Mike Bickle emphasizes the importance of encountering the Father heart of God, inviting believers to experience intimacy with God as their loving Father. He highlights that this relationship is not just a duty but a joyful exchange of love, where understanding God's love for us empowers us to love Him back wholeheartedly. Bickle encourages believers to shift their focus from seeking material blessings to nurturing a deep, affectionate relationship with God, which will ultimately lead to a more fruitful and joyful Christian life. He stresses that true obedience flows from love, not obligation, and that every believer has access to this profound experience of God's love through the Holy Spirit.

Lord, we offer this night to you to encounter your heart, Father. The encountering of your heart, and I just ask, even now, for those that are present here, those that are viewing through God TV, Lord, that you would supernaturally unveil your heart to them. In the hearing of your word, by the moving of the Spirit, the awesome privilege of encountering who you are as Father, as Abba, and we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm going to be going through a set of notes here, and those notes are available on the internet right now if you want to download them and follow along with us. Before we begin this session tonight on encountering the Father's heart, afterwards we're going to go right into a time of ministry and worship, and Misty Edwards and her team will be with us for about an hour, hour and a half, and so we're going to hear the word, and then we're going to come before the Lord through worship, prophetic worship, musicians and singers, and ask the Lord to touch our hearts by the Holy Spirit. I really appreciate God TV and their commitment to make conferences like this and many other conferences, Reinhard Bonnke and many others available. I want to pray for them because they do this free of charge. They don't charge us anything, and they do this with about 10 or 15 other groups at the expense of hundreds of thousands of dollars, I mean several million in the course of a year, and they do it in order to present ministry to the body of Christ around the nations. And so I'm going to ask the Lord's blessing upon them. Father, I thank you for the leadership of God TV that has decided, made costly decisions to make this kind of programming, along with so many others, free for us and free for the body of Christ. Lord, I ask you for supernatural provision, economic provision, because I know they don't have it in hand, and I ask you to release it to them in the name of Jesus. I ask that you would open the gates of heaven, even as they have opened their hearts and their pocketbooks as a ministry to provide this for the body of Christ. I ask you to do that in Jesus' name, amen. Well tonight we're going to be looking at encountering the heart of the Father. It's the call of God throughout the whole human race to encounter his heart in intimacy. It's intimacy with God. It's the call to go deep with God's heart. I mean what a remarkable, really it's incomprehensible. We really do not grasp the magnitude and the implication of the Genesis 1 God in whom the angels tremble before. He opens wide his heart. Jesus said, when you come before him, call him Father. The angels cannot call him Father. Only born-again believers can call him Father, only the saints. The angels tremble before him, the seraphim and the cherubim. When they worship, they close their eyes and they veil their faces with their wings. But this is the one in whom he says, call me Father, for I will be trustworthy. I am a tender one. I have your interest in my heart. God has a, as a father, he has a dream, he has a plan that is yet to be manifest for every single person that will respond to him through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And of course the ultimate reality is that in the age to come, the Father establishes his throne upon the earth in Revelation 21 verse 3 and all the nations will see God openly face-to-face on the earth in the natural. Of course the New Jerusalem is descended and heaven and earth have come together. The natural realm and the spiritual realm are fully integrated together in the most glorious reality in the age to come. And we worship and relate to God as Father through all the nations. But we don't have to wait until then, because the tenderness of his heart is available and open to us right now by the person of the Holy Spirit. Jesus taught us that we can have confidence to call him Father, encounter him as Father, and experience the tenderizing of his heart. I mean his tender heart which tenderizes our heart. Matthew chapter 22 verse 38 and 39, Jesus said you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart. Now he's talking obviously about himself but he's also talking about his Father. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength, all of your mind. Mark says, Mark 12 says, all of your strength. Now what Jesus is doing here as he's quoting a prophecy that Moses gave in Deuteronomy chapter 30 verses 1 to 10. God spoke to Moses and said, my people, well he's talking specifically to the nation of Israel but then it's extended to all the people of God, the body of Christ from the New Covenant on, all of my people will live before God with the power of wholeheartedness. Because this isn't just a commandment, it is a promise. It's an invitation, it's a prophecy. And in the age to come we will walk in this to the fullness, to the full degree. But the Holy Spirit even now is empowering those who have this vision in their heart to experience the Father, to experience his love, and to give ourselves back in the power of wholeheartedness. Now it takes God to love God. We can make the choice but it takes the power of the Holy Spirit. It takes God to love God. It takes the power of God to love God and there's nothing more exhilarating to the human spirit than to experience the power of loving God with all of our heart. And that's what Jesus was saying. He was saying the day is coming when you will have the ability to experience the Father's heart, not only to experience his love but to return it and the pleasure and the power and the dynamic reality of that in our spirit. Beloved, that is available to every believer in this age. Yes, it's a down payment of the great day when the Father's throne is on the earth in the age to come and all nations dwell before him and call him Father. Jesus gave this command, yea prophecy, promise on his last visit to Jerusalem. Just hours, literally hours, well several days before the cross but it's right at the end. It's his last public statement and last invitation of redemption to the nation of Israel, to the people of God. He ends it with this statement and he calls the nations and he calls the people of God to this supernatural lifestyle of loving God with all of our strength. Now the reason, the reason God calls us to love him with all of his heart is because he first loves us with all of his heart, with all of his strength and all of his might. I can't imagine what it means that God loves me with all of his strength, that God loves me with all of his soul and God's not inviting us or commanding us to something that he does not do but rather inviting us in a reciprocal relationship to him because he loves us as a father with all of his heart and Jesus loves us as the bridegroom God with all of his heart. He's saying I want you to enter in, not to this responsibility, I want you to enter into this dynamic supernatural lifestyle called joy. It's also called holiness. But it's joy, it's power on the inside and I want everything that God will give the human spirit in this age. I have a vision and I know that many of you do and God's calling his church right now across the nation to have a vision that we refuse to come up short of anything that God has made available to the human heart in this age. And the ultimate reality is that we would experience the love that is with all of his strength and all of his might towards us. And then it then awakens love that's with all of our strength and all of our might back to him. This is called joy. This is called power. It's called holiness. It's called humility. But beloved, this is the place where the human spirit is exhilarated. We cannot live the New Testament lifestyle apart from the pursuit of this dynamic joy exchange of our heart and God's heart. Some people look at this commandment and they're really caught up in the vastness of it and they only think of the difficulty of it because they think of pursuing it without connecting with the Holy Spirit. They think of pursuing this without first God revealing that he feels this way about them. And so here they are. It's a common experience. Somebody will read this verse and they'll grit their teeth and they're imagining kind of pressing hard after a great God but not necessarily a God who loves with all of his strength. A great God, yes, but not necessarily the God who loves with all of his strength. And they have their image of God who's not a father. He's almighty. He's a king and he is king and he is almighty. But beloved, he's more than king and he's more than almighty. He loves like a father with all of his might. The Genesis 1 God loves you with all of his might, with all of his mind. And apart from that revelation of his father heart or the second person of the Trinity, the bridegroom King Jesus, apart from that revelation this commandment is a burden. It looks like something we ought to do and so we kind of really rev up and get ready to press in and pay the price and grit our teeth and we don't have the the paradigm of the love dynamic, the the excitement of an exhilarated spirit by getting the impact of a God that loves with all of his might. And then even those that that begin to understand a little bit of the love of God, and we will only understand a little of it in this age. I mean we've we have a long way to go before we exhaust what God will give us in this age. But beloved, even if we go to the fullness of experience in this age, we've only touched the very beginning of that vast ocean of his divine love, of the ocean of his heart. And so we begin to get a vision of the love of God. And then it begins to make sense to us. It begins to motivate us to respond in love but that's not even enough there. We have to have a vital connection with the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit lives in our human spirit. And we have to develop our friendship with the Holy Spirit, the indwelling spirit. And we talk to him. And we have friendship with him. And we gaze upon him. We turn our attention upon the Holy Spirit who lives on the inside, even while we're gazing on the Father who's on the throne, Revelation chapter 4. Because it takes the power of the indwelling spirit. It takes encounter with a person on the inside in order to love the God who's upon the throne. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So it takes God to love God. The reason I'm saying this, it's not enough just to have a vision to be a lover of God. That's a great vision but that's not enough. We have to have a revelation that God is a wholehearted lover of his people. He's the God who burns with desire but that's not enough even as dynamic as that is. We have to have a continual, and I don't mean 24 hours a day unbroken, but I mean as part of our lifestyle we have to have a growing relationship and dialogue with the indwelling spirit. So I've watched people over the years. They get excited about the Father heart of God but they don't go very far. You know one, two, three, four, five years later they're still at bay, you know, on the first base. They haven't gained any ground in any discernible way. Beloved, this is more than a doctrine. This is a living reality. This is a place where the human spirit is exhilarated in this age and how much more in the age to come. Revelation chapter 15, John the Apostle saw the end-time saints on the sea of glass before the Father and they were worshiping God and they were magnifying the marvels of Christ Jesus. Revelation 15 verse 2 and 3 and 4 is describing, it's describing the end-time church and here's what it says, they have the victory over the beast or the Antichrist. There will be a people across all the nations of the earth. They will have victory over the beast. They will be lovesick worshipers of God. They will be empowered by love to the place, I mean I'm talking about the whole end-time church across the nations, will be a bride prepared. Revelation 19 tells us the end-time church, I'm talking about while still on the earth, before the resurrection. And all the nations of the earth will be relating to Jesus as a lovesick bride, as a bride who's prepared, but we will be relating before the Father as faithful sons and daughters. And Revelation chapter 15 verse 2 says we will have victory. We'll have victory over darkness. Now I look at the body of Christ right now across the world and there's a need for substantial increase of victory over darkness. But I'm encouraged. The Word of God says the end-time church will be victorious. And there's many passages that describe it. Now how are we going to be victorious? The secret of victory is in the power of love. The secret of victory is in the power of love. It's the power of feeling loved, that's where it begins, understanding and then feeling the love that God has for us. We cannot exaggerate the impact that feeling loved has. Now we don't have to feel loved to be saved. But we have to have moments in times where we feel His love if we're going to go on into the next dimensions of our encounter with God. I mean if we're going to really go somewhere in the decades ahead, that is a part of our relationship with Him to understand and to actually feel. I don't mean a hundred percent of the time, every day, all day. But I'm talking about as a regular part of our experience with the Father to actually feel that He loves us and to feel His presence. Many believers have become so accustomed to a dull spirit. They're so accustomed to living with a quenched spirit. They're so accustomed to condemnation and guilt that they're just kind of on autopilot, they're kind of on automatic pilot, just kind of going through the motions of serving God and without ever having any growth of revelation of how God feels toward them and not a increased experience of feeling the tenderizing of the presence of God upon their spirit. Now my point isn't to condemn them, you know, to heap more condemnation on them. My point is to put before them the vision of what God is really offering them. God is really offering us more than just being a worker. The reward of a lover is the power to love. That's the secret of the end-time church. It's true in the natural, but it's true in the spirit as well. That when we feel love from Him and we feel love back to Him, we feel it from Him, it awakens a tenderizing in our spirit and then we feel love back to Him. I tell you, that is the reward. The anointing to love is the greatest reward that the Holy Spirit will give us in this age and in the age to come. But in order to walk in that, we have to intentionally focus our mind to pursue it. It doesn't just suddenly automatically overtake us. The great men and women through redemptive history in the Bible and then through church history, the great men and women that grew in love for God were those who understood best God's love for them. If you want to grow in love for God, you need to lock in to feeding your spirit on the Father's love for you, the first person of the Trinity, or the bridegroom God, the second person of the Trinity, His love back to us. But the reward of a lover is the power to love. And where much of the body of Christ is focused today is on relating to God in a way to get more things. Their relationship to God and their testimony is mostly focused around