Here it is:
WEEK 10
Joe Farrente
The Father Heart of God
The journey from information to revelationà head to heart.
Information does not transform us. Revelation is from God and he chooses to give it to us. We can cry out for it and he will reveal. Revelation is what transforms us. Revelation grabs you; not you grab it. Revelation does not change under circumstances.
This week is about the journey of love from the head to the heart. Not a sermon about the love of God.
Joeà grew up in church. Preacher’s kid. Lots of head knowledge.
Two lies he believed in his life that were UNCONSCIOUS:
-these lies kept him from the love of God
1. God is not good. ßthe devil attacked God’s character
i. If you doubt someone’s goodness and whether they are trustworthy, then you will never get close to them. Think about people you don’t trust or think are good…you aren’t close to them.
2. You are not good enough for God to love you ßthe devil then attacked his character
i. This lie opened the door to shame and condemnation
These lies rob us of intimacy. They are satanic. Satan is the father of lies.
Condemnation is Satan’s greatest tool he uses against God’s most dedicated men and women
Satan uses an imaginary problem, that we are not good enough, to rob us of the joy of knowing God’s delight in his daughter and who she is
Mark 12:29-34
The Sh’ma = Greatest Commandment
Heart=
· refers to our will. Choices
· Love for God begins with an act of our will. This is where it all begins
· Agape= Love of choice, not love of feelings. To agape love someone, you choose what is best for them, not what is best for youàlove God this way.
Soul=
· word for soul:
psuche=meaning psychology kinda
philia= feelings
· Loving God with emotions and feelings.
· To love God with our feelings and to have feelings is not wrong! To elevate feelings above our choices and our will is not good because there will be days we “don’t feel like it” but it is not wrong to have feelings and to love God with them
Mind=
Mind=
· Thoughts
· It is a beautiful thing to see a man/woman with a gifted mind and they love God with it
· The mind is not the enemy
· Knowledge and love go together. With knowledge comes love. Knowledge is not meant to fill us with intellectual arrogance, but to help our love life. The more you know someone, the more you can love them. Knowledge increases your capacity to love.
Philippians 1:9
· We do have to submit our mind to our will though. Lay down understanding and let our will reign rather than our mind having to understand
Strength=
Strength=
· Body & Talents
· Physical strength
· This is doing God’s works. Works are not a bad thingàFaith without works is dead.
· Works: AN ACT OF LOVE
o Love involves action. If a man claims all this and that towards you, but never takes you out or pursues you with more than words, you wouldn’t call that love. LOVE INVOLVES ACTION.
He was a preacher and he had no revelation in his heart of who God really was. Lots of head knowledge. Some DTS students were sent to serve in his church. The students never condemned him though they knew he needed revelation. They never criticized. They spent time interceding. They took all the jobs people did not want. They served in the nursery because no one else wanted to. They spent time with the preacher (Joe) and helped him visit the sick and go help people. They served. They showed up early and would intercede for the preacher (Joe) and never tell him because they never wanted to make him feel condemned or criticized. When he had the revelation, he went to his wife and told her. She told him she knew and she had known the whole time. She had been interceding for him the whole time—their whole marriage. wow.
The missing piece= knowing God’s love for us. That is the key!
The evidence of whether we love God:
1. Our heartà DESIRE to commit my life to God
THE THING ABOUT DESIRE…
We constantly feel like we have to recommit our lives to God, but why? We don’t recommit our marriages every 5 seconds. The vows remain. Same goes with God. But we, most of the time, love God out of duty and/or fear. This drives us to feel like we constantly have to recommit ourselves. But when we have DESIRE, we don’t feel the need to always recommit. We know that the vows remain.
God will use duty and fear and so on to get us started if He needs to, but it has to be desire in order to truly last
2. Our Soul= DESIRE to spend time with God
- When you love something, it is easy to spend time doing it
3. Our Mind= DESIRE to learn more about God
- You never get tired of learning more about the person you love
- We think we need discipline in order to read the Bible or spend time with God. But it’s not discipline. It’s love. Ask for a love for this.
4. Our Strength= DESIRE to do things for God
- You can do things for God, but the key is desiring to do them. The difference from duty to love is the desire to do it. When we desire to do it, we do it out of love.
