Mike Bickle emphasizes the practical steps to pursue the first commandment of loving God, drawing from Matthew 25. He explains that loving God is simple yet costly, and it requires intentionality and faith in the process. Bickle highlights the importance of managing time wisely, avoiding condemnation, and recognizing the value of small movements of the heart towards God. He encourages believers to seek a deeper relationship with God through consistent prayer and fellowship, asserting that true love for God is cultivated over time through commitment and revelation of His love for us.

Father, we ask you for the release of your Spirit even now. We ask you, Lord, to awaken our heart and to inspire our mind and our spirit, and we thank you in Jesus' name. Well, tonight we're going to look at the ninth session in this series on the first commandment. Tonight we're going to look at practical ways to pursue the first commandment, and our passage we're going to get to in a few minutes is in Matthew chapter 25 where Jesus exhorts us to get oil. But before we do that, I want to lay down some practical principles, which is really the core of the message tonight. Over the 30 years that I've been pastoring and seeking to train people in loving God, I can say clearly that the way to love God, I've been asked that many times, how do you love God, is the people, some imagine there's some mystery to it. And I want to say this, it's really simple. It's costly, but it is simple. Now there are four or five principles or ideas that we need to get right, but you can learn those in a few minutes. And if you don't know them, you're going to hear them tonight. But my point I really want to stress is the simplicity of the process, so we don't reach and grope in the dark looking for a secret for years. Matter of fact, Moses is the one that said that very clearly, straightforward in Deuteronomy 30, when Moses was talking about loving God with all their heart. Actually, that's the actual context in Deuteronomy 30 verse 6. Then he goes on in verse 11 to 14, he says, this isn't so mysterious that you have to ascend to heaven in a heavenly encounter or someone has to come from heaven down to down to the earth to give you secret information. He goes, the word is in you, it's in your mouth. He goes, it's as close as you speaking to God from your heart. And the point he was making to the children of Israel, it's not so mysterious that you need some special revelation or some special supernatural experience. He goes, the word is in you. It's even in your mouth. It's, it's as close to you, the answer, as consistently speaking from your heart to God. And so over the years I've, as I've talked to people, that many assume that there's a mysterious kind of seven secret steps or something. And at the end of the day, I find the biggest problem that I've encountered is that people who love God and they really desire to walk with God, I mean, it's really what's in their heart, they have, they lack faith or let's use the confidence because the word faith and confidence, you can use them interchangeably many times, most times, they lack faith in the simple process that God prescribes in His Word. That's what they lose confidence in because they don't grow in the way they think they should at the pace they think. And so after a few months or years, they disconnect from the process where if they would have stayed with it, as the years unfold, it would erratically transform them. So they give up quick and they think maybe they're especially bad, that they're messed up more than everybody or they assume maybe it doesn't really work for anyone. And the Lord's answer is the simple phrase faith. You needed confidence in the process to stay with it. And as simple as that is, I know over these years that is really the core problem in context of people who really do love God. They're very sincere. In our weakness, in our brokenness, we can sincerely love God and all of us can make it if we stay with it. So I'm going to lay out just a few principles tonight by way of reminding and part of one of my goals is for some of you to conclude, well, I know these things. Maybe it just is as simple as staying with it. Huh. And it will be literally a, an awakening in your spiritual life to conclude that simple point I just made. Now, again, the process is simple. It is costly, but it's not confusing. It can be hard in terms of decision making, but it's not confusing. It's just costly. Paragraph A. All of God's commands include inherent in the command is a promise that God will give a supernatural enabling to obey that command. When he says, love me with all of your heart, the very fact he commands it, he is saying, I promise to help you if you will cooperate with me. Takes God to love God. I've said that over and over. There's, it takes a supernatural dimension to succeed in loving God, but the Holy Spirit is eager to help the weakest among us, which is all of us, if we want it. And if we will obey a couple simple principles, but more than that, if we have confidence to stay with them. Confidence in the word is what I mean. That the process really is effective over time under Jesus's leadership. Romans 5.5. Paul says, the love of God's poured into the heart by the supernatural activity, the Holy Spirit. The love of God is poured into the heart. Now what that means is, is our, our emotions will feel the subtle stirrings of God's love for us and our emotions will feel subtle stirrings of love back to God. And both of those dimensions of subtle stirrings are supernatural. They're subtle. They're slight. But over time they radically change us. You know, it's the analogy I've used over the years, taking vitamins. You take vitamins for a month, probably it's going to do no, make no impact. You take vitamins for a decade, if it's the right ones, it'll make, it'll make a big difference for a decade. These subtle impressions of the Holy Spirit, these subtle stirrings, those, those moments where it dawns on us, dawns on us ever so briefly, he likes me. And it dawns on us the feeling, I like him. Those are the operations of the Holy Spirit. He'll give thousands and thousands of those over the course of time. And that is the supernatural work of God. Those stirrings will grow if we continue in our weakness to respond to the Lord in the way the Word of God prescribes. Now, love for God does not grow automatically in us. Yet we need to be intentional about cooperating and cultivating a responsive heart because of just the weeds of life in a fallen