Is it possible to live in such a way that our love and passion for the Lord only increases? In this full sermon, Bill Johnson talks about the importance of maintaining our first love and staying childlike in our approach to the Kingdom. The difficult situations we face in life will either harden our hearts or draw us nearer to the Lord. A hardened heart can still go through the motions of the Christian life, but without a heart of surrender, routine becomes religion. Respond today to this call to return to your first love. May you continually grow in love, joy, and hope as you steward a tender heart of deepening affection for the Lord.

there’s something about first love

that needs to be revisited on a regular

basis for every one of us key verse for

my life is proverbs 4 23 where it says

watch over your heart with all diligence

because from it flow all the issues of

life watch over your heart so monitor

the condition of your heart

[Applause]

hey

please

please be seated wow

i have missed you where have you been my

goodness gracious you just

you sure don’t come very often

actually i think it’s my first time in

like six weeks or so i was scheduled a

few weeks ago and benny had had a real

rough week so

i i chose to stay with her but uh this

week was good and we’re thankful

so thankful thank you

a pennsylvani a pennsylvania man is

suing smart water

for not making him smart

i’d like to formally announce my lawsuit

against thin mints

[Applause]

sometimes i get road rage walking behind

people at the grocery store

every once in a while i go outside and

run the vacuum cleaner over the driveway

just to ensure that my neighbors leave

me alone

i asked my daughter to give me the phone

book

she laughed at me and called me a

dinosaur

then she lent me her iphone

so now the spider is dead the iphone is

broken my daughters are furious

some of you follow that one that’s good

you know

my mind still thinks i’m 25. my body

thinks my mind is an idiot

ever take a nap so good that you thought

you missed the school bus but it’s

sunday and you’re 50 years old

all right

i just watched my dog chase’s tail for

five minutes and thought wow dogs are

easily entertained

and then i realized i just watched my

dog chase his tail for fun

i tried donating blood today never again

too many questions

whose blood is this where did you get it

from why is it in a bucket

[Applause]

if i had a dollar for every time

socialism worked i’d have no money

[Applause]

coincidentally if it did work i’d also

have no money

i i have to be able to get one of those

in every once in a while all right i’m

gonna this will be the last one

no there’ll be two more

research shows that laughing for two

minutes is just as healthy as jogging

for 20 minutes

so now i’m sitting in the park laughing

at all the joggers

[Music]

all right last one if you’re fasting

and still gossiping go ahead and eat

all right

jason and lauren belton have a little

girl edie

and they sent me a little video of her

you have to you have to pay attention

quickly it’s chris’s granddaughter

you guys ready to play that why don’t

you play that for us

hey edie

who’s on who’s on that dollar

don’t pop the

who’s on who’s on that dollar

don’t pass the bill

has to build on the dollar

oh my goodness

he must be very special

i’m gonna demand royalties

all right all right i

was

more famous than i thought it was it’s a

little scary all right grab your bibles

open uh if you would to first kings

we can actually have two portions of

scripture

one is chapter three we’ll read one

verse and then we’ll spend a little bit

of time in chapter 11. so put your

finger there let me talk for a few

minutes to try to set this up

i think it’s been like six six weeks or

so since i’ve

had the chance to talk to you so i’ve

i’ve been pondering a lot

uh just

thinking a lot about the hour that we

live in in fact you know what we need to

pray just a moment i forgot to do this

uh roe v wade was defeated this week

thankful for that

i think

yeah very important

[Applause]

