SPEAKER_01: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: The key to greatness in the kingdom of God is loving God and experiencing God's love.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe this with all my heart that until we really get this down deep in our heart, you gotta work at it, believe me, you gotta work at it, then what we will all transgress towards, the direction we will all go is outward activity.
SPEAKER_00: Doing outward stuff, and we have a dutiful Christianity instead of a devoted, faith, and love relationship with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want to do this morning is I want to look.
SPEAKER_00: I'm continuing this series on being a disciple.
SPEAKER_00: This is the third part, and I believe it's the most important part.
SPEAKER_00: So in the first part, I talked about come and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: So I talked about following Jesus and what that means.
SPEAKER_00: And if you recall, I talked about the fact that God initiates with us.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at the story of Levi, Matthew, who's a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes to Matthew and says, Come and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew doesn't come up to Jesus and say, How do I receive you into my heart?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus initiates, and he is initiating with you here right now.
SPEAKER_00: You're here because he's initiating with you because he loves you so much.
SPEAKER_00: Then in the second message, we talked about our treasure.
SPEAKER_00: We talked about the talents.
SPEAKER_00: We talked about there's an investment that God has put into you.
SPEAKER_00: And you have a spirit-anointed, God-blessed opportunity to give your gifts and your talents back to the Lord and multiply them.
SPEAKER_00: And he is actually gonna come and bring a reckoning with what he gave you.
SPEAKER_00: He expects a return.
SPEAKER_00: And you remember the guy who got one talent?
SPEAKER_00: He buried his.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Well, I knew you to be a man who reaps where he has not sowed and sowed where he has not reaped.
SPEAKER_00: And I was fearful.
SPEAKER_00: And I've heard messages on that, like how we walk in fear and all that, and that's true, it's absolutely true.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus doesn't comfort the guy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is really mean sometimes in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you figured that out, but he's a little different than the surfer boy Jesus in Sunday school class.
SPEAKER_00: He is a warrior.
SPEAKER_00: He is a warrior in his heart with fierce love for us.
SPEAKER_00: But he also wants a return.
SPEAKER_00: He wants a return.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, You wicked.
SPEAKER_00: That's not very nice.
SPEAKER_00: Poor guy, he's got an inferiority complex.
SPEAKER_00: He was probably hurt by his mom and dad when he was a kid.
SPEAKER_00: And he's just, he's had a lot of worries in his life, and he's struggling, and I mean, he's probably taking, you know, a lot of aspirin.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's got issues, you know.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, You wicked and lay servant, you knew that about me.
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't you invest it with the bankers?
SPEAKER_00: So God wants an investment.
SPEAKER_00: So what is the investment?
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: Because what we've been taught in our culture, it's about achievement, it's about getting more stuff, it's about the American dream.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to tell you that Jesus is not interested in the American dream.
SPEAKER_00: He's interested in his dream for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a dream for you.
SPEAKER_00: And right there, in the midst of a situation where first it's the Pharisees, and that's the conservatives of the time, and they begin to challenge him theologically on stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Turn in your Bibles, let's look at it.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Mark chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: Mark chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: It's about taxes.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, conservatives would be talking about taxes, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what they do.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm a conservative.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I do.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, ah, more taxes.
SPEAKER_00: So right there in verse 13, he says, Are we how do we about paying taxes to Caesar?
SPEAKER_00: And that's their question.
SPEAKER_00: And then by verse uh 18, the Sadducees, which would be the liberals of the time, they're talking about is there a resurrection or not?
SPEAKER_00: So he's just getting hammered.
SPEAKER_00: And if you if you compare this with Matthew and his account, he's getting hammered with all these questions theologically.
SPEAKER_00: And then look at now verse 28, he gets asked this question: what's the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, we heard what you have the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: We know what you say about the taxes.
SPEAKER_00: But now this, and this is what he says.
SPEAKER_00: And men and women, this is really important this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You get this, because this begins to define to us what really matters to God.
SPEAKER_00: What really matters to him is what we do with this.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: So the verse 28, when one of the scribes, so first it's the Sadducees, then it's, I mean it's the Pharisees, then it's the Sadducees, and now it's the scribes.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody, can you imagine?
