The Core Value of a Christian | Under New Management | Full Experience

is the joy of the Lord. Let's pray. What's up, everyone? Welcome to church. Something I've been reminded of recently is that no matter what our weeks look like, no matter what life has looked like, we get to come together and choose joy. The joy of the Lord is your strength. That means that our joy is not rooted in our circumstances, but it's rooted in who He is. So I want to encourage you as we prepare to worship, shake off anything that's weighing you down. Let's lift our voices together and choose joy as we praise our God today. This is where I believe that You are more than enough. You're more than enough for me. You are faithful to Your promise. You are strong when I am weak. When I'm standing in Your presence, I have everything I need. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Oh, my soul, bless His name. All that is within me say, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Jesus, come one day. You are worthy of all. You're worthy of all, my friends. You are faithful to Your promise. You are strong when I am weak. When I'm standing in Your presence, I have everything I need. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Oh, my soul, bless His name. All that is within me say, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength.

Come and fill this place. So let it rise up like a river. Overflowing Holy Spirit. Let it pour out with no limit. Overflowing Holy Spirit. So let it rise, let it rise up like a river. Overflowing Holy Spirit. Come and pour it out, let it pour out with no limit. Overflowing Holy Spirit. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Oh, my soul, bless His name. All that is within me say. Oh, my soul, bless His name. All that is within me say. Oh, my soul, bless His name. All that is within me say. The joy of the Lord. ♪ The joy of the Lord is my strength, yes it is. ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ I have tasted, I have seen. ♪♪ ♪ The realness of your love for me. ♪ ♪ It's written on your hands and feet. ♪ ♪ It's all the evidence I'll ever need. ♪ Come on, let's hear you sing. Tell her, say. ♪ Your love is better than life. ♪

♪ I can't even wrap my mind around it. ♪ ♪ One day in your arms is better than a thousand elsewhere. ♪ ♪ Your love keeps on running, running. ♪ ♪ Keeps on running after me. ♪ ♪ It keeps on running, running. ♪ ♪ Keeps on running after me. Yeah. ♪ ♪ There's no one that can take your place. Oh. ♪ ♪ There's nothing that can separate your love. ♪ ♪ Oh, how high, how wide, how deep. Oh. ♪ ♪ The greatest love the world has ever seen. ♪ ♪ Tell him now, yeah. ♪ ♪ Your love is better than life. ♪ ♪ I can't even wrap my mind around it. ♪ ♪ One day in your arms is better than a thousand elsewhere. ♪ ♪ Your love keeps on running, running. ♪ ♪ Keeps on running after me. ♪ ♪ It keeps on running, running. ♪ ♪ Keeps on running after me. Yeah. ♪ We're singing scripture when we sing this, the promise of God, that there is no distance you have gone from him, that he will not pursue you. So we sing this. ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. ♪ He's just that good. ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. ♪ I've seen it in my life. Tell me. ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. ♪

♪ Tell him now. ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. ♪ Every day. ♪ Every time I turn around. ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. Yeah. ♪ ♪ Yeah. ♪ ♪ Your love is better than mine. ♪ ♪ I can't even wrap my mind around it. ♪ ♪ One day here in your house. ♪ ♪ Is better than a thousand elsewhere. Your love. ♪ ♪ Keeps on running, running. Keeps on running after me. ♪ ♪ Keeps on running, running. Keeps on running after me. ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. Every time. ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. Just your voices. Come on. Tell him. ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. There you go. That's it. Come on. Say it. ♪ ♪ Surely your goodness and mercy will follow me. We believe. Every time. You're there. Right there. You've always been. You've been so good to me. Yeah. ♪ ♪ Trust you, God. God, you've been so good. Yeah, we can cheer for that. That's all right. Yes. He is. And he will be. ♪ ♪ What a gift, what a precious gift That He is undeserved and yet We were the joy before Him What a friend, what a faithful friend He has been to wear my sin And clothe me with His righteousness Behold the Lamb of God Blameless when I was not He came to take my sin and shake away Behold the Lamb of God What a love, what a perfect love God with us, praise the worthy one

He is my King, my confidence Behold the Lamb of God Blameless when I was not He came to take my sin and shake away Thank you Jesus Holy man, holy divine He cleansed me with His sacrifice He rescued me and bought me with His blood Behold the Lamb of God Let's lift that up today In response Jesus for all that you've done For all that you're even doing now We just claim that you are worthy Worthy above it all Come on let's sing this, say You're worthy, you're worthy Worthy is the Lamb of God Worthy, yes He's worthy Worthy, worthy is the Lamb of God Sing Worthy, tell Him He's worthy Worthy, worthy is the Lamb of God In every circumstance, every situation, it's true He's worthy, yes He's worthy Worthy, worthy is the Lamb of God Behold the Lamb Behold the Lamb of God Blameless when I was not He came to take my sin and shake away Thank you Jesus

