Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #259 Obedience is God's Love Language: A Revival Call from Luke Lefevre

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#259 Obedience is God's Love Language: A Revival Call from Luke Lefevre · The OneCry Podcast

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There's a will that runs deeper than our fleshly apathy or what our flesh wants, a
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deeper cry from within us that can speak to our souls and say, want what God wants.
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Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and
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reports.
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Well, welcome to the One Cry Podcast.
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I'm Bill Eliff, and I'm so glad you joined us.
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If you were here last week, you realize that for the next three or four weeks, we are playing
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a series of messages that were preached at the Awaken Conference at the Senate Church
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in Little Rock, Arkansas, stirring up the people to revival and spiritual awakening
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personally and corporately.
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Today we're going to listen to a message from an incredible young, I don't know how to describe
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Luke Lefevre, a revivalist and evangelist.
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He's just a man of God, and he's a guy that God is really using from Nashville, Tennessee,
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and he's speaking about something that's really vital and very personal today.
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And I would get us ready for this message by asking this question.
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Are you ready?
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Do you love Jesus?
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Do you love Him?
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Do you love Him as much as you used to love Him?
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Do you love Him more than anything else?
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You know, the Bible says that we're to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and
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all of our mind and all of our soul and all of our strength.
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Well, today's podcast is going to help us in that.
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And Lord, I pray as we listen, you would stir up our love for Jesus and show us what
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must happen so that we could love you with all of our heart.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Let's listen.
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You know, just I wanted to just say this to you all.
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When I come into a place to preach, I pay a lot of attention to what happens in worship
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and the sense of the presence of the Lord in worship.
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And something I try to do is I just pay attention to like, when is my heart moved to tears?
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And I try to pay attention to that.
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And man, I just could sense the presence of the Lord in worship, just even coming into
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the room and just being here with you all, which is just a testament to the hunger and
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the love for Jesus in the room.
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So I just wanted to encourage you now, you know, we were, we were singing that moment
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of turn your eyes upon Jesus.
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And I was, I just was holding back tears because I felt like I heard the Lord say, it's going
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to get me again.
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But I just felt like I heard the Lord say, he said, I have some older saints in this
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church who have been loving me for a long time.
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And that there are young people in this church who are burning.
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And what I was thinking about, even just preparing for this message tonight and just asking the
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Lord what he wanted to do, what kept coming to mind was when there are the disciples after
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Jesus has, has died on the cross and he's risen, but there's these disciples on the
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road to Emmaus and he appears to them and they don't recognize that it's Jesus, which
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is really weird anyway.
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They don't recognize it's him and he starts talking with him and talking with them.
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And then when they finally realized that it's him, the overwhelming thing, they were like,
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we should have recognized that it was him and not, and it wasn't because, oh, we should
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have, we saw him.
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Of course we should have just recognized, oh, it's Jesus.
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What they say to each other is they said, did not our hearts burn within us when he
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talked with us and he opened the scriptures to us on the road.
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It was this moment of him going, there's only one person we know who can do that.
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And we should have recognized him.
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And my sense tonight is I'm like, you don't need, nobody needs my thoughts about the Bible.
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Nobody needs my anecdotes or things that I could pull out.
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My prayer has been Jesus, would you talk with us?
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By your spirit, would you open the scriptures to us so that our hearts would burn?
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And so I think that's the invitation from Jesus tonight.
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As we get into these scriptures, I just think this is the invitation because I just sense
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this is, there's so many of you already burning in this room.
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My sense of the invitation from the Lord is, let's just burn together.
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Let's just give something to Jesus.
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Let's just burn together to just give almost just like an offering to Jesus.
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I remember just the first time I heard somebody preach on the passage that I'm going to preach.
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And I was just sitting in a room and I was probably, I was early twenties, you know,
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and I'm just sitting in this room and I'm, and I was just tears just streaming down my
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face.
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It was a spiritual message, just burning.
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And I just get that sense of, I mean, if your heart, I'm asking the Lord that our hearts
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would burn.
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And if it's, if your heart is burning, just going, let it burn.
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And then I just got the sense too, I think there may be some students in the room that
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you're burning and you feel alone.
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And I would just say, burn anyway.
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Just burn anyway.
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So Lord, I just ask that you would do that by your spirit, would you come, would you
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open the script?
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Would you, by your spirit, open the scriptures to us so that our hearts would burn?
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I ask in Jesus name, amen.
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If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Song of Solomon chapter eight, verses six and seven.
