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(Audio files will open in a new window so you can read here while listening) |
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Audio files transcribed into text |
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These are excerpts from messages given to those in a recovery program. Most of the subject matter in these clips applies to all Christians. |
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TRANSCRIPTS
And the foundation is simply that, that we're here to do two things. Love God, love others. Just get that foremost in your life, in your mind. This is what you're here for. It's to love God and love others. (Matthew 22:37-40) In fact, I would tell my kids this when they're really little because we get to a store, we drive someplace. They’d ask “Why are we here? I’d answer, We're here to love God and love others.” They’d yell out, “No Dad, why are we at this store?” And they never did get it. because they always ask, “Why are we here?” And I'd always say the same thing, “We're here to love God and love others.” That's the foundation of your walk. Okay? It is like your two legs. What am I doing here when I wake up in the morning, I'm here to love God and love others. That's it. And if your focus ends up being, well, I'm here to get out of the program so I can do this and I can do that, and all that stuff. And you've got all these things in your mind of why you're here. You've got to get to what the foundation is. And then if the other things fit on top of the foundation, they work. If they don't fit, then you go, okay, well maybe this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. Now, if you're going to, if you're going to be loving God and loving others, does your body need to be working good? Yeah. Most of the time. Yeah. So, it's good to take care of your body, right? Right. So it's not like you'd say, oh, I'm just here to love God and love others. So I'm just going to let myself go to pieces. If you let yourself go to pieces, you're not in the place to be able to do that. Go ahead. AUDIENCE: I mean, you probably forgot probably the most important one to love yourself as well, right? Like, you're not just here to love others and love God. You need to love yourself. You can't love others unless you love yourself. Loving ourselves is a really difficult thing, all right? Because
Right? You know, you got to love yourself first. And it's a, it's a, there's some truth in it, but it's very dangerous. All right? But it's not in the Bible to love ourselves. All right? God loves us. His love for us is sufficient. (Romans 8:38-39) We're to take care of ourselves. But love yourself really. (2 Timothy 2:2-5) If you, I mean, it depends. What you're looking at is love, but it's doing what's, what's best for yourself, no matter how you feel. Now, if you're going to say, well, I'm going to do what's best for my body no matter how I feel, that's a good thing. because you're taking care of your body. (Ephesians 5:29) Why? Because it's a temple of the Holy Spirit. (I Cor 6:19) And it was given to you as a gift by God. (Psalm 139:14) God, you gave me this gift, I'm going to take care of it. Okay? If that's the purpose for loving your body because it's a gift, then that's great. AUDIENCE: Well, I mean, it does specify that our body is our temple and to cherish the temple, Right? Right. Exactly right. So we're, so we're doing it, but why? Remember what I just said? Does it fit on top of the foundation? Okay? Does it fit on top of the foundation? And the foundations are loving God and loving others? That's what Jesus summed it all up, okay? If loving yourself fits into that, in other words, if I take really good care of myself, I'm going to be able to go, if I work hard for the next six months and really take care of my body, I'm going to be able to go out in this mission field in Africa and do this work because I'm getting old and I’ve got to get myself in order and I’ve got to take care of myself. So I'm going to really love my body for the next six months. Why? Because I love God and he's giving me a calling and I need to do it because it fits the goal. All right? So I can get more into that later. But I'm going to say, we’ve got to be careful about loving ourselves if it doesn't have a purpose on, in, in, in God and what he's had for us. And so I just encourage any of you who really think that's the case, go find scripture that talks about loving yourself. AUDIENCE: There’s one that says, still love your neighbor even as you love yourself. Right? Okay, so we in the flesh, we love ourselves too much, right? Okay. We, in other words,
AUDIENCE: I don't love myself that much. How am I going to love them? Okay? You need to know how much God loves you. (1 John 3:1) Oh, okay. All right. All right.
(1 Thessalonians 3:12) Oh, all right. If you could think of it with money, for example, if you, for whatever reason, whether you're working hard or you come into more money than you need to live on, you have an overflowing, I mean, you can go hoard it, right? You have an overflowing to be able to share with others. It overflows out of you when, when it talks about love, love your neighbor as yourself, okay?
All of us do. I do. I mean, it comes down to me and you and one of us going to suffer. I'm going to go, I don't want this pain, dude, you go, you go do that hard job, you know? Oh, you know, I'm, I mean, naturally, I'm always going to love myself. I'm always going to say what's best for Rick. It's just natural. It's, it's just, it's our human nature. It's everything. It's our flesh to take care of ourselves. And so I believe what that scripture you're saying is,
You're always looking out for what's best for you. In the same way, you're always looking out for what's best for you, look out for what, for what's best for them. In the same way, you're looking out for what's best for you, look out for what's best for them. We know what love is.
