APR 24 2016 | Simon the Sorcerer, Part 2

Sea Change Church · "Simon the Sorcerer, Part 2" · Adam Stadtmiller · April 24, 2016
Acts 8:9-25
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great and all the people both high and low gave him their attention and exclaimed, this man is the divine power known as the great power. And they followed him because he had amazed them for a long time. But when they believed Philip as he preached the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.

Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles that he saw. And when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they'd simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And Peter and John placed their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money and said, Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. Peter answered, May your money perish with you. Because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money.

You have no part or share in this ministry. Because your heart isn't right before God. So repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and a captive to sin. And Simon answered, Pray to the Lord for me, so nothing you have said may happen to me.

And when they had testified and proclaimed the word of the Lord, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages. God, thank you. Thank you for your word. Thank you that you never leave us without a prayer. And thank you for the proclamation this morning. May Pastor Adam be blessed. And all of us, find a word for us in your word.

In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jim. Time for the Cobra Report. Who knows who the Cobras are? Raise your hand. Right. The Cobras are the under-10-year-old girls' soccer team that I coach, who had a poor fall campaign. We went 1-11, and we were not good. Got the same team. We are now 5-1. Thank you very much. Last week, a 7-4 victory. And the only reason the other team scored is because they put us on a three-pass rule, because we were up 3-0.

And so you have to get three passes before you can score. So we scored four goals all last season, or in the fall. We've scored 42 goals now in like six games. So picked up some players. I got an Argentinian on the team, two Brazilian girls. It is awesome. Seriously, the Argentinian is amazing. You've got to love these parents. So cool. Very, very cool.

So that's the Cobra Report. I always start with this so we can mark the tape for those people that are online. If you have your Bibles or your iPhones, open to Acts chapter 8. And it is verse, if I get my glasses on here, verse 9. I realized not too long ago that the majority of my growth with God and the maturity that I was having in the spirit, my spiritual life had been tied mostly to suffering.

Over the last 10 years, I've had these growth spikes, and the majority of my growth spikes have come because I've gone through a difficult time. This is very dramatically different from when I turned my life over to Christ fully and in a fresh way after getting sober on September 9, 1989. I went to Point Loma Nazarene College, and I just gave myself to God.

I knew it was going to be the grave or give myself to God. I gave myself to Him fully for God's sake, and I began to have a radical infusion of the kingdom of God in my life. Some would call it a baptism of the Holy Spirit, different things. All I know is that God was a lot more present in my life. And I've begun to realize that I want to start growing again, not just because I'm going through a difficult time.

Does that make sense? I feel like I've grown leaps and bounds, but it's been through a lot of the valley of the shadow, the loss of my wife's brother-in-law, who took his life with heroin two and a half years ago, taking on the daunting task of a new job. Sean, would you close the back doors, please, for the glare? Taking on a new job as a lead pastor, and it's like one of those things.

It's like marriage. You really want to get married until you're married, and then you realize, whoa, this is a pretty big mountain to climb. Maybe that's different than the rest of you have experienced, but we had some growth. We had a steep growth curve 20 years ago. Let's just say that when we got married. I want to experience God. I want to know the back doors, Sean, the ones out to the street.

I want to know God, and I want to experience him. And as we've been growing as a church, one of the things I want to make sure we don't do is start building a machine, a Christian machine, a church machine, that doesn't experience God in his fullness. And my deepest desire is that as a congregation, that you start to bump into the Holy Spirit. You begin to bump into God the Father and Jesus on a more regular basis, and you begin to desire God for God's sake.

Yesterday, I listened to the entire audio book by Bernard of Clairvaux. He wrote a book called On Loving God. And he challenged you, the reader, to love God for God's sake. That even if God were to send you to hell because he decided, God is still worthy of your love because he's God. That's a difficult concept. He says you can only love yourself.

