Spiritual Insights & Focus For 2024 (Part 1) Seven Focus Areas - Rod Mills

Each year, we pray and seek the Lord for His guidance, insights, and direction for the upcoming year. This teaching is an overview of some of the prophetic insights God is highlighting to the AeroNova spiritual family for the year 2024 and beyond.

​





Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):




​Today is the second installment on this teaching that we started doing last week. And I struggle with what to call it. But I'm really calling it holy passion, divine contentment in the supernatural happiness, which is joy.
And last week, we started it on Joy Sunday on Advent Joy Sunday, which if you remember what in the lighting of the candles is not the purple candle, it's the pink candle. And it really illustrates in the Advent season, then in the midst of are waiting it so much in the midst of endurance in the midst of almost monotony every week, it's the same color candle, it's the same color candle, and then boom, in the week of joy, it's the pink candle to illustrate that in the midst of our waiting our lives are characterized by supernatural happiness. Now I've heard people teach joy is not happiness. But actually if you look it up in the Greek Lexicon, Joy is also called happiness, but it's not earthly happiness. It's more than that. It's a happiness that comes because of God's presence in our lives because of who we are. And because of the way we are loved by Him, and the significance that we hold in his heart. And so last week, we talked about this and introduced this, this idea. And we spent some time in Hebrews chapter 13. And I'm going to return there, and we'll springboard off that passage of scripture. But I'm gonna reread it today for your memory. And then today is the fourth Sunday of Advent. And so it slides into love. And what's interesting about the love thing, is the whole reason why the Hebrews writer shows us that we have this deep contentment is because of the presence of God in our lives. And later, I'm talking about the relational presence, the relationship. So let's read I'll read Hebrews chapter 13. I'll reread from the same passage last week, verses one through five. The writer says, Let brotherly love continued, do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels. Remember the prisoners as if chained with them, those who are mistreated, since you yourselves are also in the body. Marriage is honorable among all in the bed undefiled. But fornicators and adulterers, God will judge let your conduct be without and he says covetousness let it be without covetousness as interesting because his next words are be content with such things as you have for because he himself has said this is his reason why you will be content, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So the writer of Hebrews does some interesting, he takes covetousness and he takes contentment. And he goes, here's both of now they're opposites, these two are opposites. Now what that what does that mean? If I am not content, I will probably gravitate toward covetousness all of us have believers have been pulled into this covetousness snare, where what we have is not enough. The grass is greener on the other side. And the enemy comes along. And he tries to get us dissatisfied with this dissatisfied with our house dissatisfied with our job dissatisfied with our spouse, this satisfied with where we are in life. This satisfied with the season we're in dissatisfied with our pay, dissatisfied with you name it, you fill in the blank, because the enemy knows if he can get us dissatisfied. That covetousness starts to kick in and pulls us away from the heart of God and into a whole lot of bad stuff. So he tells us be content with such things as you have. And then he tells you, here's your power for contentment. He says For I will never leave you nor forsake you. He's quoting from another passage in the Old Testament, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And you say, man, what does that have to do with contentment? That was my first response. When I was studying this passage, this go around, I'm like, wait a minute. What does that have to do with contentment? And I use this illustration, think back some of you who've been married a while think back to when you were first married, and you fell in love. And there was a certain contentment that came with the relationship. Now a healthy relationship, if it keeps growing, that contentment will actually grow and intensify over the years, if it's a healthy relationship. But if you remember back to those days, remember how poor you were. And remember, you're like, Man, I don't care what job I, you know, like, I'll work any job, we just get to be together. You know it? Well, we have to live in a dump, you know, or we have to live in this little tiny apartment or whatever, it didn't matter. We're together, we're together and the love that's in the relationship produces this contentment. That is a God ordained thing. Now in this passage is