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

Hey, this is NDEO, the pastor of Genes Church, and this is

our podcast. Thanks for tuning in. I hope that this message encourages and

inspires you in your what with God and your journey of faith. Enjoyed a

message God bless As I was just asking the Lord, I was like,

Okay, Lord, what do you want me to preach on? And I

heard the Lord say, Jazzy, I love you, and I was like,

wow, that's so great, God, thank you so much. What

do you want me to talk about when I go preach? And he was

like, Jazzy, like, don't forget that I love you. And it

was then that I realized the Lord was reminding me, like, hey,

don't forget the love of the Father, and he was bringing me back to

his love for me before I got in front of all of you guys.

And so that's kind of just what I wanted to talk about today. For

me personally, I have encountered the love of the Father in three different ways

and they all start with p didn't mean to do that, but I kind

of just came up in my head. The first one is purity, the

love of the Lord that is pure, and that was the first kind of

love that the Father ever showed me, and just the fact that I'm a

sinner but he wants to make me pures so that he can come live in

me. And the second p is personal personal love that the Father would actually

want to know me and that I'm valuable to him. And then the third

love is the pursuing love of the Father that he would still choose to pursue

me even when I rejected him. And not only that he's pursued me,

but that the love that he's poured out in me, that I am to

pursue other people with the love that he has put in me. So yeah,

I'm gonna talk about the first type of love, the pursuit of the

pure love of God, just because that's the one that marked my life the

most. And once the Lord marks you with his love, it kind of

brands you in a way that makes you dissatisfied with anything else that marks you,

so that you don't want anything less than what you've experienced with the Lord.

So yeah, I'm just gonna pray us and do it and then we'll

get into the word. So if it's okay with you, guys, I'm

just gonna share a little bit of my love story with Jesus, just because

it's totally transformed my life. So, yeah, I grew up in a

non denominal household. I grew up a Christian from the time I was like

born. Practically my parents had me grow up in the church. I was

that type of girl in Sunday school, I would come back and my dad

would pick me up and I'd be like, Dad, I received Jesus for

the twenty third time today, and I was so proud of it because I

didn't really understand I think at that age that the power and like the work

of the Holy Spirit in my life. And so that was kind of my

whole family's background, is that like we knew God and we knew that he

was great, but we didn't really the power of His spirit in our lives.

And so kind of a little off off road little turn at eight years

old, I was exposed to a lot of things unintentionally. I was exposed

to pornography, and I was exposed to a lot of things online that I

shouldn't have been as an eight year old little girl. Didn't really know what

to do with that, but I think that it planted a lot of seeds

in my life that would come up later on. And yeah, so that

was my background. I also, at eight years old, started having suicidal

thoughts. Background. I am the youngest of two oldest sisters. They are

very loud, very outgoing, and so I looked up to them. They're

four and five years older than me, and so I looked at them and

I was like, wow, I just wish I was like them. I

wish I was as outgoing as them. Nobody really seems to notice when I'm

gone, And so I started having these thoughts of like, Okay, well

if I wasn't here, maybe nobody would notice, Maybe nobody would care if

I was gone. So yeah, that was at eight years old, I

started having those thoughts. Fast forward four years later, twelve years old,

my family was introduced as the Holy Spirit, and we went to a Pentecostal

church where very Pentecostal, wearing skirts long like this, long hair, no

makeup, no jewelry, and we came in like clanging symbols with like makeup

and short hair and short skirts. But something about them was really different that

they had people like waving flags and people were speaking in a different language that

I had never heard before. And they knew God. You could tell that

the presence was different in that room than I had ever experienced before in my

life, and so that was very intriguing to me. And my family were

like, Oh, there's something more to the Christian life than Bible studies on

Wednesday nights and Sunday services and then you go home and nothing happens. There's

no transformation in your life. And so that Pentecostal church really ignited us to

search more about like, oh, way, who is a spirit? Who

is this man? And so we went to a different church because we weren't

really Pentecostal, and so we found a different charismatic church who knew a lot

about the Holy Spirit and taught us a lot about speaking in tongues and visions

and everything like that. And it was really great. I am so grateful

for the time that I had at that church. But there are also some

parts of the church that hurt me a lot, because in this church,

one could say that it was kind of a cult. A lot of unhealthy

dynamics going on in that church, and one of it was the feeling of

having to perform. And I remember being twelve years old and I would go

into church, and I was so afraid because I had put up this facade

of like, Okay, maybe if I have a vision or I say that

God told me this super cool thing, that people won't actually know that I'm

not receiving from the Holy Spirit. And I was so afraid of people seeing

through my facade. So I kind of built up this this fake identity.

