Shema

(upbeat music)

- Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu

from Pneuma Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you

and all those that you share it with.

God bless you.

(upbeat music)

♪ Yeah, yeah ♪

- Just a moment as we read the word.

Anybody happy to be in the house of God this morning?

Amen, amen.

Hallelujah.

We have baptisms today.

That's always a beautiful day.

I know we have some visitors probably visiting

as they witness their loved one get baptized.

And my prayer for you is that the Lord grabs hold of you.

Amen.

And grabs a hold of everybody in this room.

Amen, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Amen.

I want you to turn to me

to the book of Deuteronomy chapter six.

Deuteronomy chapter six, four through nine.

And if you have it, let me know that you have it.

If you need some time, say I need some time.

Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Bible,

of the Old Testament.

Amen.

Are we there?

- Yeah. - Amen.

Short passage, it says, "Hear, O Israel,

"the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

"You shall love the Lord your God

"with all your heart, with all your soul,

"with all your might.

"And these words that I command you today

"shall be on your heart.

"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.

"You shall bind them as a sign on your hand

"and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

"You shall write them on the doorposts of your house

"and on your gates."

Amen.

Let's go to God in prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word this morning,

Lord, that you've given your servant.

I pray, Father God, that as you have preached it to me,

my God, you would preach it to your people.

Holy Spirit, be on my lips, my God.

I give you this moment, Father God.

I pray, Father, that I'd be sensitive

to whatever you wanna do,

whatever you wanna say, Father God.

And I pray, Lord, that we open our hearts and our minds

to receive this word in Jesus' name.

Amen, you may be seated.

Amen.

I hope to have your attention this morning

because I believe that this is potentially

one of the most important sermons

you can hear as a Christian.

Amen.

For some of you, you might,

it honestly might not be a word for you

because you've got this down.

And if it's not for you,

then you're just gonna have to bear with me.

But for most of us, this is probably the most important

message that we can hear as Christians.

If you go through a time in your faith

where you begin to doubt the things of God,

or you begin to have questions

that you can't seem to have answers to,

or somebody combats your faith in a way

that makes you kinda question all the realities

of the things that you were taught,

if you live by this word, you will be okay.

No matter what you go through,

if you live by this word, you will be fine.

There's a man right now that I know,

I've been ministering to him,

and he used to lead worship.

I was, he was in a band, I was a fan of the band.

They weren't like a big band,

but they ministered here at the church.

I became friends with him for a little while.

He has a beautiful voice, beautiful ministry.

And right now, he's going through a major crisis of faith,

and he's posting all these things about the Bible,

all kinds of questions that he's kind of entering.

He's entering that phase

that we call Christian deconstructionism.

And so I felt burdened to reach out to him,

and just let him know that I'm praying for him.

And I told him, I'd be happy to talk with you

about some of these questions.

Friday night, he had posted this really, really long post,

just really kind of attacking things in the Bible,

and all of these questions that he had.

And I remember going to bed, I took my laptop with me,

I opened up a Word document,

and I started to write what Melissa called a book,

because I wanted to get at every one of these little points

of resistance that he was coming at

against my sacred Word of God.

And I didn't wanna be combative,

I wasn't trying to be argumentative,

I wasn't trying to troll him on Facebook

like so many people do.

I genuinely, my heart was breaking for him.

And so I came at it with compassion and with love,

and I'm grateful, I don't say this to both,

but I believe that God has allowed me to minister to him.

Because I have gone through some of these questions,

I've wrestled with a lot of these questions,

and I've dedicated a lot of my time

to studying the Scriptures in such a way to defend it

against the criticisms like the ones that he's presenting.

I remember going through a little crisis of faith myself,

and the only thing that got me through that moment,

it wasn't logic, it wasn't finding the answers

to every question that I had,

it was genuine love that I had for the Lord

amidst a crisis of faith.

I'm saying that when my faith was weak, my love persevered.

It's true what the apostle Paul says, love never fails.

Love never fails.

And so that's why I say that this is probably

the most important word that you can hear as a Christian.

It was probably the most important message delivered

to the people of Israel as they were getting

ready to enter the promised land.