very interesting because he kind of, in my, in my estimation, he draws a picture of a pyramid. Before he gets to the word or the teaching on contentment. He kind of builds it in these five verses. And he says, he starts with brotherly love. And he tells you to, to Let brotherly love continue. So he's saying, hey, that he starts with the foundation, this relationship between brothers and sisters, that is family members, right? Family members that are healthy family members that love each other as family, family members that look after each other family members who care. I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper. My kids will tell you that growing up, I wanted to know where they were, even when they were older. Even when they were teenagers. I wanted to know they were okay. Did somebody check on him? Are they all right? And then when we get married, we have a spouse that looks after us. But that brotherly love that says Hey Brad, are you doing okay, I want to know that you're all right. You see, and we get to know each other at the heart level so that we can read each other we don't always just have to do it vocally we can, we can read one another's hearts. Then the writer of Hebrews goes to the next one, he talks about marital love. And then just in case you're mistaken, or don't know, he goes to physical marital love, sexual love in this passage. And then he goes to contentment and says, the presence of God, that ultimately he says, for which in a Greek means because he says I will never leave you forsake you. And he gives us the divine relationship. And this is the key to contentment, and fulfillment enjoy. Now, ultimately, that is the core of contentment and happiness and joy is starts with our relationship with God. If this is not present or healthy, that God shaped hole will be lacking inside of us. When he says I will never leave you nor forsake you. He's talking to the people who know God. He's talking to people who are in relationship with Him. Together with him. He's not just talking about someone who happens to be in the omnipresence of God, that's everybody. Right? There's a lot of people God is not relationally with because they don't want him there. That doesn't mean he's not physically in the room or you know, spiritually in the room or that he doesn't see or that he's not omnipresent. But there's a difference here, there's a promise to God's people. He says, I am walking with you now, guys, I remember the days of darkness in my life, when I was not walking with God, and God was not walking with me. He was still looking over me. But I, my life was different. My life was empty. My life lacked this promise in verse five, because it hadn't happened yet. And so this fulfillment that comes from this relationship, we must get back to this. If we are to experience the joy in the fulfillment. You can pursue these other relationships also. And they'll bring a certain amount of fulfillment, but they will never bring the fulfillment that the core will. The reason why I call this a pyramid is because we have many people like the bottom of the pyramid, we have many relationships we're brothers and sisters with, but we have one marriage relationship, if you're married, and if you're not married, it's okay. Because then we have this relationship with God, where he says I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we talked about this quite a bit, just the power of contentment and how it happens. And we spent the whole study last time in Psalm chapter 16. And I encourage you to go back and listen to that. For review. I encourage you to take a look at what was interesting about this is David gives a whole list of these promises that flow out from this relationship of knowing God. And when we get into these matters, it is a challenge because If we only take what we already knew at face value, we will not learn anything. But if we go, Okay, Lord, I know what I've learned about this so far. Now, what do you want to teach me? What I have found is most of the time, the things that God teaches us next are actually deeper, more mysterious and more powerful than the things he taught me before about the same thing. And then I say this after years, so then I go look at it again. And the Lord takes me back. And he takes me deeper into the mystery of the love of God. And in this love, not only is it in my mind, but he captures my heart in ways that he didn't capture it before. So one of the most dangerous attitudes in the Christian faith is to say, Yeah, I've already learned that. Now, we don't say that out loud. Right. But we sure do think it sometimes we can. Oh, yeah, I pass. Rob. I've heard this before. You know, okay, I'm listening. But we're not talking about listening. We're talking about examining. We're talking about getting the microscope and the telescope out and saying, Okay, God, what do you want to show me next, reveal your mysteries to me? Create in me a hunger that I didn't have before. I have a question for you today. What is stealing your hunger?