- Think about when you change a habit of yours for the one you love. You don’t mind it. You love them so you want to please them.
- Fear motivates holiness, but love is more powerful. Fear produces a slave, but love produces a friend.
- Witnessing--comes out of love. Witnessing is talking about things you love. It’s not about boldness. It’s about love. We witness everyday. We talk about the things we love every single day. Witnessing is natural. It flows when you are in love with someone.
Everything he ever struggled with was fixed with this. It’s not about reading more books or more classes or going to a mission trip. It’s all about the revelation of love in our hearts. The revelation of love for God, it unlocks everything.
When we begin to struggle or things begin to become chaotic or offà GO BACK TO YOUR LOVE LIFE!
- Paul prays for us to be ROOTED IN LOVE
- In Revelation, it talks about forgetting your first love.
We need to pray for God to fan the flames of our love life. Ministry can be one of the biggest distractions to our love life with God. We get so busy. Ministry flows out of our love life. We have to be rooted in love. This life is all about our love life.
Big Picture of God’s Love:
What it cost for God to love us
2 Chronicles 16:9
For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.
In the beginning, God created…
Why were we created?
He wanted to give himself to us in a love relationship. He doesn’t need our worship; he doesn’t need our works. He spoke creation with his Word—do we really think he needs us to take care of it? He is all-sufficient. He doesn’t need us. He created us so he could give us himself in a love relationship. The image of God is the capacity to love, to freely give oneself.
The Lord looked down and saw that every thought was evil and he was GRIEVED…
o The Hebrew word for grieving literally means to almost pant in so much grief.
o It broke his heart
The rest of the story through the Old Testament is a story of God’s broken heart
God’s love is long suffering. He suffers in love, but is faithful and relentless to hold on for a generation that loves Him. His love is long suffering
The God who had no need, made himself have a need. He made us and with that the need for us to return the love to him. Think about having a child. You make yourself vulnerable by having a child because that child has the choice whether to love you to accept you etc. And marriage. By choosing to want to be in love, you make yourself vulnerable because you allow dependency on someone besides yourself. They have the ability to hurt you.
--This is what God did. He made himself vulnerable. He made us knowing that we could trample on His heart. He had no need, but He chose to have a need when He made us. He took a risk. He opened up his heart to us by making us, and making us with a choice. HE VOLUNTARILY CHOSE TO BE BROKEN SO THAT WE COULD HAVE THE CHOICE TO ABIDE IN HIS LOVE...the only thing that will satisfy.
We have been fed a lie that God is judge and that we should be thankful for Jesus because ONLY Jesus shows the compassionate side of God, but NO! God and Jesus are one. God is compassionate. We think only Jesus is compassionate.
Revelation-- Women are the beauty and splendor of God so the devil has tried to attack beauty for women. He wants to keep us from having life and giving life. Women are life givers so he attacks our identity in that. But the devil has tried to attack men and intimacy. He has made men believe they are only called to provide, but twisted it so men don't know to provide by their pursuit-- pursuit of their wives and their daughters. This is because if the devil can distort the view of fathers on earth he can use that to distort the picture of our heavenly father.
In the Old Testament, God delays judgment out of love. He sends prophets not to condemn, but to tell them that if they repent then he will relent. It is so clear if you read what they say, that all God is asking is for them to repent and none of it will happen.
-- Look at story of Jonah:
He was sent to Ninevah, the most wicked place, and had Jonah warn them. When they responded and fasted and repented, he saved them and did not unleash his wrath.
**Note: the reason Jonah was angry was because he looked like a false prophet because what he claimed would happen didn’t happen. But God says Jonah, you’re heart is in the wrong place. I just saved people. That is my heart—to save, not to kill. You warned them and they responded.
Look at God’s covenant:
I will be your God.
You will be My people.
o This is what it is all about
o It is everlasting!
Moses:
o God talked to Moses face to face. God is refreshed by friendship with Him.
o Moses asked to see God’s gloryà
God responds and says I will let my “GOODNESS” pass before you. God changes the word glory to goodness. When God chooses one word to describe himself, he chooses GOOD. (Look at Genesis…it was good, it was good, it was very good)
Joshua and Calebà followed me fully
Judgesà they turn to idols. God says I can bear the pain no longer. It was killing his heart. The wrath is out of a deeply broken heart.
