got the eighty kick — boom — and we got jump started. And from that day to this, with very few exceptions in this room, your heart has continued to beat. That's why you were here. Now, there may be a few of you in the room that have had some type of a life incident that your heart stopped, and by the grace of God they restarted that heart and you were here today. I know Dylan has a great story about how that — he wins a lot of icebreaking contest by someone who can say that, "I was dead before." If you don't know Dylan's story — Dylan, wave your hand. Dylan's got a great story, and he loves to tell it. You should get with Dylan; let him tell you that story.

But I bring this up for this reason: is when that takes place, something was set in motion for a set period of time, and it is determined by God to when it ends, unless you or something else, some other circumstances, intervene on that. God has started that atal kick there in your heart, that physical, physiological, chemical reaction that took place in there. And because of that, it's pretty impressive what our hearts do. In fact, on average we pump about 70 milliliters of blood with every contraction of a heartbeat — 14,000 pip pints of blood being pumped in 100,000 beat on average every day. Now, some of you like, "Well, no wonder I'm tired. I wonder I'm tired. That's — I got a lot going on." And you do.

Now, maybe your heart has skipped a beat a long time ago when you found that special someone in your life, and you remember seeing them and beginning to develop a relationship there. And maybe they're sitting beside you right now. You might just want to reach over there and just kind of squeeze their arm and say, "You know, you made my heart skip a beat." Some of you may be sitting beside somebody that you don't know but very attractive right now, and I just want you to know that you can squeeze their arm on your own time. We're not going to do that right now. We're — something special we want to do.

God has given us this amazing gift called our hearts, our physical hearts, and of course we can't even make them beat on our own. Anybody in the room a little absent minded? Anybody guilty of losing your car keys or your key fob, or maybe losing your phone? Anybody willing to raise your hand and admit that there's been times that you have left that in the most random of locations? Aren't you glad that you don't have to remember to keep your heartbeating? Cuz I dare say there'd be a whole lot fewer people in this room if it was up to you and I to remember. Now, some of you pointing fingers right now — don't do that. I'm thankful that God did not put that on us, that he just said, "You know what, I'm going to make that an autor response inside your body."

I want you to know that God didn't just give you a physical heart. God also has given us a spiritual heart. There is the inner me that is there. There's the inner you, and it's the part that chooses. It's the part that devotes. It's the part that commits. It's the part that wills. And it's — the truth is that no matter how well you take care of it, your physical heart one day is going to wear out. It just happens. But God didn't just give us a physical; he gave us a spiritual. Your spiritual heart is the core of you, and it goes on with you forever. And that's what the writer of the Book of Proverbs is saying, the wise man, when he says again in Proverbs 4:23, "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." In other words, at the top of the list of priorities that you go through on a daily basis, the first priority you need to have in your life is to guard your heart. The King James says guard it, keep it, watch your heart, care for it, because your whole life flows out of that.

So here's the question I want to ask, and many of you who've been around me for a while know that I like asking questions to make you think. So my question today in this message is: What is the condition of your heart? Not your physical so much today, even though I think it's important to be mindful that, but specifically, what is the condition of your spiritual heart? How is your heart for God?

There's a fascinating parallel, I think, between the physical and the spiritual. So many things we read about in the scriptures parallel between what we experience in physical life and what we also experience in our spiritual life and this, I have a quote for you today. I'm going to put it on the screen for you and I'm going to read it. But here's a quote from research cardiologist Hardin meet. He said, "We see people come in all the time that look perfectly healthy. You wouldn't know that there was anything wrong with their heart. Simple tests can be done, like listening to the heart or doing an EKG. Things still look fine. But put that person under stress, and now we see there's something wrong, maybe life-threatening. Put that person under stress. If we haven't examined them under stress, we might never have found the problem, and there could have been a dire consequence. But caught in time, we have a chance to correct it. They can live a healthy life if we examine their heart when they are under stress."

And I want you to know, I feel like that same thing is true when it comes to our spiritual condition: that sometimes life brings stressful things to us, and when that happens, more often than not it reveals the true condition of our spiritual life. It reveals where there may be an issue we need to spend some time digging around to try to figure out what I need to correct so that I can do what I'm supposed to do under stress. Anybody willing to say you've been stressed at least once in your life? Yeah. Anybody also saying to you that there have been more than one time you've been stressed? Yeah. It seems to be just a fact of life.