SPEAKER_00: Every major leadership influential group in Jerusalem is on Jesus' case.
SPEAKER_00: So now let's move down to this question.
SPEAKER_00: So, scribe says, having heard them reasoning together and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, which is the first commandment of all?
SPEAKER_00: And some of your translations, as well as in Matthew, what's the greatest commandment?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, The first of all the commandments is this hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_00: And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first commandment.
SPEAKER_00: So, men and women, again, I'm not very smart, but when I read something that says, This is the greatest commandment, this is the first commandment, this is the most important commandment, we gotta get this, and the problem is we've heard it too many times.
SPEAKER_00: I really do.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that we've heard this too many times, and we don't take it to heart, and we're not contending for it.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta contend for the first commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Here's my thesis today.
SPEAKER_00: My thesis is the greatest man who ever lived gave us the greatest command ever given that we might experience the greatest love ever offered.
SPEAKER_00: The greatest man who ever lived gave us the greatest command ever given that we might experience the greatest love ever offered.
SPEAKER_00: And we and we fill our life with doing stuff, and we fill our life with achievements and accomplishments, especially men.
SPEAKER_00: We're just driven that way, and you know from the last message I gave, I think achieving and accomplishing is important.
SPEAKER_00: It's very important, but it's not the most important.
SPEAKER_00: And when Sean Accor wrote his book, The Happiness Advantage, which all my staff team were all reading it together, he said he's defining happiness as happiness is the joy of reaching your full potential.
SPEAKER_00: It's the joy of reaching your full potential.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what they found in all the happiness studies and in all the positive psychology studies that are being done at Harvard and Yale and Stanford over the last 20 years, they found that it's not success that makes people happy.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, that's usually short-lived because you've got to have another goal and another goal and another goal.
SPEAKER_00: You're never happy.
SPEAKER_00: But that the people who are successful year after year are happy people.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're flipping it upside down that people who have an inner joy and an inner security, and I've shared so many times from Brene Brown, an inner sense of belonging in their heart become successful because they're ministering, they're leading, they're working out of the fullness of something within.
SPEAKER_00: Only Christ can give you that.
SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of pastors, and there are a lot of Christians, and there are a lot of people who go to church who do not get this because we and it's a struggle, believe me, it's such a struggle, because we get bombarded all the time on TV, media, even in the church, in our family, with these outward things being what's gonna make you happy, and that's really what success is, and Jesus saying, This is success.
SPEAKER_00: Right here is what success is.
SPEAKER_00: Love me.
SPEAKER_00: Love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: Start there.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what he's quoting?
SPEAKER_00: He's quoting the greatest passage in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Turn if you have your Bibles with you, turn to Deuteronomy 4, just real quick.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 4 is the great Shema passage.
SPEAKER_00: And the Shema passage, Jesus is quoting from this because this is so important, because this is when Israel was going into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna go into Canaanite territory.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna go into a territory where there's idols and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, look, this is how you keep your family intact.
SPEAKER_00: This is how fathers, you lead your families.
SPEAKER_00: So he's saying, fathers, wake up, smell the coffee.
SPEAKER_00: Smell, smell the, I guess you're supposed to say, smell the green tea.
SPEAKER_00: Green tea extract.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard so much about green.
SPEAKER_00: All the nutritional stuff that all you nutritional people is hang out with me all the time and I hear stuff.
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, wake up and smell the green tea.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says in verse 4 of Deuteronomy 6.
SPEAKER_00: Moses says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_00: You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Now look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
SPEAKER_00: He's not talking to the mothers.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking to the dads, and he's saying, Look, you get it first, and then I want you to teach it.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to live it.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to model it.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to build up your family because that's the only way you're gonna handle the Canaanite religions.
SPEAKER_00: It's the only way that you're gonna keep what Yahweh has given us as the dictates of success in our life.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to love me with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is simply saying to the Jewish leaders the same thing, and he's saying that to us today, that men and women, this is success.
SPEAKER_00: You are loved by God, and you get to love him back.
