All Your Heart

Welcome to Canvas Church. We have just started a five-month series that we are calling God First, and what we're doing is searching the scriptures to discover what it means to truly put God first in every area of our life, understanding that there is no power in the partially surrendered life. And if there was a principle that runs from cover to cover, obviously besides Jesus Christ coming for the redemption and the rescue of all humanity, there's another principle that runs from cover to cover in the Bible, Genesis to Revelation. It is this idea that God is to be the priority of our lives. Jesus himself talked about it so much in his earthly ministry, and we're gonna look at one right here in Luke chapter 10. Jesus is engaged in a dialogue with a young Jewish lawyer who is testing him, and here's what the Bible says. And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, and he says, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, well, what's written in the law? How do you read it? He said, Lord, you're a good young Jewish man and a lawyer. You're familiar with the Torah. What did the Holy Spirit tell Moses to tell us about what that said? He said, well, here's what it says.

You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength, and with all of your mind, and then love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus said, you've answered correctly. If you do this, you will live. Now, this exchange is recorded in several of the Gospels, but in the Gospel of Matthew, as soon as Jesus says these words, he follows it up by saying to the Jewish lawyer, this is actually the first and the greatest command, the first and the greatest commandment. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that means it's a big deal. For Jesus himself to call it the first and the greatest commandment means that we should pay very close attention to it, that it is weighty, it is deeply significant, and it matters to our lives. But what does it actually mean? I mean, why didn't he just say, just love God with everything that you have? Why did he specify love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and then all of your soul, and then all of your strength, and then all of your mind? Well, that's what we're gonna unpack over these next four weeks, that each of these actually look like to flesh out in our lives as we put God first in every one of these areas. And today, we'll start with the first one,

what it means to love God with all of our heart. Simply put, it means to be passionately loyal. It means to be exclusive in our affection and our love for the Lord. And today, I wanna use this as a launching pad out of Revelation chapter two that addresses this issue of God first and what it means to be passionately loyal to God and what it means to put him as the priority of our lives, where Christ in Revelation two is actually addressing and really challenging seven different churches that actually existed in modern day Turkey. And he has something unique and focused to say to each one of these churches, something very particular to each one of them. And when he comes to the church that was located at Ephesus in chapter two, he says something that is so incredibly important for us to ponder and contemplate today as we think about what it means to love him with all of our heart. And here's what he says in Revelation two. He said, I know your works, Jesus said. I know your labor, your patience, and that you do not accommodate evil, that you have tested those who say they are apostles but are not, and that you have persevered and have patience and have labored for my name's sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you,

that you have left your first love. Now, I want you to recognize how powerful this church was, how amazing this church actually was, because if you were looking for a great church, Ephesus would be a great one to attend. He says, I recognize your works, your labor, your patience, and that you do not accommodate evil. In other words, he said, I recognize you're striving for purity. I recognize that you have set yourself apart and that you are living under the teachings and the instructions of my word, and you are striving for a life of holiness and purity, and I commend you for that. And I also see that you have tested those who say they're apostles, but they're not. And not only do I commend you for your purity, but I see that you are protective of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you are careful not to have false teachers among you or those that would twist or pervert the gospel. You are dedicated to the fidelity of the theology of God and the preaching of the gospel. And then he said, I've noticed that you have persevered and you're patient and labored for my name's sake and not become weary. In other words, not only are you pure and you're protected, but you're purpose-driven. You live on mission. You realize it's not just about coming to church

and singing a few songs and hearing a good word and living unchanged. You are capable and you are aware of the mission of the kingdom of God. And so again, this is a great church. When you find a church that strives for purity, that protects the fidelity of the gospel, and that is living on purpose-driven mission, listen, that's a great church. But in spite of all of those things, he said, I still got this one simple but not small thing that has crept up that I'm aware of. You have lost your first love. Now notice, they didn't lose their love. They didn't lose their love because if they had lost their love, they would not live in purity. If they had lost their love for God, they would not be protective of the gospel. If they didn't love the Lord, they would not be purpose-driven in their mission. It wasn't that they lost their love for God. They had lost their first love. It wasn't that God wasn't in their life. It was that he was no longer first in their life. And ladies and gentlemen, this is the absolute true danger that we all face as believers. You, me, all of us. The greatest danger for the follower of Christ is not that we would just all out abandon our faith

