Well, we’re going to jump right into the word today. How many come to hear the word of God today? Yeah. We just want God to speak to us because we believe every time that we open up his word and every time we open up our mouth, God will fill it and he will use it for his glory, for his kingdom. And so I’m just super excited for what God’s wanting to do today. And man, he is so awesome and we’re going to be in the book of revelation. So if you can turn your Bible to the book of revelation, chapter two, it’s all the way in the very last book of the Bible revelation with us here for the best Mt. Carmel Church around. Chapter two, come on. Mount Carmel, turn to revelation. Chapter two. Yeah. There was also sermon notes available in your worship guide as well. If you want to go ahead and pull those out, they’re available for you to follow along and make some notes.

So we’re going to get right into the word revelation chapter two verse, starting with very first verse says to the angel of the church of Ephesus, right? It says these things says he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands. I know your works. I know your patience and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars. And you have persevered and have patience. Notice what he says, or you have persevere. You have patience, you have good labor. You have tested the spirits. You’ve tested the truth. Sound like a great church. Doesn’t it sound like a great church that you want to be a part of sound like a great church. That’s got everything going for them.

And then he just drops the bomb. He says, nevertheless, there is one thing that I have against you. One thing, or he has this thing against you. He says that you have left your first love everybody say first love how many believe today that Jesus is our first love. Jesus is our first ministry. He’s our first minister. He’s we minister to him. And the Bible says, remember, therefore, where you have fallen from and repent and do the first, come on, help me out here with us at the top Mt. Carmel Church. You gotta be a little interactive this morning. Help me out. He says, remember where you’ve fallen from repeat and do the first works or else I will come to you quickly and remove the lampstand, or maybe remove your influence from its place. Unless you repent. Come on. Let’s pray, father. We just thank you for your word. We know what’s active.

We know what’s powerful, Lord. I pray that people will experience you. They will not experience me. Lord. I’m just your vessel today. And I pray for the anointing and the power of the Holy spirit. God, I pray for the fire of God to come forward today. God, that your word would be nourishment. Lord. It’s helped to our bones. So we, you for everything that you’re doing, everything you’re going to do. jesus’ name. Somebody said a man, man. All right, my wife. And I just want to tell you a little story. My wife and I we’ve been attending a marriage Rhodes group. So how many of you are attending the road’s group right now? Come on, give it up for our roads groups, anybody. All right. So I encourage you that if you didn’t raise your hand that we have, we’re going to, we’re going to make sure that we’re back by the door back there.

I’ve already got that in my mind. And we’re gonna make sure that you get signed up. No, I’m just teasing though. Anyways, you need to be in a roads group. And here’s why, because relationships make us, Oh man, relationships make us stronger. Hello, Matt comedy. They make us stronger. So what we do is in relationships, make us stronger. My wife and I are in this connect group and we’re driving home from the group and just the group has just been so good when it comes to us here at Mt. Carmel Church. It’s been so valuable to our lives. Been imparting so much truth. Just helping us to know what it is to just, you know, have a relationship with one another again, knowing how to date each other, all these fun things that we kind of forget about, you know, and my wife, she looked at me and we were talking about all the different personalities and talking about the journey of our relationship and where we came from and where we’re going and where we see God in the future and dream for our marriage and all these things.

And cause sometimes with kids and life, and busy-ness sometimes the one thing that goes is your marriage, or maybe it’s your relationship with your spouse, your kids, whatever it may be. That’s the one thing that sometimes gets neglected or gets put to the side. So my wife was like, you know what? She’s like, I think we really balance each other out. And I’m like, you know what? I think you do. We do. I think probably more so that she balances me out. Then I balance her out. So go ahead and look at your spouse and just say, do you balance me out? Yeah, there you go. Right? I mean, how many of you believe that your spouse bounces? You balances you out? Yeah, they do. They bounce me out. My wife pulls me out of things and I’m getting into it. She’s like, no, no, no, no.

