Thank you for listening to this message from Life House Church.
Did you get your envelope?
I'm going to give you another 30 seconds, man.
Fly back there, grab a couple envelopes.
Get six, get seven, get ten.
Come on.
I was going to tell you, give till it hurts.
Amen.
Hey, while they're getting envelopes and kind of getting resettled, I know they're still
checking some people in and getting some more coffee.
Just want to let you know, we sent an email out about this, but it's really important
for you to know and that we say it from the pulpit here, that the date for the new location,
the first service that we're going to have has changed to March 16th.
And the reason for that is some of the equipment did not come in as quickly as we would like.
I knew that on the front end.
We've been monitoring it all as we've gone along.
Nothing we can do about suppliers and getting equipment to us in a timely manner.
But we are now looking at March 16th for that launch date in the new location.
Things are happening.
There's stuff getting built, things getting put together and super exciting.
It's an amazing thing that's going to happen.
We're excited.
We'll give you more details and instruction.
We want to give time to get everything in, get everything set and also to get everybody
trained that's going to be working in that area.
It's a lot different setup than what's here.
And we're excited about what's going to take place, but there needs to be some training
and we're going to launch well.
Amen.
How many are excited?
How many know we need the space?
Amen.
All right.
You all been rubbing elbows for a long time.
You can have some elbow room when you get in there.
Well, I want to pray over God's word to get started this morning and then I'll take, introduce
you to a scripture really quick.
Father, we thank you for this day.
God, for your blessings, all that you're doing in hearts and lives.
Lord, we thank you, God, for what you're God speaking in lives.
We pray God that today you would guide and direct Lord, help us as we step through your
word, help us Lord through the week.
Lord, as we dive in deep through the week into your word and God, will life groups come
together and Lord, when we're studying on our own and God, those three that we're picking
out to speak together, God and to dive into your word together, God, bring it to light.
Lord, open us up, make us whole in all that we are doing and all that we are speaking
for you.
And we just give you praise and glory and everybody said together.
Amen.
Well, listen, last week, last week we introduced this whole idea and I'm going to try to do
this and actually make this actually stick here.
This ought to be interesting.
Okay.
How many, if you were here last week, you heard us talking about we get to do this,
right?
Last week we introduced the whole idea of we get to, we really get to and that really
came from Mark 10 45, right?
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as
a ransom for many.
Jesus came to serve.
He's called us to serve.
It's not just an expectation or a nice spiritual idea.
This is what God's called us to do.
Once we're saved, once we've come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and it doesn't have to take
weeks, months or years after that, he calls us to engage in serving and following him.
It's the minimal response for his maximum sacrifice that we serve, right?
We get to serve.
We get to be a part of the kingdom of God.
We get to walk alongside of Jesus.
We get the privilege and honor to do this.
We get to do this.
Say it with me.
We get to.
We get to do this.
And this is, listen, I know this is easy preaching and this is easy talking and I hope that this
becomes a familiar motto with you throughout the year here at LifeHouse.
I hope you hear this ringing in your heart and in your ears and most of all, you know,
in our mind and walking this out.
It's an easy thing to speak.
It's an easy thing to preach, but we got to have the right attitude backing this up, right?
We got to talk about if we're going to talk about serving, we got to talk about our motive.
And I preached about this a little bit last week.
We got to have the right attitude.
Last week was all about your tude.
This week's all about your motive.
All right.
I want you to have a little Minnesota accent today and I want you to turn your neighbor
and say, we're talking motive.
Go ahead, say motive.
We're going to talk about motive today.
All right.
They just draw that M out a little bit.
What does motive have to do with serving?
It has everything to do with it.
Motive is the driving force for my action or my lack of action for Jesus.
All right.
It's the driving.
Motive is the reason behind the do or not doing of something.
It is the driving force.
Motive is the difference between voluntarily doing something and not doing anything at
all.
Right.
