Mike Bickle emphasizes the importance of restoring the first commandment, which is to love Jesus with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He explains that this commandment is not just a duty but a personal relationship that requires intentionality and obedience. Bickle encourages believers to make loving God their primary focus, as it is the greatest calling and the foundation of spiritual maturity. He highlights that true love for God is demonstrated through our choices and actions, and that we must align our identity with our relationship with Him rather than our accomplishments. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a renewed commitment to love God wholeheartedly, recognizing that our love, though weak, is genuine and moves His heart.

Julie, you have about 10 CDs, some number like that, some big number. She's been doing this for years and they're beautiful songs. I've heard them through the years and really received the grace of God in the music that the Lord's given her. Okay, let's go ahead and pull out the teaching notes. Those that are joining us with God TV, we have notes on our website, just iHop.org. We're not going to follow them in detail, but some of the verses I'm covering will be there written out for you. Father, in the name of Jesus, I ask you to release the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon the speaking and the hearing of your word. God, I ask you for the grace of God to love you with all of our heart. That Jesus would become our magnificent obsession. That we would, tonight even, renew our love before you. And that by the Spirit, you would renew our hearts in love. In Jesus' name, amen. Matthew chapter 22, verse 37. Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your mind. Then he went on, and he added this commentary to that well-known passage from Deuteronomy chapter 6. He was actually quoting what the Lord told Moses. In Deuteronomy 6, the Shema Israel, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, etc. He quotes it, and then he gives his own commentary. He goes, let me tell you something. Verse 38, about this commandment. It is the first commandment from God's point of view, and it is the great one. I mean, let me just kind of, you know, imagine that he could have said, when the Father and I talk about the commandments, this is the one we call the first one. This is the one that's most important to me and the Father. This is the one that we always talk about as the great one. I just made up that conversation. But it moved Jesus. This commandment moves his heart. Paragraph B. Now, this commandment is very personal to Jesus because the Father promised to give an inheritance to Jesus. I mean, that's an amazing truth. That the Father promised His beloved Son an inheritance from the ages past. My Son, you will receive an inheritance from me. Now, that inheritance is an eternal companion that God had planned in the eternal counsels of the Godhead to move by His Spirit to raise up a bride, an eternal companion that would be equally yoked to Jesus in love. She would love Jesus in the way that Jesus loves her. It's an amazing reality. The Father said, I'll give you the nations. Now, He didn't mean the real estate of the nations. Of course, the real estate of the earth is His. But in Psalm 2 when He said, I will give you the nations, He meant more than the land. I'll give you the people who live in the nations. You will fully possess them. They will be yours at the heart level even. Now, in this inheritance that the Father promised the Son, there's two dimensions of the inheritance that I think of. Number one, the Father promised Jesus the mandatory obedience of all creation. The Father committed to give Jesus the supremacy and the preeminence over everything. Every living being will obey Him. Every demon in hell. Yet, under the punishment of eternal hell, they will still bow their knee to Him. Every unbeliever in the lake of fire, they will go there in obedience to Him. So though they won't be saved, they will be obeying Jesus. Every angel, every believer, all of creation is under this mandate from the Father. You will all obey my Son. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess. Everyone will obey His leadership. Wow! But the Lord has more. The Father could have said, I have more on my heart than the mandatory obedience of every being. I have a bigger vision. I will raise up those that will voluntarily choose to love you. More than obedience that's mandatory. They will say, I love you. And I want to love you. By the very definition of love. It requires the people choose it. And the Father at the very center of His plan, His eternal plan, is that He would have a people who would voluntarily be moved by the Spirit to love Jesus. It's what our life is about. This makes sense of what our life is about in this age and the age to come. John 17, verse 26. Now, this is a prayer of Jesus. This prayer is my life verse. Not that you have to have one life verse. But if you're looking for one, I recommend John 17, verse 26. The Father is praying. I mean, Jesus is praying to the Father. He said, Father, the love with which You loved Me. Now, think about that for a moment. He's praying the high priestly prayer. Father, the love with which You loved Me. It will be in them. Cause them to love Me in the power that You love Me. The very power of the Holy Spirit. The power of God. So that's been a prayer that I've made the focal point of my life. And I want to challenge you to do the same. I know that some of you already have. I want to love Jesus with the love that the Father loves Him with because Jesus said we could. Father above everything, I want the ability to love Him the way that You love Him by the power of God. Paragraph C. It takes God to love God. It takes the power of God to love God. We're too weak and broken in our flesh to love God by our own power. We do have to choose. And we have to