world. And the reason I'm saying weeds is that Jesus used the, that analogy in Matthew 13 verse 22. He says, the weeds will choke the heart. He's talking about just all the, the cares of life. And, and, and in Genesis chapter three, when Adam sinned, the Lord told him that the weeds would come forth. He'd have to work the ground under the hot sun with weeds coming up was the essence of what he told him. So just, even as a sincere believer, just life in a fallen world, if you don't intend to grow in God, in love, you will, you will not automatically increase. You will automatically decrease. If you do nothing, your body will get in worse condition, not just suddenly wake up in great shape. How many of you are starting to figure that out? I figured that out a long time ago. So we have to be intentional about it. Paragraph B, it's going to kind of give you a little, uh, bit ahead of time of where we're going. I'll say it in the negative, and then we'll say it in the positive in the, in the course of the message here. The reasons, common reasons, common obstacles for why believers, sincere believers, people who love Jesus, this group, groups like this, the reason we get off course in our pursuit of the first commandment, one big reason is condemnation. After we repent, we still feel condemnation, and that will minimize your ability for those subtle stirrings of the Holy Spirit to work effectively in us. Condemnation. We have to cast off condemnation by speaking against it according to the word. Even believers who know that, they still leave, uh, they'll fail, they'll repent. Now we have to repent after we fail, but they'll live in the residue of condemnation for days, weeks, and months, and those quench the supernatural subtle stirrings of the Holy Spirit on our emotions, and they quench growth in love. Another reason, a huge one for sincere believers, mismanagement of time. What I mean by that, they're, it's not like they're trying to go out and sin. They just get busy, and therefore they don't take time to sit before the Lord, and just the weeds in a fallen world dynamic works, and their heart grows cold. And they don't mean that to happen, but one month turns to a year, and a year turns to three, and they look back around, and somehow time ran away. That is one of the biggest issues of why a sincere believer ends up being dull in their spirit. They don't use their time effectively, and they don't even know it. They're aiming at getting a mysterious supernatural experience to solve all their woes in the dull spirit, and the Lord's saying, manage your time, and let my spirit stir your heart in a more steady regular way. Managing your time by making time to be in the Lord's presence. I remember a pastor once, he said, when I hear you speak, he goes, I get this idea that you think there's a correlation between the amount of time you spend with God, and how much your heart grows. And he was saying that as a criticism. He was saying that to make sure I didn't feel rejected. He goes, no, I'm not saying you're saying that. I'm just saying it sounds like it, because, I mean, our heart grows in God by grace. And what he meant by grace is we do nothing, and we wake up with our heart growing in love. Rather than, the accurate definition of grace is, we cooperate to grow in the love of God, and the, and in the process of cooperating, grace works. And I said, well, I'm glad you think that, because it's true. He goes, what about grace? I go, grace doesn't mean it happens automatically. Grace means that the Lord's presence is released in the midst of our weak labors, and our weak endeavors. He went, maybe that's the problem in my life. He really did. He goes, I'm waiting to wake up one day with grace. I go, the grace, it's in you. Even in your mouth, it's near you. Speak your heart back to God. And that's what all of these principles, I'm going to lay out in a I'm sorry. I agree. I believe. It's the little whispers of the heart. The word is in your mouth. Activate your confession, whether it's the private whisperings of I love you to God, or the standing against the work of the enemy to condemn us, or warding off temptation. The word, it all comes down to the whispers in the heart. It's what we say in our heart. Whether you say it loud or whether you say it quiet, it really is the the language of your heart before God. The words are in your mouth. So mismanagement of time is huge in the life of sincere believers. I'm talking about people who really love Jesus, but they just can't quite get around to positioning themselves in a place where they can receive the energizing of the Holy Spirit. Another reason is because people despise the process. And the reason they despise it, they have exaggerated ideals about how dynamic it's supposed to be. They read the book, or they heard the story of that one guy, who every time he said the name of Jesus, the power of God fell on him. It was ecstasy, and it was like, wow, wow, wow. And the poor guy reading the book believed it. And so because it's not dynamic all the time, they assume they must be wrong. So they despise the process. They think, ah, it's not really worth it. It's not, there's no point in taking vitamins every day for years. I just want to get a one-shot healing and make everything perfect tonight. And a lot of folks, because of exaggerated ideals about how it's supposed to work, that disconnects them. Because I don't mean they're mad at God, despising the process. I mean they don't value the small movements of their heart towards God. They don't seem important. They seem like a waste of time, like God didn't care. Anyway, beloved, God cares about the small movements of your heart towards Him. He really does. That's how the whole thing works in pursuing to be a person who walks in the first commandment. Another reason, I'm giving you some negatives, why, there's common reasons why believers get off course, simply neglecting to renew their commitment to be a lover of God. This is why I did that at that one conference two years ago. I went up front and said, yes, now I don't renew my commitment every day. I would be exaggerating if I said that. I don't want to exaggerate. But every, I don't know, it's not like I have it measured. But, you know, every week or two or three or more or less, I take time and I, I specifically restate my vision. God, I want to go deep. Jesus, I want my whole life. It's not about IHOP growing. It's not about finance and money or, or, or prominence. My number one thing is the anointing to love you. And I say it