Motive is the difference between you voluntarily taking out the trash at your house and not
being shamed or begged to do it.
Right.
If my motive, my purpose behind that action is that I want a nice clean smelling house.
I don't want the garbage piling up.
I don't want that nasty smell when we got a drawer you pull out.
Right.
And if you leave that in there too long, how many know it gets gamey?
Amen.
You pull that thing out.
Ooh, you know, and how many know when you do that, you got a dilemma in your head?
Do I take that thing out to the trash or I just close it, hurry up and hope somebody
else does it.
Right.
If your motive is that you don't things aren't all smelly and nasty in your kitchen.
If that's the motive, you just put you tied the bag up.
You take that thing out and throw it in the trash.
Right.
But if the motive within me is that I believe that this is somebody else's job to take out
the trash.
Right.
This is not my job.
How many know you'll never take that trash out?
You'll let that thing stick the kitchen up to high heaven.
Right.
You will.
Unless somebody forces you to or shames you into it, you'll let it there.
It's the motive behind the do or not doing.
You got to know that if you're going to serve God, there's motive behind it.
If my motive is wrong, I'll never adopt the motto that I get to serve Jesus.
That we get to do this.
Right.
We'll never do that.
Matter of fact, if I'll just watch you take on that motto and I'll cheer you on while
you're doing it.
What causes me?
What causes me to have a right motive?
What keeps me motivated and moving in the right direction and asking.
It's a good question to ask yourself.
What's motivating me?
What's motivating me to serve Jesus?
What keeps me serving Jesus?
What gets me charged up?
What gets me juiced up?
What gives me revved up in the pursuit of Him?
Here's my answer this morning.
All we need to know is this.
We all need a spiritual alternator to produce right motives while we pursue Jesus.
All the mechanics said, amen.
All right.
All we need is a spiritual alternator to change, to charge us up in the pursuit of Jesus.
Now you probably drove a car here to LifeHouse this morning because we're not in a real great
location.
If you're listening online and you're not sure where we're at, we're not in a great
location to walk to church.
So probably most everybody in this building drove a vehicle of some kind to this church.
And whether you know it or not, underneath the hood of your car is something called an
alternator.
And what the alternator does is when your car is driving, right, when it's going down
the road, when it's running at any point, it's charging, recharging the battery in your
car.
That's the alternator's job.
The whole time your car is running, how many knew you didn't know you were going to get
a mechanics lesson, right?
Just recharging your battery.
But if your alternator begins to malfunction, your car will begin to lose power.
It'll start the first time.
Your battery will start it.
It'll start up, but you'll start going down the road.
You're thinking everything's fine.
The radio is on, right?
You're just bumping down the road of life and you're going to wherever you got to go
in your car.
But all of a sudden what happens is if your alternator goes out, if it's not working properly,
you'll start chugging on it.
And all of a sudden your dash lights will start to light up like a Christmas tree.
All these crazy lights will come up and all the warning lights will come on saying there's
something drastically wrong right underneath the hood.
You need to pull over because if you keep going, you're going to be sitting in the middle
of the road.
You're going to be broke down.
You're going to be sitting in the middle of the road.
You're going to be sitting along the road.
Your car will have zero motivation left in it to move you forward down the road.
You'll have a dead battery.
You'll have a dead engine and no spark in anything at all.
You'll have zero progress in your travels.
Zero, right?
And there must be a spiritual alternator feeding my spiritual battery, right?
It's true.
It's getting me moving forward in Jesus.
There's got to be a constant charge flowing in my life that keeps me serving or I'll come
to a dead stall.
I might start up and do it once.
I might even start up and do it twice.
But I'll putter out on my spiritual journey.
I need right motivation charging me up and moving me forward day to day, week to week,
month to month, year after year.
And if you're saved, but feel like you broke down somewhere on the Jesus highway, right?
It stalled out somewhere.
It could be that you got the wrong things feeding your motivation, charging your spiritual
battery, right?