What? Stealing your hunger? What's taken that? In other words, you guys have raised kids, you know, what happens is if it's getting close to mealtime, and the kids are like, ah, can I have that candy? Or can I have that? Bah, bah, bah, you're like, No, you can't. And the reason why is not because you don't want them to have any candy. It's because you don't want them to skip their dinner. You want them to get their dinner? And what's going to happen if they have that chocolate egg. Right? They're gonna be like, I'm not hungry, Mom, I'm not hungry. And so what ends up happening is they don't get the good stuff. They don't get the good meal, because they were satisfied on something else. And the Lord is just teaching us now. Hey, in 2024, especially as we move forward into the coming years, let's purpose in our hearts not to eat before dinner. Can you hear what God's saying? purpose in our hearts, not to be satisfied on things that are less than full in God. In other words, if there are things that are distracting me, or or stealing my appetite, God, come and give me the wisdom to set that aside so that I can focus on you and develop my appetite for him. You know, the amazing thing is just like with your kids, after they eat their dinner, you go, okay, now's a good time to have your dessert. This is a good time. Because now you've gotten this the good stuff, you've gotten the healthy stuff. And so my prayer for us is that we will cultivate hunger. And you guys know right now, if you if I go if I just say to everybody listening right now say, Okay, I want you to do this exercise with me. On the count of three, I want you to increase your hunger by 10 times are you ready? 123. And it doesn't matter how hard you try. You're not going to increase your hunger. It doesn't work that way. Same is true with hunger for God. The hunger for God comes by smelling the presence of the Lord seeking the presence of the Lord, hearing and being moved by the presence of the Lord with me on this. Literally, we press into God, and we sit until we gaze and say God, what is it that you want to say to me this morning? What is it that you want to do? What is on your heart, one of my favorite prayers I pray? Every morning I say, Lord, my first question after I greet the Lord in the morning, my first question is, Lord, what is on your heart today? That's that's the first question I asked almost every day, Lord, what is on your heart today? And many times, it's very personal. Many times what the Lord has to say next is personal. And man, I can't explain it guys, but there is a movement of God's presence into my soul that causes deep satisfaction that I cannot make up on my own. And nothing in my life no matter how great it is, can do what God's presence can do. But if I busy myself with the fun stuff before this, it's like eating dessert before dinner, and it will steal my appetite from the things of God Now I'll tell you this is the danger of success. I've watched it. And I've lived through many cycles of success in my life. And one of my mentors years ago, he told me, he said, Listen, this when I was really young in the Lord, he said, anytime you have a victory, or a major accomplishment in the Lord, you need to run back to the altar. Because he said, that's when the enemy will strike, and try to take you down. And he started giving me certain passages of Scripture where this happened to people. And I'm not teaching on this today, maybe we'll teach on this this coming year. But the point was, is that when we have a certain success, when we have a certain accomplishment, when we crossed milestones, there's something in the flesh that goes, Oh, you can just sit back and relax now and, and when you think about it, the key to relaxing is peace. You know, that's not the way to go. It's like, okay, double back to the Lord. Anytime you cross a milestone, you have a victory or anything, double back to the Lord and say, Okay, Lord, I want to connect with you. But I can't produce hunger just like you couldn't a few minutes ago by just going, oh, you can't make that hunger. Now, there's some food cooking for the, for the coming meal. As that aroma starts to rise and you haven't been eating, you'll start to get hungry, right? And as you look at the food, you'll start to get hungry. So if we're looking toward the Lord, and we deny ourselves other things to say, Okay, God, I'm focusing on you, that hunger will start to rise in our spirits, and it will start to rise for him. And so my prayer for us is that we will be people of Hebrews chapter 13, verse five, will really for one through five, right, because we want to walk in the fullness of those relationships, and the end, the fullness and the end the fulfillment that comes from them. I want to read, I want to read from this guy, I loved what he said, I didn't agree with all of his theology, he's got some interesting, that's another story, some things but this, this praise from the 1700s. He really had something intriguing that I just wanted to read to you. And this guy was interesting. He started out as a lawyer in Italy. And by the time he was 28, he had been a really successful lawyer. And then he lost his first case. And it kind of just brought his world down because he realized he was like, Man, I'm not happy. I don't want to live my whole life this way and die. And so he really began to pursue the Lord. And he became disillusioned with his success and the emptiness of his life as a young lawyer in his late 20s. And he began to pursue God. And this is what he said, I want to read this and he quotes someone else too, and I'll quote them with it. He says, without the assurance of faith, could anyone have believed that an omnipotent God, Lord of all, and supremely happy in himself, was capable of loving human beings to the extent of appearing to be out of his mind in love with them? Now this guy, his name was Alphonsus de la Gauri. He reached this point where he started realizing God is out of his mind in love with me, at least that's what it looks like. When you look at where he is and his position and why he has. There's nothing really truly rational in our minds that can reason how God could love us so much to do what he's done. And yet he has chosen to be what looks like to be irrationally in love with us. And you look at some of the decisions if you look at God's decisions, through the lens and the calculus of the way we logic things. Most people would go, I don't understand that. Until we understand love, and we think back when halves that love overwhelmed you in you know, even in any way you go, Wait a minute, it wasn't irrational. It was I mean, it wasn't rational. It was like irrational, because it's driven more by the heart. He said, We see wisdom become a fool. No, actually, he quotes Lawrence Justinian, who says we see wisdom, become a fool, through the excess of love.