it’s important to realize it’s not over

and much prayer is needed pray for our

supreme court justices for their safety

but also

i think if our nation saw

the root

demonic inspiration

for that value system that chooses

rights over responsibilities i think the

entire nation would be

in absolute shock

to see the roots of the devilish worship

that existed in the old testament where

they would sacrifice children

uh it’s it’s critical that

we can’t win that with

you know with retaliation arguments and

accusations

it really needs to come from the spirit

of god so i want you to stand with me

just for a moment if you’re watching

from home

sit or stand unless you’re in your car

don’t stand

uh but let’s let’s take just a moment to

pray i want you to pray number one for

safety

for all of our decision leaders if you

give them safety

uh the lord would give them safety and

secondly that the lord would release an

understanding over this nation because i

think i think if we could see it for

what it was i think we’d be appalled

appalled at what we’ve tolerated

all right so lift your voices pray pray

out loud let’s go for this

thank you god

just bring great safety in the world

great great safety

great safety to our supreme court

justices

for their families

that there would be literally a

a circle of fire the fire of god around

them for safety

and we also pray for our media that you

would put revelation

on our media that

would be known for wisdom for truth

and help us as a nation to recover what

we’ve given up so easily

we pray this in jesus name

amen amen all right thanks so much go

ahead and be seated

um

i’ve been

for the last several weeks i’ve had

something on my mind

that i’ve just been giving more thought

to than i than i normally do to be

really honest with you

um i’ve been pondering and thinking

about how is it

that people can go from

this passion for the lord

this

zeal for the lord and then just go

through the experiences of life

where they become

almost defiled maybe embittered

disappointed maybe betrayed all the

stuff that just happens in life and

let’s be honest the longer you live the

more history you have of things that

went wrong

and what i’ve noticed is some people as

they go through life they actually end

up in a place

that is they become quite jaded quite

resistant to what god is doing they

still have the routine

but see routine without surrender

is just religion

routine without surrender surrender is

the element that makes everything we do

come alive

if you give quote unquote the sacrifice

of praise without surrender

you’re not giving a sacrifice of praise

you’re making a business deal

you’re giving him this because you want

this in return

and the lord is working at bringing us

literally from glory to glory now this

is his design

his design is that i go from faith to

greater faith

from glory the realms of his presence to

greater realms of his presence there is

no end to that cycle or to that routine

to that progression he never wrote in uh

they’ll come to this point and then

they’ll level off for the rest of their

days he never ended that we’re the ones

that ended we end up by becoming

embittered becoming disappointed by

letting these things control and rule

the attitudes of our heart and that

determines where we level off but the

lord never determined that we would ever

level off at a place shorter than being

like jesus

he never designed that we would ever

level off at a place that was shorter

than us actually being like christ

that’s the design

all of us have been predestined to that

target

it’s all the same

and sometimes we fight to persuade

people that we are right

and we never become like christ in the

process

there’s a personal gratification but

there is no christ-like transformation

surrender is always the target in this

journey

great faith does not come from striving

it comes from surrender

it comes from yieldedness

it comes from our yes

to cooperate with his purpose his plan

his heart his mind

so as i’ve been pondering this i was

actually we don’t have time to do a very

extensive study even if i had the full

time today

but i’ve been thinking about three guys

saul david and solomon

king’s soul

king saul i don’t know if you remember

this or know this but king saul actually

started quite good

he started as uh as a humble man he was

not exalted in his own eyes he was not

arrogant he actually uh he was sheepish

to take responsibility he was he was

hiding when he should have been standing

and and he just wasn’t this arrogant guy