things. They're excited when more things are added to them and they're depressed and in warfare when things are taken from them. And there's actually, that's biblical to have that dimension that things, God wants to give things. He wants to give increase of influence to some. He wants to give, he does give things. But beloved, that's not the centerpiece of our relationship with God. But in many parts of the body of Christ, the focal point is to get a bigger ministry, to get more anointing in ministry, and to get more things. And they pray about it as their main focus. That's their testimony. That's how they gauge their walk with God. And the greater reality is the anointing to love. To feel it from him, to give it back to him. And of course, if you feel it from him and you return it back to him, it always overflows to others, both believers and unbelievers. We will love unbelievers, we will love our enemies, we will love humans. Whether they're kind to us or not, whether they love God or not, we will love humans in the overflow of that reality. But the Holy Spirit is going to shift the focus of the end-time church. I'm prophesying to you, but I have the Bible behind me so it's pretty easy to give this prophecy. It's a real sure one. The Holy Spirit is going to shift the primary focus of the end-time church from primarily concerned with getting more influence and more things, he's going to make that second. And he's going to shift the focus of the heart to experiencing God's heart and to giving our heart back. It's called the anointing to love. Or the anointing of love to just get caught into that divine overflow of love. The Father loves the Son. Oh, the Son loves the Father. The Father loves the Son. The Son loves the Father. You know, the reason Jesus glorifies the Father, why he glorified the Father as a man on the earth, he so loved the Father and the Father so loved him. He so liked what he knew about the Father. Now that seems like a strange idea that Jesus liked what he knew about the Father, but he did. If you would talk to him, tell us about the Father. Oh, he'd say, oh I just like who he is. I have so much respect for him. He loves me and I love him. And Jesus was motivated in that overflow of what I call affection-based obedience. It was obedience that was awakened, I mean not awakened, it was obedience that was flowing through his spirit. It's awakened in us because God loved him. He loved God. God loved him. He loved God. And I tell you, with that kind of flow of affection, obedience is a whole different issue. What's happening is many are trying to live in obedience without the connection, the anointing to love. They don't feel the love of God. They don't understand the love of God. They don't feel love back to God in a general way they do, but it's not a dynamic exhilarating power that touches their inner man, and they're kind of gritting their teeth, and they're paying the price. You hear that language a lot. That brother paid the price as though boring, mean God and good Christian pays the price to endure distant mean God. You know, I just imagine what the angels are thinking. You know, we're talking about paying the price down here so much, and the angels are kind of saying, I don't think they know who he is. I don't think they get what's going on. Jesus didn't pay the price to endure God. He loved his father's presence because he knew who the father was. Well, this is the invitation of the Holy Spirit. Beloved, we're gonna, we want things. It's biblical for God to give things, but we don't want that to be the number one focus or the defining element of our warfare or of our relationship with God. We want that to be a secondary or even a third priority in our life. It is biblical. It is right, but it can't be first. It has to be second or third or wherever. Same with ministry. The body of Christ is so, you know, if they're not into things, they're just so into their ministry being big and powerful, and that's good to be into your ministry being powerful so that it will touch other people for the glory of God. But if their ministry doesn't turn out like they want, they're so depressed, and if it does turn out good and it ends up a whole lot's happening, then people mistreat them, then they get bitter, and they get upset. Beloved, we're not made to function by relating to God mostly on doing things or receiving things. That has to be secondary. We were created to encounter the Father, encounter the Son. We were created to cry in our spirit, Abba. Romans 8 15, Paul the Apostle said, there is a cry in the human spirit that says Abba or Daddy or Father, and if we don't feed that cry, something is injured in our walk with God. We feed it by meditating on the Word. We feed it by a spirit of obedience. We feed it by worship. We feed it by speaking the Word. We have to feed that cry in our spirit that says Abba, and many believers feel that that cry, that impulse in their spirit, the Holy Spirit's in them inside of us saying, you really want a closer walk with the Father. You really do. But then we get busy and get distracted or we focus our life on things or ministry or working, and all of those have their place. They really do have a place, but they have to be second. Beloved, I want to feed that cry in my spirit. Romans 8 15, I want to feed it. I