Holy man, holy divine He cleansed me with His sacrifice He rescued me and bought me with His blood Behold the Lamb of God Yes, He is worthy You all sound amazing, thank you so much for singing You can be seated I want to welcome you again to CCV My name is Travis Brown I get to serve as one of the pastors here And a couple summers ago, I was driving my oldest daughter Back home to Arizona from Montana And on our way, our route took us through Yellowstone National Park Now, for those of you that have seen this place It's maybe the most beautiful place on the planet, right? There's massive mountains There's rivers that are cutting through valleys There's wildlife everywhere And as we were heading there, I'm like, this is going to be incredible But there was one problem You see, the timing in which we had to get home Left us a small... window and as we were driving through Yellowstone we we couldn't stop we just had to keep driving I couldn't get out we couldn't hike around we couldn't take our time to go through it because we had to get home in a certain time but what made that even worse is that the entire time that we drove through it it was a night and it was completely dark and as we're driving through it I remember looking down at our map and I'm realizing that we were surrounded by lakes and mountains and amazing views and incredible beauty none of which we could see because the light was not shining on our surroundings and we kept

saying to each other like I bet that's an amazing view I wish we could see it sometimes we do this same thing the same thing happens in our lives because everything that God wants for us is right there there's peace there's purpose there's freedom there's forgiveness but when we don't allow God's light to shine in every area of our lives we end up missing all the beauty that's another reason that I think communion is so powerful when we take it every single week here at CCV you know when we take communion we take a piece of bread that reminds us of Jesus's body that was beaten and tortured and we take some juice that reminds us of his blood that he poured out while hanging on that cross that served as a payment for all of our sins but when we take communion we don't just remember what Jesus did for us we're also reminded of what he offers to us peace purpose and freedom and forgiveness and some of us have different parts of our lives that are that are really dark because we're trying to manage them all on our own and we haven't surrendered those parts of our lives to him and communion reminds us that Jesus did not go to the cross so that you would partially surrender to him in fact he gave his entire life so that we would surrender our entire lives to him and when we do that I'm telling you the beauty that we experience is in describable let's pray together as we take communion father we're so grateful that we get to come to this part of our week and remember the sacrifice that you made for us and we just acknowledge and we remember that you made that sacrifice not for part of our lives but for every area of our lives for everything that's going on Lord may we surrender all of that to you bless this time as we continue to worship you it's in Jesus name we pray amen you well how many of you parents out there feel like it is getting harder Harder and harder to raise kids in this crazy, crazy world. Anybody out there? Jamie and I have three kids, and we would say outside of being as consistent

as we could be as parents, and we failed often, we would say the number one thing we did for our kids to develop them spiritually and make them strong in this world is every summer, without fail, we sent our kids to a CCV summer camp. We believe it is transformative. It's transformative, and every time we sent our kids to camp, they came back different, like in the best possible way, because there's something about sending your kids to a different environment where they have extended time to focus on Jesus. You know, bringing them to church every weekend, critically important, but we get one hour with them, but think of multiple days all focused on Jesus with incredible people investing in them, worship. There's so much fun, there's so much good teaching. It's in a crazy safe environment. So what I want you to know is that if you have not signed your kids up for camp yet, and you have a kid, we have a kid's camp, we have a junior high camp, we have a high school camp, we have a special needs camp. If you haven't signed your kids up for camp yet, I wanna just look at you and say, what on earth are you doing? Like nothing's more important, I'm telling you, this summer, like move a vacation, work around the sports schedule, and don't let finances be an issue. Speaking of finances, let me say to our whole entire church,

we invest so much in camp because we want it to be affordable, we provide scholarships, we subsidize costs all the time. So to our whole entire church, if you've been blessed, I would challenge you to give to our CCV Camp Fund. Because what we do, and you may not know this, is that we invest so much in camp and scholarships that every year it costs us just over a million dollars outside of just our expenses to send kids and students to camp. We send close to 10,000 kids and students to camp. And so we wanna make sure that every child and student that wants to go, finances is not a barrier. And if you're sitting there today and you're like, man, that's why I haven't signed my kids up, talk to our staff, talk to our kids pastor, talk to your student pastor, we want to help. We don't want that to keep you back. And if you're here today, you can help make sure that no child is left. Every child has an opportunity and student to experience Jesus this summer, amen. So if you wanna give towards that, let me challenge you, you can go to ccv.church, there's a banner there, or you can text the word camps to 72020. And guys, let's just be generous. We wanna make sure every child and student can be changed. Amen? So we're gonna celebrate what God's gonna do this summer. Right now, I wanna challenge you to get out your Bibles,