SPEAKER_00: It's as simple as that.
SPEAKER_00: That you are beloved.
SPEAKER_00: And many of you know my story of what happened in Mountain Springs three years ago, and that whole thing, and that was what inaugurated the planting of the road, and and so I won't go through all the details, but I discovered that I was beloved.
SPEAKER_00: I discovered that's where the whole heart advance came from.
SPEAKER_00: The whole heart advance is literally my journey with shame and breaking off the power of worldly success to discovering godly success from the great commandment.
SPEAKER_00: And so here he is, and he starts off, look at verse 29 back at Mark 12, and it's the same thing actually in Deuteronomy 4.
SPEAKER_00: He says, first of all, this is what I want you to get.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord our God is one.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is really important, folks.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: Why does he start there?
SPEAKER_00: Why does he start with the Lord our God is one?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Lord our God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit passionately love each other.
SPEAKER_00: The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Spirit, Spirit loves the Father.
SPEAKER_00: They've been madly in love with each other since the beginning of time.
SPEAKER_00: We're entering into a love relationship.
SPEAKER_00: We're entering into community that's been happening for billions of years and eternity past.
SPEAKER_00: Millennials.
SPEAKER_00: Oh folks, before you discovered God's love, he was in love with himself.
SPEAKER_00: And the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were in love.
SPEAKER_00: They were loving each other.
SPEAKER_00: Look at one of the most amazing passages in Scripture is John 17.
SPEAKER_00: John 17 called the high priestly prayer, but I want you to look at this one set of verses that gets missed sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: John 17, look at verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: He says this.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus praying.
SPEAKER_00: This is before he, right before he goes to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Father, I desire that they, meaning his disciples, and he's saying that about us, also whom you may give me, may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which you have given me, for you love me before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: God the Father loved God the Son before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: They were already in a love relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes to this, O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I've known you, and these have known that you have sent me.
SPEAKER_00: Now look at verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: Underline it, highlight it, star it, whatever you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's really important.
SPEAKER_00: And I've declared to them your name and will declare it.
SPEAKER_00: But look at this.
SPEAKER_00: This is really important.
SPEAKER_00: That the love with which you loved me may be in them.
SPEAKER_00: That's us.
SPEAKER_00: And I in them.
SPEAKER_00: Now that little conjunction, I, is super important because he's saying here, yes, I want your love to be in them even as I am in them.
SPEAKER_00: What that says to me is that it's possible for Christ to be in you, but you're not experiencing his love.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want them to experience.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the fullness of everything that really matters, and this is what effectiveness and success in life is, is to know Jesus, but also to know his love.
SPEAKER_00: To experience his love.
SPEAKER_00: I and the Father are one.
SPEAKER_00: That's before he says, love the Lord your God with all of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is in love with the Father, and they just dig each other, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And the Father loves the Spirit, the Spirit loves the Son.
SPEAKER_00: And when you receive Christ, you get to enter into that community, but you don't have to, and many believers don't.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the deal: love is unity, unity is love.
SPEAKER_00: You show me a family that loves each other, and I'll show you a unified family.
SPEAKER_00: You show me a church that loves one another, I'll show you a unified church.
SPEAKER_00: You show me a group of men and women at their job who care about each other, who love each other, I'll show you a unified company.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, dude, when you get around, when you get around Marines, any Marines in here?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a few of you.
SPEAKER_00: That's a unified bunch.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you what, you if you're in a bar and had a few too many drinks and somebody takes a slug and they find it, you just hit a Marine brother, oh, you just got yourself a bar room brawl.
SPEAKER_00: I think we should be that way.
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Unified with him, ready to battle with the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And so, and so this unity of love is the key.
SPEAKER_00: He says at the very beginning, it's the key to everything.
SPEAKER_00: So here, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I want you to get: the key to greatness in the kingdom of God is loving God and experiencing God's love.
SPEAKER_00: It's loving God and experiencing God's love.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe this with all my heart that until we really get this down deep in our heart, and you gotta work at it, believe me, you gotta work at it, then what we what we will all transgress toward, the direction we will all go is outward activities.
