Returning to First Love | Darren Rouanzoin

You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.

Good morning, 9AM. It's great to be with you, Huntington Beach. Costa Mesa, good morning. We are a few weeks into this broadcasting thing where I preach live in one location, and it's broadcasted. And I just want to say personally, I feel like I got my life back.

And I'm not recovering until Wednesday, which has been that's the reality of what I thought I had to do. And now I realized either I disappoint you because you want me in person or you love me. So it's one of those two things. And I'm going to please the Lord, and I'm going to please my wife and my kids to my best ability. Last week something happened at the 11:00 service that I just wanted to bring you into because it's weird to have two locations and different teaching.

Sometimes the Lord disrupts the service. And hopefully, you've been here when that happens. It's fun. But also, it's hard Because I was telling the people in the back, our leaders in the back this morning, I like being in control. I like having a plan and a really great curated sermon.

And I don't like the risk of looking foolish. And I don't believe that because something's spontaneous, it means it's the Holy Spirit, just so you know. I believe the Spirit of God works in liturgy. People often want to confuse the two. But last week, in between the services, a woman was wrecked by the Holy Spirit.

That's a good phrase. The Lord met with her and kept meeting with her to where we had to move her from the front because the second service was starting, and God was still meeting with her. Her testimony is beautiful, and I'm not going to share that. But in the midst of the second set of worship, I laid hands and prayed for her, and I became undone by the presence of Jesus. And in my attempt to preach what I preached to you, you heard if you were here at the 9AM broadcasted here, I wasn't able to preach that sermon.

I was undone by the presence of God. God did something else. But in the response, saw lots of spontaneous baptisms, and then we saw the power of God demonstrated in the 11:00 service in Costa Mesa in a way that I can only describe as the most powerful expression I've ever seen in our church, in a corporate gathering. We saw what I could say the event was, for me, a sign and wonder of his presence, where people were set free of evil spirits and delivered. We saw people healed.

We saw canes being put on the ground. We saw a tongue, which was frightening for many people. We've never done that on a Sunday expression, which led into worship. I said, well, it's if from the Lord, we're going to have an interpretation. And sure enough, a young man who I questioned, I'm like, have you done this before?

He's like, I've never done this before. And he said, all I heard was that Jesus is King, and he reigns forever and ever and ever. And our team was praying. And as soon as I said it, they turned. And they're like, that's what we discerned.

And it was this fear of the Lord came over the community. And it went on for hours, and it went on to the back room where our team was on their face, all to say, the Lord met us? And it's like you have these moments where, wow, God was near. And then you come back the next week, and I'm like, God, I hope you show up. But all week long, we've been met with opposition.

There's a lot I mean, without exaggeration, the most opposition we've had in many years corporately. And I believe that what we are engaged in is not fun and games. We are engaged in warfare. And the silly, demonic spirits that are trying to work against you, the fact that there's witchcraft and all sorts of things coming against communication, businesses, relationships, marriages, your life, your mindset, habits of sin. The enemy is at work.

As the kingdom of God advances, the kingdom of darkness advances. And I don't want you to be unaware. I want you to be prepared. And if you haven't learned this yet from our church, we're not a cozy consumer church. You can't be here long enough.

But once you're here long enough, you'll realize, wow, they're going to expect me to go to work with Jesus. To be Christian, in other words. I'm just trying to convince you that that's what it means to be Christian. That Jesus meant what he said, that when you wait for the Holy Spirit to come upon you, you will receive power, dunamis, to be his witnesses, martyrias, his servants and martyrs to the ends of the earth. That's not an elite call.

That's everyone's call. And some of us are called out of the comfortable places like Southern California and thrown into a war torn place like Tel Aviv. And it's our task to say, yes, and amen. We will work with you and share in your ministry and in suffering. That's the church.

And this week, as brothers and sisters have suffered, we have been disrupted by their suffering. Brothers and sisters are sleeping in places they shouldn't be sleeping, and we are disrupted by that reality. And we, as Paul, or as Peter's in prison, the church doesn't go on singing merry songs. They get on their knees and say, kingdom come. Break open these chain...

These doors and bring your Holy Spirit. And they can't believe when angels set them free. We believe in the same God. And we're at a time where I feel the Lord is pressing in, and the church needs to wake up. And I can't keep saying it enough.

