Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: Oh, Tammy. That's so beautiful. So beautiful. We thank you, God. I didn't want to move up here while you were singing. It just didn't seem right. Thank you, God. We thank you, God. We thank you, God. It's so good to be here. God is so good to us, so good to us. Just a couple things... Please check our website out because we have so many fun things happening and all the details are there. With just a click, you can sign up, find out all the information to be apart. So will you do that? So check the website out for this Saturday at our house. We are going to have a picnic at our house just across 116 and we are going to have a bonfire and we are going to play games out in the yard. We are going to have fun. Read about that and what you can bring. Everybody, bring your own chai, so you have a place to sit. Okay.
Today, after church, we will have a delicious lunch and a wonderful baptism service. I'm very excited about this afternoon, patio parties in December. We are encouraging all of us to invite people to your house or meet on a patio at Starbucks or the patio at Applebee's or somewhere: patio parties for September. Don't wait to be asked. You do the asking. Oh man, Chan has dinner theater coming up. At the end of October, talk to Pastor Jeff. He's planning a fun time for us. Check the website out for all of that. Do you want to talk a little more about the baptism?
Brian: Should we dismiss the children first?
Jacque: That would be a good idea.
Brian: Why don't we dismiss the children? They can go to children's church.
Jacque: I had so much fun in children's church last week; I got to be a kid. I encourage you to try it out and be a helper. I get to go next week too. Cindy needs a few more helpers, so check with her if you can give once a month to the kids.
Brian: I want to talk just briefly about the baptismal service this afternoon. One of the wonderful things about the Lord is he personally encounters each and every one of us. We have a personal relationship with God. And yet sometimes we emphasize that personal side so much that we forget that there is a community side of our walk with God as well. Oftentimes, we think of water baptism as, as an individual person's confession of faith before the Lord, et cetera, et cetera. But what we don't often realize is it's also the community of Faith's opportunity to celebrate that person's confession of faith publicly and in some respects, welcome them into the community of faith. So that's why we invite all of you after our lunch today to join us at the water baptismal service and really participate and celebrate the people who are being baptized in water and are really publicly confessing their faith in Christ. We encourage you to do that today.
Jacque: The baptism is going to be at Jeff and Katie Ratia's house. They have a beautiful pool.
Brian: We have directions on how to get there.
Jacque: Check back with Rachel. She has it all.
Brian: One of the things that Pastor Robert I was thinking of as you were sharing, just kind of a little bit of a heaviness today. Today is the anniversary of 9/11. You recall the many people who lost their lives that day. There is an echo that sometimes goes throughout our country about never forgetting. There is a balance that we have to have between being vigilant and not holding anger and bitterness in our hearts. There has been sins committed against each other since the dawn of time. The real antidote for letting those sins affect your life all the way to the grave is for us to learn how to walk in a way of releasing those sins against us and stuff. We all have them, we've all committed them and we've all had them committed against us.
We as a nation have committed great sin and there have been great sins committed against this nation. We need to learn how to walk in the manner of Jesus Christ in all of these things, which, in a sense, brings me to the beginning of my message today. The title of my message is "A Heart Healthy Lifestyle". There is a reason for this message for me this week. It's because of some of the events that have transpired in my life this past week. But I would like to kind of just put a context in it for you. 17 years ago this month, we were in hectic preparations for my youngest son, Micah and his fiance's wedding that we were going to be at the end of the month
Jacque: Katie.
Brian: Yeah, Katie. Micah, of course is our director of innovation and technology here at the church's a wonderful musician, but he's really behind the scenes on so much stuff. My oldest son, BJ, who is watching online this morning from a place way up north, God bless you, BJ. Thank you for all you do for Hope Community. Katie was going to marry pastor Jeff and Cheryl's youngest daughter, Katie. We were feverishly making plans for the wedding, and I started to sense something in my body that was askew that week. How many of you have ever bartered with God? Have you ever bartered with God? God, if you do this, I'll do that. Have you ever prayed a kind of prayer like that, kind of foxhole prayers? I knew there was something going on
Jacque: But you didn't tell me.
Brian: No, of course I wasn't going to tell you.
Jacque: Yeah.