SPEAKER_00: Doing outward stuff, and we have a dutiful Christianity instead of a devoted faith and love relationship with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't duty a bummer?
SPEAKER_00: Now, a duty, duty is, I mean, I'd rather have du let me believe me, I'd rather have people who have duty than people who don't.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I like dutiful people.
SPEAKER_00: But if that's primarily the way we live is out of duty, that is a drag, and that's religion.
SPEAKER_00: We want people who are devoted to Christ and they're loving what they do.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about this on the staff team from time to time.
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys loving what you're doing?
SPEAKER_00: Are you passionate about it?
SPEAKER_00: Because we want passionate people around here.
SPEAKER_00: And passionate people can break through barriers, and we need a breakthrough faith in a breakthrough God because we have a passion, and men and women, we have a passion because we're saying we love the Lord each day.
SPEAKER_00: We're loving him with all of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: So in our passage, with the shame of passage in Jesus speaking here, he then gives us five ways to love him.
SPEAKER_00: And for the next several weeks, I'm gonna cover these.
SPEAKER_00: And today we're gonna talk about loving God with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Then we're gonna talk about soul, mind, strength, and our neighbor is ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: But let's focus on this idea of wholehearted love.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you love it when Jesus commands you to do something you can't do?
SPEAKER_00: It's really encouraging.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_00: You can't love God with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Don't even think about it.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's all close in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we just think of the thing.
SPEAKER_00: No, you can't.
SPEAKER_00: You can't.
SPEAKER_00: No, you can't.
SPEAKER_00: But guess what Jeremiah says?
SPEAKER_00: Guess what Jeremiah says?
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah says this.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, prophesying of a new work of God, said, Listen, then I will give them, meaning us, and I believe he's prophesying about the church to come, a heart, I will give them a new heart to know me.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: That I am the Lord, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to me.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, with their whole heart.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah 24, 7.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if that's not good enough, Ezekiel says it this way.
SPEAKER_00: Then I will give them a one heart, I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: If you're born again, if you put your faith in Christ, you have a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have the old heart.
SPEAKER_00: Quit living in the old heart.
SPEAKER_00: The old heart is stony, it's mean, it's gossipy, it's selfish, it's a lot of us sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: But the new spirit, the new heart is when we surrender the Lord to God today, I'm gonna love you with all my heart.
SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you for this new heart.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel says, I've got a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: Devil, get out of here because I'm not gonna listen to that old heart anymore, because that old heart is gone, and I've got a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: Quit resurrection, quit resurrecting the old heart.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of you guys got this stony heart, and you keep pulling it up.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to live with that heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's a drag, man.
SPEAKER_00: God's giving us a new heart, a heart that's sensitive, a heart that's loving, a heart that's kind.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he means by heart that's full of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: It's soft, it's subtle, it's caring.
SPEAKER_00: And I know what's happening right now, because some of the women are you you're elbowing your husband right now.
SPEAKER_00: Would you quit living in that stony heart?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the reality is, is that we all do that, but that's what discipleship is.
SPEAKER_00: That's what being a disciple is, is we start making a choice to do what really matters to God, because here's what the goal of the greatness of God is, is that that greatness is found in what God the Father and God the Spirit and God the Son are doing right now, and they're loving each other, and he's saying, Love me with all of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Your new heart.
SPEAKER_00: Church, your new heart.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you don't know Christ, if you don't have a personal relationship with Christ, if you're not walking in intimacy with Christ, you don't have a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: You got an old stony heart.
SPEAKER_00: And I can promise you, your life's really boring.
SPEAKER_00: It is.
SPEAKER_00: And you start living in the heart of the flesh, in the heart of the spirit, joy starts to come.
SPEAKER_00: Happiness starts to come, freedom starts to come.
SPEAKER_00: That's the heart that he says to love him with.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he means by loving him with all of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about being wholehearted.
SPEAKER_00: What is this word?
SPEAKER_00: You understand, church, that to go to the whole heart advanced takes courage.
SPEAKER_00: It takes courage.
SPEAKER_00: To love your wife and serve your wife takes courage.
