To Know Jesus is to Love Him, Part 3

If you leave loving Jesus to your emotions or to your feelings, you're going to be in a whole world of hurt.

Trust me. But for love to be a lasting and everlasting, it has to begin and ends in the mind. Because emotions ebb and flow, emotions are mercurial, emotions can go up and down. And that is why true love can only begin and can only be sustained by the power of commitment.

And commitment takes place in the mind. Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Yusef as he's teaching through a life-changing series called To Know Jesus is to Love Him, offering keys to a deeper and more meaningful relationship with Jesus. This is Leading the Way. Today, a look at loving him with your mind. Leading the Way is listener supported ministry. Learn how you can stand with Dr. Yusef in prayer and through generous giving when you call us, 866-626-4356 and online, ltw.org.

Now they're taking you back a few years, Dr. Michael Yusef. Back in the 90s, Christians began to wear a bracelet with written on it, WWJD. And this stands for What Would Jesus Do? After it became popular among Christians, all of a sudden, some enterprising marketers turned a well-intentioned concept into a fashion and a big business. Some celebrities began to wear these bracelets, WWJD. One of those celebrities, in fact, there are two or three of them together, wearing this thing and the cameraman just comes in and said, now, what does this mean? What is that thing you're wearing? Oh, yeah, yeah, WWJD.

What does it stand for? They didn't have a clue. They absolutely have no clue what it means. That is not strange to human nature because back in the Old Testament, the same thing was happening. God has pointed out to Israel again and again, thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, with your soul, with your mind, strength and your neighbor as yourself. Years later, some enterprising rabbis put it together and they called it the Shammah. Can you say Shammah? And another group later on came in and they said that Shammah is so important, we must insist that everybody would recite it twice a day.

Not twice a week, twice a day. And they did. They will recite it. But like those who are wearing the bracelet WWJD, they didn't have a clue what stood for. They did not understand the depth of the Shammah is all about. They recited it twice a day, but their lives were as far from loving God and their neighbor as it can get.

So much so that when God appeared in the flesh, the one who has been promised in all of the pages of the Old Testament scripture to be coming, God in human flesh, the Messiah, not only that they did not recognize him, but they crucified him. What they were saying with their lips. They were denying by their lives.

What they were declaring publicly, they were not practicing it personally. Sounds familiar? Sounds familiar? There is no difference between the Jews in the time of Jesus and our day. How come? Think about it. Think with me. These professing Christians who sing the Christian songs and they spend millions on Christian CDs, yet they don't live the very words that they sing.

They do exactly what the Jews were doing in the time of Jesus. Now I want to bring this closer to home because I don't point fingers. I point finger at me. I have to confess to you there are many times, particularly in the past, when we would begin to sing a song and then I stop singing and I start praying. And say, Lord, do I really believe this? I mean, do I really intend to keep these promises? Do I really practice these words? Do I really live up to this song?

Do I really mean this song? And I begin to realize that what I'm singing is a lie. Take the song that we often sing, Mold Me, Make Me.

Really? Do you really want Jesus to mold you? I mean, I remember several times I would stop and say, Lord, I'm not going to sing unless I really mean this. Husbands, do you know what you're saying when you sing, Mold Me and Make Me? You are saying that I am going to put my wife's best interest ahead of mine every time. Wives, do you know what you're saying when you sing, Mold Me? You're saying I'm going to submit to my husband's spiritual authority every time. Young people, students, listen to me. When you sing, Mold Me and Make Me, you are saying that I'm going to obey my parents unconditionally, not only when I agree with them. Workers, when you sing, Mold Me, are you willing to submit to your authority, earthly authority?

And the list goes on and on and on. Really? Do I mean this? I want you to turn with me to Matthew 22. The Sadducees was a Jewish sect that did not believe in the resurrection. Now, if you missed that word resurrection, you missed the whole point. OK, they did not believe in the what? They didn't believe in the resurrection.

They're like the secular humanist of our day. They said, yeah, when you die, you die. And that is why we're going to see this very hypothetical case that they're bringing to Jesus is a very cynical and evil attempt to trick Jesus. Coming up with this hypothetical case, what Jewish law said, when a man dies without leaving children, then the brother marries. And they said, OK, they went on for seven times in the resurrection.

What? What resurrection? You don't believe the resurrection.

It's a trick. And they couldn't put it over Jesus. They were trying, but they couldn't.

In the resurrection, whose wife is it going to be? And Jesus silenced them. He really, literally, the word means he shut them up. And then he tells them that God is the God of the living, not the God of the dead. And if you don't believe the resurrection, then you've had it, boys.