And in this church, every week they would give us a verse and they

would say like, hey, go home over the week and see like what

the Lord is showing you through this verse. And then you'd come back to

church the next Sunday and you would share with like the young adults, like

your homework sharing of the week. And so every week I would come back

and I'd be like, the Lord showed me this super cool vision that I

made up in my head, and that actually didn't really happen. And I

kept on going and being fake and being fake and being fake, so that

I because I was so afraid, And that went on for three years,

three years of performing, three years of building up this facade, three years

of pretending like I was some super spiritual person, but no transformation was happening

in my life. Because I was seeking the gift and not the giver.

And that's what performance does, is that it makes us seek the thing and

not that actual person who gives a thing. And it was not producing producing

good fruit in my life. I was anxious all the time. I couldn't

hold a conversation by myself with somebody without my older sisters being there, or

without my parents or my mom and my dad being there with me, because

I was so insecure and so afraid that somebody would see past my fakeness and

see who I really was. And I hated myself, and so I just

kept on building up this facade and hating myself and building up this facade and

hating myself. And it was a cycle that kept on going and going.

And so eventually the Lord took us out of that church, thank God,

and we moved completely different states. But the thing was, I still continued

in this facade building because that was just what I was used to. Because

the Lord can take you out of a place, but it is up to

you to renew your mind and renew your thinking. And I was so stuck

in this way of like I have to perform, I'm so afraid I have

to perform that when the Lord took me out. I didn't know how to

deal with myself and be free in the reality that the Lord had given me.

And so after we moved, I was super scarred by the church and

I was like, I don't want anything to do with God, because if

all God wants is a really good performance or a really good homework sharing,

then I have nothing to give. And that's on God if he wants to

give that to me. But I'm I'm done. So I closed my Bible

and it remain closed for about two years, and I had to say face,

you know, because my family was super high up in the church where

your friends with the pastors, everybody knew. Our family went to a small

church. Everybody knew, Oh, the Wong sisters are super great. They

were see from the Lord. And so my whole life I was I was

not touching the Bible, but I was over here, yes, Lord,

raising my hands will. The Lord still still works in my life. The

Lord is still so good. But inwardly I was not. I was not.

I was just still being fake because I didn't know anything else, and

behind closed doors, I was watching pornography at the age of fourteen because those

seeds that had been planted at eight years old, had been watered by my

fakeness and by my apathy and my numbness towards the word. And so at

fourteen years old, I was struggling with addictions that no fourteen year old should

be struggling with and that was due to my fakeness. And no one expected

it from me because they were like, oh, Jazzy, she's so joyful,

she's still pure, she said, holy, her family is so great,

which was true, but it made me think like, oh, like,

I'm pretty good at being fake. Because if I'm fooling all these people

to think that I'm so joyful and so pure and doing things behind closed doors,

that means I can get away with it. And so my I neglected

my relationship with the Lord, and that grew and watered the seeds that had

been planted in me at eight years old, and it did not produce good

fruit. I s think like Durian. We've been walking around in Malaysia and

we just smelled Durian all the time, and that's what my life smelled like.

I smelled like Durian, just putting up this facade and stinking and putting

up this facade and stinking more like Durian. I still have never tried it,

and it was not pleasing. It was not a pleasing a Roman to

the Lord. And I isolated myself a lot because I was so ashamed,

and the enemy kept me in darkness because I didn't have any mentors. I

couldn't tell my family because I was ashamed. And that's what the enemy tries

to do. He tries to isolate you so that you have nobody to talk

to and keeps you in the darkness. So I struggled with that for probably

about three years, and I pushed my deliverance onto God. I was like,

God, if you want to deliver me, that's that's on you.

That's your call. I'm not going to try and like fake this anymore.

That was me pushing my deliverance on God. Was my for something real.

I was like, I faked my relationship with the Lord for so long.

I Lord, if you want to deliver me, you're gonna have to do

it, because I'm I can't do this by myself and I'm done. And

so that's what I told myself for a year or two. I was done

with religion, and I knew that God was powerful I had seen him work

in other people's lives. I had seen people fall on the floor, speak

in tongues. All of that. I knew that he was super powerful.