You cannot love yourself on your own. You can only love yourself because God loves you. And so we have to understand our own personal love of ourselves. We have to experience the love of ourself for no other reason that God your Father cares and loves you. That's a good enough reason to start. And I've begun to say, I want to start experiencing God.

So I said, God, I want to dive into the deep end again. Because what happens is when suffering ends, I have a tendency to go into pleasure. I go into, I want to watch a movie. I just got to get a little bit of my time. I want to go for a walk. I want to go for a run. I want to play basketball. I want to go to a coffee house. I want to go do some Zentangle coloring.

Anybody else do adult coloring? I'm really into adult coloring. No one else does that? Yeah, okay. Thank you for raising your hands. You've all admitted it now. So we're about 10 now. Really into adult coloring. And I find that when I'm not suffering, I just want to go do what I want to do. But there's a lack of a desire that when I'm not suffering, to run into God just to let God be the full expression of the pleasure of my life.

And I've begun to do that over the last couple weeks. And I feel like the ice is beginning to crack again. I feel like the geode. Remember the geode. You break those things open. It's a rock on the outside. But inside is this beautiful, you know, crystals that are so gorgeous. You get a chance to get into that. I feel like God gave me a picture of a forest.

And he said, inside of that forest, and I was standing in a field outside the forest because God speaks to me because he created me to see things visually in my mind. That's how I see it. You might not. And I saw this picture in my mind as I was praying of a forest. And I felt like God said there's a thimble. And I don't know why he said a thimble.

But he said there's a thimble in that forest. And if you're willing to go into the darkness, and it looked like one of those enchanted dark forests, you know. I know this isn't in the Bible. It's just a picture. But I felt like God said, if you're willing to go in there and seek me, there is no way you won't find it. But you've got to be willing to go into that.

And the reason it was foreboding to me is because God scares me. He really does. Somebody challenged me a year and a half ago back and said, and I've said this, I know I'm repeating myself. My mom says, you repeat yourself in your sermons. I said, okay, thank you, mom. That makes sense. That helps. I know I'm repeating myself. So I'm going to give you a footnote that I know I'm repeating myself this time.

That somebody challenged me to worship God as Father. And I went away on a retreat and I tried to do it. And I got terrified. Like literal fear. And I realized, whoa, something's going on here. Because I was terrified of my father. He was a big man. He was, you know, parents were born in Germany. And he was born in 1908. He expressed love in a different way.

And I was terrified. And so the thought of going after and having intimacy and some people that have been abused and their heart has been closed off because you're afraid of intimacy. We close our heart off to God. And we close it off for one reason to another. We're living in a world that has a broken heart. We're living in a world that needs a father.

We're living in a world that is trying to extricate the need for a father. And we need a father. And God, the primary way God expresses himself in the scripture is as father. He calls himself king and on and on, different metaphors for God. But God is a father. And Jesus has come to introduce us to God the Father. So I want to experience God. And I want to make sure that I'm not in church, but not in Christ.

I want to make sure that I'm in church, that I'm not just in church, but I'm also in Christ. I think it's easy to have a mental understanding of who Jesus is, who God is, what he's called you for. But God hasn't called us for a mental understanding. If I were to go to Carrie and say, Carrie, here's my wife, and say, I want you to know how much I love you.

And you know why I love you? Because I know I should love you. And I just, I just, I care for you so deeply because I've been told that I should. And I know I should. So because I know about you, and I know about love, and I've heard all about it, I want to let you know that I'm going to love you because I know I should. That wouldn't play so well in our heart, in our family.

What does my wife want? She wants my heart. She wants me to love her from my heart and to move away from a mental understanding into a heart's passion, a heart's desire, and God wants the same. This might change and rewire your understanding of the gospel, but we're not saved because we know that Jesus Christ died, and you believe in your mind that he died, rose again, and you're saved because of that, not because of your mind.

