The Heart Series

"Tell Your Heart to Beat Again"
www.newperceptions.tv

• The Story
  • Danny Gokey
    Tell your heart to beat again
    Close your eyes and breathe it in
    Let the shadows fall away/Step into the light of grace
    Yesterday's a closing door/You don't live there anymore
    Say goodbye to where you've been
    And tell your heart to beat again
• The Heart
  • Revelation 2:4 Message—"'You walked away from your first .'"
  • Matthew 24:12—"'Because of the increase of wickedness, the of most will grow cold.'"
  • Matthew 23:23/Luke 11:42—"'Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! . . . You have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy [] and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.'"
  • Luke 7:34; 15:1,2—"'The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, "Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a of tax collectors and sinners.'. . . Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, 'This fellow sinners and eats with them.'"
  • Christ's Object Lessons: "When you see yourselves as sinners saved only by the of your heavenly Father, you will have tender pity for others who are suffering in sin." (210)
  • Romans 5:5 NLT—"For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his ."
    • People filled with the Spirit of God are filled with the of God—and people filled with the love of God will those the rest of the church and the rest of the world cannot find a heart to love.
    • William Blake: "We are put on earth for a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of ."
• The Convictions
  • #1—We will never like Jesus did until we are daily baptized by the Holy Spirit like Jesus was.
    • Pray: "Pour Your love into me today."
      • Steps to Christ 94: "Our heavenly Father waits to bestow upon us the fullness of His blessing. It is our privilege to drink largely at the fountain of boundless love."
    • Pray: "Pour Your love out of me today."
  •  #2—There is a hunger in this world for a place, for a people "who will me for who I am—a sinner in desperate need of God's saving grace and love."
    • Jerry Cook: "I say to you, that [individual] was restored only because God enabled us to love and accept and forgive him. , acceptance, forgiveness—those three things are absolutely essential to any ministry [church] that will consistently bring people to maturity and wholeness. If the church is to be the force for God in the world that it should be, it must learn to love people, accept them and forgive them." (Love, Acceptance, Forgiveness: Equipping the Church to Be Truly Christian in a Non-Christian World  11)
    • Romans 5:5-8
• #3—I believe God is calling us as a congregation to embrace new DNA to become the most , the most friendly, the most caring church around.
  • Jerry Cook: "The minimal guarantee we must make to people is that they will be —always, under every circumstance, with no exception. The second guarantee is that they will be totally accepted, without reservation. The third thing we must guarantee is that no matter how miserably they fail or how blatantly they sin, unreserved forgiveness is theirs for the asking with no bitter taste left in anybody's mouth. . . . A church that can make that commitment to every person is a church that's learning to love and a church that will be a force for God". (11, 13)
  • Gregory Boyle: "We played the grooves off this record. Consequently, a line from the song found itself permanently etched in my brain—a mantra of sorts: 'Long lay the world in sin and error pining—'til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.' Sure—it's a song about Jesus and Christmas, but how is it not the job description of human beings seeking kinship . . . remembering that we belong to one another, and letting souls feel their worth." (Tattoos on the Heart 196)