You know, it’s just like all these things and character personality. So it’s amazing how, you know, I guess just opposites attract is what it is, you know? But I thought about that and I let that resonate in my heart. And I thought about how a relationship between a man and a woman, if there has to be balanced in a marriage, then what about the balance that we need in our relationship with God and his children as being his children? I believe just as a relationship with a man and a woman, there should be a relationship between Jesus and his followers. How many believe this morning that God brings balance to your life? How many would agree that God brings stability to your life? How many in this season that we’re in right now, there is so much unstableness. How many agree with me that there’s so much unpredictable things happening right now that we can’t even predict the top Mt. Carmel Church services.

We’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen. What are we going to do next? I don’t know. Everything’s all hell broke loose. And all these things are going on. And our life seems to be out of balance. Anybody ever just seemed like your life was out of balance off balance. You ever seem like you’re going in one direction and you realize, Oh, I shouldn’t be going that direction. And back that direction, I had this image when I was a kid. And maybe you did the same thing when you were a kid, you got on a teeter-totter. You might know what a teeter-totter is. Yeah. I kind of forgot about those things. But anyways, you get on those Teeter totters and the whole ideal of a teeter-totter was to keep it balanced. So you get someone about the same weight as you, and obviously you keep it bounced.

But you know, there was always those kids, you know, where I’m going with this. There was always those kids that would just wait and he would, he would jump off on one side or she and the other one go way up in the air like this. How many has ever did that before? I just heard that somebody did that once. I just started up. It’d be good in my sermon today. But anyways, what if your life was about balance? What if God is calling you into a balance in your life, a new balance with us here at Mt. Carmel Church, a new way of looking at things, a new perspective, a new view of people, a new view of your opinion, your attitudes, your character. What if God is calling you into something like that, would you submit to that? Let me ask you a question is your life out of balance is your life off balance at this time is your life off balance.

Webster’s defined, defines the word balance, the ability to move or to retain in a position without losing control, without losing control. How many of you feel like that? Maybe you’ve already lost control. Maybe, maybe hell. How many of you feel like that? Maybe you already falling because it says without control or falling, how he’s ever felt like that you’re off balance. Well, revelation chapter two, he talks about how they had all these things going for them with us here at Mt. Carmel Church. The church and Jesus is basically given this heavenly appraisal of the book of rebel in book of revelation, to the church of emphasis. And he’s given them all this, this great appraisal. And he’s saying, you know what? You have great works. You labor, great. You’re enduring great. You and I know your patients. I know that you stand for the truth and I know all these things and it looks good, but there’s one thing I have against you.

And that you left your first love. What if the balance of your life was more about moving into the who then moving into the what? What about if your life was more about moving into the who with Jesus, then moving into the, what of the unpredictable, how many can, how many can stay in right now in your life can say that I need that kind of balance in my life. I need to know more about the who. Here’s what I know that the more that you know about the who and less about the what, the more that you will know about who you are and the more that you know about who you are, the more influence and the more the kingdom of heaven is going to be released out of your life.

Cause I was just praying, God, I just want to be a vessel for God. I just want to be a vessel for him. I want, I want to live in the overflow. I want to live in the overflow of the presence and the spirit of God that’s within me, but I will never know what that is. If I always live in the watt and I never live in the who I got to live in the who first. And once I live in who, and sometimes that’s not just a, you see, sometimes I think that we look at it in church culture, that living in the, who is an event living in an a, who is a lifestyle. When we live in, move in the who, it’s a lifestyle. It’s not something that happens whenever we get saved. Salvation is a beautiful thing. Jesus, his blood paid for our sins, but it’s not just an event.