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And this is where we're going to, we're going to open tonight.
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And this is what it says.
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It says, place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong
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as death.
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It's jealousy unyielding as the grave.
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It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
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Many waters cannot quench love, rivers cannot sweep it away.
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If one were to give all the wealth of one's house for love, it would be utterly scorned.
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A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a pastor who has planted this church
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network in India.
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If you didn't know this, the ways that God's moving around the world right now are unbelievable.
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There are now a million churches in India.
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The largest church in the world that has a million members at this single church is in
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India now, in Hyderabad, India.
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And I was talking with this pastor and their network, this church network has planted churches
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that have planted churches that have planted churches.
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And it's now a network of 16,000 churches in India.
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And he's telling me about one of their pastors and he tells me this story because the average
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age of their pastors is 27 years old because they're all first generation Christians.
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So they don't have a ton of like older leaders to pull from.
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So the average age is 27 years old.
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And he was telling me about one of their pastors who was the first person to come to
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Christ in his village.
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And he comes to Christ and he goes back to his village to share the gospel.
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And when he does, a mob rises up, they beat him, drag him outside the city, tie him by
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his feet upside down by a tree, and they invite the entire village to come and beat him with
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rods like a pinata and to urinate on his face.
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So they do that all day long.
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Finally, in the middle of the night, somebody from the village has compassion on him, goes,
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cuts him down, and he is able to escape in the middle of the night.
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But instead of running, he then comes back to the same village, preaches the gospel again,
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and has now planted three churches in the same village.
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Now, this leader who was telling me the story, he said, we had, he goes, we had a training
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for our pastors.
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And he said, and we brought in a prominent leader from the Western church, he said, to
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come and do a training for our pastors.
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And all of these young pastors wanted to know when this leader came in, they asked, they
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said, what's the church like in America?
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And he just began to tell them, this is what it's like, the kind of the state of the apathy
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in the church, the lack of hunger for God, the difficulties that we're facing.
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And he said, as he began to share, because the only context these pastors had for the
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American church was cable TV.
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And he starts to share about the state of the American church, he said, and all those
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young pastors started to weep.
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And every Friday, these pastors, they take Friday to fast and pray.
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This leader told me, he said, you want to know what one of the number one things they
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pray for now is that God would reawaken the love of the American church.
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In Revelation chapter two, Jesus appears to the apostle John, and he gives him a word
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for the seven churches in Asia minor.
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Now these seven churches that he's talking to, the number seven in the Bible is representative
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of completion or fullness or wholeness.
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So when he is speaking to these seven churches in Asia minor, one, it's a word to these churches
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at their context in time in 70 AD in each of these specific cities.
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But this number of seven, which is repeated all over the book of Revelation is a sign
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that this is a complete message to God's church for all time.
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He opens his message to the churches that he speaks through the apostle John.
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And he says this, he begins with these words in Revelation chapter two, verse one, he says
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to the angel of the church in Ephesus, right?
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These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the
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seven golden lampstands.
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I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance.
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I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be
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apostles but are not and have found them false.
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You have persevered and endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary, yet
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I hold this against you.
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You have forsaken the love you had at first.
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Consider how far you have fallen.
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Repent and do the things you did at first.
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If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
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Now here's what we have to understand about Ephesus.
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Ephesus is a church burst in a move of God.
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Probably the most unbelievable move of God in the New Testament happens in the city of
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Ephesus.
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Paul comes to Ephesus as in Acts 19, Paul comes to Ephesus and such a mighty outpouring
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of the Spirit of God begins to happen in Ephesus that so many people are turning to
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Christ that it's shutting down the idol making industry.
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Now Ephesus was known as this kind of bastion, this protector of the temple of the goddess
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Diana or the goddess Artemis.
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It was this place that people would travel to for idol worship sake and they would sell
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these idols almost like souvenirs or just this proliferation of idol worship in Ephesus.
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And so many people are coming to Christ that it's shutting down an entire economic industry.
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It would be like someone coming into Las Vegas preaching the gospel, so many people coming
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to Christ that all the strip clubs start shutting down because nobody's going anymore.
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It's this level of a move.
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People are under such conviction of sin that they're taking their witchcraft books, kind
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of tells you what sort of city this is, their witchcraft books and their charms, their demonic
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charms and they're burning them in the streets.
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It says it's like millions of dollars worth of this stuff that they're piling into the
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streets under conviction of sin and burning.
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It says that Paul, it gives this caveat, it says unusual miracles were being worked
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through the hands of Paul.
