Mike Bickle emphasizes the importance of understanding God's emotions towards us at different stages of spiritual maturity. He clarifies that God's grace is not a license to sin but requires genuine repentance and a heartfelt response to Him. Bickle explains that spiritual disciplines are essential for growth but do not earn God's grace; rather, they position our hearts to receive it. He reassures believers that God delights in their sincere efforts to seek Him, regardless of their maturity level, and that true repentance leads to transformation over time. Ultimately, Bickle encourages believers to embrace their relationship with God, knowing that He values their heart's desire to grow closer to Him.

Well, I'm going to continue on the subject of the grace of God, and I want to focus tonight on how God feels about us at different levels, different stages of our maturity, and different responses from our heart to Him. Because God has different emotions related to our responses, and He has very clear emotions in the Bible that describe how He feels towards us at various levels of our maturity. And understanding this is critical, because I find that it's easy to get confused about this. And some people think God is mad when actually He's glad, and other times, which that is, uh, that's very common, and other times people think God's glad, and He's not so glad, and that's called presumption. And we want to understand where it is most people err on the Lord is far more in a, in a posture of delighting and rejoicing in His people, but they feel like God's angry at them. That's clearly the most common err, but the other one does exist as well. And we've been talking about that, the presumptuous understanding of grace, where grace is presented, is that which just makes us comfortable with God while we're sinning. And that's not what grace is about either. Roman numeral one, review of some of the foundational truths that we've looked at the last couple of weeks. You just can't say this too many times, though everybody knows it. We receive God's grace, and we are justified because of what Jesus did on the cross, not because of our spiritual disciplines. You need to say that every time, because then we need to say our spiritual disciplines are an essential part of growing in the grace of God. Spiritual disciplines do not earn us the grace of God. The grace of God doesn't override them to where it nullifies their importance. Spiritual disciplines are essential in order to grow in the grace of God, and in no way are we earning grace because we posture ourselves before the Lord with spiritual discipline. The point I've been making the last several weeks that most of you are really clear on, but for those that are visiting, I just want to say it again. There is nothing in the Bible that gives anybody the assurance that God will give them grace if they don't repent. The receiving of grace, the free grace of God, is dependent upon the human response of repenting, of changing the attitude, and people get confused about grace where they see grace as nullifying the need for human responsiveness, and God does not nullify the need for our responsiveness, our repentance, which means to agree with God. In one sentence, repentance is breaking our agreement with darkness and with the devil and coming into agreement with God. That's what repentance really is, and the Lord requires, insists upon repentance because repentance, the voluntary agreement of our heart with God, is the very essence of intimate relationship. God doesn't want robots. He doesn't want automated servants. He wants love relationships. He wants responsiveness that's voluntary, and the key word in that responsiveness is faith or repentance, which are really two sides of the same coin. Paragraph B, repentance is a change of attitude. It's a change of the attitude of the heart. The attitude of the heart must change for repentance to be genuine. We're turning from something negative, sin, and we're turning to something positive. We're turning to God, so there's a double dimension of repentance. Now, we only repent according to the light that God gives us, meaning when we first, in our first encounters with the Lord, we only have a little bit of understanding of what we are, of where we're wrong, of where our attitudes are wrong, and the Lord is pleased if we agree with him to the degree that he gives us light, to the degree he gives us information. So the Lord is as pleased with a one-day-old believer and a one-year-old believer as he is a very mature saint that's deep in holiness, because that new believer that's walking in sincere repentance is walking in all of their light, and that's the issue, that they're walking in their light, and the Lord rejoices in that, and he sees this as the person, the believer, valuing the relationship with him, and that's the critical issue. It's not that he holds back and says, you know what, you're just a young believer, I'm just going to wait and see how things turn out. When we respond to the Lord, to the fullness of our light, meaning when the Lord shows us it's wrong, we declare war on it. When the Lord shows us something's right, we go after it. We may not attain it, but we go after it, and there's a big difference between going after it, seeking it, and attaining it, and the Lord values the seeking of it. It's the seeking to attain the right things and the seeking of abstaining from the wrong things. It's the seeking that makes a statement from our heart to God that we value the relationship, and what happens sometimes is that we put all of our energy and our attention on how much we attain, and I believe that it's more accurate of a statement of where our heart is if we would if we would focus our attention on seeking to enter into the things God tells us to do, the disciplines as well as the works of service and the acts of kindness, as well as putting our attention on seeking to abstain from the negative. The seeking happens many times for a long season before we have any substantial attainment. We can seek an area of obedience and not attain