SPEAKER_00: To begin to get in a D group with some men and begin to start working on your porn addiction takes courage.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're in an adulterous relationship right now, it takes courage to go in there and break that thing off.
SPEAKER_00: Because courage comes from the word core, C-O-U-R, which is Latin for heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we get the word cardiologist.
SPEAKER_00: It takes heart.
SPEAKER_00: When he says wholehearted, he's saying, love me with courage.
SPEAKER_00: Courage is where it's at.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather have a courageous man that fails than a lazy man who succeeds.
SPEAKER_00: We need courageous men.
SPEAKER_00: It takes courage.
SPEAKER_00: Courage means wholehearted.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you men maybe never had a dad, or possibly never had a coach, who told you that being courageous is important in life.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to tell you today, as your pastor, dad, friend, peer, it takes courage to make something of your life.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you in this room have never been courageous.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to tell you, you can be.
SPEAKER_00: Through the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Through the power of this new heart that God's given you, He can make you courageous.
SPEAKER_00: Noah Webster in defining the heart says, an inner part of anything, the core of everything, vital, vigorous, the seat of our affections.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Saying that, well, Noah Webster's saying this, but what Jesus is saying is, I want you to love me emotionally.
SPEAKER_00: I was had the privilege of being at the Air Force Academy and speaking there a couple weeks ago, and I told the guys there, I said, you've got to learn to experience the emotional heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because most men and women live in a mental ascent, but not an emotional response to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You say, well, how'd I do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it begins in worship.
SPEAKER_00: It begins with worshiping the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: When we go into worship in a few minutes, we're going to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And you can either just kind of go through the songs and say, well, that's a little too loud, or that's, I wish they was louder, or I don't know the words to this song.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can go, I'm worshiping the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Rain, snow, sleet, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to emotionally try to connect.
SPEAKER_00: And you won't.
SPEAKER_00: You won't.
SPEAKER_00: But if you keep doing it every week, if you start putting on the iPod and you start doing it when you do a prayer walk, you start doing it in your time with the Lord, it'll start to come.
SPEAKER_00: You'll start to have an emotional relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You'll experience Him at the emotional level.
SPEAKER_00: And when that begins to happen, God changes us.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that's what enthusiasm means?
SPEAKER_00: Enthusiasm is a 17th-century word.
SPEAKER_00: Enthusiasm.
SPEAKER_00: In thu.
SPEAKER_00: That means in God.
SPEAKER_00: You know what the word enthusiasm meant in the old Webster dictionary from the 1700s, the one my wife always uses.
SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
SPEAKER_00: Is that 1700s?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she uses that.
SPEAKER_00: Sucker's like massive.
SPEAKER_00: And I see my wife, she got a Bible on one arm and she's got this big old dictionary.
SPEAKER_00: Steve, you know what this word means?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, and I don't want to know.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me tell you anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that cool?
SPEAKER_00: Not really, but she loves it, you know.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, because she's really into words and stuff, mislinguistics here.
SPEAKER_00: I probably learned this from her.
SPEAKER_00: Enthusiasm, thus, is where we get from the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: It's the idea of in God.
SPEAKER_00: You know what enthusiasm means in the 17th century?
SPEAKER_00: It means possessed by God.
SPEAKER_00: We need enthusiastic believers.
SPEAKER_00: That's loving God with all your heart.
SPEAKER_00: They're in God, and they're so into God that you get around them, and then you go, whoa, I want to follow whatever they're following because they seem to be pretty darn happy.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are way too sad.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's okay to be sad.
SPEAKER_00: I've been sad half my life.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you, God can give us a possession by Him to love Him the way we fall in love with another person.
SPEAKER_00: And when I fell in love with my wife, we were thousands of miles apart, but I couldn't wait for that phone.
SPEAKER_00: We used to have, there used to be these things that were called, they were called rotary phones.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know many of you have never seen these, but you have an index finger.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: It's the index finger.
SPEAKER_00: This is the index finger.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: And you stick it in a hole, and it had a number on it, and you went like this.
SPEAKER_00: And then you you had a number, you memorized it, or you had it on a piece of paper that you had written with a pen.
