Contending for the Greatest Life Part I - Contending For The Focused Life

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Men and women who change the world have a burning heart for God.

They do.

They have a burning You want to be successful in business, have a burning heart for God.

You want to be successful in your marriage, have a burning heart for God.

You want to be a successful parent, have a burning heart for God.

You want to be successful financially, have a burning heart for God.

Because when you have a burning heart for God, you can't do it unless Christ who lives in you does it through you.

And when he does it through you, you become all that you can be.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Exciting times.

This is the inauguration of our new president this week.

There's a lot of changes, a lot of things going on right now in our country.

But this is a new year, and it's uh it's not only a chronologically true new year, but it is also a kairos moment.

I think it's a kairos moment that God gives us in the seasons of our life.

I was talking to someone earlier before I came in, how if you grow a little bit and you're a little bit older, you know, I'd say past, say, 40, you've had a few lives and deaths and uh sicknesses and health situations of seasons in your life that you begin to appreciate the fact that you do go through seasons, and some are harder than others.

But one thing that I've learned is that we have to contend for an inheritance.

We have to contend for the promises of God, and we have to contend for the joy of the Holy Spirit.

It doesn't just come naturally, it doesn't fall in your lap.

You have to battle for it, you have to fight for it, and so joy is for those who contend.

Happiness is for those who contend for it in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So I want to talk about this week and next week, I want to talk about, before I go back to Revelation, what I think is the most important concept in the Christian life, and I'll tell you, I've only heard one message.

I've been a Christian for over 40 years, and I've only heard one message on this passage.

Now, maybe you have, probably many of you have.

And I think we take it for granted, we that have heard it.

But I can just say personally, I haven't, and it's been a growing revival in my heart, this passage and what God means by it.

So would you turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 12, and there's just not enough time to cover it in my message, so I'm going to do a part one and a part two.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

But this, I believe, may be the most important concept and the most important conviction that you can have as a believer.

Mark 12.

There's a lot of things that we can have convictions about.

Some of us have convictions about certain things in the political realm, some of us have convictions about areas in education, business.

You see the seven mountains of God that we prayed all night over, these seven mountains of God, and we we have them up here in the front.

But this is key and it's foundational to all of those other convictions of our heart.

And it's Mark 12, 28.

Jesus, the greatest man who ever lived, is being quizzed by scribes and Pharisees about what's the great commandment, what's the most important thing if we were to think in terms of life, and this is what I would say, guys, what's the irreducible minimum of life?

What's the irreducible minimum of a successful life?

What is the irreducible minimum of an effective life?

And because many of you know I was an athlete and a gymnast and stuff, I always thought that way on a particular event.

What do the judges want me to do?

What's going to get me the closest to a 10-0, the easiest route?

So some guys, you know, I mean, I'm going to do a triple.

I'm going to do a triple off the high bar.

I always thought they were nuts.

That's ridiculous.

Because you're going to wipe out like eight out of ten.

Why do you want to do that?

Just do a double and land it and stick it and get the score you want and win the championship.

Well, I feel that way in the Christian life.

You know, what's the irreducible minimum?

What is it?

It's the core beginning point, the foundational, that everything flows out of.

Well, here it is.

It's right here.

Jesus said this.

So Mark 12, starting at verse 28.

Then one of the scribes came and having heard them reasoning together, so they're trying to catch Jesus in an argument, perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Well then, okay, which is the first commandment of all?

What is the greatest commandment of all of the scriptures?

Verse 29, Jesus said, The first of all the commandments, in other words, the irreducible minimum, the beginning point of everything in life is this Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.

That's all we're going to cover today, with all your heart.

Next week we're going to cover the other.

With all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

This is the first commandment.

And Matthew says, the greatest commandment.

It's all there, church.

It's all right there, and it is the beginning point, it is foundational, it's the key, it's the essence, it's the first and the greatest.

And here's my thesis.