to obedience in a substantial way for months or even years in that area according to the light the Lord gives us, and the Lord will help us attain in due time if we will seek him earnestly according to the light that he gives us. In Psalm 36 verse 9, King David says that in your light we see light. Now what King David meant by that is that when we receive the light of God and we honor it and we obey it and we walk in it, then we get more light. If we walk in the light that God gives us, we see more light. If we value the areas that he tells us to seek to walk in, even though we don't attain, but we value it, we get more insight, we get more understanding. Paragraph C. This is what it means in 1 John 1 7 when it says we walk in the light as he's in the light, and we might think, wait, how can we walk in the light in the same degree God walks in the light? God walks in the light perfectly, and what John is talking about is that walk in the light that you have in the way that God dwells in the light he has. God dwells in the light that he has with all of his heart, and though we have only a little bit of light and God has all light, the idea is in as much as we know the light, walk in it. And that's what God does. That's an understatement. God, of course, dwells in the light that he has, but that's what John's telling the saints to do. Whatever the measure is you have, go with all of your heart, and then you're living with the light in the way that God lives with light because God goes with all of his heart. He dwells in the light that he possesses. Of course, that's a given, but that's what John's telling us to do. Okay, paragraph D. Repentance is a process, meaning we make the decision in a deeper way as we grow. Our repentance is valid even when our repentance is immature. It's still valid in the Lord's sight, and our repentance matures, and our repentance broadens as the light increases. We have a greater sphere of understanding of what it is that we are to walk in and what we're to abstain from, but there's a process that at every level of maturing in our repentance, this same process is happening. There's three steps that are taking place. Number one, God is the one that gives us the light. He's the one that convicts us. He's the one that woos us and draws us. And the reason I point this out is because God receives the glory for our transformation and our change because he's the one that gave us the light. He's the one that stirred us up. He's the one that talked us into it. That's called conviction. He talks us into it. He convinces us. And so we don't look at repentance as a form of earning anything because God understands he's the one that stirred you to repent. He doesn't think of it as you're earning anything because there's some camps in the body of Christ where anything like repentance or discipline, they automatically minimize it under the wrong idea that it's a form of earning grace. And the Lord could answer and say, no, you're not earning it. I'm the one that convicted you. I'm the one that gave you the idea to repent, and I moved on your heart, and I and I wooed you, and I wowed you with who I am, and I convinced you to do it. That's step one. Now, again, these three steps take place at every level of maturity. It's the same three steps. Then the second thing that happens, step two, we respond to these divine ideas touching our heart called conviction. We respond by making a resolve to obey those ideas. And again, we only see those, we only have a little bit of insight. We only get a little bit of light when God convicts us, but we resolve to the level we have light. And it's critical that we do resolve to obey that light. And then step three, God releases more blessing. He releases power. He responds to our response. So step one, God initiates. God's the one that gets our attention, and God's the one that convinces us. Step two, we respond to God's initiation. Then step three, God responds to our response, and He gives us the, releases the blessing. So He's on the front and the back end of the whole process, and He is glorified in it. And He knows that it was His power that was the major, it was the deciding factor, so to speak, in the equation, because He gave us power and convinced us, and gave us understanding, and helped us all along the way in a supernatural way. Okay, paragraph E. Repentance always must result in change. Always, if it's true. True repentance, maybe I'll just add the word true there, true repentance, because I don't know what false repentance is. That's kind of an oxymoron, false repentance. But true repentance always eventually, eventually results in change. It may take some years before the change is substantial, but it always brings us eventually into the area of light that God gave us. Maybe, you know, on an area of our speech, which is the most difficult area in everyone's life, is their speech and their thought life. And the Lord gives us a scale of one to ten, a level two of light about our speech. And boy, it really challenges. It may be a few years before we actually walk in that. We think, finally, we got that down. And then all of a sudden, the Lord turns up the power on the microscope, and now He gives us level three. You go, oh, my goodness, my speech is totally out of order. It may take a few years to really walk in that level. And then we get there, and then He turns up the power on the microscope again, goes to level four. And so the Lord is never holding us accountable to live in level eight of an area of purity, but only to live within the measure of that which He speaks to us. And He gets the glory for it because He's the one that enabled us to see it. But it always does result in change within the sphere of the light that He'd give us if the repentance is genuine. And if years have gone by and you haven't made any change in that area, you need to talk to the Lord about whether your repentance is genuine in that area. It doesn't mean that you've perfectly matured. That's not what I'm saying. But there needs to be some growth. Our character needs to be increasing to some