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Like if you have to categorize Paul's miracles as unusual, I'm like what is happening?
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This is unbelievable.
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So revival begins in this city and it would grow, Ephesus would grow to be the largest
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church in the New Testament outside of Jerusalem.
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It was the crown jewel of New Testament churches.
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Now church history tells us that the apostle John, after the death of Jesus, would take
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Mary, Jesus' mother Mary, and he would adopt her like his own mother and take care of her
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and he would take Mary and John would move to Ephesus to help Timothy, Paul's spiritual
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son, lead the church.
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You want to talk about a stacked pastoral team.
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Who's your founding pastor?
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The apostle Paul.
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Who's your current pastor?
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Timothy.
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He's got two books of the Bible written after it, you know, with his name on it.
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Who's on your elder team?
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John the beloved.
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Who leads your intercessor team?
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Mary, the mother of Jesus.
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Ephesus is the epicenter of the who's who of Christianity.
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It is the church.
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Now John is such a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire that they're going, we've got
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to get rid of this guy.
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You know, he is old at this stage and they're going, he's still such a problem, we've got
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to get rid of this guy.
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So they try to boil him in oil to kill him and it doesn't work.
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So they go, well, if we can't kill him, we'll try to give him a face, a fate worse than
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death.
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We'll exile him.
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So they send him to this remote island in the middle of the Mediterranean called Patmos
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for him to just die alone in exile.
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And that works out real well for them because on Patmos he gets the revelation of Jesus
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Christ.
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Now John, John who writes the book of Revelation, he also wrote the gospel of John.
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Right now in the gospel of John, John has this very unusual way of referring to himself.
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He calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved.
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And you can think of, yeah, it's like, I'm like, okay, a little proud there, don't you
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think John?
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But I don't think this was a superiority statement.
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I think it was an identity statement.
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He is so convinced of his belovedness in Christ that he refers to himself, not as John, but
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as the disciple whom Jesus loved.
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He had looked into the eyes of Jesus, laid his head on his chest and been overwhelmed
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with one great and deep conviction.
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I am loved by the son of God.
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And he is sitting in exile on the island of Patmos and Jesus appears to him again.
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And he looks into those eyes that burn like blazing fire.
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And he takes John by the hand and he says, I have something to say to my churches.
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John takes up his pen and Jesus says, write what you hear.
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And he goes, okay, Lord, what do you want me to write and who do you want me to write
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to first?
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And he says, write to Ephesus.
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And I just imagined John in that moment, stricken and exiled, disconnected from the world, surely
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every day aching to hear even the smallest word about how the church was, must have thought,
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not my Ephesus.
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And Jesus is going, yes, your Ephesus.
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How is she Lord?
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And I'm going, it's not good, John.
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And he's going, well, what is it?
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And he's like, have they fallen prey to false doctrine?
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I know that was a big thing trying to invade into the churches that they fall prey to false
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doctrine.
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And he's going, no, John, they're actually, they're testing apostles to say that they're
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not, and they're proving them false.
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And he's going, well, there's a lot of persecution in Ephesus, have they stopped enduring under
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the weight of the persecution?
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And Jesus goes, no, they're persevering, John.
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And he's going, well, have they stopped serving?
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And he's going, no, he goes, no, I know their deeds.
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He said, they're hard workers, John.
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Then what is it Lord?
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And I don't think there could have been any greater wound to the heart of the disciple
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whom Jesus loves to hear, John, they don't love me anymore.
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Now I think we can look at this and we can tend to think they lost their love.
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That's what an unfortunate reality hope they get it back.
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But if they don't just keep being faithful, just keep serving and it's all good.
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Don't worry about it.
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What can you do?
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But here's the thing we see losing our love as an unfortunate reality.
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Jesus sees it as a lampstand removing level offense.
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Now to understand this, we have to talk about the lampstand for a second of what this represents.
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So the lampstand, one in the old Testament, it's an article in the temple.
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And the lampstand was to always be kept burning.
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The priest's job were to keep it trimmed and the light in the lampstand always kept burning
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because the lit lampstand in the temple was the sign of the manifest presence of God.
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It was the light in the darkness.
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It was the physical representation of the manifest presence of God in the midst of the
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people of God.
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And right before this, when it is describing Jesus as the one who walks among the lampstands,
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Jesus tells John, he said, this is the mystery of the lampstands.
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He goes, the lampstands, the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
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So when Jesus is referring to the lampstand, he's referring to their place as a church.
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And he says, repent, or I will remove your lampstand from its place.
