Latest / Generations Church / The Father's Love | Jasmine Wong (Oral Roberts University)

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The Father's Love | Jasmine Wong (Oral Roberts University) · Generations Church

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Hey, this is NDEO, the pastor of Genes Church, and this is
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our podcast. Thanks for tuning in. I hope that this message encourages and
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inspires you in your what with God and your journey of faith. Enjoyed a
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message God bless As I was just asking the Lord, I was like,
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Okay, Lord, what do you want me to preach on? And I
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heard the Lord say, Jazzy, I love you, and I was like,
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wow, that's so great, God, thank you so much. What
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do you want me to talk about when I go preach? And he was
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like, Jazzy, like, don't forget that I love you. And it
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was then that I realized the Lord was reminding me, like, hey,
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don't forget the love of the Father, and he was bringing me back to
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his love for me before I got in front of all of you guys.
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And so that's kind of just what I wanted to talk about today. For
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me personally, I have encountered the love of the Father in three different ways
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and they all start with p didn't mean to do that, but I kind
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of just came up in my head. The first one is purity, the
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love of the Lord that is pure, and that was the first kind of
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love that the Father ever showed me, and just the fact that I'm a
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sinner but he wants to make me pures so that he can come live in
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me. And the second p is personal personal love that the Father would actually
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want to know me and that I'm valuable to him. And then the third
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love is the pursuing love of the Father that he would still choose to pursue
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me even when I rejected him. And not only that he's pursued me,
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but that the love that he's poured out in me, that I am to
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pursue other people with the love that he has put in me. So yeah,
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I'm gonna talk about the first type of love, the pursuit of the
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pure love of God, just because that's the one that marked my life the
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most. And once the Lord marks you with his love, it kind of
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brands you in a way that makes you dissatisfied with anything else that marks you,
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so that you don't want anything less than what you've experienced with the Lord.
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So yeah, I'm just gonna pray us and do it and then we'll
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get into the word. So if it's okay with you, guys, I'm
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just gonna share a little bit of my love story with Jesus, just because
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it's totally transformed my life. So, yeah, I grew up in a
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non denominal household. I grew up a Christian from the time I was like
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born. Practically my parents had me grow up in the church. I was
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that type of girl in Sunday school, I would come back and my dad
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would pick me up and I'd be like, Dad, I received Jesus for
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the twenty third time today, and I was so proud of it because I
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didn't really understand I think at that age that the power and like the work
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of the Holy Spirit in my life. And so that was kind of my
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whole family's background, is that like we knew God and we knew that he
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was great, but we didn't really the power of His spirit in our lives.
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And so kind of a little off off road little turn at eight years
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old, I was exposed to a lot of things unintentionally. I was exposed
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to pornography, and I was exposed to a lot of things online that I
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shouldn't have been as an eight year old little girl. Didn't really know what
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to do with that, but I think that it planted a lot of seeds
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in my life that would come up later on. And yeah, so that
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was my background. I also, at eight years old, started having suicidal
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thoughts. Background. I am the youngest of two oldest sisters. They are
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very loud, very outgoing, and so I looked up to them. They're
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four and five years older than me, and so I looked at them and
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I was like, wow, I just wish I was like them. I
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wish I was as outgoing as them. Nobody really seems to notice when I'm
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gone, And so I started having these thoughts of like, Okay, well
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if I wasn't here, maybe nobody would notice, Maybe nobody would care if
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I was gone. So yeah, that was at eight years old, I
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started having those thoughts. Fast forward four years later, twelve years old,
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my family was introduced as the Holy Spirit, and we went to a Pentecostal
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church where very Pentecostal, wearing skirts long like this, long hair, no
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makeup, no jewelry, and we came in like clanging symbols with like makeup
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and short hair and short skirts. But something about them was really different that
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they had people like waving flags and people were speaking in a different language that
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I had never heard before. And they knew God. You could tell that
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the presence was different in that room than I had ever experienced before in my
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life, and so that was very intriguing to me. And my family were
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like, Oh, there's something more to the Christian life than Bible studies on
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Wednesday nights and Sunday services and then you go home and nothing happens. There's
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no transformation in your life. And so that Pentecostal church really ignited us to
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search more about like, oh, way, who is a spirit? Who
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is this man? And so we went to a different church because we weren't
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really Pentecostal, and so we found a different charismatic church who knew a lot
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about the Holy Spirit and taught us a lot about speaking in tongues and visions
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and everything like that. And it was really great. I am so grateful
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for the time that I had at that church. But there are also some
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parts of the church that hurt me a lot, because in this church,
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one could say that it was kind of a cult. A lot of unhealthy
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dynamics going on in that church, and one of it was the feeling of
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having to perform. And I remember being twelve years old and I would go
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into church, and I was so afraid because I had put up this facade
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of like, Okay, maybe if I have a vision or I say that
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God told me this super cool thing, that people won't actually know that I'm
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not receiving from the Holy Spirit. And I was so afraid of people seeing
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through my facade. So I kind of built up this this fake identity.