and walk away from God altogether. That's probably not going to happen. The greater silver bullet or danger for the believer is that we would slip and drift and slide into a very casual and cavalier relationship with our heavenly father and settle for some mediocre version of what it used to be. It's not that we would lose our love for God. It's that we would lose our first love for God, that he would no longer be the priority of our lives because it's one thing to acknowledge God and to even have some kind of relationship with God, but to simply acknowledge God and settle for a casual relationship provides no power to change our lives or bring the kind of peace and healing that we so desperately need in our lives. I said this to you last week. What actually activates God's power in our lives is when he becomes the priority of our lives. We cannot expect God to make us a priority as long as we treat him as an option. He has to be first in our life, and it's echoed from Genesis to Revelation everywhere. Why? Because the warning is real because it happens so often. But what I want to do today, because it's so gradual, because it's happened in my life, because it's so slow to happen,

it's not easy to recognize. How do we know if we're losing our first love? How do we know if we're drifting away where he's in our life, but he's not first in our life? Well, I would like to submit to you today six signs, okay, or six identifiers that will help us know as a litmus test when we're starting to slip away or lose our first love, and then at the end of this, I'm gonna come back to Revelation because he doesn't just address they've lost their love and then walk away and leave them wounded. He says, I'm gonna give you three things to recapture your first love. He addresses Ephesus and says, I'm gonna give you three things to do to make me the first part of your life again. But first, how do we know that we're losing our first love? Well, let me give you six signs. Number one, one of the first things that happens is we start to drift away from genuine humility. We start to just drift away from genuine humility. Again, in all transparency, I've seen this happen in my life of 32 years walking with the Lord so many times. One of the first things that happens to our hearts when we begin to slowly move farther away from God is that pride begins to reestablish its place in our lives, that it becomes all about us again. Because what I've learned in my own life

is that true intimacy with God always produces as a byproduct humility. The times in my life when I began to grow cold, though, it started to become again all about me. I was worried more about my well-being than others. I was worried about being served rather than serving others and few things create more problems in our lives than pride. It's the sand in our spiritual machinery. It clogs the flow of God. It kills our servant spirit and it ultimately destroys respect and relationships. This is why the Bible warns us so much about pride. Let me just give you a few places. Proverbs 11, pride leads to disgrace. But with humility, it brings wisdom. Humility actually brings wisdom, but pride will always lead to disgrace. Proverbs 16, in the message translation, first pride, then the crash. I've lived this one, man. This one's so true. The bigger the ego, the harder the fall. Oh, so true. How about Proverbs 13? Pride leads to conflict, but those with humility will actually listen to each other. If you've ever been in an argument with your spouse or your mate or somebody and you're not listening to understand,

you wanna make sure they hear what you're saying, but you're not really interested in hearing their position. You're only listening to form a reply. But when you're truly humble with each other and humble before the Lord, you're actually listening to understand. One of the first signs that. God is truly at work in someone's life, is the presence of humility. And one of the first signs that we are growing cold in our relationship with God is the resurgence or the presence of pride. But let me clarify something here just for good measure. Don't misunderstand, humility is not timidity. I'm not selling timidity, and the Bible's not selling timidity. God did not give us a spirit of fear, but power, love, and a sound mind. It's not the absence of confidence. Confidence is something God desires for all of his children to have, because godly confidence is rooted in what we know God is doing in our lives. One man said it well like this, humility is not thinking less of ourselves, it's simply thinking of ourselves less. Pride is a spirit of independence where we falsely tend to believe that we can be who we are without God,

