Spy Wednesday || Victory Church [Holy Week #3]

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Holy Week. We are on day four, it is Spy Wednesday. We're so glad that you're hanging out with us today. Do me a favor, before you do anything, click the share button. If you're watching on Facebook or on YouTube, the website, we would love for you to invite a family member, friend, co-worker, anybody that you would like to send some encouragement to. My name is Stephen Hathaway, I am here with? Liz Mendoza, it's such an honor to be able to spend this week with you. And we have a very, very, very special guest with us today, Pastor Dennis Rouse. What's going on, Pastor Dennis? I'm so glad to be with you guys tonight. Good. Pastor Dennis, it is, we're gonna have a great time. We know that our online family always loves it whenever you come back and speak, whenever you have a chance to be a part, there's always big hand claps, they're excited when you're here, that's right. So do us a favor, before we get started, just tell us, like, what's been going on lately in the house of Rouse? Well. House of Rouse, that's great. I just, for the very first times, my wife and I watched our grandkids,

three grandkids for seven days straight. So I'm just coming off this, this, this, endurance of seven days. And they're little, they're very little, a lot of energy. It was wonderful, but I have a new appreciation for, you know, I told Collin, I said, with you putting your full effort in and me putting my full effort in, we make up one mother. That's right, it's the dream team. Yeah, so it was great. No, but I'm really excited about this week because this is the Super Bowl of Christianity coming up this weekend. And so I'm anticipating amazing things happening in all the services. And this, what's really exciting for me is, this is a, every time we circle around to Easter, it's a reminder to me that this is the day that I got introduced to Jesus. That's right. In 1982, on the streets of Richmond, Virginia, not in church, not in a service, where a guy who we recently had at a service that came out and surprised me, who had led me to the Lord, he started witnessing to me on the street. And from that day forward, it was like my life was never the same again.

And this was on Easter. This was on Easter Sunday in Richmond, Virginia. In 1982. 1982, so how many years ago is that? That's 42 years ago. 42 years ago. All right, what I really love about that is someone said in the chat last night, one of you put down something that I wanted to read today because I went back and looked at all the comments because there might be a couple that I miss and we love it that you are engaging with us during this time. One of you put down, it was Denise. She said that me and my family accepted Jesus and at an Easter service five years ago. So the entire family came to faith on Easter. I think that's a lot of people's story, which is why it's such a big deal to use that share button or even invite people to join along with you for Easter services this upcoming weekend that we're gonna be getting into in just a little bit, but we can't wait to dive into what today means for us as we look at the most important week in all of history, Holy Week. And today we're remembering Spy Wednesdays. Let's go to watch the video now. Can I say, this awesome video that we have, it's actually interactive. There's gonna be a moment of worship

and we just wanted to invite you to just to not watch, but to maybe engage, it'll be our very own Spend It All by Our Victorious Worship, and we did that on purpose. So be sure as we take a look, just be able to worship as well. Let's watch together. Amen. And we lift You up in the name of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lift You up in the name of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We lift You up in the name of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We lift You up in the name of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lift You up in the name of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every time your presence fills the room You are worth me looking like a fool So light a sweet aroma fill the air As oil pours everywhere As oil pours everywhere I wanna spend it all, spend it all on you Every single drop of my heart's perfume I wanna pour it out and give you something beautiful I wanna spend it all, spend it all on you, my Jesus At your feet I lose my dignity Even though it cost me everything And if they laugh, Lord, I don't even care I'll pour oil everywhere I'll pour oil everywhere I wanna spend it all, spend it all on you Every single drop of my heart's perfume I wanna pour it out and give you something beautiful I wanna spend it all, spend it all on you, my Jesus

All of my worship and all my affection In reckless abandon, poured on you, Jesus All of my worship and all my affection In reckless abandon, poured on you, Jesus I wanna spend it all, spend it all on you Every single drop of my heart's perfume I wanna pour it out and give you something beautiful I wanna spend it all, spend it all on you, my Jesus I wanna spend it all, spend it all on you, my Jesus The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume The people at the table are stunned Mouths open, whispers in the corner They just couldn't believe what was happening Judas actually... He cries out, what a waste! We could have sold this and used it to help the poor. By the way, have you ever noticed that the people who demand that others should help the poor are usually the last people to help the poor themselves? Jesus responds, she's done a beautiful thing to me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. And then he adds this one special line. Truly, I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her. And here we are today, still telling her story. But why this strong statement from Jesus? I mean, after all, Jesus has been doing ministry for three years now.