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And in this church, every week they would give us a verse and they
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would say like, hey, go home over the week and see like what
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the Lord is showing you through this verse. And then you'd come back to
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church the next Sunday and you would share with like the young adults, like
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your homework sharing of the week. And so every week I would come back
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and I'd be like, the Lord showed me this super cool vision that I
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made up in my head, and that actually didn't really happen. And I
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kept on going and being fake and being fake and being fake, so that
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I because I was so afraid, And that went on for three years,
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three years of performing, three years of building up this facade, three years
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of pretending like I was some super spiritual person, but no transformation was happening
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in my life. Because I was seeking the gift and not the giver.
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And that's what performance does, is that it makes us seek the thing and
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not that actual person who gives a thing. And it was not producing producing
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good fruit in my life. I was anxious all the time. I couldn't
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hold a conversation by myself with somebody without my older sisters being there, or
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without my parents or my mom and my dad being there with me, because
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I was so insecure and so afraid that somebody would see past my fakeness and
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see who I really was. And I hated myself, and so I just
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kept on building up this facade and hating myself and building up this facade and
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hating myself. And it was a cycle that kept on going and going.
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And so eventually the Lord took us out of that church, thank God,
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and we moved completely different states. But the thing was, I still continued
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in this facade building because that was just what I was used to. Because
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the Lord can take you out of a place, but it is up to
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you to renew your mind and renew your thinking. And I was so stuck
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in this way of like I have to perform, I'm so afraid I have
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to perform that when the Lord took me out. I didn't know how to
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deal with myself and be free in the reality that the Lord had given me.
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And so after we moved, I was super scarred by the church and
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I was like, I don't want anything to do with God, because if
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all God wants is a really good performance or a really good homework sharing,
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then I have nothing to give. And that's on God if he wants to
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give that to me. But I'm I'm done. So I closed my Bible
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and it remain closed for about two years, and I had to say face,
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you know, because my family was super high up in the church where
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your friends with the pastors, everybody knew. Our family went to a small
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church. Everybody knew, Oh, the Wong sisters are super great. They
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were see from the Lord. And so my whole life I was I was
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not touching the Bible, but I was over here, yes, Lord,
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raising my hands will. The Lord still still works in my life. The
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Lord is still so good. But inwardly I was not. I was not.
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I was just still being fake because I didn't know anything else, and
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behind closed doors, I was watching pornography at the age of fourteen because those
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seeds that had been planted at eight years old, had been watered by my
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fakeness and by my apathy and my numbness towards the word. And so at
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fourteen years old, I was struggling with addictions that no fourteen year old should
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be struggling with and that was due to my fakeness. And no one expected
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it from me because they were like, oh, Jazzy, she's so joyful,
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she's still pure, she said, holy, her family is so great,
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which was true, but it made me think like, oh, like,
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I'm pretty good at being fake. Because if I'm fooling all these people
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to think that I'm so joyful and so pure and doing things behind closed doors,
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that means I can get away with it. And so my I neglected
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my relationship with the Lord, and that grew and watered the seeds that had
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been planted in me at eight years old, and it did not produce good
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fruit. I s think like Durian. We've been walking around in Malaysia and
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we just smelled Durian all the time, and that's what my life smelled like.