It’s a lifestyle. It’s something that we start. It’s not something that we just, you know, here’s pastor Chad said, this, that in his, in his last series that it’s not necessarily about what we need to stop. It’s about what we need to start. And I believe this morning that God is say, he wants you to start some new things in your life. He wants to reset some things in your life because we are in how many believe that we’re in the last days, maybe the in times, let’s say the in times we are in the in times. And we know that Jesus was, he is, and he’s the one that’s going to come. So if we know that he was, and he is, and he’s the one that come, then he’s the one the who that I need to be pursuing the most with us here at Mt. Carmel Church. Jesus gave them great affirmation, great value. He said, you, you didn’t even worry. You didn’t get weary. You didn’t, you persevered. He didn’t quit. There were the kind of core values that we needed at church, right? Here’s what I know that consistency. How many has ever, how many has ever bought or purchased a membership to something maybe. How about a gym membership in January, January 20 and 20, I’m going all in man. I’m chasing my body. Everything’s going to happen. I’m going to eat right. And it’s going to be the best year of my health,

January 3rd, come around. And you’re like, I don’t know what in the world. I thought I was doing same way with our walk with God that when we don’t pursue consistently our first love and our first works that everything else is off balance in our life. We wonder why we might be a little bit overweight. And we already bought the gym membership that gave us access to what we needed, but we never visit the gym.

Just an analogy. so consistency in the absence of consistency when there’s no consistency, there’s compromise. nice Compromise. And I believe the church is compromising more and more. We need a voice. The church needs. God is wanting to use the voice of the church. He’s to use the voice of the influence that we have inside of us. We’re speaking truth and life and speaking things into existence. Life and death is in the power of the tongue. When we speak it, things begin to happen when it comes to us here at Mt. Carmel Church. Things begin to change. We’ve got to keep moving. We’ve got to keep consistent. Albert Einstein says this, that life is like riding a bicycle. How many believe? How many just you’re you may be on a spiritual bicycle right now to keep your balance. You must be keep moving. How many knows that whenever you birth time, you got on a bicycle. I always think it’s interesting because whenever even growing up and having kids, I think it’s cool that your parents didn’t put you on the road the very first time.

If you did, then they’re your parents. I don’t know. You need to have a talk with them about that anyways. But what about you put your kids in the grass, right? Because you know that they’re not going to have the greatest balance. All right. They got to have balance to be able to ride that bicycle because you don’t think that maybe they’re not gonna be able to move as fast and as they get moving too fast and then they crash and then guess what’s going to happen. It’s going to be complete chaos, disaster or whatever, and that’s going to be your fault. So that’s why sometimes it’s the same way with God. It’s the same way as we’re moving. If we keep moving in a lifestyle with Jesus, then he will keep our life stable. He will keep our life stable. It cannot be an event. It’s got to be an everyday thing that we do. The more time, the more that we were subpoenaed, it can’t just be the works of the ministry or the works of what he wants to do. If it’s also about who he wants me to become, who God wants me to become in the process of what God wants me to do. Because if I don’t know who I am, then I can not do what God wants me to do.

Amen. I spend time in worship. I have to spend time in prayer. After read my Bible. I have to read, know what the word says. So I keep moving. These are just ways I keep moving. I keep moving whenever I worship God, whenever it’s just me and God alone. Even whenever I don’t feel like it. Even whenever it doesn’t look like things are changing. I keep praying. I keep moving. I keep moving into relationship. I keep the joy of the Lord is my strength. I keep prophesied over myself that I am chosen, that I am called that I am. He is that I am who he says that I am. And just all that’s the lifestyle that we live in our first love with God. So notice what he says in revelation, chapter two, verse four, he says that you have left your first love. The word left actually means to send away, let go release depart discharge separation that you’ve left your first love, which has caused a separation. So I don’t know who I’m talking to this morning, but God just asked you to. He wants you to come back. He’s inviting. God will always give you an invitation to come back. He will always give you an invitation to be a part of who he knows that you are.