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They had all their doctrines right.
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They had their convictions set.
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They were still working hard, but a light had gone out.
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Senator Gravenhill once said, he said, you can have all your doctrines correct and still
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not have the presence of God.
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And this is the terrifying thing.
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In the beginning of Revelation 2, Jesus says, I am the one who walks among the lampstands.
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And he says, he's going, I will no longer walk among you.
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What a grievous thought.
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I will remove your place as a church and I will remove you from the place that I walk.
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I'll keep walking among the churches, but you just won't be there anymore.
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His manifest presence would be gone.
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And then, and this is just what I want to get at for us.
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And just even, I just, I pound this into my own heart is just going, unless we think
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that we're beyond the Ephesian church, that this doesn't apply to us, just like go read
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the rest of the seven letters to the churches.
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These are the best churches I've ever heard of.
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Testing false doctrine and proving it false, enduring under persecution.
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One church is going, you are, your church exists in the place where Satan's throne is
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and you're persevering, you're serving.
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And he, and there's a reason that Jesus begins all of the seven messages with this first
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message because all of them hang on this first message of love for Jesus.
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And when Jesus confronts the church in Ephesus, he gives a three-step remedy to the Ephesian
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church.
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He illuminates their compromise and decline, and he gives them these three steps.
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He says, remember, repent, and do the first works.
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He goes, remember, one translation says, remember the heights from which you have fallen.
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It's like a, it's like a dad who on a weekend decides to go down into his basement and he's
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like, I'm going to spend, you know, Saturday cleaning out the basement and just try to
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get this thing tidied up.
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Goes down into the basement and he's dusting off some boxes and he comes across one box
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that has a label on the top of it, it just says home videos on it.
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And he opens it up and it's full of all these DVDs and he pulls one out, you know, it's
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got like summer of 2015 on it and he's like, oh man, I'm going to, I'm going to check this
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out.
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He sticks it in, in the, you know, DVD player and it pops on a screen that he's got down
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there in the basement.
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What comes on the screen is he starts to see his kids running through the yard and they're,
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you know, jumping through the sprinkler in summertime and he hears his kids laughing
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and he hears his wife's voice coming from behind the camera and he starts to recognize,
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I haven't heard my kids laugh like that in a long time.
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And I haven't heard my, the life that I'm hearing in my wife's voice like that in a
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long time.
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And then he sees himself come onto the end of frame and he looks and he sees a vibrance
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in his eyes that he has not seen in the mirror in years.
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And by all means, kind of coming into that, you know, as he went down to the basement
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on that Saturday, he would have been like, hey, my family's in a good spot.
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Stuff is stable.
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Relationship with the kids is good.
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Their lives are good.
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You know, my, my, the relationship with my wife and I, like we're stable, it's like we're
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not on the brink of divorce.
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It's like, it's just things are, things are fine.
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But it's not until he remembers a season that once was that he realizes how far he's declined.
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This is what remembering is supposed to trigger for us.
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Of remembering, he's going, he's going, remember what it was like when you first fell in love
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with Jesus.
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How did your heart, when was the last time your heart burned like that?
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When was the last time you longed to be near to Jesus like that?
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When was the last time you just longed to crack this thing open and have the spirit
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of God set your heart ablaze through it again?
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Remembering gives perspective to our decline and he's going remember.
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And then he says, repent.
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He's going, remember, repent, what he's saying, he's going, let that memory cut you.
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Let it make you bleed.
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Let it make you ache.
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Where he's going, in Joel chapter two, God calls the people of God to repentance.
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And he tells me, he says, he says, rend your hearts and not your garments.
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Because in that time, right there, there would be this tearing of a piece of clothing.
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It would be like this sign of remorse before God.
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And he's going, I'm not after, he's like an outward sign of repentance.
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He goes, I'm after your heart.
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He's going, rip your, rip your, tear your heart.
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Because the second Corinthians seven says, godly sorrow leads us to repentance.
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Now you might go, listen, like the heart can only feel what it's going to feel.
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Like I can't, you know, make my heart feel what it, what it doesn't feel.
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And I would go, I agree with that.
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I'll talk about that more in a second.
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But there is, there's an aspect of stirring yourself up.
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In Isaiah, it says, there's this indictment that God gives where he says, there is no
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one who stirs themself up to lay hold of God.
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Like there, there is an ability in the Psalms where the Psalmist says, why so downcast,
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oh my soul?
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He goes, put your trust in God.