Samuelà The people tell Samuel they want a REAL King. God is not enough. When Samuel weeps, God says that they have not rejected you, they have rejected me. Rejection is all God has ever known from us. He understands rejection.
David= a man after God’s own heart.
o David had some serious issues. Murderer. Adulterer.
o Hezekiah was the MOST righteous King, but Jesus does not sit on the throne of Hezekiah BUT ON THE THRONE OF DAVID.
Why? à
Because David was AFTER GOD! He sought the heart of God
Isaiah
I feel like a woman/man who has married the man/woman of my dreams and on our honeymoon, you have left me.
Jeremiah
My children are foolish. Come back
Ezekiel
“Spiritual prostitution”
God says, my heart has been hurt by their harlotry =
Chapter 16 is a graphic picture of how we have left God and become a harlot. I feel like a man whose wife has become a harlot. It is breaking my heart. I am in pain. But at the end, God says if you return to me I will give you back my heart.
Hosea--Wife was a prostitute. This is the story of how God feels towards us.
Maybe this is entirely metaphorical, but probably a literal story. God is a teacher, not a preacher. We learn through experience much more than stories.
Malachi-- First words of the book, “I have loved you.”
Their response= Really? When? How?
God has loved, we have doubted. That is the problem.
So…
God sends one more messenger. His son.
John 3:16 à not about how much Jesus loves the world; it is about how much God loves us.
Jesus= Man of Sorrow
Jesus experienced physical pain, but more than physical pain, Jesus experienced deep, deep emotional pain. He had to see a world that rejected the love of the Father.
When Jesus asks for the cup to pass…
It is like this moment when He realizes that he is going to take on all sin. What is sin? Rejecting the Father. Murder, adultery, etc, these are all manifestations of rejecting the father, but the real sin is rejecting the Father.
He cries out NO, NO, NO! He has known his whole life he would die. It is not fear of death that he is crying out for. It is finally realizing that in the most painful moment of life, he will take on the rejection of the Father done by the people. He will be without his father. His Father has been his reference point his whole life. He does not know life without him, and now he is seeing that this cup is not about physically dying, but about death in his heart, because life without the Father is death. He was going to experience life without the Father because he was going to take all our sin, our rejection of the Father.
But here is the difference between us and God. When we are rejected, we grieve for ourselves, but when God is rejected, he grieves for us à Jesus says don’t weep for me, weep for yourselves and your children
Jesus died on the cross in a few hours. That is unheard of. There are records of people hanging on a cross for 7-10 days. Most people die within 2 or 3 days. Jesus died within a few hours.
Why? He LITERALLY died of a broken heart.
When they took the spear and cut his side and blood and water came out, it shows God died of a broken heart
à You see, there is a sac by the heart called the pericardium. When we have extreme agony or suffering this sac fills with water and blood and it will burst.
**Just a note- I looked this up. It's for real. It was unheard of for men to die on the cross so quickly. The other two men had to have their knees broken in order to die quicker but when they went to Jesus, they punctured his side and blood and water flowed so they never broke his knees. A corpse does not have blood, but Jesus did. This indicates that he truly did have a ruptured heart. They say that a ruptured heart does not usually immediately kill you, but can take time. Thus, it was probably (this part is theory obviously) in the Garden that Jesus' heart ruptured. WOW. Look it up.
Book of Revelationà Because of Jesus Christ, God no longer looks at us with a broken heart. He looks at us as he originally created us. We are redeemed. He is filled with joy and exhilaration.
The veil is torn. Jew and Gentile alike have access to the holy of holies. Jesus' death released his spirit so the temple is now within us. Do you know what that means? The Kingdom of God is within us. We are the place where heaven and earth meet. We have the ability to release heaven on earth. The temple was the meeting place of heaven and earth and we are now the temple...Look it up if you do not believe that it was considered that in the jewish culture.
The Kingdom of God is NOW. That is why Jesus kept saying it is near...He was not saying that it will be when we die. He was saying that when He dies, His spirit will be released and the Kingdom of God will be released in us! The Kingdom of God is now.
All of this proves the first lie to be a lie (who woulda thought?), but the lie that stands in the way now is the second lie—that we aren’t good enough.
^^^So this was day one's notes only. Crazy right?!? Hope this rocks your world as much as it rocked mine.
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