Moses is preparing the Israelites for what's about to come.

His time is almost up, he's old,

he's not gonna be able to enter the promised land

with these people that he led out of Egypt

and that he shepherded for 40 years in the wilderness.

And so as a pastor and as a father-like figure,

he begins the message to Israel with the word Shema,

which is the title of my sermon.

Shema means to hear, listen, it is a summons.

Today the Jews still recite this prayer,

it's known as the Shema.

And it was the first word right here in verse four,

it's meant to call the attention to the nation of Israel

who was called to be the people of God.

And so today, if we are called to be the people of God,

holy and sanctified and righteousness,

then this word is as important to us as it was to them

4,000 years ago.

And the message is very simply, Moses says,

love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your might.

That's with all your being.

With everything that you've got, love the Lord your God.

2,000 years later, Jesus says,

this is the greatest commandment.

Loving God isn't really something

that I think we talk a ton about.

But Moses said, teach this to your children.

He said, this shall be the talk of your home

when you sit down around the dinner table,

you should talk about it.

When you lay your head down at night to go to bed,

when you rise up in the morning,

this should be the very way of life.

Post it on your door so that when you enter your home

and when you leave your home,

you are reminded that you shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart, soul, and might.

Live by this word, he says.

See, we talk a lot about faith in God

and obedience to God and fear of God.

Maybe it's because loving God is just kind of a given

in the Christian life, but when a person,

I believe when a person loves God genuinely

with their entire being, faith and obedience

are going to follow.

And listen to me, we have to learn how to love the Lord.

I don't mean just love his word.

I'm not talking about loving the work of the ministry.

I'm not talking about loving the church.

I'm not talking about loving the people, the lost souls.

All of that is important, but God desires a church

that just loves him for him with no strings attached.

Because you know, one day there's gonna be no need

to preach the word, did you know that?

All of the Christians that are so angry

with other Christians all the time,

you just beat people with the word of God,

one day you're gonna be irrelevant.

There's not gonna be a need to preach the word

or even study the word as we do today.

You have to love God more than you love his word.

I know there's Christians who love the Bible

more than they love God.

They worship the Bible.

They actually have a thing called bibliology,

which is the worship of the Bible

when you equate the word of God with God himself.

Sometimes I think these people don't even love the Bible,

I think they just love knowledge, they love to be right.

That's why there's Christians who know so much

about the Bible, but they would rather tear down

other Christians than to edify them.

You have to love God more than you love the work

that you do for God, the ministry that you do for God,

because one day there will be no need for pastors

or evangelists or missionaries, there will be no needy

and there won't be any work to find fulfillment in.

We need a church that loves the Lord simply

because he's God.

That's it.

And it's such a simple message.

But I feel like many of us don't grasp it,

we don't live by it.

We love God with strings attached.

We love God because it gives us a platform.

We love God because it gives us something to do.

We love God because it gives us a sense of purpose.

We make it about us.

This week I invited Pastor Abram, many of you know him,

to be on my podcast, the JRC podcast, Shameless Plug.

Go stream it.

We were talking about discipleship and I realized

that the church at large hasn't done well discipling people

into a greater love for God.

We haven't taught people how to love God,

we've just told people to love God.

And as pastors and as leaders and even as parents,

if you have kids, you know that it can be frustrating

when you're trying to get somebody to love God

in the way that you love God.

You know what I'm saying?

It breaks your heart when your children don't love God

the way that you do, when they're not serving God

the way that you are.

And I realized that this is not something

that I can pass on to you.

I can't pass on my love for God to my children.

The most I can do is pass on the commandment

to love God and to instruct them in the ways of God

and to show them how I love God so that they see it

from a healthy perspective,

but I can't make anybody love God.

I mean, I think every preacher would go out and evangelize

and the whole world would be one

if we could make people love God.

We can't do that.

And every Easter Sunday when we have so many unbelievers

in the room, that is my biggest burden.

Sometimes I come into Easter Sunday with a saddened heart

because I know that I'm gonna give all my heart

to delivering the message of the gospel

and some people are still going to walk away unchanged.

There's nothing I can do to make you love the Lord.

