Mike Bickle emphasizes the profound fascination that comes from knowing Jesus, the most captivating figure in history. He explains that God created us to be in awe of Him, and that true pleasure is found in a deep relationship with Christ, who desires connection with us. Bickle encourages believers to pursue a life filled with the joy and pleasure of encountering God, highlighting that the greatest revelations of God bring the deepest satisfaction to our spirits. He shares personal experiences of his early struggles in faith and the transformative power of understanding God's love and desire for us. Ultimately, he calls for a generation to be captivated by the beauty of the Lord and to abide in His love.

Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus, and we ask you for the spirit of revelation. We ask you for the unveiling of the beauty of the man Christ Jesus. Father, I ask you for literal fascination of the human heart. In the name of Jesus, amen and amen. Tonight, I want to talk about being fascinated with Jesus. Now, that's kind of a cool word, being fascinated, but it's literal. This is not hype. The God of glory created us in order to be fascinated with Him. I mean, He created us in a way that our spirit would tremble and be filled with marvel and awe and love when we understood the truth about Him. And when we understand the truth about Him, our hearts are filled with fascination. This is not hype. This is not exaggeration. This is literal New Testament Christianity as God designed it. Now, our vision is to see a generation fascinated with the most fascinating man that ever walked the earth. This man is fully God and fully man, and there's no one like Him. The most fascinating man that ever walked the earth is the man Jesus of Nazareth. Fully God, fully man. He created the heavens and the earth by His power under His Father's authority, and His heart is deeply connected to you with love and desire. That He longs for deep connection and partnership and relationship with you. I mean, people love to have relationship or to get an autograph or to get a picture with somebody that's really cool. But I tell you, the most fascinating man that ever walked the earth is deeply interested in a deep relationship with you, and that's what we're going to talk about a little bit tonight. Look at Psalm 16, verse 11. This is good news. God's personality is filled with joy, and God's personality is filled with pleasure. King David was the first person to see this. What a startling revelation that the Holy Spirit gave King David a vision of the throne of God. And when David saw the throne of God, look what he reports. He said, your presence is the very fullness of joy. He said, at your right hand, the right hand of your throne are pleasures forevermore. David saw the epicenter of the universe, the throne of God from which thunder and lightning and majesty go forth. The very center of the universe is the epicenter of pleasure and the epicenter of joy. Imagine, at his right hand are the fullness of pleasures forever. Now this is a new idea to some people, that God is the author of pleasure. The reason he's the author of pleasure, because his personality is filled with pleasure. The devil is the one that came along and counterfeited the pleasure and brought people out of the will of God and into darkness by counterfeit pleasures. But know this, everything the devil does is a counterfeit of the real. And if there's pleasure in sin, you know there's pleasure in the will of God in connection to God's heart. He created us to enjoy pleasure. Now let me say that again. For millions and millions of years, you will enjoy pleasure because God created us to experience it. Pleasure that's in the light, that's in the will of God. There are pleasures in our mind. When we understand certain things, it brings pleasure. There are emotional pleasures. There are physical pleasures that are in the will of God. And there's physical pleasures out of the will of God. And there are spiritual pleasures. And the deepest pleasures that exist are spiritual ones. Paragraph B, the greatest pleasures available to the human spirit are spiritual. And what do I mean? When God reveals God to the human spirit, that is the greatest place of pleasure in time or eternity. I'm going to say that again. When God reveals God to the human spirit, when God the Holy Spirit reveals the Father or the Son to our spirit, that brings us greater fascination and pleasure in this age as well as the age to come. More than any pleasure that the human experience can have, the greatest ones are when God reveals God to the human spirit. The problem today is so many of God's people are spiritually dull. And they live in so much familiarity with darkness that their capacity to feel this pleasure of the revelation of God in their spirit has been dulled and it's been diminished. But God has a plan to turn all this around. Now, the will of God for your generation is to raise up literally a generation fascinated with the pleasure of encountering Jesus that surpasses literally every other human pleasure. Look at paragraph C. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit. And when He gave us the Holy Spirit, Jesus Himself told us the Holy Spirit's job description. He said here in John 16, verse 14, the Holy Spirit, He will take the things that are mine. He will reveal them to you. He said, I'm giving you the Spirit. Let me tell you what His job description is. He will take the fascinating things of me and He will give them to you. And your spirit will be exhilarated when you receive them. And the God of joy, the God of beauty, the God of majesty and holiness, the God of pleasure will exhilarate the human spirit with the awesomeness and the marvel and the wonder of who He is. I call this divine entertainment and it's real. I know in my early days, I mentioned it earlier, prayer was so boring to me. I really loved Jesus when I was 15 years old. I made a radical decision to walk with the Lord. I had a radical conversion experience at age 15. That was 40 years ago this summer, I'm 55 now. I went to a sports camp and I heard a famous football player give his testimony that I could know Jesus and I'd never heard of such a thing. My father was a world champion boxer. I was raised in a boxer home and his friends were boxers. And I used to tell all my friends growing up, my dad can beat up your dad, this I'm sure of, because my dad's world champ. I knew nothing about religion, nothing, zero. And I heard a man tell a story, a football player, a pro football player named Roger Stalback from Dallas Cowboys. He talked to a bunch of teenagers and he said, I met Jesus Christ and I went what is he talking about? I've never heard this idea, ever, once. I went out of the meeting that night, 1971, 40 years ago, and I said I don't know if this is real, but if it's real I want you and my heart was strangely warmed. And something happened in my heart and it set my heart in a direction and I came home from that camp and I was determined I was going to walk radically for Jesus all the rest of my life. So I got involved in a youth group. This is really important. If I would not become involved with that youth group, I would have completely fell away. I got immediately involved in a Presbyterian youth group, doesn't matter what kind it is. And they were talking about Jesus and revival and radical dedication and I fit right in with them and they taught me. So I love Jesus, but the problem is the Bible was so boring to me and my youth leader told me you've got to grow in the Word and in prayer. I said okay, I mean you know a lot more than I know, so I decided to be a man of prayer. I decided to be a man of the Word. I was going to study the Word. I never read the Bible, but I said if that's what you do, I'll do it. I love Jesus, I meant it. So I bought some books on prayer, started reading them. Reading on prayer was not so bad. Then I started praying. It was horrible, 15, 16, 17, 18, not that it would take you that long. I would read the Bible and I would go to personal prayer and it was absolutely miserable. I had a certain time every day where I would get alone and pray and like I said earlier today I tried to pray for an hour a day. I mean it was more bitter than death to be honest. It was the dreaded hour. I remember I was 18 in college and I would try to pray and I would pray for two minutes and I exhausted my prayer list and I had 58 minutes to go and I said God this is miserable. I said you're never going to make this thing work called the Kingdom of God if we have to do this every day. Well the Lord didn't really listen to me. He liked me but he didn't take my advice. And then I would read the Bible every day but it was so boring. I didn't know the difference between a gospel, a disciple, an apostle and an epistle. I couldn't figure out anything. None of it made sense. And if you would have told me back then one of these days you're going to be leading IHOP 24 hour prayer with fasting teams. Oh I hated fasting even more than prayer and Bible study. I tried to fast once a week because my leaders did. I made it till noon many times. I'm serious. But it wasn't funny because I felt rotten because I couldn't make it past noon. Sometimes I made it till 2 o'clock. So I had this real kind of negative. Like I love you Jesus but I'm just a misfit. It's never going to work. I had no idea. He was smiling at me the whole time. And in his heart he was saying I love you. I desire you more than you can imagine right now. You bring me pleasure in a way you do not know. It's 40 years later and I can look back at those early years when I was 15, 16, 17. And I know now from the Word and from my experience how God felt about me in those years. I wish I could have felt that way back then. I wish I could have known it. I wish somebody would have told me that God was smiling and God was enjoying me during the journey because I thought I love Jesus but I'm stuck in this miserable lifestyle of fasting and prayer and Bible study but there's no other alternative because I love him too much just to backslide. Now I had one good thing going for me. I like going to meetings. That was one thing I liked was meetings especially if they had music. I loved it. I'd go to meetings every night. But when I was alone with my Bible and just God, well I began, I came to understand that the Holy Spirit, paragraph C, his job description was to take the things that belong to Jesus, the fascinating reality of Jesus and give them to my heart to fascinate my heart with him. Again, I call it divine entertainment. And I've learned it's real. And I can tell you this, and I know some of you 15, 16 won't really fully believe this. I can tell you that I understand exactly what a 15 and 16 year old goes through loving Jesus but I can't endure the