I mean, and tons of crazy stuff has happened. Miracles, casting out demons, healing people, raising people from the dead. But this story of a woman and her perfume somehow grips Jesus's heart. Why? Because this is worship. This is extravagant worship. This perfume was likely her entire inheritance. It's all she had to lean on for her provision in the future in a society that had no social security, had no welfare programs. I mean, this is all she had and she pours it all on Jesus. This is her thank you. Jesus delivered her. Jesus brought her brother back to life. He's been so good to her family. So to thank him, she holds nothing back and she pours it all out. And we see the response in the room. It is, to put it bluntly, uncomfortable. But she doesn't care because the truth is extravagant worship will always offend the religious and the enemies of God. You know, today we don't have large jars of perfume to give to Jesus in worship, but we do have time. We do have money. We do have love. We do have songs. What of your time do you pour out on Jesus?

How extravagantly do you give your money? How genuinely do you point your love at him? How sincerely do you sing? Do you freely give the words of the songs we sing to him or do you stand there, arms crossed, because you don't wanna be embarrassed. You don't wanna be that guy. I mean, who would you be in this scene? Would you be the one complaining in the corner that it's too loud, it's too extravagant, it's too long. I mean, she should have done something else, anything else, rather than just pouring it out on Jesus. Or would you be Mary, giving everything you had to show your affection to the one who's just been so good to you? I mean, this moment actually happens six days before the Passover. I mean, probably the Saturday before Holy Week. Well, I guess the question is, then why are we talking about it today? Because I believe that this is the moment that Judas decided to betray Jesus. After all, Wednesday's called Spy Wednesday, because today is the day that Judas negotiated with the priest to have him killed. The day that Judas negotiated with the priest to hand Jesus over for 30 pieces of silver. In Judas's mind, Jesus was just so off mission to let someone pour expensive perfume on his feet. Jesus should have told the woman to give it to him,

to sell it, give it to the poor, sell it and fund the revolution, but anything except for worship on feet. But Jesus was actually fully on mission in this moment, and he allowed extravagant worship, because it was motivated by an extravagant heart. This moment and many others has been marinating in Judas's mind. This isn't the way it's supposed to go. Jesus isn't doing what I want him to do. I just can't follow this man any longer. And on Wednesday, with the smell of worship still in his nostrils, Judas leaves to go betray Jesus. Because extravagant worship will always offend the religious and the enemies of God. of God. Family, worship anyway. Jesus said that this moment is one that will continue to be retold over and over and over again. And we want to continue to hear from you. So wherever you are, as you're watching along with us, just know that you are a part of the discussion. And I'm going to be checking the chat, seeing what, seeing some of the things that you're putting down, some of your insights, maybe even some of your questions. So make sure that you continue along with us. But the first question I want to kick off with is to you, Pastor Dennis, as we have been a part of my family for Victory for about almost 17 years this year, we have loved continuing to grow in our faith. One of the things that like we say a lot, even to our online family, is Victory is not just our church. We also see it as our university because we are continuing to grow and all the things God's called us to do. And a big part of that, that I love and my sons love, are your stories, seeing how you continue to live out your own faith. So when we were talking about what extravagant worship looks like, Lizette and I were talking about who would like to join along with us to have stories