and I realign my heart to my real life vision. And if you, if you do that every year or two, your heart will, will begin to have dullness working in. You need to realign yourself, realign yourself on a regular basis, whether it's weekly, monthly, don't put it on the calendar and then, you know, say, oh, it's been a while since I've done it. But conclude in your mind that the kind of this, the times, those moments, and I don't mean a minute and a half or two, three, four, five minutes. I don't mean an hour either where you sit down and go, wait, I want to say again, why I have life and breath on the earth right now. I want to walk in the anointing to love you more than anything else in life. And those realigning times every few weeks or months, whatever the time is, they're critical. They're critical to do that. I've known people, I've said this kind of thing over the years and said, I, you know, I don't think I've ever done that. I think, ah, that hurts my heart. I go, well, how do you expect to grow in love? I don't know, grace of God, isn't that how it works? And their idea of the grace of God is a disconnect from human process and an automatic just kind of waking up everything different. Now that happens in the resurrection, but it doesn't happen in this age that way. Paragraph C. Now this would be a, a common thing here in the IHOP world. A common mistake is to see your prayer time as your first commandment time and your people time as your second commandment time. That's completely a mistake and complete wrong thinking, completely. And I haven't heard that over the years. Their first commandment time is when they sit before the Lord. Their second commandment time is when they get up and they leave their prayer time. No, that's completely wrong. Sitting before the Lord is the place you get energized. It's where you get fueled to go out to do the first and the second commandments. 98% of your set first commandment time is not sitting in a chair. You sit in a chair to get fueled up to go do the first commandment. Now, the fact that you enjoy some of the times when you're sitting there and the fact that you say, I love you a few times sitting there, doesn't mean that is the essence of your first commandment time. Because when you're serving people and you're out and about, you still say to Jesus, I love you. You whisper it and you still do that labor because you love him. So some people say, well, you know, I'm having, you know, I do my first commandment time, my second commandment time. Don't ever, ever confuse the mix that up again. Because when I am helping a person, I am doing it far more effectively by looking at his eyes on me smiling and I'm doing it because I love him. And then I'm far more energized to love them. When I disconnect from the fact of serving people is an overt act of loving him where I can whisper, I love you in those few times in the act of serving and reaching out. When I don't do that, then serving people, we do it with a spirit of performance and it burns us out. When our serving and relating second commandment is disconnected from the first, you will do your activities with the spirit of performance. You'll get angry if you don't get the right response from the people. You'll get angry and depressed and offended if you don't get recognized or thanked or if you get criticized. But if you do the serving of the people with the idea that his eyes on you, you're really serving him first. Then when they are mad glad and sad and all the unpredictable cycles of life, your heart's still happy because you were doing it. It was an act of the first commandment. So then you come out from the, from the rigors of the world, loving God and loving people. You sit in the chair to get fueled up to go back out to do the first and second commandment. So the sitting in the chair part is about getting fueled. Paragraph D, sitting before God is to get oil. The reason you sit before God, the reason I sit before God, although I like it, I like it more than I used to in my early days. I did it because I had to. And then in my middle days, I was kind of half and half. And now sometimes I don't like it so much, but I like it a lot more than I used to. And it's a lot more regular than I, I feel his pleasure and his presence, but it's still not at the place where I want it. But the reason I began to in my early days to sit before God, and one of the reasons I do, I mean, I do like it, but there's a bigger reason. It's a statement of humility. You sit before God quote in the prayer room in a personal devotional way as a statement of humility. Here's what you're saying when you do it. You're saying, I believe in Jesus' testimony about my life that I cannot love well without being supernaturally energized to do it. You're sitting in the chair because you believe you can't love well if you don't get fueled up. You can't love God well, and you can't love people well. Paragraph D. I'm going to continue. I want to love, second sentence, with clarity. I mean with discernment. I want to know what's going on in God's heart. I want to love with clarity. I want to love with consistency. I want to love with right motives. It's not enough just to be active with people and say, well, I did my love thing. I was busy with people. Again, a lot of that is human activity with a spirit of performance. It's not even about love. It's about not having people get mad at you. It's not about love in the full way if we're completely disconnected from the idea that his eyes are on us and we're doing it for him and with him. Now, I don't mean you think that every minute, every time you're serving, but as you're, you're kind of girding up to go serve, thinking that he likes this and takes it personally, that you're touching him. You're actually serving him. That's what gives power and consistency to love when you're serving people. It is arrogance to assume you can love people well disconnected. So somebody will say, I've heard it again just for years. Well, I got to get out of the prayer room to go love people. Now is, now there's truth to the fact where they need to go love people. But don't take your prayer room time, or let's call it, let's not make it's just sitting in a room in a building, your time alone with God, take it out of your video game time. Take it out of your play time. Don't take your fueled up time with God. Don't throw that away to go do other things. Take your play time and change that out for serving. We never need to pick between loving God and loving people. We really don't