And guarding Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, we have to rise to the occasion. Perhaps we might be the one that cries out at midnight, the bridegroom is coming. So it's not play games and be cozy with Jesus. There's a war, and the war is the reality that people are suffering, and we have a God who wants to comfort. We have a God who wants who wants to remind the broken.

He sees you, and his ministry is one of binding the brokenhearted. Those that are struggling peer with habitual sin, we believe that God wants to set captives free. This is what we announce. This is not what we consume. Although, let me say, all week long, I've been consuming the grace of Jesus because I don't know how to lead anymore.

This is what's been going on underneath the surface of this last year has been a threat to the faithfulness of Garden Church to Jesus Christ. And the threat is success. And all week, I've had this struggle to teach this sermon today because it's the sixth part of our miniseries. And I didn't know how it was going to go. I didn't know if I would get to it.

Didn't know if I could do it today because last week, was so disrupted. And all week, I was so disrupted. My prayers are contending prayers morning, noon, and night, nonstop for the people of God, for our people, for those that aren't here that are suffering in these communities. And the threat that we see is written about in Scripture, and it's a threat for GARDEN CHURCH to be aware of. It's a threat for your discipleship, especially in Southern California, especially in a context where we don't see the war.

If you wake up... Mean, we were getting text messages from Hannah and Nolan constantly. They slept in a bomb shelter for months. They have a... Their kids have a worldview that if you project to what Jesus teaches us is the worldview of every Christian, that we are at war.

We are living in a love story that is in the middle of a battlefield. That's great introduction, not in my notes. You can build incredible things in the name of Jesus and completely miss it. You can go to church and give and serve and lead worship services and practice the way of Jesus. You can build an emotionally healthy, purpose driven, ruthlessly eliminated, hurry life and still miss the point.

Acts chapter 19. Huntington Beach, I keep bragging about you to Costa Mesa. Let's just make sure the camera is blocked by all the Bibles in the room. A sea of scripture just flooding over here. When you...

Acts 19 · chapter mention

When I say turn to Acts, I hear a wave of pages. Costa Mesa's working on it. Love you guys. Some of you are just going back and forth to the live version. That's fine.

I know who you are. You're not judged by me. I get it. But you are judged by your peers. I'm just kidding.

Mainly the diehard Cunnington Beach people, because you take their seats. But anyways, we gladly give them up for our brother and sister at this church. Yes? Amen. Acts 19.

I'm going to start where I began six weeks ago. Verse 23. About that time there arose a great disturbance about the way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsman there. He called them together along with the workers in related trades and said, you know my friends that we received good income from this business.

And you see in here how this fellow Paul, this is perhaps the first commentary on church growth in the entire history of the world, has led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and practically the whole province of Asia. So it's the outsider saying, the church is growing like crazy. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is a danger. Not only that our trade will lose its good name, so our finances will be affected in our vocation, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited.

And the goddess herself, who is worshipped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine magistrate. And we've read this, that they went on to shout, 25,000 gather in arena and shout, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. We started this series to answer the question, what caused the riot in Ephesus? And the answer is simple, revival. It wasn't a scandal.

It was revival in the city. So many people turned from their idols that the economy began to collapse. The Bank of Asia, the seventh wonder of the world, Artemis's Temple, is discredited by a leather workers bible study. The city packs 25,000 and they cite the greatness of Artemis because the city's economy is being disrupted by the local church. This is everything I've preached the last several weeks.

Idols burned. Disciples made, the word of God spread, the spirits poured out, the Jesus stuff is done. Yeah. And the church is so alive that the city feels its impact. And I want you to hold that picture.

I want you to hold this image of a vibrant church transforming the second largest, most influential, and wealthy city in the Roman Empire, 250,000 people in that space, a city dedicated to false gods, a city dedicated to its beauty, and wealth, and prosperity, a city dedicated to the idea that to be Ephesian is to worship Artemis. I want you to hold that picture because just one generation later, the church is almost shut down. Just a couple of years later, we have the Apostle John writing a letter to Ephesus on behalf of Jesus in the book of Revelation. Could you go to Revelation chapter two? Anyone here for the Revelation series?