An unhealthy heart spiritually is a heart that loves the wrong things in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. God's desire is that we follow after him, that we have a longing inside of us to be obedient, to want to know his desire and follow after that with our life. John warns about having disorder in 1 John chapter 2:15. Says, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the father but is of the world." And if there's anything that goes on in our day, I feel like it's important to know that wasn't just John speaking to his day and his time, but it was a universal truth that you and I fight every day. We fight in our life the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It's something that we combat every day of our life. It doesn't matter how old or how young. It doesn't matter your race. Doesn't matter your gender. It doesn't matter any of those things. We all fight this stuff in our life. We got to make sure that we're deal ENT about keeping our heart, what John was talking about.

And it's something that I'm very passionate about, is understanding your purpose in God's kingdom, because our purpose gets all messed up and junked up and disordered apart from God. And an unhealthy heart that is marked by cravings and lust and disorder and desires and pride goes contrary to what God wants to do in your life.

Now, here's the one thing: what I do with my spiritual life is my responsibility. I have to own that. I can do my best as a human being. I can do my best as a brother and sister in Christ. I can do my best even in the ministry to try to encourage you to be better and make better decisions, but I can't force you to do that. You can't force me to do that. You can try to be persuasive, but at the end of the day, I'm responsible for me and you're responsible for you. You need to take ownership for your spiritual condition. You need to take ownership. That's why it's important that you stay in tune with where you are.

And I say that because I'm guilty, and I'm quite sure that most everybody else in this room has been guilty of doing this before, and that is: you act in a way or you say something, and you make the statement, "I can't believe I did that," or, "I can't believe I said that." That's a real good indicator that you're really out of tune with your spiritual life. The fact that the thing you did, that you couldn't believe you did, happened, and you were unaware that it was there — you were either lying to yourself or you truly are out of touch with where you are.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't like being caught by surprise. Anybody in here like being caught by surprise? I like to know what's going on. I like to know the truth. I like to know the condition. That's why I prefer to have people in my life that just speak the truth. I mean, I feel like you can be biblical and speak the truth in love. I like having medical professions, professionals that I go to. I like the doctor that I go to. I like Dr. Burns. He's a military doctor. He doesn't beat around the bush. He'll just look at you and say, "Hey, you're fat. That's why your knees hurt." I just — look, we don't have to beat around the bush. Just tell me what I need to know.

When it comes to your spiritual condition, we are great at lying to ourselves. Here's what normally happens. I had a New Year's resolution, and I've been pretty good at keeping it, and that was, I'm trying my best not to use absolute statements. But I feel like this is something that will reach most of us in the room, and that is: when we find oursel being in a position where we are aware that I'm not as good as I should be, our default reaction is to look for somebody worse off than us. It's to say, "Well, at least I'm not like them." Yeah, we look around and say, "Well, you know, I know what I did wasn't good, but at least I'm not like soand so. At least I'm not as bad as Wesley. Least I — we do that." Have you noticed that? Now, whether you say it out loud, we think it: "I may not be the best, but I'm sure not the worst." But that doesn't make where you are any better than the worst person, because you still are admitting, "I'm not where I need to be."

Now, here's the thing: when it comes to my spiritual life, I may think my heart's okay sometimes, but even when I come to church — and again, we got to be careful, because we'll come into a service like this where we're in the presence of God and we're worshiping and we're singing, and we almost get that mindset of, "Man, I am on fire for God. I got my hands up, I'm worshiping, I'm even jumping a little bit, I'm even engaged a little bit. Or we'll have Mission Sunday, and Brother Elkins gets up and talks about what's going on around the world, and we find oursel where our heart is being tugged on a little bit, and we're a little emotional. We're like, "You know what, I'm a pretty good person. I'm sensitive to that. I'm engaged in this." And we begin to try to balance out a scale that's just set off, because we always want to justify why it's okay for us to be where we are. Have you noticed that? We're not saying we're perfect, right? None of us are going to do that. We're not — "I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not there," or, "at least I'm not that bad."