He could heal. I had seen it. But I didn't think he could

do it for me. Why because here I was. I was so impure,

I was so ashamed. I was like, God, you can do

it for other people, but you can't do it for me, because because

you like, I know that you see me. I know that you see

what I've been doing. I didn't know the power of the Gospel or of

the Lord's love because I hadn't encountered it for myself. I had seen it

in other people, and I believed it for other people, but not for

myself. And so at seventeen years old, my church was having a conference

for all of the youth in the church. And a little background about my

family. We love conferences, my mother and father, we love going to

the conferences in America, all the Christian conferences, all the healing conferences,

everything, and so this was just another conference. And they were like,

oh, go to conferences, they're so good. We love conferences, And

so I went because my sister was one of the chaperones, and I was

still trying to say faced right. So I was like, yeah, I'm

super spiritual. I'm going to go to this conference. And it was about

two thousand teenagers and I went in with no expectations because I was like,

there's no way I had been to all these conferences before and nothing had really

marked me, nothing had really stood out to me. It was just another

motion that I was going to go through to look good and maybe I'll like,

I'll take a testimony when I come back, because that was what I

was good at. And on one of the nights, it was a second

night of the conference, isn't A been no Maverick City Love? We Love

Maverick City. They were at this conference and they were singing super big conference,

and I was over here. I was like, WHOA, no Raverick

City And I was so excited, and they were singing the song Champion,

and so here I was like, Maverick City is super cool singing the song

Champion, And one of the lyrics of that song says that you would choose

someone like me to carry your victory, And I like, I put my

phone away for a second, and the Holy Spirit kind of like pricked my

heart and I was I asked the Lord. I was like, why would

you choose someone like me to carry your victory? Like that doesn't make any

sense. Lord, Like, you've seen me, you know what I've done.

And I think at that point I had kind of come to the end

of myself. This is like the third year of my addiction, and I

was kind of like the woman with the issue of blood. I was like,

I'm done. I've come to the end of myself. And I told

the Lord. I was like, I know that you are able to deliver

me from this, but all I need is like a little touch from you.

And at that moment, I had like a little picture in my mind

and the Lord's little pinky finger it came down and like it touched me right

in the head and I just broke down and I started crying because I felt

the love of the Father that I had never felt before, the ones that

I had seen like other people experience and cry and break down. I was

like, Wow, that's so good for them. It happened to me and

I didn't think that it could. And in my head I had thought like,

oh, I the Lord is going to touch my life and all my

addictions are going to be gone. But the reality was the Lord touched my

life to get my focus back on him, to get my gaze set back

onto his face. My addictions weren't gone, and my old patterns of thinking

were still there. But I started to believe more in in the Word and

what my identity was. And so as a byproduct of fixing my back on

Jesus, everything else looked a little bit smaller, and so obviously I wasn't

completely perfect. After that moment that night, I started to believe. And

after that conference, I was on like a spiritual high. I was like,

Wow, the Lord got my life back on track. Let's do this.

I was spending hours in my Bible every morning. I was in high

school at this point, seven seventeen years old, super excited, was praying,

was walking through the hall. The hallway is like hearing the voice of

Lord, hearing songs, and I was like, this is great. I

love this. Let's keep this up. And then I I caved, My

flesh caved in a little bit, and I lost I lost sight of Jesus

for a second because the old thoughts and old patterns came back up. And

that's what happens with temptation. Temptation makes you think like, oh, it's

it's not that bad. That's what in my head, that's what temptations sided

like, it's like, it's not that bad. And then a little analogy

that I have for you guys, let's imagine stick with me here. I'm

a really good baker. I'm not I burn every single pan of brownies that

I make. But let's imagine for a second. I have a secret brownie

recipe and they're known all across the world. I have my flour, and

I add my sugar, and I add my vanilla and eggs and whatever else

goes in brownies and chocolate chips and stuff like that, and I put the

battery in and it's super yummy. And my secret ingredient is a little bit

of dog poop. And I give it to you guys, and I'm like,

here, here's my world famous brownies. You guys have to try them,

but just so you know, there's dog poop in them. Would anybody

eat those? Okay? What if I said, I'll cut the recipe of

the dog poop in half. I'll just I'll just put like a little bit

a little bit of dog poop, but you have to try them because they're

super famous. Would anybody try them? Then? Oh good. There's always

usually like one little boy who's like, I don't try them. You wouldn't

try them. And that's what sin is is a little bit of dog poop

in your brownies. And the enemy tries to make you think it's just a

little bit of dog poop, it's just a little bit of screen time on

there. It's just a little bit of complaining. It's just a little bit

of pride. It's okay, it's not gonna contaminate the whole batter. It's

just it's just a little bit. Oh, we'll even could it. And

half it's not as much as it was over here. It's it's a little

bit less, but a little bit of dog poop is still gonna contaminate the

whole the whole batter, it's still gonna be unedible. And so that's what

the enemy was speaking to me. It's like, it's just a little bit,

It's okay, it's just one site, it's not even it's not even

that much compared to what you were doing. And so I fell into that

over and over again, and I got even more disappointed with myself because I

was like, Lord, like I had this whole, this whole revelation,

this whole like life changing experience, and now here I am again, still

falling and failing over and over again, Like what's going on? Yeah,

So I I blame myself, and I didn't realize that I need to renew

my mind. Ephesians four twenty two says, put off your old self,

which belongs to your former manner of life, and it's corrupt through deceitful desires,