degree as the light is increasing. Now, when the Lord in the area of our speech, He talks to us on a scale of one to ten, a two, I tell you, you'll be one of the most saintly people in town. I mean, if you get actually a two, which is real low, you'll be noteworthy amongst the church because of your godly speech. Because I would say that most believers live far below level two in the area of truly sanctified speech. That's the giant area in everyone's life. And of course, then their thought life, because our speech and our thought life certainly go hand in hand. 1 John chapter 2 verse 3 and 4, John says this, by this, by this, we know that we know Him. By this, we know we're saved. This is a pretty important, pretty big statement here. By this, we know, we know Him. If we keep His commandments. And again, the unspoken principle is that we keep the commandments according to the measure of the light we have. Because the commands of God, there's an absolute standard and there's a relative standard. In the absolute sense, we don't ever enter into full obedience in this age to where we obey to the absolute, utter, the highest end of purity and holiness that equals God's. Now, our, our obedience is relative according to the light. It's not in the absolute sense. And so he's talking about in the, in the relative sense here, that we know that we know Him because the areas that He's given us light in our heart, we're, we're going after it. And over the years, our obedience becomes more substantial. It never becomes perfect, but it becomes more substantial. It grows and it broadens to reach other areas of our inner life. Verse four, the person who says, I know Jesus, but the person does not keep His commandments in the relative sense. This man is a liar. The truth is not in him. And, and of course, the thing that's been stirring me up the last few weeks is just the, the subject of so much of the false grace message is being offered. The grace is being offered without repentance. And there is no such thing as the grace of God being offered from a biblical point of view to whosoever, unless they repent, there has to be a change of attitude because God is jealous for the relationship. The repentance is because God wants relationship. He wants us to say yes in a meaningful way. And that yes does not earn us God's favor. That yes is our response in the relationship because it's a relational dynamic that God is after. Okay. Paragraph F again, I've said this every week, but I just, I just love saying it. So I'm going to say it again. Paragraph F spiritual disciplines are ordained by God as a necessary way to posture our heart to receive freely. Spiritual disciplines do not earn us God's power or God's favor. Spiritual disciplines merely position our heart in front of the bonfire of God. And the analogy I've used for years is you think of the, you know, just a, a, a, a five pound block of frozen hamburger. And you put that, that frozen hamburger in front of the bonfire in time, it's going to be tenderized and it's not the power of the hamburger that's doing it. It's the power of the fire. We put ourselves in God's presence by reading the word, committing to obey fasting prayer. We're not earning anything. We're putting our frozen heart in front of his fire and the power is in the fire, not in the sitting in front of it. There is no power or virtue in the hamburger. The power and the virtue is in the fire. That's where the energy is. And the Lord will, if we posture ourself in front of him, we receive from him more. And the scripture is clear that if you want to receive more posture yourself more in his presence, you don't earn it. You put yourself in the place to receive it freely. Paragraph G God gives more to our heart, but this is critical. He doesn't love us more because he gives us more because sometimes we confuse this. And we think if we posture ourself more in his presence, he loves us more. No, he doesn't love you more. He doesn't like you more. If you posture yourself in his presence, that's called discipline. He doesn't love you more. If you do that, he gives you more, particularly on the inside. And he allows us to determine in a significant way to how far and how fast we go. Now, of course, we want to go, you know, to the fullest degree at the full speed. And that's not, I don't mean that, but according to how God runs his kingdom, we can speed up the process by responding more aggressively to him. We can get more and we can get it faster. And it's, and the law of the kingdom is Matthew chapter five, verse six, blessed are those who hunger and thirst. They will receive more is, is the essence of that hunger and thirst for God. And for righteousness is a relational dynamic. God says, I will give you according to hunger. I'm not going to give you more because I like you more. I like you. Anyway, I liked you before you even said yes to me. I liked you when you were at the total beginning of your maturity process. I don't like you more and therefore give you more that what I do is I honor the relationship by giving you according to your hunger for the relationship. So really the Lord is dignifying the relationship. It's he's not stating that we deserve it, nor is he stating he likes us more. He's saying, I am valuing in your heart. The fact that you value relationship with me and the law of the kingdom is God gives more to the hungry, not more to those who deserve it, but more to the hungry Galatians chapter six. This I'll give the negative. The principle works on the negative and the positive. If you sow to the flesh, you sow to the flesh in terms of immorality, in terms of different, uh, you know, uh, abuses and alcohol and drugs and immorality or anger or strife or covetousness. If you sow to the flesh, you will reap the habits that will create bondages that some of them will become demonic bondages. That's called corruption. And the Lord allows us to determine what seed we sow in our hearts. If we want to sow to the flesh, the Lord says, I still love you, but there's a principle of my kingdom. It's not a fact that I don't love