Now, here's the interesting thing: is that God doesn't look at you, and he doesn't say to himself, "You know, I wish that Jeff was as good as Kevin, or that Kevin is as good as Jeff." He doesn't do that. He's looking inside your heart for your decisions and what you're doing. Now, we like to contrast and compare, but God's not contrasting and comparing. He went ahead and set a standard himself and said, "Look, this is what I want you to do." And that's one of the things I love about our God, is he didn't leave us alone, number one. And number two, he hasn't asked us to do anything he himself is not willing to do first. He gave us an example. It's called Calvary. And said, "This is what I want you to do."

Now, here's what happens more often than not, is that we begin to bring our feelings into the equation. Now, you guys still staying with me? I'm talking about our hearts, talking about our spiritual hearts, and how more often than not we find oursel taking our feel feelings, and we like to put our feelings on an equal playing fi with truth. You got to be really careful with that, because I'm going to tell you, your feelings will lie to you. Anybody ever realized that? I know I use this example quite a bit, but you know, I remember being able to be in this age group right over here and making a statement, "I'm in love." You're not in love. You don't even know what love is. You barely can spell it. You don't love — love is something you experience over time. In fact, if we only really get down the heart of matter — I'll put a plug in for last Sunday's sermon — to really understand love, you have to understand who love is. God is love, according to his word. And for you to fully grasp love, you have to have a relationship with him.

But we will lie to ourselves, and we'll bring our feelings into it, and we'll begin to justify why it's okay that I don't do the very thing I hold other people accountable too. Anybody ever been there? Anybody ever call somebody else's hand on something that you have done, but you didn't really call your hand on it, because we justify oursel in there? And then we feel like, "Well, I just don't feel like it's okay. I don't think it's applicable in this day and age. And I know that scripture says this, and I know that God says if you love me you'll keep my commandments, but I'm hoping that he'll grade on the curve."

Now again, this, it's not about works, okay? Please don't misunderstand me. You can't earn your way into heaven. You got to be obedient to what he wants. It was Jesus' redl words that said, "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments." He didn't say, "If you love me, you'll just keep my suggestions." My commands.

When I come to church — I come in, the goal of being in a worship service is twofold. It's for me to remember it's not about me, right? You can't really worship if you're thinking about yourself. To worship, you have to acknowledge God: you are bigger than me, you are better than me, your ways are higher than my ways, and this is not about me. You have to acknowledge that. And then you also have to become aware of what it is you need to work on in your own life. And as I have been guilty of saying many, many times in this pull pit, if you haven't repented to today, you really should, because you're not that good, nor am I. There shouldn't be a day that goes by that you shouldn't stop for a moment and say, "God, please forgive me for the things in my life that I have not done correctly." I'm not saying it's some — like you're out murdering, okay, or you're out, you know, committing adultery. I think sometimes we feel like the only time that I need to repent if they hit one of the biggies. You know, it's like in our — we have a mental checklist: "Well, as long as I'm not on drugs or alcohol, as long as I'm not using hate speech, as long —" But we don't think anything about embellishing, which is called lying. Some of you lie so much you don't even know what truth is anymore. I'm okay with y'all being quiet right now, because I know sometimes you got to absorb this stuff. And I'm not trying to be hurtful or mean. Like, my goal with this is to make you aware, as that your primary mission in coming into this worship ship service today should be to worship him and acknowledge where you are. To worship him and acknowledge where you are.

So I'm going to ask you again: How is your heart? Not your physical, but how is your spiritual heart? How are you? Are you in tune with it, or are you lying to yourself? It's your responsibility. It's not mine. How are you doing with being in tune with your heart?

Life will bring you stress. Have you picked up on that yet? There going to be a problem that's going to come your way. It could be a relationship that you're in with another person, or it could be a frustration that you have in your marriage, because you feel like you're always the one having to compromise. Or it could be something at work that doesn't go the way you want it to do. Or you got bad news, or there's a financial pressure, and you realize that you don't have as much money as you have month. And you — or you realize that you don't have all the things that you feel like you have to have. Or there it comes, a change that you didn't initiate. Or there it comes, a temptation. And when I'm faced with not getting what I feel like my heart truly desires and wants, and under stress, then I find out the truth about where I really am, where I'm really at. See, when my desires are smashed, it often times brings stress and pressure, and stress reveals the true condition of where I am. So where are you? Where are you right now?