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He speaks to his inner man and he tells it, want what God wants.
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There's, there's a will that runs deeper than our fleshly apathy or what our flesh
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wants.
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A deeper cry from within us that can speak to our souls and say, want what God wants.
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Because he says, you have forsaken the love you had at first.
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Here's the thing.
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They didn't just lose it.
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Like they didn't just misplace it.
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They had left it.
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They had abandoned it.
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And the question is why?
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In the book of Philemon, Paul references a man named Demas.
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Anybody ever heard of Demas before in the Bible?
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He's mentioned a couple of times just in passing.
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And this is what he says about him in the book of Philemon.
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He says, Demas, my fellow worker, that's how he refers to him.
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He relates him to men like Mark and Luke, authors of scripture.
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Like this is who he's relating Demas to.
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This is kind of the category that he's being talked about in.
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In the closing words of Colossians, Paul again mentions him.
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And he says, our dear friend, Luke, the doctor, again, author of scripture.
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And Demas send greetings.
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But Demas gets mentioned a third time by Paul.
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And it's in Paul's last letter before he dies.
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Paul is imprisoned under the emperor Nero.
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The pressure is extremely high.
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And Paul writes to his son in the faith, Timothy, probably in Ephesus, asking for him to come
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quickly to him.
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Because he says this, he said for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me.
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This man who was on like equal terms with Mark and Luke, deserts him.
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Why?
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Because of the love of the world had not been crucified in his heart.
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Because he loved something more than Jesus.
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In Matthew 24, Jesus is giving this discourse about the end of the age.
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And he's talking about the coming of the end of the age.
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And he says this, he's talking about this increase in persecution and false prophets
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and wickedness that's going to come at the end of the age.
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And he says this, he says, because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will
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grow cold.
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And I find it so interesting that Jesus' warning, Jesus' thing that he's trying to grab him
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by the shirt and by the collar and just be like, listen, listen to me.
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I would assume that if wickedness is going to increase, the thing that would happen is
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he would go, the faith of many is going to grow weak.
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Like the faith is going to grow weak.
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Or maybe the convictions of most is going to wane.
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The convictions are going to get worn down over time of all the lawlessness, all the
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wickedness, all the deception, it's going to wear down the convictions.
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But that's not what he says.
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He says the love of most will grow cold.
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This is the great threat to your walk with Christ.
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There's this misconception, I think, that people walk away from the faith because of
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some intellectual argument that got them out of it, or some philosophical framework
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convinced them otherwise, or some circumstance, some great pressure of circumstance short-circuited
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their belief.
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But people don't leave the faith for that reason.
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At the end of the day, people leave the faith because there's something that they love more
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than Jesus.
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The threat is that you will love the world, you'll love your sin, you'll love your own
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self-lordship, and I think this is a big one for us in the West, you'll love your comfort
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more than Christ.
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And with the ideology, the philosophy, or the intellectual framework you adopt is simply
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a way of justifying loving that thing more than Jesus.
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It's going, I'm going to find a way to adopt a way of viewing the world in a framework
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that can justify why it's okay to love this thing more than Jesus, and obeying him.
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He says, remember, repent, and then he says, do.
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Do the first works.
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Now here's the thing that's key, what Jesus says is he doesn't say, feel what you first
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felt.
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He says, do what you first did.
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I remember my dad, my parents have counseled a ton of people in their marriages over the
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years, and I remember this one conversation my dad told me about where there was a man
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that came to him, and they were, him and his wife were on the brink of divorce, and he
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just said, he was like, I think we're going to get a divorce, he goes, I just don't love
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my wife anymore.
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And he goes, it's just not there.
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The fire's gone out, it's just not there anymore.
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I think it's time for us to separate.
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And my dad said, he said, what did you do when you first fell in love with your wife?
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Tell me about that.
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And he said, well, he said, I would drive long hours through the night just to go see
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her.
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He said, I would, I would show up at things I didn't even want to be at, because I knew
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she was going to be there, and she liked it, because I would try to do anything I could
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think of to think what would bless her heart.
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And my dad looked at him, and he said, do those things, and watch your heart come alive
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towards her again.
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See, emotions follow actions.
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What obedience says, when we're doing the first works, right, when he goes, Jesus tells
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us, he, John writes this in his gospel.
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He says in John chapter 14, he says, if you love me, keep my commands.
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Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.
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The one who loves me will be loved by my father, and I too will love them, and listen to this,
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and I will show myself to them.
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I love this quote from A.W.
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Tozer, he said, have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late
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and how little revival has resulted?
