GIVING IT YOUR ALL
HEART
[JESUS FREAKS PAGE 288]
-it’s a simple story, a little girl, only 5, but what were on her and her Dad’s hearts? Telling people about Jesus.
-that little girl at five, her whole life should have been about having fun, playing with dolls, being loved by her family, and instead it was filled with worry and fear, but instead of focusing on that worry or fear, her whole life, all that she had, was devoted to Jesus.
-this retreat is based on one verse that focuses on that. If you can’t read it in your book, look on your shirts:
**Mark 12:30 -> 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. (NCV)
-the way this statement came up, Jesus was in a debate with some Sadducees about people being raised from the dead. So, Jesus told them what would happen and it says one of the teachers there liked His answer, so he decided to ask Jesus another question. He asked Jesus which commandment was most important. Out of the 613 laws given to Moses by God, which one is number one.
-Jesus’ answer is found in Deut. 6. It’s called the Shammah. The Hebrew people were to say this every morning and many still do. It starts by saying the Lord our God is One. Basically, there are no other gods, there is no one else, there is one God and He alone is the true God. The next verse takes the focus off of God and onto what we should do with that knowledge. Love God with all that is in us.
-because really, after those four things, what else is there? What other part to you is there besides your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, your physicality?
-there’s nothing! God is asking that we give everything that is us to Him.
**Deut. 11:13-14 -> 13If you carefully obey the commands I am giving you today and love the Lord your God and serve Him with your whole being, 14then He will send rain on your land at the right time, in the fall and spring, and you will be able to gather your grain, new wine, and oil. (NCV)
-we are supposed to be serving God with our whole being, all that is in us, every part of us.
-we’re not supposed to give God our mind, believe in Him, but then not our body, don’t serve people or help them. We’re not supposed to give Him our soul, be emotionally happy or feel His presence, but then not show people love. We’re supposed to be giving all of it to Him.
-that verse we just read, huge! And I mean huge. Anthropologists see it as a turning point in history right there. See, before that verse, you have all sorts of peoples and tribes who believe in all sorts of gods. Now how do you make gods happy? Sacrifices. You offer food or children or something. Now here’s a big problem. If you don’t have enough, if you have a bad year, the gods are mad at you, so you do what? Give them more. If you have a good year the gods are smiling on you and need to be thanked for that. How? Give them more.
-so here we have Israel, what does God tell them? He gives them a list of sacrifices and what they’re worth. Suddenly people know how to please God, what He wants. How much. It’s a total change in how people view God.
-then, in the middle of that, you have a tiny little verse that changes it even more. Obey the commands, but also serve Him with your whole being.
-we talked about it in NewSong last week if you were there. Before, people could give these sacrifices but you didn’t really need to be sorry or feel anything. God wants more than hollow footsteps following what He says. He wants all of you, not just rituals.
-so what does that mean? Give God everything? How? Why? Those are the types of things we’ll be talking about this weekend.
-because this is what we want, you to have the best relationship with Jesus you possibly can. I know sometimes I can seem like I’m pushing people a little, but it doesn’t help me. It’s not like I’m going to get to heaven and there’s going to be a big tally board showing how many people Troy helped serve in church. And even then, I can’t do it for you. All I can do is tell you why I think you should and help all I can.
-we are supposed to give ourselves completely to God so that He can make us completely whole.
**I Thess. 5:23 -> 23May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. (MSG)
-that’s what everyone wants, right? Look at our world, there are tons of people spending tons of money on anything and everything to make them whole.
-and that’s we want for you, nothing more.
-we want you to be closer to Christ for this simple reason, we want you to be closer to Christ. God wants to be close to you and we want you to experience that as best you can.
**James 4:8a -> 8Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. (NASB)
-God wants to be close to you. He wants to have that amazing relationship that you can’t have with anybody else, only Him.
-so we want to look at these areas of your life and how you can draw near to God in them.
-Jeremiah was told this by God:
**Jer. 29:13 -> 13You will search for Me. And when you search for Me with all your heart, you will find Me! (NCV)
-so that’s why we start with the heart.
1. GOD WANTS YOUR HEART
-one real obvious reason why we should give God our hearts, God wants our hearts.
-in the book of Joel god is describing how the enemies of Israel want to take over them and attack them like locusts, a big grey cloud of ugly grasshoppers that destroy everything in their path. And after saying that, He says this:
**Joel 2:12 -> 12That is why the Lord says, “Turn to Me now, while there is time. Give Me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning.” (NLT)
-how do we turn to God, we give Him our hearts.