Brian: That's why I didn't tell you. You were going to do something like that. I knew there was something going on with my heart at the time and I prayed and I said, "Lord, if you just get me through this wedding, and if you get me through all of our guests leaving town, then I promise you I will go to the doctor right away." The Tuesday after the wedding, we dropped our last guest off at the airport and we were leaving the airport. You know how you go down that little hill there at the airport when you are leaving the drop off area, and I turned to my wife and I said, "Jacqu, I need to go to the doctor." And she said, "Well, I'll make an appointment." I said, "No, I need to go right now."
Jacque: "I've been having pain for nine days" and he said, "I could hardly lift up that suitcase. And I think we'll go to Methodist." I said, "I think we'll go to Fairview Southdale," which is the next exit
Brian: Which is the next exit. We pulled into the hospital and I walked in and I said to Jacque, "I just need to go to the bathroom really quick." So I went to the restroom. When I came out, there was a nurse with a wheelchair there waiting for me and wheeled me into their cardiac area of the hospital. I was right on the verge of starting to have a heart attack. The next day, they did an angiogram on me and found I had two blockages in my right main artery that were a hundred percent blocked. They put in two stents. That was 17 years ago, and I chop and cut and split 25 cords of wood a year. I'm doing really good.
But recently, I started to feel not quite right. There were a few symptoms that were happening, and so I went to my doctor and then I went back to my cardiologist. He ordered a stress test and we took a stress test and he called me and he said, "There is an abnormality there, and we'd like you to come in for an angiogram." And so last Tuesday I was scheduled to go in and the procedure was scheduled for 11 o'clock in the morning. That doesn't mean anything to the doctors nowadays. Because there were about four people that came on that day that were emergency types of situations and they bumped ahead of me. I was prepped and ready to go at 11 in the morning and at 6:15 that night, I said to Jacque, "Could you just check to see if there is anybody in the hallways out here? Have they forgotten about us?"
Jacque: He said, "If the lights go off, we are in trouble."
Brian: Yeah. If the lights go off in the hallway, we are in trouble. At 6:30 they came and got me and did another angiogram and found that in the same area where I had the blockages 17 years ago, I had another blockage of 95%. They fixed that. They cleaned out everything and looked through the rest of my heart and everything is looking really good. But as I was lying in the recovery room, or in the recovery area for me, I began to ponder this whole thing about having a healthy heart and how there are so many references in scripture about our hearts. Obviously, some of them referred to our physical heart, but the majority of the references in the scriptures pertain to what we translate the word heart. We are going to talk about what that actually means today. But I realize, again, through this procedure that without a healthy heart, we really don't have a healthy life. Do we? And without a real healthy, spiritual heart, we are not going to have a healthy spiritual life.
Jacque: Brian, sometimes without a healthy heart, we don't have any life.
Brian: We don't have any life at all. Because if our heart is sufficiently unhealthy, it limits and constricts or we end up with no life at all. One of the key factors in having a healthy heart, of course, is good blood flow. That's why they're concerned about blockages and things like this. When there are blockages in our heart physically, while death or damage can occur and when there are blockages in our spiritual heart, death and damage can occur in our walk with God and our lives with each other as well. And so there are a lot of parallels between the human heart and our spiritual heart. I would like just to look at a few of them this morning as the Lord gives us a few moments together here.
I want to begin with the scripture__ we talked about this a week or so ago, where the religious leader came to Jesus and asked him, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? Again, he didn't really understand that you really can't do anything to inherit eternal life. Eternal life is a gift that we receive by faith in Christ. But at the same time, Jesus asked him a question and he asked the question, well, what is the greatest commandment and he responded by saying this in Matthew 22:37.
Jacque: Love the Lord, your God, with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being and with every thought that is within you. This is the great and Supreme commandment. That's from the Passion Translation.
I was thinking today that there isn't a greater commandment. Jesus said this is the great and supreme commandment. If this commandment is the supreme commandment, it's not like a supreme supreme commandment. This is the greatest commandment. The greatest commandment Jesus said is that we are to love our God with every passion of our heart. I began to ponder again that word heart, and to try and give it a little bit more of a clear definition in our lives. Because we say to each other, we'll say to our spouses, "I love you with all my heart." I think what that's supposed to mean is that there is nothing left over for somebody else in this manner, in this way. I certainly love everybody, but I don't love all of you ladies in the same way that I love my wife. I don't think you want me to love you the way that I love my wife either.