you, but if you so immorality into your heart, if that's what you sow, you will have corruption in your, in your emotional patterns and in your physical patterns, there will be defilement. And there will be, uh, there will be, uh, uh, evil desires that are far more difficult to manage. It's called corruption. The word for the, so the word corruption, you could put bondages and habits that accelerate and increase the, the bad habits will, will increase and accelerate, but it goes the other way too. If you sow to your, to the spirit and that's by sermon on the Mount living, every time we fast and pray, every time we obey and humble ourself, every time we act in kindness and in servanthood, it's, it's a very small incremental sowing to the flat, I mean, to the spirit, it's a very small sowing, but it's a sowing that is substantial. It's an important one. And what we reap is, is life. Now we can get tripped up by this verse because it says we reap eternal life. And what people sometimes think is it means we'll go to heaven when we die. And certainly it means that we will be in heaven when we die, but we get life now. If we sow in the spirit, instead of the word life, put the word, the anointing, because that's what it means. The anointing on the heart. If you will sow in the, into the spirit in these small incremental ways, very small, it's like, uh, the man or woman who grows, uh, strong and righteousness and revelation. It's like they're doing pushups, spiritual pushups every day. And if you met the world champion pushup guy, if there is such a thing, and if you ask them, what pushup was the one that made you the world champion, he would say, well, I do thousands of them a week. And there is no one pushup that makes me strong. They all just very small, little incremental steps. Every one of them contributes to my strength. And when we sow in the spirit by bridling our eyes, by bridling our speech, by speaking, uh, grace, instead of sarcasm, or instead of a bitterness, when we obey God in our finances, in the kingdom, we use the, you know, we, we, we get this emotion about our money. We want it, we get fearful. So we hold on to it or, or we get other ideas and spend it in ways outside of God's will. And even we spend money in the will of God, that's sowing to our spirit. And the sowing to our spirit is very easy to do. We do it thousands of times in the course of walking with the Lord for years. And every single one of them, though we can't measure the power of one pushup in the world champion pushup guy, every single one of them is bringing more of the presence of God to our heart, though we can't measure it in that day. When, when, when an athlete works out or the musician practices, you know, one hour later out of tens of thousands of hours of working out that one hour, they go, I don't know if this was the big hour. It seemed like the other hours, the same was sowing to the spirit. It's every single, uh, deposit, every installment that we make every, uh, investment we make in sermon on the Mount living before the Lord. It's a very small incremental step forward. And it does the opposite of corruption. It makes our, our soul experience the presence of God. It's a very powerful reality. I remember talking to a guy and he was addicted to pornography and he goes, Oh, this is terrible. He goes, how can I get out of it? I go, it's really easy. He goes, it is. I go, yeah, I go, you get out of it the same way you got into it by making 10,000 small decisions. That's how you get out of it. I said, you were not addicted to it. The first time you went back over and over and over and over and over, you get out of it the same way you stay away from it. You feed your spirit on the word over and over and over and over. And at first it won't seem to make an impact. You get into trouble in the same way you get out of trouble. It's the same little by little incremental steps. You sow to your flesh, you get bad habits and addictions. You sow to your spirit. You have the anointing touches your heart over time. And the reason the Lord doesn't count this as a, as earning it because it's relational. He goes, no, I'm giving it to you on the basis of how much you hunger for me. And I so value our relationship that every movement you make towards me in the relationship, I will honor it because I so keep, I care for the relationship. So when I hear people, I've heard it for 30 years, talk about fasting and prayers earning. I go, it's completely confused in their mind because what they're, they don't have a paradigm of relationship with God when they fast and pray. They're, they're like maybe thinking of punching in a time clock, you know, a time card proving to God they're sincere with no relational dynamic. And if they kind of like, if they like endure a boring God long enough, finally, God will break down and anoint them. You know, it's like they're, you know, I've, I've heard people talk about paying the price for prayer. And the idea is that this is a, you know, a, a boring God. And if we really kind of, you know, rise up and endure him enough by reading his boring Bible and doing his boring prayer thing, finally, boring God will break down and help us. That is, that is completely the wrong paradigm of why we're praying and fasting. We're not punching in a time chart. I mean, a time card, we are giving ourself to the relationship and the God of relationship goes, I'm going to honor the relationship and I'm going to honor your part in it. And I take this as love. I take this as your hunger. Now there's not much you can do besides put your cold heart in front of the bonfire, but I'll take it because the power of my fire will then touch you. Okay. Let's go to top of page two, spiritual immaturity. We, we touched this last week is not the same thing as rebellion. I, we won't go through it. Uh, uh, all of the paragraphs here, cause we looked at this last week, but I just want to say it again for those that are visiting and it bears repeating anyway. And my course, my goal is that you would say these principles, not this, that you'd kind of grasp them and