Oh, yeah. I wanna do a short recap of that series next fall maybe. That series changed our church. It did. Changed my life.

If you weren't with us, which Costa Mesa, none of you were with us, really. All 1,200 of you. Thank you. So glad you're here. It's a great book.

We taught verse by verse through Revelation. And what you need to know is it's not a code book about the future. It's a discipleship manual. And it's less about how it's all going to happen in the newspaper. And it's immersed in the Old Testament, over 500 references out of four zero four verses in the book of Revelation that allude to the Old Testament.

But the book is about living faithfully to Jesus now in the midst of the chaos of the world you live in. John writes this as an epistle, as a letter to encourage seven churches in Asia Minor. And he writes in Revelation chapter two verse one this, from Jesus speaking to the church. He says, to the angel of the church in Ephesus write, these are the words of him who holds the seven stars in the right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work, your perseverance.

I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people. You have tested those who claim to be apostles, but are not. And I found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardship for my name, and have not grown weary. Amen.

It it starts off with the the one who holds the seven stars. Behind Caesar's throne were seven stars because the astrology of the... That they they believe that the stars held the fate of the cosmos, and every king wanted to harness the stars, but it's Jesus who holds them in his hand. And the seven lampstands, we find out, are the seven churches. And Jesus doesn't stand at a distance among the churches waiting for them to mess up.

No. He's walking amongst the lampstand. Where is he in your suffering? He's right next to you. That's the difference between every other religion and Christianity.

That pain doesn't discredit the presence of God. No. He enters into our pain, and he's got scars to prove it. Is that good news for somebody? Yes.

He speaks to Ephesus, this church that we just read the origin story. For six weeks, we've been talking about the impact of one local church that sets the pilot episode for all future revival stories being played out in the world. This beautiful, passionate story of God capturing the heart of a community, and it lighting a fire that doesn't stop burning, or apparently it does, within one generation. And it lists out all the things I hope one day Jesus could say about GARDEN CHURCH, that we persevered, that we endured and we didn't grow weary, that we called out false teaching and doctrine, that we had the best programs. That we were popular, and we were liked, and our music was amazing, and people came from all over because they loved all the things that the church did.

That's that's not a good thing. He says, I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Let's pause there. There's a Greek word here that says, you've forsaken the love you had at first.

That forsaken, that means to leave behind. It's the same family of Greek words that's used for the disciples when they drop their nets to follow Jesus. You have faded away. You've drifted. It's not that your love was stolen in a moment.

It's that you casually allowed the fire to go out through neglect. Somewhere between the bonfire and the board meetings, between the Sunday gatherings and the Wednesday morning carpool drop off, Ephesus left the love that it had at first the way fishermen leave their nets to follow Jesus. How does that happen? How does it happen? How does a church that starts with spirit and devotion and a city uproar lose?

Hannah introduced me to my wife. I was 19 years old. Alex was 18 years old. We had an intro to theology class together, and I invited Hannah to come to MacArthur Park with me to serve homeless on Saturday. Because that's what I did as a college student, I served homeless for years.

And I said, hey, do you think you can invite Alex? Didn't look in her eyes and say, will you come with me? I didn't have that courage like my son. We went on our first date, someone had to give me gas money because I didn't have a job. And I paid for coffee with coins.

This is our origin story. We went to Laguna Beach, and I confessed my love for her. No, I just sat watching the water, talking about all sorts of nonsense. And when you fall in love, you lose track of everything. Like, time is...

What is time? It's 3AM. And back then, there wasn't text messaging, really. It was AOL, instant messenger. And I know, I'm millennial.

Like, computers were hard lined. We didn't have WiFi. We had LAN, ethernet cables. Remember that? AOL dial up.

Remember that? I was in fourth grade when that happened. But there I am, 3AM, asking all sorts of nonsense because that's what you do when you're in love. Get married at 22 and 21 and then start a church, a missional church project called the Long Beach Project, ten months into our marriage. And everything else was perfect after that.

I wrote her poetry and sonnets and prayers. I drove for hours to drop off flowers just to... I reorganized my life around this woman I fell in love with. Because that's what you do when you get in love. And then life happens.

You have kids. You move more times than you can count the burden of trying to be a church pastor when you have no sense of identity in the first place. Nobody should be 23 planting a church. That's just negligence. My brain wasn't fully formed according to science.