The greatest man who ever lived, the greatest man who ever lived, gave us the greatest commandment ever given that we might experience the greatest life ever offered.

The greatest man who ever lived gave us the greatest command ever given that we might experience the greatest life ever offered.

Now that's a pretty good deal.

Wouldn't you want to hear a sermon on that?

Because the reality is this is the starting point, this is the beginning.

This is like saying to a track runner, dude, you know, this is how you gotta dress.

I mean, you've got to really be slimmed down for this thing because any weight, any wind resistance, you're gonna lose.

You know, this is the way to win.

This is this is someone who's learning to write, and you start talking about, you know, uh verbs and nouns and direct objects, and you start explaining basic grammar.

This is the basic grammar of the Christian life.

And so I want to call this contending for the focus life, which is what we've been doing all week.

Monday, you know, on vision, and we've been talking about um intimacy with Christ.

We've been talking about having goals and setting goals.

We've gone through the whole week.

And then on Friday we we get we talked about contending for the focused life and getting your inheritance.

And we looked at Joshua 1, and it was such a great crowd here.

You guys were just so into it, but how do we get that?

I mean, you've got to go after it.

You have to go in, and you're gonna have to fight.

You've got to fight for it, church.

It does not just come.

And I told you how frustrated I can be among many evangelical Christians who are saying, well, God's got this.

You know, God will fight the battle.

And I mean, it's true.

On one level, that's true.

Theologically, that's true.

Positionally, that's true.

You are lifted up into the heavens and you are seated at the right hand of the Father positionally, but you if you're not experiencing that, it's because we're not fighting and contending for it.

We've got to battle for it.

We work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

And so, contending for loving God with all of our heart.

And we want to argue, don't we?

Especially pastors, people like me.

We want to argue about baptism.

We want to argue about the gifts of the spirit.

We want to argue about buildings, we want to argue about carpets, we want to argue, we want to argue about everything.

That's what they're doing here with Jesus.

You know, they're arguing about taxes, they're arguing about this and that.

And then Jesus says, look, it's almost like he said, I'm really tired of talking to you guys.

You're wasting my time.

I've got discipleship to do, and I've got I've got people out there that truly are wholehearted.

I'm going after them.

But here's what you want to know: love God with all your heart.

And then before he starts it all out, he he has this he has this thing that is overlooked in almost every message that I've ever seen related to this, and that is he says, the Lord is one.

What?

He says, the Lord is one.

He starts off with the Lord is one.

Then he says, Love the Lord God with all your heart.

And what he's hearkening back to, church, is Deuteronomy 6.

He's hearkening back to the great Shema passage where Moses gave his greatest command to the nation of Israel.

And here's what he was doing.

This is important for us today.

This is 2017.

We are now in this stage where our nation is literally collapsing.

We have a nation culturally collapsing.

We have civics class being taught across the country.

The last I heard was 400 universities are teaching what they're calling the new civics, which is building students into being community organizers and being radical.

It's about tearing down everything that this country's been built on.

And so the Israelites are getting ready to go into the promised land, and Moses saying, Look, everything we believe in is going to be torn down if you don't do this in your family.

This has to be done in your family.

So he says in Deuteronomy 6, this.

Now listen to what he says next.

He says, You shall teach them diligently.

He didn't say you shall teach them casually.

You will teach them occasionally when you feel like it.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.

So Moses is saying what Jesus is saying, thousands of years later, this is the essence of how we contend successfully, is in our homes and in our churches and in our families, that we're diligently teaching our kids that, first of all, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

So Jesus is reiterating to the scribes what Moses had said.

And so here's what he says, first of all, both places.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, and the Lord is one.

Now, what are we talking about here?

I believe that what God the Father, through Jesus the Son, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is saying, is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in love.

That the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, the Spirit loves the Son, the Spirit loves the Father, the Father loves the Spirit.

There is this community of love that's right there in the Godhead.

And listen, it turns the argument actually on top of its head.

Because what the Pharisees want to know is, what do I need to do to fulfill and obey the greatest command?

