Mike Bickle emphasizes the importance of restoring the first commandment, which is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, as the primary goal of our lives. He highlights that this commandment is not just a directive but comes with a promise of divine assistance from the Holy Spirit to help us fulfill it. Bickle encourages believers to prioritize their relationship with God over external blessings and to cultivate a deep, heartfelt love for Jesus, which will transform their lives and perspectives. He asserts that true success in life is defined by our love for God and our identity in Him, rather than by worldly achievements. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a commitment to make loving God the central focus of our lives, as it is the foundation for all other aspects of our faith.

Look at the notes. Those that are joining us through God TV, we have these notes on the website at ihop.org. If you want to follow along with us, you can download those notes on the IHOP website. We're talking tonight about loving God, restoring the first commandment to first place. In the early church, the first commandment was in first place by the power of God, and it's God's desire. It's on the Holy Spirit's heart worldwide to restore the first commandment, to establish it in first place worldwide. It's bigger than us, meaning we look at our own lives and we say, Lord, we feel so weak, we feel so much struggle, but the Holy Spirit, I believe, says, be of good courage, I have a plan. I'm gonna strengthen the body of Christ worldwide, and the first commandment will be in first place, I believe, before the Lord returns. Well, let's read the passage. Jesus prophesied it. It's actually a prophecy. Matthew chapter 22, He said, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind. This is the first of the great commandment. When He said, You shall love the Lord your heart, the Lord your God, He was actually prophesying to Israel. This is right before He goes to the cross, Matthew 22. It's His final public declaration to the nation of Israel, and He's quoting the prophecy from Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 6. Moses prophesied that Israel, in the generation the Lord returned, they would love God with all of their heart. And Jesus, I believe, is quoting this along with Deuteronomy 6, where this passage was originally stated in the Word of God. But in Deuteronomy 30, by the anointing of the Spirit, Moses said, You shall love God with all of your heart. And so here we find Jesus, His final public statement to the nation of Israel, right before He would go to the cross. He speaks to them one final time, and I see Him saying, Oh Israel, do you know the plans that I have for my people that would say yes to me? Now He called the first commandment. He named it here, the first commandment and the great commandment. He's going to make it first. It's first on His agenda. I believe that this is the Holy Spirit's favorite subject. I mean, the Word says it's the first thing on God's agenda. The Holy Spirit, I believe, loves this idea of the people of God, the body of Christ loving Jesus. And if this is true, that means He wants to help us. But what the Word of God makes clear is that He helps us according to our hunger. And a lot of believers, they love Jesus in that general sense, but the thing they're hungriest for is just more external blessings. Now I like external blessings. I love it when God touches my physical body, my finances, my ministry. I love that. And He enjoys doing that. But there's something I actually want more than external blessing. I want more than a growing ministry. I want my heart to grow. And I look at this promise and I go, Holy Spirit, this is mine. And I imagine the Holy Spirit saying, if you want it, it's yours. If you're hungry for it, I will talk to you about it. If you're hungry for this, and if you talk to me about it, I will show you the way forward. So I want to encourage you in this Passion for Jesus Conference that you would, in a deliberate, intentional way, you would make the first commandment to love God with all of your heart, the anointing to love God, you would make it the primary goal of your life. Not something that you hope happens along the way, more than that. But this would be a time where you would define this as the highest goal and dream of your life. There was a time in my life some time ago when I, it was a paradigm shift, where I deliberately made that my primary life goal and made ministry and blessing on circumstances and other things that are good, I made them second. And it changed my life to make this promise, this prophecy of Jesus, this command of God, but it's more than a command, it's a command with a promise, that we would actually have the anointing to walk it out. But it, something happened in my paradigm, in my thinking, in my worldview concerning how I viewed life, when I made this the primary reason I'm alive. It shifted the way I interpreted many other things. Now I haven't done it in the full way that I said in my heart, but the sheer determination to make this the primary goal of your life, it will change the way you interpret blessing, it will change the way you interpret testing, it will change the way you interpret the Word, the way you read it, the way you interpret ministry, the way you interpret difficulty. It's all changed when this is the primary grid that you're interpreting your life and Jesus's leadership over your life. Now the Father, paragraph B, He promised Jesus an inheritance. He has promised an inheritance for His beloved Son. Now the inheritance that He promised Him is an eternal companion. It's a people that He totally possesses. The Father ordained that Jesus would have an inheritance and it would be a people that He fully possesses. They would be His with all of their heart. Now it's important to understand the inheritance that God promises Jesus. I divide it in two different categories, or two different ideas, and of course we could think of the Father's inheritance towards the Son in many different ways, but number one, the Father has promised the Son that every knee would bow and every tongue would confess. We find that Philippians chapter 2, verse 9 to 11, we know the passage well. Every knee will bow. Every demon in hell and every unbeliever in hell, though staying in hell, they will still bow their knee and confess the supremacy of Jesus. Every angel, every believer, every living being will not only confess His supremacy, but they will obey Him. Now that obedience is mandatory. The devils will obey Him when they're sent to eternal judgment. They go in obedience to His Word. The Father has promised the mandatory obedience of all creation. There is no