want it to mature. I want it to dominate my spirit. Well, Jesus is the one who said, when you come to God, say, Our Father. That was so staggering. Again, I think of the angels. The angels are covering their face looking at the, you know, the transcendent God in his glory, and they're overwhelmed with his awful, terrifying majesty and beauty, and Jesus says, when you talk to him, call him Papa, Father, the tender one who has my good upon his mind. I can just think of the angels going, this is just, this is just too much almost, that any creature can have this kind of relationship with the awesome, transcendent God. Beloved, where are we at in our journey in this relationship? This is, this is the ultimate invitation that God has offered the human race. A lover will always outwork a worker. Some people, you know, they get nervous if you talk about intimacy with God. They think, what about the harvest? I go, that's a great question. As though, if we get too close in intimacy with the Father, or with the Son, somehow we're gonna get disconnected. We're gonna get so into the Father and the Son, we're gonna forget the harvest and other people. Like, what's wrong with that thinking? I tell you, if you get close to the Father, the Father's the one that sent the Son to die for the, for the world. God so loved the world, he sent Jesus. You get close to his heart, I tell you, you are gonna be effective in the harvest. A lover will always outwork a worker. Always. Because a lover will endure the seasons of difficulty in a way a worker won't. If it gets too hard, a worker, I'm burnt out, it's not the right season, I'm better, I don't care, they treated me wrong. I mean, workers quit pretty quick. Within a five-year cycle, many workers in the body of Christ quit. Five hard years, many of them quit and they take 10 or 15 years off. They think they're on a season of rest, they look back, it's been 10 or 15 years since they've been engaged in a zealous way in the work of the kingdom. I've been in ministry for 30 years and I've watched this. I know a lot of people, they still think that that sabbatical has been a, you know, a few months. It's been 15 years. I want to tell it to you just straight forward. A lover will always outwork a worker. Always. And when a worker becomes a lover, it changes the entire paradigm of the work. When we become one who loves the Father, I mean, not just in the general sense, I mean, we feel His love as a tender father. We feel the passionate love of the Bridegroom God, Jesus. We feel love back to the Father. We feel love back to the Son, the Spirit of God. We have communication and fellowship with Him and He's empowering God of this love for God in our spirit because it takes God to love God. Again, this is called joy. This is called living exhilarated. No matter what's going on in our life, we can have joy in our spirit. The Bible's filled with the description of this. People get so used to not experiencing it that they kind of give up on the reality that it exists. Beloved, this is within the reach of every single weak believer. But when the worker begins to get a new focus, begins to get just a little bit of experience, they're beginning to feel that the love of God that tenderizes, the love of the Father, they begin to feel the love of the Bridegroom. They feel His goodwill and His tender and His kindness and His gentleness towards them. They begin to say, oh, I really like you too. I mean, I like anybody who treats me this way. Then our view of the work changes. When the worker becomes a lover, I tell you, they view the work very differently. They view holiness very differently. It is absolutely essential that the body of Christ shift their focus from enduring God and paying the price or just being workers to becoming lovers of God first and workers for God second. They will do far better work and they will sustain through the decades without bitterness and burnout taking them as casualties out of the battle. And of course, when we experience the God who loves us with all of His strength, I mean, this is just mind-boggling in the natural. He loves us with all of His soul, all of His might, because He's not asking us to do anything that He has not done far more than we have done. When we begin to experience that, I tell you, I'm after this. I want more of this. I've been locked into this for some time and I want more. I want to be more locked in. I want to feel it more. I want to give myself more. I want to talk about it more. I want it clear in my mind and I have 24 hours a day just like you do seven days a week. We rest some, we sleep some, we have responsibilities, and we have X amount of time that we can set our heart in very, very specific ways. I mean, in really clear ways. Beloved, we have to capture our time and pour it into developing this reality in our spirit. There's a problem in the Christ right now. It's called spiritual boredom. There's many believers, they love God in the general sense, but they're spiritually bored and they have been for some time. The Word is boring. Prayer is boring. These ideas are kind of interesting, but they don't experience them. They're so accustomed to having a dull spirit that they've just kind of decided they're gonna live with a dull spirit just until some miraculous day where it goes away. It