It's all about them.

And Jesus says, it's not about you, it's about him.

And so he starts off with him, not you.

So he's saying, look, before you start thinking about, I've got to love God with all my heart.

He said, No, why don't you start with this?

The Lord is one.

Love begins there.

The unity of the Godhead is a loving family before the earth was ever created.

There was a loving community before man was ever created.

There was a loving community before you were created.

The Father loves the Son.

The Son loves the Father.

That's, I mean, it's really important.

And so what we're doing when we get saved, when we come into a personal, vital, dynamic, growing relationship with Jesus Christ, is that we enter into this loving communion, this loving family of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

They love each other.

That's pretty cool.

So you say, Why come I didn't come out of a loving family?

My family, you know, there was divorce, there was infidelity, there was abuse, and I get all that.

And probably most of us came out of that kind of background, quite frankly.

It's really more rare now that any of us come out of kind of loving families.

We all seem to be coming out of, you know, the fractured family.

It's only getting worse.

And uh, and so that's that's the situation.

But when you get saved, you get to enter into a really loving family.

It's not just the church.

I mean, I hope the church is that way.

Sometimes the church is really lousy at that, you know.

You know, if you've been if you've been a Christian for more than two years, uh if you haven't experienced that, you're still in la la land.

Enjoy it because that's great.

But I mean, the reality is it's made up of a bunch of sinners, a bunch of broken people, and we do the best that we can, but you do have a loving family, and it's not necessarily the church all the time, but it's the God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I mean, that's a loving family, it's pretty good.

You've got a loving family no matter what these other people do.

And so he says, Look, it's not about what you do.

He's saying the Lord is one.

He's got a loving family, he's got a unified family.

Know him, love him.

And so Jesus, speaking of this, it's his last days before he's gonna go to the cross, he really wants to emphasize this concept of the love of the Father to his disciples, and he says this as the Father loved me, as the Father loved me, the Son, I've loved you.

Abide in my love.

So the same love that the Father had for the Son, he showed to his disciples that kind of love, that level of love, that intensity of heart.

That intensity of heart love, he says, abide in that.

Abide in.

That's John 15, by the way.

John 15 says, abide in that kind of, not just the love like when people treat you well, you treat them well, they're really good friends.

We watch the NFL together.

But no, but a relationship of how much the intensity, the fire of the heart of the Father toward his son, Jesus gave to us, abide in that kind of intensity.

He said, Well, I can't do that.

I know.

I mean, we're gonna get to that.

By the way, you can't do anything I've said so far.

Naturally.

You cannot do it.

Well, then he's not done.

In John 17, in his great prayer there before he goes to the cross, Jesus says this.

Listen to this.

Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me.

For you loved me before the foundation of the world.

O righteous father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me.

Verse 26, that I have declared to them your name and will declare, and then listen to this.

This is underlined in my Bible, circle in my Bible, square in my Bible, and it's got an asterisk beside it.

That the love with which you loved me, the love that you loved me, this is Jesus speaking, may be in them, and I in them.

So this is really cool.

So not only is he saying, I want the same intensity and the same fire of love that you had for me, and the same love that I have for them and for you to be in them.

That's us, his disciples, and that the one who gave us that love also is in us.

That's pretty cool.

So it's not just that we get the love, we get Jesus.

You get Jesus with his burning heart.

His burning heart.

Men and women who change the world have a burning heart for God.

They do.

They have a burning heart.

You want to be successful in business, have a burning heart for God.

You want to be successful in your marriage, have a burning heart for God.

You want to be a successful parent, have a burning heart for God.

You want to be successful financially, have a burning heart for God.

Because when you have a burning heart for God, you can't do it unless Christ who lives in you does it through you.

And when he does it through you, you become, what did the Marines say?

All that you can be.

Or I'm just the army of Marines or whatever.

And by the way, you're never an army of one, okay?

So the reality is this is that in Christ and in his love flowing through us, we listen, don't miss this.