living being that will not obey Jesus. That's a glorious reality, but there's more. The Father has more on His heart than mandatory obedience. He conceived of an inheritance of those that would voluntarily love Jesus, not just obey Him because God ordained it. They would actually choose to love Him. So the inheritance that God has promised His Son is people that would voluntarily love Him with all of their heart. Now imagine this. We will love Him with all of our heart by the anointing of the Spirit, and we will forever, but understand that He loves us with all of His heart. I'm talking about being equally yoked in love forever as His eternal companion. That's who we are. I mean we look at our weakness and our brokenness in the flesh and we say, how could we be the inheritance you so deeply desire? It doesn't, if I was you God, I would not want me as your main inheritance. I mean come on. I'm glad you do, but I don't get it. Beloved, the plan of God is for a people equally yoked in love to their Savior, to the Bridegroom God, that we would love Him with all of our heart because He loves us with all of His heart. Now think for a moment. Imagine the uncreated God, the God who was never ever created, Jesus. He's fully God, fully man. There was never a time He did not exist. He's uncreated like the Father and the Spirit. Imagine God loving you with all of His mind. You know I look up at the stars at night and I say, you were like really smart. No, I mean look, they say there's a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. A hundred billion stars, not one of them the same. But the Milky Way galaxy is one of the smaller galaxies in the known universe. Through the Hubble telescope they are estimating there's a hundred billion galaxies of which the Milky Way is the one of the small ones. I look up at the sky. Jesus, you were so smart. I know that sounds maybe funny, but I mean I really do. I go, you were like unbelievably smart and powerful and creative. Look at this. And we're only seeing a fraction of one percent of the universe. And the Word would let us know He loves us with all of His mind. That's a lot. Well He loves us with all of His strength. Beloved, I don't get why He wants us, but He does. Let's settle it. You know Misty sings the song, I'll say it wrong, like, God loves me, I love God, something like that. That settles it. Anyway, I hope she sings it. I'm in love with God. God's in love with me. That settles it. And the band explodes and the drummer goes nuts. Anyway, I love that song. I just messed it up there. But anyway, that settles it's the idea. He does. It's a mystery. It's bigger than my mind, but He does. And I just decided to settle it. Like, okay, let's, this is what my life is about. Life doesn't make sense apart from that reality. With that reality, everything is different. Not only that He loves us with all of His heart and mind and strength, but our primary reason in this age and the age to come in the resurrection is to love Him with all of our mind and soul and strength. That's the point. That's the point. It's not to have a big ministry and get a lot of money and have a lot of friends. Those things can happen and I love those things when they happen, but that's not the point. There's a bigger storyline of which you are in the center of it in terms of God's call upon your life. And He's committed to this storyline. And the more that we understand that He has an inheritance, that's an eternal companion that's equally yoked to Him in love. When we get that that's the storyline that makes our life make sense, then everything looks different. But apart from that, I mean we look at financial trouble and sickness and the attack of the devil and all kinds of setbacks and we go, where are you God? And God's answer is, I have a bigger plan to bring forth love in a way that will last forever. And it doesn't fit all of the Western paradigms the way I bring it forth. Even though the devil attacks with rage to destroy us, we stand against him and his attacks. But God in His leadership, He's orchestrating leadership, I mean the plan of our life, whereas we say yes to Him, He's developing this reality called mutual love, that we would be equally yoked in love. Now being equally yoked in love means we love Him with our all. Now His all is a lot bigger than our all. But it's not the size of the all, it's the fact of the all that makes us equally yoked. The fact that we're giving our all, the best that we know. Even though our all is small, it is our all and that moves Him. That makes our life relevant, that very fact right there. Well in John 17, 26, I've had this as my life verse for near 30 years. You don't need to have a life verse, you could have the whole Bible as your life verse, but I picked this one out. You don't have to have one, but I recommend it as a good life verse. And here's what's going on in John 17. Jesus is praying right before He goes to the cross, and He says this, Father, He actually says, I only have part of the verse here in the handout, He says, Father, I have proclaimed Your name to them. I revealed Your splendor and Your excellencies. I've told them about who You are in Your magnificence. And then He tells us why, so that, now read it, the love with which You loved Me, Abba, would be imparted to them. Beloved, I cannot imagine anything more glorious than loving Jesus with the love the Father loves Jesus with. I remember when I first ran into that, and I don't remember exactly when, but many years ago, I said, when it first hit me, I said, this can't be true, that one day in my heart, in the resurrection, when it comes to a full, a much fuller degree than this age, but it happens in this age too, in part, that I will love Jesus with the love the Father loves, in my being will resonate that kind of reality, that kind of desire would be first in me. I thought, this is awesome! I mean, I must really be special if the Father has ordained that He's gonna let me feel about Jesus like He feels about Him. Beloved, what does that say about who you are to God? What does that say about the glory we will live in forever? But we don't wait to the resurrection, to the fullness. We can walk in measures of this now. So I begin to say, Lord, if this is what you're willing to do to a person like me, you're kidding! But yes, that settles it. I want to love you, Jesus, the way your Father loves you. And I think, oh, Holy Spirit, would you give this kind of thing to a human heart? And the testimony of the Word is, this is what God wants. This is the destiny for your life. And we can touch this in part in this age. And we say, well, we can't get that far. We can get further than we are now. I want to keep going further. I don't know how someone