Proverbs 16 to says this, all the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord
ways the spirit.
Commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established.
God himself weighs out our motives.
He will weigh out our purpose behind the serve.
He really will.
And if it's an ungodly motive, right, it will leave us powerless and beside the road.
If it's an ungodly motive, you'll stall out in the pursuit of Jesus.
You'll somewhere along the way.
You'll just get you'll get waylaid.
You'll you'll end up by the side of the road.
If it's an ungodly motive, right, a selfish spirit will come on you and you're not going
to want to serve.
Motives important.
And what I'm telling you is what I tell myself, right, is what keeps my spiritual battery
charged or drained.
What I tell myself, it's kind of the alternator in your life.
What I'm telling myself will either keep your spiritual battery charged up, right, or drain.
What I speak, how many know you talk to yourself?
I remind you this all the time, right?
What I'm saying to me, right, the words that I speak to me, the self talk that I have will
either maximize your spiritual battery.
It will charge it up in the hot pursuit of Jesus, doing what God instructs you to do.
Or what I'm telling myself will drain my spiritual battery.
It'll suck me dry.
I will be broke down somewhere along the road.
I'll go for a while, right?
I'm saved.
I'm redeemed.
But I'll get nowhere on the journey with Jesus.
I'll get waylaid.
I'll get powerless.
It's what I'm preaching to myself that will dictate how I feel and how I move in life
and your spiritual walk.
It will.
How many of we love to talk about our feelings, right?
How many of you love to talk about your feelings?
Oh, you all do.
Come on.
All right.
You tell people all the time how you feel about something, right?
Listen, have you ever eavesdropped on a conversation at a restaurant?
Somebody on the next table over is passionately talking about how they feel about something.
And the conversation seems to be more interesting than the table that you're currently sitting
at.
So what do you do, right?
Instead of leaning in, you lean out, right?
Come on.
So you've done it, right?
That's why you're like, you lean out.
And whatever their feelings being expressed at the next table.
And here's the thing.
While they're talking, and I know you don't know them, you don't know who they are.
You don't know anything about them.
You don't know where they come from.
You don't know their past.
You don't know their present.
But I can tell you one thing.
If you hear what they're feeling, you know, it's express their feelings.
I can tell you, you can you can know some things about what they're saying to themselves.
Because what you're saying to yourself will be part of the motivation in your heart and
it will come out your mouth.
It will be you'll begin to speak it right.
What I preach to myself right or wrong ends up in my motives and it starts to get expressed
in manifests in my feelings.
So if you're listening, if you're eavesdropping at a table, you can start to know what somebody's
really talking to themselves about.
Right.
What I preach to myself is the spiritual alternator in my life charging my spiritual battery.
And what I listen, what you preach to yourself is either going to charge you up or it's going
to suck you dry spiritually.
If someone starts telling me how they feel, I begin to understand how they're preaching
to themselves.
If I get in a conversation, I get to sit down and listen, you know, and they begin to unload
some of those spiritual, you know, some of those deep feelings that are taking place
right at that time.
A lot of times I can spend some not all the time, but a lot of times I start to know,
you know, where that's coming from.
I start to know how they're talking to themselves.
I start to know what they're saying to themselves.
I start to realize whether they're talking God's word, whether they're talking about
God's truth to themselves, whether they whether they see their future in Jesus, whether there's
holiness being spoken to their life.
Right.
If they're giving faith to themselves, you can start to understand that because if not,
right, if they're feeling down and everything's down, right, you can hear the bitterness in
the feelings.
And I know how they're speaking to themselves.
I know something about what they're preaching to themselves.
When I speak to myself, it will form the motives in my life and they'll manifest in feelings.
They'll come out in your verbiage.
It's beyond important to examine what you're preaching to yourself.
It's beyond important.
I should challenge, examine, determine everything that that I'm speaking to me.
Right.
I should not just what people are speaking to me, but what I'm speaking to myself.