And then he quotes another woman who at the time and one of his contemporaries, and she says yes, she says, Jesus, you are insane in love with me like the the experience of the love of God. These people were not quoting theological facts. Do you see what I'm saying? They were feeling it and experiencing the love of God. And she's like Jesus, you You're insane in love with me, I will say it and I will go on repeating it forever. You're insane in love with me, because she was so moved by the love of God. And another another brother in the early church in the very early church described it this way. So this is not insanity. But the ordinary effect of divine love is to make lovers go beyond themselves and give themselves totally to the person of their love. This divine yearning brings ecstasy so the lover belongs no longer to themselves, but to the one they love. Now, does that remind you of something we talked about last week, when Paul talked about the marriage relationship, remember, and he says, The man does not belong to himself, but to his wife, the wife, not to herself, but to the husband. There's an exchange of ownership in the marriage covenant. That is an image of what God does in us when he says over and over in the Scripture, we'll look at one of those passages today from Jeremiah, where he says, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. In other words, please, we have to strand sin, the world of intellectual theological facts into the world of the heart realm. Because if we only describe this as theological facts, we will miss the heart of God, God sin, I give myself to you, with all my heart, I give myself to you. And he calls for us to do the same. And when we do that, there's a surrender. There's like this love or like, we're like these people were reading and go, Oh, my gosh, I am. I am taken by your love, Lord, and how much you love me. You know, when I was young


the people who love me the most in my life, I only understood one ounce of the depth. I knew they cared about me. And I called it love. But now that I'm older, I realized that the depth of their love for me, was so deep. And I look back on my feeble mind and heart in those days. And I had no idea. I had no idea how much they loved me. I, I had no concept of how much they loved me.


And now my life is so richer, to know it to feel it. Now, of course, I'm still growing in it. But to think something is announced deep to find out, it's 100 feet, 1000 feet. I'm like, Oh, my goodness. And so the the difference is in one, when I was young, I knew it as a fact. But when I'm older, I understand it as an experience. And I understand it more like, yeah, I feel that now for my own family. And I can tell you, as a grandfather, and as a father, I'm very mindful that my grandchildren do not understand how much I love them. But listen to what I'm telling you. And some of my kids are here today. But I want to tell you this, please hear my heart. My kids do not know how much I love them. But they will. They will. Because this is something we grow into. And like we talked earlier, before we started the recording today, part of our preparation for the coming of the Lord as Trees of Righteousness is to grow. In each year that ring grows and grows. What is that growth, guys, it's not just a growth of more knowledge. Some of the worst places to be in Christianity is to have more knowledge, without the heart experience that goes with it. Because it steals our understanding of what is true. There are some things where I'm better off ignorant than to know it in my head and not in my heart. I'm more dangerous if I know it up here, and I don't know in here in the heart. And so I pray God, teach me by revelation and experience. And you guys heard me say this many times. Knowledge is to know something revelation is to see it and experience is to feel and experience it. Right. And so there are different levels of learning, but the very nature of walking with God, guys is hard stuff. I think God for the head stuff you guys know, I love learning and stuff. But learning up here is so boring. If it doesn't play out, I don't want to read about God, I don't want to read about my wife, I don't want to read about my grandchildren, I want to be with them. I want to be with them. I want to know them. I want to know what's in their hearts, so that I can serve them and love them. And you know, love, loves to give love loves to give love, the very nature of the love of God is giving. And people look at God, and they hear his words, and they hear his commands Christians and non Christians. And they think that God is trying to take something from them, because they're looking at him through their fallen mentality. Because that's the way humans are. And God when God calls you to give something to surrender something, he's trying to get you to exchange something. He's like, Hey, I've got something for you. Give me your penny. And you're like, oh, no, I want my penny God. It's only penny I got I want this penny. And God's like, No, give it up. Have you ever had the Lord tell you to give something