SPEAKER_00: And you did this thing, and there was this little funny kind of banana-looking thing in your hand that had this kind of squirrely looking cord that went into the machine.
SPEAKER_00: And then you there was a voice on the other end from very, very far away.
SPEAKER_00: And so we could only afford, while I was in Japan and she's still at UCLA, was a dollar a minute phone call once a month.
SPEAKER_00: That's all I could afford.
SPEAKER_00: 60 bucks a month.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's big time money back then.
SPEAKER_00: And and that, and there's another thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll spell it out because you probably don't know what the word means, but it's called a letter.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not like a letter on a keyboard.
SPEAKER_00: That's actually a letter where you lick this piece of this little thing, and you actually don't put any money in it.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a bill, it's a letter.
SPEAKER_00: And you would, and it didn't have a window on the envelope.
SPEAKER_00: So that when you put it in and it says you, you know, utilities bill, and that it's already ready to go.
SPEAKER_00: You actually wrote the address of someone that you were writing, the letter to.
SPEAKER_00: And that would take five days.
SPEAKER_00: And then and then she would write me, and then five, so ten days if she's on it and I'm on it, it took, and then one call a month.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: But I was madly in love.
SPEAKER_00: And I just couldn't wait.
SPEAKER_00: And every once in a while, Liz would get one from me, or I'd get one from her before the other one got there.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a problem at times.
SPEAKER_00: I I figured that out.
SPEAKER_00: You might have said something in response to something she asked you, and you you settled whatever this thing was, and then she wrote you again, elaborating more on the thing that you responded to, and then so now that the thing you respond to is totally different than it was with the first letter that you got, and you are way down deep in the hole.
SPEAKER_00: So I got real smart and realized I'm not I'm not writing a letter until I get that next one back.
SPEAKER_00: Because I said I was sorry in the last one, but then I got, you know, you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody over 45 knows what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else is like, man, he's weird.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's an old guy.
SPEAKER_00: Glad we don't do that anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I can just text it and get it rid of that thing.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to be with her because I was emotionally charged by Liz.
SPEAKER_00: And God, I believe, wants us to be a church that's emotionally charged by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't mean that we live in emotion, and I'm not saying that we should uh live in emotionalism.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying, though, that the engagement we have emotionally heals us.
SPEAKER_00: It heals us.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't feel emotionally close ever to your spouse, you really need counseling.
SPEAKER_00: You need to get some work, do some heart work.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't feel that way all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, maybe I even don't, but a lot of times I do.
SPEAKER_00: Still do, but we have to work at it.
SPEAKER_00: We have to work at it, we have to work at it.
SPEAKER_00: And I have to work a lot harder than she does because I think women in general are more emotionally and spiritually in touch than us guys, and we have to work harder at it.
SPEAKER_00: And so, women, be nice to us because, you know, God grabbed one of our ribs, and so, you know, we're missing some stuff.
SPEAKER_00: We're missing some stuff, man, I'm telling you.
SPEAKER_00: And all those studies showing those babies and everything, it's kind of like there's this wash that happens on that guy's brain when he becomes a male, and it messes us up.
SPEAKER_00: So we need a lot of love, we need a lot of patience, and we need a lot of care, please.
SPEAKER_00: We need you to go and pay for us to go on this retreat because we're not that courageous.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, is that it takes courage to love God with all of your heart and soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_00: It really does.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to love with courage, core, from the innermost being.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to love him.
SPEAKER_00: It's the new storyline, church.
SPEAKER_00: This is the new storyline.
SPEAKER_00: The old storyline is, you know, come to church and work.
SPEAKER_00: Come to church and serve.
SPEAKER_00: I like servants and workers for sure, but I say the new storyline is Jesus loves the Father, the Father loves the Spirit, the Spirit loves Jesus, they're in unity.
SPEAKER_00: Love me courageously with all of your heart, and that's success, and you will find happiness because it will overflow in your life, because it's happening, first of all, in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're at for church.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're at.
SPEAKER_01: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
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SPEAKER_01: If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
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SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.