What am I preaching to myself?
Is it truth or is it opinion?
Right.
What am I preaching to myself?
Is it God's holy word or is it somebody else's unholy word?
Right.
What am I preaching to myself?
Is it charging up my spiritual battery or is it draining me dry?
Is it sucking the spiritual life right out of me?
This is why Paul tells us in Romans chapter 12 verse 1, he says this, I beseech you therefore,
brother, by the mercies of God.
This is a very familiar scripture for a lot of people that have been in church for a while.
Do you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your
reasonable service, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Renewing, regenerating, recharging my mind happens with the right self talk.
It's one thing to tell you to transform your mind.
You need to know how to transform your mind.
Right.
You need to regenerate from the inside out, not necessarily the outside in.
What I speak to me will begin to show up and it will begin to regenerate how I think.
It will begin to transform my thinking and what I'm doing.
And this is a deep spiritual discipline.
This is something that we should practice.
This is why we talk about things like LH3.
We talk about memorizing scripture, familiarizing ourselves with God's word.
This is why we meditate on God's word.
Right.
Meditation is something we don't talk about much.
This is why you should think through biblical concepts, not just read them.
Right.
How many of you can get your Bible out?
You can just start reading it.
Oh, cool.
Check off my checklist.
Right.
I wrote 16 scriptures.
You have no idea what you just read.
You didn't think about it.
You didn't meditate on it.
You didn't figure out how it applies to your life or anybody else's life, or maybe even
what God meant by that whole portion of scripture.
Right.
I'd much rather you read one verse and you just meditate on that thing.
You just park on that thing for a while.
You just start thinking about how this thing fits in my life.
Right.
And you begin to meditate because you'll start talking to yourself when you when you you'll
start pulling that into your vocabulary as you speak to yourself like, oh, this applies
to me.
Right.
This is why we tap into the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the word, the revelation
that the Holy Spirit gives, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Amen.
It's true.
We get this right.
We will spiritually charge up and nothing will draw us down.
Right.
But you get it wrong.
Right.
You'll you'll you'll need spiritual roadside assistance.
You'll be calling spiritual AAA AAA still thing.
I haven't had a long time.
Yeah, it's still a thing.
Right.
You'll be drained.
Your motors will be all jacked up.
Let me let me let me give you a little biblical example of what I'm talking about here this
morning.
Here's the thing, if I continually tell myself the lie that I am alone in life, right, if
that is my self talk, if I start preaching this to me, if I keep feeding my heart and
my mind, the soul, my soul, the lie that I am all alone in this world, I will just I
will develop this destructive motivation and it'll come out in feelings.
Right.
If I keep telling myself that there's no one there for me.
Right.
Nobody's around.
I'm not worthy to be in a relationship.
I'm not all that lovable.
Or maybe you're on the opposite end.
Maybe you're going, you know what?
Everyone else in this world is just horrible.
There's nothing but horrible human beings around me.
Right.
They're rude.
They're self-absorbed.
They got no time for me.
All I am is alone.
If you start feeding yourself this kind of self talk, right, it'll start draining this
your spiritual battery.
You'll never be motivated.
You'll not only not be motivated to be around other people.
You'll never serve anybody.
And in fact, things like bitterness can become the motivational factor in your life and it
can thread into everything you do.
Right.
Hopelessness or despair can be the motivation behind the force that's manifesting in the
feelings that are manifesting in your life.
I just heard of this this week.
I was talking with somebody else who's in an administrative position and they were telling
me about how they just rocked their world because it was a junior high student.
Right.
That was ready to take their own life.
They were talking to themselves this way.
They were speaking to themselves this way.
It changed everything about their motivation.
It changed everything about how they felt.
A junior higher in school ready to take their own life.
Listen, the enemy, Satan loves to chime in on this kind of self-talk.
Loves it.
If you get it started, he'll just he'll just turn up the amplifier in your life.