Jacque: I don't think I want that either.
Brian: And I don't think you do either. But as we pondered this word, heart, I began to conceptualize what it really means. One of the definitions that I like to use is this: it's the seat of our affections. It's the place that our affections rest on.
Jacque: I think of a throne.
Brian: It's like the throne of our life. That's another way to think of it. Our heart is the very throne of our life and someone or something is sitting on the throne of every single person's life. Every single one of us has a throne in our life and someone or something is sitting on that throne. Jesus is saying to us that the greatest command is that that every passion of our heart will be given for God. That doesn't mean we can't have passion for something else. I certainly have passion for my wife. I have passion for my children. I have a love for many things, but the Supreme love that is supposed to be there in my heart is to be for God. We don't think of this term very often anymore. This might be a little bit older fashion term, but we've heard the term, the county seat. A county seat is an administrative center. It's the source of all decision making in that county, wherever that county seat is. If our heart is the seat of where all of our affections lie, the seat of our affections, then that is the throne where we let that which is most predominant in our lives sit.
Jacque: All of our like decisions and our motives, everything just flows out of our mouth from God or__
Brian: From our heart. Our heart is really the source of all decision making for our lives. I'm sure the medical community wouldn't agree with me when I say this, but in reality, every single person that dies, dies of heart failure, because you're thought of as being alive, as long as your heart is beating. Even if there is no brain activity, there is still the idea or thought, well, there is still life there, but no matter how much brain activity you have going on or other functionality, the minute your heart stops, that's the end of life as we know it here on earth. Our heart, spiritually, is the source of all decision making for our life. There are some instructions given to us about our hearts. The first instruction I would like to bring to our attention today is in Proverbs 4: 23.
Jacque: Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
Brian: We are to guard our hearts. When you think of someone who is a guard, I don't think of a rent a cop type of thing. I think of a military guard, someone who is really standing at attention, someone who is really putting their life on the line to guard whatever they're guarding. It's a very intentional thing. The scriptures tell us that we are to guard our heart. We are to guard it. We are to be intentional about what happens in our heart, because it determines the very course of our life. Jacque and I have been trying to help a couple; they don't live here in this state. We have a lot of relationships with people around the country, and a lot of them look to us during times of difficulty. This couple has gone through some real difficult times. What's at the heart of it and at the root of it was the husband didn't guard his heart. The husband didn't guard his heart. How do we guard our hearts today? Well, one of the answers we find is in Psalm 119: 11 where the scripture says this.
Jacque: I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
Brian: The word hidden here doesn't mean we hide who we are in Christ, but what it means is when something has been hidden, it's like it's buried really deeply. It's buried really deeply. What the word of God is teaching us here is that the Psalmist says, "I have hidden your word in my heart. I have really put the word of God deeply into my heart so that I might not sin against you." It's not that he wants to keep it from being shown to the world. Obviously, we are a city set on a hill; we are light set on a lamppost. The concept of hiding something is bearing it really deep. One of the ways we guard our heart is by putting the word of God deeply within our heart, so that the essence of what comes out of our heart is rooted in the word of God. There is another scripture found in the book of Psalm 139: 23 and 24 that also pertains to this whole subject here.
Jacque: Search me, oh God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you and lead me along the path of everlasting life.
Brian: Search me, oh God. What a wonderful prayer. The last few weeks, I knew something was going on in my physical heart. I knew something was going on there. I could tell there were certain manifestations that were taking place in my body that were signs, that were clues. In the same way, in our relationship with God and in our relationship with each other, we can tell when something not good is going on in our hearts by how things happen. I knew something was not going on correctly in my heart, so you know what I did? I asked my cardiologist, my physician to go search inside of my heart to see what was going on. This is what the Psalmist is saying: Search me, oh God, and know my heart; know my heart. The scriptures do say that our heart can be deceitfully wicked. Can't it? We can deceive ourselves. We can think one thing when in reality, a part of our heart is a skew. The only way for that to be revealed is for us to honestly come before God and say, "God, you search my heart" in the same way that I submitted to the wisdom and skill of my cardiologist and I said, "Take that instrument and go right up inside my heart and see what's going on. Take a look inside." They didn't just go to one spot. They checked everything out. They went up this artery. They went out that way. They went in and out and everything.