Agape Love is doing what's best for the other person, no matter how you feel. It's doing what's best for the other person. So we walk in this foundation and the foundation is we're here to love God and love others. We take care of ourselves. We do those things as necessary to do those things. But when you wake up in the morning, when you're going throughout the day and you say, you say, what's your purpose here? And sometimes you guys, you could feel purposelessness because you say, well, what, what do I have in life? You know, I don't have a job and I don't have this and I don't have my family together. And you can think of all the things you don't have. You can do that and get really depressed about it, okay? If you want to go there, think of all the things you don't have.
okay? So you have a label given to you by the king of the universe and you’re children of the king of the universe. And
And I'm telling you, the people out there that have the things that most of us wish we could have in life, like I say, health and prosperity and all the different things, say it would be nice to have all that stuff. They don't have their purpose. I don't mean none of them, but they're so caught up in the world and in their things that they've lost sight, they, they've lost sight of their purpose. (Ecclesiastes 5:9-10) They've lost sight of the reason they're here. And the reason you're here is to love God and love others. That is your whole purpose. And when you get that ingrained where that is what you wake up in the morning to do, that's what you go through the day to do as you're going throughout the day, is to, is to serve others. (1 Peter 4:10) When you make a nice meal for people, you take all that time, all those hours to say, I want to bless others with this good food. And so when you're doing those things, you're always thinking, how can I bless others? (1 Peter 3:8-9) How can I take others to a better place? What can I do? You know, give a smile. So it's important you meet up with people. Smile. You know, if,
At least let it flow out with a smile. It brightens up people's day.
Okay, seek me and you'll know me. Right? Seeking means you're going around looking right. I'm looking. It's, you take energy. It doesn't like, well God, where, where, where are you? Seek! Lord, what's the answer?
AUDIENCE: Seek and your shall receive. All right? That's what he wants you to do with all of our hearts. (Jer 29:13) He wants us to go to him. And as we go, build that love relationship with God. And he already has the love for us. (1 John 4:10) The idea is, the two things we're supposed to do. And like for Seth who just became a believer recently and all of us here, you never look at it and say, well, I need to learn a bunch of stuff before I can get this figured out. It's really simple. That's another one of Satan's lies. Love God, love others. Yep. Okay. What's that number? Number two here. The foundation for our life is God's love and his power.
It's number three, love God, love others. That's it. It's that simple.
You don't need to read any of the rest of the Bible. Should you read the Bible? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. You should, but you don't need to. You okay? But don't, don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. You don't need to understand what God wants for you. Because Jesus said he summed up the law and the commands in this simple thing. Love the Lord your God with your heart and soul and love others like yourself. Love your neighbor like yourself. He summed it all up. (Matt 22:37-40) Okay? He's trying to make it simple. So I say things sometimes like you don't need it just to wake you guys up. Alright? And so don't take out, oh, Rick said we don't need the Bible. Don't, don't go there. Obviously, I've memorized all in the Bible. I think it's pretty important to have, but don't believe the lie that because you don't understand the Bible enough that you can't walk with God right. That's what I'm saying. Bring it. Don't use that lie that says, "Well, you just haven't been a Christian long enough; you don't know enough, so you can't figure out what you're supposed to do." No. It's real simple. Give glory to God and show love to others. What's love? Agape love. You know what a really good definition for agape love is?
See, there's all kinds of different love. Okay? There's a love you have for ice cream, love you have is sexual love. There's brotherly love. Philleo love is a brotherly love. There's agape love. When the Bible says, husbands love your wives and love your enemies, it doesn't, it's not the Philleo love. It's not to have good feelings for. It's agape love. It's the same thing. Agape love the same love when, "For God so loved the world." Same word throughout there. It's the same word. That's the word that's most commonly used in the Bible. And the best definition, I'll have to write this out some time for you guys, but it is simple. Okay? And, and do what's best for the other person. Amen. No matter how you feel. Amen.
So when Jesus went to the cross and died for us, that's what he did. For God so loved the world, he said, what's best for them? And what did Jesus say? Can you take this from me? (Luke 22:42-44) Is there any way for me to get out of this? He didn't feel like going to the cross, right? He didn't have. And, and it, so when it says love your enemies, it doesn't mean have good feelings towards your enemy. Do what's best for them. Right? And sometimes what's best for a brother isn't just sweetness and kindness and all this stuff. It's a hard word, dude. You need to get your act together. You got to quit swearing at people. You got to quit going smacking on people. Okay? You got to stop doing that. Alright? I'm not saying Van's doing that. I don't know what he does when I'm not around. But if, hey, that was real, you take it now. And so that's love. All right?
Okay? So understand that's what that love means. And so we can do that. But here's the really hard part.
What's that? Well, I'm just going to figure it out. What'd you say? What God told you to do?