that we can do what we can do without God, and that life should actually be all about me. So it's a sure sign that we are losing our first love when we start trusting in God less, and we actually start trusting in ourselves more. So sign one, we drift away from genuine humility. Here's another one. When we start to lose our first love, we find ourselves complaining more than worshiping. Our attitudes are a reflection of what's happening in our hearts, and what we truly value or don't value. Our words, our attitudes, our action reveal where our focus really is on a daily level. Ingratitude is one of the telltale signs that we are starting to slip away from our first love. Let me say it this way. What I've noticed is that we tend to look more on the injustices that happen in our lives rather than the blessings that surround us every day in our lives, because there's always something to rejoice about, and there's always something to complain about, but we get to choose, and it's a sign of where God is in your life which one you choose. We start to focus more on the things we don't have instead of truly thanking God for the things that we do, and the scriptures instruct us on how to live from a first love foundation.

Let me give you some Bible here, Philippians 4. I want you to notice the theme of these three verses. Rejoice in the Lord always. Everybody say always. Guess what that word means in the Greek. Yeah, I'm sharp like that. You gotta watch me, dude. I'm slipping in on you. It encompasses everything. It doesn't mean seasons or specific times. It means exactly what it says in the Greek, in the Hebrew, and in English. It means always. I say it again. He said it's worth bearing again. Rejoice in the Lord always, always, always. How about Psalms 34? I will praise the Lord at all times, at all times, when I get a good report, when I get a bad report, when it goes my way, when it doesn't go my way, when my prayers get answered the way I want God to answer them, or when it doesn't get answered the way that I want, I'm gonna praise the Lord at all times. I'm gonna constantly speak his praises because even when I cannot trace his hand, I can trust his heart. First Thessalonians, be thankful in all circumstances, not for circumstances. You're not thankful for the bad diagnosis. I know that.

We're not thankful for the bad news in our life. We're not thankful for the bad days, but that's not what it says. It says in all of these circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. Not only is it God's will for our lives, but people just love to be around people with good attitudes. Have you ever been around, have you ever been plagued by a constant complainer in your life? Are you married to a, no, don't raise your hands. Bro, some of you got quick on that one. Like, before I could call you down, five of you were like, man, bro. Bro, it's, oh man, it's vexing to the soul. I'll never forget reading, I was laughing about this earlier in the week. I was reading about a guy that wanted to join a monastery. He was somehow attracted to the lifestyle of meditation and contemplative life, and he joins the monastery. He meets with the superiors, and they go, well, one of the things that you have to do when you come here is you're gonna take a vow of silence, and every 10 years, you'll get to say two words. And so he says, perfect. They go in, they live for 10 years. The superiors call him in, and they say, you got anything to say? He said, yeah, food bad. Food bad.

They were, whatever. They go out, spends 10 more years. They call him in. 10 years later, you got anything to say? Bed hard, what he said. Bed hard. 10 years later, bring him back in. You got anything to say? I quit, that's what he said, I quit. And the guy said, I'm not surprised. You've been complaining ever since you got here 30 years ago, it's all you've done. You ever been around people like that? Listen, man, listen, it's not only vexing to you, it's vexing to our God. When our walk with God is strong, and he truly is our first love, it does something in your heart, and it does something in your soul. And one of those things that seems to always be present is a thankful heart and a grateful spirit. It's one of the signs that you haven't lost your first love, that he's hot on your heart, and he's the priority of your life. But every time we begin to slip away from our first love, we grow more in complaining and grumbling than we do worship. Number three, we know we're losing our first love when we're quick to excuse our actions instead of owning and being responsible for them.