It's science. You parent through COVID? I love all the singles that went through COVID. I know we all had different experience, but try parenting during COVID. Yes.

They taped off the playground, son. And you can't walk this nature trail because it's illegal. Nope. Can't go to the beach in LA. You'll go you'll get arrested.

Let's just make this the hardest season of your life even harder. And if anyone's been married, you know how it happens. The passion of love gets replaced with the burden of duty. You become partners, and roommates, and co parents, and everything but lovers. And nobody decides to do this.

It just happens. Somewhere along the way, you lose sight of the thing that started it all, and you can't just drift your way back to love. You have to find you need help to find your way back. So many of the stories in the Old Testament, Moses is preparing the people of God for the land of promise, in Deuteronomy, he says over and over again, remember. I was talking to Hannah last night that all of Israel, they practiced the rituals found in the Old Testament.

They may not believe or have faith in God, but they have these habits of liturgies. And all of the liturgies of the Jewish faith are to remember what God did. Moses writes in Deuteronomy eight:two, remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness. He calls them to remember, because I love what Walter Brueggemann, the great Old Testament theologian, says. He says, prosperity breeds amnesia.

The desert is where you're formed. The wilderness is where you learn dependence. And as you step into the land flowing with milk and honey, as you step into success, as you step into prosperity and abundance, and all of a sudden the temptations are not temptations. They're just a way of life in Orange County. You forget.

Ephesus was successful. It grew. The programs got better. The kids ministry got dynamic. The small group program reached every life stage.

They had a strategy for the Artemis crowd. They were doing all the right things. But according to Jesus, the church became habit, duty, practice, and a job. The work was done, listen to this, without love. Jesus was never after your good deeds.

He was always after your heart. And throughout scripture, our relationship with God is revealed to us as a bride and a groom. And it's hard for us to imagine this, but there's so much bridal language in the Old Testament. We just kind of miss this altogether. The love you had at first is bridal language.

The groom reminding his bride. I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you love me. This is Jeremiah's passage to Israel, when Israel was not faithful. There's this constant narrative in the scripture of getting back to the love that you had at first, that God is like a lover wooing his bride. Have you ever read the story of Hosea?

It's brutal. Let me just give you it in a nutshell. Can I do this real quick? And then we'll go back. God told a prophet to go marry a woman who would cheat on him over and over again because she was a prostitute.

And he told this prophet to name their kids, No Mercy and Not My People, so that Israel could see at Hosea's dinner table the picture of Israel. He embodied the story Israel was living. His wife left him, Gomer. She chased lovers. And in her mind, she thought those lovers were paying for the bread and the wine and the oil, only to come find out that it was actually Hosea paying for it all along.

In her rebellion, he provided her care. Isn't that Ephesus? The beginning of Ephesus is Acts 19, a pagan city pursuing false gods. And Paul shows up, and the church reveals all of this oil has been provided by the Father in heaven who loves you. And they get wooed back to Jesus.

And as a result, they come. They're like, all the false gods we've worshiped, we're going to burn it on a bonfire no more. We're passionate. We're going to go for it. We're all in.

And it's like a wave of love. It's texting at 3AM. AIM at 3AM. It's sonnets. Yes.

Shakespearean sonnets as a 19 year old for an 18 year old girlfriend, because that's what you do when you study Shakespeare as an actor. You quote the poets. You pour out your love because that's what it looks like when you're infatuated. But somewhere along the way, you've made it duty. You've made it practice.

You don't have five minutes for the love of the Creator of the universe who's given you everything, and instead you forsake love for duty. And in Hosea, there's a section of scripture that should undo... It undoes me. It's this moment where God gives a list of all the things that are going wrong. And he's like, therefore...

And if you're like me, you just expect the just punishment you deserve. Yes. I've done all these things wrong. You caught me. Give me the punishment.

I will be the best one you've ever punished. Hosea two fourteen. God speaks about the adulterous woman in the story, which is really about the people of God. And he says, therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. That word allure in Hebrew means entice.

I will woo her back. It's not punishment she gets. It's the wooing love of a husband who speaks tenderly. I will speak to her heart. It's the voice of a husband who has decided he's not going to live without his wife.