he didn’t start off that way

he demonstrated the zeal for the name of

the lord he rose in a time of great

conflict led the armies of israel into a

tremendous victory it took amazing

courage and faith for him to do that but

he was the guy he stood as it is may

recognize his moment the spirit of god

came on him and he led israel into great

victory so here’s saul

who later becomes

this guy who consults with a witch to

get information on what god wants and i

mean he just he compromises

the extreme issues of his own heart for

personal gain and personal protection he

tries to kill the very guy

whose

military prowess has exalted his own

position as king

but he’s jealous

jealousy comes from fear everything we

do is out of fear or love

and this issue of jealousy this thing of

fear

exposes a secu an insecurity

and insecurity is wrong security exposed

insecurity is god being merciful to us

exposing where we have wrong securities

it’s never shame it’s always an

invitation to find a correct security a

correct place of stability so we have

saul

so he starts this tenderhearted innocent

lover of god

saying yes to a commission that was far

above his pay grade and he knew it and

it was a place of dependency childlike

innocence that he had in his beginning

but he ended up

this jaded calloused resistant de fire

of the name of the lord

david

david prob most of our hero

you know

many kings for hundreds of years

afterwards were compared to david

he followed the lord like his father

david it was always that standard that

was said

david even in his older years

became

can i say entitled why

when kings would normally go to war

he was at home in the comforts that he

deserved as king

and it was in that moment of not being

where god gave him a grace to be that he

faced a temptation he had no grace for

and in that moment he fell with

bathsheba and ended up having uriah

killed

even the lord when he spoke of david he

said you know there’s nobody like david

david followed me with all of his heart

except for that situation with the uriah

and he and he goes in i’m glad that the

lord tells the truth about about all of

us

all you all

and

but here’s the guy actually want to look

at for the next 10 or 15 minutes is i

want us to look at real quickly the life

of solomon

he’s one of my heroes he’s he’s

i i’ve studied so much about his life in

the last maybe 15 years

maybe more than any other figure because

i admire him so much

i admire his i admire his yes

um and he blew it bad

in fact we’re going to end with to we’re

going to read the end

one of the saddest stories in the bible

let me tell you or call your project you

saw

us uh

announced that once again earlier

and that we bought an additional 20

acres

to the original 30

and one of the first things we’ll be

building on the 20 acres is called the

house of generals it’s actually a

library museum

about revival the revivalist of history

and i’ve got i i’ve been

i’ve been buying stuff for 25 years plus

and i mean we’ve got over 12 000 volumes

just in books

thousands of them uh we’ve got uh

kathryn kuhlman’s white gown that she

administered and i’ve got

john alexander dowie’s pulpit chair and

we’ve just got all kinds of stuff full

gospel businessmen first you know

plastic podium that they had just all

this stuff from from revivals through

the years

but i mentioned it for this reason

i i felt early on

25 years ago when this journey started

for me of collecting this stuff

i felt i was supposed to

honor

the yes

of those whose lives ended poorly

they entered they ended in drunkenness

maybe suicide

whatever

at some point in their life they said

yes god used them powerfully and then

this that i’m talking about they became

hurt betrayed

offended

i want the whole story

but i want especially to honor all the

yeses

and i don’t want to hide the fact that

this life ended in tragedy i just i just

want to hold it into perspective that

god used them for a season

and uh so anyway that’s just beside the

point but solomon is one of those guys

who his his yes to the lord was so

extreme

that literally the only time in all of

history the nations of the world came to

sit at the feet of a man to hear about

god in his perspective on life it’s

never happened in the measure that it

happened with king solomon i believe

it’ll happen in the coming days with the

body of christ but

let’s let’s read just a few verses and

then uh i’ll i’ll talk to you all right

in first kings chapter three we’ll read

one verse that’s verse 3.