says, how far is far? I go, I don't know, but it's further than I'm walking in now. That's what I do know. So I offer you that as a life verse, if you're looking for a verse to make it your premier one. That God would impart the love in you that he has for his Son, it would dwell in you. Paragraph C. It takes God to love God. It takes the power of God to love God. We have to make the decision. He won't make the decision for us. But once we make the decision, we don't have the ability to fall through. But there's a cooperation. We make the decision to make this our determined life goal. And we make the decision over and over and over again. I renew the decision often. I need to renew it more. I don't renew it often enough. But it's a decision we renew over and over. And then God says, as you renew that decision, that that's the primary goal of your life, I will little by little bring you forward in that reality. Romans 5.5. I believe the greatest gift the Holy Spirit can give us. Pours love into the human heart. Now when God pours love into our heart, it means the revelation of how he feels about us. But it doesn't stop there. There's more than the revelation of his love for you. There's an impartation of love back to him. Beloved, I love to grow an understanding of how he feels about me. I don't think there's anything more important than growing in the understanding of how he feels about me, even in my weakness. That is a glorious reality. But there's something additional to have the power to give yourself back to him, to be exhilarated by wholeheartedness. Put those two together and you have Romans 5.5. Paragraph D. Well, we want to love God. There's a lot of talk today about love. But it's important that we love God on God's terms. We cannot define what it means to love God. God defines it. A lot of people defining love and they're adding God to their definition, but it's not biblical. We can call it love all day long, but if God doesn't call it love, it's not love. At the core issue, and the generation the Lord returns, the very core issue is going to be how love is defined. Because all the confused sexuality going on today in the church and in the nations, all the confused paradigms of love and what forgiveness is and what holiness is and purity is and what it isn't, there's so much confusion. I want to say this, at the core, a core issue of what God's doing in the generation His Son returns is defining love on His terms. That's the only terms that count. The humanistic culture that has infiltrated the church in the Western world that defines love as sentiment only is not biblical. Now there is sentiment in love and feeling, but love is more than that. I have written here, it's a quote from Misty, I love it. I heard her say it once, I loved it. She was talking to some of the musicians and they just, you know, lay back, you know, just chill out, just kind of, you know, read the Bible maybe a little bit, maybe not, kind of press in, maybe not press in, just kind of see what happens. And she said, I want you to know God's not a hippie. He doesn't just chill out. He actually has a plan for you and He wants you to go after it. I loved it. God's not a hippie. Some people think love is kind of semi what hippies do, you know, just kind of don't ever get excited or focused about nothing and that's love, man, just chill out. And I loved it. She says, God's not a hippie. He actually has a determined plan that He wants you to go after with a fierce focus and determination. Don't take things that come, go after them in the will of God with a focused heart. Well, John 14, Jesus defined love, but He defined love on God's terms. It's rooted in a spirit of obedience to the Word of God. There is no love if it's not rooted in a spirit of obedience. Now our love comes up short. My love is weak. My love is flawed. It's fragile. So I don't have full obedience, but the quest for obedience is there. The sincere reach for obedience is in my heart, therefore my love is real, though my love is weak. I have good news for you. Weak love is not false love. The fact that our love is weak does not mean it's false. If the desire to obey in love is real, every step along the way the Lord enjoys the love we offer Him while it's growing. Some people have the idea that He only counts it as real love when it's mature. And everything between now and then is false or hypocritical. It's not. That's why I use the phrase here, it's love that's rooted in a spirit of obedience. It's not the sentimental love of a humanistic culture that disregards obedience to Jesus and His Word, but nor is it the performance orientation that says, only when I'm fully mature does God pay attention to me and take me seriously. It's neither extreme. But when we set our heart to love Him with the full intention to obey Him, though our love is weak, the sincerity is real. And beloved, I have good news. He enjoys you while you're growing, not just after you grow. He enjoys us every step along the way, because He sees the sincerity of our heart. And I'm talking to born-again believers who love the Bible, who love Jesus, and are not trying to find Bible verses as a scape hatch to go live in carnality. I mean, I'm not talking to people who are looking for Bible verses to back up compromise. I'm talking about we see the Bible verses, we come up short, but it pains us and we keep signing back up for obedience. Beloved, that's real love. I mean, Luke 11, Jesus said, if you being evil know how to love your children, how much more do I? And we don't find it strange that we love our two- and three- and four-year-old children. They're very immature. We don't say, hey son, when you're 21, then we'll talk what love is. But until then, you're on probation because you're just a little whippersnapper who keeps stepping over all the lines and breaking them all, all the rules. We love our four-year-olds. How much more does God love His four-year-olds even if they have a 40-year-old body? They may be four-year-old in their maturity in the Lord, but He goes, I love my children. I really do. Well, there's no such thing. I love to say this to the young people, and they love to hear it. Some don't, but many of them do, because they have an authentic cry. I mean, a cry for authentic Christianity. I tell them, there is no love if it's not in the pursuit of obedience. It's a delusion. It's a distorted grace message. It's not real. No matter what somebody calls it, it's not real. The love that Jesus talks about is rooted in obedience. And I've said it over and over, but it just needs to be said. And we need to say it with boldness, not shy about it, because there's a distorted grace message that's filling the land. I mean, it's all over the Western world. This