What my heart really wants is a reputation for being better than I am. That's what my heart wants. What my heart really wants is for me to receive glory and to be lifted up. That's what my heart wants. My heart wants comfort and convenience. Under stress, I see, if I look at my heart, it wants to have credit that it doesn't deserve. My heart is willing to be deceptive in order to avoid pain. My heart is so wrapped up around itself that sometimes I will not even notice or listen to or even try to love someone else. Under stress, I find myself withdrawing and avoiding and hiding, or trying to manipulate to get my own way. Under stress, I find that I'm ready to judge people to cover up my own secret sense of inadequacy or jealousy for what they have.

See, some of you, in the last two minutes of me describing these scenarios, I have basically laid out your life to a tea. It's a wrestling match that you have every day in your life.

Now, if a heart is working right — if a heart, again, I'm talking about the spiritual heart — if our spiritual heart was where it was needed to be, you and I would be appalled by sin. We would be repelled. We would push away from that, because if our heart was in tune with God, God is repelled by these things. See, I sometimes feel like we take his silence as if he is okay. Upset, he would rain down fire in judgment, right? We have examples of that in scripture where he just, you know, he rain down brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. So I guess as a country he's okay with us yet, because there hasen't been fire and brimstone. Is that what it takes for you to be in tune, is fire and brimstone? I have a hard time with that. I know I often default to describing relationships in this manner, but to me it's the closest relationship I have to contrast and compare with my God, and that is a relationship I have with my wife. I know the things that she likes and I try my best to commit myself to those things, even if I'm not necessarily interested them — and them myself.

You'd be very proud: McKenzie and Aisha and Sarah were working on a long hallway covering for VBS, and they were drawing some trees. And where's Mackenzie? McKenzie, you in this room? McKenzie, what did I say you needed to add to that? Tulips. Tulips. I said, "You need some flowers." And they're like, "Of course you would say that, because you — Sister Chassie." I'm like, "Well, yeah, because I'd never paid attention to flowers, honestly. I didn't. I mean, FL, it's a flower." But now I know the difference in Bonas and tulips and other stuff, when she quizzes me. Dalas and tubers — I don't even know what these words are, but they're there in my vocabulary. And why am I bringing this up? I do this because of how much I love her. And when you're in a relationship where you truly love someone, there's things that you do because of the love you have for them.

He died on a cross to provide a way of salvation for you and I, for you and I to reciprocate that love back. There's going to be things that he's going to ask you to do that you may not necessarily want to do them, but your love, your heart, should push you that way. It should cause you to say, "I want to do this for you. I want to live a life that's committed for you. I want to do these things. I want to separate myself so that I belong only to you." And that's why it's important that you keep tabs on the condition of your heart, because when you're around sinful situations, when there's things going on to stand in direct contrast to his word, there should be something inside of you that resists that, that pushes back and says, "This isn't right." There should be instances even where maybe you don't fully understand all of the why, but there's just something in your spirit that says, "It doesn't feel right. I don't want to go any further, because it doesn't feel right. I can't explain it. Just doesn't feel right." That's a good spiritual heart, because you're allowing your conscience to work, that God-given things he put inside of you to understand right and wrong. It is there. If it's working right, I don't want to gossip because I know it messes up someone else's life. If it's working right, I'll own up to my mistakes instead of telling a lie to avoid the punishment. If my heart is where it needs to be, and I look at what's going on around me, I'll try every day to make sure that I have made space for God and his plan in my life.

I don't want to be the guy that just messes up people because I never learned how to handle my own anger. I don't want to be the guy whose heart gets smaller because I'm just bitter. I don't want to be that person. And if our hearts are working right — you say that, me say, "I don't want to be that person." You don't want to be that person. You want to be tuned in and growing in your life.