So Moses says, teach the words to your children

so that your children know, so that the generations

that come after you are without excuse

that to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,

and mind is the most important commandment given to us.

Is, I wanna ask you a question,

is loving God a cultural standard in your home life?

You'd probably say, yes, it is, pastor, praise the Lord.

But I want you to think about it.

Is loving God the standard or is serving God the standard?

We sometimes like to think that the two are the same,

but they're not.

I would argue that you can't genuinely love God

without serving God.

If you love Jesus, you are going to serve him

because you love him,

but you can serve God without loving God.

I see it all the time.

And listen, I want you to teach your family

the importance of serving God,

but more importantly, teach them to love God.

There's a lot of people who are raised with parents

who have a genuine love for the Lord.

I am a product of those parents.

I saw my parents loving the Lord.

Many of you are products of the same thing.

Many of your children will be products of the same thing.

They will have grown up seeing mom and dad love God.

It's a beautiful thing.

But I grew up in the church.

I also know what it's like to grow up in the church

with certain expectations.

I grew up knowing the do's and the don'ts

and the things that you should say

and shouldn't say around certain people.

I pass all that stuff to my children

because look, I got a daughter who's really tall for her age

and she can't find a dress that's not too short

or a skirt that's not too short.

So I'm always onto her about what she wears,

especially when she's at church.

And be careful what you listen to and don't watch that

and don't say these words.

And all of that is good.

I'm not saying to disregard righteous instruction,

but if we are not mindful about it

in the midst of all of this other instruction,

we might forget to instruct them on the most basic,

but most profound commandment given to us,

which is just to love God with all your heart.

We teach them and disciple them in so many different areas,

but we miss the most obvious one,

which is just to love God.

And at the end of the day,

I would rather have children who don't meet the expectations

of the church, but who genuinely have a love for the Lord

than to have children who get the applause

and the praise of the church,

but are devoid of God in their life.

We've taught our children how to do it backwards,

look good for the church,

and we've never asked a deeper question, do you love God?

And Moses says, this is the most important commandment.

Teach it to your children.

Let them know that to love God is the most important thing.

What is the most important part of our discipleship,

if not just to help people love the Lord?

Yes, I want you to know the Bible.

Yes, I want you to get planted in sound doctrine.

I want my daughters to quote scripture,

and I'd be proud if they entered the ministry, I would.

I want you to learn how to do ministry

and how to reach people for Christ

and to develop good, godly character

who represent Christ well,

but you can do all of those things

and you can gain all of the knowledge and all the wisdom,

but if you don't have any love, it's pointless.

You still with me?

(audience member speaking faintly)

Moses knew the law.

It's not called the Mosaic law for nothing, right?

Moses was the one who hand-delivered the law

to the people of Israel, 10 commandments,

and 613 Levitical laws composed of moral

and civil and ceremonial laws.

There are entire books dedicated to the law of Moses.

The first five books of the Bible are known as the Torah,

which means instruction.

The law, listen, the law is important to God

because it reflects his holiness,

but out of all of those laws,

the one that is highlighted and emphasized

among the prophets and that Jesus calls the most important

is the one that just says love God,

because Moses knew that if you just upheld that one law,

everything else would follow,

and so he says, "Here, people of Israel,

"listen, just love the Lord, love the Lord."

The idea of loving God, you know,

I think for many of us it's so easy to wrap our heads around,

but the practicality, I've struggled with this,

the practicality of increasing my love for God

is not always that easy to accomplish.

Like, how do I love God more?

I'm always asking God that question,

because if I need wisdom, the Bible says,

"I can ask for wisdom,

"and God will give it to me generously."

If I need peace, I know and can expect

that God is going to teach me peace

in the midst of chaos and a storm

so that my peace is revealed.

I know that if I ask for faith,

He's going to strip some things from my life

so that I learn how to depend on Him more,

but how can I fall more in love with God?

That's not up to God, that's up to me.

So that's a constant prayer of mine,

Lord, I wanna love you more,

because I think that if I loved you more,

it wouldn't be such a struggle to wake up at 3 a.m.

when the Holy Spirit is pressing on my heart

to seek Him.