other stuff. But my love is real. My sin was growing. It wasn't going away. My love was real. I hated prayer, hated Bible study, hated fasting, loved Jesus and was sinning more. How many of you can relate to that? Don't raise your hand. But I want to tell you, I want to assure you, if it worked for me, it can work for you. Now you look at me and go, well, that's not fair. You're the IHOP guy. You're an old guy. You wasn't messed up. You don't even know what messed up is. I do know what messed up is, was, is, whatever. And I tell you, there's something bigger than your dedication to God. It's God's dedication to you. I'm serious. Our dedication to Jesus matters. But His dedication to you actually is far more powerful than you can even understand. Your desire for Him matters. But His desire for you is the reason you're going to actually break through and succeed in this. Now again, I wish somebody could have told me when I was 15, the story that was written, that this would really be real for me. I would have been so excited to believe the breakthrough was coming. I didn't think a breakthrough would ever come. I thought I'll be the only guy that will always hate prayer. I'll be the only guy who loves God but hates Bible study the rest of my life. I can tell already that's how it's going to be. It is so strange to me, years later, I'm the IHOP guy, like this has got to be a joke. I go, Lord, how on earth could I ever do the IHOP thing? And I look back over the years, I smile, and I say, what an amazing turnaround. But my desires changed. Because I began to get new ideas about what God was like. I began to get new ideas about how He viewed me. And when I saw Him in a different way, it changed the way I felt about myself. You heard the testimonies tonight. Paragraph D. And we're not going to go through all the notes, just so you know. I always give more notes than we cover, just so you can have something to read if you want to on your own. Paul experienced the power of a fascinated heart. Philippians chapter 3, verse 8. He said, I count all things lost for the excellency of knowing Jesus. Paul understood the excellency, the fascination, put the word fascination in there. His sacrifice made sense to him. He suffered the loss of everything because he knew that when he refused certain things, his ability to be fascinated increased. He saw the excellency, he saw the fascination of Jesus. And he goes, the more I saw the splendor of this man by the Holy Spirit touching me, showing me, the more willing and eager I was to sacrifice and to get out of my life everything that was getting in the way. Christianity is about pursuing a person. Look at paragraph D. Some people, when they think of Christianity, they think of getting out of hell. Somebody says, hey, you can be saved and you won't go to hell. People go, wow. Now, I love getting escaping hell. That's cool. That's really, I love that. But the essence of our experience of salvation, it's not mostly about getting out of hell. It's not mostly about obeying a code of conduct. It's not mostly about a ministry assignment. Those are involved, but those are secondary. Christianity is the pursuit of a person who is pursuing you. That is what Christianity is. It's the pursuit of a person who is pursuing you. The most fascinating person is after your heart and he wants you. And he won't stop pursuing you till you know who he is. And when you know who he is more, your heart opens and you run to him. Paragraph E. David experienced the power of a fascinated heart. Here's David, a 16-year-old, a 15-year-old. We don't know exactly, but he's a teenager. He lives in the little town of Bethlehem, which in our context would be a little rural town of about 300 or 400 people outside of nowhere. Now, some of you live in a little rural town. You're far away from everything. David had seven older brothers. He was the youngest brother of eight boys. And the scripture's clear that his seven older brothers, they did not really like him. He was not the favorite in the family. He was the forgotten one in the family. And as a teenage boy in a little rural town with no hope of ever getting out of that town, there was no chance of him getting a job in the big city in his context. And David learned to play the harp. We'll call it the guitar. As a teenage boy with nothing to do besides watch the sheep, and that was unbelievably boring. All by himself in a hot day, sleeping at night under the stars by himself, watching a few sheep, playing his guitar to God, looking up at the stars, saying, God of heaven, I love you. I want to know you. And as a teenage boy, he set his heart to know the Lord. Now, what David did not know, that God's eyes were on him. And eventually, God sent the prophet Samuel to him and shocked David. A little bit of time went by. He's still a teenager. The prophet comes to his house and the prophet's message is this. David, your eyes have been on God. But what you don't know is the whole time God's eyes have been on you. And this is the most wonderful moment in David's life. But beloved, let me tell you this. You may be in the most out of the way, difficult position. The youngest member of your family that nobody likes, or just the outcast of your family, let's put it that way. Nobody knows you. Nobody cares about your calling or ministry. But I tell you, the eyes of the Lord are on you. And David told us. He told us the secret of