doesn't just go away in some miraculous day. It goes away when you decide that you can't live without a greater experience of the Father's heart. When you decide that, you say, this is not a one or two month kind of decision. I'm gonna lock in for a decade. I mean, several decades. I'm gonna go after this. I'm gonna feed this cry in my spirit. Romans 8 15, the cry Abba. I'm gonna feed that cry to the Word and through the spirit of obedience and through the various ways. I have some of them written here on the notes and you can get the notes on the website right now if if you want them. We have them available. We're not gonna cover all the notes tonight. I just lay them out there just as a resource for those that want to study a little bit more. It says in 1st John 4 19, we love him because he first loved us. We can't love God with all of our heart until we understand he loves us with all of his heart. We cannot love God with all of our strength without growing and understanding that he loves us with all of his strength. John chapter 15 verse 9. I mean, one of the ultimate statements. Now, here at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, we talk about this all the time. John 15 verse 9. I tell you, I just don't, I don't know how to say anything more dramatic, more radical than John 15 9. And what Jesus says, as the Father loved me, in the same way I love you, that the standard of measure for how God loves us is how much God loves God. Beloved, God loves us like God loves God. Jesus said, in the same measure that the Father loves me, the same way the Father feels about me, he feels about all of his sons and daughters. All of them. Just by this one statement, every believer in the body of Christ has the right to stand before God in the confidence that they are God's favorite one. God's heart is big. He could have a billion favorite ones. Beloved, if he loves me the same way he loves Jesus, I'm absolute top of the list. And so are you. Sounds kind of cute, but it's not cute. It is real. This is not just kind of a cool little verse to put on a postcard. It's okay to put it on a postcard. This is a living reality. This is staggering beyond exaggeration. Let's say it again. Jesus said, as the Father loves me, the Father loves me in the same way, that's how I feel about you. Jesus feels about you like the Father feels about him. Look what Jesus went on to say a few moments later in John 17 23. He said that the world may know, Father, he's praying, that the world may know, Father, that you love them in the same way you love me. Can you imagine that the Father feels about you and your weakness and brokenness and about me and my weakness and brokenness? He feels about me like he feels about Jesus. Beloved, we have to get a hold of this. We have to feed our spirit on this. We've got to turn some things off. We have to make some time. We have to free up some space on our emotional hard drive and feed our spirit on these things in a consistent, focused way. I don't mean for a summer. I'm talking about for a couple decades. We've got to downsize. We've got to downsize some of the things that are destroying, I mean not destroying, but completely overcrowding our schedules so we have time to actually grow in revelation. I tell people all the time, just downsize a little bit. Downsize some of your recreation. Downsize some of the time you put in entertainment. Downsize some of your growth of popularity. Don't go to every, don't go through every door that's open for you. Downsize. Downsize some of your business opportunities. Make some time to feed your spirit on this indescribable truth. It says in 1st John chapter 3 verse 1. John, I mean here he is in his 90s. He writes the 1st John in his 90s. This is what most scholars say. He says, behold what manner of love the Father has. He's given to us. Behold it. Be attentive to it. Study it. Ponder it. Be preoccupied with it. Behold it. It doesn't mean just underline the verse in your Bible. That's good to underline. I got this verse underlined in my Bible, but that's not enough. I want to behold it. I want to be attentive to the quality of love the Father has given me. This was the secret of King David's life. This was the secret of Mary of Bethany who set the feet of Jesus. They made it their preoccupation to behold the quality of love that God had for them. King David said, this one thing I do all the days of my life in Psalm 27 4. He locked into this. He goes, I behold the heart of God is in essence what he was saying. 3rd John verse 2. John said, John goes on to continue to talk. He goes, I pray that you would prosper in all things. Beloved, God wants us to prosper in all things. And he says, I want your body to be in health, but in proportion to your soul prospering. And beloved, our soul prospers as it grows in the anointing to love. What happens often is that people focus on prospering in all things and they talk about divine health, which are very important subjects in the Old and New Testament. But beloved, John in his wisdom and this elderly apostle said, don't miss the connect point. Because what benefit is if you have many things in your hand, but your soul is dull in God or you're living spiritually bored, even as a born again believer, your soul is not prospering in the first commandment. The first