that reflect this. And we thought, man, we would love for you to be a part, to even share as we were watching that video, what was, what was storing up in your own mind, in your own thoughts as we were observing it? Wow. Well, that story is, uh, very personal for me because, um, when I, I got saved, literally got saved right around this time of year in 1982, where a guy came up to me on the streets in Richmond, Virginia and started sharing Jesus with me on Easter Sunday and out of the blue, uh, developed a relationship with me and what ultimately, uh, lead me to Jesus. And at that time in my life, um, I was an extravagant sinner, but I didn't understand, um, the, the forgiveness of God. I didn't understand that I had reached a point, I think in my life, I had been in church, I had been around Christians, but I had rejected it. I had rejected it up to that point. I was 22 years old and I had reached a point internally where I, I just didn't believe that God would forgive me for my sins. And when I finally did experience, uh, what we call now the born again experience where you fully surrender your life to Jesus. Um, my experience was extravagant. It was dramatic. It was over the top, uh, in every single way. And when I remember when, when I was reading that scripture later as a Christian and I saw, I mean, there's a lot of different accounts of that, of that story and you have some people that think there's two different accounts of that. There's Mary Magdalene, the prostitute. There's Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha that we see in other gospel accounts, which Mary was it. But the big, the big issue was that she had been forgiven a lot of, for her sins. She had been forgiven in a deeper way. And the contrast was, uh, you love in accordance to how much you've have been forgiven. So when people ask me, and I had a person asked me this today, that person that goes to our church, I ran into in a business today. Uh, what made you go so strong for God when you first got saved? Because when you see people get saved, a very low percentage of people really go after God. You know, most people just have that, that encounter with God and then they take a while before they really make a full commitment. If they ever do make a full commitment to Christ. And I said, you know, what happened with me is I, I came to a realization of how, how dark my life had gotten before God. And when I got, gave my life to Jesus, I had this overwhelming, um, I mean, I feel it now, right now, this, this overwhelming, extravagant mercy that God had extended to me that I did not deserve. And I couldn't thank him enough. I just had this

overwhelming gratitude in my heart for what God had done to save me, to, to take me from the lifestyle that I was living and turn me into another person and I just made a decision that from that point on, I'm just going to give my whole life to You, God. I'm going to be... I'm not going to be a normal person anymore. I'm not going to be a normal person that goes to church and stands up and sits down and sings songs and goes home and there is nothing about their life that is significant or makes a difference. And I realized that this whole concept of worship is not about singing songs. We always think of worship as a place we come to to lift our hands and sing songs. But you know, when you read the Bible, the Bible talks about God's words actually. Jesus said this, He said, there are a lot of you that worship me with your lips but your heart is far from me and it burns me when I see the church like that. When we worship with our lips but our heart is really not fully engaged with God. So this guy that I was talking to today said, how did you change your life so fast and how did you just go after God? I said, I didn't have like a biblical reason for it, like I didn't understand the Bible for it. I just knew that from that day forward, my life is worship. It's about worshiping you, God.

And it's an expression in every facet of my life. My body now is an act of worship. What I do with my body is no longer mine anymore. I can't just do whatever I want, whenever I want. I can't succumb to those things. My body is an act, an expression of worship. Every day that I give you my body, I offer it up to you as a willing sacrifice. My mind, what I put in my mind or allow in my mind or don't allow in my mind is an act of worship. When I go to work and put my hand to the plow to do some work, to make money, that is an act of worship. And it's funny because people ask me a lot about... because I've shared a lot of stories in the church about generosity and things that God's done in my heart about giving. I said, for me, when I gave my life to Jesus, I didn't know anything about tithing. I've never been taught about tithing or giving or anything like that. I just knew I wanted to give God something. Just like that woman, she only had that one thing. She had that jar of oil that was worth everything. Maybe a year's wages, who knows. All she wanted to do was just say to Jesus, Jesus, you have taken my breath away. You have forgiven me of this lifestyle that I've lived. How could you do that? And how could I not give you everything I have?

And if you... When you do that, when you do give Him everything you have, I try to explain to people but you can't really explain it. God just puts His hand on you and He starts to do things in your life that you realize you can't do yourself. You have no... I tell people all the time, I'm not good enough to pastor a church like this. This is a big church. I don't have the skills or the abilities to do those things but when you are fully surrendered to God and you are fully surrendered in worship, He puts His hand on you and favors you and does things in your life that you don't deserve. And I just want to say this to those of you that are watching because I think this is really important because I feel like the Lord shared this with me this morning when I was in prayer that there are some of us and I'm one of those people that have been in this place so I know what it feels like where you don't deserve... You feel like, I don't deserve forgiveness. I don't deserve the mercy of God. I deserve bad things happening to me, not good things and yet, God wants to say to you, my mercy is new every morning for you. It's not something you deserve, it's not something you earn,