his life. Psalm 27, verse 4. He said, one thing I have desired. All the days of my life, even from my teenage years. Even from my early days. This was the secret of David's life. He said, I set my heart to behold. Or the other words you could use, to focus on the beauty of the Lord. To experience the beauty of the Lord. That's what David said here in Psalm 27, verse 4. The greatest prophetic singer ever. The greatest warrior in Israel's history. A social transformer in the days to come. We find that in his early days, even in his teenage years. He set his heart to encounter the beauty of the Lord. Now I'm sure he did not encounter very much in those early days. But his heart was set. One of the messages that I really have on my heart. Is to convince young people in their teenage years. To set their heart like David did. On encountering the beauty of the Lord. Regardless what they feel. Keep your heart set. Because your eyes are on the Lord. But the good news is, God's eyes are on you. And whether you know it or not, He has plans to visit you. And again, David, it probably was the shock of his life. When the prophet knocked on his door a few years later. And said, God has called you with a great destiny. And a great calling in your life. Let's turn to page 2. I want to talk about what I call the ocean of God's love. The ocean of God's affection. I believe the most fascinating aspect of God's majesty. And God's beauty is His affections. His love. Instead of the word love, I'm going to use the word affections. Because sometimes when we hear the word love. We think of kind of a, it doesn't, it's such a normal word we hear all the time. It doesn't always move us. Well, God loves me. Okay, beloved. When God loves you, it means His affections are stirred. And His desire is towards you. When the scripture talks about God loving you. It doesn't mean He stamped your passport. And now you're saved. You know, it's like, okay, my son died. So I'm stamping your passport. You're in heaven. Now don't bother me anymore. I saved you. What more do you want? Well, God loves me. He had to save me. Jesus died for me. I like the testimony earlier. God didn't save us just because He's a savior. He saved us because He really, really wanted you. He really liked saving you. He wanted you in His kingdom. This is one of the most dramatic statements. John 15 verse 9. I mean, I cannot imagine a statement more dramatic than this. Look what Jesus said. He made the declaration that God loves us in the way that God loves God. What? Let me say it again. Jesus declared to the young apostles, they were mostly about 20 years old, these apostles. They were young men. He makes one of the most dramatic statements. I don't know of a statement that is stronger than this statement in the whole Bible. It must have shocked the apostles. God loves you in the way that God loves God. What does that mean? Let's break that down a little bit. John 15 verse 9. Jesus said, as the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. Read that carefully. He said, in the same way the Father loves me, in the same intensity of how God the Father feels about me, that's how I feel about you. Read it. He said, in the way the Father feels, the same measure of love, the same affection, the same intensity. He looks at these young, early 20s, and he tells these young men, I feel about you the same way my Father feels about me. That must have been the shock of their life. How does the Father feel about Jesus? Think of the delight the Father has in the Son. That is the same delight that God has in us. I mean, this is not possible. When I begin to understand this, in my early 20s, long time ago, the Lord began to stir me in this direction. That is when my journey changed dramatically. I began to love the Bible, because the Bible wasn't just a duty to read. I was searching out new insights of the heart of this One who loved me and had such affection for me. When I began to have this new view of God, it changed my prayer life radically. I wasn't just going down a prayer list. I was talking to the most fascinating person who deeply loved me and really, really enjoyed me. And I wanted to grasp more of it, and my spirit became more excited, exhilarated in this relationship. So I began to find out ways to give myself to God, even in a more extravagant way. I wanted to give myself more to Him, because I wanted to feel more about how He felt about me. I saw many people around me. They did not have this idea of God like that. And God was boring to them. And reading the Bible was a duty to them. And I began to tell them, wait, the most amazing thing has happened. Jesus loves you in the same intensity that the Father loves Him. Here's what Jesus said. Look at John 15, 9. He said, abide in my love. Would you, here's, this is the most important exhortation right here. Abide in my love. To abide means to live in. Jesus told them, focus on this subject of my love. Study it. Focus on it. Go deep in it, and never, ever leave the subject of the way I love you. Never outgrow this truth. It's not enough for you to hear this. Underline the key verse in your Bible and move on. We have to abide or to focus on or to go deep in this truth the rest of our life. What I mean by the rest of our life, I don't mean just tell you die or meet the Lord. I mean a million years from now, you will still be focused on this truth. John 15, 9. Jesus said in the same