solomon loved the lord walking in the

statutes of his father david

except

that he sacrificed and burned incense

at the high places

okay look at it again

solomon

loved the lord

walking in the statutes of his father

david

except

how many how many of you can say you

don’t want there to be an except

when god’s talking about you

yeah except he sacrificed and burned

incense in the high places

the surrounding nations there was

something in solomon that was broken

i it started off i think as something

very subtle but he never dealt with it

he had some sort of an admiration or a

value

for the surrounding nations and how they

worship their false gods because they

sacrificed on the high places

this was an unsanctified place of

worship

it was a place that violated god’s

design

god had designed

ways processes

locations

and what they were supposed to do in

response to god he violated that to copy

the surrounding nations now to his

credit he was only worshiping the lord

and so sometimes

the end justifies the means to our ways

of thinking when i’m doing it for the

lord

but the more

the more

self-will

becomes involved in our worship the less

worship it actually is

if self-will drives my worship i’m

worshiping self-will

chapter 11

verse 1

king solomon loved many foreign women

as well as the daughter of pharaoh

the women of the moabites the ammonites

sidonians hittites

from the nations of whom the lord had

said to the children of israel you shall

not intermarry with them

nor they with you

surely they will turn

away your hearts after the gods after

their gods

solomon clung to these in love

and he had 700 wives

princesses

300 concubines

and his wives turned away his heart stop

right there

these are from the surrounding nations

that worship these these demons these

demonic gods

and part of their worship was the

sacrifice of children

of burning alive their a kings would

even offer their own sons at times as to

appease or to please their god so these

surrounding nations that’s what they are

steeped in

and their entire worship system

is interwoven with gross extreme

sexual perversion and immorality as a

part of their worship for god

solomon marries 700 of them

demon-possessed devil worshipers who are

perverts

and they are all vying for his affection

and he no longer stands in a place of

resolve for worshiping only the lord he

gets sucked in because of his own

appetite for wrong things he gets sucked

in to establishing

a way of worship in israel i’ve not

researched this myself somebody else

gave me this information but they said

it took israel 300 years to recover from

what solomon brought into the country

when he was king

they were so deeply steeped

in the worship of demons

the devil’s real

mario merolo told us years ago he said

the

devil’s real he says he’ll enter a bar

of soap if you worship it

he just wants attention

that’s it

so here’s solomon

who

who is trying to bring peace to israel

here’s the bizarre thing why is he

marrying the daughters of these kings

and these leaders from surrounding

nations he wants alliances so that they

have peace

all right that’s the intent bring peace

the intent

was kind of stupid to my way of thinking

because he was trying to obtain what he

already had

he already had peace they were already

leaving everything even kings leaving

the comfort of their own throne to sit

at his feet to receive instruction on

the nature of god in the heart of his

kingdom

he’s already got them eating out of his

hand if you will there’s absolute peace

they are paying him because i figured

out though the amount of money once just

the surrounding nations something like a

billion dollars a year just in gold

tribute to him there’s already peace

but he feels somehow

again this self-will thing sacrifice on

high places that self-will thing never

got dealt with and it surfaced later and

led him into the worship of false gods

these

subtle little things that get ignored

if they’re not dealt with

they creep up later at the most

inconvenient time

and they affected in this great man

a value system that he wrote against

solomon would have done fine if he would

have just kept reading his own book

you know if if if he just would have

kept reading proverbs he would have been

fine he already warned everybody about

what he just did

verse 9 says the lord became angry with

solomon

because his heart had turned from the

lord

god of israel

who had appeared to him twice

i have that phrase

circled

who appeared to him

twice

look at it again verse 9 the lord became

angry with solomon

because his heart had turned from the

lord god of israel

who had appeared to him twice this is

this is the lord’s description he says

solomon loves me with all of his heart

except the high places and now he says

i’m angry at him because

i appeared to him twice most people

don’t get one

solomon got two visitations of personal

deep encounter here’s the deal you’ve

got to understand this we are people who

pray constantly more more lord increase

lord give us greater breakthrough get we

we want to see you we want to see your

hand at work we want to be involved more

with your face and the presence of god

that’s yours our greatest treasure and

that’s absolutely 100 true

the frightening part of this equation

is that the clearer

the manifestation of god’s voice or his

presence the greater the responsibility

to walk consistent with that voice in

that presence

it’s the reason jesus taught in parables