He'll make sure you just keep feeding yourself the garbage.
Right.
He glories in it.
He glories in destroying your thought life and the things that you're speaking to you.
And he'll get you started on that loop and he'll just let you run.
Right.
Don't let him talk to you that way and don't let him join in on a conversation with you.
You got to stop.
Right.
You got to take every the word of God says we should take every thought captive.
That means you got the power to grab a hold of it in Jesus.
You got the power to crush a thought.
Isn't that awesome?
Something comes in your head that is not godly.
It is not a God thing.
Crush that thing.
Stomp on it.
Amen.
He gives you the power to do it.
He does.
I tell myself the truth.
Right.
The truth of a holy and eternal God.
I don't know if you know this about the truth, but truth is eternal.
If you're going to talk to somebody and you want to get back to the truth of something
and they don't believe in God, they don't believe in this and they don't believe in
that.
You say, well, let's talk about what's eternal because the eternal God is actually the one
who gives the truth.
And anything that's true is eternal.
Right.
Not my truth, not somebody else's truth, Jesus' truth.
Right.
And I start preaching that to myself.
I start saying the words and you can do that all through God's word.
I'm going to take you all the way back.
We're going to go back to Deuteronomy.
Right.
When Jehovah is speaking to Moses, Israel's leader, he says this in Deuteronomy 31, 6.
He says, Be strong and of good courage.
Do not fear nor be afraid of them.
For the Lord your God, he is one who goes with you.
He will not leave you nor forsake you.
Amen.
You can take a hold of Moses' word and just take it for yourself.
And it wasn't just Moses.
If you go on to the next successor, the next leader in Israel, you can go on to Joshua
and Joshua 1, 9 says, Have I not commanded you, be strong and of good courage.
Do not be afraid nor be dismayed.
For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
You're not lonely.
Right.
You might, you might be thinking, well, these are great leaders in the word of God.
Right.
These are, that's what God does that with great leaders.
Well, Jesus came to this earth.
He returned to the Father and he tells us in God's word that I'm going to send back
the periclete.
I'm going to send back the Holy Spirit.
I'm going to send back the counselor, the guide.
I'm going to send back the one who will teach you all things.
Right.
And he's going to speak to you.
And how many know he sent the Holy Spirit back so you would never, ever be alone.
That he will live with you, that he will live in you.
In John 14, 15 says, If you love me, this is Jesus talking, obey my commandments.
I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate.
Another word description for the Holy Spirit who will never leave you.
It's what it says in the word.
Right.
He is the Holy Spirit who leads you into all truth.
The world cannot receive him because it isn't looking for him and doesn't recognize him.
But you know him because he lives with you now and later will be in you.
No, I will not abandon you as orphans.
I will come to you.
Orphans are abandoned.
Orphans are left alone.
Orphans are left to themselves.
But in Jesus, you're never abandoned.
You're never alone.
You're never ever by yourself.
Right.
Psalms not.
Preach these scriptures right back to yourself.
Psalms 94, 14 and the Lord will not reject his people.
He will not abandon his special possession.
That's what he thinks of you.
You are his special possession.
He will never leave you.
He will never forsake you.
He will never walk away.
Right.
And listen, I'm not minimizing the need for human interaction.
I get it.
We're built to be an interaction.
That's why we say don't do what?
Yeah, right.
You know, and here's the thing.
If you understand that he is your king and that the Holy Spirit walks with you and you
are never ever alone.
And if you engage in what God says and you get in around the people of God and you engage
in the larger family of God and you get it.
How many know you got family right here?
You should never be alone.
And matter of fact, you probably looking for you should be looking for some alone time.
All right.
This may be it should be so much family showing up.
You should be looking for some alone time somewhere.
Please stop.
Right.
How many how many come on, you know, you turn to pull the shades down, turn the lights out
and put your car in the garage like you're not home.
Right.
We're never alone.