it's not something you will ever be able to accomplish in your own strength. You just have to receive it. You have to receive who God is and what Jesus is in your life. And I often think about what's happened at Victory over the last 34 years has been nothing short of a miracle. And I've watched countless people come out of these places of darkness, places of sin that you would not... you would not want to talk about and yet there is nothing that's unforgivable in those arenas. The only thing that God is not forgiving is if you reject Jesus, if you turn your back against Jesus because God will forgive you of anything else. And so I looked at my wife the other night and I said, I can't comprehend the hand of God on our lives. It's too marvelous, it's too magnificent. The goodness of God is so overwhelming. All I want to do is do something for you, God. I just want to give something back to you. God did something miraculous for me the other day, healed my body. I had an illness that I was dealing with that was... I thought it might be cancer and I was dealing with it for about a month and the doctors thought it was cancer and it wasn't, I got healed. I think it might have been but I got healed.

Whatever it was, I'm healed. And when you come through something like that because some of you may have been through those kind of tests before, all you want to do is just extravagantly worship God in whatever way you can. And so I told Colleen, I said, we've got to find somebody poor and give them some money. We've got to do something. We've got to give back to God because when you give to poor people, you're giving to the Lord and we've got to find something to do to express our thankfulness to God and our gratitude for God. And I just can't tell you how incredible it is when you live like that. When you live with a life of gratitude and thankfulness and extravagant giving in your life, you are so, so fulfilled in your daily walk with God. And so everything we see here at this church is a result of people, not me, it's a result of people extravagantly worshiping Jesus. And so this Easter, it's going to be that way. It's going to be an expression of that gratitude. When you come to church this weekend, you better give it your all. Don't be halfway in and halfway out and don't be an Easter Sunday Christian. It's going to be an all in every week. Let's go after God to express our thankfulness and our gratitude towards God.

Amen. It reminds me of when Jesus gave a harsh word to the people who were following Him once and a couple of people started to leave Him. Some disciples stepped away. And so He looked at Peter and the 12 and said, all right, you guys out too? And Peter's response was, where else in the world are we going to go but with you? No one else has life. We can't find anything else apart from you, Jesus. And it reminds me of a story in my own life when I was 15 years old, moving into a shelter by myself. My mom and my dad were both going through such a horrible time and a horrible divorce. But there was a Christian homeless shelter that took me in and it's at that place that I think, I mean, I had gone to church several times, almost been raised in church, but my faith became real in that moment. I think I truly understood God's love. And that's when I felt like God was, like I knew I was called to ministry, but I wanted to run after it because I thought if there's anything that I could do to say, thank you, Lord, if it's mission field, whatever it might be, I want to do it and I want to pursue that. And just, I love it when we experience

that kind of mercy from God. It's his kindness that draws us to repentance, that leads us back to him, that makes us want to be willing to lay down anything. But we've been getting a lot of good comments and a lot of questions. One that I think I want to run by you that I thought was something that maybe there's someone who is on YouTube, who's processing like, man, I love the Lord. And I've had this moment. But here's your question. Even though you became saved, this is towards you, Pastor Dennis. Did you still continue to struggle with temptation and other sins? So we heard about how you were, you said you lived as a sinner extravagantly, but when you became a follower for Jesus, I mean, you wanted to pursue him wholeheartedly. What was that sanctification process look like? I mean, what was that like for you? So it was, yes, the answer is yes. I did continue to struggle to a degree, obviously not to the same degree before because you've trained your mind and your body in bad habits for many, many years that don't just get undone in an instant. Sometimes they do. Sometimes people get miracles

like they get miracles of healing. But... For the most part, you have to go through a process of renewing your mind, transforming your mind because it's all up here, it's in your mind. That's right. And what you do sinful, it always starts in the mind and then it translates out through the body. And so yeah, it took me about... probably about 6 to 8 months to really understand holiness and what God was expecting of me. I didn't know anything about... You know, I knew that certain things were sin. I knew they were sin but I didn't know how bad that was or I didn't know how that grieved God or the Holy Spirit. But as I got closer to God, as I got closer, the closer you get, the more you feel the conviction. The farther away you go, the less you feel the conviction. So that's why you see people, when they start to drift away, it's because they don't want the conviction. They don't want the conviction of sin. They want to feel good about whatever they are wanting to do. And certainly, I've let God down. You know, I'm sure over the years, I mean I can't say that I've never sinned or I've never done anything wrong. I've done things that especially in the early days but the thing that I realized was that the goodness of God always leads you to repentance and realizing that God is always there. He will never leave you.

