Prioritizing God: Embracing His Love and Purpose

"Now, I was taught many years ago that the compelling part is where we kind of lack in compelling them into, into the house of God. And the compelling part says that by whatever means necessary. Are you hearing me? Your family, your co -workers, your neighbors who don't know Jesus, are we compelling them? Are we doing whatever it means necessary to bring them into the house?" [00:39:02] (37 seconds)


"Because, you see, my problem over the last several months has been stuck on trying to find the details that are in the Scripture that brings out the heart of a father. One that is of compassion and love that no matter what we've done and no matter what they've done, we love them unconditionally. Are we? Our words often don't reflect that we are doing that and we are encouraged this year to love unconditionally regardless of where we've been or what we've done. We must continue to show them the great love of our God." [00:39:50] (52 seconds)


"That's everyone in this building. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Now we go back several years when I explained to you that that hate isn't that we disown our family or we hate our family or that we show them hate. It's that our love for God... Our love for God becomes so passionate. Our love for God becomes so great that it looks like we hate everything else." [00:41:38] (38 seconds)


"So I ask you to compare your love for the Father. Is that love for the Father the same way that he is telling us it needs to be? That God is number one in every part of your life. If you're not loving God in a way... That he has become number one in your life, that's where we're going wrong. We're not going to have joy. We're not going to have peace. We're not going to have all the good blessings of God until we put him at number one in our life." [00:42:56] (34 seconds)


"You're not going to have joy being a complainer. You're not going to have joy being a gossiper. You're not going to have joy always fussing over the problems of your life. God is not on His throne complaining about you. You shouldn't be on your throne complaining about them either. That's a rough one, isn't it? We'll spend more time complaining and fussing about problems in life and our life burdens and situations if we'll just set the complaining aside and we'll find His presence." [00:44:07] (37 seconds)


"Whether you like it or not. And we have leaders who are over us who are leading guidance. And you got to start telling your wife how she need to do it. And you need to quit telling your parents how they need to do it. And you need to quit telling your co -workers how they need to do it. For you and me alike, we need to pick up our own... our own crosses and crucify a lot of our own problems before we go trying to help other people carry theirs." [00:47:07] (29 seconds)


"You're a house your body is the temple of the Lord your house when you gave your heart to Jesus Christ I believe too many of us probably failed to calculate the cost that it was going to require to maintain the house now you hear me if you're going to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior it's going to come at a cost it's going to require us to lay down our lives our ambition our hopes our desires our dreams so that we can align ourselves to who Jesus is so when it's time to build the house and give our lives over to Jesus Christ we must know it's going to require sacrifice you're going to have to give of your money you're going to have to give of your time you're going to have to give of your life you're going to have to sacrifice and service and give and do and over and over because you said I love Jesus Christ and I thank him for saving my soul and now my life's goal is to reflect who he is my life's ambitions are to be who he has called me to be and to serve him with my whole life and my whole heart and everything I am will be about Jesus Christ and no it's not just the pastor who had to do that it's not an evangelist or a teacher it's the body of Christ who dies to themselves so that Jesus might come alive so I think for the majority of the church we have either forgotten what it was going to cost or we decided to do some additions to the house that were never meant to be additions to the house and now as you start adding all the other things you start realizing you put in the house you put the second roof on wrong and now when the rain comes it's flooding your relationship with Christ parable too tight there thought it was pretty good" [00:49:36] (121 seconds)


"y 'all probably should take your shoes off for this one I got a little out his house is suffering spiritually because the house at home has no spirituality to it we've sacrificed the Holy Ghost in the house of God because the Holy Ghost don't exist in our houses we've sacrificed the word of God for fancy teaching and some fluff and some excitement and some entertainment because the word of God doesn't exist in our homes" [00:53:14] (40 seconds)


"pursuing the father and this year I want you to go home and I need you to clean out the house and clean out your life so that you can pursue the father closer one lady in the community she put on her Facebook this week that she was doing a house clean out and she was going to do 31 trash bags in 31 days and every day she was going to declutter her house she was going to fill one trash bag every single day and I think for ourselves some of us we could not only probably declutter our houses we could probably declutter our spiritual lives the same way every day examining who we are and how close we are to the father would you stand with me this morning" [01:17:13] (46 seconds)