get out your notes. We're continuing our series under new management. And I wanna start by showing you a very powerful life story. Watch this. You know, I was treating God like a buffet, kind of picking and choosing where he is to be a part of my life, based on my choices, rather than fully giving up control to him. In my work setting, especially, I felt that the harder I worked, the better off I was. The more I did, the better off I was. A company I interned for in college called me aside and said, oh, what's this meeting about? So I remember it very vividly. And he said, hey, unfortunately, your position's cut. We just don't have the budget. And I remember getting home, just not knowing what the heck to do, like, holy cow. But then saying, okay, now I need to work as hard as I can. And I need to put my foot to the metal. I need to just focus on getting the next job and applying and applying and interviewing. I took a kind of a leap of faith getting into a new industry in the pharmaceutical space. And after nine months or 10 months, they decided, oh, we're okay in this operation. And everyone on the team got laid off there. It was, you know, the same things over and over again,

or new issues constantly arising, realizing that my life was kind of spiraling in a sense, and I wasn't able to swim upstream fast enough. You know, I never even once, it's hard to say, but I never once at that time turned to God. And I really didn't, I didn't give him any control. I didn't lay anything at his feet. I didn't trust him at all. I just trusted my own abilities. You know, I was constantly chasing the next thing and saying, I'm gonna plan out the next 10 years of my life. And this is how I'm gonna get there because I can do it. And I got this. We try to control our lives and everything in our lives without giving up full control to God. So stepping back and really just understanding that, and then kind of putting it into practice. I have a sense of peace with it that I can, I've given it to God. I've entrusted him with it. And even if it's not how I want it, it's his way. And I know it's his way because he's in control ultimately. I think getting back into the church. Getting back connected with community and mentors of mine, I learned that, I mean, that truly, if he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. He has to be Lord of every single piece of your life, your finances, your marriage, you being a father, you being a friend, you being a worker in your workplace.

You have to give everything to him and have faith and know that he's in control. And even when things are out of control, he's still in control. And you gotta just trust on that and rely on that. So plugging into the church was probably the most fruitful for me. I was able to connect with guys and couples. I was able to be more involved with community, which led me to read the Bible and taught me more of how to prioritize my prayer life and prioritize my daily devotionals and reading the Bible and scripture and those type of things. So getting plugged into the church was ultimately the catalyst of that transformation. Can we thank Kyle for just sharing his story? My guess is some of you can really relate with Kyle's story. It's so easy to wanna get in a mode where you wanna control your life and you're in charge. But what we're learning in this series is that when you give your life to Jesus, when you are baptized, which by the way, so many of you have done recently. I mean, we're four months into this year and get this 4,621 people have been baptized already just in 2026, which is an amazing miracle of God. So for all of you who've made Jesus, like you said, I'm all in with Jesus, I'm going all in. He's now the CEO, he's in charge. And I love how Kyle put it.

He said, Jesus is Lord of all, or he's not Lord at all. And Kyle said, I had a season where God was like a buffet to me. And some of you relate, it's like you pick and choose, like God, I'll do this and I'll do that and I'll do it your way in this area. But hands off over here. And man, the reality is we just gotta understand that doesn't work. You live life that way. You gotta go all in, like every area of your life has to be under new management, which is the series we're in right now. And that's really learning what does it mean to make Jesus Lord? Or let's use it in terms we understand, CEO or leader of our life. Well, I wanna ask, just curious, how many of you have ever been a part of a company, whether you are the company or maybe your company bought another company? How many of you have ever been part of an acquisition where you acquired another company or maybe another company acquired you and you got a brand new CEO with a new culture, new values? Just raise your hand. How many of you have been a part of that? Yeah, some of you. When I was at Intel, before God called me to spend the rest of my life in the local church,

at the Intel Corporation, we acquired a lot of companies. I saw this firsthand how hard it is. And it's incredibly hard because when you get a new CEO that comes in and wants to do something totally different, culturally, with the values and systems, it can be really disorienting for people. In fact, according to research, Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Consulting, one of the best in the world, they would say that acquisitions have a very bad track record. In fact, 70 to 90% of acquisitions they do not work out, they fail. And why is that? It's because the new employees, the employees of the company that got a brand new CEO, brand new culture, brand new values, it's hard sometimes to buy in to those new values because you're so used to doing it your way. One of the most famous recent examples is, and some of you followed this, when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022. Did you see this? You remember what he did on his very first day when he bought Twitter? He walked into the corporate offices, and this is him, he walked in with a kitchen sink. And what was he communicating? Everything's on the table to change, even the kitchen sink. And everything's going to change. The values, the culture, and guess what?