Man, when we're deeply connected and close with God, it seems to be a bit easier to see ourselves correctly. I know it is for me. To be able to admit and recognize the issues in our lives that need to be challenged, that need to be changed. I've learned in my own life that when my relationship with God starts to grow a little cold, when I start to just get a little distant from God, I'm far more quick to reject his correction and his conviction and excuse away any claims that I may have an issue that needs to be addressed. But true transformation in our lives rides on the rails of repentance. Please hear this. True transformation in our lives rides on the rails of repentance. Confession and ownership of our behavior creates the environment for miracles in our hearts to take place. When we are close to God, we aren't as quick to hide from God. We aren't as quick to dodge the Holy Spirit. We aren't as quick to dodge the correction of his word. We aren't as quick to dodge the Spirit of God when he starts to deal with our lives. The more intimate we are with God, the more the Holy Spirit is able to deal with us and speak to us about those things that affect our attitudes and lives and relationships and those things that are not reflective of Jesus.

When we start to slip away from our first love, one of the first things that happens is that we start to get really, really good at identifying everybody else's problems quickly, but our own. We become excellent judges of others and we are exceptional lawyers of ourselves. And we judge everybody else based on their actions, but we only judge ourselves based on our intentions. We don't give anyone else the benefit of the doubt, only ourselves. Happens when we get cold with God. It happens when we start to drift away in our relationship with God. I have learned that nothing in our lives that we choose to excuse will ever be healed. Nothing in our lives that we choose to excuse, that we choose to hide can ever be healed. The only way that God will heal it and change it and transform it is when we are honest with God and honest with ourselves and not try to hide it, but bring it out in the open and allow him to mold and shape and form and crush and rebuild and renew and recapture our hearts. We have to be willing to embrace the truth and be responsible for it. And sometimes the voice of God will come through your wife. It does mine all the time. Sometimes the voice of God will come through your husband. Sometimes the voice of God will come through a friend,

a mentor, a family member. But our quick dismissal and rejection is often a sign where we are in our relationship with God. Number four, when we start to drift away from our first love we seek always to be served rather than seeking to serve others and just the way it is. When our hearts are full of God, it always spills over into service to others. We actually find joy in it. We actually do. We actually enjoy serving others. We enjoy being generous with others. There is something that happens as an overflow of the spirit of God moving in our lives and the depth of our relationship with God that makes us want to do for others and serve others and bless others. But when we are out of sync with God, when we are out of step with God, when we begin to drift away from our first love, one of the first things that happens is our view of service becomes skewed. We actually begin to see it as a burden, not a blessing. We see it as an obligation, not an opportunity. We really hope others will bless us, but we are not excited at all about reciprocating that blessing back to them. Selfishness is rooted in its very root word, self. We worship, as I've told you before, the wrong trinity, me, myself, and I.

We wanna be served but not willing to serve others. Did you know that in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, if you do a quick study, you're gonna find out just in the New Testament alone, over 50 times the Scriptures mention the phrase one another. Says things like this. Pray for one another. Serve one another. Love one another. Prefer one another above yourself. Forgive one another when they've wronged you. Be merciful to one another. Be patient with one another. Be kind with one another. Be tenderhearted towards one another. You start to get a pretty obvious message that God wants us to remember that the best of life is not lived only for ourselves, but the best of life is lived when we actually care about one another, when we actually seek the best of someone else, not just ourselves, and that only happens when we are close. and intimate in our relationship with God. Only then it starts becoming less about me and more about him and more about others. Number five, when you drift away from your first love, we start to view the things of God as an obligation to be endured

rather than an opportunity to be enjoyed. We start to read the Bible and it doesn't really bring life to us anymore. It starts to feel like full of this and thous and thou shalt this and thou shalt not that. But I wanna show you something in Psalm chapter one. Psalm chapter one and verse two talks about the blessed man. And it says, the blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But watch this, his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law doth he meditate day and night. When he reads the law of the Lord, it is not a burden, it is not an obligation to the man who is close to God, to the woman who has their priorities in place. It is a delight. They see the word of God for what it is. A love letter from our heavenly father to protect us and to provide for us and to instruct us and to help us experience the best, the abundant life in John 10 is what he calls it. When we're close to God, we view his direction and instructions in our lives as a blessing, a delight. We realize that his guidance actually brings peace and joy and liberty to our lives. And we gladly seek to live out his word.