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He said, I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for
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obeying, and it simply will not work.
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The missionary Amy Carmichael once said, she said, one can give without loving, but one
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cannot love without giving.
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And there is no greater act of giving than the giving of oneself and loving obedience
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to Christ.
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It's going, do the first works.
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You can obey God without loving God.
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The Pharisees are proof of that, but you cannot love God without obeying him.
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In Acts 13, it's describing when King David replaces King Saul, and it says this, it says,
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after removing Saul, he made David their king.
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God testified concerning him, I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart.
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He will do everything I want him to do.
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What characterized the man after God's own heart, that great lover of God, David, it
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was a love that longed to obey God, to give God what God wanted.
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Because see, this is what obedience to the commands of Christ says.
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Obedience says, Jesus, what's important to you is important to me.
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You know, you can tell your wife, you love her all day long, right?
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And be like, I love you.
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I love you.
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I love you so much.
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And it may be sweet at first, but at some point talk becomes cheap.
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And she wants to know is what's important to me, important to you.
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Because when you love somebody, what's important to them becomes important to you.
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And, you know, I think there is one great and ultimate first work in the heart and the
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mind of Jesus, and it is a laid down life to the great commission.
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You know, Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the father, and he is waiting to return.
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And you know what he's waiting for?
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He's waiting to split the sky and come back, and he is, you know what he's waiting for?
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He's waiting for us to finish the job.
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He said, this gospel will be preached in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and
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then the end will come.
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It's important to his heart.
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I remember I was having lunch with Pastor Bill and Pastor BJ this afternoon, and I was
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telling them this story.
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When I graduated high school in Nashville, they passed this law where you could get two
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years of community college for free, and I really wanted to go to ministry school.
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I just wanted to go.
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I wanted to move to Africa.
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Like, I just wanted to go anywhere that God was moving, you know?
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And my parents were like, well, that's two years of free college, so you're doing that.
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And I was like, no.
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Because it was like an old, it used to be a bus garage.
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I'm like, this is not a college.
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This is a bus garage with classrooms.
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And I remember I was in such inner turmoil, going, God, what have you called me to do
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with my life?
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I love you.
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I love you.
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I long to, I just want to see you move.
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That's all I want to do with my life.
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I'm just longing to see you move, God, please.
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And I would get there.
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I had all 8 a.m.s my first semester, and I would get there, and I thought that was really
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early before I had kids.
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And I was like, 8 a.m.s, this is, and my children were like, that's cool, watch this.
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But I would get there early, and I was about 45 minutes from campus, and so I'd get there,
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you know, half hour, hour early, and I would spend time with the Lord in my car and just
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read and pray.
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And I was in such turmoil.
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I remember calling my mom one day and going, Mom, I'm not supposed to be here.
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I'm not supposed to be here.
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And she said, has God told you to be anywhere else?
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And I said, no.
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And she said, well, then you need to believe for God to move where you're at.
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And I remember I was sitting in my car, and I had this moment where I was just, I was
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asking, God, what are you asking me to do with my life?
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I'm just asking for clarity on next steps, like, what do you want me to do?
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And I just had this moment, just this realization moment from the Spirit of God, where he was
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just going, Luke, you keep asking me for specifics of, like, what I've asked you to do.
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He goes, when you're doing so very little with the clearest revelation you're ever going
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to get, which is the Word of God.
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And so I was sitting in my car, so convicted, and I just made a list of all the things that
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I could think of that Jesus had commanded us to do.
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And the number one thing that kept coming to mind was the Great Commission, which I
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think it's funny that we call it a commission, because it's really, it's a command.
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You know, people have said it's not the Great Suggestion, it's the Great Commission, like,
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it is a command.
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It's like, it is, it is burning on the heart of Jesus.
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And so, like, I'm like, okay, Lord, I'm going to do everything I can to be obedient to this.
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I walked into class that day, it was my mass communications class, and the professor said,
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I want everybody to stand up and tell themselves, tell the room a little bit about themselves.
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So everybody's going around, hopping up, and the guy in front of me is like, my name is
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Joe, and I like guitar, and he sits down, and I am, like, shaking, like, hands sweating.
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Because I stand up and I go, hey, my name's Luke, and I can't tell you about who I am
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without telling you about the person that's changed my life.
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And I just share the gospel with the room.
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Nobody comes to Christ, but one girl comes up from the back of the room, and she kind
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of whispers it, and she's like, hey, I'm a Christian, too.
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And I was like, you can say that in your out loud voice.