up? And what happened? I tell you, if you wait long enough, when the Lord tells you to give something up, he just had something else to give you in exchange for it. But there are certain things he cannot give you unless you surrender right? May God give us in this next year, May the Lord give us a revelation of His heart like we've never had before. Because the love the heart, love of God takes over. And it says just like it was described by one of these in the 1700s that we want to surrender we got like God, how can I give something more of my heart in my life to You know, Friends, if we have seasons of our life that we don't feel this way. There's nothing wrong with you. Remember this, if you're lacking in your hunger for God, if you find that you're in a season of life where where you don't want to surrender where God wants you to know, first of all, there's nothing wrong with you. But there might be something wrong with what you're doing. And so God's saying, Hey, quit eating your candy before dinner, and you hope you understand the metaphors like, set aside this other stuff. You know, and I'm god, what God will do is he will cause that hunger to ignite in our hearts. When we gaze upon him we spend time with him will start to smell the food will start to see the beauty and the attraction is overwhelming. And then the love kicks in because the love and the contentment go together. That's why the Hebrews writer in verse five said, For I will never leave you nor forsake you. He's quoting the Lord himself. So he knows this is the secret to contentment. Man, do you guys love this? It's critical to understand that loving God and the cultivation of burning desire for him is a passion that is developed. It's not you can't do this, like you do push ups. Because with push ups, you do them you just try harder and you do more push ups, right? That's the way we've been taught a lot of us. We just taught if it's not working, try harder. If it's not working, try harder. But some of us have tried harder, tried harder, tried harder, tried harder in different areas of life. And it didn't work, did it? And so we think God, you're not hearing me or that or this doesn't work. And it's like, no, God's got a different way of doing it. It means I need to learn and grow. It's not original to our flesh, there's something wrong, that it's not original to our flesh. There. There's this thinking that there's something wrong with you. If you don't feel this way, don't listen to that lie. Don't listen to it. We're all made in the image of God and we're all susceptible to the same love of God, the capturing of our hearts by him. Each and every one of us is.


Let's talk just for a few minutes before we close how this transformation to passionate deep love and its holy contentment happens. Now sometimes I found that pastors, teachers, ministers, people in the house of God, they tell us what to do. But they don't always tell us how do I do this and this is why it's so important to me to always talk about the how to in all of our time Teachers and ministers, everybody encouraged you don't just say what people should do talk about how to do it. It's so important. Some of the scriptures that I've read, they seem cliche, because you've heard them so many times. And yet, until we go deeper, sometimes we can't get the application that God's wanting to do. So that's back to what we were talking about earlier, of going deeper, and experiencing the deeper elements of God's spirit in that truth. Now, here's the danger. Let's talk about sin for a minute. Sin will harden the heart. It's not just candy before dinner, sin will harden the heart, sin will steal our ability to feel in our hearts, if we start to harbor anger, we start to harbor bitterness, we start to harbor lust, we start to harbor different feelings of envy. Any of these things, what happens is very quickly, the heart, it's like leaving bread out in Colorado, it starts getting hard, really fast. And it'll start to harden very swiftly in that environment. And then what happens is, we can't feel anymore, not like we should. And we're like, God, what's wrong, you know, are irritable about this, and we're irritable about that. And Nathan, and I can't feel your Lord. And sin will do that to you. So very important in this process to deal appropriately with sin, because it is your enemy, it will cause the callousness of the heart to grow very rapidly. And guys, I know I teach this all time, I'm a teacher at 100,000. More times, you and I cannot do this on our own. We must stay engaged with each other, encouraging one another, we must engage with each other speaking into one another's life that we've seen just recently, we've seen more people falling and sin and morale and all this kind of stuff, I'll tell you, when you when they go back and do the autopsy, I promise you there's going to be something they find. And what is going to be as a lack of a close Heart to Heart relationships with people I'm talking about at the transparency level at the sin confession level, at the level where you say, Man, pray for me, I'm struggling