You guys are awful quiet In here. Not Carmel. Come on, give it up. Just make a price break right now. Hey man, just Left your first love separation to part. It’s not God that leaves us. It’s not necessarily that. We’re he’s saying you losing your salvation. Although that’s a spiritual, that’s not good spiritually. So here’s how I know that that God will never leave me off balance that it’s not God that leaves me. And maybe some of you are here are struggling right now when it comes to us about when we can help you with us at Mt. Carmel Church. You’re saying, Hey, I don’t know why God has left me. Where’s God in all this he’s left me. He’s given up on me. He’s forgot about me. Anybody ever felt that way? I have. I felt that way. That’s the enemy’s approach to get us to believe that God doesn’t care about us. God doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your situation. He doesn’t care about what you’re going through in your life. But here’s a promise from the scriptures that said in Deuteronomy 31 six, it says be strong. Be strong. Somebody say it. Be strong and of good courage. Good courage. Do not fear nor be afraid of them for the Lord. Your God. He is

One who goes with you. And it says here that he will never leave you nor for sake. You, he will never leave you nor forsake you. That’s his promise for your life, but he will never leave you nor forsake you. So it’s not God that’s abandoned the relationship. It’s not God that’s neglected the relationship. And I think that’s why God is saying it’s prominent for the church right now. It’s imperative that we know in these in times in these last days that we don’t lose sight of our devotion with God, because I’m telling you that if we don’t get the first, right, it’s going to be hard for us to get the latter, right? If we don’t get the first things, right, we can’t get the next things, right. And he says, return back to your first thing. The first

Works Exodus three 12 says, and God said, I will be with you. I will be with you. I will never leave you nor abandoned. You notice what he says in revelation, chapter two, verse five. He says, remember, therefore, where you have fallen from repent and do the first works or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand. In other words, he’s saying, I’ll remove your influence, how many what’s influenced in your life. You want the kingdom of God to flow through. You want to influence the culture and society and the world around you, right? That’s why we’re all here because we want, we are kingdom minded people. And we want the influence of God to permeate everything around us. And he says, if you want that in your life, if you want influence in your life, that kind of influence. And you have to have the first works.

You can’t settle on what, what the things in the end, the work of things, and you gotta, you gotta look at who he wants you to become, who he wants you to be and not the what the, what is not wrong. It’s just sometimes we get out of balance. When that’s the only thing that we focus on. I want results. When I ask God for something, I want to know the details. What it’s going to look like. God says that’s not faith. Faith is a substance of things. Hoped for the evidence of things. Not seen you step into it. You walk in it and I will show you the rest. Come on. Somebody give him praise today. He’s good.

Preach myself. Happy yeah. Jesus. Come on, Jesus. Woo. He said, look at where you have fallen from. Look at where you’ve fallen out of the word follow means to fall out of fall down. It means to be due late labor for, or be engaged in or with the works. The works. Notice what he says, the works there. He says, you’ve fallen out and he says, repent. And do the first works. The first works be engaged, be engaged. The first works, there has to be engagement that has to happen. There has to be engagement that has to happen with the first words. The first works is the first love. Your first love. There has to be engagement that has to happen. Engagement. Are you engaged with God? Isn’t God engaged with you is the time that you spend with him and who he is. Is it touching your emotions? Is your emotions dead? Because you don’t spend enough time with God. I want God to move my emotions. I don’t want my most motions to be emotions, to be moved by feelings for a new level of Mt. Carmel Church.

Come on. So many times we focus on the feelings. I just want the feel, right? I want the feeling of it. I want the feeling of it. It feels good. And then when it don’t feel good, we wonder why things are wrong. Sometimes when you’re walking with God, it ain’t going to feel good.

Sometimes when you’re pursuing God, it ain’t going to feel good. It might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but he said, you still have to be engaged with it. If you engage with it, then you will see the process. Sometimes it’s the process that God wants to take you. And I just want you to know today that God wants to stir up a new passion in you. God wants to stir up a new passion in you in the middle of all the mess and the chaos and everything that’s going on. God wants to give you a passion to where you will be hungry for him. That’s what it’s about. Church.

Jesus. When we get hungry for God and we won’t want anything else

Jesus says, or the Bible says in Ephesians chapter two, verse 10, it says for, we are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good Works. Could I just let you get on a little secret that you were created to do good works. You were created to do the first works. You were created to spend time with him. You were created to worship him. You recreated your creative being is in Christ. Jesus, Jesus loves to worship with you. He loves to be your first love when it comes to Mt. Carmel Church.