Everything changed at Twitter. And you know what happened? Within months, they lost a majority of all their employees. Why? Because with a new CEO comes new values, new culture, and sometimes people just struggle. Now, put Elon Musk out of your mind. Because some of you love him, some of you don't. That's not the point. Here is the point, spiritually. When you give your life to Jesus, and you're baptized, you get a brand new CEO over your life, and it's not you. You're no longer the boss. And Jesus walks into your life, and he has a brand new set of values, a brand new culture he wants to bring. And you guys, it can be crazy disorienting when this happens, because it's like, yeah, we want to change, but we don't know what to do. And we want the forgiveness he brings and we want to do it his way. But I have been doing life my way for a long time, right. I know how I handle my finances and Jesus is like, I want to do it differently. You put your hands off that area. I know how I treat my career and how I look at success and how I look at my image and how much I focus on me or what I do for pleasure or what I do sexually. Jesus is like, I want to change everything with a new set of values.

Now if you are at your place of work, you might have like a set of core values or values up on the wall. Anybody else? If you asked our CCV staff, we have these. I would tell you as a leader, the culture and the values we have here at CCV matter to me almost more than anything else. It drives everything we do, our values. Because core values in an organization are determined to say, this is who we are. This is how we operate. This is how we make decisions. You probably have those at your workplace. What is hard at a workplace is when you put the values on the wall and people aren't living them out. We'll talk about that in a minute. But the greatest thing that drives a culture is someone's values. And when Jesus comes into our life, there's all sorts of values he has for us as Christians. Like we're called to be generous. We're called to have humility. We are called to be kind. We're called to have joy in our lives and have courage. And you can go down the list. We're called to be holy, to have unity with each other. To tell the truth. To be servant hearted and serve others. There's all sorts of values. But today what I want to do as we talk about being under new management, I want to tell you the number one value that Jesus

wants to drive your entire life. And he's so clear about it. The reason we have to talk about it is because this is the one that maybe Christians live the least in our world. And let me show you the values straight out of Matthew 22. Watch how clear this is. And here's the context. Matthew 22 starting in verse 36 says that a teacher came to Jesus, a religious leader came to Jesus. And normally what they're trying to do is they're trying to stump Jesus. They're trying to give him a question he can't answer. Which, by the way, you can't stump Jesus. He's Jesus. But they try over and over again. So the teacher comes and here's the question he throws out to Jesus. Which is the greatest commandment in the law? Now this is a huge question. Because if you know the context of Jesus' day, the Jews at the time, the Jewish law, the Mishnah and all the other laws from the Old Testament and what they added over time. Watch this. There were 613 laws. Now what I just put on the back wall, that is every single one of the laws. So imagine this guy walks up to Jesus and he's like, see all these laws? Like for example, let me show you. Law 308, do not entice others through adultery.

That's a pretty good law and there's a bunch of other laws and there's some weird laws. But he looks at Jesus and he says, all these 613 laws, which one is the most important? Gotcha. You never gotcha with Jesus. So listen to his response. It's beautiful. He says this. Jesus replied, would you say the bold out loud with me. Jesus replied, love. I want you to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. This is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it. Don't miss this. It's equal. This is the same command, same exact command. He's just trying to clarify it for us. The second is equal. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. This is brilliant. Jesus is a brilliant teacher. Watch what he does. He says, you see all these 613 laws? Jesus says, I am going to boil it all down and say this is the summary. I want you to love God and love people. If you wonder today like what should drive my life as a

follower of Jesus. What should be the number one value. What should you hang and be like this is what I am all about. Don't overcomplicate it. Jesus is so simple in his teaching because his burden is light. I want you to love God and love people. It's one command. Love God and love people. Here's what Jesus did. Jesus simplified what religion complicated. Take that in for a minute. What I want to do today is I want to talk about what it really looks like. To not just love God, which a lot of us want to do. What does it look like to love people? Jesus says it has to be both of those. command. In Jesus' day, people would say, like, I love God, and then they would treat people terribly. Or they would say they try to love people, but they wouldn't be able to do it because they didn't really love God. If you're taking notes, I'd say it this way. Loving God without loving people is hypocrisy. You can't do that. And the flip side is loving people without loving God. That runs out eventually. You're not going to do it without the power of God and His love in your life to love others the way He wants. And so if Jesus is your CEO, which if you've given your life to Jesus, if you've been baptized, He is the CEO leader of your life. It is His values, not yours. The number one value is to love God and love people. And there's three big things we've got to absorb today about