And he takes her back to the wilderness, the one place where she had nothing but him. And he gives her back her vineyards, this is Hosea, and turns the Valley Of Achor, which is the valley of trouble, into a door of hope. And then he says, You'll no longer call me Lord. You will call me husband. And then chapter three, he goes back and he buys her back for 15 shekels, a sack of barley, because that was the price she thought she was worth.

Less than the price of a slave. Church, when Jesus speaks to the church in Ephesus, he says, verse four, I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider... This is the next part.

He doesn't leave it with a diagnosis. He provides a solution. No. He provides the way back. Is anyone here longing for that love, that rekindled flame you had for God at one point in your life?

There was a season where, like, man, I was so on fire. Heard his voice. I felt his nearness. It marked the season. Is anyone here feeling like, Oh, I wish I could go back.

I wish... Some of you don't even know what I'm talking about. The way I'm talking about the love of God, you're used to religion. You don't even realize that what we're here doing is trying to cultivate a blind date for you. Trying to set you up.

Yeah, I'll go to MacArthur Park so you can have this. Twenty three years later, it will be twenty years in June, married to my bride. And it has not been all easy. There's been so much suffering and so many things that have come against our relationship, but God is wooing us back to each other. Is anyone here wanting to rekindle their love for God?

Is anyone here wanting to see Jesus light the flame again? Consider how far you have fallen. That word consider is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word remember. Remember. In the Greek, means keep.

On remembering. I want you to think about that because this is written forty years after the story of Acts 19. So when Jesus says, remember, we go back to Acts 19, and we look at the origin story of the vibrant church that begins. This passionate love, extraordinary miracles. Remember when they would give up their siestas to study the word for five hours?

Do you remember when we had to come up with a new category of miracles because it was just like aprons and handkerchiefs were setting demons free? Do you remember that? Do you remember when we smelled the burning of scrolls that one night that began with a small group and it turned into a massive city bonfire. Do you remember the smell of our idolatry being burnt away for our devotion to God? Remember the story.

For all of you, you have these testimonies. And what happens to me is I come into the presence of God. As soon as I got into pre service prayer, I couldn't make it to the front to pray. I had to get on my knees because I was remembering this week. The woman that was set free, the generosity given away.

This week, we've seen so many things. We saw the fire of God. I'm remembering my friend who's unlawfully held. I'm remembering all sorts of pain this week, and how God is ministering as we pray. I'm remembering what God's doing.

I'm creating a dependence for him. I remember that at Vanguard last week, a wrestler who looked so strong and tough was about to get baptized and began to weep. And he said, I don't have to do it alone anymore. That was last Sunday as this whole wrestling team stood in our church witnessing their brother as he went into the waters of baptism. Brothers and sisters, do you remember all the things that God has done for you?

If not, can I give you one to remember? That you were worthy just by yourself of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross so that you could live for eternity with him the way you were intended to live in the first place. That's enough to rekindle whatever. Wet wood is inside of you right now. He keeps going.

I'm going get through this. I got time. Good. This is good. I'm not qualifying the quality of the sermon.

I'm qualifying getting through it. There you go. He says, Repent. There's three things that he gives you to help you along the way. The first is to remember.

The second is to repent. That word repent is metanoia, and in the Greek, it means to change your mind. In the Hebrew it means to return or to turn away from. You're headed in this direction. Turn this direction.

This is the path you are walking, and now you're you're given a chance to get your heart back. Church, I can't help but think that this is probably the biggest thing we need to do as a corporate community, is repent together. You know what happens? I'm going just share share with you what I think is happening in the room. The moment a pastor who's preaching the word of God in a room that honors the resurrected Christ says the word repent, some of us, like, feel this religious spirit come up, like, Some of us are immediately thinking of things.

Did you notice that? That as soon as I said repent, there's a couple of things that popped into your mind that have come up over and over again in your life that you're like, oh, I might need to repent of this? Do you know what I'm talking about? Like right now, even as I'm talking right now, I want to see your heads nod. Costa Mesa would be like, yes, they're big time sinners.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. They're obsessed with grace. You should be too. My people, I love you guys.