If I loved you more, I would be so quick to be obedient

to the things that even I'm uncomfortable with.

If I just loved you more,

everything else will just fall into place.

Seek first the kingdom of heaven,

and everything else will fall into place.

So I always ask God, Lord, how do I love you more?

Because you can have moments in your walk with God

where you lack any one of those fruits of the Spirit

that we talked about a couple weeks ago,

but because love is present,

you can always get back to where you need to be.

So you might lose your peace in a moment of uncertainty,

you might lose your patience in the waiting,

and as a result, you get angry

and maybe you try to take matters into your own hands

and manufacture a blessing on your own.

You might lose self-control in a moment of temptation,

and you give in to sin, but if you love the Lord,

that love grounds you,

grounds you.

But the thing is, when you start to lose your love

for the Lord, that's when your faith is in danger.

I don't know who I'm talking to today.

I hope I'm not talking to anybody.

But when you begin to lose genuine love for the Lord,

I fear for your faith.

I fear for it.

My wife will give me grace when I react in anger.

Right, Ben?

Yes.

(congregation laughing)

She gives me grace when I lose some self-control.

She's understanding of me

when I'm having a moment of fear and anxiety,

and I don't look like the man that I wanna be to my wife.

She has grace with me,

but if I start to lose my love for her,

all she can do is wait with no guarantee

that I'm just gonna start loving her again,

because my love for her is beyond her control.

So you can love your kids with your entire being

and you can give your entire life to them

and everything, your entire life savings,

and you give everything to your kids.

Doesn't mean that they're gonna love you back.

The love that you have for God

is the most important thing that you have in this life.

You have to guard it, you have to feed it,

you have to nurture it.

You have to see it grow on a daily basis, church,

daily basis.

And you can't neglect it

because the moment you begin to neglect it,

that's the moment your faith begins to weaken.

You know, I was thinking about this.

You know what's more ugly,

or you know what's more sad than an ugly divorce?

To me, personally, I think what's more sad

than an ugly divorce is a peaceful divorce.

The Bible says that God hates divorce.

I'm willing to bet, the Bible doesn't say this,

but I'm willing to bet that he hates an easy divorce

more than he does an ugly one,

because when you have an ugly one,

that means at least one party is still fighting.

There's one person believing and showing up to church

and showing up on the altars and praying

for that other party.

There is one person saying,

"I am willing to forgive everything

that my spouse did for me

because I wanna see this marriage restored.

It's ugly, and I've counseled people through it,

and it's filled with tears and just wanting to give up.

It's ugly, but there's still hope."

But when the divorce is peaceful,

it's usually because both parties

have already lost their love for each other,

and they're just ready to move on.

Couples who are cordial in their divorce

don't come to me for pastoral counseling.

They go straight to the divorce attorney.

They're done with that.

And one thing that they say is,

"Well, we just grew apart.

We no longer love each other.

We changed.

We both wanted different things."

See, love doesn't just die, it's neglected first,

and then it dies.

When you get to a point where you only come to church

because you have to serve that day,

or you only come to church because it's expected of you,

or because you have religious obligations,

or because you enjoy the community,

you like the people there,

when the love element is no longer the reason

that you do what you do for God,

understand that you are neglecting

the most precious piece of your salvation.

And sometimes your love is neglected

because it's being redirected.

Sometimes your love is being redirected.

It's not that it's gone.

It's that you see something else

and you want that a little bit more.

This is why you have to love God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your might,

because if you don't,

you might love something else a little bit more

and start to chase after that.

I remember speaking to somebody

who was struggling with a homosexual feeling.

And the thing that I told them was,

if you don't love God more than that temptation

that you wanna give into,

then you're going to abandon God

and you're gonna give into that.

And I'm not saying that it's easy

because there are things in our life

that we are tempted to gravitate towards.

That's why God says you gotta love me with everything.

You can't give me some of me.

You can't share the love.

You can't love the world and love me.

You can't serve two masters.

It's all the way or nothing at all.

This is why I'm telling you,

love the Lord your God with everything you have.

I want you to question your love for God today.

Question it.

Sometimes your love is neglected

because it's being redirected.