loving God and loving people. And here's one if you're taking notes. Love isn't optional. It's the evidence. As a follower of Jesus, love is not an option for you to love other people or love God. It is the evidence that you are under the leadership of Jesus as your Lord. Now, when I see that, when I say that, and you guys, I'm preaching to myself as much as anyone here today, I promise you, that smacks me across the forehead like a two by four. Because as anybody else out there, I don't always want to love people. I mean, hey, if you're a lovely person, I would love to love you. Does anybody else have any unlovely people in your life? What about them? What are we supposed to do with them? Jamie and I were just recently meeting with our counselor. We meet with a counselor about every two months, whether we feel like we need it or not. We've been doing this for years. And the reason why is we want to stay so healthy. I am committed as your pastor to staying healthy as your pastor, because it is so easy, especially in my position as a pastor, to get off base, and I'm committed. So I'm just doing the work. We're constantly doing the work. And we're meeting with our counselor, and we're having this conversation. He's asking us what's going on, and we're just describing the season we're in. And the only way I know how to describe the season we're in is it's just been a tough season. And some of you are in a tough season right now. And I've shared with you over the years, the last couple years, what's been tough is Jamie had cancer. We walked through that. It was really, really hard. We've had a bunch of losses of people we love. Just this last week, I went into Kansas City and did the memorial for my cousin. It was a suicide, and it was so hard. And so many of you reached out and said you were praying

for me, and I just thank you for those prayers. I felt it, and I really felt like God was moving, even in the midst of that really hard thing. But those are hard. But the hardest thing, just to be honest, has been dealing with kind of vile, like hateful people. And they're everywhere, right, in our world today? Like it's just there's just a lot of hatred, a lot of vile and visceral stuff out there. And it's even been hard because my dad has dementia. And you guys, if you've ever dealt with someone that has dementia, there's times that dementia, there's things that come out of that person's mouth that are so horrific. It is hard to hear. And so we're just describing all this, you know, the counselor. And he's listening. He's such a great listener. He's a man of God. He's amazing. And he gets really quiet. And he says this, he says, what do you think the bullseye is that God is trying to teach you in the midst of this really tough season? I was thinking to the doctor, I'm like, I don't know what Jamie's thinking. But maybe I'm thinking like, God, you could rain down some judgment on some of these people around, you know, like, I'm just like, well, I don't know. And then he said these words next. He said, I wonder if the bullseye is God wants to teach you how to love unlovely people. And that's, that's when I fired my counselor. You know, I was thinking to myself, what if I don't want to learn that? But as a follower of Jesus, we have no, we have no choice. We must learn to love everyone, even the most hateful, vile people that are around us. Right? I mean, Jesus says you don't have a choice. Of course, it's easy to love people that love you. Jesus said this in Luke six, he says, if you love those who love you, what credit is that for you? Everybody does that. Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do

good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. In other words, everybody does that. But as a follower of Jesus, under my leadership as a CEO, you are different. You must be different. You love people. The way I loved you. And man, there was a time in our lives where we were an enemy of Jesus, an enemy of God. Our sin separated us from God and God came after us. He loved us. And so then he says this in verse 35. It's like hard to even read. But love your enemies, do good to them. But then you realize why? Because Jesus says, when you love others, even those who are vile to you, that is what's best for you. Did you know when someone's so vile or spews hatred your way, do you know how easy it is to take all that and put that in your heart and you now become the bitter, judgmental, hateful person and now you're the one whose soul is rotting? That's so easy to do. And so Jesus is like, I want you to love everyone, even your enemies, because I want your heart to be pure and clean so you can love the people around you that are closest to your family, your friends, everyone, but you gotta love everyone. And the challenge is, is like,

as you live your life for Jesus, do unlovely people go away over time? It's like they multiply. It's like there's, and especially if you're making a difference for Jesus, understand Satan's gonna come after you. There's just gonna be some unlovely, like hateful things. And what we know about people that spew hate is they're hurting. Hurt people hurt people. Let me say it again. Hurt people hurt people. The people that spew hate is because they are so hurting, they've never healed from whatever happened to them. And so what they do is this poison comes out of them to everyone around them, and if you're not careful, you will drink the poison yourself. If you're not learning how to love them in the midst of that, you're gonna drink the poison and now you're the one that's bitter and hateful yourself. And so we have to love. It's not optional. It's the evidence. So how are Christians doing in our world today loving even people that are hateful towards us? Let me put it this way. Are Christians known more for judgment or for their love? The data is in.