distorted grace message that says grace is about being freely received unconditionally. No, that's not true. This idea of unconditional love, we have to say yes to Jesus to receive it. We have to. If we say no, we end up in the lake of fire. It is true He loved us, and we did nothing to deserve it, but if we don't receive it on His terms, we end up in the lake of fire. It's real. And there's a distorted grace message that emphasizes the freeness, and we need to do the free, emphasize the freeness, because that's part of the true message. But it's the freeness of grace that is so dynamic, it produces a response in us that says, yes, we want to give ourselves fully to You. It's not a grace message that makes us comfortable sinning, but a grace message that empowers us to repent and to go back into a lifestyle seeking full obedience. But with the confidence that we have new mercy every single day. See, the real grace message, we're not looking for a way to feel comfortable while we're sinning. That's not the grace message. That's a delusion. That's, that's a false message. Well, under grace, do what you want. It's grace. Beloved, that's a deception. The true grace message freely forgives us, inspires a response in us to seek to obey. We come up short, when we come up short, we call it sin, we repent of it, we sign back up for obedience, we push delete on the shame and condemnation, and we have a first-class status before God with confidence. But it's not just a first-class status with confidence, separated from a heart that repents of darkness. But we have confidence when we fail. I fail all the time, but I have the confidence, I call it sin, I repent of it, I claim the blood of Jesus, and I don't spend three weeks in some kind of self-made, you know, probation with God. Like, God, that was a bad one, so for the next three weeks, I'm just gonna be miserable to prove to you I'm sincere. I did that in my youth, kind of put myself in some kind of probation to feel bad for three weeks, maybe three months if it was a bad one. And then God would say, wow, you're so sincere. Okay, time up. Time's up, you can come to first-class citizens. No, the real grace message, we repent, we call it sin, we resist it, we get forgiveness, and we have confidence. I mean, within minutes we're standing as a first-class citizen, within minutes in the relationship. But don't take the confidence in the freeness separated from the genuine desire to love expressed by obedience. It all goes together. And we don't have to apologize for it. We don't have to, well, that's pretty intense. I've had some people say, no it's not, it's not even intense at all. It's the indescribably good God giving me the best arrangement possible and giving me a way out of sin that defiles my spirit so I can feel the love of God and feel the relationship. I go, it's not intense, that sounds like the glory of God to live that way. Turn to the top of page two. And again, those that are joining us through God TV, we have these notes on the website, ihop.org. It's called Loving God, the First Commandment. Well, let's look at this for just a moment. Jesus said, you shall love me. It's the first of the great commandment. He didn't call it the first option, he's called the first commandment. It really is the first commandment. But it's a commandment with a promise. It's the, there's a promise of an enabling to actually walk in it. For weak people like us, because of the grace of God. Paragraph C, it's also called the great commandment. It's not only the first one, it's not just the first priority to God, it's also the great commandment. In what sense is it great? Well, many ways. I just give a few of them here. It has a great impact on God's heart. Did you know when you respond in love, it moves Him? He's not a stoic God. He's not an unmoved mover, as one theologian said. Yes, He moves history, but He's moved Himself by the response of His people. He is love. He isn't just power, He's love. I mean, at the very core of His being is the very fountain, the self-replenishing fountain of love. He is the source of love. He loves to love, and He loves when people love back. It moves Him. It's who He is. It's who He is in His being. Some people have an idea of God, He's so powerful, He's so majestic, that He's not moved. So He's majestic and powerful, but not love. Well, He's love, but He's unmoved love. Well, there's no such thing as unmoved love. Beloved, when we love Him, the miracle, or that's not the right word, the mystery, it moves Him. How, why, why He wants me to love Him, I don't get it, except for He is love. But I love that He does. God loves being loved, and He loves loving. It's who He is. That understanding of His personality changes the way we read the Bible. So it is the great commandment in many ways. One is that it has a great impact on God's heart. But not only that, it has a great impact on your heart. Feeling and returning the love of God will move your heart more than anything that exists in created order. You know, you think somebody came and gave you a million dollars, that would move you, and it probably would. Or maybe you had the most anointed ministry, or you had the greatest business, or the greatest family, or the greatest, pick ten categories, it would move you. That's true. And it should. But I tell you, nothing moves you like genuine love touching your spirit. Love from Him, and then returning it back. The human heart was made in a way, it's the greatest thing that moves us. Of all the blessings that are good, that we like, nothing is greater than this commandment in its power on our own heart. Well, that's the greatest calling. You know, a lot of people, which rightly so, they're focused on knowing the will of God. I talk to young people all the time, they, I want to know the will of God. And I ask them, and a little bit, you know, I'm just playing with them a little bit, meaning I'm tricking them, but with affection. I'm grinning at them while I'm doing it. What's your life vision? Now, they know better, if they've been around for a while, how to answer that. But typically, they go, well, I want to, you know, some of them talk about the size of their ministry. I want to change their world. I go, that's a good vision. What's, yeah, and they talk about filling stadiums, or changing the earth, and da, da, da, that's good. Or they talk about, and I have a kingdom business, and da, da, da. Some talk about their family, and they want to be in love, and have great family, and children. I go, those are great. But mostly, when I talk to somebody, and I ask them a question, what is their vision? What, what do they want in the will of God? It's something that they want to do, and rarely do they answer according