way the Father loves me. In the same intensity of how he feels about me. That's how I feel about you. Stay focused on this truth. Abide in it. Lock into it. Go deep on it and never get distracted from this reality. That's what he's saying. So I saw this verse some many years ago. And I'd set my heart. And I haven't always been faithful to it. But I've focused on this quite a bit over the years. I determined I was going to abide or I was going to search out this truth and stay focused on it all the days of my life. And tonight I'm calling you to a new understanding of how God feels about you. That the God of joy, the God whose personality is filled with pleasure, he actually wants to give the pleasure to your spirit of experiencing the fascination about how he feels about you. And he wants you to abide in it. He wants you to stay focused on it. He wants you to go deep in it the rest of your life in this age, in the rest of your life in the age to come, which will never end. He wants you to study it out for your own heart. He wants you to go deep in it. And he wants you to share it with other people. This is the will of God for your life. Abide in my love. Many people, they get the introductory truths down. Then they graduate to deeper things. I want to assure you there is no deeper message. There is no more important message. Stay focused on it. Abide in it. Let's look at paragraph B. God is love. This is such a big statement. God does more than just that he does acts of love. It's not just that he does things that are loving. He is love effortlessly. In his being, he is love. It's who he is in his nature. He doesn't work to express love. He is love effortlessly. He is the fountain of overflowing desire. In his being, I picture this bursting fountain of desire that overflows and touches all of his kingdom and there's no end to it. His love is infinite. What is the measure? How much does he love you? Infinite. There is no measure. He has infinite love for you. How long does it last? It lasts eternally. What that means is that God's love, think about this, his love for you never can increase. God never grows in his love for you because his love for you, the day you're born again, is infinite and eternal. The first moment you say yes to him, he doesn't come to know you and then if he discovers good things, he loves you more. That's not how it works. Imagine his love can never increase. It can never decrease because it's infinite. It's eternal. Now our ability to enjoy it, our ability to receive it can increase but his ability to give it is at full measure all the time. His love is like a vast ocean. I call it the ocean of God's love and no matter how deep we go in his love in this age, we are only a few inches into that ocean. I mean 50 years later, you will only be, you may be totally experiencing the greatest revelations of love but billions of years will go and you will never exhaust the ocean of the love that he has for you, never. A million years from now, a billion years from now, you will have new and fresh discoveries of how he feels about you. Beloved, we have it made. We have it made. The God of love, his heart is focused on us. Look at paragraph C. Because God is love, he has deep desires. He has deep desires. Love is not distant. He does not love at a distance. He has deep desires. He is deeply involved with us. Some people have the idea that God is at a distance. He checks in on us regularly and when we get into a big sin, then he gets involved or if we get into a big trouble, I mean a horrible trial happens and now he gets involved to deliver us. So the idea is that mostly he stays at a distance. He looks down in on us occasionally. If we really mess up in sin, he gets real involved for a few moments or if we get in a big trouble, I mean a big trial, then he'll deliver us to show us he cares and then he goes back to being distant again. That's not how it is. Because he loves us, he wants to relate to us. Look here in paragraph C. Because he desires us, he goes, I want to relate to you. I don't want to just stamp your passport and welcome you into the gates of heaven and say, hey, good to have you in the empire. See you later. He desires to relate to us in a deep way. He wants to make us feel loved. When you love someone, you want them to feel loved. You desire that they would have confidence in the fact that you love them. He wants us to feel the confidence of how he feels. When you love someone, you celebrate who they are. How much more does he celebrate who you are? He knows more about you and understands you far better than you do and he celebrates who you are even though you might despise who you are because he sees the good. He sees the future. He sees what's in your spirit in ways you can't see. When you love someone, you have pleasure in the relationship. Beloved, he has pleasure in the relationship and it goes on and on. It's more than a work assignment. Being in the kingdom of God is more than just a work assignment to go help other people though we do that. Being in the kingdom of God is more than a code of conduct. We try to obey God in these ways. We do need to do that but that's not the essence of what Christianity is. It's not a code of conduct though we do obey him. Christianity is more than escape from hell. It's the pursuit of a person. A person who has been pursuing us. It's the awareness of the beauty and the fascination and the