This is just factual. You can look at the last Barna study where they surveyed people and said, when you see Christians, what do you see? The data says most people that aren't Christians, they look at Christians, they say they're more judgmental than they are loving. That's what we're up against. And what platform has been introduced in the past 20 years that allows there to be more hate spewed out there than any other time maybe in human history? What is it? Social media. And I tell you this, I hope this sinks in at some point, that you understand that social media is a for-profit entity, all of them are, and they're run off of profits and a revenue model. How do they make their revenue? Off clicks. So they have to drive clicks, drive views. What drives more views? Love or judgmental posts? Truth or lies? Controversy drives traffic. And so this is what we're up against. And as Christians, we're called to not spew the hate, not spew it, but to be loving even in the midst of all the craziness that we see because, John 13, Jesus says,

by this, everyone will know that you're my disciples if you hate them. Man, it's like if you love one another. So love is not optional, it's the evidence. That's the first thing we have to absorb. Now, the second thing we have to absorb is like if that's true and it is true, then what is love? What's the definition of love that we have to live out? And this is so counter-cultural. Two, love isn't a feeling, it's a choice. Our world tells us love's a feeling. If you feel it, give it. If you don't feel it, withhold it. And God needs to get a hold of some of us and just be like, you need to get over your feelings. Your feelings aren't facts. Love is a choice. It's not a feeling. When Jesus used the word love, he said, love God and love people, he used the word agape and it's not a noun. Almost every time Jesus uses the word agape, it is in verb form, which means verb is an action. It's a choice. It's a decision. It's a commitment. That is what love is. It's not a feeling. It's a choice, which means love is choosing

with God's help to treat others how you want to be treated. It's the golden rule. Now, I'm gonna pause, because this is very important. I want someone to lean in. Love does not mean you stay in an abusive relationship. You run. Love does not mean that you let yourself be harmed or run all over. Love doesn't mean if you're the leader of an organization, you're a victim. people leader, that you're just like, well, I got to keep everybody, I gotta love Mike, I can't ever give an employee, I can't ever hold an employee accountable. And maybe you have to, you know, X them out of the note, that's not love. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do as a leader is hold someone accountable and to love them and to love the organization. You have to sometimes part ways. So please understand what love is love is not like heart you being harmed or letting yourself be run over or be abused. That's not love. But at its base level, love is the golden rule. It is treating others the way we want to be treated. The golden rule is Jesus's rule. And I love Jesus because he's such a brilliant teacher. You know what Jesus knew? You already love yourself. Some of you are like, no, I don't. I have a low self esteem. Those things. No, listen, love is not a feeling. It's a choice. You already love yourself. You choose to love yourself. I can prove it to you. When you take a group picture, who's the first person you look at in that group picture? That would be you. Even if you don't like yourself, you still look directly at you. Right? And so what Jesus does, this is

amazing. Jesus doesn't command us to love ourselves. He assumes it. He knows how he created us. And some of you want to push back. You're like, there's things I don't like about myself. There's things I actually kind of hate about the way I look or my body image or the way I act. And listen, there's some things you cannot like about yourself. But you understand you still love yourself. You still have self-love. You still choose to feed yourself. You choose to want to have a home that's safe. You still choose to want to, you want to have a happy life. I mean, all of us, every single one of us wants food and clothing and meaningful work and friends and a life that counts. That's self-love. Nothing wrong with self-love. If you hated yourself, you wouldn't ever want to change anything about you. Did you know that? You just accept and hate yourself. But the fact that you even want sometimes things to change that you don't like about you says that we all love ourselves, every single one of us. And self-love is not evil. It's not evil to want a safe home where you're for kids to thrive. It's not evil to want financial security. It's not evil to want to have air conditioning in Phoenix over the summer. Right? That's a good thing to love yourself. Where it becomes evil is when we only want those things for us, not for anybody else. And what Jesus says is the same level of passion and care that you want good things in your life. You want to overcome the challenges you have. You want to have security. I want you to have the same passion and drive to want those things for other people, not just you. That's what it means to love others as you love yourself. Watch the verse again, Matthew 22. Love your neighbor as what? Yourself. As yourself. Love is simply choosing and committing