I want to see the heads nod. Right now, as I say, repent. Is there a conversation with somebody that you're like, I didn't talk to them with the right tone? There's something you did that nobody saw, a blurring of the lines, a lingering too long, a scroll that led to pornography, that right now, the Holy Spirit is convicting you of to give you the bull's eye for getting back to your first love. This isn't a religious act.

This is an invitation to live in a constant state of repentance. Repentance is not like a one time stop. It's the hallway I live in. That's That's good, Darren. That's good.

I live constantly in the state of having to apologize, first to God and then to all the people I hurt. And the humility of Christianity is that we are met with grace. So therefore, we live towards one another with grace and forgiveness. But right now, here's what I know what's happening. God is moving.

God is moving all over the world. And he's going to use a container for his purposes. He's going to use the church. He's going to and the container that we need to be is a pure heart. And what happens is we are in moments where the presence of God is very powerful and clear.

The gathered church is a space where God inhabits. Yes, he's everywhere, of course. But there's a manifest presence. And when the word is preached, when the communion is received, when the worship is honoring to God, and when the ministry of the Holy Spirit is given freedom, there are things that begin to bubble up. And I need you to see this, that right now, are things that he's saying, just turn.

He's drop air dropping right now. Are you writing them down? Like, I'm talking, and I have this playback with Jesus right now, and he's convicting me as I'm preaching. He's like, you didn't get this one on your... I had to do two prayer walks this morning.

What does that mean? My heart was so torn with all sorts of things that were going on this week, in ways that I wasn't the best version of myself. So I did one, and I was like, all right, I'm going shower and get ready and make breakfast. He's like, you're not done. So I went on another walk.

And I spent most of the morning confessing and repenting. And is this Okay? I'm trying to give you real time. Because if not, it's like this. Have you ever got in a fight with your spouse and then went on a date night?

My friend Preston Morrison from... What's the church called? Church. Pillar Church, yep, in Scottsdale. He shared this analogy with me this week.

And it was so good, and it's so true. Have you ever been on a date night with your wife, and you've gotten a fight, and then you show up, and as the man, you're just like, let's get on with it. But she's giving you that look. Like, you can't move on with the date until you address the thing. Yes?

And so many of you are so distracted, and God is right now giving you the look. And it's not Okay now, penance and a world of lectures. He's not going to punish. He's like, just God, I blew it again. I blew it again against you and against so and so.

Will you forgive me? Of course. Now move on. You're not going to get that first love stuff until your heart has been made right with the Lord. He has canceled your sin 100% as far as the east is from the west.

He has separated your transgressions against him. He is all after you. But we turn to the Lord. You want to recover your heart? You've got to deal with that stuff so that you can get on with the date night.

Yeah? Third thing. Last one. And then we'll figure out how to end the... Laying the plane or crash it.

Either way. We'll touch ground. Either way, it's good. Want some fire? I don't I don't know.

So grateful to Jesus right now. I'm just having this weird dialogue with him. He's just so pleased. He says, Repent and do the things you did at first. Do the things you did at first.

Return to the things that you did. So if you want to find your way back to the love that you had at first, remember, repent, and return. This is not about manufacturing feelings. This is about getting back to the place where fire was started. And I think it's really fascinating because if this is spoken to Ephesus, then you go back to the origin story and what do you have?

You have these people that are baptized in the Holy Spirit. They're disciples of Jesus. They're studying the word of God. They're doing the mission of Jesus. They're caring for the poor.

They're casting out demons. They're healing the sick. They're organizing their lives together in a way where the church is just growing. So how do you get back? Well, brothers and sisters, I find it fascinating that the church doesn't have a quiet time.

How are you going to have a loving relationship with your spouse if you don't spend time with them? This is how silly it is. Shouldn't we at some point just be obsessed with the person we're in love with? So what was it? I mean, it's so funny.

I have these friends that did YWAM when they were young. And for many people that do YWAM, those were the glory days of their life with Jesus. That's when they had the most vibrant relationship, and then the rest is always pointing back to the glory days. Do you know what I'm talking about? I actually think in the kingdom of God, every new morning is the potential for the glorious day.

And there's a way to walk out our faith. And I don't want to give you a bunch of lists of things to do because I love the lists. Like, there was a big conflict in my relationship with Alex when she was going through so many things, And she was suffering. She was bedridden because she had hyperemesis with Ezra and Amos when she was pregnant with both kids, which made her be bedridden. And I remember there was a point because I just felt like, I'll do all the things you used to do and all the things that I do, and that's how I love you.