because loving people is loving God. But a lot of folks that I've talked to in the body of Christ, it's a, I'm not trying to be mean to them, but there's a presumptuous arrogance that they would, they would boldly say they rarely sit before God, but they assume they love well. They may be active. That doesn't mean they're loving well, because, and it's not my opinion to figure out who does what. That's, I don't go there. I don't figure out who does it and who does it. I'm, I'm giving you just insight into how this works, because you can be active with people socially and in serving and be getting angrier and angrier at people the whole time. You're not loving well, even though you're active. You might be socializing beyond measure, but you're getting more offended in your spirit as a human being as the years go on. You're getting more proud. You're getting more dull in your spirit. Beloved, that's not loving well. And that presumption is rooted in the idea that Jesus had it wrong in John 15. He said, if you abide in me, it works. If you don't abide in me, you can't do anything. They don't buy that. They say, watch this. I'm going to serve well and I'm not going to abide in you. And again, they can stay active. They can stay highly engaged, but they get angrier, more offended, and more arrogant and more dull as the years unfold, unfold. And that means, though they're active, they're not loving well. And what we're interested in is loving well. And the only way to love God well, and the only way to love people well, is by the God of love to energize our spirit regularly. And so this is a critical thing. So you need your time before God, not because you're selfish, because you are committed to loving God and people well, and you're convinced that Jesus was right. You can't do it well without his help on a regular basis. And his help, yes, he helps us in flight in the process, but he says, you sit before me and get energized and I will help you love me well, and I will help you love the people well. And I, I talked, I've ran into this for years and years, just the confusion with this. And the folks that are over busy are assuming they end up with a martyr's complex, very busy, burnout, angry in a martyr's complex, and mad at the others. Beloved, that's very opposite of loving. If they would dial down, connect with the Lord, they would love far more consistently and far deeper. And they wouldn't love in spurts, they would love for decades with consistency. Yes, in our weakness, there'll be failures in our love, but there'll be consistency with it as well. Roman numeral two, practical ways to pursue loving Jesus. Simple. Number one, don't neglect this. This is huge. You must make the determination, that's what your life is about. Not just my 50-year life, it's what my life is about this week and what my life is about the next several decades. It's long term and short term. We stop and we determine, we make a decision. Our response to love Jesus starts, I mean our response to his love, because he stirs us first. And our response to him stirring us, to love him back, begins with a choice, a decision. Some might imagine that the Lord will stir them and then they kick into automatic robotic status and they just start loving God just automatically. No. He stirs, but that stirring won't go to the next level if we don't make a intentional decision to love him. And that love is always in a spirit of obedience. I'm not talking about going to more worship services, saying I love you, I love you with your words, although I do believe in that, that's powerful, but it's I love you, it's affectionate, it's an affectionate spirit towards the Lord, but it has concrete obedience to Jesus as defined in the Sermon on the Mount. We regularly realign our hearts. I just made that point a few minutes ago. We, and I don't mean just I love you, it's more than that. It's loving you, walking in the anointing to love you is the first priority. It's, it's that phrase, it's the first priority. I mean everybody in the kingdom wants to love him. And that general way I'm talking about moving it from the general status to the specific, I want it to be first priority in the long term and the short term. Because a lot of folks have the vision to love him as first, but in the years to come when they get the breakthrough. And this issue of making a definitive decision on a regular basis is critical. The psalmist said, or the Lord said to the psalmist in Psalm 91, because that man, if David wrote Psalm 91, because he set his love on me, therefore I will deliver him. There is a place where we set our love on him and do not underestimate the value of that decision and the need to do it repetitively. We set our love on God. How? It's really not confusing. It's just a determination. I don't feel a lot right now, Lord, but I have set the goal of my life, short term, long term, not just to love you, but to love you, to make that the top priority. And I mean it. And I want you to help me. That simple declaration of the heart and saying it to God will begin to move you forward in a, in a, in a more rapid growth pattern in the Holy Spirit. It says of Mary of Bethany, Luke 10, Jesus says, Mary has chosen the good part. You have to choose it. Nobody can give God all of your love. Lord, I want to give you all my love because nobody else can give you love for my spirit. What I give God is totally unique. And what you give him is totally unique. Only you can give it and he wants it, but you have to choose it. I'm talking about the day, the moments you're inspired and you're not inspired. There's a choice. And the Lord says, Mary chose it. And sometimes that choice is easy and exciting. Sometimes that choice is hard and costly. Sometimes it's just boring. And the Lord says when it's hard and costly, when it's exciting and dynamic, and just when it's boring and routine, choose to love me. And it moves my heart, all the movements of your heart in this way. David said in Psalm 18, he goes, I will love you. That's a simple, it's not just a worship song. That was a realigning of his heart. Now some of you know, and you, this needs to be a IHOP 101. Everyone needs to know this next sentence I'm going to say. Psalm 18 is a critical, I mean, I, I mean a very important Psalm and a critical hour in David's life. David had just come out of Ziklag 16 months with an element of compromise in his life. Not his whole life, but he had an element of compromise. It's the only time he ever had it for a sustained period that we know of in his life. And the day that he repented, his opening statement right here, I will love you. I mean, this was a huge declaration from his heart. John the Apostle, at the end of his life, he said, I'm the guy that leans on God's heart. In other words, I want to be as near to God as possible. That wasn't just a casual statement. That was a definitive life goal of John the Apostle. I will lean. I'm the man that leans on his heart. I'm the man that wants to get as close to God as possible in this age. Beloved, we set the vision to have as much of God as he will give the human spirit in this age. That's what I'm talking about. Determination. I'm not talking about you grit your teeth and therefore you get a breakthrough. I'm saying that posture of mind, the setting and the deciding and the realigning of it is one of the key principles. It's not mysterious. It's very simple to understand. It's costly. Sometimes it's exciting. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's boring. But no matter what mood we're in, that determination is a critical non-negotiable foundational reality in becoming a person who loves God with all of your heart. The determination, the setting of the heart. Top of page two. The revelation. Receiving revelation. Not just making a determination, a commitment, but receiving revelation. Revelation of God's heart equips our heart to love Jesus back. Revelation of God's heart infuels our heart up. This is where, this is the fuel. This is the, the oil that fuels the engine, if you will. The gasoline. This is what empowers us. Because we will only love God with all of our heart to the degree that we see he loves us with all of his heart. When the human heart is stalled out in love, we feel dull and passive, feed yourself on the revelation of how he feels about you. That will awaken your spirit. And again, it doesn't, you don't go from scale of one to ten from a one to a ten in one moment. You go maybe from a one to a 1.1. It's incremental. It's small steps forward, but it really matters over time. Again, it's the vitamins analogy. If you take it for a month or two, probably won't do much good. Take it for a decade, it actually will start, it will, it will make an impact, again, if they're the right ones. We love God because we understood he loved us first. When God wants to awaken love, he shows his love to that person. But it works for us as well. If you want to awaken in love, focus on the emotions of God for your life. Because if you want to love, then understand love coming towards you. I wrote a book called Passion for Jesus. And over the years, people will ask me, they'll say, hey, how do you get passion for Jesus? And the book's really a little bit of a misnomer, the title. Because the real title of the book should be, Jesus's Passion for Us. The whole book is about Jesus's passion for us. A couple things I think I eked out. Hey, set your heart to love God. Most of the book, actually, I was saying how God's heart was set to love us. Because I know that's the foundation of passion for Jesus, is understanding his passion. Well, it takes time to do it. You can't get that revelation on the run. This is the place we get fueled, right here. We, we set time aside, whether you're in the quote, the corporate prayer room, or at home, or in the car driving, and you got music. It doesn't, there's different settings. It's where you're consciously opening your spirit to God without a hundred other things going on, in a focused way. And you're studying the word and saying it back to God. Praying the word as you're studying it. Or just declaring your, your intention to obey and love him. Or thanking him that he loves you. Just those simple things. Fuel, if you will, touches our spirit, a little bit. But if you will believe in that process, when 10 years becomes 20. Not that, it doesn't take 10 years to make an impact. You make an impact in weeks and months. But I'm saying, as a decade or two goes by, you look back and say, my emotions are very different. But you can bide time in the kingdom. I've watched it for years, where people, they just go 10 years in the kingdom. They, you know, they're still there. 10 years later, they haven't left the kingdom. But they have not interacted with God's heart. And they're actually, very common, more bitter and more dull than they were 10 years ago. But they've loved Jesus the whole time. But they haven't exposed their spirit in a focused way to the presence of God. A little bit on worship, on Sunday morning, they'll go in. And they'll kind of open their spirit and settle down. Beloved, you cannot live on that minimal amount of focused encounter with the Lord. Now, we can encounter the Lord and touch his presence in everyday life, as we're serving and we're doing many other things. We can touch his, and we're, our eye is on him. The fact that his eye is on us, and that matters. But I'm talking about those focused times, where we take the word and we speak it right back to God. And then we receive his testimony towards us. It's critical. It's critical we have those times. And to that pastor that asked me, it almost seems like you have, you think there's a correlation of time to how much you grow. I go, absolutely, there's a correlation. Well, what about people? Obviously, the statement you hear all the time, you will love people way better if you take time to do that. You'll love them deeper. You will love them with greater discernment. You'll love them for years if you do that. Again, you don't take your God alone time and exchange it for your going out with people time. Take your playing around time and networking in ministry and working long hours to make more money. Take that time. There's plenty of time in a week to do that. You know, every now and then, I'll give a message like this. It's about every week, actually. I mean, you just put yourself right in the way of this thing. I mean, it's first commandment every single Friday night. I mean, you're just like, you're just a total target here. So, you know, I'll have students come up. I'm going to quit Bible school to be time with God. I go, no, you're awake 16 hours a day. You don't need to be in the program 16 hours for the next 10 years. I mean, if you give you some hours, you got time to go to Bible school. You really do. Oh, you don't have to go from an hour every other day to 16 hours every day. I go, no, there's lots of baby steps in between that. I said, I don't know that. I mean, there could be that one guy God calls to do that, but you give the Lord some hours. Some, it's