We start to have a harmony of heart.

You know, it's interesting.

We that counsel do counseling from time to time.

Some of you, we have a number of professional counselors here, and you guys know this to be true better than me, but you know, bipolar, this fracturing of the mind often is a fracturing of the heart.

And so the fracturing in the mind is really kind of connected, interconnected with the heart.

And so the harmony of the heart is loving God because he loves us.

I remember coming back from a retreat two years ago.

My son Daniel and Ryan were with me, and not on this particular moment, but they're with me on the retreat, so they were the first ones to hear it.

But I'm I'm coming down from this hike, I've been praying, and I've been doing a prayer walk, and I heard almost an audible voice of the Lord saying, Steve, I love you with all of my heart, with all of my soul, with all of my mind, with all my strength.

I was like, What?

What?

Honestly, I had not thought of it that way.

That God loves me with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Man and women, God loves you with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, with all your problems and all your brokenness and all the stuff that we all struggle with.

He still loves you with an abiding love, with an everlasting love that's never changing.

And it's the it's the heart of a of a burning, fiery heart, and it harmonizes our hearts because that's what we were created for.

We were created for the harmony of loving God and being loved by God, and that ultimately is success.

And we'll talk about it next week more about identity.

I'm gonna talk about identity next week.

That's loving God with all of your soul.

God loves you and you love Him.

You're successful.

That's the that's the crowning point, that's the beginning point, that's the core.

Isn't that awesome?

It's the harmony of your heart, and listen, that's why He starts off with saying, the Lord is one.

Because that's unity, the unity of our hearts, the unity of our mind.

I would say to someone who struggles with mental illness, though those that struggle with addictions, I'd say, let's start there.

Let's begin to understand how can you begin to experience that God loves you with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Then you reflect that back to him, and you've got to say it, church.

You've got to say it.

You've got to say, Lord, I love you with all of my heart today.

Today I'm gonna be a mechanic, I'm gonna be a painter, I'm gonna be a carpenter with all my heart.

I'm gonna do it for the Lord.

This is worship.

Last night I was not in the mood to clean up the kitchen.

But all I kept thinking about, wait, my whole family's at the prayer room.

That's a pretty good deal.

I mean, some of you have some spouses that you may not like where they're going.

I like the prayer room.

I think it's pretty cool.

You know, it could be a lot worse.

It could be a lot worse, you know.

I mean, people were flocking in here, and so they weren't there.

So I said, I'm worship, I'm gonna worship the Lord while we do, you know, some of the cleaning.

I didn't do it all.

Gotta train those kids, boys and girls, that do your work.

I made them clean up a little bit.

But you know, when we when we start to love, it brings harmony, it brings unity.

It's that that's why that's the that's the core of the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is that unity flows from their love relationship that they have.

And we're entering in.

In other words, we're we're lining up with what the Godhead's already doing.

And so and And so harmony of love brings unity in a family.

Harmony of love, that's where you may have a covenant of harmony.

We have you sign a covenant of harmony.

What we're saying in the covenant of harmony, we're not being legalistic.

We're just following the scripture saying we're not going to allow gossip in our church.

And some of you got a gossip problem, probably.

I haven't had any problems with it so far in two and a half years at the road, but we will.

Because some of you won't sign the covenant.

We'll follow it.

It's your discipleship.

I mean, if you want to keep living your life with telling lies and little things about people, fine, you can do that.

Just go haunt some other church.

Because I've seen the destruction of that kind of behavior.

It's not good.

So, so a harmonious family doesn't talk about each other, it talks to each other.

Okay?

A harmonious church doesn't talk about each other, it talks to each other.

We take our issues, we we deal with that.

We're always hurting people's feelings.

It's just, it's normal.

If we're not regularly experiencing Matthew 18 and working stuff out, then you're not living.

I mean, just live.

Let's go for it.

Let's be all in.

And then in the process, we're gonna we're gonna hurt people's feelings and things like that.