And I feel like more often than not — I'll be even specific: I'm talking about Apostolic Pentecostals — somehow, some way, feel like it's okay to plateau in your walk with God. It's not. You should be constantly learning and growing and desiring, and hunger and thirsting after righteousness. Not that, "I figured a few things out, and I've got a couple of marks checked off, and I don't do that anymore. I don't do that anymore. I don't do the biggies over there, so I'm in a good place." No. There should be a constant craving and a desire and a hunger in your life to get closer and closer and closer and closer to God. In order for me to get closer to God — the only way it works is there has to be less of me in the equation.

I don't have time to go into a deeper Bible study with this, but the scripture talks about going from glory to glory. The only way you can go from glory to glory is there's a more weightier glory that goes on each time. There has to be less of me. That means I got to peel off some stuff in my life in order to get closer to God. It's not just about escaping hell. And I'm afraid so many of our relationships are based on the fact of, "I'm only going to be good because I don't want to go to hell." There's nothing wrong with having a mindset of the fact, "I don't want to go to hell." Nobody should ever want to go to hell. But that's not — my relationship with God is only built on escaping hell. It's about being closer to him. It's about understanding my purpose and my plan and what God put me on this planet to do. And he didn't create me just to escape hell. He didn't create me just so that I could be self-centered and self-focused and a selfish little human being that built my own little kingdom, that I would spin around the sun for 70 or 80 times and build up my little 401k and my little easy life and my little retirement plan. And as long as I showed up at the church building, I gave him the offering, I gave to the missionary out there — that can't surely — surely a rational thinking person can comprehend there's more to me than that.

Yeah, because what we're seeing today — and I mean we are at epidemic proportions when it comes to how many people are dissatisfied and anxious in this life — because it was never meant to be about you. But our culture has created this comfort zone that we live in where it's all about me. And again, you guys that have been here know me well enough to know I love my nice pickup truck, and I like the house that I live in. And I'm — thank God for the carrier family who invented air condition. God bless that family abundantly for what they've done. I like those things. But if that stuff goes wrong — if somebody runs into my truck, if the air conditioner quits working, what seems to be a reality that happens a lot in our life — I don't cuss and fuss and get out there and shake my fist at heaven and say, "God, why don't you love me?" But I feel like so many times we feel like we're only in the will of God when everything's working according to our plan. Sometimes God likes to come in and disrupt your plan so that it reveals the true condition of your heart.

Have you ever been — I'm not — so we won't even confess about ourselves right now. Let's do this one. Have you ever been in a circumstance where there was someone else, and something happened? You were at work, and then the machine quit working. Or you were at school, and they — the teacher did something. There was just a scenario, and then that person all of a sudden turned into somebody else, and the things that come out of their mouth, you were like, "Whoa." They — there was a side of them that was revealed that you had to step back, and you're like, "My goodness, I had no idea." Like, wow. Anybody know what I'm talking about? So what you seen in that moment was there, that there was a disruption that happened, and the disruption revealed who's really there.

Now, please understand, I don't feel like we should go around and confess everything that's in our heads. How scary would that be? I don't — I've never been in your head, thank God. I've never been in your head, and you've never been in my head, thank God you've never been there, because you would probably want me committed if you knew all the things that went on in my head. If you knew all the things that sometimes I think when people are talking to me, that go on in my head, like things like, "Why are you this way? How did you not see that wasn't going to happen? How did you not know that was really dumb?" Or other random musings that enter in my head while I'm mowing the yard. Anybody else have random usings while you're mowing the yard? Yeah, contemplating all life's equations that are there.

Now, I bring that up for this reason: I don't feel like when he said confess your faults to one another, he said confess every little crazy thing that's in your head, because we would never have any friends. But there are things that go on in our head when it is good and right to talk to someone and say, "I'm struggling here. Would you help me pray about this? I'm dealing with anger that is trying its best to control me, and I'm trying to keep myself in check. So can I be accountable to you?" Or, "I'm struggling with these thoughts that I know are not incorrect," or whatever your scenar scenario or circumstance may be. And we can help each other with that, because in the process of disruption and life stresses, it reveals where we are. And the worst thing you could do is ignore it.