with this, or I've got that, or I've got a hindrance here, or I need victory. And there's an obstruction here, or this relationships not working. We have to have people around us with these kinds of relationships. Because if we don't have those, we're vulnerable to the enemy. And there's a whole lot of times when the enemy attacks, what's the temptation? What do people do? Come on, we got some preachers out here, pull away. Isolate. Yeah. Fight. Yeah, strike back. And then when you strike back, what happens it puts a barrier in the relationship. The enemy wants to isolate and fix you, by yourself. That's what he's trying to do. Because he knows, as long as that hand is connected to your arm, the bloods going to flow, the healing is going to come. But if he can get that hand to separate, if he can sever your relationships, from the key people in your life, that bring those nutrients to you, then he's got you where he wants you. And I've seen it happen to the most spiritual people. I've seen it happen to the most successful people. You've seen it happen to people time and time again, this is not rocket science. It's actually very simple. And that's why some people miss it, because it's simply they're looking for something complicated. We looked at the the a few weeks back, we looked at John six, I'm gonna look at it again. No one could, Jesus says, No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him. This is so much more than an invitation to be a Christian. Now, that's it is an invitation to be a Christian. But Jesus didn't say for all of those who need to be saved. He didn't add those words that caveat on the end. He's saying that we cannot come to God unless the Father is drawing us. We cannot come to God unless unto Jesus unless the Father is drawing us to him. This is the father drawing us into a holy union into the pleasure of His presence in knowing him, which exceeds all these other earthly pleasures. So for the first few few years that I was walking with the Lord, I thought this was a one time deal. Like okay, the Lord drew me to Jesus, I gave my life to him. And then within a few years, I started figuring out like, why The minute what's this? I'm feeling like, I feel like the Lord is drawing me again. And you know, in my early years I was in a Baptist church, and pretty much the only invitation they gave every Sunday was for salvation. And the Holy Spirit's drawing me. And I'm like, he's drawing me to get closer to him. And so pretty soon people are like, Man, how many times are you gonna get saved? Because I go up over and over and over and over and over and over, and they're like, man, what's going on? And I'm like, I don't know. I just feel Lord drawing me closer. Like, I need to go up here and probably need to get closer. Because the Lord is drawing me. And so recognize let's pay attention, put your Put your glasses on and look and see where and when is the Lord drawing me? A lot of times, he's closer than you think he is. A lot of times, he's gone. Did you see that? Like, many times, the Lord would be like, Did you Did you notice that and I'm like, Whoa, now I'm learning to hear and see more when he's speaking and impressing upon me his relational interaction. And so he draws us. And we need Lord give us eyes to see the drawing of the Lord. And I like the way James says it in James four, eight, he just says, draw nearer to God, and He will draw near to you. Like he's like, I love this. You take a step toward God, he takes 100 steps toward you. You take 10 steps toward God, he takes 1000 steps, you take 100 steps, he takes 10,000. Like, as soon as I've noticed, if I draw near, and I go, Lord, that's why I like to pray that prayer. I told you in the mornings when I get up, I like to get my coffee first. And I sit down and I get my coffee and the lights are low. Sometimes I have the fireplace on the winter. And I say Good morning, father. Good morning, Jesus. Good morning, Holy Spirit, and it calibrates me, my facial my facial countenance toward the Lord. And I say, Lord, what's on your heart. Now I'm engaging God. And guess what God engages back. The most important person in all the universe and all of time and all the things outside of time, the most important person has time for you. And so I don't want to take it for granted. Every day, I want to set that appointment with him. Because then the rest of the day I find myself connected with him. And I pray that this will be ours. You say, Rod, you're not teaching me anything I didn't already know. I tell you, the Holy Spirit wants to teach you something you didn't know. He wants to take you into an interaction with him that you didn't have. He wants to put his finger on sin in your life that you didn't even know was there or you weren't paying attention and go, Hmm, I noticed there's a hard spot here in your heart. Are you forgiving this person, and he's not doing it to embarrass you. He's doing it to set you free. He's doing it to make that heart so soft, that he can counsel you and bring you into things that you otherwise would never enter into this heart of the Father.