And I remember after months of this, she's like, I just don't feel like you get it. I'm like, what don't I get? She's like, I don't need you to do all this. I just need you to sit with me. They went and said that to their spouse.

I really have learned to love Jesus. I love him. And in our world right now, there's a threat to what's possible for GARDEN CHURCH. And one of the things that disrupted the sermon last week was I just felt this conviction that I don't want to build a church that doesn't look like Jesus. And how do you prevent that?

Because it's not like one day our staff and our elders are like, we're not going to look like Jesus anymore. We're done with that. We're going to convince we're going to lead everyone astray and build an empire and start the con... How do you get there? It's it's the slow drift.

And what Jesus says to the church in Ephesus is, if you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. You will lose your ability to witness to the world. You will no longer be a witness. You will retire your witness while you still meet in my name. And this is what convicted me all week, just this one line that perhaps there's so many of us living the Christian life in The United States that are so busy with activity, but we no longer have witness.

If you look at Ephesus today, there's a lonely column for the Temple Of Artemis, all sorts of great cathedrals that are completely empty of any congregation, and Turkey's 98% Muslim. So this whole series, we burn the idols, we followed as disciples, we studied the word, we filled the spirit, We are filled with the spirit. We did the stuff. And the last revelation is that every one of those five things become machinery without the love of Jesus in our hearts. Idol burning becomes performance.

Discipleship becomes self improvement. Bible study becomes trivia, spiritual gifts become a brand, and revival becomes a product. And it's in Acts 19 verse four that I leave for you that the whole thing is lit ablaze in this one line. Verse four, Paul says, John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, and here's everything that starts it.

That is in Jesus. Brothers and sisters, this is perhaps the most important thing to understand about the revival that took place. It's always been about Jesus. Because Jesus is the baptizer. Jesus is the disciple maker.

Jesus is the word of God. Jesus is the healer. Jesus is the deliverer. Jesus is the idol breaker. And Jesus is revival.

This series is summarized, and all of Acts is summarized that in Jesus period, full stop. That's what we're about. That the church needs to find its way back to first love devotion. And the threat right now is the success of a growing church without your heart being lit ablaze for Jesus Christ. And we're gonna do this.

This is the thing. It's just gonna... We've never had momentum. And now people show up and we think that God's here because there's a crowd. No.

I will not. I will not credit God for crowds. We want his presence. And it's... We're not counting people.

We're weighing the kingdom. Because there are places around the world right now where there is very few people, and the weight of his presence and the impact is so substantial, and there are massive communities that have lost the very witness of Jesus Christ because their hearts are so far away, and Jesus wakes up the church and says gently and loud, repent. Turn away. And if you're here and you're constantly struggling with the same sin and the same brokenness and the same distraction, can I say take a different road? I just wanna figure out how to not lust on my phone.

Get your Internet off your phone. Hebrews says you haven't been tested or tempted to the point of bleeding. The point is you haven't even got to the point where you're on a cross. So sure, if you wanna be casually messing around to use the Old Testament language and the New Testament language, if you wanna sleep around with other gods, go for it. But I'm sold out for Jesus.

So to end the series, the mini series, as we step into the rest of Acts, which we've got a long way to go. It's great. You've got to find Jesus. This is how I want to end it. There's all these people in the New Testament when Jesus was walking that just found a way to Him.

And I'm done trying to give you, here's three steps to a greater devotional life. Forget that. Be the woman that brings the alabaster jar and is willing to sit among Pharisees and be ridiculed and judged as she pours out her devotion. Be the woman who breaks to the crowd as an unclean woman bleeding for twelve years and grabs his freaking robe. Yeah.

I said freaking. Grabs his robe to get as close as possible. Be the ridiculously offensive and smelly leper who doesn't hold his mouth down and shout unclean, but falls to Jesus in mercy begging for a word and is met by an embrace as he announces what a priest can announce in a temple, clean. I don't know what you need to do, but I do know Jesus is wooing you. He's wooing his church because he's a groom looking for his bride, and brothers and sisters, he will dress us in white.

So can we stand?

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