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I smelled like Durian, just putting up this facade and stinking and putting
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up this facade and stinking more like Durian. I still have never tried it,
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and it was not pleasing. It was not a pleasing a Roman to
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the Lord. And I isolated myself a lot because I was so ashamed,
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and the enemy kept me in darkness because I didn't have any mentors. I
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couldn't tell my family because I was ashamed. And that's what the enemy tries
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to do. He tries to isolate you so that you have nobody to talk
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to and keeps you in the darkness. So I struggled with that for probably
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about three years, and I pushed my deliverance onto God. I was like,
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God, if you want to deliver me, that's that's on you.
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That's your call. I'm not going to try and like fake this anymore.
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That was me pushing my deliverance on God. Was my for something real.
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I was like, I faked my relationship with the Lord for so long.
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I Lord, if you want to deliver me, you're gonna have to do
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it, because I'm I can't do this by myself and I'm done. And
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so that's what I told myself for a year or two. I was done
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with religion, and I knew that God was powerful I had seen him work
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in other people's lives. I had seen people fall on the floor, speak
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in tongues. All of that. I knew that he was super powerful.
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He could heal. I had seen it. But I didn't think he could
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do it for me. Why because here I was. I was so impure,
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I was so ashamed. I was like, God, you can do
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it for other people, but you can't do it for me, because because
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you like, I know that you see me. I know that you see
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what I've been doing. I didn't know the power of the Gospel or of
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the Lord's love because I hadn't encountered it for myself. I had seen it
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in other people, and I believed it for other people, but not for
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myself. And so at seventeen years old, my church was having a conference
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for all of the youth in the church. And a little background about my
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family. We love conferences, my mother and father, we love going to
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the conferences in America, all the Christian conferences, all the healing conferences,
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everything, and so this was just another conference. And they were like,
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oh, go to conferences, they're so good. We love conferences, And
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so I went because my sister was one of the chaperones, and I was
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still trying to say faced right. So I was like, yeah, I'm
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super spiritual. I'm going to go to this conference. And it was about
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two thousand teenagers and I went in with no expectations because I was like,
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there's no way I had been to all these conferences before and nothing had really
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marked me, nothing had really stood out to me. It was just another
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motion that I was going to go through to look good and maybe I'll like,
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I'll take a testimony when I come back, because that was what I
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was good at. And on one of the nights, it was a second
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night of the conference, isn't A been no Maverick City Love? We Love
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Maverick City. They were at this conference and they were singing super big conference,
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and I was over here. I was like, WHOA, no Raverick
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City And I was so excited, and they were singing the song Champion,
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and so here I was like, Maverick City is super cool singing the song
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Champion, And one of the lyrics of that song says that you would choose
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someone like me to carry your victory, And I like, I put my
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phone away for a second, and the Holy Spirit kind of like pricked my
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heart and I was I asked the Lord. I was like, why would
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you choose someone like me to carry your victory? Like that doesn't make any
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sense. Lord, Like, you've seen me, you know what I've done.
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And I think at that point I had kind of come to the end
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of myself. This is like the third year of my addiction, and I
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was kind of like the woman with the issue of blood. I was like,
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I'm done. I've come to the end of myself. And I told
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the Lord. I was like, I know that you are able to deliver
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me from this, but all I need is like a little touch from you.
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And at that moment, I had like a little picture in my mind
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and the Lord's little pinky finger it came down and like it touched me right
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in the head and I just broke down and I started crying because I felt
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the love of the Father that I had never felt before, the ones that
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I had seen like other people experience and cry and break down. I was
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like, Wow, that's so good for them. It happened to me and
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I didn't think that it could. And in my head I had thought like,
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oh, I the Lord is going to touch my life and all my
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addictions are going to be gone. But the reality was the Lord touched my
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life to get my focus back on him, to get my gaze set back
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onto his face. My addictions weren't gone, and my old patterns of thinking
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were still there. But I started to believe more in in the Word and
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what my identity was. And so as a byproduct of fixing my back on
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Jesus, everything else looked a little bit smaller, and so obviously I wasn't
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completely perfect. After that moment that night, I started to believe. And
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after that conference, I was on like a spiritual high. I was like,
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Wow, the Lord got my life back on track. Let's do this.