choose daily. But with the inspiration of the grace of God combining with our choice we can actually walk this thing out. It takes God to love God. So we set our heart to experience the anointing of the Spirit. Or we can call it the grace of God. I use those phrases interchangeably. The anointing of the Holy Spirit or the grace of God. It takes the anointing of the Spirit to receive the love of God and it takes the anointing of the Spirit to give it back with all of our heart. It takes God to love God. We need His power to love Him. This is the greatest gift the Holy Spirit gives us is the ability I mean as believers now we've been forgiven the great gift we have is not a bigger ministry although a blessed ministry is good that's not the best thing that God has for you. Not more money though I'll always take more money if God will give it. Not more favor I like more favor. But the greatest anointing of the Spirit is the ability to receive the love of God with understanding and to feel it and then to return it back to God. Beloved, I want to identify that grace that anointing of the Spirit as the premier object for which our life is to be focused on. It's not the only thing we do but it's the premier thing that we've locked our heart into. I want to walk and the grace of God the anointing to walk out the first commandment. Romans 5.5 The love of God is poured into the heart. Wow! The love of God is poured into the heart by the Spirit. Now that happens progressively. And the heart here I'm referring the heart here refers to the emotions. The Holy Spirit lives in our spirit the day we're born again. But the influence of the Spirit moves our heart. In the heart there are several ways to identify the heart in the New Testament. But in this context it moves our emotions. Now this is progressive. We pray Holy Spirit pour love into my heart. I mean again He lives in us in fullness. The Spirit of God lives in our spirit the day we're born again. But impact strengthen my heart with power. Inspire me. You can pray that prayer and receive more of it. Some believers never talk to God about the subject. Well this is a Passion for Jesus conference. So what better subject than how to have Passion for Jesus. And the Passion for Jesus our passion for Him is actually the fruit of the revelation of His passion for us. When we understand that He has passion for us that awakens passion in us back to Him. But it comes by the power of the Spirit and we can ask Him for more of this. But many believers never do. They ask Him for more money which is biblical. They ask Him for the release of health. Biblical. They ask for more favor, more friends a bigger ministry. All of those are biblical prayers. But they never ask to experience the love of God in a greater way. And I'm saying that not only should we ask it it should be the number one prayer of our life. That's what I want you to take away with from this conference. That you would go out of here and that would be the primary dream of your heart. That you would walk in the anointing to love God and to receive the love of God. Beloved your very desire for God is His gift to you. The very fact you desire this is the gift of God working in you. I mean He gave me forgiveness. So now I have eternal life in the Spirit. Wow! But He says He can add to that and say the very fact you care about loving Me is My gift to you. Paragraph D Now as we pursue this glorious subject of loving God it's critical that we love God on His terms. According to how He defines love. Because there's in our culture today in our humanistic culture that's in the body of Christ I'm talking about there's a new definition of love that's love on our terms and I want to submit that we must love God on His terms not our terms. And it's love that is according to a spirit of obedience. That's central to it. It's not only obedience but obedience is central to it. I love what Misty Edwards says. I wrote her down here. I heard her say this to her worship team a couple of years ago with a great zeal fired in her eyes. She said God's not a hippie. Because a couple of them were some years ago they were talking about loving God and just kind of chilling out and kind of showing up when they wanted to and their idea of love was kind of do whatever comes and just kind of take what comes laid back, chill out. She goes God's not a hippie. Love Him on His terms. Set your heart to love Him. Be intentional about it. Not if you do, you do. If you don't, you don't. You take what comes. Throw that away. I heard her say that one of those worship team meetings. I said God's not a hippie. What a classic statement. Let's love God with intentionality. Let's make it the goal. The defined goal. Premier goal of our life. Because God calls it the first commandment. Well let's look at paragraph E. John 14. Jesus defined loving God as being rooted in the spirit of obedience. Again, it's not only obedience, but obedience is central to the definition of love. Look at this. He says it three times. One passage. John 14 verse 15. If you love Me, keep My commandments. Verse 21. He that has My commandments and keeps them, that's the man who loves Me. That's the woman who loves Me. If anyone loves Me, let him keep My word, My commandments. Here's my point. There's no such thing as loving God without seeking to obey God according to the Word of God. Some people think love is what happens in a dynamic worship service if they feel, they have tears, and they feel love, that's love. Well I like feeling God in a worship service, but love is much more than a feeling in a worship concert. It has to be walked out with the spirit of obedience. Now we fail. We're all weak and broken people in our flesh. I'm not talking about that we don't fail, but I'm saying that when we do fail, we call it failure, and we re-sign back up to obedience because of love. Paragraph F. The best definition in the Bible, in my opinion, about loving God on His