more than less on a daily basis. In this context, it's our occupation to do that. You have plenty of time to go to Bible school. You really do. And you have time to have friends, but you do have to be measured where the thing goes bad is the, I just say, I like to say a little bit mean to be direct. It's the criminal waste of time and mismanagement. It's criminal. It really is. I've seen it over the body of Christ for years. The ease at which people throw away 15 minutes and 30 minutes multiple times throughout a week. I mean, many, many times, week after week, year after year, it is criminal because God is so good. The word is so deep. Their spirit has such a capacity. If they would only seize that some time and be in His presence, the power of God on the capacity of their human spirit, your spirit was made to be invigorated by God. But you have to get some time there. You don't have to do, you know, real dramatic things, quit everything. You don't need to do it 16 hours a day to do it right. Get rid of the other things. Seize your schedule. You will be surprised how many 15 minute and 30 minute increments that you can get a hold of in the course of a week or a month. I mean, you'll find if you're an average person hours and hours and hours, that's without doing anything radical like quitting everything. Go get that first. Go lasso and go seize the time that's wasted. But aim at 15 and 30 minute increments, not even four hours, like four nights a week. I'm not, I'm talking about something far more specific. You know, some folks just kind of bebop around in life every night, you know. They don't quite know what to do. I'm not even talking to that crowd. I'm talking to the crowd that it doesn't mean anything to throw away an hour a day. You don't want to throw away an hour a day. Well what about rest? Now you can rest in the will of God. That's actually a useful, a beneficial use of time. That's a biblical use of time to rest. But our culture is inundated with the right to play. It's, it's, it's like a, a built-in right that everyone has for recreation and play. And they read the grace of God through the lens of freedom to play more. Beloved, God, he's not offering you grace because he's mad you're playing. He's saying, I have something gold to give you, but I won't give you if you don't sit before me. I won't give it to you. It's not about, if you really get grace, you play more. And if you don't have grace, you, you kind of endure God more. That poor guy, he didn't know what grace is about. He's sitting there before God, enduring him. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about grace will invigorate your spirit. I mean, they're, you don't want to figure out how grace operates. So you're less engaged with God. Whatever interpretation you have with grace, you want an interpretation of grace that helps you engage with God in a more consistent way. Not live in the flesh more and feel good about it. Because God is too good. His spirit is too dynamic. And your human spirit has such capacity for God. We can't go decades within this criminal waste of time that so many believers and obviously unbelievers as well. They just, it's, it pains me to watch it year after year after year of, of being a leader in the body of Christ. Paragraph C, personal petition, prayer time. There are a number of verses. I have a couple here. You could add, you could put 10, probably five or 10 more, where in the new Testament, they prayed that love would increase. Do you actually ask God for a greater anointing to be released on your heart, your emotions? I'm talking about your emotions now. The Holy Spirit lives in your spirit the day you're born again. But I'm talking about his manifest presence, stirring your mind and emotions, stirring your inner man. If you ask for love to abound, it will. If you don't give up, don't do it for three weeks and quit. Do it for 10 solid years. And if you're an unsatisfied customer, come and talk to me. Don't try God for three months in tents. If you're going to try him, which is okay, do it for at least 10 years. Because three months is the American version, the American culture version of trying something. Do it the biblical version and try it, but try it for 10 years. And if God proves to not be reliable, then you have an argument. But good news, that will be an irrelevant conversation because you will find him to be true. But my point is this, in my prayer time, I ask God many, many times, Father, empower my spirit to love you more. And the Lord might say something like, I'm sure it's not exactly how he says it. Well, if you really, if you're going to be that way about it, I will. Beloved, use the prayer of faith to enrich your own spirit in love. Don't just use the prayer of faith to get a physical healing or more money. That's good too. Use the prayer of faith to grow in the anointing of love in the inner man. Ask him for love to increase. There's many prayers. One I don't have here, one of the favorites is the 2 Thessalonians 3, 5, where Paul said, direct our hearts into the love of God. Direct, take the reins of my heart and lead me into the vast ocean of your love. And again, don't give him a three-month trial run. Give him a 10-year one and see if it doesn't really work. And the reason they do it three months and quit isn't because they don't love God. They don't have confidence in the process. The point I started off with, they don't have confidence in the biblical little by little process that it's actually matters to God. That the love they're giving God, they don't really think it matters to Him. It's not that they don't love God. It's not that they're bored with God. They don't think God cares about the little movements over the months and years. Beloved, He cares massively about the little movements of your heart over the years. Paragraph D, the fourth principle. The confession, the confession of your faith in a time of temptation, in a time of failure. When we repent, now you got, you have to add the word when we repent. Because some folks, they fail and they confess through the Lord's beloved. The Lord says, well you are, but it would really work a lot better if you added that extra step in, break your agreement with your sin. No, that sounds kind of funny, but it's real. Lots of folks, they hear, quote, the bridal paradigm. And paradigm means perspective. The bridal perspective of the kingdom. And they take it outside of the boundaries of the Word of God. And Jesus being a bridegroom means He's happy with us no matter what we're