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And she goes, I've been thinking about what if we got people together to pray on campus.
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And I was like, let's do it.
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So we start getting students together to pray.
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It's terrible.
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It's one of the worst prayer meetings you've ever heard of.
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It was, like, three of us, and somebody was, like, I mean, I'm, like, burning for revival,
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and somebody's like, dear God, my cat is sick, and would you please, I'm like, God doesn't
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care about your cat, OK?
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If it was a dog, maybe, but it's not.
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But I'm like, our professors are so lost, our students are so lost, and you're praying
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for your cat.
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God just cares about your cat, because he cares about you, I think, you know, like,
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they're terrible.
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But we just kept praying.
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I was just going, we're going to be obedient to what he's asked us to do, and every single
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day, it was, like, grating against my flesh, because I just, like, I don't like talking
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to strangers, like, personality-wise.
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And I set a goal that I had to, every day, go up and try to pray for one person on campus,
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try to find somebody sitting alone, or ask a professor if I could pray for them.
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And there's six months of this, that I am just trying to be obedient to what he says
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in here, and then all of a sudden, one day, I'm walking through the campus, and the Lord
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speaks.
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And he goes, you're going to have an outreach on the front steps of the campus.
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And it's a long story, there's so many miraculous things I could share.
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But between that point, for a two-year period, a thousand high school and college students
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gave their lives to Christ over the next two-year period.
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And what I started to realize is, I was like, oh, obedience is your love language, Jesus.
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I want to make what's important to you important to me.
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And people will look at me a lot, and they're like, Luke, you're an evangelist, right?
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And I'm like, no, I'm like, I just, Jesus, you know the promise that Jesus would be with
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us always?
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We quote it all the time, it's like, behold, I'm with you always, even to the end of the
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age.
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It's given in the context of the giving of the Great Commission.
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I'm like, you want Jesus to be with you?
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Do the Great Commission stuff.
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You will never experience the nearness of Jesus more than when you're living a life
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consecrated to what matters most to him.
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See, one of the things I learned from studying the great missionaries and heroes of the faith
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is, I started to look at them, and I would think, these people who had led masses to
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Jesus, I would go, man, they're such lovers of the lost, and I just don't have that.
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Like, I don't wake up every day thinking about the lost, Jesus.
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And you know what I found the more that I studied their lives?
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They weren't great lovers of the lost, they were great lovers of Jesus.
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The missionary Vance Hovner said, the primary qualification for a missionary is not love
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for souls, as we so often hear, but love for Christ.
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Nicholas von Zinzendorf, who, great name, first off, led the Moravian movement in the
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1700s that led to this outpouring of the Spirit of God, turned into a 100-year, nonstop, 24-7
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prayer gathering for 100 years, beginning in the 1700s, greatly affected men like John
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Wesley and others led the First Great Awakening in America.
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They had consecrated their lives to the completion of the Great Commission when they began to
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cry out for an outpouring of the Spirit of God.
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And you would look at that and think, man, Zinzendorf must have just had this burning
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love for the lost, but listen to what he said.
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He said this, he said, I have but one passion.
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It is He.
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It is He alone.
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The world is the field, and the field is the world, and henceforth, that country shall
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be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.
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And the burning, rallying cry for the Moravian movement was, may the Lamb receive the reward
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of His suffering.
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As we close and the worship team begins to come, one of the earliest surviving Christian
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documents that we have is this small text called the Martyrdom of Polycarp.
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Now, Polycarp was the Bishop of Smyrna, and he is an old man in the recounting of this
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story.
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He's in his 80s.
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And now here's the thing about Polycarp, so this is happening in the 2nd century AD.
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Polycarp was discipled by the Apostle John, the writer of Revelation.
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John the Beloved, John the Revelator, the writer of the Gospel of John.
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And in that document, it details these believers who gave their lives for the Gospel, and there's
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a couple people mentioned, but there's two primary people that it talks about.
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And the first, and I love this, it's one is a young man, and one is an old man.
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And one is a young man named Germanicus.
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I couldn't even get this story out to my wife the other day at the breakfast table.
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But the document details the story of Germanicus, and Germanicus is taken into the arenas to
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be fed by, according to the document, two wild beasts for being a Christian.
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He's probably in his 20s.
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Now at that time, the common animal used in the arenas were bears in the Roman Empire.
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And so they said, Germanicus is being mauled by a bear in front of this arena.
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And the crowd, because he's so young, starts looking down on him, and they're going, give
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it up, Germanicus.