He will never forsake you. Guys, He will never leave you and He will never forsake you and when He puts His hand on you, He doesn't do it because you are good. He does it because He loves you and He knows what we do. He sees every single thing that we do in private. He sees everything we do in public. He hears every word we say, He sees every action we do and yet He still accepts us and loves us enough and I mean, this is what's so powerful about Easter. How can God take our place on a cross and take the beatings that He took, 39 lashes for every sickness and disease that would be placed in our bodies? How could He take that so that we could be healed? How could He take the sins of humanity? I mean, you guys know, this world is not getting less sinful. It's getting more sinful and the darker it gets, you realize everything you see that's getting dark, every dark thing. I mean, I was down in Miami, Florida a few weeks ago for a meeting and we happened to have dinner for my wife's birthday. We just happened to be down in South Beach right in the heart of Spring Break. And if you've never seen Spring Break in Miami, Florida on South Beach... I thought I saw you down there. That's right. Yeah, it was debauchery. I mean, there were people walking around

in not too much clothing and things of that nature and just it was crazy and I remember just being still in the middle of that and I'm thinking to myself, God died on a cross for every single one of these people and no matter how bad they are, no matter how dark they are, no matter how much they go away from God and snuff their nose at God and turn their back on God, He still died on a cross for them. With them in mind. And forgave them and all He's asking for them is to receive what He did for them and so this is the thing with God is, we're not going to be perfect. We're going to make mistakes but the more you focus your life around worship, about really, your life is an act of worship. I tell people, your life is a living sermon and the reason why some people are not getting much from churches is we're just preaching stories that aren't who we are. We're not preaching from our lives. We're just preaching things that we read in a book. The Bible has got to translate off the pages into your life. It has to be a part of the way you think, the way you function in your daily life and you are a living sermon. You are a living, breathing Jesus that represents Christ in the earth. That's what the light of the world is

and I tell people that we are the only Jesus that people will ever see and so how could we not spend our life, the few years that we have in the earth as extravagantly giving back to God in every facet of our life. Breaking all the selfishness off of us and just surrendering our lives to Jesus and I think when we do that, that's what turns people's hearts towards God when they see people living like that. I agree. They see what God is moving in them. in your heart, in your life, and that inspires them to want it for themselves. Almost like a provoking, a holy jealousy. Like, I see what God's doing. I want it. I want that for me. I want that. Yeah. We have one more question that I want to run by you that I think I love this because we have a lot of families right now that are watching along with us. Morgan have, so glad you're hanging out and a lot of other people that are here apart, bringing their kids. And here's one of the questions we got,

which is, what is a good way for us to talk to our younger children about the reason why we celebrate this holy week? And I think that as a dad with three boys, what I love is finding these kind of moments where I just don't live my life and leave my kids at the house with it. I bring them a part of every part during the week. Even if they might not understand it, I do my best to explain it to them at their own level. Year after year, continuing to lead them from glory to glory at their right understanding so that they can continue to grow with it along in their faith. And I think sometimes we think, we'll wait until they're in middle school before we start teaching them or let's wait until they're in high school, then they're ready to receive it. Man, start when they are children, even before they might even know some of the traditions that you're developing as a family of continuing to pray together, reading the word together, whatever it might be. And that's something that is very special and helpful with your children. But Pastor Dennis, we love Lauren. She's such a big deal around here. Even as we were watching the video of the dancing,

you reminiscing of that being a huge talent that she has. What would maybe to answer that question about how can we kind of raise up our children to understand these big moments in Christianity? Yeah, with Holy Week. Is there anything that... Well, I just had the most incredible experience with my grandchildren, just the last several days. And I have a granddaughter named Audrey, who's six years old. She just turned six. And another granddaughter named Chloe, who's four and a grandson, Dylan, who will be two this summer. And so we had them this past week while my daughter and son-in-law went on a vacation. And I said, Colleen, we've got to spend some really quality time with them about God and teaching them about God. So that's part of our role as a grandparent is to impart what God's done in our life into their life. And so I was taking them to school and we were just having conversations. And after I picked them up at school, I said, so guys, tell me what do you think is the reason Easter is important? Like what's the Easter mean to you? And what do you think they say? Well, it's time we get Easter candy. The baskets, Easter baskets.