commandment, you shall love the Lord your God. That's a promise. That's a prophecy. That's an invitation. That's a lifestyle of exhilaration in God. Let's go to Roman numeral two. Again, you can get these notes on the website right now. We have several pages of them. We're just gonna go another few moments and then we're gonna invite Misty Edwards and the worship team to come up and we're gonna just respond to God and give our heart to him. But I'm not after just a evening of saying, I love you, God. I love you, God. I like an evening of doing that. That's a very wise way to spend an evening. But I'm after much more than an evening. I'm after more than a year at Bible school. I want to do this for decades. I want to do this my whole life. This is more important than anything else that God gives us in blessing that are second and third on the priority list. As important and as biblical as they are, they are second and they are third. My soul prospering in feeling loved and loving back and then over towards God and then overflowing towards others. Even my enemies. I mean overflowing. Beloved, that cycle of love begins to get set loose in our spirit or our emotions. We will love our enemies in truth. We can't do that by gritting our teeth. We do that in the overflow of beholding what manner of love the Father has for us. Ephesians 3 verse 17. Paul called it being rooted and grounded in love. I want to be rooted and grounded. What a phrase. Rooted and grounded. Rooted is agricultural. It's talking about the tree and the root system. Grounded is architectural. It's talking about the foundation of a building. Specifically what he's referring to. He uses both different analogies. Because the roots around, I mean some trees, the roots go around a rock deep in the surface and those trees are the strongest and there's all kinds of illustrations about root systems and trees that are glorious. The foundation of a building. I want to be rooted and grounded. Rooted or grounded. It's the same truth said two different ways. One's architectural and one's agricultural. I love the analogies but I want the reality. I want my soul grounded. I want to feel love and love back. And the verse before right there in Ephesians he's talking about strength in our in our inner man. Strength in our inner man comes from this reality. Talk about a couple types of obedience that are common in the body of Christ. The first one is what I call affection based obedience. That's the obedience to God that comes from experience. Experiencing his affection for us. And of course when we experience his affection for us it's only a short amount of time we start having affection back towards him at a whole new level. It takes God to love God. It really does. And I know you know that. When I feel loved and I feel loved back, obedience is not a burden. It is not a burden. I mean there's a few things are still burdened. But you have, I mean Jesus went to the cross. That was a burden. But he had love like a volcano in his soul moving him. But the day-to-day obedience is not burdensome when we're rooted and grounded. When this is moving in us. And it's not like you have to go you know to level 10 on a scale of 10 the first day. Beloved if we're at 1 we're going to 2 and we're going to 3. And the years unfold we're moving to 4 and 5. It's a slow growth. And sometimes it's three steps forward two steps back. But we're still going forward a little bit as the as the months and years are going forward. I don't grow every day. Some days I I do worse than I did the day before. I understand that. But in the overall of months and years we're moving forward in this reality. Now this is the strongest kind of obedience that there is. This results in the deepest and the most consistent obedience. And the reason why because a lovesick person will endure anything for love. You get a person lovesick they don't care what it costs them. They will go to any extreme to show their love. This is again I mentioned it earlier. This is how Jesus glorified the Father. He didn't say I glorify the Father because I should glorify the Father. You know I want to be an example. And Father I'm going to show them what's right. Yes he was an example and he showed us what was right. But he had a volcanic fire in his soul of love. He liked what God the Father was like. He liked what he saw in his Father. The Father loved him. He loved the Father. And there was a this torrent of love moving in his being. Beloved this is how the end-time church is going to glorify God. Satan and the Antichrist and the enemies of darkness will come and say if you don't deny him this and that. He says you know what? You can't take anything from me that are the highest things in my heart. Because the highest things that I have are in my heart between me and him. No human hand, no demonic hand can touch it. Beloved nobody can take it from you or touch it. You know Saul, King Saul chased David around the wilderness for about seven or eight years. Saul can touch David's body but Saul can't steal David's calling. The only person that could hurt David's calling is David. The only person that could take your calling or wreck your life is you. The enemy can't do that. They may injure your finances for a season. They may injure your reputation for a season. But beloved your