Jacque: They said, your plumbing is really good.
Brian: They said my plumbing is good. They meant the plumbing on my heart.
Jacque: That's for sure.
Brian: They were searching inside my heart to see if there was something blocking the natural blood flow. And they found it. They found a constriction. They found some plaque buildup. They found a blockage. This is what we have to do spiritually. We have to ask God, search my heart. I don't think there ever comes a time where you can ever get mature enough to ever stop asking God to search your heart. Just search my heart, Lord. Show me if there be any wicked way in me. That prayer is not really talking about his behavior. That prayer is about the attitudes and disposition of his heart. Show me, to see if there is anything wicked in there that's not of you. Because when the fruit of the spirit is not being manifested in your life, then something is askew with our hearts.
The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, long suffering, meekness. When you find yourself not being some of those things, then maybe there is an issue in your heart. If you find yourself not being very patient__ maybe you are lacking joy. Maybe you have no peace. A lot of this stuff gets back to well, what is on the throne of our hearts that we are hanging onto that we need to let the Lord take care of and so forth. There is something off in our hearts when the fruit of this spirit becomes absent. We need a spiritual diagnosis from the great physician where he comes in and he will search our hearts to see, ah, there is fear in there, or there is unbelief in there. There is anxiety in there. There is jealousy in there. Oftentimes, God will have the right treatment for us, won't he? One of the great treatments we find in Psalm 51:10 and 12,
Jacque: Oh, we join with David in praying this. Keep creating in me a clean heart; fill me with pure thoughts and holy desires, ready to please you
Brian: Let me stop you here for a second. Have you ever been just kind of going through life and all of a sudden, just this thought out of nowhere comes in and it's like, where did that come from? Well, we are obviously in a spiritual warfare or spiritual dynamic in our lives. And not every thought that we have is our thoughts. Of course, temptation comes from the enemy and so forth. We have to learn how to walk in discernment about what is of God, what isn't of God, what is us, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the prayers that we can pray that really helps us to guard our hearts is to pray, God, keep creating in me a clean heart, a pure heart, and fill me with pure thoughts and holy desires. Fill me with pure thoughts and holy desires, ready to please you. Let's go to verse 12.
Jacque: Because we don't have to just try and change our behavior on our own. But we look to God to heal us from the inside, to work on us inside. I was thinking when we were preparing this yesterday. We need God's help to love him more. Help me love you more, make me willing to love you more. He will pour all of that in us. We need his help to love him. Verse 12, we are reading from the Passion: Let my passion for life be restored, tasting joy in every breakthrough you bring to me. Hold me close to you with the willing spirit that obeys whatever you say.
Brian: I was very grieved as I was talking to one gentleman recently, and he made this statement, "I'm tired of doing what everybody else wants me to do. I want to do what I want to do." Included in that statement was what God was asking him to do. He was tired of doing what God wanted him to do. He was now going to do what he wanted to do.
Jacque: He said, "I'm tired of not doing what I want to do."
Brian: Yeah. I'm tired of not doing what I want to do. I thought to myself that maybe for much of his life, his understanding of Christianity has been askew anyways, because when we do value the sacrifice of Jesus and the death of Christ and the shed blood that he gave for us, that's why we offer communion every Sunday. We don't do it to the whole church or in an obligatory way, but if the whole church wants to take communion after service, everybody's free to do that because I don't ever want us to get too far away from the fact that there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and every sinner who's plunged beneath that flood lose all of their guilty stains.
By the way, that hymn was written in 1772 by a man who had struggled with depression. He understood that even in the point of depression in his life, God was there to meet him. This classic hymn that has been sung for over 200 years, 250 years by countless of Christians, numbers of Christians was written by a man that came out of the pain of depression. But there is a fountain filled with the blood of Christ. I know we don't like to talk about that a lot because it sounds gory, but that's the price that our creator paid for our redemption.
That's the power of the cross and the gospel. In reality, we all know this, that life is in the blood. If we are lacking a spiritual life, we need to get back to the cleansing flow of the blood of Jesus in us to value that and to appreciate it and to understand just the sacrifice that he gave and made for us. And so that when we understand that, then it's not just drudgery in obedience like slavery, but it's a love slave, a love servant, where we want to do what our master bids us to do, because he's been so good to us, not because he's been so abusive to us, we are afraid of the abuse that will come, but rather he's been so good to us. We can't help but follow and be obedient.