terms is the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5, 6, and 7, where Jesus in three chapters lays out the overview of what life and character is like in the kingdom of God, in the ideal. He calls us to live out eight beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those that mourn. And He goes right down and gives eight of those blessings. And then He tells us, I think of those eight beatitudes like the flowers in the garden of our heart. And what love looks like are those eight beatitudes coming to maturity in our character. That's what love looks like from God's point of view, in my opinion. That's the ideal, to walk out those eight. Then He adds six negatives that you have to resist in order for those beatitudes to fully flower in our heart. Then He adds five positives that we have to pursue. Now I don't want to go through that right now, but I just wanted to mention that here in paragraph F. Love defined by God, eight beatitudes that flower fully in our heart, and there's six negatives that we resist. We pull the weeds. We take out the toxins. And there's five positives, nutrients to that soil of the garden of our heart. And those eight beatitudes will flourish. And that's what love looks like. I encourage people to measure this. I say this at IHOP all the time. We measure our spiritual maturity by how much we're walking out those eight beatitudes. Our spiritual maturity is not measured by how many people are impressed by our spiritual maturity. It's the reality of those eight beatitudes. We measure, I measure my ministry impact not by the size of the number of people that are receiving my ministry, but by the people that are moved to the Sermon on the Mount at the heart level. I can have thousands at a conference, but if they're not moved to these eight beatitudes, to love, I have not had a successful ministry no matter how many thousands show up. I want to encourage you. Measure your ministry, not by the size of it, but are you moving people, ones and twos, tens and twenties. Are you moving people over the decades to these eight beatitudes to love God with all their heart? That to me is how we want to measure our ministries. I have here in paragraph G that I gave a series to our Bible school students and a 12 part series on the first commandment where I took this subject and spent 12 one hour sessions and you can get that free on the internet with notes. And again, our copyright is the right to copy. If you like any of it and you make your own Bible studies, you can cut and paste and take anything you want and never mention me or IHOP or Kansas City. It's yours if you want it. Top of page two. Let's look at it again. Paragraph A. Jesus said, you will love the Lord your God. This is the first and the great commandment. I want to develop those two ideas just a little bit. It's the first and the great commandment. It's the first priority to God. Beloved, I can assure you what the first priority to God in your life is. This commandment growing in your life. It's the first emphasis in the whole spirit of the church. Sometimes we'll have, over the years we have pastors conferences. And pastors say, what's the Holy Spirit saying to the church? I go, I'm positive what He is. I don't know all that He's saying but I know the first thing He's saying, loving God must be first. He said it with His own mouth. Jesus did. And I encourage pastors to make it a premier focus of their ministry or anyone, those that are discipling younger believers, whether the children's ministry, the high school ministry, make the first commandment the first priority in your ministry to others. And of course, the first priority in your own life. B. It's not called the first option, the great option. Jesus didn't say, this is the first option, love God, if it works. God has everything. But in the Bible, He's portrayed as searching. I mean, how can the God that has everything search for anything? It kind of throws us off. The eyes of the Lord are searching to and fro across the earth. 2 Chronicles 16.9 His eyes are searching to and fro. 2 Chronicles 16.9 Says in John 4, The Father is searching for worshipers, those that will love Him according to the spirit of truth. How can the God who has everything search for anything? What's He looking for? It's love that He's after. Because love in the human heart is the one thing He will not, He will not produce apart from our choice. I won't make you love me, I will wait for you to love me. And if you don't, then you don't. And if you do, you do. And there's consequences on both sides. He's after our heart. Beloved, He's after our heart. The mystery of our life is found in this truth. Meaning, if I buy this, then my life makes so much more sense. Because, by nature, and I'm not saying this is a rebuke, but it's by nature, I'm after bigger, better, easier in every category. I want bigger, better, and easier. I want more money, more power, more favor, less work. I want bigger, better, easier. We got Bible verses to back up that pursuit. God whispers, I want to give you some of that, for real, but second, I want your heart bigger. And the collision of those two agendas is what makes sense of our life. The Lord says, I want to give you something that you really want, that you don't know you want. You really want a bigger heart. Trust me, when we meet eye to eye one day, you will really be glad I held you to the fire, your feet to the fire on this point. This is what the devil's attacking in our life. Even more than our money and our ministry, he's attacking our heart first. A lot of people talk about the devil stealing their money and their ministry. Their family, their relationships, he does. It's real. I care about that subject. But he's after your heart. The devil, he wants to steal your heart more than he wants to steal your money. One of the reasons that he takes our money, because he knows he can take your heart if your heart's wrapped up in