So then you apologize.

Two sentences.

It can save your life forever.

Three words, two sentences.

I am sorry, and I love you.

I am sorry, I love you.

I am sorry, I love you.

Practice that.

I am sorry.

That's the first time some of you guys have said that in 20 years.

See how God's moving?

Holy Spirit revival's coming.

Okay?

So say it again.

I am sorry.

And I love you.

Say that.

I love you.

I mean, they both they both work together, you know.

It's not I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry, because I'm not asking you to be a doormat.

I'm saying I am sorry, but I love you.

And so we're in this relationship together.

There's a harmony and there's a unity that comes with that in our families and our marriages.

And many of us aren't there.

Well, let's start practicing.

It's a new year.

Let's do it.

Let's start by saying that every day when you get up in the morning, say, Lord, I love you with all my heart today.

I love you with all my soul, minus things.

When I go to work today, I'm gonna love you.

I'm gonna love you with the cooler, I'm gonna love you in front of the computer, I'm gonna love you with my colleagues, I'm gonna love you, and you're and you won't.

I mean, you'll do it for like an hour.

And then like somewhere in that second hour, you'll say something really dumb.

You know, ah, you know, but then if you just keep doing that and doing that and doing that day after day, what the passage I gave you was uh was a and I'll let you look it up.

Exodus 23.

Exodus 23 says, you know, I when Moses is telling the Israelites, he's saying, look, I'm not gonna give you the land in one year.

But I'll give it to you, I'll give it to you step by step.

I'll give it to you gradually, one piece, one tribe at a time, one tribe at a time, that you might increase and inherit the land.

Exodus 23, 29 through 30.

And so that's the way it is, guys.

It's gonna be gradual.

Don't quit.

Don't quit.

Keep coming, keep coming on Sunday mornings and get equipped.

Get in a D group, get equipped, get in a C group, get equipped.

Have some blood-stained allies that you're hanging with.

You're not alone.

Hang together, battle together.

There's guys coming here and doing their D groups on Sunday mornings.

They come early, they grab a table, they get their coffee, and probably they get some donuts, and they they get down.

I see with the word open, they're in their meeting together because they need it every week to be discipled and in that kind of relationship.

And so we we say that.

So here's what I want to talk about at the end.

I'm gonna run out of time.

Okay.

Love God with all your heart.

Love God with all your heart.

He actually gives us four focused ways to love God with your heart.

I'll give some today.

We'll get some more into it tomorrow, next week, too.

Soul, mind, strength.

Almost any physiologist, almost any psychologist will tell you that's the makeup of humankind.

It's heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Right there.

He's saying, Love me with everything.

The greatest man who ever lived gave us the greatest command ever given that we might experience the greatest life, life ever offered.

And so you can't do it.

Isn't that great?

So the pastor gets up and says, This is it, folks.

This is the irreducible, it's just the minimum, it's just the beginning, it's the beginning point of everything you can't do it.

That's really encouraging.

Okay, let's all just close in prayer.

Worship team come up, you know.

It's a great revelation to know you can't do it.

Because some of you are going, I can't do it.

And you know, it's true.

You can't.

But when you got saved, and when you gave your heart to Christ, you know you got a new heart.

You know your old heart's like gone, you got a new heart.

He replaced your stony heart with this subtle, beautiful, fleshly, uh seeking, passionate, zealous heart.

So Jeremiah said this.

Then I will give them a heart to know me.

I will give, he's prophesying of the church, he's prophesying of the coming, the first coming of Christ.

Then I will give them a heart to know me that I am the Lord and shall be my people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

New heart.

Ezekiel says this: Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my judgments and do them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

He's saying, look, you can't do it with the old stony heart.

That's not possible.

You can't do it.

That's what the Pharisees are trying to do.

That's what the Sadducees are doing.

That's what half, two-thirds of the church today is trying to do, is trying to live the Christian life by religion, by standards of excellence, or the law, or the Bible, or whatever, and you can't do it.