Been many times that I was doing exams on patients, and I would begin to ask them a few questions, because I had what was the possible diagnosis on my request that was there, or the reason why I was doing the exam. And I would like to ask them some questions to see if what they were saying was going on matched up to the diagnosis, because there have been a few times when the orders got mixed up, so it was always good to check. "So I have you down here, it says we're going to check your gallbladder. Have you been having problems after you've eaten food? Are you having pain in a certain area?" Ask questions. Now, what always surprised me is how many people would say, "Oh, this has been going on for a while." Like, "What do you mean it's been going on for a while?" "Yeah, I've been living with it for like eight months." So you're telling me every time you ate a high fat contact meal you threw up and you couldn't move for two hours, and you've been doing that for eight months? "Yeah." "Why?" "Well, I just kept thinking it was going to pass. It was going to pass." I would think after a couple of days of this you'd be like, "This ain't getting any better." Or there would be people who would show up and they would have like a knot on their abdomen, like the size of a bowling ball, and I'd be like, "Did this just pop up?" "Well, no, it's been growing. It's been growing for the last six months." Well, I would think when it got up to the size of maybe a golf ball you should go get that. But we've passed golf ball; we're at bowling ball stage. And then you can't even hide it under your clothes, and you're like, "Okay, now maybe it's not going to get better."

Now, I'm being a little funny with that for this reason: those are physical things. Let's get down to the spiritual things. On how many times do we lie to oursel? How many times we just brush it off? How many times do you have to lose your temper and act like a fool? How many times do you have to find yourself visiting websites you're not supposed to be on? How many times do you have to basically destroy every relationship before you realize the problem is you? But we're the king of lying to ourself. You see, we need to be tuned in. We don't want to be that person. But all too often my heart is — it's not that it's the healthy thing to do — it's just out of sync with God.

So I talked about confessing. The scripture that supports that is First John 1:8. Says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Nine: "If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say he have not sin, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

I'm so thankful for that passage of scripture for two reasons. Number one, it lets us know I need him and you need him, and if we say we don't need him, we're making him a liar. But I love the part that says, "If I confess, he's faithful and just to forgive. If I confess, he's faithful and just to forgive. If I confess, he's faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse." And you've heard me say this before: that cleansing part — the best analogy I know to make that make sense is be like when the girls were little, and they'd come in and they would have mud on their hands, and they'd be like, "Dad, will you please clean my hands, because my hands are dirty?" But I, looking at them, would see that they were more dirty than just their hands. Their head's dirty. Their feet's dirty. They look like been wallowing in the mud. But for them it was just the hands. But when I confess — that's the beauty in that verse of scripture, is that when I confess, he's faithful and justce for and to cleanse me from all on right, even the things I'm not aware of in that moment. He says, "I'll forgive that too." What a good God we have.

That's why it's important that you stay in tune with your spiritual heart. Sometimes I think we hear these words, and if you're part of the church each week, so often they just don't stab us anymore. That's why I love that John goes on in chapter 2, verse number1. Says, "My little children, these things are right to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now by this we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says, 'I know him,' and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him, and by this we know that we are in him."

And then he goes on in the next chapter, 3: one says, "Behold what man are loved the father has bestowed upon us, that we be called the children of God. Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know him."

If our healing for our restlessness and our confused heart only comes when we find our identity and our value and our worth and an understanding that I am a child of the king — you are a child of the king. Oh, the world's big on putting labels on you and putting you in boxes and trying to help you better define what feelings are there. I'm going to tell you, the most important thing that you can do is understanding the only title that makes sense is, "I'm a child of God. I'm a child of God. Everything else comes secondary to that. I'm a child of God. I'm who he died for. I'm who he was loving. I'm who he went to the cross and willingly put his hands out and allowed them to nail him there." That's because he loved me. He loves you. And that love should drive us to want to be the very best version that we can be of ourselves.