Easter, find Easter eggs. And we have a party and we have all this stuff. I said, but do you know, that's not really what Easter is. I said, that's kind of what the world's turned Easter into to make it a holiday. I said, just like Christmas, you know, the same thing. I said, but Easter is about Jesus. Do you know what happened to Jesus on Easter? Do you know what happened? Do you know why that's so important? And of course they said, no. So I started trying to explain it to them about what Jesus did and why he did it. And you realize, okay. So I said, do you know what sin is? No, I said, he forgave us of our sins. He took our sins and forgave us of our sins. And my granddaughter said, what is sin? You know, when you're six years old. It's a great question though. You don't know what sin is. You don't understand sin. You're in the age of innocence. And oh my gosh, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could return to the age of innocence where sin no longer dominated our thoughts and our minds like a child. That's why Jesus said, if you want to understand how to enter into the kingdom, you have to become like a little child.

You almost have to regain your lost innocence. And by the way, you can regain your lost innocence. Amen. And so I had explained to her, well, sin simply is when you do something that you know is wrong and you do it anyway. You do it. You know it's wrong, but you do it anyway. Have you ever done that? Oh yes. Yes, Poppy, you've done that. I said, so that's sin. And the only way you can get into heaven is you have to have those sins forgiven. And the only way you can have those sins forgiven is you have to understand what Jesus did on a cross when he died on the cross. He took your place and all the sins that you would ever do in your life upon himself and traded it for you to be forgiven so you can return to the age of innocence. receive his righteousness and the right to enter into the kingdom of God. And Easter is the celebration of that and the fact that the reason we know he could do it, the reason we know he's God, is because on that Sunday he rose from the dead. And he's the only one that claims to be prophet or son of God that actually came back to life. Muhammad never came back to life, Buddha never, all these famous religious leaders, none of them ever rose from the dead. Only Jesus did that. That's the separating factor

between Christianity and every other religion. And every other religion says you have to be good enough to get into heaven. Except Christianity says you can't be good enough. There's no way for you to be good enough to get into heaven. So you have to have somebody to take your place and God had to take your place on the cross. And so I explained that to him slowly and surely. And so when my daughter picked him up last night, they're riding home, little Chloe said, Mommy, I know what Easter is all about now. That's special. Poppy explained it to me. That's beautiful. That's great. She'll always have that memory. Isn't that awesome? Yeah. Oh my goodness. And what a privilege that we have to be able to to share that with our children. Yeah. So for those of you who are asking that in the chat, looking for ways to impart that to your kids, or I love that part of your story, Pastor Dennis, even to grandkids, the legacy of righteousness that we get to continue to pass down is amazing. So a lot of you have been talking about what Easter means for us, even learning about our pastor. This is grandchildren learning what Easter means. That's when he gave his life to the Lord. That was a big part of my faith growing up as well. Some of you are putting in the chat. You came. Your whole family came to faith at Easter. So this weekend, we have lots of services that are designed for us to give that kind of extravagant worship to the Lord. So here's the QR code up on the screen for to show you all the different services that we have this weekend. We have special services, new ones we've adopted for for us to make sure we have plenty of space for everybody. So whether it's Norcross, Hamilton Mill, Midtown or North Cobb, scan the QR code, see which services they have and come out and say hello to us.

Liz and I, we're going to be at Norcross. I'd be so honored. We would love to be able to meet you in person. Please come up and say hello to us. And we'll continue streaming now every night leading up to Easter night at 7 p.m. We'd love for you to continue to join along with us. And Pastor Dennis, thank you for joining with us today. This is a pleasure. This has been great. And thank you guys for being here. We'll see you tomorrow night at 7 p.m.