Zeal for Christ - Finding Your Way Back with Rhonda Stoppe

Zeal for Christ -  Finding Your Way Back with Rhonda Stoppe
Remember when your zeal for Christ captivated your very existence? Life can pull you away and before you know it that passionate flame becomes but a distant memory. Do you ache to find your way back to a place of intimacy with Christ? This short and powerful workshop will show you how.

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Transcript

ZEAL FOR CHRIST - Finding Your Way Back with Rhonda Stoppe 
[00:00:00]:
Today, I am going to talk to you about, finding your way back to zeal for Christ. And I don't wanna waste 1 minute cause I've got a lot to say in the short amount of time that I have here. Finding your way back to Christ. You know that time when you were so near to Jesus, you were never gonna wander away. You were always gonna be close to him. You were gonna be intimate with him for the rest of your life because you loved Jesus. Maybe it was right after you came to Christian, maybe it was after you went to a woman's retreat. I just spoke at amazing women's event, this last weekend and women make a commitment to pursue Jesus in a personal and intimate way and then life gets in the way.

Rhonda Stoppe  [00:00:37]:
Right? I remember being in that situation and you know who somebody else that was near to Jesus was the apostle Paul. I'm sorry, back up. Apostle Speaker, the apostle Speaker, he was so near to Jesus and yet when Jesus said that he was going to die, Peter was like, oh, no, you're not. And he said, I won't let that happen. And what did Jesus say to him? Get thee behind me, Satan. Like, what now? This is the apostle Peter who hung out with Jesus all the time, and he put his foot in his mouth again. And then Jesus told him, Peter, Satan wants to sift you like wheat. And I wish so bad that Jesus would have said, but I'm not gonna let him, but Jesus didn't say that.

Rhonda Stoppe  [00:01:15]:
He said, but I have prayed for you. Wow. And then Jesus said when he comes back, he was going to build his church. And I am here to tell you that sometimes those times that we fail Christ, those times when we feel that we could not believe we did or didn't do the thing that we promised we were never gonna do or always gonna do, that we fall on our face, sometimes it breaks our pride and God says, you know what, I resist the proud, but I give grace to the humble. I love knowing that when Jesus resurrected, the first thing he told, Mary was no tell the disciples and Peter that I'm alive. Jesus came after him. Where was Peter? He was hiding and then he went fishing. Because sometimes when we fail Christ, we go back to what we know we're good at.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:01:59]:
Right? And Peter was a good fisherman. So where do we find Peter? In his boat fishing and Jesus on the shore. And when Peter sees him, he jumps in the water and he swims to Jesus. Sometimes, it takes us falling on our face before we're ready to know I can't live this Christian life on my own. I can't be religious enough or good enough. I will let people down. I'm going through that right now. I've let someone down and I can't let myself off the hook and I'm dealing with that regret, the no regrets woman, of just not measuring up to someone's expectations.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:02:34]:
That just kills me. And yet Speaker ran to Jesus and he said, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And then Peter was ready to be the leader of the church because he had been humbled even in his own failure and sometimes that happens with us. So let's unpack really quickly. I think if you're a true follower of Jesus, his spirit is likely stirring in you a longing to deepen your relationship with Christ. In fact, if you're joining this workshop, I have to believe it's because that's what you're looking for. I believe that every Christian woman can walk in close fellowship with Christ, and men too, for all of their days. And I believe that you can find your way back to a more intimate walk with Jesus. And today, we're gonna unpack some practical ways to show you how.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:03:20]:
Number 1: GET ALONE WITH GOD.
To seek him, I have these little points there. There we go. To seek god, act 17/27, sorry, that's not in the bubble, That they should seek god in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. Oh, Oh, I love knowing that he is near. Draw near to God. He will draw near to you.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:03:44]:
Deuteronomy 4:29 says, "But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you search after him with all of your heart and with all of your soul."

I don't know about you, but man, I long to seek him with all of my heart and life gets in the way. Sometimes what gets in the way is just unconfessed sin. Are you willing to daily get before the Lord, Psalm author 9:23 through 24 and pray,
"Search me oh God and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting."

 Unconfessed sin is the number one hindrance to a Christian's walk with intimacy with Christ. And so often we have those quote respectable sins that we don't even really observe how sinful they are because we look at other people and how bad they are, but God wants us Jesus words were get the log out of your own eye.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:04:40]:
So are you willing daily to get alone with God and seek him and ask him? Search me and show me my own heart.

Number 2: READ BIBLE STORIES. BEGIN READING THROUGH ALL THE BIBLE STORIES. Get in the word girlfriend. The word of God is what is quick and powerful and a sharper as a two-edged sword. He is the living word. Spending time in the word is spending time with Jesus and you will draw near to him. But read those bible stories that you know so well, but instead of looking at what did what did Adam do? What did, Moses do? What did Abraham do? Look at what did God do. Because God reveals his character to us through those historical biblical accounts of His ways in history and how He moves among men.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:05:23]:
And then He says, love me. Search me and love me. Mark 12:30, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. He doesn't ask us to blindly love him. He says, "this is who I am. You can love me for who I've revealed myself to be"And you can fall in love with him.

NUMBER 3: Write out Psalm 119. Write out the Psalms.
Psalm 119 is one that I write out and then I pray it back to the Lord and I meditate on it and I asked the Lord, and I've loved it so much that I have memorized so much of Psalm 119. I love when the psalmist prays,  "Open my eyes that I might see wondrous things from your law."

Wow. I want to see you in a new and fresh way, Lord. I want to see You as you reveal Yourself in scripture.