your money. That's one of the reasons he steals our money, so he can get our heart. He's after our heart. Our hearts are so connected to it. So our money's so often. Well, paragraph C, it's the great commandment. Do you know this commandment has the greatest impact on God's heart? It's the great one. It's the greatest on His heart, and it's the greatest one to impact your heart. It's called the great commandment. It's the greatest calling. You know, we have a thousand students in our Bible school. So I talk to them here and there, you know, privately on the side sometimes. And I ask them all the time, what's your calling? Of course, those that have been around to the conferences when they were 15, 16, they got the answer. It's kind of a trick question. I'm not really trying to trick them. I'm having a little fun with them. What's your calling? And most of them answer their calling, they want the greatest calling. That's cool. What is the greatest calling? And mostly they define it in terms of size of impact of their ministry. Fill stadiums, change nations. I go, good. That's not the greatest calling though. It's not? Give me the great one. It's called the great commandment. Jesus called it the great calling. So many of them, when they think of the greatest calling, they think of what they are going to do instead of what they are going to become. And I go, you know what? There's a greater anointing than you filling up a stadium. What? Your heart filling up with love. Make that the premier goal of your life and go fill the stadiums in the will of God if God gives it. But make that second or third. Don't make that the primary goal of your calling of your life. Let's look at Romans 3. Let's look at these four words. Just a minute on each one. A couple of moments on each one. And again, I have a 12-part series on this where I go a lot more in depth. It's free on the internet if you want it. The four spheres of loving God with all of our heart, our soul, our strength, and our mind. Four distinct spheres of our life. Number one, love God with all of your heart. Now, I want to say this. The reason that we are called to love God with all of our heart and mind and strength because He loves us with all of His mind, all of His heart and strength. Can you imagine looking up at the sky how smart God is? When you look at all the stars. I look up sometimes and I go, you are so smart. And it's true that He could say, but I love you with all of my mind. With all of your mind you love me and you did that. And I love you with all of my strength. Can you imagine the God of Genesis 1 loving you with all of His mind? Beloved, we have it made. Many believers are so focused on what they don't have, they don't know what they do have. We have His heart. Beloved, He loves us with all of His heart. Before we get totally captured on what we don't have in our ministry and our money and our favor, etc. Let's look at what we do have. He loves us with all of His strength. Already He does. Beloved, we have it made. We have it made already forever. Well, He wants us to love Him with all of our heart. The heart speaks of our emotions. Now again, different places in the Bible. There's different nuances to these words. But in this verse, the four words are put not just as repetition of each other, but to highlight distinct dimensions of our human design. So the heart, the mind, the strength, and the soul. He wants more than dutiful service. He wants service. He wants obedience. But He wants us to engage our heart. Some people, they will obey with their heart disengaged. Of course, you won't obey long in that state. Did you know that we have a significant role in determining how our emotions develop? You can actually impact the way your emotions will be a year from now, two years from now, and three years from now. You can actually impact the way you feel in the next months and years by what you do today. It may not take root in 12 hours, but it will take root in 12 months, I assure you. Paragraph B. Psalm 91. Verse 14. The Lord is speaking. He says, because... He's talking to the righteous man. Because He set His love on me, therefore I will deliver Him. Here's the point. There is a place in the grace of God where we set our love on Him. And it's a decision. There is a place where we determine. We choose. Even without feeling, we choose. It's a conscious choice to set our heart. I have it written here. This involves the primary dream of your heart. The primary dream of your heart to walk in the grace of God, to love God. Meaning, I have a number of facets of the dream of my heart. The dream of my heart involves my ministry, involves my family, involves friends. I have different facets of the dream of my heart. But there's what I call the primary dream of my heart. The dream that's bigger than the other ones. If we make that the anointing to walk in the first commandment, then we have set our heart upon God. We've set our love upon Him. There's a setting that's essential. I have here in paragraph B, our emotions follow what we pursue. You can pursue anything. If you stay with it long enough, your emotions will go there eventually. Now my mom told me as a kid, if I kept eating liver, I would like it. That never happened. Never liked it. But then she would argue, you didn't keep eating it. Maybe she has a point. But your emotions will follow whatever you do with your actions over time. You are in the emotional state you are in today related to what you've set your mind on the last ten years. It's not only that, there's other dimensions. But I assure you, our emotional state today is the fruit of what we've dreamed about and made number one in our imagination through the years. Last ten years, or longer, whatever. There's other dimensions. But we do have a dynamic role in the forming of our emotions. We don't have the full role, but we do have a dynamic role. Here's how I say it. We change our mind and the Spirit