-the love that you can possibly feel from your heart for anybody or anything, God wants you to give that to Him.
-that may seem like a lot to ask, but think about it. If you were dating someone, would you want them to be thinking about other guys and girls or would you want them to be thinking about you?
-of course God wants your heart. In our society it’s where we think love originates from, and what is God? Love! If you want proof read I John tonight.
-but how do we give God our heart?
2. LET GOD CLEAN YOUR HEART
-there’s a reason why whenever a relationship with God starts people always start with forgiveness.
-God is a Holy God. He is perfect. He is pure. He is spotless. There is no trace of anything evil or wrong anywhere in God’s being.
-so to have a relationship with God, we have to likewise be spotless and pure or else we would be making Him unholy.
-this is the reason for all the sacrifices we mentioned before. They were done to make people pure for God. Sin equals death. I have sinned, so God let something die in our place, a nice little goat.
-but now we don’t need to worry about that because Jesus died in our place and is willing to clean our hearts.
-this caused so many problems while Jesus was on earth because people just didn’t get it, they thought that by doing what they were supposed to they were made clean and somehow then knew God, but Jesus came to give it as a gift to us, forgiveness and a relationship with God.
**Col. 1:13-14 -> 13God has freed us from the power of darkness, and He brought us into the kingdom of His dear Son. The Son paid for our sins, and in Him we have forgiveness. (NCV)
-Jesus wants us to be forgiven and be made completely pure for His Father.
-this is one of the best ways we can give our hearts to God and why we always talk about forgiveness. Without it that relationship with Jesus would not be possible at all. We’d still have to go through intermediaries, somebody who is blameless and sinless to talk to God for us. And I ain’t sinless so I would be visiting that guy a lot.
-and after your heart has been made clean, God can be a part of your life and live in your heart.
3. INVITE GOD TO LIVE IN YOUR HEART
-yes, it’s a metaphor, God doesn’t set up shop, put His stereo in the corner, put a little bookcase in your left ventricle, His Spirit resides in us with our spirit.
**Eph. 3:17-18 -> 17And I pray that Christ will make His home in your hearts through faith. I pray that you may have your roots and foundation in love, 18so that you, together with all God’s people, may have the power to understand how broad and long, how high and deep, is Christ’s love. (GNT)5. WHAT YOU TREASURE IS IN YOUR HEART
-whatever you find to be important or totally valuable to you, that’s what is in your heart, be they good or bad!
**Matt. 12:35 -> 35A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. (NLT)
-if you want to be a good person, if you want to live a good life, you have to be careful what is stored in your heart.
-I know you’ve all heard it before, garbage in, garbage out, but it’s true. If all you do is watch videos on the internet of people being brutally murdered and sitting in your bedroom alone in the dark thinking of all the people you hate, you just might turn out to be a serial killer.
-in Luke Jesus is talking to a whole bunch of people about this when He talked about money. Money’s a real easy one because if you want to know what people love, watch where they put their money, but also because it’s easy to fall in love with money and have it at the center of your heart.
-and now with all the internet banking, account info sent to your phone, it’s really easy to have money in your heart. But when talking about it, Jesus ended His little sermon with this:
**Luke 12:34 -> 24For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (NIV)
-so here’s the big question, do you treasure God in your heart? Do you treasure other things as well and they take over?
-there was a song by Creed, how we miss them, that said the little line, “What controls your heart controls your eyes.” It’s true. What do you focus on? What do you read? Watch on TV? Websites do you go to? For some of you guys, it’s ESPN, ESPN Magazine, ESPN and ESPN. So where does your heart lie then?
-we have to focus on God, get our hearts chasing after Him, get Him to fill us up. Then:
6. WE NEED TO LIVE LOVE
-I’ve said it before and I’ll say it so many times you’ll get sick of hearing it. If Christ is really God and He really can forgive sins and He really is love, and if He really is as great as we say He is, why is there not a line of people at the door to our church Sunday morning?
-are we showing God’s love?
-can you imagine knowing inside you how vast, how grand, how immensely huge God’s love is? Yet that’s what Paul is saying here he prays for all those who believe in Christ, that He would live in our hearts so we could know God’s love fully.
-wouldn’t the church be a much different place if we all felt that way, if we all had Christ’s love in us? What a crazy thought...
-and another thing. If God is in your heart, He will be the focus of your heart. So try living your lives focusing on God.