go, okay, I think, I think I got that straight. I would, my desire is that you would say these to people in need, to people you minister to and your friends and the people that you meet over the years, because one of the greatest areas of confusion in the body of Christ is this issue of immaturity and rebellion, because immaturity is sincere towards God. It's made the choice to obey God. It hasn't attained. It hasn't broke through yet. There's not a breakthrough, a full obedience, but it's really made the choice. And then this person really wants to obey God, but rebellion says, no, I'm not making a choice for God. I don't want to make that choice. I have no plans to obey the Lord in this area. I just don't even, I don't even bother me. Holy spirit with my speech, I'm going to say what I want to say, go where I go, use my money in time. The way I want to use my money in time, leave me alone. I'll obey in a couple other areas. That's called rebellion. When the Holy spirit is speaking in area after area, we have no regard for it. Immaturity says, yes, I'm totally on Lord. Oh no, my repentance is so weak. It's so fickle. It's so fragile, but I'm on, I'm with you. I care. And the Lord sees that as sincere and it's real to him, but it's immature. If we confuse spiritual immaturity with rebellion, and so many do it, they call the immature believer rebellious and they injure the faith of that immature person or equally bad. They call themselves rebellious when in fact they're mature. I mean, they're immature. That's their problem. They're not rebellious. God is angry with the rebellious and God actually enjoys the immature. He enjoys them while they're growing up. You know, God doesn't just enjoy his children. Once they mature, he actually enjoys them each step of the way. He doesn't only enjoy them when they break through. He enjoys them when they resolve to be his and they make the inward decision. When the movements of our heart line up with God and agree with him, the movements of our heart, we call that repentance. We call that agreeing with God. We haven't got the attainment yet in our character. We haven't broken through yet at the heart level, but we have really resolved to go after this. That is precious to God. That is not rebellion. That is immaturity. And to confuse the two in your own heart is to live perpetually in condemnation. Now here's the bad side about condemnation, which so many believers are living in condemnation, is that they want to quit. They just think, you know, I don't want to keep reaching to obey God and failing so bad as a hypocrite. I can't, you know, seek to love God and lose every time sooner or later. That is so painful to reach to be a lover of God and to constantly be a hypocrite. I will, people will end up after a few years of that, just settling down and deciding to be a second class citizen in the kingdom of God. They'll say, you know, when I was younger, I had zeal for that, but it's never going to happen. I'm never going to break through. And they resolve that to live at a distance from God. And they really do love God. What really happened is they confuse their immaturity with re with rebellion. Somebody told them they're rebellious. They believed it. And sooner or later, they said it hurts too much to reach to obey and fail every single day is horrible as it is. I would rather not have that trauma in my heart day after day after day. I'd rather just draw back, lower my standards and just hope for grace when I meet the Lord on the last day. And this can be corrected because we tell the guy you're not rebellious. Actually the, the, the reality is you really do care. You care intensely. That's why you have so much pain. And the guy goes, yeah, I've got to do this over the years. And the guy goes, yeah, that's, I do care. I really do. And I says, I've got good news for you. God is angry with the rebellious, but you're not rebellious. God actually enjoys the process of his young ones growing. And they go, yeah, but I've been young for so many years. I go granted it's 20 years later and you're still a spiritual infant, but still the principle is still true. He loves those that are seeking to obey him. And when people can feel God smile on them while they're growing, then they run to him instead of running from him. Then they have courage because they go, I haven't attained yet outwardly to all the issues. My heart is not attained yet, but I feel his pleasure because I know that he values the resolve of my heart to go towards him. It makes all the difference in the world. I mean, it is huge. Paragraph D struggling and weakness is not the same thing as being a hopeless hypocrite, a hopeless, a hypocrite is somebody who is not seeking at the heart level to obey the things they're saying. We don't attain all that we're seeking, but the fact that we're seeking it, the fact that we're seeking it is what causes us not to be a hypocrite. A hypocrite is not seeking it. They're not even pretending to do it. They're telling others to do it. And at the secret place of their heart, they're trying to fake others out. They're not trying to obey God thought, word and deed and their time and their money. That's not even on their mind. And that's where the hypocrite is. Now, a person, a new believer that doesn't even have light on all those areas, as long as they walk in their light, the Lord will keep increasing the light and the Lord will bring them along in his own time. Paragraph E, David sinned. When David sinned, his heart was wounded. Why? Because he knows, he knew he grieved God's heart. David didn't repent because he got caught. David repented because he knew God's heart was grieved. He sinned a bunch of times, but his conscience troubled him because he cared about the relationship. Saul, the reason when Saul apparently repented and it didn't, God didn't receive it because Saul only repented when he got caught. He didn't actually repent because his heart was troubled. He repented because he got caught. He repented because there were consequences. And that repentance so often is not even genuine. There's