was to conceal truth

from those who weren’t ready to obey

it’s the mercy of god to speak in

principles concepts truth so that only

those who who were hungry enough to

penetrate to pierce into this truth to

discover what god is saying only those

people would see with clarity what god

was saying why because only they were

ready to obey what god had actually said

so god in his mercy conceals things to

keep us from a responsibility we’re not

ready for

what did he do with solomon

showed up twice

twice

most people in all the record of

scripture never got one

solemn got twice

and he

was

the most exalted

in my opinion the most exalted human

being

in stature

in

intelligence

in perception of reality

in

human power and a sense of being able to

persuade and to train and to raise

nobody higher

and yet

certain years go past

and things happen

where there’s betrayal and i don’t know

what happened to him i just know there

was there was this thorn under the

saddle that he never

stopped long enough to remove from from

the self-will involved of sacrificing

high places and pretty soon that thing

demanded expression

and then we have a guy who

god’s angry with

because he has now welcomed

the demonic presence

of all the surrounding nations

that were eating out of his hands he has

welcomed them in and brought an entire

nation into compromise

that’s a bummer of a story and i i don’t

mean to depress you

just be thankful i’m not sending you

home now i’m going to give you a few

more minutes give you a little little

pep talk here

so i’ve i’ve been i’ve been pondering

this stuff for a while because i

you know one of the one of the great uh

privileges of my life is to as i as i

have friends all over the world and i

mean

some of the greatest people i’ve ever

met in my life

i’ve become acquainted with in the last

20 25 years and personal friends where

we visit one another even take vacations

together and

share meals together and just just do do

life together just talk about what god’s

doing pray for each other get on benny

and i have been on numerous numerous

face-time calls with some of our dearest

friends praying together and they’ve

been ministering to her and it’s we’re

just thankful but also in that journey

is running into

a number of people that in one season

we knew them well as

as the childlike

innocent lover of god

who just had

tough stuff happen

and somehow

the the the joy’s gone they still do the

routine

but somehow the surrender is not there

anymore there’s there’s the there’s the

outward there’s the same songs there’s

the same

you know

encouraging sermon there’s all that

stuff but something’s missing here

because because the the innocence

is gone the

the first love passion just

just isn’t there anymore it doesn’t it

doesn’t go away in one day it’s not like

somebody wakes up one morning goes

i’m tired of loving god first i’m gonna

do something else you know it just

doesn’t happen that way you just you

just kind of get hurt you know you get

spoiled to get in different maybe

distracted so many people lose that that

love for the lord because they get

distracted by by the blessing of the

lord and then they get sucked away into

all kinds of things things that are

wrong and i listen i i’m i’m saying this

today for me as much as i am for you i

didn’t come this far

this long to be stupid in the last mile

that’s

that’s all i’m saying i

i didn’t

i haven’t said yes to god a million

times over and over and over again by

about so many different critical and

difficult and challenging things i’ve

not done that so that i can now just get

stupid

and lose

the first love lose

the child-like approach

and so i in my ponderings in my thinking

in my

praying

about this subject

i i felt impressed of the lord it wasn’t

it wasn’t a voice i i don’t want to

exaggerate it i just felt this

impression of the lord that there were

two themes in scripture

that if i could grab hold of them

they would complement each other

and these two themes

this is what i felt he said

they’re

different sides of the same coin

and the two themes are this mark chapter

10

where jesus says

unless you become

as a child unless you receive the

kingdom as a child you can’t enter

think think through the words here

unless you receive as a child

you can’t enter you can only enter

you can only enter kingdom realities in

the measure you’ve received it as a

child

there’s an innocence

of the child

there’s adventure

there’s humility

children

think of themselves

as dependent

they they they don’t wake up with a

burden to go earn money you don’t have a

five-year-old saying man we gotta get

some groceries for the family you know

you just don’t have that not not in a

healthy environment you don’t

you’ve got you’ve got this sense of

adventure on children you’ve got this

you know put a batman cape on them and

you you’ll find out what they’re capable

of doing

i mean they just there’s there’s nothing

impossible for him i remember gabe my

son one of his one of his kids was

playing t-ball t-ball is the ultimate

expression of baseball

it’s baseball in its purest form

where you put a ball on a stick and the

kid hits it and isn’t sure what

direction to run that’s it’s just

it’s just the coolest thing in the world

and

and so gabe was out with his little

five-year-old that was out there and he

was uh

supposed to be playing third base wasn’t

quite in the right position so gabe

walked out and kind of walked him over

put him in the right position