You used to love your wife,

but then you started to move away.

Your love started to move away from its target.

Maybe she changed or you didn't,

you just, your love didn't go with her.

Maybe she did something

and your love couldn't go on any further

because of what she did.

So then love is redirected to something else

or to another person or to an idea of life without her.

Your love for your spouse and for God has to be focused

and it has to be intentional.

Because in either case, listen, there will be changes.

There will be season of change.

There's going to be seasons of change.

There's gonna be seasons where God gives

and there's gonna be seasons where he takes away.

There's gonna be seasons of pain and loss,

of hope and loss of strength and loss of peace.

Your love for God can never miss the target.

Your love for God can't be attached to anything else.

It shouldn't be an attachment to your income

or to a person or to a way of life

because God forbid those things are removed from your life

and your love for God goes with it.

Love the Lord your God with no strings attached.

That still with me?

- Amen.

- You know, I was, as we were talking,

me and Pastor Abram started talking about discipleship

and I've always said we need to stop thinking

about discipleship in terms of like

a 12 week discipleship class, right?

Discipleship is so much deeper than that.

The way I see it, the way I've always seen it,

there's three phases to discipleship.

There's the biblical foundation.

You need biblical foundation.

You need character formation because sometimes

we just stop at the biblical foundation.

We put people in the ministry

and they haven't developed good character.

So character formation and there's also

ministry development.

Jesus instructed his disciples with the word.

He worked to help shape their character

and then he equipped them for ministry.

Pastor Abram added another element to it

that I thought was so beautiful and so obvious,

but so overlooked.

He said during his early years when he was being discipled,

he also had to learn how to have encounters with God.

He said a mentor of his would invite him to church

just to pray.

What do you mean we're just gonna pray?

Where's the teaching?

Where's the lesson?

Where's the training?

Where's the opportunity to acquire more skill

so that I can give it back to God?

He's like, no, we're just gonna pray.

That's it, we're just gonna pray.

We're gonna have an encounter with God.

Prayer gives you encounters with God.

When you commune with God, like seriously,

when you actually commune with God,

I don't know how many of you have tried it,

but when you commune with God,

it's not like you're on an awkward date

that you're just waiting for it to end, right?

It's like when you are communing with God,

you are experiencing the goodness of God,

the joy, the peace, the love of the Spirit of God.

And when you commune with God,

you can't help but fall more in love with him

because he's so good.

And when you experience the goodness of God,

when you taste the sweetness of the Holy Spirit,

all you want is more, it's addicting.

I was talking to Brother Sergio,

for those of you who know him,

and he was sharing how before he came to Christ,

he was addicted to getting high

and he was always struggling

and just in his problems running to the wrong things.

But one day he said he came to one of our worship nights,

which are always fire, right?

And he said that in one night,

he had an encounter with God that changed his life forever.

It was like night and day.

And I asked him, because I always like to ask the question,

did you still struggle with that addiction

after you came to God?

Because sometimes people are struggling

even after coming to God.

He was like, no, I didn't struggle again.

It was like night and day.

And so I want you to hear me on this.

I want you to hear me on this.

And I say this with love,

but there's many people who come to church consistently

who are still struggling in their relationship with God

because you're still flirting with the world.

You have relationships that you should have cut off

a long time ago.

Might the reason be that you haven't fallen deeply

in love with God is because you haven't had an encounter

with God that has totally messed you up in his presence.

An experience like the apostle Paul had

on his way to persecute Christians.

Could it be that you're trying to come to God

through religious practices or community or ministry

or Bible study?

I'm not discounting any of that,

but it's not until you learn to love the Lord your God

with everything that everything else won't matter as much.

You have to have encounters with God

to fall more in love with him.

The spirit transforms, the spirit frees, the spirit heals.

I believe you can come to God through intellect.

I believe that 100%.

But if you never have an encounter with God,

you will never experience the love

that God wants to show you.

When you worship God with all that you've got, man,

you go all in with all your heart, with all your soul,

with all your tears, all your makeup and all your moccles

and all your tired feet from wearing heels

and at a Pentecostal church, when you give God everything,

you just can't help but fall more in love with him.

You want more.