But as we begin to reframe an understanding of a personal intimacy with Christ, of saying, God, I love you.

You love me, you've given me a new heart.

I have to have your spirit to empower me to love you that way.

It's surrendering afresh to the Holy Spirit.

Many of us here have to do that every day.

I do, I have to do it every day.

And I get, I get cranky.

I want to say my wife will tell you that, but now that Ryan's worked with me for almost two years, he knows that now.

And so, I mean, there's some people, I mean, I get cranky, I get, I get, eh.

And it's like, why is that over there?

And why is that?

And then my wife says, Would you just seriously go out by the fire or something and spend some time with the Lord or go shoot something?

Because get out of here, man.

You know, driving me crazy.

Because here's the deal, guys: being wholehearted and loving God with all of your heart takes courage.

It takes renewed courage all the time.

It's actually, courage actually comes at its base root, means heart, core, C-O-U-R and courage, comes from the Latin root word for core, which means heart.

It takes heart to be courageous, and it takes courage to be, to, to have a loving heart.

Wholehearted disciples are courageous disciples.

I mean, robotics is really big right now.

So we got robots now that can run, we got robots that can shoot, we've got robots that can pick up stuff, we got every kind of robot, but the one thing they're never going to be able to discover is a robot with a true heart.

And we have Christians that are robotic Christians.

And they're so duty bound, they're boring.

They drive you crazy.

They're like, I mean, they've got everything figured out, you know, they're duty bound, but they're not devoted to Christ.

Now they would say they are, and I'm not, I wouldn't judge them.

I'm not going to judge anybody.

I'm just going to say, okay, well, but you can tell because there's this hardeness, there's this, there's this hard heart thing.

And you get around them and they just, oh, they're so boring.

And they're just, oh, they drive you crazy.

And a lot of pastors are like that.

That's the reason I don't hang out sometimes with a lot of pastors because pastors are just like so, I don't know.

I don't know what their problem is, you know.

But, you know, you because I think what happens is you you kind of think you've got this vision, and then you give this vision, this great vision, and this great mission, and you take off and you look back, and nobody's following you.

I like when somebody said that, you know, if you think you're a leader and nobody's following you, you're only taking a walk.

You know?

And so, and so I want to just say, dude, just love God.

Let's love God and equip the saints.

Let's love God, equip the saints.

Let's worship Him.

It's harmony.

It's harmony in our hearts because we're harmonizing with the great commandment.

So, here's what loving God with all your heart means.

That sounds really good.

It sounds like I'm talking about being all in, being wholehearted.

I'm not.

I mean, that's the byproduct of it.

What we're really talking about is loving, listen now, because you're gonna, this will be taken wrong if you don't listen to the whole paragraph.

Here's what I'm gonna say: it's loving God with your emotions.

It's loving God with your emotions.

Not emotionalism, though.

I'm not talking about everybody next week coming and dancing in the aisles and rolling around and screaming at the top of the line like you're at a Broncos game.

How many times have you heard a pastor say, Man, there's so I mean, look how many people, and they're broncos, man.

Oh, and you come to church like this.

I don't want this to be like a Broncos game.

That sounds horrible to me.

But here's what God wants: He wants an emotional connection with the one who wants to be our best friend.

There has to be some kind of an emotional connection.

You know the word enthusiasm?

You know what enthusiasm means in the Latin?

Enthusiasm means God-possessed.

Enthuse from theos, from God.

It means to be in or possessed by God.

Inspired by God, enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm that's faky is not what we're talking about, but an enthusiasm that overflows out of a love relationship, like when you fall in love.

I still get enthusiastic about Liz.

I do.

I still get enthusiastic, like not exactly the same as the early age.

It'll never be the same as it was, church.

You're never gonna be, probably, I mean, there's some that do, and it's great.

I mean, you know, it's great if this is true.