majesty of this man and there's nothing more fascinating about him than how he feels about us. It excites our spirit like nothing else. Paragraph D. Jesus is a king with power. The body of Christ knows about the king with power. He can work miracles. He can save people. He can provide finances. He's a king with power but he's more than a king with power. He's a bridegroom with desire. Some believers only see the king with power. They don't see the bridegroom with desire. He has power and he has desire and they both operate with no contradiction at all. With his power he anoints us to do his work. With his desire he anoints us to experience his love. Someone said which is best? To be anointed to do his work or be anointed to experience his love and I'd say you don't have to choose. You get both of them in fullness. He's a bridegroom, king and judge. November 1995 I had a very powerful prophetic dream and in this dream I was standing on a large platform with thousands of it's like the one thing conference. Again last year we had right here in this building just across the street in the big building. We have the there's a building right over there that can seat 40,000 people. The Lord showed me that building and it was thousands of young people and I stood on a platform and I mean there was I'm guessing 30, 40,000. I don't know. The place was so full and I was standing like this and an audible voice like thunder spoke and he said this look at it. I have it written here call them Hephzibah for the Lord delights in you. Call them Hephzibah for the Lord delights in you. And the word Hephzibah means the Lord delights in you from Isaiah 62. And so this thunderous voice told me to tell this young generation God calls you Hephzibah. God calls you. You are my delight. So I lifted my voice and I said he delights in you. He delights in you. And then the power of God fell on them and touched their heart and changed their lives and their hearts and their emotions. And I knew from that prophetic dream I woke up and the power of God was resting on me in a very intense way and I knew that I just had one of the most important encounters I've ever had in my life. And he was telling me tell the people how I feel about them that they're not just a workforce they are my bride. They are my partner forever. Beloved, we want to work in the kingdom. We want to be anointed to do work. I mean I want to raise the dead. I want to preach the gospel. I want to work for justice. I want to see every sphere of society transformed by the power of God. I love the anointing on the work but the anointing on the work is not the whole message. We're more than a workforce. We are his bride. We are his partner. We are in deep partnership. His companion forever and ever and ever and we can't see it but he sees it. When he looks at you he doesn't just see who you are at age 16 struggling with five issues. He sees who you are 10 years from now 50 years from now 500 years from now and 5 million years from now he sees the truth of who you are. And in the big picture of who you really are you only struggle for just a brief moment and who you are is not mostly about how you struggle. That's a part of our story but it's not the main part of our story. But the enemy comes and tells us that God looks at us only related to our struggle and then we see ourselves and our identity only by what we fail in. And the Lord told me in his dream tell them how much I desire them. And the idea is I see them from the beginning to the end. I see who they are in entirety the fullness of who they are in the big picture not just what they're struggling with this summer. 40 years ago the summer I met the Lord 1971 he knew that I loved him I really did. I mean I read books biographies about people that gave their life for God and I wanted to do it. I mean I really wanted to go hard. Hated prayer hated Bible study sin was increasing in my life but I loved him and I read books I go God I'm never going to make it and the Lord could have said to me I didn't hear this Mike I see you 40 years from now talking to a bunch of students about how I changed your heart you don't even know that but one day you'll do that. 40 years ago God saw the way my heart was today and he sees the way my heart will be in 4 million years from now and the Lord sees the big picture about you and about me and about everyone. When this touches us it shifts the way we relate to God. It changes the way we view him and the way we view ourself. It gives us confidence but not only confidence it awakens a desire in us to be abandoned to him and it exhilarates our spirit. When we begin to touch this we begin to be more eager to learn more and to feel the power of it more and more and more and that's what we call fascination. The most powerful exhilaration of the human spirit is when God reveals God to the human spirit and even though in this age it's only a little bit but I tell you a little bit goes a long way. Roman number three I'm not going to go through this I'm just going to take one minute and tell you what this is and you can read it on your own if you want. I call ask Misty's team to go ahead and come on up. Roman number three God I want to encourage you to be a student to study God's emotions. King David studied God's emotions. I just tell the story I mean I the verses here you can read on your own. Moses said show me your glory Lord. I want to see your glory