But when our relationship with God starts to slip and get cold and we've lost our first love, we begin to see the laws of God as limiting, restricting, as some burden to bear that we have to do to somehow be good Christians. The things of God begin to feel like an obligation, a duty to be performed, a task to be checked off our good deed list. It's a reflection of where we are in the depth of our relationship with God. I've learned in my own life that when our relationship with God is first, and it is fresh, man, there is a love for God's house. You don't have to go to church. You can't wait for church to come around again. There's a love for God's people, as imperfect and as flawed as we are. There are no perfect churches, there are no perfect pastors, and it's full of flawed, broken people, and I love it still. It's the best thing going, and I can't wait to be around God's people and God's house every week that I get the chance to. There's a love for God's word. You can't wait for the word of God to be preached. There's a love for the ways of God. I want to live out the ways of God.

It just changes the way we see everything about God and his will for our lives when he is our first love. And I'm gonna give you this sixth thing. I want you to go ahead and just buckle up for a second. Here's how you know you're starting to drift away from your first love, when you think a sermon like this is for everybody else but you. When you're like, boy, you're giving it to them today, preacher. I hope they're listening. I hope she's listening in particular. I hope he's listening. Easy, cat, easy. We get closed off when we start to lose our first love, even when the Holy Spirit is trying to speak to us, even when the Holy Spirit is trying to break through, even when the Holy Spirit, out of love for his children, are trying to convict, we're quick to reject it as it's somebody else's problem, not my own. I laughed again this last week. I read about a preacher who had a guy in his church who constantly complained about everything. He treated his wife terrible, treated his family bad, but he would come to church every single week and sit right on the front row, and the pastor would constantly build sermons that would preach right to this guy's issues. And every week, he would go to the back and greet the preacher on the way out,

and he would say, boy, you gave it to him this week, preacher, that's some good preaching. I hope they're listening. And it would vex this pastor's soul. He just couldn't stand it. And one day, as fate would have it, this guy was the only guy who showed up for church, and the pastor said, this is God. This is a God moment. And for an hour and a half, my man went through the list of everything in his life scripturally that was going on with him, and when he goes to the back, the guy meets him, and he said, it's a cryin' shame they weren't here today, pastor, because. I'm sorry. Don't be that guy. Don't be that woman. Don't be like that. Listen, accept that God loves you, and that he brings a word like this to try his best to bring you back to a right relationship with him, because he cares about you. He loves you. The greatest sermons that I have ever preached in my life had nothing to do with the depth of the revelation or the ability in which I was able to articulate it on that particular day. The greatest sermons in 32 years that I have ever preached are the ones that I have preached.

that break me first. They wreck me first. They convict me first. They speak to my soul first. So I'll just say it, if this word isn't for anybody else here today, I'm preaching to me. And I receive it as the love and the correction of my heavenly Father. Now, if you're here today or you're watching online and you've been able to recognize that this is happening in your life, you're able to identify right now, maybe not just one, but maybe there's two or three things on this list that you say, oh my God, or all of them. And you realize now that you are drifting away or have drifted away from your first love, that God is in your life, but he's not first in your life and you clearly know it. How do we rediscover our first love again? Well, let's go back to Revelation two, because after Christ identifies the church at Ephesus, he says that they have lost their first love. He then gives them three things to find it again. Here's what he says. He said, okay, Ephesus, I love you. And I want you to remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and then do the first works

that you did in the beginning again. Number one, he says, remember. He calls them to remember how intimate their relationship used to be. He said, I want you to think about how it used to be that you loved me and I loved you and that there was nothing hid between us. I want you to remember how beautiful this relationship was and how intimate it used to be in the very beginning. November 22nd is my anniversary. And this year, it'll be 36 years for me and my wife, this November 22nd. And let me tell you what our anniversary serves to do and it should do for you. It reminds me of the moment in Lake City, Florida when I was 18 years of age that I stood before the man of God and I stood before God and I made a vow to my wife for better, for worse, for richer, for poor, in sickness and in health till death do us part. I stood there and said, I do. And every anniversary, I look her in the eye and say, we celebrate our anniversary because I still do today. 36 years later, I remind myself that you are the exclusive priority of my life. There is no one before you in my life. This is what it means to remember where you were with God, to remember the exclusive nature that he is the first in your life,