and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put

on the new self created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and

holiness. And so I had been I had been renewed, I thought,

and then I kind of I didn't fortify my thoughts. I didn't change my

thoughts, and so I kept on falling over and over again. And I

didn't realize that that's what needed to happen. Was I needed to retrain my

brain to think thoughts of the Lord. And I felt unqualified to do that

because here I am a seventeen year old girl trying to rethink her whole life,

retrain her whole brain. I feel like that's like a counselor's job or

something, not a seventeen year old girl senior in high school. And so

what I started to do, which is like super common, right, I

started to read my Bible, no matter what it was. I just a

little bit of day, like five minutes a day. I started opening my

Bible again that had remained closed for years. I also did the thing where

like you put little encouraging sticky notes on your walls there and like wrote stuff

on your mirrors. And I was the girl with like a million different Bible

verses on her screen saver of her computer and her phone. And it seemed

I got really bored of that because I was like this, I'm a person

who likes fast results, and this was not producing fast results. It seems

so like so pinterest, so like I'm trying to be aesthetic, and it

wasn't. It wasn't really working, so I thought. And what I realized

was that like those little sticky notes, those little Bible verses that I was

putting on, I was training my muscles again. I was I was retraining

past in my brain and I was I felt like I was going through the

motions, but it was actually discipline and training for for retraining my my brain,

and so that when the enemy attacked me, the first thing that came

was, oh, remember that sticky note that was on my mirror the other

day. I remember that verse that I just wrote down, And so I

was I was doing that, but also it was taking my eyes off of

the problem. Those those little Bible verses and those little sticky notes were reminders

for me to lock eyes with Jesus and to keep locking eyes with Jesus in

that encounter that I had four months ago, five months ago. And so

I kept on doing sticky notes, kept on failing, and I got really

frustrated. And I remember one day I just I called out to the Lord

and I was like, God, like, what's going on. I'm so

discouraged and I can't do this anymore. And I remember the I was like

kneeling on the ground and the Lord was like, hey, lock eyes with

me. And I was like, hey, let me imagine somebody's eyes really

quick, and so like I just pictured like somebody's eyes, big brown eyes,

and I looked at them and then I looked closer at them and there

was fire in them, and he was like, these are my eyes Jasmine

like lock eyes with my eyes, And so I was looking at them and

I was like, whoa, his eyes are the only thing my brain was

trained on. And he was like, do you still want to watch porn

right now? Do you still have those thoughts anymore when you're looking at my

eyes? And I was like, no, Lord, And that moment really

marked me because I realized the importance of where my eyes were locked on.

If I was looking at my problem, that was all I was thinking about,

and I wasn't retraining my brain. But if I was locking eyes with

Jesus, that was retraining my brain. That was the new paths that were

being made. Luke eleven thirty four. Your eye is the lamp of your

body. When your eye is healthy, the whole body is full of light.

But when the eye is bad, your body is full of darkness.

Therefore, be careful lest the light in you be darkness. That was one

verse that really stick out to me because it gives importance to your eyes.

Like I know everybody says like, the eyes are the window to your soul,

but they really are the way what your eyes are focused on is what

you're thinking about. I think your eyes and your brain are connected to each

other one other. Verse we sing it in worship today, Revelation one fourteen.

The hairs this is the vision that of Jesus. Verse fourteen. The

hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His

eyes were like a flame of fire. And it goes on, but I'll

stop there. And those eyes that had the fire in them, that is,

those were the eyes that I saw. And the fire of his eyes

were purifying my heart. And so when I looked at him and all I

could see were fire, he was. The fire of his eyes was removing

whatever I had that was attached onto me and restoring my identity. It was

like, hey, all of this gets burned off, what's left is your

identity. And so I started to like understand a lite. I was like,

okay, lock eyes of juice, lock eyes of Jesus. And I

started to understand that sin was breaking eye contact with Jesus. So I was

locked eyes with Jesus. And then all of a sudden, like some other

little eyeball popped up over here, and I was like, oh, look

at that eyeball. Side eye, let's get over here. And that's when

I fell again, and I fell short again, and then I would lock

back eye back at Jesus, and I would I would remember his left for

me, and then another little I would pop up over here and be like,

oh, right, eye contact with Jesus. And so that was I

started to get that that new those new thoughts of like, Okay, this

is the dynamic of what's happening right now, and so today, not today,

but right now, I've gone three years without watching porn. That's not

because I was over here like okay, don't do this, don't do this,

don't do this, don't do this. It's because I was like,

okay, God, where are your eyes? Let me let me lock eyes.