Saul was made the first king of Israel and he failed in that duty to truly have faith in God. We know the story where God picked a little teenage boy to be the next king of Israel. He was picked for really one reason, and we see that reason in Acts 13:22.
Jacque: But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, "I have found David's son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, he will do everything I want him to do."
Brian: See, we actually can be people that are men and women after God's heart. We can be that. I don't think it just happens by a casual inquiring of it. But David, on the backside of all those Hills, when he was tending sheep was writing Psalms and praying and spending time in the presence of God and began to understand. As a matter of fact, of all the people in the Old Testament, he probably was the closest to what I call a New Testament relationship with God because of his, his valuing, the presence of God even in the old Testament context. David was called a man after God's own heart. I can't think of a greater compliment that anybody can be given than to be called the person who has a heart after God, or as a heart like God.
He goes on to say that he will do everything that I want him to do. When I read that, I asked myself the question: I wonder if God thinks that about me. I would hope he does, but if he doesn't, it's because there is something here in this heart that I need him to search out and to cleanse and to fix. I want that to be done because having a heart after God and always wanting what God wants, will always bring us to the right path. It'll always bring us to the right path, having a heart after God will be like this north star reckoning. We know what that's like up here in the northern hemisphere, where you look at the big dipper, and then you just go up a little bit off the cup part, and then right there is a north star. It doesn't move. It doesn't change. It stays in the same place all night long. It faces north. If you ever get lost in the woods, and it's not a cloudy night, you can know where north is. From getting that north bearing, you can know where you need to go from there. That's what having a heart after God is like: it is this north star reckoning that will keep us living a spiritually healthy lifestyle or a heart healthy lifestyle. There are only a couple more verses, and then we'll be done here. Luke 12.
Jacque: Luke 12:34 from the Passion Translation: where you deposit your treasure, there is where you fix your thoughts, and your heart will long to be there also.
Brian: It's kind of like a cycle, isn't it? Where you deposit your treasure, there is where you fix your thoughts. But if you fix your thoughts, that's where your treasure is going to be. So be careful of what you think on. Be careful of what you think on, because your thoughts will become your actions. And then your actions will become your habits and your habits determine your character and your character determines your destiny. But it all begins with your thoughts. Where you deposit your treasure, there is where you fix your thoughts. This is what I fixate on. This is what I'm thinking about all the time. Those of us who are followers of Jesus, he needs to be preeminent in our thoughts. He needs to take preeminence in our thoughts. It doesn't mean that we can't do research on buying a new car or a new house or the different things that we need in life. But at the end of the day, who is going to be on the throne of my heart. It still needs to be Jesus. It still needs to be Jesus.
Jacque: And when fear comes, when anger comes, when hurt comes, if we can just keep remembering to lift our eyes to him at the moment, to bring him back into the situation.
Brian: We have these thoughts and we control our thoughts. I have bad thoughts. I have thoughts that aren't of God. I have thoughts that come out sideways, you know, and I just say, oh, I just rebuke that thought.
Jacque: I remember when we were dealing with this couple a lot, trying to help them, and you would get off the phone with him and you would just be__
Brian: I would be angry.
Jacque: Yes, you would.
Brian: I would be angry for God. I would be angry for his wife. I would be angry for the kingdom. I would be angry that I felt like I wasted so much of my time. There were times where my mind went to a place that wasn't Jesus, like I could care less what happens to him? That's when I needed to back off and say, "I need more, Jesus. I need more of Jesus here."
Jacque: Compassion.
Brian: I need more compassion. I had to, again, get my thoughts fixed et cetera, et cetera. When my thoughts and my treasure became Jesus, that's where my heart really was. How do I love the Lord with all my heart? Well, by being intentional to do these things. The first is we need to guard our hearts. So being selfless and intentional. In order to guard our hearts, we have to be intentional about it. We have to be selfless and we have to be intentional.