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I was spending hours in my Bible every morning. I was in high
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school at this point, seven seventeen years old, super excited, was praying,
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was walking through the hall. The hallway is like hearing the voice of
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Lord, hearing songs, and I was like, this is great. I
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love this. Let's keep this up. And then I I caved, My
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flesh caved in a little bit, and I lost I lost sight of Jesus
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for a second because the old thoughts and old patterns came back up. And
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that's what happens with temptation. Temptation makes you think like, oh, it's
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it's not that bad. That's what in my head, that's what temptations sided
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like, it's like, it's not that bad. And then a little analogy
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that I have for you guys, let's imagine stick with me here. I'm
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a really good baker. I'm not I burn every single pan of brownies that
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I make. But let's imagine for a second. I have a secret brownie
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recipe and they're known all across the world. I have my flour, and
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I add my sugar, and I add my vanilla and eggs and whatever else
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goes in brownies and chocolate chips and stuff like that, and I put the
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battery in and it's super yummy. And my secret ingredient is a little bit
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of dog poop. And I give it to you guys, and I'm like,
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here, here's my world famous brownies. You guys have to try them,
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but just so you know, there's dog poop in them. Would anybody
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eat those? Okay? What if I said, I'll cut the recipe of
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the dog poop in half. I'll just I'll just put like a little bit
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a little bit of dog poop, but you have to try them because they're
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super famous. Would anybody try them? Then? Oh good. There's always
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usually like one little boy who's like, I don't try them. You wouldn't
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try them. And that's what sin is is a little bit of dog poop
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in your brownies. And the enemy tries to make you think it's just a
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little bit of dog poop, it's just a little bit of screen time on
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there. It's just a little bit of complaining. It's just a little bit
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of pride. It's okay, it's not gonna contaminate the whole batter. It's
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just it's just a little bit. Oh, we'll even could it. And
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half it's not as much as it was over here. It's it's a little
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bit less, but a little bit of dog poop is still gonna contaminate the
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whole the whole batter, it's still gonna be unedible. And so that's what
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the enemy was speaking to me. It's like, it's just a little bit,
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It's okay, it's just one site, it's not even it's not even
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that much compared to what you were doing. And so I fell into that
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over and over again, and I got even more disappointed with myself because I
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was like, Lord, like I had this whole, this whole revelation,
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this whole like life changing experience, and now here I am again, still
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falling and failing over and over again, Like what's going on? Yeah,
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So I I blame myself, and I didn't realize that I need to renew
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my mind. Ephesians four twenty two says, put off your old self,
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which belongs to your former manner of life, and it's corrupt through deceitful desires,
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and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put
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on the new self created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and
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holiness. And so I had been I had been renewed, I thought,
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and then I kind of I didn't fortify my thoughts. I didn't change my
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thoughts, and so I kept on falling over and over again. And I
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didn't realize that that's what needed to happen. Was I needed to retrain my
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brain to think thoughts of the Lord. And I felt unqualified to do that
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because here I am a seventeen year old girl trying to rethink her whole life,
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retrain her whole brain. I feel like that's like a counselor's job or
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something, not a seventeen year old girl senior in high school. And so
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what I started to do, which is like super common, right, I
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started to read my Bible, no matter what it was. I just a
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little bit of day, like five minutes a day. I started opening my
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Bible again that had remained closed for years. I also did the thing where
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like you put little encouraging sticky notes on your walls there and like wrote stuff
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on your mirrors. And I was the girl with like a million different Bible
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verses on her screen saver of her computer and her phone. And it seemed
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I got really bored of that because I was like this, I'm a person
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who likes fast results, and this was not producing fast results. It seems
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so like so pinterest, so like I'm trying to be aesthetic, and it