The scripture says that if you, if you confess with your mouth and you believe where? There. In your heart. It's a difference. In the scripture, if you want to Google, go to our good friend Google and put in verses in the Bible on the heart and begin to read about the heart. You see, many people will come to heaven and say, I knew you. I knew you. Look at the scripture here that I'm showing.

First, let's go to Romans 10.9, the one that I just said. The gospel, first of all, I'm going to give you a challenge there up in the media booth, okay? Look in your notes. Destined for the heart. The gospel needs to land in the heart to accomplish its purpose. The gospel, a relationship with Christ, is not a mental exercise, although God has given us a mind for a reason, to shepherd the heart, but it says that he has put the law in everyone's heart, but he has written it on our minds.

There's a difference. It is placed within our heart. It is only written on our minds. And the heart takes seniority over the mind. You can prove that in scripture. And if you want to challenge me on that, I'd love to have a conversation with you because it has been an amazing revelation over the last year and a half. And I have dove deeply into this because I want a heart for God.

If it was all about a knowledge of God, then the smartest people would be the closest people to Christ, but it's not. Jesus didn't go after the smartest. He went with the largest minds. He went after people with the biggest hearts. And so in the scripture, in Romans 10, 9, the gospel says, if you declare with your mouth, which is an exercise of the mind, that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

We want to make sure that we have a heart's faith. Another scripture, when I said that everyone who says that they knew Jesus and understood who he was, is not going to be saved. Look at this. Matthew 7, 21 through 23. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. See, they knew who he was. And they know he's the Lord. This is a powerful verse.

This is a powerful story. And it's a story that Jesus told for a reason because we need to make sure that the gospel is in our hearts. It's not just a mental exercise, but we are giving ourselves fully to him. Everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

And we even drove out demons in your name, and we performed many miracles. That's scary. I find that, I won't say scary, I think it gives me hesitation to sit and think, what is my faith really about? Is my heart really God's heart? Has it really been given to God? Do I have a desperation to give him the key to my heart, to the innermost being? And I know I've told this story before, but there was a woman at a coffee house recently, and she had a key around her neck, and I said, what's the key around your neck for?

She said, it's the key to my heart, and one day I'll give it to somebody. It was a perfect opportunity to bring in God, but I didn't. I just got my cappuccino and moved on. But it really struck me, and I thought, maybe I want to get some antiquated keys and start giving them out at the back for people to begin a journey to say, God, I want to know you in my heart.

And if you don't know that you know God in your heart, it's a great journey to begin. Because I believe that if you just say, God, I want to give you my heart. Because he understands if it's been broken. He understands if someone has taken it out. Maybe you've seen that play that they've used on all the missions trip where they take the heart, and have you seen that where a girl gives her heart to this guy and it's a play.

And if you've been on any missions trip in the 90s, you've seen this, right? You know this one, right? So they give you the heart and the guy takes it and he trods on it. You know, what am I, from England? He trods on it? Okay, he jumps on it. And then she gives it to someone else and someone else and pretty soon she takes her heart and puts it away. It's like a play.

And finally, Jesus comes and she gives his heart and her heart gives him her heart and it is restored. And Jesus says there at the end of this passage, it says, they did not, didn't we do miracles in your dream? He says, then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you away from me, you evildoers. Let me just say that when we get to heaven, it's not really going to be about if you knew Jesus.

It's going to be about if he knew you. Let me say that again. I know I'm rewiring some of the gospel in your minds, but it is not going to be if you knew him because many will come and say, hey, I knew you. I knew you in my mind. I loved you in my mind. You meant so much to me. I did all this stuff for you, all this stuff. But they were missing the target of what it was all about.

Missing the target of he wants all of your being. He wants to have a passionate, intimate understanding and a knowledge of you that goes to the depths of your heart where you say, it's all mine. You are all mine. And I will say this. You'll know when you get there. You will know. And I have found that there's moments, that the feeling of that comes and goes for me.