You got to be preaching the right stuff to yourself.
You got to crush what the enemy's trying to speak.
You are his special possession.
The word of God says that he'll never leave you.
He'll never forsake you.
This is the kind of self talk we got to pull in.
This is what we got to be speaking to ourselves.
This is what's going to charge your spirit.
Come on.
Your spiritual alternator will be spinning and it'll be charging you up and firing you
up instead of draining you dry spiritually.
And you might think, well, well, you know, pastor, this sounds like a lot of mental hoops.
It sounds like a lot of spiritual work.
You know, I got to get into Bible and I got to I got to read the word.
You know, I, you know, I'm already exhausted.
I got four kids.
I just want to die.
You know, at the end of the evening, I just want peace and quiet.
Right.
Yeah.
Come on, Pastor.
This sounds like a lot of work.
Well, let me read you something else.
As I get ready to close and worship, Dean comes.
Let me read you something else straight out of scripture.
I mean, what we speak to ourselves should be God's word.
Right.
Not my word.
Not somebody else's.
But what God's word says.
Listen to what God's word says in Luke 13, 18.
It says this, then he said, What is the kingdom of God like?
I love when that comes up in scripture.
You see that all the time.
You know, what is the kingdom of God like?
And to what shall I compare it?
It's like a mustard seed which a man took and put in his garden and it grew and it became
a large tree and the birds of the air nested in its branches.
Luke 13, 20, right.
The very next set of verses says, and Jesus said it again.
Right.
To what shall I like in the kingdom of God?
It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal and it was all leavened.
What was Jesus saying in those verses?
You just start to preach a little bit of the right thing.
You just take a mustard seed of God's word and you put it into your spirit and you start
preaching that thing to yourself.
And here's what will happen.
That thing will grow.
OK.
Letting things grow.
God's word is a living word.
It is not just any word.
It is a living word.
And if you place a living word in your heart, if you place a living word in your mind, if
you just put a mustard seeds worth in there, I'm telling you, if it's God's word, it'll
grow.
It'll take root.
It'll begin to put out its branches.
It's like putting yeast in dough.
Right.
That lump in your head.
Come on.
That lump sitting on the top of your shoulders.
It's just like a big old pile of dough.
All right.
Put some God's word in there.
Put a little and it will leaven the whole lump.
It'll it'll it'll spread.
One of the reasons we started talking about LH3.
Three minutes.
Right.
You think, well, what's three minutes going to do?
You put God's word in your spirit for three minutes a day and you start to see what happens
every single day.
You don't miss a day.
You don't skip a day.
You don't three minutes a day.
You start putting God's word and you just let it take root in there and you start to
see branches.
You start to feel the roots go down.
You start to feel the whole lump getting leavened and it'll change you.
I'm not talking about you don't have to sit down and do it throughout.
So now you should if you want to man, keep going.
Here's what's going to happen.
You're going to get three minutes.
It's going to start to transform your mind.
Your feelings are going to start to change.
Your motivations are going to begin to shift.
You're going to get this desire to serve God and you're like, why would I just take three
minutes of this?
I think I'll have six today and you'll get in six or 16 or 26 or 106.
It's God's word.
It is living.
What you meditate on, what you tell yourself will, it will form your motivations.
It will change your feelings.
We always start at the feeling and try to work backwards.
You need to start at the core of what's fitting your motivations and your feelings because
it'll change.
I can't tell you how many times.
Anybody ever have a pity party for yourself?
I get having a pity party for myself.
Get in the corner of just little old me, poor old me.
You know, and then God's like.
Let me tell you what God, let me tell you what my word says.
And it changes my motivation.
It changes my feeling.
I got to confess usually and repent.
What are you speaking to yourself?
I'm going to ask if you'd stand.
Thank you for tuning in to this message from Life House Church.
We pray that you were impacted powerfully by this message.
If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with
us as we love God, love people every day, visit our website at www.lifehousecog.com.