changes our heart. We change our mind and then He gives us desires that awaken over time. Not immediately, but over time they will. I made a determination years ago through the influence of other people that inspired me that I was going to make the first commandment. The first object of my life. Not my ministry. I was going to walk in this anointing to love God. IHOP is not the dream of my heart. IHOP is my assignment. It's not my dream, it's my assignment. I appreciate my assignment. Most of the time. I appreciate my assignment. I have friends that come and visit. Because IHOP has been going 12 years. But the Lord spoke about IHOP almost 30 years ago. That's a long story. I'm not going to go into the details. But 30 years ago, the Lord spoke by the audible voice of the Lord. May 1983. Actually 29 years ago. And He said, Do 24 hour prayer. With singers and musicians. In essence. I'm just summarizing it, not quoting it. He said it audibly. That was a little disconcerting. I didn't know how to make sense of this. But we put a sign on the wall. 24 hour prayer. In the spirit of the tabernacle of David. Which means with singers and musicians. So for 16 years we had the sign on the wall. I was pastoring a church. People would come and say, What's that sign on the wall? 24 hour prayer? I go, I don't know. I go, I can't figure that out to save my life. I really could not. Truly. I go, I get what 24 hour means. I don't know why or how or when. Or I can't even imagine this. So it was kind of neat. But it was more, it bothered me. Like, I can't picture this. This is weird, to be honest. We had it on the wall. Almost 16 years. People would come and say, What's that? I go, I don't know. And our church grew over the years. And the new people would say, What's that? I don't know. 16 years. Then finally, it was 12 years ago, when the finally came, we began. I resigned the church. Went to start with 20 young people. We started a mission space. They all raised their own support. We're missionaries. We're going to sing. And then we're going to minister after we sing to God. We're going to sing to God. Then we're going to go tell people about Jesus and feed the poor and heal the sick, etc. It's cool. We had 20 young people. Signed up. Day one. Ready to go. Well, it's 12 years later. And I have friends from those first 16 years. Many from all around. They'll come visit. They'll see IHOP. And it's grown a lot. And they'll say, Wow. And invariably, somebody will say from the old days, really positive, of course, they're saying, Your dream came true. And I tell them, I go, IHOP is not my dream. My dream didn't come true because we have a lot of people in prayer meetings. IHOP cannot touch the dream of my heart. The dream of my heart is the anointing to love God. And if IHOP gets real big, or IHOP falls apart, it can't touch the dream of my heart. Nobody can touch the dream of my heart. I said, this is my assignment. Beloved, if your assignment becomes your primary dream, you will be burnt out and worn out and spit out. And a lot of people that are in chronic burnout and bitterness it's because their primary dream isn't the right one. Their primary dream needs to become number 2, 3, 4, 5. In reality, not rhetoric. And their spirit will be different. Let's go to top of page 3. I'm gonna skip the rest on loving God with all your heart, the emotions. Gonna move on to the second sphere. Again, those joining us through God TV, we have these notes on the IHOP homepage, ihop.org. The second sphere of our life, love God with all of our mind. That's different than the emotion, though all four of these overlap. The mind, the emotion, the strength and the soul. They all overlap. So I don't wanna, in a forced way, separate them because they're all dynamically connected, but there are distinctions to these four words. We fill our mind with that which inspires love for God instead of filling our minds with that which diminishes love for God. A lot of people, they love Jesus. Really. But they put in their mind that which diminishes their heart for Jesus and they don't connect the two together. So they love Him with their heart, meaning they've really said it, but what they do with their mind, they're diminishing their love for Jesus. Jesus said, I want you to love me with your mind, not just your heart. What we do with our mind greatly affects our capacity to love. Paragraph B. Our mind is the doorway to our inner man. We all know that. Much of our life, I will go further, most of our life occurs in the mind. The language, and I'll break that down in a moment because that might seem odd. The language of the human spirit is images. If I say pink elephant, the instant thing that comes to your mind is an image of a pink elephant. The language of the human spirit is images, pictures. See, our mind is like an internal movie screen. Here's the issue. It never, ever, ever stops showing pictures, one after the other. Never. A billion years from now, your mind will show pictures. It will never, ever stop. Ever. It's like a camera. Stores all of our memories and all of our imaginations. Now in this movie, screen on the inside, we are the producer of the movie. We're the actor, and we're the consumer. We produce it, we star in it, and we watch it. We are both the hero and the villain of our movies. It's true. But I want you to see the importance of your mind. Ten years, a thousand years, a million years, your mind will never stop showing pictures for one second. Ever. It's how powerful your mind is. Let's talk about the capacity. Our mind has such a capacity, because a billion years from now, all of our memories will still be there a billion years from now. I'm talking about those that have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus, they'll be gone. But I'm saying, the capacity of our mind to remember, we think of 70 years on the earth, think of 70 billion years. It's just inconceivable how vast your hard drive