And I know there's times where I trade my heart and I'm not saying you jump in and out of salvation. Once we are saved, we are saved with the seal of Christ. I'm not trying to make anyone doubt their salvation. That's not the point of this. My charge to you is, have you taken time to assess the condition of your heart and how much of it you want to give to God?

And where do we give our hearts to? We give our hearts away to so many different things. And so we see here that Simon's true heart is exposed. And I got a few minutes to finish this before we go into the fullness of the Holy Spirit, which I promised you two weeks ago I would get to. So we're going to talk about the heart for a moment. And then we're going to talk about how to be filled or to have, be overcome with God's presence and spirit.

We see that Simon's true heart is exposed. Simon is a man who I said that I really like. Now somebody challenged me on that, this sorcerer. I just liked him. I thought he had a really, I thought he had a, I thought he had a real desire to follow Jesus. He was excited about Jesus. He was excited about the message and maybe for the wrong reasons, but he kind of reminded me of a second Peter, not the book.

He reminded me of a guy like Peter who was really impetuous. And in the end, he's all, hey, I want to do the cool works that you were doing because we see that when Philip came, he started amazing the people that Simon the magician had previously enthralled with his magic. But what Philip brought to the people was something beyond because they left following Philip, they left following Simon.

Even Simon himself put down his magic to follow Philip because Philip was bringing the real deal. Philip was bringing something that brought hope. Philip was healing blind eyes. Philip maybe was raising the dead. Who knows what he was doing, but he had been sent in the power of the Great Commission. And we see that he was not only bringing his presence there, but he was bringing the presence of Christ.

He was showing up and he was showing up empowered with a presence of empowering that changed people's lives. You see, people were tired of being fooled by a low-level magic. And I will say the world today is saying to you, follow this magic, whatever it is. The magic of relationships, the magic of your own personal identity, where you become God. There's just this magic.

And if you follow this, it'll fix everything. But you see, Philip comes with something that changes lives and changes hearts. And he brings a power and he brings a presence. Let me say that again. He brings a power and he brings a presence. Because he believed in his heart and that heart, if we believe in our heart and we fully put our affections upon God, it'll be impossible, I believe, not to have power emanate from you.

Will you raise the dead? I don't know. Will you heal the sick? I don't know. But God has created you uniquely. And he wants to empower the creation that is you in such a beautiful way that power will emanate from you. And it might be the power of love. It might be the power of compassion. And we tend to lose sight of the fact that someone has a power or a gift of encouragement, goes up to somebody who's really struggling and thinking and contemplating suicide, and they bring a word of hope.

They bring a word of consolation to that person. And that person says, today I will not take my life, but I will turn and follow God. That's a miracle. And we tend to be looking for all these other miracles that we get impressed with, not realizing that God has created you uniquely to bring power and presence. I love what we heard this morning during the missions report.

We just had to show up. We just had to show up and basically care a little bit and show up and make a difference. And so we see that Peter begins to talk to this guy, Simon, or excuse me, Peter speaks to Simon and he exposes and says, look, what you've done with your mind is not enough. Now Peter was harsh with him. But remember, Jesus had taken Peter out behind the shed more than once.

So Peter had had enough. Peter had denied Christ. He had, you know, think of Peter's story. Now I think Peter would have put his arm around Simon two and a half years earlier and said, yeah, this is a good idea. Where can we get some more power like that? He just did stupid stuff. When they went to the Mount of Transfiguration, he opens his mouth and is like, hey, let's just build some tabernacles here and hang out here forever, basically is what he's saying.

And heaven has a voice that says, Peter, shut up. I didn't really say that. That's my translation. But it wasn't cool. One time Peter confesses with his mouth that Jesus is Lord. Jesus says, you know, the Holy Spirit showed you this and it's amazing. He's the first one to confess that and the next minute he tells Jesus he doesn't have to die. You know what Jesus says to him?