Good works.He prepared for you in advance long time ago. So how do we transition? How, what, what is, what should be our focus on how we can retain and obtain and get all of this? Our lives balanced? Well here, I think that the key thing is our heart. We have to have a balanced heart, a balanced heart produces a balanced life. If you don’t have a balanced heart, I’m not talking about balanced feelings. Cause you’ll never get your feelings balanced. I’m talking about a balanced heart in God.

Your heart simply typically means in the Bible. It talks about how the heart is your inner person, that your values is your values messed up. It’s your affections is your affections messed up your desires, your dreams. It’s a place where your dreams are. Why do you think the enemy wants to take away the heart? Why do you think the seed has been sown that the enemy wants to take away? Because he wants to take away your dream. That’s a place where your dream is. That’s a place where your desire is. That’s where your affection is. That’s where your passion is. Your passion is in your heart. And that’s where the enemy wants to get in. By ever heard that the scripture where it talks about that out of the, out of the mouth, the abundance of, or out of the heart or out of the mouth, the abundance of the heart speaks. How many has ever said something. And you’re trying to reel that something back in because you’re like, no,

I didn’t mean to say that. Well that’ll be abundance of your heart. Your mouth speaks. When we move into the who and not moving into just the what, then we will see him as he is. We will see circumstances differently. We will see people differently. We will view others’ opinions or maybe over our opinions. It, then it becomes a convenient lifestyle versus a sacrificial lifestyle. God is saying, I want to be, have a sacrificial lifestyle and not just a convenient lifestyle. I want you to have a sacrificial lifestyle where every day, this is part of the way that you flow because alphabet,

Hello is work on works. what happens many times with our heart is a heart gets shuts down. Something happens, something didn’t go our way. So we can see things. The way that we think should have been saw, saw what happens is a heart goes on the default mode. You know that thing on your TV that you can hit and it pulls up everything. Nowadays. I have all the new TVs they have, where they have all your apps and all that stuff on there. It’s a control center for us at Mt. Carmel Church.

That’s the way our heart is. But sometimes our heart goes, it wants to default back to something else. Matthew six 21, the Bible. I know I’ve seen this a lot in, in homes and are in houses. I’ve even had this in my house. It says for where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is going to be. Did you know that your heart will always follow what you treasure, what you treasure the most, your heart will follow. So that tells me that the results that you have in your life may be the results of what you’re actually following with us here at Mt. Carmel Church.

If you’re pursuing him as your treasure, then that’s what you’re going to receive and re, and so in your life, remember that the Bible teaches us that when you sow, you reap what your soul, you reap, what you soul. If you reap to the treasure, you receive the treasure. You sow the treasure, you release the treasure where your heart is. That’s where your treasure is going to be. Many times we flip it and we want the treasure to be where our heart is, where my heart may not be in the right place. I don’t want my treasure to be where some or something where my heart may be, where it’s not in the right place, where your treasure is, your heart will follow. Have you ever heard this one that maybe you, or maybe you set yourself? I’ve said this. Some that, Hey, I may be in something, but I’m not in.

I’m not in something. I may be there, but I’m not really there. My heart is not in it. How many is maybe in something right now that maybe your heart is just not really in it. God wants to recalculate. He wants to re recalibrate your heart. He wants to you to know that, Hey, he’s put some things inside of you and he wants your heart. He wants your heart because where your heart is, where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is going to be. When you treasure him, he tries her hand. The Bible says cost is two, three. It says in whom are hidden. All the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge. Anybody need wisdom and knowledge in your life. You need wisdom and knowledge in your life. Right now, it’s in the treasure of who he is. That’s who it is. That Bible says right there in whom the word, the whom is him.