to what they want to be. Beloved, the greatest will of God for your life isn't related to your ministry. What city you are to do it in, and what the nature, or what business, or even who to marry. Those are important, but those are secondary. The greatest will of God is what you're supposed to become. And so, we need to seek the will of God on that. The greatest calling is the first commandment. The anointing, or the grace, is what I mean. To walk out the first commandment, that's the greatest calling. It's not the size of your ministry, it's the size of your heart, for real. You know, it was almost 30 years ago. It was May 83. We were in a time of fasting and prayer, a group of young adults. I was in my 20s. I was 27 years old at the time. And we were at a time of fasting and prayer, and the Lord shocked us. And I tell the story many times, so I won't give the details right now, but the Lord spoke by His audible voice. And He said, I want you to do 24-7 prayer in the spirit of the Tabernacle of David, was the essence of it. I'm not giving the whole story right now. I went 24-7 prayer with the spirit of the Tabernacle of David, meant with singers and musicians like David had. David had 4,000 full-time singers and musicians on his staff in his tabernacle. 24-hour prayer in the spirit of the Tabernacle. I didn't even like that. I went, no Lord, let me try again. I want revival. I mean, I don't even know what that is. And I was not moved by that. I was perplexed by it, and a little bit put off by it. I went, now I remember telling Bob Jones when he, all this came down, I go, why would God want us to, what will we do all day? It's 30 years ago. He goes, I don't know, I guess pray. I go, what? He goes, there'll be thousands of you. I went, I don't think so. Well, the Lord convinced us, because it was the audible voice of the Lord, so we put a sign on the wall. 24-hour prayer in the spirit of the Tabernacle of David. So over the years, from 83 to 99, 16 years, for most of that time, we had the sign on the wall. So the church grew, several thousand people, the new people that came, you know, the following years, they would go and see that sign and go, what's that? And I would say, I don't know. No, I mean, I go, I don't know. They go, what do you mean you don't know? I go, God spoke it audibly. They go, you don't know? They go, when are you gonna do it? I said, I don't know what it is. I don't know how to do it. I don't know when I'm gonna do it. I don't have any idea, but I know it's gonna happen someday. So IHOP started in 1999, which, as I mentioned, it's, we're coming to our 13-year birthday in just a week or two. And so IHOP grows. Now there's a thousand staff members and a thousand students and interns, and near 25,000 young adults come to the annual conference every year in December. And so my friends, through the years, they'll say, wow, it happened. I mean, I didn't know. I mean, it had to happen. God said it, but I just couldn't ever picture it. I'm not a singer or musician. I mean, I am, but they won't let me do it publicly here. They'll see one day what they've missed out, but I can't get any audition team to let me do anything on the platform. I think they're all missing it, but that's okay. My wife agrees with them. But, uh, so people come and they go, wow, you got a thousand staff members, a thousand students and interns and 25,000, the cops, whatever, whatever, whatever. And all these things are happening. And I've had people over the last 13 years of IHOP come in and visit friends from the 16 years earlier who knew the story. They're not a part of IHOP, but they drop in. You know, they, some live in the city, some from around the nation. And I hear this statement many times. They say this, your dream finally happened. I go, what do you mean? And I know what they mean, but I ask him anyway. They go this 24 seven spirit of 10 happened. Your dream. I go, I hope it's not my dream. It isn't. It's my assignment. I said, my dream happens in my heart with God. It's the anointing of the first commandment. That's my dream. That's my daydream is that not I hop. I go up my up, make it real big, but it won't help my dream at all. And I hop may get real small and it won't hurt my dream at all. I hop can't touch my dream. Nobody can touch my dream. Nobody can. My dream and my highest life vision is the anointing to walk in the first commandment. Nobody can touch that. Nobody can. If I hop gets big, the big threat is the bigger we get, the more distracting it gets. So actually the bigness of it almost is opposite of my life dream. I mean, we're managing it. That's what team ministry is about. But my point is this. Don't make your life dream your ministry that you imagine. It will get big and it will get little. It goes in seasons, called pruning. If it's big, little while later there's gonna be some hiccups. But after the hiccups, you know, and it may never get big, but you know what? It doesn't matter. If your heart gets big, you win. Honestly, you win. But don't make it your financial situation. Well, I have a vision. I'm gonna make 100 million a year. Some guy says, I go, good, I love it. As long as you use it right, because if you don't, it will trap you. It will be a golden cage that will imprison you in darkness. You better use it right, because it will have power on you bigger than just a great story. But don't make making a millions of dollars your dream. Don't make a big ministry your dream. Don't make romance your dream. A lot of young people, I understand it. I want to be married and be so in love and have the greatest family. Ask the Lord for that. We got plenty of young people doing that. That's good. Don't make it your dream. Because if it's your dream, your romance, your finance, your ministry influence, I tell you, you will have all kinds of confusion figuring out what life is about, if that's the number one dream of your life. Because it will go high and go low and go high. It shifts in the seasons, all kinds of things. It's easy, then it's hard, then later it's easy, then it gets hard again. But I tell you, beloved, if you make the first commandment, your primary passion of your heart, I mean you determine it. You are a man or a woman who has built your life on the rock. Like Jesus said in Matthew 7, the storms will come, they can't move you. When I stand before God, eye to eye, me and Jesus, eye to eye, He is not going to ask me how big our conferences were. He's not going to ask me how big our Bible school was, or how many missionaries we've sent out. He's going to ask me one major question, how big my heart response to Him was. When Billy Graham stands before the Lord, Jesus isn't going to say, Father, Father, there's Billy Graham. Look, he filled up