NUMBER 4: LEARN THE NAMES OF GOD
Back to what we talking about, God reveals himself through those biblical accounts. Jehovah Jireh, he is the God who provides.

Jehovah, Nissi. He is the, the Lord is your banner. He is the, the one who will fight our battles for us. Elroi, the God who sees. That's Hagar's story. And she said he is the God who sees. Sometimes just knowing that you're seen and knowing that he cares means so much and draws us near to him.

NUMBER 5: READ BIOGRAPHIES. Next, read biographies about people who have followed so close to Jesus.

I love to read biographies and of people in history that were missionaries, that, have been preachers. I love the story of Spurgeon's life. There's a book called Susie that's about Susanna Spurgeon's life. Such a great book. So many, accounts of missionaries and how they served God, but how he showed up, and it's just incredible. If you wanna see God's character revealed, look at those incredible, biographies and you will see God in a fresh way.

NUMBER 6: ASK GOD FOR HELP. You're not alone in this.

The Bible says "You have not because you ask not". And sometimes, we are so busy trying that we forget that God's like, Just ask Me!   

Jesus promises, "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that the author may be glorified in the son." Matthew 7:8, "For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds and the one who knocks, it will be open."

1st Chronicles 16 11. "Seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his presence continually." Which leads me to my final point.

Rhonda Stoppe  [00:07:43]:
NUMBER 7: DON'T GIVE UP!  Don't give up for it is God who works in you to will and to do his good pleasure. He gives you the want to and then he makes it happen, but you have to continually draw near to God as he will draw near to you. Seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness, looking for ways that you can press into him, finding your way back to ZEAL for Christ.

•  Get alone with God
• Spend time in his word
• Begin to read through scripture. We read through the bible every year together. And I gotta tell you, reading through the bible with my church family, with my husband, with my family, it knits my heart together with other believers. 
• Fellowship with others who wanna draw near to God.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:08:28]:
If you are fellowshipping with apathetic status quo whatever Christians, you're most likely gonna be status quo apathetic and whatever and think that's the normal Christian life. It's not!

Jesus told the church in Laodicea, I wanna vomit you out of my mouth. That they were a good church doing good things, but they had lost their first love. They needed to press in and I pray that for you today. As you begin reading all those stories and writing out christian, beginning with the Psalms, learning the names of God. Kay Arthur has a book out that is called, Lord I Want to Know You, and it's the names of God. So good.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:09:03]:

• Read those biographies 
• ask God for help. And then 
• don't give up. Never give up daily putting one foot in front of the other. 
• Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

 "I pressed toward the mark of the prize of the upper call of God in Christ Jesus," is what the apostle Paul said. "Not that I have already attained this or I'm already perfect, but one thing I do, I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own." He has made you his own!

• Press on. 
• Make it your own. "If any of you think otherwise, god will reveal that to you also."

 CONCLUSION:
I'm praying for your maturity in the faith. And then I just wanna spend 1 minute reading about how the apostle Peter's life ended up. From my book, Real Life Romance, one of the best love stories in all of that book full of love stories is the apostle Peter and his wife. But the way that it ends is from an excerpt that you read Eusebius, a well learned Roman historian. He said:

"The blessed Peter, seeing his own wife led away to execution, was delighted on account of her calling and return to her country. That he cried out to her in a consolatory and encouraging voice addressing her by no by name. Oh, thou remember the Lord. Such was the marriage of these blessed ones."

The apostle Peter had failed once, but he did not fail when his life was put on the line, when all he had to do was deny Christ and it would have invalidated the testimony that he had seen the resurrected Christian not only would it have invalidated his testimony, but all of the other disciples as well, he stayed true because he had drawn near to Christ.

And for the rest of his life, he built the church of God. And that's what God wants to do through us. He wants to us to stay near to him so that he has "saved us unto good works, that he ordained in advance that we should walk in them"so he can accomplish those works through us as we walk near to him, as we're humbling ourselves under his mighty hand.Know that he knows what he wants to accomplish in and through your life. And as you draw near to him, don't focus on what you want to do for him.

Focus on who he is. Fall more in love with him through the practical steps we've given today, and you will draw so near to him and then in you, he will do exceedingly and abundantly above all you could ask or even imagine in Jesus' name.

Thank you so much for joining me today for finding your way back to Christ. You can find that article on my website noregretswoman.com. There's an article called How to Find Your Way Back to Christ and you'll find all of these points.

You can also text the words NOREGRETS to 55444 and I will send you a free video of me teaching, "Your Marriage Can Survive Toddlers and Teens". I believe that's what up there. And if you go to my website no regrets woman.com and follow my newsletter, you can get a free chapter from one of my books.

Rhonda Stoppe [00:11:55]:
I think it's Moms Raising Sons to be Men, my best seller. And please follow my podcast, Old Ladies Know Stuff, because it's a nod to Titus 2 women. Old ladies, God's called us to pour into the lives of the next generation and so old ladies know stuff is a wonderful way for you to connect with with me and my best of episode is what to do when you don't know what to do. My best of 2023 episode. You'll find that at my podcast oldladiesknowstuff. Thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate you, and let me just pray. Lord God, in the name of Jesus, we want to find our way so near to you that nothing can pull us away from Christ.

Rhonda Stoppe  [00:12:33]:
I pray Father that you would accomplish in each woman and in myself, all that you have for our lives. As we draw near to you, father, draw near to us and give us a sense of your presence, your joy, and your peace. In Jesus name, amen. 

And if you don't know Jesus, contact me through my website,  and I will send you an article  "How to have a relationship with Jesus". Thanks so much.  Have a great day.