to want for others what I want for myself and sacrificing for it. In fact, the way of Jesus is I should love others even more than I love myself. And that's where the rub comes in, huh? Like this is the crux of the issue because some of us think, well, if I love others that much, what if it hurts me? Like if I pour my energy into other people, what about this person? Think about your marriage, right? Some of us thinking of marriage. Well, if I love them and focus on my spouse's happiness, what about me at work? If I'm always investing in other people and serving other people at work, what if I get passed over? What if no one notices me? I don't get the promotion. At church, if I focus on serving others, I'm always about reaching more people for Jesus. What about me? Take any area of your life, isn't the issue if I love others more than me, what about me? And this is where Jesus has an upside down kingdom where your life works better when you're not focused on you. In any area of life, it's just true. Take the secret of a happy marriage. What's the secret of a happy marriage? Two people that are trying to love the other person above themselves. That's how marriage works. And boy, is that hard. The secret of every great leader at work, he cares more about his employees than he cares about himself. That's an organization that will thrive and where employees want to be. The secret of any great church is to be outward-oriented not inward-focused. And the gravitational pull of every church over time is to turn inward and say, it's all about me. And Jesus says, no, no, no, no. I left the 99 to go after the one. And that's why our number one core value at this church is we have a heart for evangelism. We say Jesus' last command is our first priority, which means we are always going

to be a church that is going after the one. Now, we care about the 99 always, but we have to keep our focus. and people that are not going to heaven. We have to keep our focus on lost people. And remember, Jesus is our CEO. We don't call the shots, he does. It's his values, not ours, and he made it clear. What is the value? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God and love people. That is the summary. That is your value. That is the value that drives every other value. And guess what? The first, love God, is what allows you to love other people. If you don't love God, you'll never be able to love the other people around you. It has to come from loving God, or you'll just run on empty all the time. You gotta let God's love fill you up. Let God's love be the core of who you are and what satisfies you, and that allows you and frees you up to love everyone, even the people that don't love you or spew hate at you. Jesus is trying to tell us that's the only way

to have a meaningful, satisfying, purpose-filled life is to let your life be driven by love. In fact, watch how clear he is in Matthew 10. He says, if your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. That's why some of you are so lost. Everything's about you. And then he says this, but if you forget about yourself, and you look at me, you'll find both yourself and me. Isn't that true? Let me ask it this way. Who is the most selfish person you have ever met in your life? No, sir, you don't need to be pointing right now, right, in the service, so, I'm just kidding. I just want you to put in your mind who's the most selfish person you know, the person that loves themself the most, is the most prideful, they maybe have a lot, and they're just all about them. I just want you to put them in your mind right now. Is that person truly, honestly, I don't care what they have, their stuff, are they happy? And you know the answer. Those people are miserable. It's all about them. Now, let me give you the flip. I want you to put in your mind right now the most loving, selfless person that you personally know.

It could be someone that's passed away, it could be someone that's in your life right now, it could be a grandfather, a grandmother, a mom, a dad, your spouse, I don't know who it is for you, but I want you to put them in your mind, and as you're thinking about who they are, I wanna tell you who that is in my life. This is just true. Who it is for me is my wife, Jamie. If you know my wife, Jamie, you know what it is like to be truly loved. This woman is just, I can't even describe what she does to love everyone around her. If you're one of her friends, you know, man, she would do anything for you. She would love you, deeply. Our three girls have been the beneficiaries of a mom who isn't perfect. She didn't let them do everything, run wild, she held them accountable, but she loved those girls unconditionally. And the way she loves me, it humbles me. And the way she loves this church, you guys, the way she loves this church, she has poured her life into so many people in this church, and you know what I've seen and watched people do to her? Turn their back on her. And it's even hard for me to say, I'm just like, how do you keep doing it? And yet, my wife is the happiest, most joyful,

most purpose-driven person I've ever been around. Because why? She loves God, and she loves people. It is the way, it is the only way. It's the way of Jesus, and it's the way you live the best life. Did you know, all the people we admire, truly admire in this world, not for the short term, I mean over the long haul, the people we admire most were driven by loving God and loving people. Can I give you a few examples? Mother Teresa. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mr. Rogers, what a beautiful man. Billy Graham, who shared Jesus with maybe more people than anyone in history. And even recently, Tim Tebow, who has been to our church and is a good friend of our church, he's loving people that get overlooked in our society. And every single one of these examples, what drives them? It's their love of God and their love of people that's creating a life worth living. But it's all because they're looking to Jesus as their example, the one who went to a cross to die. for you and for me and to show us what real love is like. See, in God's economy, loving others isn't losing your life, it's unlocking it. When you think about loving people,

truly being about loving others, that unlocks something in your life that maybe has been hidden or you've been searching for your whole life, like, how do I find this thing in life? And it's love that's the key that unlocks it. And some of you feel so stuck in life, it's like you're hitting a barrier over and over again or you just feel stuck. And the issue is you are not living a life that is truly all about God and His values and commands and loving other people radically. And maybe God just brought you today to just kind of reorient you the way He's reorienting me, just putting this message together. When you stop living for yourself and start loving others, that's how life becomes significant. So if Jesus is your CEO, the number one value is to love God and love people, which means what? Love isn't optional, it's the evidence. Love isn't a feeling, it's what? It's a choice. And love isn't, loving others isn't losing your life, it's what unlocks it. Can I give you some handles to actually put this in practice this week? Because I know God's working on someone and I know He's working on me.