stadiums. Billy Graham's going to be evaluated on one issue, not how many people came to his stadiums, his responsiveness to God at the heart level. That's all that matters when I stand before Him. Did you pursue and walk out the first commandment? If you did, then you will walk in the second commandment, and you'll do a whole lot of other things, because the dominoes will go down if you get the first one right. Roman numeral three. I'm just going to rush through these four items just for time's sake and let you read them on your own if you want. Sphere one, there's four spheres of life Jesus talked about that He wants with all of our heart. Love in these four arenas of our life. Number one, love from our heart. He wants us to engage our emotions. I don't mean emotionalism, that's not what I mean. But I mean it's not dutiful service where we're not connecting to Him at the heart level. I'm talking about connecting to Him at the heart level while we're serving. Beloved, you have a significant role in determining how your emotions develop. Every human being does. Now there's other factors that play into our emotions, but we have a huge role in determining how our emotions develop. We can cultivate emotions in many different ways, many different emotions. We can cultivate them. Paragraph B, if we set our love on anything that we choose, in time we will love it. If you set your mind and make something the primary dream of your life, your emotions will catch up. You could pick a subject you're not interested in. And I mean you set your focus on it and you say this is going to be the dream of my life, in time you will feel desire for it. Our emotions will eventually follow our primary dream. That's why people's emotions are so overcome with anxiety and fear related to finance because finance is their primary dream. I want God's blessing on finances, but I don't want it to be the primary dream of my life. I want God's blessing on my ministry. I don't want it my primary dream of my life. I want to be able to receive the blessing of God, but hold it lightly and not let it ensnare me. Because blessing can ensnare you if it's not in context to right now. Vision for your life related to loving God. You set your mind and the Holy Spirit will change your heart. I want to encourage you, again in a moment we're going to have you respond to the Lord, to set as your goal, you're setting your heart. The scripture says in Psalm 91, set your heart on loving God, is what that passage means. The Lord said this man set his heart on loving me. Meaning there's a time where you make a calculated intentional decision that walking in the first commandment, you're going to make it number one, even if it takes a while for your heart to catch up. And there's a lot of other issues related to the heart, but God wants us to love with our heart, to touch our emotions. He wants us connecting at the emotion heart level. Again, I'm not talking about emotionalism. Top of page three. God wants more than for us to love Him with our heart, because He loves us with His heart. He loves us with His emotion. He connects at the heart level with us. Number three, He wants us to love with our mind. More than our mind, all of our mind. This is a big one. Some people think of loving God as crying in a worship service. And I appreciate that. I cried many times at worship services, but crying in a worship service is not the totality of loving Jesus. I mean if the music's just right, and a few other things are just in order, you might cry even unrelated to love. My point is to put down crying, I love to cry in the presence of God. I love it. But my point is loving is bigger than that. We love Him with all of our mind. Now I want to take just a moment to talk about our mind. The way that we love God with our mind is by filling our mind with that which enlarges our capacity to love Jesus. Now we know we can fill our mind with anything we want. If you fill your mind with things that diminish your capacity to love Jesus, then that's what happens. Paragraph B. Our mind, it's very important, is the doorway to our inner man. Our mind is. That's why Jesus wants to be loved with our mind. Did you know that most of your life occurs in your mind? Now just think for a moment. Most of your life actually occurs in your thoughts. I mean there are actions, but we don't act out but a small amount of what goes through our mind, good and bad. Now the language of the human spirit is pictures. That's how our human spirit operates. You know if I say pink elephant, there you go. We think pictures. Even when we think concepts, a picture comes. And when we can't get a picture, it frustrates us. Well I don't get what you're saying, which means I can't picture it. That's how the human spirit's built. Paragraph C. Your mind, my mind, is an internal movie screen that shows pictures forever. You know a billion years from now, you will still have pictures going through your mind. It's like a camera that stores all the movies. We are the producer, the main actor, and the top consumer of all the movies we make right here. We produce it, we act in it, and we watch it. We buy the movie. We're the hero and the villain. We save the day and we choose sin. Oh, I shouldn't have chosen that. Terrible. But I'm the hero over here. Paragraph D. There's a vast universe in your mind. What I mean is it's huge. Using an inaccurate way to say it, your hard drive of your human spirit, there is no such thing, but the hard drive of your human spirit is so vast, a billion years from now with a resurrected mind, you will still have new pictures and you will have the stored memory of everything for a billion years. And you won't even begin to be close to filling up your capacity of your mind. Your mind is so big. I mean the resurrection, the real you, it will be the same you, but just with a resurrected body. You will have a capacity for memory and recall for billions of years that your ability to recall is, I mean the human spirit is vast. We have this whole world of pictures on the inside of us. You can never turn it off. When you go to bed, you have dreams all night long. You only recall a few of them, but the science says you have dreams all night long, pictures running all, ever since you've been alive, born, you've got pictures moving all the time through your whole life. We only remember a few of them, but they're there, they're moving all the time. You can't shut down that movie theater inside of you. You can't. You cannot shut it down. A billion years from now you can't, but you can redirect it. You can rewrite the script if you want. You can redirect the thoughts by meditating on the word and talking to God, getting the word into our mind and getting into our