doing. No. His heart is troubled with love when we break our agreement with Him. But when we do come back into agreement, that's called repentance. We declare war on the compromise. We renounce it. In other words, we say, Lord, that was sin. I'm not going to find a Bible verse to patch it up. It was sin. It was. The Lord says, good. I repent of it. Good too. I receive your mercy and I am your beloved. I am your favorite. The Lord goes, you got it right. You can stand with confidence as a first-class citizen right now in my presence. Absolutely. Beloved, we have to use the confession of truth when our heart, when we have failed, because it recovers our confidence. And the recovery of confidence gives us the ability to feel those impressions, those subtle stirrings that I started off this message with. Those subtle stirrings make all the difference in the world. Oh, I love what John said here in John 21. He goes, I'm the guy Jesus loves. I'm the disciple whom the Lord loves. Beloved, that's your, everyone's confession if you want it. My favorite one, though that has got to be my favorite one too. I love that. Don't you like that? John's signing off in John 21. He's signing his signature on the gospel of John. And instead of saying, I, John, wrote the book, he wrote, the guy that Jesus loves wrote the book. Well, who was that? John goes, guess, it's me. I know who I am. Beloved, you have the right to use that. The other favorite verse on that is the John 15 9, where Jesus says, I love you like the Father loves me. Oh, beloved, that, you can't go beyond that. Jesus loves you like the Father loves Jesus? Like what? Beloved, you are his favorite. God, nobody can be loved more than the Father loves the Son. If I'm on the status of how the Father loves the Son, if that's the, that's the ground I have, I am his favorite. His heart is big enough for all of us to be his favorite without diminishing love towards any one of us. When you sin, you confess it. Don't, again, find a Bible verse to make the sin okay, because you'll, you may fake your friends out and fake your conscience out, but your spirit will still stay dull. I don't want to find Bible verses that empower me to live dull. What's the point? I want to find Bible verses that give me confidence to be renewed when I blow it. And I've blown it many times, but I know what it means to repent. And I, I mean, I do this, this is, this will be kind of tough for some of you, but you just need to do it. Over the years, I've, I've, I've done this for 30 years, I've used this verse. I mean, I blow it. God before God, I mean, just still in the, in, in just the, the yuckiness of the emotion on my heart. I repent. Here I am, Lord, your beloved, your favored one. I'm the one you love. And I'm going, oh, that hurts. No, no devil in the name of Jesus. Go. I am your favorite one. Oh, that hurt to say, boy, those early days. That just hurt me to say that because my religious spirit was just healthy enough to feel better about my life. If I suffered in condemnation for a little while, you know, put myself in kind of probation spiritually for three months, come out of it. You know, I paid my debt and I just started speaking right into this, just said, I mean, 17 minutes ago. And here I am. Oh God, I am your favorite one. That's me. And just throughout the day, I am your beloved. I am the one that you delight in. Oh boy. It hurt at first because my mind was so unrenewed that I had my confession long before I had the revelation. But I tell you, you get that confession, your heart will get into revelation in time. Here we are. Psalm 18. Remember what I said a few minutes ago about Psalm 18? That was the one where David, 16 months of, of, of, uh, compromise and zig lag. And he starts off a few minutes ago. I said, he said, I love the Lord. Well, here he is 19 verses later, because that was verse one. When he said, I love the Lord. After 16 months of compromise, the first day back, the first day back, David tells everyone God delivered in me because he likes me. He delights in me. His friends, they were all believers too. Go, what? We've been with you for eight, 16 months, David. He goes, I know, but I repented. He delights in me. That's why he delivered me. The audacity for him to claim that the first day back. David said, I know God. I'm back. We're together and I've got my confidence back in God. Oh, beloved. You get your confidence by a clear confession of truth after you repent. I mean, you can have that confession within minutes after you repent. If you really got nerved, just do it within a minute. I mean, try to get that under 30, 60 seconds, like repent and get right back in it. But due to weakness, it may take you 10 minutes or an hour to get your confidence back, but don't take three months, whatever you do, because it will quench the stirrings of emotion of the Lord's stirrings of his heart on your heart. And then you won't grow in the first commandment. Paragraph E, well, we're not going to get to Matthew 25, but you got, you got it written out for you. That's okay. Paragraph E, fellowship. So much of your inheritance and your healing is in the hands of others. The revelation of the love of God, I will get part of it direct and part of it out of your lips. I will get part of it direct and part of it will be in my lips when I'm talking to you. And part of it will be in your lips when you're talking to me. And the Lord's made it clear. He entrusts a dimension of his love in the dynamic of people connecting. That I find, I find so much in God by talking to believers, unbelievers, friends and strangers alike. I don't mean every conversation has Bible verses I'm saying, but in the flow of life, if you try, if you seek to walk in the light, that's the key. You'll have fellowship. And the fellowship means there's a two-way contribution to each other's spirit. Beloved, let me say something really strong. Hanging out together is not the same thing as fellowship. Two people with a dull spirit hanging out together with no light in the relationship, they will probably end up duller in their spirit because they hung out together. No, for real. I've heard young people and old people alike for years say, well we're on fellowship. I go that, I've been there. That's not fellowshipping. That's sitcom humor with a lot of darkness and complaining and accusations and low-grade ABCD as well. The jokes, the things they talk about. And I've talked about believers, I've talked about leaders in the church. That is not fellowship. That is indulging each other's