is. It's really big. And they say that we don't even use, you know, a percent or two of our mind, and we don't recall our memories, but they're stored in there. Powerful. Our mind, paragraph D, it's a vast universe. It's vast. You can't shut down the images ever. Many of our images we don't remember, but they're still there. They're still working. Most of our dreams, you might remember a dream every now and then, some of you more often than that, but you're dreaming all night long. Images are flashing all night long. You just remember one here, one there. We can't shut down this movie theater, but we can redirect it. We can replace the dark thoughts. We can rewrite the script that's on the inside by meditating on the Word. We can form the movie that's going continually on the inside. Paragraph E. Our mind has such glorious potential, such vastness, and yet many believers are so casual about their minds. What they do with their mind, just vain imaginations, idle their days away, entertainment, recreation, entertainment, some of that's okay. But the casualness of which people program their mind with truth. Well, I'll get around to it later. And they daydream so much. Jesus said, I want you to love me with your mind. Bring that to me as well. Paragraph G. One of the big issues in this hour of history is immorality. It is exploding because of technology and the internet. And it's going to go far beyond anything we can imagine. The next 10, 20, 30 years, where immorality is going, none of us can comprehend where it's going in the next 10, 20, 30 years. Beyond that. Jesus exposed how the spirit of immorality operates. He says a man looks and then he lusts. Paragraph H. You can read this more on your own. The progression of adultery. I adultery leads to heart adultery leads to physical adultery. There's a principle there. Paragraph I. Jesus said, Close the eye gate to immorality and then your heart and your character will follow in time. It's easier to close the eye gate than to try to put the fire out later. And to love God with all of our mind. We can cry in a worship service and then go back to the hotel room and watch pornography. And my point isn't that you're just some horrible hypocrite. That's not my point. My point is, Jesus says, I want your mind. Don't you see? It's powerful. It's awesome. You actually want your mind under my authority. It's vast. Love me with your mind. Don't just claim the grace of God and say, well, you know, boys will be boys. Love me with your mind. Paragraph J. Job 31. He understood the power of the eye gate. Job did. In expressing love for God. Job 31, verse 1. He said, I made a covenant with my eyes. Why should I look upon a young woman? He meant in a lustful way. For if my heart has been enticed, in verse 9, by a woman, or if I've lurked at the neighbor's door, he meant in a lustful way. Then he goes on and describes where that would not be good. I urge men and women to make a covenant with their eyes to love God. And some people, when they hear this, they go, you know what? I just never connected the dots. I never thought of a covenant with my eyes as an expression of loving God with my mind. That's okay. That makes sense. I'll make the covenant. We're going to pray that in just a couple moments when we close. The last page, page 4. To love God with all of our strength. That's the third sphere that Jesus highlights. He speaks of four. Heart, mind, strength, and soul. We're on the third one right now. Loving God with our strength. To love God with our strength means with our natural resources. Our time. Our money. Our energy. Our words. Those are the expressions of the strength of our life. You give your time away. You give your money away. You give your words away. You are expressing and investing your strength into other people. Good or bad. It is your strength. Now, it's most natural for us to invest our strength in a way that is focused on our own comfort and honor. That's natural. And that's even biblical in part. We use our natural strengths. Our money. Our time. Our words. Our energy to secure our own money and honor. There's a dimension of that that's wholesome. But not all of it. And the Spirit calls us to love God with our strength. Paragraph B. Jesus cares about how we love Him when we invest our strength in loving Him and showing His love to other people. We invest our strength. When we give time and money away, we give energy to serve even though nobody recognizes it. Maybe we're ignored by everybody but we're doing it because we love Him. We're giving, we're showing love to Jesus with our strength. Paragraph C. He multiplies and returns the strength back to us. You give money, He will multiply it and return it. Now, here's the deal. His time, His way. But He will multiply the strength that you invest to pursue love Him, loving Him in your own life and to express it to others. He will return that back to you. How does He return time to you? I put time in my personal life, so do you, in our personal life with God. I put personal time to develop my love for Him. It takes time to do that. You can't develop a heart with fire for God on the run. It takes time. And when I take time to do that, that's time I'm not doing other things. It's costly. But Jesus, I love you, but I have other things to do even in your kingdom. And the Lord will whisper, and He'll say, but I want you to take time to grow in love. And I want you to take for Him. And I want you to take time to express it to others as well. It's both dimensions, but here's my point. It takes time to do that. Sometimes I'll be alone with the Lord and I'm saying, Lord, I don't really want to be here, but I love you and I want to develop red hot love for you in my heart. And this is part of it. It's not the only thing, but it is part of it. So I invest time like you do. But He returns that time. How does He return time? He gives us multiplied impact in the years ahead in ways that if we