conversation with Jesus. We are redirecting the movie script. Here's my point. Paragraph E, our mind has such vast potential and believers are so casual with their mind. They just kind of walk through life and what comes, comes and whatever. Their mind is phenomenal, but they treat it like it's nothing. It's so glorious. The potential of the human mind. I'm talking about this age and the age to come, but I'm talking about the divine design of your mind and how it will work forever. It is so remarkable. And Jesus says, I want you to love me with your mind. All of your mind. Beloved, I want to guard my mind. I have, as you do, as every human being, so much potential in your mind. And the casual way that people live, just kind of unfocused, kind of don't pay attention to anything, just see what happens. And I go, you know, one of my big things to young people that come here, I want them to get a vision for their life and get a determination, go after it, use their mind, use their time, get rid of all this video games and goofiness that so many people waste their life on. Their mind is so much more important than this. So much more important than just squandering it in vanity. I don't mean just in playing. I'm talking about just the people that live in a perpetual daydream of vanity and fantasy that isn't real. I'm talking about believers. They say, well, my mind keeps going there. I get it. But let's intentionally love Jesus with our mind. Let's fill it with things that enlarge our capacity to love Jesus. Number four, loving him with all of our strength. Page four. He wants to be loved with our strength. Not just our mind and emotions, our strength. Our strength speaks of our resources. We express love by investing our resources in that which enhances our relationship with love or other people loving Jesus. When I give my time to Jesus, when I give my money, my strength, my talents, my words, those are all part of your strength. He wants to be loved with your strength. He wants us to invest our words, our time, our physical energy, just the energy of being awake and going hard for God. I'm talking about regardless what our assignment in life is. I don't mean you have to be, quote, in a professional ministry to do this, but I'm talking about we use our influence, our words, our physical energy. I'm talking about our personalities just to engage with people is what I mean by energy. Our giftings. We use it to express love. We, we make choices with our resources that reflect our commitment to love him and to honor him. And there's a thousand things to say about that. Let's go to the final point here. Roman numeral six. We love him with our soul. I believe this is the most demanding of all though. I'll just be brief on it. I just want to alert you. I think this is more demanding than loving with our heart, our mind, and our strength. Probably loving him with our strength is the least demanding of them all. Giving our time and money and words to him. That sounds pretty demanding. Those other two are even more intense than that. Our soul. What does it mean to love God with our soul? All of our soul. This has to do with our identity. What do I mean by that? When we base our identity on our relationship with God, it enables us to love God with our soul because our natural orientation is to base our identity on what we accomplish or who recognizes us. If we do certain things in ministry or in the marketplace or in athletics or whatever, and people recognize us and we accomplish things, we end up naturally getting our value from that accomplishment or that recognition. That's normal. That's finding our identity in what we do. But the Word says we're to find our identity in who we are before him. And it takes work. It takes determination to shift the way that you understand your identity. Now your identity means the way you define success. How do you define success? How do you define value? I mean, how do you define when you're valued? Well, I'm valued and I'm successful. If my ministry's big, that means I'm successful. If my marketplace assignment is big, if my family is good, if relationships are great, I'm successful. Well, not necessarily. We are successful because of our relationship to Jesus. Now I know we all know that, but most believers don't live from that identity. And the reason this is important, paragraph B, when we get our identity from our accomplishment, it creates a storm on the inside of us. We're fearful. We're striving. We're mad at people that block our goals. Can you believe he said that about me? Why are they overlooking me? I've worked so hard. I've given so much, and that's how they treat me. There's a storm on the inside. And that storm, I believe, is one of the major things that hinders our ability to love God. Jesus said, I want you to love me from your soul too. From what happens in you when your identity shifts over to basing who you are and why you're valuable because of your relationship to me. Paragraph D. Do you know why we're valuable? Because God loves us, and we love God. Beloved, if God loves me, and I respond by the grace of God and love Him, I am already successful. In the most primary, lasting way, I'm already successful. If God loves me and I believe it—see, God loves everybody, but the majority don't believe it, so they're not successful yet—they have to believe it and respond back to it. If I love God, and God loves me, I'm already successful. I mean, you can't get beyond that. When I stand before Jesus again, He's not going to ask me about the days of my conferences, how many books I sold, how much money I had, how many people were in our database. He's not going to ask me any of that. My success with God is not related to anything related to that. That is success, but those are secondary issues. They are important. I'm not minimizing those things to make them nothing, but if they're primary, they will hinder you dynamically. You know, I get into troubles and consternation and fears and anxiety over the years, and I've used this sentence, paragraph D, for many years. I stop and I go, wait a second, why am I doing all of this? We all ask that question because pressure makes us ask the bigger question, why am I even doing it? And that question's a very important question. Pressure makes us evaluate what we're doing and why we're doing it. Now, the devil has reasons for pressure, but God wants us to answer those questions. I go, why don't I just go easy, draw back, chill out, give up, give in, live for comfort, get out of this intense pursuit to love God and to talk other people into it. Why don't I just chill out, be relaxed, get a little bit of money just to make life comfortable? Then I start asking, why am I on the earth and why am I doing