calling isn't jeopardized when that happens because God has all the money and all the power. He just a little time-delayed system and you fulfill your calling. David didn't lose anything because Saul chased him around for seven years. I lost seven years. God gave David more in one year than any other man could have done in a lifetime. Saul can't take the will of God from you or he can't take your, he can't destroy your life. I hear people say that man destroyed my life. I said if that man destroyed your life, pity you! That you would live that way. You would live that lowly. You would live that weak that another human being has the power to touch the deepest things of your being and to move them and manipulate them and take them from you. Because the deepest things in our heart, nobody, no demon, nobody can touch them. That's why affectionate, affection based obedience is so powerful. Because the lovesick person, they'll do anything for love. They can take our life. They can take our things. They can ruin our reputation. But they haven't touched our life vision. Our life vision is at the heart level. It's only in a secondary way at the ministry level, in the circumstance level. The second kind of obedience. We're gonna bring this to an end. The second type of obedience is duty-based obedience. It's the obedience that we take, I mean the obedience that we do without feeling the presence of God or inspiration. Now let me tell you, just be clear, the Bible is clear we have to obey when we don't feel inspired. I know a whole lot about saying Lord you know if I could feel your presence I could do this a whole lot better right now. I've had that many times in the 35 years I've walked with the Lord. God requires that we obey him when we don't feel his presence. There is a duty. He is the Creator and the Redeemer. He is King and he is Savior and he says obey, we obey. I'm just telling you that isn't the most powerful kind. It is still required but it has holes in it. It's not the best way to keep us steady. And many believers that's what they do. They lock into this and it is it again we do obey whether we feel it or not but I'm not content to live that way and there's a vision to go higher in our experience with the Father's heart. And the third type of obedience is what I'll call fear-based obedience or shame-based. Fear-based obedience is the obedience that we walk in because we're fearful of negative consequences. Well beloved this is biblical too. Hell is real. You really will go to hell. It's real. I don't want to go to hell. The consequences are real. Even as a believer who loves God there is a there are seasons of divine discipline that are unnecessary. Some some of these seasons God disciplines all of his sons and daughters but there are things that the Lord will do in chastising us we could avoid if we would listen to the Word of God and not respond only to the rod of God. And the Lord says well I tell you that's fear of consequences. It's called the fear of the Lord. Now some people have this in an inappropriate way but I don't want to be put to shame and I don't want to be disciplined more than I have to be. So even this is biblical but it's not enough to sustain us through the years. Many people mostly they obey through the fear-based obedience. They obey through a legitimate reasonable knowledge of negative circumstances. If they don't they really will get in trouble. If they steal money, commit adultery, and lie, sooner or later chances are something's gonna happen outwardly where it's gonna bear down upon them. And it's real. It's the discipline of the Lord. And they think oh man you know they feel the fear of God. The fear of God's good. But beloved you can't go as far with fear-based obedience. And again fear normally to most people think that's the type we don't do the grace of God. No it's a fearful thing to fall in the hands of God in disobedience. It really is. As a believer even that. Because he loves us too much to leave us in that condition. But I look at this and I go I've done fear-based. I've been afraid and obeyed. I didn't want to obey and I obeyed because I did the math. I did the math. I said you know what I'm obeying. Oh I'd love to I'd love not to obey but I did the math. Lord goes that's good. It's duty-based. It's just right. I love you and eternity is a long time and and I want to do right. I don't feel the inspiration but I'm gonna sit before you and I'm gonna be faithful with my money and my time and I don't feel anything. But you are the creator and you are the Redeemer and I'm the little guy. You made me and saved me. Hey I'll do it. But beloved there is nothing like affection-based obedience. Nothing like it. And it's within the reach of every single believer. Well we're gonna call the worship team up. Misty Edwards and worship team if you'll come on up. We're gonna take the next hour and 15 minutes at least on the air and we're gonna just respond to the Lord and then we're gonna go on past that you know it again I want to invite you to the 10 o'clock prayer meeting at IHOP right after this meeting just to go and to sit before the Lord and then we have the all-night of this beginning at midnight the special all-night burn that goes joins the night watch tonight. So I want to invite you to that. Let's just stand before the Lord.