He goes on and James forward, he says after he says drawn nearer to God and He would draw nearer to you. He even tells you some other things you can do on how to do that. He says cleanse your hand sinners and purify your hearts double minded. And some people say man, he's talking to the unbelievers. No, he's not. This is a letter to the church. It's pretty rough. Because there's another place I think it's in this chapter where he goes adulterers and adulterous, it's the addresses them and he's like, in a starts talking to him. And what he's saying is, hey, look where you are spiritually, and remove these things and draw near to the Lord. And he tells us how to do it, Cleanse your hands, purify your hearts. And I love this because God takes us From Glory to Glory, from faith to faith, from hope to hope, from tree ring to tree ring. He grows us up into those great trees of righteousness to prepare us for the coming age. Because that's what this is all about. We are all babies in the womb of this creation. And the formation of the child in the womb is critical to the destiny that is to come. This is why Jesus emphasizes so much our faithfulness in our works in this life, so that we do not enter the next life maimed and unprepared for God's destiny. And I mentioned this before, I don't remember the last few weeks. I can't remember or what context it was. But there will be people, I believe, who will shudder and be shaken in the age to come because of what they could have had and could have been. But because of the lack of fadeless, they didn't understand that they were circumventing their development in the womb of this life. The scripture, someone says what passage talks about this, he says that the whole creation is in birth pains right now he's given us this imagery of this temporal age as the womb of the age to come and have the creation to come in our development in this womb is absolutely essential, because we get so wrapped up in our destiny and our profession, and our calling, and all these things in this life. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a nine month deal here. This is a nine month deal. We're talking about the rest of our lives in eternity. And God is pressing us to prepare for the age to come in the true destiny that you and I are called to. And for us to be prepared for it, we must be knit in heart to heart with the king and knit in heart to heart with one another, so that the enemy does not have one place in us. So he cannot have an ounce. Don't give him an inch, don't give him a centimeter. Don't give him a millimeter of your heart. And you say, Rod, that's hard to do. Yeah, but you got God right there with you. He's gonna go, you'll put his finger on this. And he'll put his finger on that. Let him convict you. Somebody told me the other day they go in, I think it might have been calling I can't remember who was sharing. There's a man convicted when it's such a harsh word, you know, you know, in our day, and time convict means like, convicted in court or something, you know, the Holy Spirit convicts to remove it. Right? He convicts it to set us free. And we're living in an age when people want to just change what's true, that won't work. It won't work. It got we have to say, God, where is it? And what do I do? How do I cleanse my heart? How do I purify cleanse my hands? How to purify my heart? How do I move from glory to glory, so that my soul begins to feast upon foods that were never tasted in God. That's my prayer. You know, when when the kids were young, Beth was, I don't remember all the meals we had, but the girls became teenagers. And our life changed. Because they started finding all these recipes and found out man, the girls are like gourmet cooks, like they were teenagers, like young, I don't remember what age you all were. But it was like, all of a sudden, like, man, I've never tasted anything like this before. Do you know that can happen again, and again. And again. And again. And even after we've been alive in God for 1000s of years, and the Lord goes, I got something else for you. And then a million years go by a trillion. Listen, God is never going to get boring. And the fullness of contentment in him is is going to be a renewing thing, where there's always the next season. Just like we always say there's never the end and God, there's never the end. There's always a next chapter, there's always the next season, there's always the next thing, there's always the next ring on the tree, its glory to glory, there's always a greater faith, there's always a greater closeness to God than what we have right now. Or what we will have. There's always more. This is what's so cool about this journey that we're on. Because God says, Hey, if you feel like you've reached a dead end, something's wrong. Let me help you out. Because there's no dead ends in the kingdom. Unless we go off into sin, and