Because we don't know, especially us guys, when it comes to the ladies, loving your wives. Oh my gosh, figuring it out. You've got to be kidding. You do one thing one day, it works. You do the same thing the next day It doesn't work. Well, what am I supposed to do? Did you not? Good luck. I haven't figured that one out. All I do is I do my best, right? (Rom 12:18) I do my best to love my wife. I do my best to do what's best for her. And then the chips fall where they do. And she'll get like two months later say, yeah, I was really cranky, wasn't I? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You know, and nothing I could say was going to work. Oh, well that doesn't mean I don't do it; doesn't mean you don't do it.
So, before I go on to reading some stuff from the scripture and go over that with you, I want to just go over the absolute most important foundation. If you don't hear anything else in all my teaching, you've heard this before, okay? I'm not sharing something new, but I want you to hear it.
You have two purposes in your life that you're supposed to do. Who knows what those two things you're supposed to do are?
AUDIENCE: Love God and love others.
Who said that? Right on. That's it. A okay.
Love God. Love others. Love God. Love others. Love God. Love others. (Matt 22:37-40) That's it. Now, I don't want you to raise hands, but
You don’t need to raise your hands. Just think, okay. Like the whole day, you didn't go through and say, oh, I'm really, my goal here is supposed to be loving God and loving others. Or the day before or maybe for a week or whatever.
AUDIENCE: There's definitely been times.
It's what?
AUDIENCE: There's definitely been times that I haven't.
Sure, of course, sure. But this is,
And we're, we're doing what we're not meant to do. And it just doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's not working for us. It doesn't work for, for what he wants in the kingdom. It doesn't work for God's church. And you think you've got a different way that works, but it doesn't work in the end. It absolutely doesn't. None of the things.
and saved their money and done some things for themselves and take advantage of all kinds of people to do all kinds of things and, and gotten really rich and gotten really powerful, and ask them how they're doing. You know, really, "How's it working for you?"
Like Dr. Phil said, "How's it working for you?"
Well, no. Why? Well, I mean, I've got my yacht and I got this, and I'm alone here. I don't know if my friends really care about me. My wife left me. And, uh, my kids don't respect me. They're all, they're all, they, they don't have jobs. They all come to me for money. Well, yeah, you trained them not to work their whole life. What do you expect? Gave them everything. You know?
And, and you know what, and I worked at, worked in my job, worked in my career, and hardly saw my kids. And now they're all grown. And they don't, they don't think I'm a good dad, so I don't see the grandkids. And I mean, it's, it's not a fulfilled life because
Love God (Matt 22:37), love others (Matt 22:39). That's your purpose in this life, to love, to respond to His love.
But the the concept is there is that God wants us focused on him. He wants us to be, He wants to know that He's our everything because He is our everything, okay? He wants us to be in our dreams and our thinking and our relations with other people.
When some guys have come over to work for me, and it hasn't, it's been a while, but they mess some stuff up sometimes and they're not paying attention or they're not trying hard or something going on. SPEAKER JOKES WITH AUDIENCE MEMBER Well, particularly some particular people. I won't say their names, but no... and I want to call them out, right? I want to call them out right then, and I stop. And this is an important thing to do.
And it's not many of the times, it's not going to be what they need is a correction of how to do something better. (Col 3:13) Sometimes I'll say, "Hey, didn't I tell you this? Let's do this here." and try to say it in gentleness. I want to just say, "I just said to do this and you did that. What's going on? Are you thinking?" I mean, trust me, I can be very condescending and I can be very to the, the matter of fact, I can call out exactly. It's,
and I can speak the truth without love, really Well, okay?
(Eph 4:15) and the way we do it is we have to stop what's going to come out natural. And "Lord, what does this person need at the time?" Because you know, it's not about you if Jesus is your everything. (Phil 3:8) To be able to say whatever you feel like saying that makes you feel like you're all that because they're not doing the job right? And you're going to say, "Hey, you know, I'm the man, I'm calling you out." And then you feel a little powerful there. See,
at that moment. And it's not easy because everything inside you wants to say, "Get your act together!" Now, trust me, there are times we do that because we see that the person's capable. We see the person's not trying. We see the person being lazy, and, but there's still a way to challenge them in a positive way to do a better thing. But it's not going to necessarily be comfortable for them, but it's what they need to hear. Okay? But that's how the awakening happens. NOTE: "The Awakening" was a song that was played prior to service. Be we don't want… Most of us have had dads who were verbally abusive in some way. Not they, they didn't train us in kindness. And the way as positive to do. We don't need to be hearing that from our brothers and sisters. We don't need to be using that same dialogue that the parents gave us.
Amen. And he is love. And we speak the truth in love.
What does the word love mean?
Okay? All right. So that's how we deal with others.
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