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Just recant.
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They're going, you've got so long to live.
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You're so young.
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They're like, why waste it?
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Give up your life.
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Recant.
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They're like, don't give up your life, recant, just recant your faith in Christ.
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And they said at that moment, as the crowd is calling to him in this moment of compassion
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they're having on him, asking him to recant as they're watching him be mauled by this
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bear, they said, he heard the cries, and he grabbed the beast by the beard, it said, and
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he drug it towards his neck, as if to say, never.
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And at the end of the document, it details the story, so you have a young man, and then
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it details the story of Polycarp, who's 86 years old, Bishop of Smyrna.
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He is captured in his home, drug into the arena, to be burned alive.
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And they've piled the wood around Polycarp, getting ready to burn him alive, and the proconsul
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calls out to him and he's like, listen, he goes, you're old, he goes, we'll have mercy
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on you, he goes, just, just recant.
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And this is what Polycarp answers.
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He says, 80 and six years I have served Christ, nor has he ever done me any harm.
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How then could I blaspheme my King who saved me?
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Bless me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong
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as death.
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It's jealousy unyielding as the grave.
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It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
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Many waters cannot quench love, rivers cannot sweep it away.
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If one were to give all the wealth of one's house for love, it would be utterly scorned.
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Speaking of that passage, Matthew Henry said this, he said, no waters could quench Christ's
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love to us, nor any floods drown it.
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He waded through the greatest difficulties, even seas of blood.
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Love sat king upon the floods, let nothing then abate our love to him.
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Would you stand with me?
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He says, remember, repent, and do the first works.
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And this is what I would just want to call you into tonight.
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Is as we respond, if you are going, Jesus, I am just, I am re-consecrating my life.
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I don't have to feel anything anymore.
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Maybe you're burning, and this is, you are burning, and you're like, I must respond.
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Maybe you're not burning.
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But you're going, he doesn't say, feel what you first felt, he goes, do what you first
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did.
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And if you're going, Jesus, I am re-consecrating my life to say what matters, what's important
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to you, is important to me.
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And if that's you, I just want you to begin to come.
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Just in response to Jesus, just to come out of your seat, just begin to come to the front
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and just say, Lord Jesus, I am saying, I am re-consecrating my life.
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Whether that's an act of, I am burning in this moment, it's just a fresh laying down,
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I'm saying, I want to be a laid down lover for Jesus all of my life.
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Or it's a moment of going, Jesus, I'm repenting of my cold love, of my apathy, and I'm saying,
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Jesus, I am from this moment saying, I will give my life to what's important to you.
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And if that's you, just begin to come.
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Well, that was such an incredible word from Luke and kind of message you want to go back
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and listen to again and again, maybe send to a friend.
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I remember years ago, I came into one of the first of a year, and I just realized that
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I had lost my love for Christ.
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I mean, I would say I love the Lord, and I loved Him maybe as much as a lot of people,
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but I had known a more fervent love before, and I wanted it back.
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And so I went on an extended fast, and in that fast, I prayed one prayer over and over
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again.
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And here's the prayer, Lord, would you let me fall in love with you all over again?
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And you know, the Lord did that, and it led to an incredible season of revival in my
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own heart, and then fresh revival among our church leaders, and literally an extraordinary
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movement of revival in our church.
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So I want to ask you a question coming off this message today, and is there anything
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that you need to identify that the Holy Spirit speak to you about that you love more than
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Jesus, where you give your time, your attention, your affections?
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And if there is, I would encourage you to repent of that and just ask the Lord to flood
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your heart afresh with the love of God.
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Would you join me in just praying for that for a moment?
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Let's ask the Lord to do that.
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Father, we thank you for this good word from Luke Lefevre today.
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We thank you, Father, that word came straight initially from your lips as you spoke to the
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church at Ephesus, do you love me?
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And so I pray, Father, that we would look at our hearts and we would let your Holy Spirit
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examine the depths of our heart.
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Show us things that we can't see on our own without your illumination, and convict us
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and give us such a hunger to love you afresh, Lord, with all of our hearts that we would
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be willing to lay down secondary loves and replace you with full love.
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And Father, we pray that the world would say, I remember my parents often saying, we just
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wanted more than anything for our children to know that we love Jesus more than anything
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else.
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I pray that would be said of us, Lord, and take us there in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Well, thanks so much for joining us and come back next week.
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Another message that is really going to throw your heart from your friend Kyle Reno and
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mine and that was preached at the Awakened Conference.