I remember — and I've said this before — for the birth of our daughters, I remember each one of those three special days when they came into the world and being overwhelmed by the love that was there. And I've talked with some of you here today, and you've told me about all the things that you've gone through. And some of you have felt the pain and the sting of a loss of those that are close to you, the loss of a child. Some of you in this room have experienced something that I can't quite get my mind around: the loss of a child. Some of you have dealt with the pains and struggles of infertility and the longing to just be there, and even the longing in the process of just trying to adopt a child, and what was going to happen there, and how your heart hurt so much, because you just knew that there was a piece of you missing because of that desire. And I want you to know that you have some kind of a glimpse into what it is that God feels, because he loves us so much. His desire is for you and I to be in a relationship with him, to be his children. And that's who we are. And I want you to know how great a love that is, that he became our atonement sacrifice to bring us into a right relationship with him. And when we were born, Jesus looked with you and he said, "I'm so filled with love, I'll die for youus." But his heart breaks over our lostness, and his sacrifice on the cross paid for my sin and yours, and his death brought back life, so that I could have a new heart. So that I could have a new heart. So that I had an opportunity to become a new creature.

See, that's why it's important to understand — again, I'm speaking specifically to Apostolic Pentecostals, because I'll be transparent — I'm afraid a lot of us become spiritual junkies. And what I mean by that is, God has brought us out of a lot of difficult situations. He's brought us out of drug addictions and alcohol addictions and pornography addictions and abusive relationships. And he's brought us out of these things, that when we were in those things, there was moments when we felt the high. We felt the thrill. We felt the thing that kept us going back to that. You know, people can try to paint some bad picture about living in sin — and living in sin is bad — but there are times when it's fun. Yes, Pastor stood up and said, there are times when living in sin is fun. It's momentary, though. It disappears quickly. and it leaves a life of destruction apart from God. It does, every time.

But why am I bringing this up? Well, often I've seen where some people have traded in what was a bad thing, and they start walking with God, but instead of continuing to walk with him, they just like coming in and having momentary hits of being in his presence. And they treat it no different as the momentary high when they were going out and smoking crack cocaine, or they were getting drunk, or whatever. It gave them a moment of relief. I want you to know, it's more than just what happens in this building on Sundays and Wednesdays. It's more than just having an altar time in the presence of God, as the choir singing, the lead us, and worship. Those things are good, and I love it. I love being in his presence. But I've seen so many that have never moved further in their walk with God than just shouting around the altar. Please understand me: shout around the altar, but you got to keep growing. You got to keep deepening. You got to stay in tune with your spiritual heart. It's important. There should be the ability for you to look back over the last year, over the last 5 years, over the last 10 years, and see that there has been growth in your life. And the only way you're truly going to grow is to know where you are — is to know where you are spiritually — and then to continue to hunger and thirst. And so many fall short because it's just not convenient and it's just not easy. And I would ask you, where did that come from in scripture, that it was going to be convenient and easy for us? Apostolic — said, you remember the day that God filled you with his Spirit. You remember speaking in tongues. You remember the day you were baptized. What a day that was. But have you grown from that moment? Because that was the beginning of your walk with God. I'm G to say that again: that infilling was the beginning of your walk with God. So are you still at step one?

That's how we do, right? That we're people, we like to look at the Ikea instructions, right? 1, 2, 3, 4. So we look at a plan of salvation, we do 1, 2, 3, 4, and like, "Okay, I've did it. I'm good. I'm not going to go to hell." But you missed the part about living the overcoming life. You missed the part about how important sanctification is, and it's a lifelong process. You get your diploma on the sunny banks of deliverance, not over here. You get it over there. And the only way you're going to make it over there is you got to stay in tune with your spiritual relationship with him and your heart. You got to be working on it every day.

I know I'm dragging this out. I'm starting to lose some people, so I'm going to skip ahead. When we find oursel in tune with God, and we're walking after him, and you're following after his desire — did you know that there's joy in heaven when a sinner repents? Joy in heaven. Luke 15, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. I'm getting ready to close. The fact — the musicians can come. Luke 15, it's the lost chapter. Everything's lost. Got a lost coin, lost sheep — a lost sheep, then a lost coin, then a lost son. And I love how in that chapter you see the love of a shepherd. You see the love of a father who's always willing to do whatever it takes. He's wanting to find that that was lost, to go after it, to have that kind of a desire, a hunger.