the priority of your life. David wrote it, Psalms 51, out of his terrible mistake and terrible sin with Bathsheba and then killed her husband, Uriah. And the enemy, the prophet confronts him and he repents and he writes 51 out of this terrible experience. And he writes these words, God, would you make a fresh start in me? Would you bring me back from gray exile and put fresh wind in my sails? The King James Version said, Lord, would you restore unto me the joy of my salvation? He said, I remember what it used to be like when I was just a shepherd, out in the field protecting the sheep and I would play my songs and I would write my songs to you and you were, the intimacy and the fellowship was so sweet and you were with me and you protected me and you provided for me. And it was as though you were right next to me and we talked as friend, talk to friend. David said, I've lost that, I lost that. I lost it, that's how I could go so far so fast. It's how I could have an adulterous affair and then murder the woman's husband to cover it up. How could I get from here to there? It's because I've lost my first love. I've fallen so fast and God, I want you to restore. I wanna remember what it used to be and I wanna come back to that again.

And then number two, he said, repent. Repent is a beautiful word, y'all. It's not a negative word, it's not a damaging word. It's a beautiful word, it's a word that gives life. It simply means a course correction. A course correction is to identify where we are and to say, Lord, forgive us for allowing other things to creep in and to push you out. It wasn't intentional, God, but it's happened and it happened slowly over time. And today, I'm making a turn with a clear intention to make a change. I'm running back to you and I'm coming home. Course correction means that I'm making up my mind right now. I'm not going back to that thing or that way of life. I'm putting you back where you belong, the first in my life and then he said, renew. Do the first works you did over again. I got saved when I was 20 years old and I remember what I felt because I've been transparent with you about, my dad was a pastor for 32 years. I was arrested three times. What was terrible was I did all my worst sinning publicly and the community knew it in the same city where my father was pastoring. I have felt so terrible about it. I've apologized to my father a thousand times of making his ministry so difficult. But I really believed that I had had better opportunities

than most people. and I had spit constantly in the face of God. And because of it, I really didn't feel worthy at all. I didn't feel like God, I felt like God had just wrote me off. And I felt like I'd done it to myself. I wasn't blaming God, I did it to myself. But when I could finally run no longer, and I could no longer escape the hound of heaven, and the whisper in the grip of the Holy Spirit, and I fell on my face and wept before the Lord and turned my life over to Christ, I felt the embrace of a father who loved me. Not because I was so good, but because he was. Not because I was worthy, but because he's worthy. That it wasn't anything to do with my goodness, because I had none, it was all his grace. And I felt accepted and brought into the family of God. And you know what happened because of it? There was this unbelievable gratitude that gushed, gushed, gushed out of my life. I actually made time every day to talk to God. I actually carved out copious amounts of time to spend in his word. I actually loved God's house so much I couldn't wait for church to come around so I would get off work at two o'clock. I worked from six in the morning until two in the afternoon. And I went to my local church and my local pastor and begged him to let me do things around the church.

I just wanted to be around God's house. I just wanted to be around God's people. And I grew and I grew and I grew. This is what he's talking about. What did you do? What was it like when you first got saved? Do you remember how grateful you were, how full you were, how much you loved him and how much time you wanted to spend with him? What happened to that? Where is that? It's what happens when we drift. We drift away from God, he's not our first love. We drift away from his word. We drift away from his house. We drift away from his people. We drift away and we just, life just happens. That's why the clarion call today is to return, to come home. If he's not first in your life, but he's in your life, make a change. Renew, repent, remember, because I'm telling you right now, this is so true. There is nothing in your life that a deeper and more intimate relationship with Christ won't solve. There is nothing in our lives that a deeper and more intimate relationship with Christ.