would have spent all of our time doing a certain thing that's good and we didn't spend all of our time doing it, but we spent some of that time seeking Him, I guarantee you in 10 and 20 years, you'll look back and He will have multiplied your impact and your effectiveness. You can't measure it in weeks and months, but you can measure it in decades. You take time to develop your prayer life. You may lose out on some things in the next couple of years, but you'll look back in a decade or two and you will see a multiplied impact on your life. He always returns strength, always. Not just money, but time and words and everything. He returns it. The last one, sphere number four, loving God with all of our soul. Now, this is actually, in my opinion, the most challenging of all. Loving God with all of our soul. I believe this means to realign our identity so that we base our identity on our relationship with God in love instead of basing our identity on our accomplishments and recognition that we receive from people. This takes effort. This is a muscle we have to work day in and day out like those other three spheres of life as well. But this one, I believe, is the most demanding of all. I'm going to say it again. Paragraph A. Our identity is how we view ourselves. Our identity is how we define value. How we define, I mean, value in our life. Why we are valuable. Why are we successful? Why are we important? And the way you define that is the essence of your identity. Naturally, we define our success and who we are by what we accomplish in the eyes of people. Jesus is saying here, I want you to define your life based on who you are in my eyes pursuing me in love. That's a huge radical shift on the inside. And we can determine to do it, but we can lose sight of it really easy. I've set my heart to do this years ago, but I constantly lose sight of it. I have to realign. Realign to this reality. And the verse that I use is the great commandment. I want to love you with my soul. I want to exert the energy and the effort to realign my soul with you because I love you. Our identity is how we define success. How we define our personal value. How we see ourselves. Paragraph B. I'll say it again. Most of you already know this. But I'm going to say it again just to get it clear. If it's a new idea to some of you. B. When we get our identity, our sense of success, our primary success is what I mean. When we get our identity by what we accomplish outwardly. When we get our identity by how much recognition we get from people. We end up in an emotional storm of preoccupation with vanity. I remember in my early days, and I still fall into this. I'm not claiming that I'm immune to this by any means. I don't want to present something false. But in my early days of ministry, I defined my value according to how effective my ministry was. And let me tell you, that is a cruel taskmaster. Because when your ministry isn't big, you're left whipping yourself into despair and emptiness. Because that's the only way you can define value for your life. And if your ministry's not big, and nobody appreciates it, you're just, you feel worthless. You feel a void. You're just floating in space, aimless. So many men and women of God in ministry, they identify their personal success by their ministry success. And I want to say it again, that is a cruel taskmaster. It is unrelenting. It will beat you. And it will burn you out and tear you up. That mindset will. The reason, because 99.999% of the human race, what we accomplish, even in the perfect will of God, I mean it's the will of God, is small. God is pleased. God's delighted in it. But nobody else is impressed. And so, we feel rejected and overlooked. We walk around rejected, overlooked, despair, aimless, I have no direction. God goes, you're doing the will of God. I love what you're doing. It's beautiful. You're showing love to me. Oh, I don't care about all that. I just want people to think what I'm doing is important. And we live in a storm that's unnecessary. Very, very natural. I've known that storm over the years. And I'm not saying that I'm through with that storm. I'm just saying I attack it relentlessly through the years. When I see that storm in me, I say, no, that is a lie. I'm not yielding to that. See, we must define our primary success. I need to add the word primary. By being ones loved by God and those who love God in return. Do you know why I'm successful? Because He loves me. And by the grace of God, I love Him. I'm already successful. If I up falls apart tomorrow, I've already got it made. He loves me. And by the grace of God, I love Him. I've already won. Really, I have. I'm already there. Now, I want to do my assignment. But not to be successful. I want to do my assignment. I'm already successful. I want to do my assignment to express love to God. To bring more people into the love of God. Paragraph D. Here's our confession. I want to give you this confession. I've given this confession thousands of times. And sometimes it takes and sometimes it doesn't take. But I'm sticking with it. I say this. My heart gets in pain. Or I'll get in confusion. Or I'll feel down. I say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, stop! Stop! I'm talking to me. Nobody else is around. I go, I'm loved by God. The Genesis 1 God. The God who created Genesis 1. Big God. He really likes me. Wow, that feels good already. And I'm loved by God. And I'm a lover of God. Because out of 6 billion people in the earth, the majority do not receive the grace of God to love Him back. But you did. You're of that minority of history that loves Him back. I mean, there's hundreds of millions. But it's still a minority of history. Somewhere in the grace of God, you said, yes, and you love Him back. Our love is fragile. Our love is weak, but our love is real. It's real. I love Him. No, I may start to say it right. He loves me. I love Him. Huh. I already got it made. I already