Get behind me, Satan. Whoa, that's heavy. That's behind the woodshed and you don't want to go behind the woodshed with Jesus like Peter did. So you can see where Peter's coming from. So let's put that in context because maybe somebody else would have responded different but the same message is true. And the message is this, look at the condition of your heart.

You want to buy the gospel. Peter had watched his Savior die. He had wept tears of remorse and bitterness for leaving him when his friend was in the most of need. He had given up his calling and gone to go fishing again. But Jesus showed up because Jesus pursues us. And he's so, he's so, I use the word lovely. He is. He's so beautiful. He's such a good friend.

He wasn't willing. He wasn't willing to have Peter go away. And Peter went to Jesus. One thing I thought was interesting in the Easter message, I didn't say it, I thought about it afterwards, is that both Peter and Judas had done the same thing basically. They had denied Jesus. Peter had called curses down on himself. But they went, they didn't know where to go.

They went to the, Judas went to the wrong place. And I'd never seen it before but Judas went back to the old system to find repentance. He went back to the temple. He went back to the Sanhedrin and he gave the money back and he went there but there was no forgiveness there anymore because that, that era had ended. He went to the wrong place. Where do we go for our forgiveness?

Where do we go to turn in and trade in our guilt? Because we often go different places and so he went to the wrong place and there was no answer for him here and the Sanhedrin said to him and it's a harsh answer. He said here, you know, I betrayed innocent blood and they said, what does that have to do with us? And I say, when we go oftentimes to try to fix our guilt in the wrong ways, the world looks at us and says, what does that have to do with me?

Because the world will use you up. It'll call it freedom. It'll say this is your right. Go after this. It'll give you everything and in the end you will come back broken and maybe you've been there because I've done it enough times in my life to know I've come back and it looks me in the eye and it says, what does that have to do with me? On to the next. But you see, Peter was in a boat and when Jesus was there, Peter couldn't restrain himself anymore.

He had been changed and jumped in the water and he swam in Galilee and I love that concept of swimming in Galilee and that six or eight minutes or whatever it took him, I don't know how good of a swimmer he was, whatever it took him to get to Jesus, I wonder what was going through his mind at that point. You know what I love about him? He didn't ask to walk on the water to Jesus that time.

You know, the first time Jesus was out on the water on Galilee, he's like, hey, I want to do a miracle. This is, I mean, it was great. Great miracle Jesus, you know, let him do it and honored it. But I mean, really? Let me walk on the water. I want to walk on the water. You know what? At this point in his life after the brokenness, he just didn't care about walking on water anymore.

I'm getting to the point in my life where just the stuff I used to care about, I just don't care about it anymore. Bernard of Clairvaux said, death will be the ultimate gateway into ultimate freedom. And that is not a solicitation for suicide. But yesterday in my prayer time, I just was thinking, Jesus, for the first time in a long time, I would just love to go to heaven right now.

Like, if I could tap and go, and it was so real, and I had 10 minutes of a consolation of God's peace and love that was a complete detachment from this place that I thought, the geode is cracking. That's all I want. That's all I want. I want to get rid of all my affections. And so Peter talks to him and he says, your heart is in a bad place. Your heart is in a bad place and you need to check your heart because at the very beginnings of the gospel going out, we cannot have this corruption creep into the gospel.

And churches always need to be careful with money. You can see, churches fall because of sexuality and money and things like this. And these guys were pure and Peter had a pure heart and we know that Peter ended up being crucified upside down because he told the Romans, I am not worthy to be crucified like my Christ. I think you can see the heart was changed.

And so Peter says in Acts 9, 20 through 21, Peter said, may your money perish with you because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money. See, it's a gift. You have no part or share in this ministry because it's a sharing ministry. It's not one that can be bought. Look at the language there. Because your heart is not right before God. Repent. I want to say, we repent is a word that, it's probably a word that would be seen as sinful now to tell people they need to repent.