So I don't want to throw cold water on your party, but that the reality is we probably won't experience the same depth of level of excitement as when we first got saved.

And sometimes we we want that, we long for that.

Let's just let's have a mature faith now, though, that's still enthusiastic, but it's got all the years of experience behind it now.

And so, and so instead of getting bitter, we're growing in maturity, even through those hard times, even through those difficulties, even through those broken places, and we're loving him with a mature love, a deeper mature love that's enthusiastic because you're allowing God to touch your passions.

And you go, well, how do you do that?

I think the only way you do it is you just you just tell God you love him.

You go into your study or you go out on a prayer walk or you go into the woods, wherever you dig it, you know, and just say, Lord, I love you.

I cherish you.

Thank you for going to Calvary for me.

Thank you for forgiving my sin.

Thank you that I don't struggle with this anymore.

Thank you that you you gave me my wife.

Thank you, you gave me my girlfriend.

Thank you.

Just be thankful and then say, Lord, minister to me.

Would you, as I read your word, as I go through my day, I want to experience your love.

Would you love on me?

Ask him to love on you.

Ask him to touch you, and he'll do it unique to your personality and to who you are.

It won't be the way he speaks to me, it'll be the way he speaks to you.

And to begin to do that every day, to begin to say, I love you, Lord, and you love me, I love you.

That's success.

That's success.

You may lose your job, you may lose your 401k, you may lose your wife, you may lose your husband, you may go through tremendous trials.

But if you're loving God with all your heart and you're letting him love you with his heart, you're successful.

That's really, really a wonderful identity.

I'll talk more about that next week.

That's an awesome identity to have.

I'm loved.

And for some of you that have been kicked around your whole life by men, you you gotta be able to start having enough self-respect and self-love.

And when I say self-love, through Christ's love in you, you go, you know, I'm not what he says I am.

I'm loved by God, and I love God, therefore I'm successful in all things, and I'm growing in that.

I'm not perfect, but I'm I'm growing in all of that.

That's the great prophecy of God's heart.

That's the great prophecy of God's heart is to love him with all of our heart because he loved you first.

And the fiery heart of Jesus is in you.

You have a new heart.

It's not your heart, you have a new heart.

Isn't that great?

So quit listening to the old habit patterns of the old heart.

You don't even have that heart anymore if you're saved.

Now, if you're not saved, if you're not really, if Christ isn't living in you, you still got an old heart.

That's a really that's a big bummer because this message is a really downer for you.

Because you're gonna try to do it and you're gonna just go, oh, this is like that's impossible.

It is impossible.

But the reason it's impossible is because God's guiding you to the possibility of knowing him in a personal way.

So surrender to him.

Surrender today.

We take communion over here as we go into worship, and the worship team can come up now.

Um but as we take communion, you'll see some of our folks around the edges go up to one of them and say, I want to receive Christ.

I want to give my heart to Christ this morning.

I don't know, maybe I'm saved.

I grew up in the church, I did communion, I did all that.

But you know what?

I want to make sure.

I want to seal the deal this morning.

For some of us here, this is like hitting you in the heart, and one of the best things you could do, one of the most righteous things you could do, one of the most wholehearted things you could do is let someone pray with you.

Don't leave without getting prayer.

You say, Man, I want to do this.

I want this, but would you pray for me to be empowered and strengthened by the Holy Spirit?

We would love that.

We count that like a great privilege and a great honor to pray with you.

So, church, listen to this.

There's a new storyline.

There's a new storyline.

Your old storyline is an old storyline.

And now there's a new storyline, and the new storyline is intersecting as of today.

Good news and bad news.

Good news, you heard this message today.

Bad news is you're now responsible for the message that you heard.

And so your old storyline is here, and now God's storyline of I love you and you can love me is now intersected with his storyline, and you've got a new storyline in the new year.

And so many of you, I don't know, probably 80% of our church showed up at one of the nights this week, and you came because you're contending for a focused life.

You're getting focused, and you're going to be totally different this time next year.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.