4. FOCUS ON GOD
-I remember hearing a woman speak years ago. She described the church as a woman in a dirty wedding dress. We as the church are the bride of Christ (if you read my blog last week), and she was saying how we have sin, how we aren’t perfect, so we are in a dirty wedding dress, full of grass stains, smears, dirt. And no woman wants to get married in an ugly, dirty wedding dress. So what do we do? We try to clean the dress. We try to scrub the stains out but it only makes things worse.
-you know when those stains start to disappear, when we start to think about our Spiritual Husband, when we start to focus on Christ.
-in psychology it’s called a shame spiral. You do something wrong. You feel bad about it, guilty. So what happens? You start to think a lot about what you did wrong, thinking how you’re not good enough. You end up doing it again because the only thing on your mind is what you did wrong. And that makes you feel worse. So now you’re thinking even more about how bad you are and what you did wrong. With it always on your mind, what do you do? You do it again. And it’s just never ending until you get your heart focused on something else.
-we have to be careful to keep our hearts focused on good things.
**Luke 21:34 -> 34Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. (NIV)
-God doesn’t want your hearts to be weighed down. He created you. He loves you. He wants what’s best for you. He wants you feel life in it’s fullness.
-you have to keep your heart focused on God because whatever you hold dear, that’s where your heart goes.
**I Pe. 3:15a -> 15But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. (NIV)
5. WHAT YOU TREASURE IS IN YOUR HEART
-whatever you find to be important or totally valuable to you, that’s what is in your heart, be they good or bad!
**Matt. 12:35 -> 35A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. (NLT)
-if you want to be a good person, if you want to live a good life, you have to be careful what is stored in your heart.
-I know you’ve all heard it before, garbage in, garbage out, but it’s true. If all you do is watch videos on the internet of people being brutally murdered and sitting in your bedroom alone in the dark thinking of all the people you hate, you just might turn out to be a serial killer.
-in Luke Jesus is talking to a whole bunch of people about this when He talked about money. Money’s a real easy one because if you want to know what people love, watch where they put their money, but also because it’s easy to fall in love with money and have it at the center of your heart.
-and now with all the internet banking, account info sent to your phone, it’s really easy to have money in your heart. But when talking about it, Jesus ended His little sermon with this:
**Luke 12:34 -> 24For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (NIV)
-so here’s the big question, do you treasure God in your heart? Do you treasure other things as well and they take over?
-there was a song by Creed, how we miss them, that said the little line, “What controls your heart controls your eyes.” It’s true. What do you focus on? What do you read? Watch on TV? Websites do you go to? For some of you guys, it’s ESPN, ESPN Magazine, ESPN and ESPN. So where does your heart lie then?
-we have to focus on God, get our hearts chasing after Him, get Him to fill us up. Then:
6. WE NEED TO LIVE LOVE
-I’ve said it before and I’ll say it so many times you’ll get sick of hearing it. If Christ is really God and He really can forgive sins and He really is love, and if He really is as great as we say He is, why is there not a line of people at the door to our church Sunday morning?
-are we showing God’s love?
**I Pe. 1:22 -> 22You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. (NLT)
-it’s not a request. If we truly have Christ in us, if He is in our hearts, people will want to talk to us, people will want to be around us, people will want to spend time with us because they will feel loved. They will feel God’s love simply by being in our presence because we will be exuding love.
-and here’s the other kicker, don’t wait until you feel loving.
-I hate that. “Why don’t you serve God?” “I don’t feel like serving today.” Oh really, poor baby. I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life where I went, “Woo! Dirty dishes, please, let me serve you and clean them for you!”
-but I know a lot of you know that if you start to do it, you start to feel good and then you want to do it more. Loving people is the same way. God doesn’t say love people when I make you feel like it. He says love people. And in doing so we will get closer to God and want to do it more. We will be more filled with Him and His love and then have more love to give and it’s a never ending growing cycle.
**I Thess. 3:12-13 -> 12And may the Lord make your love for one another and for all people grow and overflow, just as our love for you overflows. 13May He, as a result, make your hearts strong, blameless, and holy as you stand before God our Father when our Lord Jesus comes again with all His holy people. Amen. (NLT)
-see it? May your love overflow, and as a result, your hearts will be strong, blameless and holy. By loving, you will get to know Christ more. Instead of waiting for God to fill you with His love, go out and love, and magically it will fill your heart more and more.
**II Thess. 3:5 -> 5May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ. (NLT)
[HEARTS IN BOOK, LEFT WHAT YOU TREASURE NOW, RIGHT WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO TREASURE]