The only sin these days is telling people that they have sin. The word repent, we need to speak the truth of repentance. repentance. Because I tell you what, we're going to stand there one day and the scripture even says this and they will look at us and we will be held accountable and they will look at us and say, why didn't you tell me? You will be going into glory and they will look at you, read your scripture, I don't have the verse on my mind, if you want me to find it for you, I will, and we will be held accountable because we didn't tell them and as they are being cast and separated between sheep and goat, they will look and say, why didn't you tell me?

It's true, it's the gospel. And he says, repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord the hope, in the hope, that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. Now we know that Jesus would forgive him. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin. I ask this, what's the condition of your heart? Is it full of fear, bitterness, anxiety, or is it full of love?

Is your heart full of forgiveness? Is it full of peace? When someone wrongs you, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? You know, a lot of times you can know where your heart is by the first thing that comes to your mind and definitely out of what regularly comes out of your mouth. We were going to Arclight Movie Theater the other night and there's somebody there walking down and they were dressed up in a get-up, a get-up, where did I get that from?

What am I from? You know, 1812. They were dressed up in a get-up and it was like, it was just a thing that was going, everyone in the mall, look at me. Check me out. It was just like so over the top and I made some comment and Carrie's like, where's, you know, I didn't think it was super bad but it wasn't great and she goes, where'd that come from? That comes from your heart.

I'm like, oh, rebuke from the wife. Oh. It's true. It's true. Where's that stuff come from? Your first, if you want to know what your heart thinks, it's one, whatever your mind dwells on on a regular basis is what your heart is filled with. If you're constantly in anxiety, fear, worry, it's because it's in your heart because the heart, as we'll see in a scripture here, has the ability to store up.

Luke 6, 15, a good man brings the good things out of the good stored up in his heart and the evil man brings out evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart for the mouth speaks what his heart is full of. The heart has an ability for storage. It is a silo and what you fill your heart with is what will come out. It'll be what is constantly on your mind and what I want to do is meditate on the goodness because this is what our mind can do.

Our mind can open up a gateway to the heart. One of the things that the mind is great at is beginning to put your mind upon certain things and it'll open up a door that'll allow the heart to be changed. And so if we use our mind to meditate on Christ, David Levy has been doing these tapes and MP3s on meditation in the Lord. If we meditate on your belovedness before God, it'll start to trickle down and the lock and the channel will be opened between your mind and your heart.

We begin to meditate on the things that are of God. We begin to meditate on Scripture and it will change your heart. What you allow into your ears, what you allow into your mind, eyes, the things that you allow in, the things that you allow your mind to ruminate by not taking thoughts, the Scripture says, we take our thoughts what? Captive, making them obedient to who?

Christ. Christ, so that every thought will be made submissive to the will and the heart of God. That we can use our mind to begin to fill it. You know, one of the things I don't watch, and this doesn't mean you shouldn't, but I just can't do violence. I just can't watch violence. I really struggle with violence because I found, and I'm footnoting this story again because I'm self-conscious now.

I know I told this story, but one day I was walking with my wife and there was a kid on a skateboard and he was going off a curb and there was a truck coming around the corner. This is in the 1990s after we were married. I was really into like gun movies and all that stuff. And I remember he was getting ready to do an ollie off the curb and land and this truck was destined to hit him.

And I was across the street and I tapped my wife on the shoulder and I said, Carrie, watch this. Why not this? Stop! Wah! Ah! Stop! Stop! Ah! Stop! Hey! Now the kid didn't get hit, thank God. But I thought to myself, really? Watch this? Where'd that, what is, what? And that was a, that was a wake-up call that I was allowing things in my heart that calloused it. That calloused it.

I want to say that we are living in a world and especially with media, you better guard your heart from the media. I'm not saying you don't know what's going on, but if you want to live on that 24-hour news cycle, your mind is going to start callousing your heart. And in the end days, in the end times, it says that people's heart will grow what? Cold. It also says they won't know truth.