what I'm doing? Then I always come back to one sentence. Yeah, but you love me. That's amazing. And I love you. I'm already successful. Then I can look at everything different. Because when we look at paragraph B, I mean E, burnout does not come from hard work. I mean, it might on occasions, but mostly it doesn't. Most burnout doesn't come from hard work. It comes from working with the wrong spirit. People say all the time, I'm burnout. What they mean is I'm disconnected from God in my ministry. Now, nobody wants to say that, but that's why they're burnout. Because they're working with the wrong spirit. We all do it. We work disconnected from connecting with Him and feeling His love and feeling love back to Him. And when we do that, the work isn't worth it. And the people don't appreciate it and then they criticize you for it. And all that weighs you down if you're not connected. Here's the key right here, paragraph E. When we work for success, we get burnout. But when we work from success, we get strengthened. IHOP has so many challenges. We got 85 departments, 85 departments. That means 85 teams of 5 or 10 leaders, and they don't all want the same thing at the same time. I mean, every decision at IHOP, nearly, not everyone, takes 10 departments to be in agreement. And you get a conference, you got to get the media team, you got to get the marketing team, you got to get the IT team, you got to get the shuttle team, and 10 more. Every event, everything. So we got all these fiery people, 85 departments, and lots of times, 2 of the 10 departments, hypothetically, they go, no, we don't agree. It's not good for our department. And the thing stalls. So then, you got to sort it out. And people don't like how it gets sorted out. And then people get weary. It goes on and on and on. It's everywhere in life. That wasn't a little sob story. Well, maybe a little bit. But my point is, it gets weary. But if I look at that, I just have one role in it. There's lots of leaders, lots of responsibilities, but I look at it and I go, you know what, Lord, I want to solve this. I want to help in whatever way. But if I'm solving it so I can one day be successful, that will wear me out. But if I'm already successful, I can go into the meeting. You love me, I love you. I've already won the biggest issue for why I exist. I've already established it. I'm already there. I can address, think through the problems with a completely different spirit. So I love to tell God, God, you love me. I love you, therefore I'm successful. I'll end with this. The thief on the cross got the shock of his life. He says, Jesus, forgive me. He goes, you'll be with me in paradise today. So the thief dies. I don't know how it works exactly, but he ends up in paradise. He looks around. Wow. I never heard about this place. Well, you're going to be here forever. And you're a king and you're a priest. Wow. Guy says, if I knew I was the king, I never would have been a thief. I never knew about this. His life, because of the last decision he made, made him one of the most successful people in human history. Say what? Yes. I don't know the percentage of the human race that's born again through history, whatever. You know, let's just make up a number, maybe 10%. I don't know. Maybe there's a billion or two, but there's many billions more who aren't saved. I don't know what the numbers are, but I know this. The people that are saved are the minority, very small percent. It may be 5%, maybe 10, maybe 20. I don't know. But I know one thing that 10 or 20%, whatever the number might be, they are the most successful people in human history compared to the vast number over there. And that thief, I don't mean he's one of the most, you know, highly rewarded of all the saints. I'm not saying that. I'm saying he's among the people that God said, I love you. And he said, yes. And he loved God even for that brief moment. That made him one of the most successful people in human history. He's in that small number, billion or two or whatever, but still it's a minority. Beloved, you're already successful. And when we connect with this, it changes the way we face conflict. We have confidence because we're not trying to be successful. We already are. Now we want to be successful in those secondary ways. I believe in that. But when you're successful in the primary way of loving God and God loving you, it changes the way you pursue success in the other ways. And if you don't do it that way, it hinders your ability to love him. And Jesus said, love me with all of your soul to all your heart. I want to heart connect all your mind. Don't waste your mind, all your strength, your money, time, words, energy, all your soul, realign your identity so you can love me from the essence of who you are in the fullness of who you are. Amen. Let's stand. Well, this is a Passion for Jesus conference, so we're talking about Passion for Jesus. That's what you came for. What I want to do tonight is end with this. I want to give you a chance for the first time to decide Psalm 91. We set his heart to love the Lord, to set your heart that to walk in the first commandment is first in your life starting today. Doesn't mean you'll follow through well, but I mean you're going to set it as my primary dream. And I'm going to follow through better as time goes, but I'm going to set it as my primary dream. And the second group of people, you say, I've already done that. I've already defined it as my primary dream, but I want to recommit to it because I have to recommit to this all the time or I lose it. So I want to take our opening night and I want to lead us into that recommitting that the first commandment would be first as our dream, our real dream. It's our daydream. When we daydream, not always, but we daydream about walking in the anointing and equipped to love him and to feel his love. That's our biggest daydream. Let's go before the Lord. Now, Misty, do what you want, but before you end, you got to do that. Okay. You got to do that one at the end or whenever you want, but I got to get the words. Okay. Let's just come before the Lord for a moment. Just as the music starts, let's talk to the Lord. I want to lead you. Jesus, this is what I want. This is what I want. Why not me? Why not me, Lord? Walk in the first commandment. Why not me? Beloved, it's not too late. You say, well, I'm 80 years old, but better now than later. Do it now. You say, well, I'm 12. You're not too young. Do it now. Make this the primary dream of your life. Walk in the grace of God to walk this path. All your heart, all your strength, all your mind, all your soul. Nobody can do it for you. Nobody can lay hands on you and give it to you. It's a choice that we make and we re-decide a thousand times.