the guy who's, you know, he finally admits after he's been cornered and everybody's caught him. Okay, I did it. Well, everybody's caught you and you can't get out of it. I did, I repent. And it might be real. Sometimes it's real even when they repent, when they get caught, but often all they are doing is repenting because they've been cornered. Because sometimes when people read the life of David and Saul, they says, man, God was nice to David, but he's mean to Saul. I mean, Saul did little things and got in big trouble. David did big things and only got in a little bit of trouble. It doesn't seem fair. And the truth is, is that David repented because he offended, he grieved God. He knew that his conscience was troubled and God valued that even though David's sins were huge. And Saul, he didn't care that he offended God. That didn't trouble him. He only got in trouble if he got, I mean, he only repented when he got caught. Romans number three, how God feels towards people. A, God loves unbelievers that have no regard for him. For God so loved the world. God loves everybody. He loves the whole world. He loves the unbelievers in the nations. Paragraph B, God loves unbelievers, but he does not enjoy them. God does not enjoy unbelievers, but he loves them. He enjoys a believer who comes into agreement with his heart. Even if the light we have on a scale to one to 10 is a one way at the beginning, we're walking in the light that we know, meaning we're, we're, we're seeking to obey it. We don't fully even obey the level one light, but we're seeking to, and the Lord sees that and values it and esteems it as, as caring about the relationship. We only have level one of light and we don't even obey it fully, but we seek to obey it fully. That's the key word we're seeking to, and we don't attain to it for a season. The Lord says, you value the relationship. You care about our relationship and the Lord's heart is smiling over the relationship. Now, one of the great passages in the Bible in terms of this subject is Psalm 18 verse 19. It is so dynamic because it's the context of Psalm 18. And if you read the, the introduction, that's not the right word. What do you call it? Psalm, you know, when you open it, it gives a little introduction there at the top. Anyway, there's a, there's a official name for that, a theological name. Anyway, when you read that little postscript, it tells you that Psalm 18 was written on the day that God delivered David from King Saul. Well, we know what day that was. It's in first Samuel 30. It's when, it's when David just left Ziklag. And I don't want to give a big story on David right now, though it's, it's, it's fun to do that. Here's the point. Here's the point you need to know. David wrote, God delivered me because he delighted in to me on the day he repented after 16 months of disobedience. He has only repented one day and he gets delivered. And then the, you know, the head reporter from the head magazine comes to him and says, well, why do you think God puts the microphone on? Why do you think God delivered you after 16 months? He had, he had an area of compromise. I don't want to go into it right now for 16 months. He cried over it a whole bunch, but he didn't actually obey. Cried a lot of tears over it. That's clear from the Psalms. So the reporter comes up and says, David, why did God deliver you today? And you think, well, I don't know. What would David say? Because God likes me. He delights in me. The guys around David might've said, David, that's a little outrageous. You've only been like fully repented for nine hours and you're already talking about how much God likes you. David said he liked me all the way through it. That's why my conscience was so troubled. He delighted in me all the way. That's why he was so severe on, on calling me and hemming me in because some real negative things happened to get David's attention because the Lord delighted in him. But this is one of the grand statements of scripture about how God feels about a guy whose repentance is only about 10 or 12 hours old. His full repentance. I mean, David was crying about the fact he was not fully, he was going, Oh God, I'm not fully doing this. This isn't good. I don't like this. And it says in Psalm 56, that all of his tears were stored up in God's bottle. And it was talking about that 16 month period in Gath or in Ziklag. Anyway, enough on that. But I just want you to, I mean, I don't want to go into the context more. The point of it is 16 months of compromise, not total calm. He's not living like in, in brazen rebellion against God, but he has an issue or two that he's not obeying the Lord on. And he doesn't like it. His heart's burning within him. And the day he repents, he enters right into the revelation of God's delight in him. Within the day he was singing how much God liked him. He didn't even get a chance to, you know, do his Tuesday fast day. You know, it was just, it didn't even get through the day and he already was singing about how much God liked him. And then he went on later on in the same Psalm. And he said, God, it's your gentleness towards me that makes me great. Again, his friends might've said great. You don't look that great right now. You look like you're a mess right now because he's been in, he's been again in a wrong place for 16 months. You don't look great. And what David was really saying is because God was so gentle towards me, I will end up growing up into the fear of God in the days to come. Because on the day David wrote it, he didn't have that much going for him. I mean, he's had a lot of negative things still surrounding him on that day. But he says, my gentleness, what David meant is the fact that you treated me in gentleness, God, because God, you know that I know that, you know, you could have wiped me out and I would have deserved it. But you forgave me. You gave me hope. And I will become a man who fears you in a mature way. And because you were gentle towards me, I will be great before you one day. David goes on to develop that same idea in Psalm 30. This is David's writing Psalm 30. He goes, if you Lord should mark iniquities, meaning if you should take an account on who deserves to get in trouble, that's what marking iniquities that God carefully marks what you did in truth, not what you say you did, what you actually did in truth at the heart level and at the outward level too. If he marked it and then gave to us according to what we did, David said, if you mark the truth and then paid us according to how you marked us, it's an accounting term. He said, oh Lord, who could stand? I would be wiped out. You would have wiped me out way back in Ziklag. But look at verse four, but with you, there's forgiveness. And why? Because you've forgiven me, you have given me a second chance the thousandth time. Isn't that great? God gives you the second. He's the God of the second chance. 