They won't know truth anymore. There are things floating out there that are ridiculous. Really? Like you have no ability to see that that's not even right under common sense, naturalism? It's ridiculous. From the pit of hell. And they won't know truth. And they will turn their hearts off and their hearts will grow cold. I'm not going to make it to the second part of my message, so I'll have to teach it next week, that part of it.

But let me just come in for a landing here because I really want to hit this thing on the Holy Spirit. So we're going to be back in this scripture next week as opposed to making you sit here until three in the afternoon. The Cobras have a game, by the way, and I've got to get to it. It's more Cobras than it is you. And the evangelism training, which I'm going to be evangelizing to my soccer team.

But don't miss that. Proverbs 4.23, look at this, about your heart. Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do. Circle everything. Everything you do flows from it. Guard your heart. That doesn't mean lock your heart up so that it can't be loved. It doesn't mean lock your heart up and hide it away. It means guard it from the things it needs to be protected from and then let the keepers of the gate allow in the things that should be allowed in.

Because of the brokenness that so many of us have experienced, we no longer allow our hearts to be loved. And so we tell the watchful dragons, as C.S. Lewis says, at the gate, do not let that in. And so somebody comes with genuine love for us or someone comes with a word of caring or the Father is singing to you a song of consolation and belovedness, but I won't let that in because my heart has been so broken.

I believe we're on a journey here in this church to heal broken hearts. I believe that's where God is taking us. I believe we're on a journey where if you want to go into that forest and look for that thimble into that place that you can find the consolation of God. And I believe that the more of us that go there together, the more it will become a momentum and we will have an exponential revival and renewal.

And I believe we're having renewal at this church and I believe revival is not going to look like an explosion here. I believe it's going to look like a glacial movement. A lot of times I've seen things explode and what you have afterwards is a black spot on the ground and nothing left. Besides the sonic boom, great things happened. What I want to see is a glacier moved.

It takes a lot longer but it's massive and when it moves, no one can move it back. And I want to try to lead in that. So pray for me, would you? Please add me to your prayer list if you would. I'd appreciate that. It would be great. But it says guard your heart because we want to have these hearts. I want to say the heart has a unique ability to shut out the things that would heal it but the inability to do the same with things that destroy it.

Somebody can give you love and it's easy to shut it down but if you put yourself in front of violence, you put yourself in front of pornography, you put yourself in front of your own fantasies. And one of the things, you know, men get a lot of hard times given because of the pornography but one of the things I see with women and I've counseled a lot of marriages is this mental desire to be with someone else besides their husband or thinking if my husband was like that husband and to begin to covet an idea that's not reality.

It's not that God can't give you a vision of what he wants your husband to be like but the whole fantasy novel thing and, you know, it's one of the largest mediums is women's, you know, these romance novels. It's saying get out of reality and here's this. I want to say, you know, what do we put in our heart? We need to be careful what we put into our hearts because our hearts have the ability and everything we do flows from it.

And so in closing, we see that his whole heart was exposed there. The heart has the inability to keep away things we allow in. You can't just watch things and meditate on things and don't expect it to go into your heart. But what are we casting our mind upon? And then finally, Luke 16, I'll just say this again as the worship team comes forward. A good person, man, stores up good things and out of the good stored up in their heart and an evil person brings out the evil things of the evil stored in their heart.

For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. I want to challenge you to go on a mission to renew your heart before God. This is going to be some heavy lifting. This means spending more than three minutes in the three minute devotional you can get on eBay. This means taking some time away and saying, God, I want your heart for me. What does it look like? Beginning to take track of your thoughts because you will know the condition of your heart by what your mind is constantly fixed on, by what comes out of your mouth and the first thing that comes to your mind when perhaps some event happens.

As we go into worship, I ask that we stand and we worship. If you want a new heart before God, trade yours in. He's in the business of heart renewal. He's in the business of renewing and trading our hearts in. Let's go before God and do that now. Amen. Amen.