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wasn't. It wasn't really working, so I thought. And what I realized
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was that like those little sticky notes, those little Bible verses that I was
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putting on, I was training my muscles again. I was I was retraining
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past in my brain and I was I felt like I was going through the
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motions, but it was actually discipline and training for for retraining my my brain,
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and so that when the enemy attacked me, the first thing that came
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was, oh, remember that sticky note that was on my mirror the other
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day. I remember that verse that I just wrote down, And so I
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was I was doing that, but also it was taking my eyes off of
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the problem. Those those little Bible verses and those little sticky notes were reminders
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for me to lock eyes with Jesus and to keep locking eyes with Jesus in
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that encounter that I had four months ago, five months ago. And so
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I kept on doing sticky notes, kept on failing, and I got really
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frustrated. And I remember one day I just I called out to the Lord
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and I was like, God, like, what's going on. I'm so
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discouraged and I can't do this anymore. And I remember the I was like
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kneeling on the ground and the Lord was like, hey, lock eyes with
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me. And I was like, hey, let me imagine somebody's eyes really
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quick, and so like I just pictured like somebody's eyes, big brown eyes,
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and I looked at them and then I looked closer at them and there
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was fire in them, and he was like, these are my eyes Jasmine
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like lock eyes with my eyes, And so I was looking at them and
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I was like, whoa, his eyes are the only thing my brain was
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trained on. And he was like, do you still want to watch porn
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right now? Do you still have those thoughts anymore when you're looking at my
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eyes? And I was like, no, Lord, And that moment really
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marked me because I realized the importance of where my eyes were locked on.
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If I was looking at my problem, that was all I was thinking about,
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and I wasn't retraining my brain. But if I was locking eyes with
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Jesus, that was retraining my brain. That was the new paths that were
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being made. Luke eleven thirty four. Your eye is the lamp of your
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body. When your eye is healthy, the whole body is full of light.
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But when the eye is bad, your body is full of darkness.
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Therefore, be careful lest the light in you be darkness. That was one
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verse that really stick out to me because it gives importance to your eyes.
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Like I know everybody says like, the eyes are the window to your soul,
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but they really are the way what your eyes are focused on is what
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you're thinking about. I think your eyes and your brain are connected to each
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other one other. Verse we sing it in worship today, Revelation one fourteen.
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The hairs this is the vision that of Jesus. Verse fourteen. The
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hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His
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eyes were like a flame of fire. And it goes on, but I'll
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stop there. And those eyes that had the fire in them, that is,
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those were the eyes that I saw. And the fire of his eyes
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were purifying my heart. And so when I looked at him and all I
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could see were fire, he was. The fire of his eyes was removing
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whatever I had that was attached onto me and restoring my identity. It was
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like, hey, all of this gets burned off, what's left is your
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identity. And so I started to like understand a lite. I was like,
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okay, lock eyes of juice, lock eyes of Jesus. And I
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started to understand that sin was breaking eye contact with Jesus. So I was
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locked eyes with Jesus. And then all of a sudden, like some other
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little eyeball popped up over here, and I was like, oh, look
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at that eyeball. Side eye, let's get over here. And that's when
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I fell again, and I fell short again, and then I would lock
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back eye back at Jesus, and I would I would remember his left for
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me, and then another little I would pop up over here and be like,
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oh, right, eye contact with Jesus. And so that was I
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started to get that that new those new thoughts of like, Okay, this
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is the dynamic of what's happening right now, and so today, not today,
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but right now, I've gone three years without watching porn. That's not
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because I was over here like okay, don't do this, don't do this,
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don't do this, don't do this. It's because I was like,
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okay, God, where are your eyes? Let me let me lock eyes.