10,000 times. He gives you the new beginning. If you want it on that day. But, but we have to repent. This is not an offer that just offered to everyone. It's people who line up with God and repent and declare at the heart level before God that they're going to obey the light God's given them. He says in verse four, with you, there's forgiveness. And he could have put the same word gentleness. It's the same idea. You treated me with gentleness. You kind of wiped me out, God, but you were gentle with me. You gave me a new beginning again and again and again and again. And now I have courage to seek you. And I will be a man filled with the fear of God before it's over. I will be great in the fear of God before this whole thing's over. And it happened. David ended his days in the fear of God and great maturity in the Lord. Beloved God's looking at you right now. And then he's saying, if I marked your iniquity, if I kept careful track and then gave you what you deserve, you would never grow up to fear me. What if God would have treated Paul the apostle in his first days of even knowing the Lord exactly how Paul deserved it. He would have never have been a mature apostle. The Lord delights in mercy. He delights in it. That's Micah 718. We say that around here all the time. Micah 718. He actually delights in it. He likes to give mercy. It's one of his favorite things he does. He likes to give mercy and he likes it to connect with our spirits. But the problem that I've seen a little bit in the seven years of IHOP is that some people get into the delight in mercy message and they forget a very significant part to the people who repent and it becomes God delights in mercy. He becomes a kind of a heavenly Santa Claus just reigning in heaven to make people happy on earth and to give them what they want. He wants relationship with us and the only way you can have relationship is if we repent and agree with him at the heart level. He doesn't delight in mercy, giving mercy to the person who won't line up with him. And again, we line up, we agree to to repent, we agree to pursue that area of light long before we break through and attain. We seek it long before we attain it. Look at here in Luke chapter 15. It's the parable of the man with the hundred sheep and and one of them gets off, off the path. You know it. You know the story. Well, verse 5. When the man found it, Luke 15 verse 5, when the man found that lost sheep, he lays it on his shoulders, complaining all the way about that lost sheep. No, rejoicing. Did you know that as a believer, when you get ensnared in something and you decide that day, Lord, I'm done with this, and you might even stumble in it again, but you're, you were declaring war on it. Did you know he puts you on his shoulders and rejoices? He's not threatening you all the way back to the sheepfold. I tell you, Bickle, you do this one more time. Don't give me that. I'm sorry, Dale. I've heard this so many times. He actually says, I will carry you, and I will rejoice in the new resolve in your heart to be in the middle of my will. Now, that lost sheep, in the human analogy, that the person that returns, the day they return, their repentance is not very mature. There's a resolve, and the Lord says, the resolve to obey me even before the the full walking out of it. I rejoice in it. I say, I take it personal. The Lord takes it personal. He takes it as a love statement from our heart, and look what he does. Verse six, the man, now Jesus is talking about himself. He's giving the parable, but the person he's talking about, the shepherd, is himself. He's telling the people what his heart's like when he's redeeming people in trouble, and this isn't just the day somebody gets saved, because it's not a, it's, it's somebody that's in the fold. It's already somebody that's part of the sheep fold of God's kingdom. This is a lost sheep. This isn't a something, some other animal, a goat that gets converted to a sheep. He's talking about within the family of God even. He's talking to the nation of Israel that were the people in the covenant relationship with God as a nation. Look what he says. Verse six, he calls together his friends, and Jesus says, when you change that attitude, I tell my friends, he's got lots of friends. Jesus is like, he's really well liked in heaven. He gets his friends, and they rejoice over you. He's like, man, I've been, I've messed up, and you're telling me that if I will really say yes at the heart level, that he's going to rejoice over me? In verse seven, I tell you there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, and he's talking about within the sheep fold. This isn't only something that's true the day somebody's born again. We've reduced this passage to only mean this is how God feels when somebody gets saved. So if somebody, if it's three years later, and they sin, all of a sudden God's heart is different. He can't, you know, he can't relate to somebody if they've been in the kingdom for a while. It's only if they were, you know, deep in sin, only for one day is he happy when they repent. No, this is what his personality is like. He calls his friends. I love this. Paragraph C, God's mercy gives us confidence. Beloved, we need confidence that he enjoys us even in our weakness. We need confidence. We need