am successful. That's what I call loving God with your soul. Realigning your identity to line up with truth. Because, see, you can love Him with your heart. You can set your heart and your emotions. You can love Him with your mind. Fill your mind with the Word of God and with the true things. You can love Him with your strength. Use your time, money, energy. But to love Him with your soul is that internal reality where we realign ourselves up and we're not going to let our soul get strung out in lies. Because, I tell you, our un-renewed thinking is filled with wrong ideas. So, I mean, I've confessed this for years. God loves me. I love God. Therefore, I'm successful. That settles it. I know who I am. And I get that center back, so to speak. I get that clarity. Paragraph E. Burnout doesn't come from working hard. Burnout comes from working with the wrong spirit. I've had a lot of people over the years say, I'm burned out. And they're kind of suggesting they've worked hard. And some people physically burn out from working too hard. But 99% they don't burn out because they work hard because they work with the wrong spirit. That's what burns them out. It's the approach. It's the paradigm. It's the mindset in which they're working. When we work for success, we get burned out. When I'm working so finally my life can be successful, that will burn you out. But if I work from success, I'm already loved and a lover, then the work will actually build up my spirit. If I'm trying to win your approval, to get some recognition, to finally feel good about myself, I can work 16 hours a day and I will end up burnt out and absolutely just completely wasted. But if I work hours a day and I already know I'm successful, I'm not trying to gain success, I already am successful. I just have a different definition of success. I tell you, beloved, it will reinvigorate your spirit dynamically. Here's what Jesus wants, paragraph E at the end. We will love Jesus much better when we have much less emotional traffic inside. We have so much emotional traffic of being preoccupied with being a failure, being a loser and nobody cares. How can I get more people to pay attention? That emotional traffic diminishes our ability to feel and return love back to God. So, paragraph F. I want to love Him with all my heart. Conclusion. I want to love you with all my heart. I want to be equally yoked in love and we can be even in this age. The size of our love will not equal the size of His love, but the all of our love can be the same like the all of His love. Jesus, I want to love you with all of my heart. My heart's not as big as yours, but it's still my all. Though the all is small, when we bring it to the relationship, it's still our all. And that moves Him. It really does move Him. Our all is weak. Our all is fragile. But let me tell you good news. Weak love is not false love. It's still genuine. I love Him in weakness, but it's real and it moves Him. Paragraph G. The final paragraph. Have the worship team come up if they would. A sustained reach in our spirit. I want to reach for 100% obedience and love. I have set my heart to sustain that reach. I don't actually, I've never attained it. I lose it all the time. But I reestablish it, then I lose it. Then I reestablish it, then I lose it. So I've never attained it, but I keep sustaining the reach. The reach is imperfect, but I keep signing back up for love when I fail. And when we fail, if we will call it failure, I mean we sin. Don't find a Bible verse to rationalize and say, I sinned. Repent. Re-sign up for love. Push. Delete. Never bring it up again. And love God with confidence that moment with all of your heart again. Start over. Immediately start up and sign up for love again. The Lord values our journey. Beloved, if we don't quit, we win. Amen. Let's stand. If we don't quit, we win. Now I want to lead us. There's two points of ministry. There's the first one I want you to do in your chair. Just in private. And then the second one, you can come forward if you want to and receive prayer or in your chair as well. The first one. Two points of ministry. Men and women, take just one minute. Make a covenant with our eyes that we are not going to let our eyes go somewhere that hinders love. Loving God with all of our mind. And when we do, we'll call it sin and we'll repent of it. Job said, I made a covenant with my eyes. I want us to make that covenant that in a moment, we're going to sign up for the first commandment to be the primary dream of our heart. Some of us, we're going to shift inside and make the other big dream, we're going to make that secondary. We're going to pop it down one. And you'll feel different on the inside if you do that in truth. But first, let's do the covenant with the eyes for just a moment. I'm just going to ask everyone just to close your eyes for just a moment. Job 31, verse 1. Job said, I make a covenant with my eyes. I won't look in a way that stirs up lust. I won't. Whether media or in person, I won't. And if I do, I'll commit it to repentance. Right now, let's all make that commitment. This is loving God with all of our mind. Jesus, by the grace of God, I make a covenant with my eyes yet again. I renew the covenant. Tonight, I renew the covenant. I'm not going there. Whether in the media or in person, I'm not going there on the inside. And the second point, and then I'm going to have the worship team lead us and we're going to ask the Holy Spirit to touch us. To make the first commandment the primary dream of our life. Not our ministry, not our money, not even our marriage. In our relationships, make those second. The anointing to love God with all of our heart. The ability is number one. Jesus, I'm going to do that. I'm going to start spending time and money to back that up. I'm going to start doing this in a new way. Now, many of you have already made that commitment. But tonight's a night of renewal. Misty, just leave this down.