It’s Jesus are all are hidden. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I need wisdom and knowledge about my marriage, my finances, how to raise my kids. All of these things. It’s right there. Cost is three, two, two, three. Give it to you. You didn’t know how, what I need to do for school. What school look like, and I don’t know how I’m gonna do this. What kind of, what kind of, um, um, friend group do I need to be in? I need wisdom. I need knowledge about that. Well, guess what? Clusters to three, I’ll tell you wisdom and knowledge is hidden. Treasure Bible says in Matthew six 33, it says, but seek first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all things, everything else will be added to you. All your needs seek first, the kingdom. How many has ever grown up? Heard that scripture. You’ve heard that your life seek first, the kingdom strive aim. That’s what it means to seek strive here at Mt. Carmel Church.

And aim to the kingdom. First live righteously and everything else will follow. Everything else will be added to you. That means that we’re, that means we’re laying down our opinions, our motives, our ideas, and our agenda for the kingdom that comes first. His kingdom comes first. We don’t, I don’t want God to have to alter.

Yeah, I don’t want to alter God. I want God to alter me. I want, I don’t want to altar God and his kingdom, which I can’t anyways. But sometimes we try to do that because we want, we want something look the way that we want it to look. So we try to have God. We want, we want to alter his kingdom and his weights by our motives and our ideas and our agendas

Seek first. The kingdom of God seek burst and everything else will be added. Matthew five. It says Matthew five and eight. It says blessed are they that are poor. That appear in Hartford. They shall see God blessed are the pure in heart. Let me tell you this. The more pure you get, the more you’ll see God when the why you’re not seeing God right now, maybe it’s because you’re not as pure as what he wants you to be. The only way that you can do that is get the who and not the best aroun with us here today.

Move into the who and not necessarily the what Well to see God, the way that God is. You want to see yourself the way that God sees you, then you got to be more pure in your thoughts. You know, I had a picture of the Lake. He might’ve ever went fishing. You’d like to fish or maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. But if you ever went fishing, you know that sometimes the worst thing you can get and the most aggravating thing is whenever you cast your line and you pull up junk

And it feels like a big one, you’re polling here. Like this thing, I tend to find that it’s a little bit, he can that somebody through him, that’s aggravated, right? and sometimes that’s the way our hearts is. Our heart is so unclean. There’s so much impurities in it that that’s why we can’t see God. He wants us to be able to see clearly, if we want to know the agenda of heaven and what God is doing on this earth, then we gotta, we gotta be able to see him clearly. If we just want to come to church and hear a good sermon, then that’s the way we’re going to go home. We’re never going to see God, the way that God sees us. The last one, Proverbs four 23. He says, keep the heart with all diligence. For out of it flows the issues of life. Keep, keep, keep, keep, keep, keep the enemies. After our hearts, the enemies after our hearts, and it was after hearts, the enemy wants to get a heart so he could get into a horse to get it impure about us here at Mt. Carmel Church.

He wants to get a heart. So we got to guard our hearts. The word keep and guard is a military term. It means to protect, maintain, and obey. The heart is the place that you have to protect. You have to maintain, and you have to obey. You will Bay from the heart. You don’t obey from your feelings. You maintain from your heart. You protect from your heart. I’m protecting my heart from all the junk. I protecting what I see. I’m not going to see things like everybody else sees them. I’m not going to look at Facebook. I’m not going to look at Instagram. All it is is all a bunch of junk. And I’m not going to look at that any longer, because all it does is get me upset when it comes to us with a better level of sermons here at Mt. Carmel Church.

That’s what happens many times in our life. We fill our life with more of other stuff than him. And then we wonder why the results that we get is what we get. We got to protect, maintain, and obey the word guard. It’s a military term. It means assignment responsibility to watch over protect shield, defend. You gotta defend, defend your heart, defend your heart. What if, what if our life? What if we had a kingdom centered heart and a kingdom focused treasure? What if our heart, our kingdom, kingdom, heart, and we had a kingdom focused treasure. What would our life be like kingdom hearts and a kingdom focused treasure.

Thanks so much for watching with us. We love our online family and we invite you to connect with us. We have a few different ways. You can do that on our website@theroads.church, as well as on social media, you can text to give by texting the amount space, roads to four, five, seven, seven, seven, and we’d love to pray for any needs you might have. So send us a message and let us know how we can partner with you in bringing the light and love of Jesus to your world.