that's not the kingdom, right? Jesus visited me in a dream. Some of you've heard me tell this story. In 1991. The Lord Jesus came to me in a dream. And he, it's hard to explain what happened. But in that dream, he came to me and says, I'm showing you how things work. And I saw all these things that I could not explain even to you today, but I saw how they worked and how they moved. But then he turned to me and I saw his face in the love of God came over me like I had never experienced in my life. And I began to cry. Because I was overwhelmed by the love of Jesus. I could see it. I could feel it. Guys, it was more than a dream. It was a visitation. It was so intense. And I began to cry and I began to wait ill, and I woke up in the presence of the Lord's love was so on me. I could feel like healing just flowing through my heart as I was crying, and I was wailing and wailing and wailing, I was crying. And I couldn't stop. And this goes on, and on. And on. And on. And Janae what was a real little you were real little Janae. And Andrew, our oldest son was a little boy, he was probably like, we'll say, would have been two years old. And he came in there. And he's asking Beth, he's like, what's wrong with dad, and he's standing right by the bed and I'm crying, I can't even stop crying because I was overtaken by the love of God. It was transformational. This encounter with the love of Jesus was transformational. And it went on, I don't even know how long I cry. It probably was like an hour or two. It was a long time. And I could not stop. Because I was so overwhelmed with the love of Jesus. A week goes by. And I'm still changed. Like, I still like, I was like, Man, I tell you, I loved my family. I love God, more than I ever possibly could love them before, like a supernatural love came over me. A month goes by. And it didn't go away. year goes by. And it was still there. It didn't leave. It felt like it was getting bigger. 10 years go by. And I still feel it today


was more than a dream. A dream can't do that to a person. But Jesus can.


Think we're close there. I just asked you to know that the Lord's heart. It's like we said last week, we're standing there asking God, we've got our little cup out. And we're saying God, can you give me your love or your faith or your whatever you're asking God for. And, and you think God's going to come up with a picture. And he's going to put pour in whatever it is you're asking for. And so many times in my life, when I look up, there's a dump truck backing up, generator, Fill my cup. That's the way God's giving in love toward me has been all my life. All my life, when I asked the Lord for something, and it seems like a few drops come and I wait. And a few drops come and I wait. And then the next thing you know, I look and there's a dump truck backing up. And he's starting to pour in the love of God and His good grace and goodness, more faith than I ever thought I could ever have in my heart, or more love, or more forgiveness or more of the glory and grace of God just pours out. Lord, we pray and make us people who draw near to you, people who trust you. Lord, as we pull out our little cups, and we ask for more of your love and presence in our life. Help us to see the ocean of your love. That you really, really really want to pour out. Help me let go with those things. anger, unforgiveness, harshness, whatever it is, that have robbed me and kept a lid on my cup. When you're trying to pour out so much. In my life, my family, my spiritual family helped me to walk before you with a pure heart. So that I may be near the heart of Jesus day and night. In Jesus name. Amen.


Thank you for joining us today. Aaron ova is raising up spiritual leaders in many nations through our spiritual enrichment events, syndicated NetCast international prayer Council network and numerous international seminary scholarships to get Other, we are lighting the fires of revival, fueling prayer movements and raising up friends of Jesus in the nations. We invite you to partner with us in this extraordinary movement. You can sign up as a prayer and financial partner today by going to Aaron nola.org and clicking give. Please include your email address so that we can send you updates. That's era nova.org. Click give and become a monthly partner today. Invest in some of the most fertile spiritual soils on the planet and give the gift of faith and love today to those with a deep need and hunger to know God. Their lives will be better because of your generosity and heaven will be greater because of your love. We pray that you will be drawn ever closer in your walk with God and that you will see his dreams unfold in your life in extraordinary ways. Thank you for your faithful prayers and gifts that enable us to take the Friends of Jesus movement to the nations as we watched the rise of the presence of God in His people throughout the earth.