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Okay, your eyes are over here. Let me look at here,
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and let me not look at what what's over here anymore. And sometimes my
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distrecon and be like okay, okay, God, sorry, I I forgot
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to lock ice with you. Let me let me retrain my brain. And
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so slowly those new paths started to be formed in my brain, not by
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focusing on my problem, but by focusing on Jesus. And something that I
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heard recently was like everybody hears old Jesus, behold Jesus. And so I'm
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like, yes, behold Jesus. What does that mean? And I think
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behold is made up of two words be and hold, So that was the
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image I got when I was beholding Jesus. I was like, Okay,
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I need to draw close enough to Jesus so that I can hold his face.
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How do I do that? How do I draw close to Jesus?
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And I think part of that was the sticky notes that I was putting on
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my dorm, like let me just constantly be renewing my mind in the word
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and washing my washing my thoughts and seeing where God's eyes are because he's always
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his gaze has always been on me, and he's just waiting for me to
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look back at him. Because how sad is it for me to be looking
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at somebody the whole time and they're not looking back at me? Super sad?
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And the Lord has an invitation for us today, like hey, look
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back at me, like I am I gay? This has always been on
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you someone thirty nine. He saw you in your mother's room. His eyes
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have always been on you. He looks at us with some one thirty nine
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eyes. It's it's not judgmental eyes of like, oh you messed up.
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Look at me so that you can feel bad. When I locked eyes with
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Jesus in my room that one time, it wasn't judgment that I felt.
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It was the same love that I felt a couple of months ago when he
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had touched me with his little pinky finger. That was the same love that
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I felt when I looked into his eyes. And so your gaze, where
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your gaze is is super important. I think that purity is less about your
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actions and more about where where your eyes are focused on. For so long
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I had I had thought like, okay, I my purity is based upon
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my actions, which is like you know those purity rings that people have.
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I had thought like we have them in my family. And I had thought
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like, okay, I can't smoke, I can't do drugs, can't have
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sex, can't do all of these things. So I was like, okay,
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purity is based on my actions, and it's not. Purity is based
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on what your eyes are fixed. So if my eyes are fixed on my
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myself and my problem is obviously like I'm gonna do all those actions. If
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my eyes are fixed on Jesus I have, I'm going to be pure because
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he is pure. He is a pure one. He has no shame in
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his gaze, which is why I could look at his face, because that
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was the only eyes that I feel like I could look at and not feel
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shame, Even like looking at my parents, I was like, oh,
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they're gonna they're judging me right now, even if they weren't. The Lord's
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eyes are perfect and they are pure, and so his love is kind and
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his love is in his eyes. And so question for you, guys,
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what are you struggling with today? Then you need to lock eyes with Jesus?
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For is it complaining because he has a gaze and he wants you to
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look at him to be purified in his fire. Is it self control?
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He wants to meet your gaze? Is it pride? He wants to meet
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your gaze? Is it sickness? He wants to meet your gaze. And
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if you're willing today, his gaze has already been locked on you since before
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you were born. And so all it takes is like, okay, like
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I'm looking at my feet, Oh they're your eyes Jesus. And if you're
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willing to have him purify your heart, then he's already He's already been here,
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He's already been waiting for you. And so yeah, another scripture Matthew
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five, verse eight, part of the beatitudes I'm sure that we've all heard
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is Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And
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I know this verse can be kind of Oh, I think like for a
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lot of people, this is scary. This verse is really scary because it's
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like, Okay, I have to be pure before I can see God.
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And I think that instead, if I can offer a alternate definition of this
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verse, it's that as I see God, as I lock eyes with Him,
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my heart is purified. It's not this verse is not to disqualify those
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whose actions are impure, because, as we said before, your your actions
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do not define your purity. But this verse is to encourage people to draw
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people in so that they can see God, and then as they see God,
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their hearts are purified. And so yeah, where if you were to
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walk away from this my little testimony for with one thing, it would be
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to ask yourself, where's my gaze? Where's my focus on? What are
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my eyes looking at? Thanks for listening to this message. We hope you've
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been touched and inspired by the word of God. If you have been blessed
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by what you've experienced. Please subscribe and share it with your friends on social
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media. Do check us at Generation's Mind and for more information check us out
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on body Slash Generation's Mind.