It produces that fire in you that says,

all right, Lord, what next?

Where do you want me to go?

What do you want me to do?

It inspires you, it motivates you, it heals you,

it frees you, the more of God you have,

the more your soul learns to love him.

The way that you fall in love with God, church,

is by encountering him more.

And it makes it easier for you to continue loving him.

Listen, when you're deeply in love with God,

it's so easy to fall more in love with him

even when you're not in the encounters,

when you're not reading the Bible,

when you're at work, when you're in the struggle,

you could still love God

because you're already deeply in love with him.

I'm gonna have the worship team come up.

I wanna give you just something real practical, real quick.

And I always tie it back to marriage

because I think marriage is just a great model

for our relationship with God.

I'm gonna say something that's gonna be like,

I don't make time for my wife.

Yeah.

Listen, look.

Look, look.

I don't make time from, she's my wife, I see her every day.

I see my wife every, I go to bed with her.

I wake up with her.

We're raising kids together.

We have fun together.

We manage our household together.

Even when we're not in each other's presence,

we're talking, we're texting,

we're talking about what we're gonna make

or what we're gonna order for dinner.

We're in constant communication.

I don't have to make time for my wife.

She's very much in my life.

In fact, I have to make time for things

that are gonna take me away from my wife.

If I'm scheduling a meeting after work hours,

I gotta look at our shared calendar

and make sure it works for us.

If I'm gonna go hang out with some friends,

I'm gonna check with her to see if she's good with that

because she's more in my life than my friends are.

I go to bed with her right now.

I don't go to bed with my friends.

I don't have to make time for my wife.

She's my wife.

I have to make time for date night.

I have to make time for intentional grownup conversations

that we can't have in front of our kids.

There are things that we have to make time for

in our marriage, but I don't have to make time for my wife

because she's so much of my life.

And now we're always telling Christians,

make time for God.

Don't forget to make time for God

like he's an item on a to-do list.

Why do we feel like we have to make time for God?

Doesn't that make time God and not God God?

When God has to conform to my time?

The Bible says in Colossians,

"In all you do, do it unto the Lord."

In 1 Corinthians it says,

"Let all you do be done in love."

It doesn't say sometimes.

Doesn't say in certain hours.

You can love God and serve God when you're at work.

You can love God and serve God when you're on vacation.

You can love God and serve God

when you're having intentional date nights with your wife.

You can still love God.

You can still make it about God

when you're having moments with your children.

Don't equate God with the things that you do for God

because then you're not loving God with all your heart.

And you might say, well, it's on the date nights

that you fall more in love with your wife.

That's true.

When I hang out with my wife, we hung out yesterday,

we had a date night, dinner and a movie.

That's how we keep it.

We're feeding our love through those intimate conversations.

And yes, those intimate moments.

I fall more in love with my wife.

It's in the encounters where you fall more in love with God.

It's in the worship sessions, it's in the Bible studies,

it's in the prayers.

But love is exercised through hardship.

Please hear me.

God will mess you up in his presence.

That's what he does.

That's what his presence does.

Makes you emotional.

Makes you wanna cling to him.

But love is exercised out there in hardship.

I still gotta demonstrate my love for my wife

when I'm not on date night.

I gotta love her through the hard moments

when we don't know what to do.

And when we're facing giants,

I've gotta love her through the arguments

and through the disagreements.

You know, I've made it a point

and maybe she finds it annoying, but I'ma keep doing it.

If we ever have a really, really good fight,

I'ma send, every time I send her a text and I say,

girl, I know we're going through it right now,

but I still love you.

(gentle piano music)

Because I still love you.

It doesn't matter what I'm going through.

My love for you stands alone, baby.

My love for God stands alone.

It is not attached to a good moment or a good season.

My love for God stands alone with all my heart

and with all my soul and with all my might,

with everything that I've got.

Because he's good.

(gentle piano music)

In the same way, fall in love with God

through those encounters,

but don't forget to exercise that love

in every single moment of your life.

The reason people come to church for a season

and they leave is usually because they don't have

that love factor down.

This is why the Israelites lost their way.

You can take your seat, you can stand if you want,

but I got like five more minutes.