and this little guy who looked up at his

dad says he says dad

you better get off the field you might

get hurt

so that’s

that five-year-old was pretty certain he

was the greatest ballplayer to ever live

and he was protecting his death but

that’s that’s the innocence of

of

being childlike

there’s childish but there’s childlike

so here’s what i felt impressed of the

lord

there’s the childlike nature of the

kingdom the innocence

the innocents

and the other was

revelation chapter two

i have this against you

you left your first love

we sang it this morning

now we should sing that like every day

for the next

100 years

first love there’s something about first

love

that needs to be revisited on a regular

basis for every one of us key verse for

my life is proverbs 4 verse 23 where it

says watch over your heart with all

diligence because from it flow all the

issues of life watch over your heart so

monitor the condition of your heart when

you start seeing uh unbelief mourning

whatever the morning will take you one

or two places

blessed are they who mourn they shall be

comforted so mourning will take you to

the holy spirit to be comforted or it’ll

take you to unbelief

and every one of these situations in our

life they have the potential of taking

us into greater expressions of the

kingdom or into greater rigidity and

resistance

first love

and childlikeness two sides of the same

coin

i i don’t know that i’ll ever think of

those two things

the same way ever ever again

because i see them as they’re so

unique and different and yet they’re so

complimentary

so what did he say in revelation 2 he

said

he said you’ve lost your first love

repent

and then he said

do the deeds you did it first this is

fascinating because what he he didn’t

say he didn’t say to this group of

believers he didn’t say you’ve lost your

first love

um put on a worship cd worship me for

eight hours today by the end of eight

hours i will have renewed your heart

your spirit you would have been restored

to your first love

he didn’t say uh you know go on a water

only fast for 21 days

and and then you’ll recover first love

you didn’t say it didn’t say triple your

bible reading because that will help you

recover he didn’t say any of the stuff

that we might

encourage someone he said do what you

used to do why does he say that he says

here you need to rediscover what you

used to do in your childlike innocence

in your deep profound defection for me

you need to go and reactivate those

exact things you used to do well i don’t

want to be phony if i do that now that

was it was real then but i don’t want to

be phony i don’t want to go into just a

routine oh shut up and do what he said

he said he said do what you used to do

why because god looks at physical

obedience and he touches it with power

and something gets re reactivated in us

our own history with god it’s like he

brings out the pen again and is ready to

write right where he left off on that

page where we stopped

having him as our first love something

happens it gets reactivated just simply

by our raw obedience to acknowledging

him for who he is

i i believe these two themes

are going to be really important for us

in this next season we’ll understand

i just told you to shut up i’m so sorry

it felt so inspired when it came out of

my mouth but now i’m

starting to wonder

i didn’t tell you so it was them other

people

you know all the other ones

the ones that don’t listen that’s the

ones i was talking about

it says he takes us from glory to glory

takes us from faith to faith

is it possible for you to end your life

and your days

with a greater joy than your first day

of salvation

with a greater faith

with a greater sense of presence

a greater sense of innocence

a greater sense of affection and delight

father that’s what we pray for

i pray for that right now lift your

voices of the mind we pray we invite you

to teach us

deeply and profoundly what

what real

innocence and childlike lifestyle looks

like

and

and this first love

thing remind us

the simple things

that we used to do

to reactivate them again

i’m i’m just my cry

is that we honestly would go from glory

to glory

from victory to victory from triumph to

triumph

i pray this in jesus name

real quick question is there anyone here

that you’ve never given your life to

jesus christ you’ve never you’ve never

said i give my life to jesus to be a

disciple a follower of jesus the only

one who has the right to rule and to

direct my life if that’s you you’ve

never been what the bible calls born

again

but you want to be i want you to put a

hand up right where you are we’re just

going to make an agreement today for a

miracle in your life put you in the park

because i don’t want to miss you

wait wave it at me if i if i miss you

all right

all right well i’m going to

i’m going to assume you’re all in all

right we’ve got a banner up here and

anyone who would like to receive prayer

we’ll have a ministry team up front

who’s helping me hear who’s who’s coming

to deliver me you are come and deliver

me

wonderful

listen to her she’ll tell you what i’m

so glad that you uh watched this video i

do pray that it’s a great great strength

and encouragement to you and i’ve got a

verse that it really is my cry for all

of us and it’s uh psalms 20 it’s verse

4.

may he grant you your heart’s desire and

fulfill all your plans

that’s my prayer that’s my prayers that

this would be the season of rich rich

fulfillment

thanks for joining us