Number two, we need to hide God's word in our heart. We need to bury it deep. We need to know the word of God. We need to know the word of God, his promises, and what he says to us during our darkest nights and seasons, we need to let God search our heart. Show me, Lord, what's in my heart. We need to be honest and transparent before God. Show me if there be any wicked way in me. And then we ask God to create in us a pure heart. Do your work in me. That's what I needed to do with my cardiologist. I said, "Hey, do your thing." I was lying on the table, all this stuff going on around me and monitors and this and that and what have you, and I looked at the doctor because I was awake. And I said, "Well, do what you are trained to do. Fix me up doc." He said, "Well, we'll do our best." But if you say that to God, he'll say "I got this, I got this. I'll take care of it. And I'm not going to be punishing you in the process." There may be some pain in the process.
I had finished the procedure. I was back in my room and apparently, my incision had developed a hematoma, which is a bleeding under the skin. The nurse came in at four in the morning. By the way, don't ever go to the hospital to get rest. There was this monitor that beeps every 14 seconds. I counted them every 14 seconds. About one in the morning, the beep would go off, and then it was like, okay, I got 14 seconds to get to sleep before it goes off again, so I won't hear it. At four in the morning, this nurse came in and looked and said, "Oh, this is not good." Well, that wasn't good news to hear. And they said, "This is going to hurt." And then they proceeded for 15 minutes to just put all the pressure they could on my incision. He said, "We'll be done at 4:40." At about 4:39, another nurse came in and said, "I need you to do this for five more minutes." And I said, "Who let her in the room?"
Sometimes the process of getting fixed can hurt a little bit. It can be painful, but we need to trust the fact that the physician knows what he's doing. Do your work in me, oh God. And then the last thing, let's just pray to have God's heart. I want what you want. When we say I want what you want, it takes trust on our part to say that I want what you want.
Jacque: When we were making this list, we left one thing off. At the top of the list is to make sure that God is on the throne of your heart.
Brian: That's right
Jacque: I saw this little vision. I was praying one day and I was wrestling about something. I saw this little picture in my mind, and I saw a beautiful throne and God was on the throne of my heart, but I was just inching up. I was trying to get on the throne with him.
Brian: You were kind of sliding him up a little bit.
Jacque: Just like this, and I was trying to get my way. God in his gentlemanliness just stood up and went over to the side and let me be on the throne. And then I realized I don't want to be here. I got up, moved off, and let him get back on. When we pray constantly, God, I give everything and everyone to you. You are supreme. You are supreme in my life. He stays on the throne.
Brian: Let's pray this prayer in Psalm 19:14, where the Psalmist says this.
Jacque: May the words of my mouth, my meditation thoughts, and every movement of my heart be always pure and pleasing, acceptable before your eyes, Yahweh, my only Redeemer, my protector.
Brian: What a wonderful prayer. Adrian, would you come to the keyboard, please? What a wonderful prayer to pray. May the words of my mouth, my meditation, thoughts and every movement of my heart be always pure and pleasing and acceptable before your eyes, Yahweh, my only Redeemer and my protector. Our friend, Adrian, is just a wonderful, gifted pianist. I've often said when I grow up, I want to sing like Keith Eklund when I grow up. I've added another wish to that. When I grow up, I want to play the keyboard like Adrian plays. He's just so good.
Jacque: The chords.
Brian: He gave me a CD last week that he recorded, and the first cut, other than some improvising that he was doing, was this old hymn. There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel veins and sinners who plunged beneath that blood lose all their guilty stains. And in that plunging, in that immersion comes a transformation of our heart, where we want him to sit on the throne, where we recognize that the only thing that will happen if we take control of our lives is we will mess it up. But if we listen to his gentle leading and his love and grace and mercy that is so freely given to us, we will have purpose, we will have fulfillment, we will have a guilt-free life. Pastor Jeff, would you come and just lead us in a prayer that really renews all of that in us?
Jeff: We hope so. I think we read it in the Passion Translation. The way that I know it was the prayer of David in Psalm 51. Create in me a clean heart, oh God and renew a right spirit in me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me, but restore unto me, the joy of my salvation. He prayed that prayer after he had failed to guard his heart, a man after God's own heart. You can be a man or woman after God's own heart and you still have to guard your hearts. But that prayer is exactly what you just talked about, Pastor Brian. It's intentionally giving God as the surgeon the right to go in and clean it out. When you pray that prayer, he will do it. He'll do what you ask.