and to Moses' surprise God said I will show you my glory but to his surprise he revealed his emotions to Moses. Beloved when God reveals his glory to you he doesn't just demonstrate his power and raise someone from the dead that's his glory for sure but the most glorious thing about God when he showed it to Moses he showed God God showed Moses God's emotions he said look at my heart see how I feel that is the greatest manifestation of my glory as I let you see how I feel and how I feel towards you. And I just gave a little bit of the passage there I urge you to read it more in context the greatest manifestation of God's glory is when he opens his heart and he says this is my glory do you see how I feel about you? Have a life vision to be a student of God's emotions I determined years ago David was a student of God's emotions he studied them and I began to study God's emotions in my early 20s I want to see how God feels and I tell you it totally changed me and I'll just end with this story about Alan Hood Alan Hood is the leader of our Bible school helped start IHOP 12 years ago he'll speak tomorrow night Alan Hood is an amazing man but it was 20 years ago it was over 20 years ago Alan Hood was just about 20 years old and he was just a student in the church where I was the pastor and I challenged the people 20 years ago I've given this challenge many times I challenge you with it I said go through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and study God's emotions everywhere where you find a passage that reveals how God feels about people underline it I said it may take you a year to do it Alan Hood 20 years ago he's 40 now or something like that he was about 20 then he's he was sitting right over there on the left I can I can just recall this sermon and he said I'm gonna do it and he took the next year and he went from Genesis to Revelation and every place in the Bible where God revealed his emotions Alan underlined it and he began to make a list and he began to pray it back to God and say let me feel how you feel about me I've heard Alan tell the story a number of times I might ask him to tell it again tomorrow I've heard him tell the story he said that year when I began to focus on God's emotions to abide in his love to stay focused on God's affections towards me he goes it radically changed my life and it changed the way I saw myself and it changed my life vision and that's what I call you to and exhort you it's a life of fascination with the most fascinating man that ever lived who lives forever and forever he's fully God and fully man Christ Jesus amen let's stand it's gonna have Misty just play the music just for a moment let's just all close our eyes for a moment just as she's beginning the music the Lord's calling some of you in this room I mean you feel the Lord's calling all of you but some of you are feeling it right now he's calling you to set your heart your vision to be a student of God's emotions to live exhilarated begin the journey start tonight I tell you I know what a 15, 16, 17, 18 year old feels like who loves God but it's not working I get it I totally get it but I promise you this thing will work for you even for you it will work I thought it would work for everybody but not for me I was shocked because it worked for me I felt it changed the way I felt that's what I mean some of you tonight you're saying I want to commit myself to abide in his love to study this to go deep in it to throw my life into it to make it known to other people that's a decision you can make tonight say no I really want to do this I mean in a whole new way you would like prayer I would like you to invite you to come up here go ahead Misty young men after God's own heart young women after God's heart like David you may be in a little rural town like Bethlehem your family may despise you like David's family you may be taking care of the sheep the most boring job in town you got a guitar with one broken string nobody cares about your ministry or your life your eyes are on God and I tell you his eyes are on you I tell you he's going to make this work for you you're saying Lord I want to go all the way Lord here we are Lord I ask you for a spirit of grace I ask for a setting of the heart tonight in a new way all over this room Lord I ask you for the setting of the heart in a new way Lord release your power Lord release your power right now I ask you everyone's in the room to come up if you love Jesus I want you to come up pray for folks if you're just an on fire believer I want you I want everybody up here with somebody laying hands on them so youth pastors I might interrupt but 15 year olds come on up as well we want to lay hands on everybody because the Holy Spirit gives more when the church prays for each other we're going to continue to worship Jesus we want to go deep in this I will set my heart set your heart and I will visit you Lord release your glory even now is show me the glory Jesus I will stir up my soul into mystery I'll just rest as I bend your truth this is my simple divorce oh look at me You've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, with one glance of your eye. You've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, with one glance of your eye. You've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, with one glance of your eye. You've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart, you've ravished my heart.