The Israelites lost their way

because even though they were taught to love the Lord,

they didn't always exercise it through the hardship.

You know what they always had?

They didn't always have their love,

but they always had their religion.

They always had their festivals and their temples

and their sacrifices and their celebrations,

but they lost the thing that Moses said,

"Hear me, hear me, love the Lord with everything."

Religion will never keep you, love will keep you.

People who love the Lord,

man, they don't turn from the Lord, man.

They don't, don't neglect your love,

don't let it lose focus.

Because as long as you love the Lord with everything,

you are loved and commissioned by God.

I'm gonna ask you to stand now.

If you're gonna be baptized, you can go and be dismissed.

I wanna end it with this.

One of the most beautiful conversations

recorded in the gospels is the one between Jesus and Peter.

You know which one I'm talking about?

Peter is feeling the regret of his denial.

And the moment where Jesus needed his disciples the most,

Peter denied him three times.

Imagine that, man.

Imagine coming to church your entire life

and having communion with God

and having encounters with God

and believing that you love God

with everything that you have,

but then in a weak moment of your life, you fail him.

How many of you have been Christian and still failed God?

So now imagine Peter, the man who said,

"Jesus, I will never deny you."

What are you talking about?

Someone who served God so diligently,

he was the first to respond.

He was the one to demonstrate the faith first

among all the disciples.

This is the one who first declared Jesus,

"You are the son of the living God."

In a moment of weakness, he failed his Lord.

You're gonna have moments and seasons of weakness, church.

I'm gonna have periods where anxiety

lives in my mind rent free.

I've been in seasons where my faith was being questioned.

I'm still remembering,

I remember telling my wife a few years ago,

we were right here parked outside.

I was having a moment with her crying.

We were having a church cell.

This was maybe five, six years ago.

We were having a church cell.

I didn't want to go in

because I didn't want people to see me in that moment.

I was having a moment

where my faith was being questioned and challenged.

And I remember telling her,

this was before I was the lead pastor,

but I was still pastoring as an English pastor.

I told her, I said,

"I don't think that I can continue to serve God

"with the doubt that I'm feeling.

"I need to go back to what I was doing before."

Peter goes back to what he was doing before.

He goes back to the boat.

He went back to where Jesus found him originally.

How many times do we go back to the place

where God found us in a moment of weakness

that we have deemed unredeemable?

So Jesus gets ahold of Peter and he has another encounter.

And he asks Peter a question, "Peter, do you love me?"

(gentle music)

Notice he didn't say, "Peter, why did you fail me?"

It wasn't, "Peter, are you sorry?"

It wasn't, "Peter, do you regret what you did?"

It wasn't, "Peter, are you ready for a six-week disciplina?"

It was, "Peter, look man, do you love me?"

I remember telling God during the failing moments of my life

where the devil was trying to get me to quit.

I said, "Lord, I'm feeling this right now,

"but I still love you.

"I can't quit because I love you.

"And even if I fail a million times, I am grounded in love

"and I will continue to get back up

"and do what I am called to do

"because even if my faith is weak, my peace is weak,

"my anxiety is flaring up, fear is overtaking me,

"I love you, Lord.

"And if I love you, Lord, I will find my way back to you.

"You will find your way back to me

"because just like I love you,

"you loved me before I loved you.

"I love you, tend my sheep.

"I love you, feed my sheep.

"I love you, tend my sheep."

Three times Peter denied Jesus,

but Peter never stopped loving the Lord.

Therefore, here people of God,

love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your might.

And if you do that,

you will never depart this beautiful faith.

(congregation cheering)

Thank you, Jesus.

I want the worship team to sing

and I wanna invite you to the altars.

If you just need to have an encounter with God,

the altars are open.

If you need to repent, if you need to say,

"God, I'm sorry, but I still love you,"

this is the time to do it.

I wanna invite you this morning

to let the Lord know how much you love Him

with everything that you've got.

Yes, worship.

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on Pneuma Church,

visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

If you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe

or share it with your friends on social media

and tag us @mypneumachurch.

Thanks again and God bless.

(gentle music)

[MUSIC PLAYING]