How many of you want to ask him to do that today? Could we just put our hands on our hearts? If you are at home, you can do this as well, watching my livestream, and just pray this. Pray with me. Create in me a clean heart, oh my God and renew a right spirit inside of me. Create in me. Have your way as you please. Clean my heart. Teach me to guard it, so that I can live my life true to you.
Jesus said, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" We so easily lose our souls in this world that is constantly glittering and seducing and so many things that want to become the focus, so many different things. But Lord, you are the one that deserves the focus. The thing is, when we focus on him and we give up the world, we actually gain everything. If you have your own soul, you have everything you need. That's one of probably the biggest problems in our world today: so many of us have lost our souls, lost our ways, given them up for empty things. But when OUR soul is full with him, we have so much. We have so much, and we are satisfied with whatever we have. Isn't that amazing? If we've lost our souls, no matter how much we have, we are not happy. If we've gained our souls, no matter how little we have, we are happy.
Let's just let the holy spirit be that doctor that's constantly examining, searching, convicting, bringing us back to him, helping us to let go of the things that aren't important. I also want to take a minute this morning. I was thinking Pastor Robert is probably back getting lunch ready, but the Holy Spirit is always messing with me and Pastor Robert. We always have the same thing in our minds about what's going to happen next. He was talking this morning about fall and resetting and being thankful right where we are and accepting where God has you. Before he even got up, I was upstairs and I was praying and the Lord was speaking to me and this morning, he said, "Instead of praying for people who need healing, I want you to thank me." I was thinking about how we have a long prayer list of people that need healing right now. Don't we?
Our own Nadine, great to see you on the stage this morning. Was that fun? Yes, no, maybe. Our friends, Butch and Brian and Lori and Deb, we've really been praying hard. We've been pleading with God to be God in their lives and to bring the healing that we need. This morning, I just really understood that we are not going to plead with him. We are not going to pray. We are going to thank him. We are going to thank him for every one of our friends that is in need of a miracle because he's the God of miracles. And guess what? He's here. He has heard us clearly.
So father, before we go, we just join our hearts. In fact, let's stand together. Stand with me as we thank him. I'm going to thank him, but you thank him. Don't just listen to me thank him. Just begin to thank him. Thank him for hearing our prayers. Thank him for touching the lives of our friends. Thank you for being present with Deb right now, right where she is with Lori and with Butch and with Brian, with Nadine, with all the different ones that we are trusting him for. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. We thank you, Lord. We thank you, Lord, that these prayers, these urges, these passions that we feel, these cares that we carry for people that we love, they don't just fall on deaf ears. They don't fall on someone who doesn't care. They fall right into your lap, into your heart, and you put him in a bowl in heaven that you can tip over and pour back the answers. And we thank you for that, father. We thank you, Lord, for your love for each one of our friends, that you loved them more than us.
We thank you for the provision that was made in Jesus, that you said it was finished. And it is finished. And we thank you that it's finished, Lord. And there is nothing that we have to do except to thank you and trust you, trust your love, trust your willingness. As you said to that leper, "I am willing; be clean." We just trust you, Lord. And we thank you, Lord. We thank you. We thank you. We thank you. You are so good. There is no one like you. We thank you, Lord. We thank you for taking a hold of our lives as you did, some of us many, many, many years ago, and you've held us so faithfully. You are so good. Amen. Pastor Brian.
Brian: John, and I believe, Tina are going to be coming back to help serve communion to anybody who would like to have communion this morning. We welcome you to stay for lunch and then join us for the water baptismal service. The address is in the back with Rachael. Thank you to all of you who have been watching online. I was getting texts during the message today, just from people saying how sweet the spirit has been here this morning and how grateful they are to be a part of what God was doing here even though many of them are many, many, many miles away. And so we thank you for joining us today as well. We are so grateful for our whole faith community. those of you who attend in person and those of you who attend every week online. It means so much to us that we can come together and just enjoy the wonderful love of our creator.
Let's raise our hands together.
And now may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you may the Lord make us face to shine upon you and be gracious to you and may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may you allow the Lord to search your heart and do his work in your life? This we pray in the name of the father's son and holy spirit. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. We look forward to visiting with you during lunch. Please stay for lunch.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 9-11-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.