Okay, your eyes are over here. Let me look at here,

and let me not look at what what's over here anymore. And sometimes my

distrecon and be like okay, okay, God, sorry, I I forgot

to lock ice with you. Let me let me retrain my brain. And

so slowly those new paths started to be formed in my brain, not by

focusing on my problem, but by focusing on Jesus. And something that I

heard recently was like everybody hears old Jesus, behold Jesus. And so I'm

like, yes, behold Jesus. What does that mean? And I think

behold is made up of two words be and hold, So that was the

image I got when I was beholding Jesus. I was like, Okay,

I need to draw close enough to Jesus so that I can hold his face.

How do I do that? How do I draw close to Jesus?

And I think part of that was the sticky notes that I was putting on

my dorm, like let me just constantly be renewing my mind in the word

and washing my washing my thoughts and seeing where God's eyes are because he's always

his gaze has always been on me, and he's just waiting for me to

look back at him. Because how sad is it for me to be looking

at somebody the whole time and they're not looking back at me? Super sad?

And the Lord has an invitation for us today, like hey, look

back at me, like I am I gay? This has always been on

you someone thirty nine. He saw you in your mother's room. His eyes

have always been on you. He looks at us with some one thirty nine

eyes. It's it's not judgmental eyes of like, oh you messed up.

Look at me so that you can feel bad. When I locked eyes with

Jesus in my room that one time, it wasn't judgment that I felt.

It was the same love that I felt a couple of months ago when he

had touched me with his little pinky finger. That was the same love that

I felt when I looked into his eyes. And so your gaze, where

your gaze is is super important. I think that purity is less about your

actions and more about where where your eyes are focused on. For so long

I had I had thought like, okay, I my purity is based upon

my actions, which is like you know those purity rings that people have.

I had thought like we have them in my family. And I had thought

like, okay, I can't smoke, I can't do drugs, can't have

sex, can't do all of these things. So I was like, okay,

purity is based on my actions, and it's not. Purity is based

on what your eyes are fixed. So if my eyes are fixed on my

myself and my problem is obviously like I'm gonna do all those actions. If

my eyes are fixed on Jesus I have, I'm going to be pure because

he is pure. He is a pure one. He has no shame in

his gaze, which is why I could look at his face, because that

was the only eyes that I feel like I could look at and not feel

shame, Even like looking at my parents, I was like, oh,

they're gonna they're judging me right now, even if they weren't. The Lord's

eyes are perfect and they are pure, and so his love is kind and

his love is in his eyes. And so question for you, guys,

what are you struggling with today? Then you need to lock eyes with Jesus?

For is it complaining because he has a gaze and he wants you to

look at him to be purified in his fire. Is it self control?

He wants to meet your gaze? Is it pride? He wants to meet

your gaze? Is it sickness? He wants to meet your gaze. And

if you're willing today, his gaze has already been locked on you since before

you were born. And so all it takes is like, okay, like

I'm looking at my feet, Oh they're your eyes Jesus. And if you're

willing to have him purify your heart, then he's already He's already been here,

He's already been waiting for you. And so yeah, another scripture Matthew

five, verse eight, part of the beatitudes I'm sure that we've all heard

is Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And

I know this verse can be kind of Oh, I think like for a

lot of people, this is scary. This verse is really scary because it's

like, Okay, I have to be pure before I can see God.

And I think that instead, if I can offer a alternate definition of this

verse, it's that as I see God, as I lock eyes with Him,

my heart is purified. It's not this verse is not to disqualify those

whose actions are impure, because, as we said before, your your actions

do not define your purity. But this verse is to encourage people to draw

people in so that they can see God, and then as they see God,

their hearts are purified. And so yeah, where if you were to

walk away from this my little testimony for with one thing, it would be

to ask yourself, where's my gaze? Where's my focus on? What are

my eyes looking at? Thanks for listening to this message. We hope you've

been touched and inspired by the word of God. If you have been blessed

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