So I don't know where everyone is in this room. I don't know everybody's spiritual condition. I know where some of you are, because we've talked about what God's doing with you and what you're feeling. But for the most part, I don't really know where you are. I know some are hungry. Some of you are hungry, and you're desiring and you're wanting more for God, and that makes my pastor heart so happy. You have a desire. But some of you, some of you have grown a little cold. Some of you have grown a little stagnant. Some of you have seemed to be content. And that makes me a little nervous.

Again, I go back to my relationship with chassid. I know that if I'm not working on our relationship — by me not working on our relationship, it starts to drift. Now, when I say drift, I'm not out looking to find somebody else. And there's a reason for that: I'm still standing breathing right now. She's really a sweet girl, she is. I know sometimes I get up here and you're like, "You know, poor Pastor, man, he's living with chesse. She's tough." She is tough, but she's a good girl. She loves me. I'm thankful for that. But if I'm not working — if we're not working — we realize that a long time ago, that we got to work on that with each other. We talk to each other, and things change with age and relationship development, it goes. That should be with you: that what got you to God is not what's going to keep you in the relationship with him. For most of us in the room, what got us to God was our terrible circumstance. We were in the addiction, the brokenness, the sin that was there. Okay, so what got you there is more often not what's going to keep you there. It's your desire to stay in tune with him.

And here's what I know: is if my relationship with him is not where it needs to be, then my relationship with you is not going to be where it needs to be, because there's a direct connection between the vertical and the horizontal. So if the situation is not ideal, if you're struggling right now — you're struggling in your marriage — I feel this in the Holy Ghost right now. I don't know why. I don't know why. It's just stuck in me. I felt that a few minutes ago and I didn't say it, but I'm going to be obedient. There's a marriage right now that's struggling. I don't know where it is, but it's in this room right now. There's a marriage that's struggling. Listen to Pastor: both of you got to tune into your spiritual heart. You have to figure out with him, or that relationship with them is never going to work. Because without being tuned into him, you are a very selfish, self-centered person, and so am I. And we become about self-preservation and self- focus. I feel — I speak this in the Holy Ghost right now: there is a restoration in a marriage that can take place in this room right now, if you will tune in to your spiritual heart. There is an intense desire that Jesus has when he looks at you and when he looks at me. He doesn't look at us in a casual way, but he intently looks at us and desires us. He has it for every human being that's ever been unborn on this planet — every color, every culture, every language, everybody, whatever you do. There is — there's an ache in his heart to embrace us all and to call them his children. You have never listened to me — you have never looked into the eyes of someone that he doesn't love as much as he loves you.

So as I end this message today — so here's a couple things, just, I feel like it's important for us to answer: Do you really believe that Jesus is it, that he is the one, that he died for you to provide a way for you to have life beyond this? Do you really believe it's true, that he is atoning sacrifice for sins and for the whole world, and that there's no other way to be saved outside of him? Do you believe that? Do you and I carry a burden for people that don't know him? That was a piece of my message I didn't even get into, and I'm not going to get into it for the second time. But I'm going to say this: that if we're truly tuned into him the way our heart needs to be, our heart aches for those that don't know him. When's the last time you had an ache in your heart because you seen somebody that you know needs him so bad?

So as that end this message today, there needs to be a spiritual physical take place in this room. What I mean by that is, there needs to be a moment where you and I, all of us, all of us in this room, we do a little evaluating on where our spiritual heart is. "God, am I where I need to be? Or am I being so consumed with things that don't matter?" We need to evaluate that for the sakes of our marriage. We need to evaluate that for the sakes of our children. We need to evaluate that for the sakes of the Kingdom.

So here's my altar call today, for those that are willing. Nothing's going to be forced here, but for those that are willing today, I want you to know this altar is opened, starting now. And if it's important to you to know where your spiritual condition is, I invite you to come and just be open and honest before God. Just find a place to be open, honest, for you. But here's my confidence: there are restorations going to take place today, because we have a God who specializes in restoration.

It's prayer time. I invite anybody and everybody that feels comfortable to find a place to pray. If you're not comfortable coming down to the front, then I invite you to pray in the seat where you are. God can meet you right there. But what's important is you don't leave here today without a real understanding of where you are spiritually with God. It's prayer time.