Maybe some of you need to walk into work on Monday and you need to make it about others. You're in a meeting, recognize somebody else. Call out someone else's good, give someone else the credit instead of you always wanting the credit. If you're a leader here today, make it about the people around you, not just you. In your marriage, some of you feel like your marriage is dying. And I'll just be honest, if you came to me and you shared everything, I'd be like, this is a marriage that is dying. And the reason why is because each of you are waiting for the other person to make the first move. There hasn't been a lot of love, and you're like, if you'd start loving me, I'll start loving you. And I wanna just look at you and say, why wouldn't one of you just make the first move? Why wouldn't it be you? I mean, look at men. Men, you make the first move. If God's called you to lead your family, it doesn't mean every single situation, the man has to make the first move. But men, why wouldn't you step up and make the first move? Like, let love be the driving force of your marriage, putting the other person's needs above your own and your finances. Some of you are so driven by money, it's destroying you.

It's destroying you. And you can't see it, but it is. And the only way to have a loving, value-based relationship with Jesus is to put God first with your finances. And some of you, the only time you give, the only time you're generous is if you think someone's gonna notice or your name's put on a plaque or something like that. And men, the way of Jesus is to give, wanting nothing in return, wanting no recognition. Just go read Matthew chapters five and six. For some of you with your mental health, you're struggling with your mental health, and there's so many issues with mental health. I don't wanna downplay this, but I wanna say this. What studies show over and over again is one of the best ways to overcome your mental health is to begin pouring your life into other people. Why, because loving others, what's it do? It takes the focus off, maybe you have too much, a little too much focus on you and your problems, your mind's just on you all the time. You need to get your mind off you and on other people. That will help you with your mental health. And the last one's hard, I'm gonna say it anyways. It's forgiveness. One of the greatest acts of love you will ever give another human being

is to forgive them. And you know who you're loving most in that? You're gonna love yourself. Because you are destroying yourself. Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. And some of you just need to forgive. There's so many other examples, but I just want you to, in your mind right now, think, who is it I need to love this week? And what would God call me to do? It could be making a phone call with someone you haven't talked to in a really long time because the relationship's broken. It could be just reaching out. It could be praying for someone. Praying for someone begins to break the cycle that we've had in our lives for a long time of just the bitterness we have. Whatever it is, could you imagine a world where every follower of Jesus began to love like that? You guys, it would change everything. It would change our city and our state overnight if just the people at CCV began to do that. We would be so radical in a world that spews so much hate when we love. And again, you're not getting abused. You're not getting taken advantage of. We're just gonna love radically. The opposite's also true.

Could you imagine if we don't do this? The world that doesn't know Jesus is watching. And when they watch. Watch us, not love. I'm not sure they want anything to do with Jesus. Brendan Manning put it this way. He said, the greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, deny him with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable. So CCV, know this. As a follower of Jesus, being a part of this church, people may spew hate at us. They may do it often, but could you imagine if we were the type of church, we were the type of people that loved radically back and we trusted God with our lives. We trusted God that he can redeem. We trusted God that that's the way to have purpose and meaning in life, not to spew it back, but to love God and love people as the dominating value in our lives. Anybody else in to live that kind of life? Let's be that kind of church, CCV, and to do that, I just wanna pray over us, because guys, I need this as much as anybody. So I'd invite you to pray for me too. Let's pray, God, I just know, I know the value you've asked us to live.

It is to love God and to love people and to do it radically and generously, the same way, God, you sent your only son to die on a cross and shed his blood for us so we could be forgiven when we were enemies of you. God, would you rattle some of us today in a way that we walk out and we just decide we are gonna be known for our love? And God, there is balance in that. There's times we have to be, how old people accountable? There's times we need to walk away with abuse. There's things we have to do that you're not asking us to be run over. You're just asking us to live and treat others the way we wanna be treated. Would we do that radically and with love? And will we see the name of Jesus lifted in our city and state like never before? We praise you for what you're doing in our church. We ask you to keep moving miraculously. We pray all this in Jesus' name. We all said, amen, amen. Hey, Sunday night, we have a night of worship. You will not wanna miss it on every campus, 6.30 p.m. We'll see you then. Until then, we'll see you back for Under New Management. Thank you. Thank you.