confidence. When a person gets confident in their spirit, even in their weakness, that God enjoys them, oh my, they will, they will run into his presence. They will run to him, not from him. The great truth that the end-time prayer movement needs is that the leader of the end-time prayer movement is a bridegroom with a passionate heart for people who's tender towards his people. It's not just a king who's the head of the prayer movement. He is a king, but he's a bridegroom. That's why it's as a bride, as a cherished bride, we cry come, because it's the relationship of his tenderness as a bride and a bridegroom that gives us confidence to cry come. That's why it's critical that we understand this revelation. Paragraph D, we are defined. There's three things that define you and define me in our weakness. Number one, the fact that God has passion for us here in paragraph D. Number two, we receive the gift of righteousness. And number three, there's a sincere heart cry. The Holy Spirit works in us. I mean, even our own heart cry has been worked in us by the Holy Spirit. Even the Holy Spirit helps us at every step of the way to sustain that heart cry of obedience. The reason God likes you is because of his passion. He's a, he's a God who likes people. That's his personality. One of the reasons he likes you because he's a likable person. He likes people. That's one of the reasons he likes you. And then Jesus died on the cross to remove all of the legal penalty that would stand in the way between God expressing his emotion towards us. And then the Spirit works in us a response. It's a weak response, but it's a real response. And those three things together, even in our weakness, they define us before God is lovely. They define us before God is lovely. Paragraph E. Oh, I love this verse. This revelation of God's kindness, his love. Look at this, 1 John 4, 17. Love has been perfected among us in this. We have boldness in the day of judgment. This is, this is just beyond exaggeration. It's importance. Did you know that on the day of God's, the day of judgment, the end, the final judgment, a believer on the day, when the judgment of God is most severe, when the judgment of God right now, it's being withheld. Most of God's judgments are being restrained. Only a little bit of his judgment is being manifest in the earth. Only a little bit on the day when his judgment is most manifest. Do you know what you will have on that day as a believer boldness, because you'll see it like it really is. And so what my logic is, as I've read this over the years, Lord, I don't want to be bold on that day. Only I want to be bold between now and then. I mean, if I'm going to be bold on the most terrible, glorious day of history, when your anger is most manifest, I will be most secure because I will see it clearest. If that's true, then it's true. Now, Hey, I'm going to get into this right now. If I'm going to have boldness on the judgment day, why shouldn't I have boldness now? Because of Christ Jesus. And you know why you have boldness on the day of judgment. Here it is. This is, this is awesome because as he is that's Jesus before the father, as Jesus is before the father, look at this. So also are we in this world in the same way that Jesus is before the father. He looks at you, even in this world, in your weakness, beloved, you have every reason for boldness as a sincere believer. That's saying yes to the Holy spirit. We're not breaking through on all the areas, but we're definitely warring on all the areas. We have every reason to be bold. Confident is the way you could say that. Paragraph F when we send and we repent beloved, you sent at two o'clock repent. And at two Oh five push, delete two Oh one push, delete. And you are a first-class citizen in his kingdom. You are right there. I mean, don't, don't negotiate with God. Say, put yourself in 30 days of probation. The Lord, here's what I'm going to do. This is so bad. What I did this time, this is the 20th time I did the same thing. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to suffer for 30 days to kind of even the score. The Lord says that didn't even my score. That only injures your spirit. My score was evened when my son took the wrath for you. And then when you agreed to repent by the Holy spirit's power in you, the scores even there's no reason to be 30 days in probation, stand there that moment and say, I'm a first-class citizen and the kingdom of God. So what you have only been one minute into repentance. Well, I tell you it's one minute. That's enough because the score is even because Jesus paid the penalty and the spirit convicted you and urged you to repent. And those are the two things that God requires for you to stand before him in his favor. Not that you're mature is that you agree in your spirit. You resolve in your spirit. We call that a yes in your spirit. You agree with God. Paragraph G we embrace the spiritual disciplines. You will pray and fast. I'll just say it that way. There's lots of spiritual disciplines besides prayer and fasting. You will work through the unsettled issues of your heart. I will work through them in my heart far more consistently. If you have confidence that God's smiling on you. Beloved, I can do a lot of discipline. If I know he's smiling on me, I can face many issues in my heart. If I know he's smiling at me, I can bear paragraph H a lot of conviction of sin. If I know the reason he's convicting me is because he likes me. If I know that, oh, I can bear a lot of conviction because conviction isn't rejection. The conviction of sin, if it's coming direct by the Holy Spirit or by one of his friends that you didn't give permission to talk to you about, but they talked to you anyway, and they're convicting you. Beloved, it's because God is jealous for you. He wants you. That's what that's all about. Well, I think we're just going to end with that because I got a couple more things. I'll just bring it up next week. So I'll just kind of dovetail this into next week's notes. Let's stand. For more free downloads from Mike Bickle, please visit mikebickle.com.