spirit. In order to walk in fellowship, fellowship means my interaction with you and yours with me builds our spirit up. Doesn't mean every time we're together we have a spiritual gigantic experience. That's not what it means. But the love of God is coming from me to you. Not just is it only touching you. It's touching me when I talk to you. I'm talking to you out of my heart and it's building you up and me up. And you're talking back. It's building you up and me up. There's a dynamic of love that happens in fellowship. But it's fellowship when we're in light. And light doesn't mean we're fully mature. It means we're sincere about being wholehearted at whatever level of maturity we are. And two one-week-old believers can walk in light together and spark each other. But having said that, two 30-year pastors can completely defile one another spirit and without ever saying overtly evil stuff. Just the darkness and the cynicism and just the secular mindset that is so often even in leaders in the body of Christ. Do not equate hanging out as fellowship. So what you ask and I'm not saying you dump all your friends. But ask yourself this question. Is there any spark of life for real? I don't mean a stretch that is kind of doesn't have credibility to it. I mean is it for real? Is there a spark of life going either direction in your last three or four times together? If not, that doesn't mean dump your friends. It means you determine that you're going to go to the next quote outing and you're going to walk in light. The walk in light means you're going to set your spirit to to live in light before you get there. And as a conduit of light it doesn't mean everything they say, hey how's the football game? Well God was glorified in the victory. You don't have to. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying you have to give biblical terminology to your conversation. Small talk is okay. Small talk is a very normal part of life. But if it's only small talk and there's no light in it, it's not fellowship. And it's dulling your spirit and their spirit. But having said that the negative, the positive is part of the revelation of the love of God for my heart is in your lips. And part of the revelation of the love of God for my heart is in my lips but only when I talk to you. There's this, there's a great dynamic in this whole thing. Let's just go another minute or two and we're gonna finish here. Paragraph A, Roman numeral three. Setting our heart to love Jesus. And the idea is to love Jesus for years. Sustained for for years. I'm not talking about going you know a summer at IHOP or a year at Bible school. I'm talking about setting your heart to do this thing for decades. No matter what. If it's moments where it's exciting, moments it's hard. Hard means it's costly to obey. There's a big ouch because what he's demanding it hurts. And there's times we're just boring and routine. But no matter what season we're gonna go for this thing. We have to have a sustained vision to go deep. It takes focus. It takes effort. Our soul will prosper if we stay with it. Here he is in John, third John. He's talking about a soul that prospers. Is that a dynamic concept? Our soul? Wealthy. Our soul's wealthy. We don't end up with a prosperous soul because of a diligent three months. We end up with a prosperous soul just like in business. Most people don't make millions the first three months. Most people that have made millions in business, by far the normal way is the sustained pattern of doing it with wise principles. And our soul gets wealthy if we stick with it. Again, 10 full years. Don't do it hard for a summer. Say, you know what? I'm gonna go all the way with this thing. Beloved, you'll end up with an anointing to love God with all your heart. And you will experience that whether you're sitting in a prayer room or you're not. And again, your prayer room time isn't your love God time. That's energy from God time. So you can love God when you go out and love people when you go out. Paragraph B. Are you an extravagant lover of Jesus? If you are, here's the question. You don't have to say it in this way, but here's the question. What is the most that God will empower you to give him? The question isn't how much sin can you get away with without losing your salvation? That's not the issue. I talked to different folks over the years and their whole argument is how much they can get away with without being completely thrown out of the kingdom or whatever. Like a completely wrong question. The question is how much will God empower you to be abandoned? That's the question you need to be asking. That's the place where light is in your spirit. Even if you don't break through in this area or that area, that question brings light to your spirit. It doesn't matter how many years you've done it or even how mature you are. It's the decision to be wholehearted. That's the light issue. Paragraph D. Now let's go to paragraph C. C and D. We'll end with that. I just want to look at David. David said this one thing all the days of my life. All the days of my life. You know I talk to folks and they say I want to be radical and what they mean is they want to do something extreme for a few weeks or a few months. I go that's not radical. Oh that's kind of fun. Sounds kind of cool. It's kind of cool but you can't be radical by doing something three months no matter how extreme it is. It's radical if you stay steady for 10 years. Radical is about longevity not about the uniqueness or the exoticness of your venture. Lots of folks can do kind of cool even, I mean even important kind of exotic kind of endeavors. Go in the middle of the Amazon you know build a tent and witnessed all the da da da da. Well that sounds pretty cool. That sounds radical. Well radical is not exactly the right word in my opinion. I think it's might be really important. What's radical is if you're there 10 years later. Now that's radical. Radical is about longevity with consistency. David said all the days of my life. We'll end with this. Daniel, I mean look at Daniel. He said Daniel knelt down on his knees three times that day and prayed and he gave thanks to God as was his custom since his early days. Daniel was over 60 years working in that in Babylon and three times a day since his youth. He's in his 80s. He was in his teens. Now beloved that's radical. Three times a day. It's 60 years later. The guy is still going like I'm going for it. Amen. Let's end with that. Let's stand. For more free downloads from Mike Bickle please visit mikebickle.com.