Rough translation, but you get what I mean. And so, look at verse 34. The Pharisees, bless their hearts, they were watching Jesus' every move. I mean, they tried to manipulate him so many times.

I mean, you can't miss it if you read the Gospels. They constantly tried to manipulate him. They constantly tried to trick him. Constantly trying to get him into a charge of heresy.

I mean, they're constantly. And they're watching for him. I mean, they were clever guys. They were watching and said, let's see what these Sadducees, they might get him.

But when they saw that he shut the Sadducees up, they said, well, let's see if we can try. They were sworn enemies, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. They're the two main sects. The Sadducees were a much smaller group than the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were a larger group. And they figured out that we're not matched for Jesus. Every time we tried to trick him, he beat us by our own game. He asked him a question. He said, well, let me ask you this. And so they failed.

And they said, the theologians and the preachers have failed. What to do? What to do?

What to do? When everything else fails, get a lawyer. They brought a lawyer. And this lawyer came to trick Jesus.

Because at least they felt he's a match. And so the lawyer comes to him and he says, Rabbi, which is the greatest commandment? The idea is or the purpose of this is to pin Jesus down on a heretical charge. If he said the first or the seventh or the ninth, aha, you don't treat them all equally.

Here's the charge. And he thought he was going to come up with one of the Ten Commandments. But instead, Jesus told him the very words of the Shama that they recited twice a day, particularly these folks.

They recited it twice a day. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind or your strength in some translation and your neighbor as yourself. Now, in this series of messages, to know Jesus is to love him. And in the last message, I showed you three obstacles to loving Jesus more deeply every day, to loving Jesus more intimately every day. Today, I want to talk with you about loving Jesus with your mind, loving him with your mind. Why the mind is so important? Why?

Listen to me. Because the mind is the seat of the intellect. The mind is the seat of determination. The mind is the seat of willful vigor. The mind is the seat of commitment. So what? Well, if you leave loving Jesus to your emotions or to your feelings, you're going to be in a whole world of hurt.

Trust me. And that is why we have some messed up marriages, because some people get into marriage with their emotion and not with their mind. But for love to be a lasting and everlasting, it has to begin and ends in the mind. It has to begin and ends with commitment. It begins and ends with determination.

Why? Because emotions ebb and flow, emotions are mercurial, emotions can go up and down, and that is why true love can only begin and can only be sustained by the power of commitment. And commitment takes place in the mind.

If you want to grow in intimacy with Jesus, if you want to grow in love with Jesus every day, it has to be a continuous act of the mind, continuous act of the will. It has to be a continuous act of determination. It has to be a continuous act of mental and willful decision. You cannot leave it to your feelings. You cannot leave it to your moods.

You cannot leave it to your circumstances. You cannot leave it to when you can get around to it. It has to be the priority of your time. It has to be the priority of your energy. It has to be the priority of your money. It has to be the priorities of your thinking. It has to be the priority of your decision making. It has to be the priority of all of your dreams and your longings. How many books were written about ordering your priorities, reordering your priorities, and seminars and conferences?

I'm sure some of you have gone to these like I did. You go to these seminars and you read these books, and they always tell you that priorities in life must be God. They always never say God. God. Family. Work. And church. I remember one time I was in a pastor, and I was really messed up with my priority and I was struggling in that issue, and I saw this and I said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got to do that. I've got to follow this.

I'm telling you, as God my witness, I have failed miserably in trying to keep up with this list. You say, why? Because God is invisible. But everything else around me is visible. And when the crunch came, guess who gets shafted?

The invisible one. How? Well, what grabbed my attention? What took my time? What occupied my passion?

Is what I could see with my physical eyes? Is what I could experience existentially? Is what is urgent every time trumped out the important? Let me share with you from the painful experience of failure, to love Jesus, trying to keep this list of priority. Because what happened, at least to me, you might have succeeded in that, and now God bless you, that's fine. But to me, the reason I failed is because God got crowded out, and with it, my desire to love him deeply and intimately. Here's how the Lord began to teach me back those many years ago, of changing the concept from a list, one, two, three, to a bicycle wheel. You see, when Jesus is the axle around whom all the spokes of my priorities revolve, when Jesus is the hub from whom all of my priorities emanate and go back to, when Jesus is the very center of my life, and all the other priorities fall in place.

When you get the center right, when you get the hub right, when you get the axle right, everything else will revolve around him. Let me tell you something else while I'm at it. When I used to set my priorities as God, family, work, church, I used to lie often.

Why? Because as I said, I can go for days when God gets the short end of the stick, when God gets the leftover, when God got the crumbs, when God got shoved into a corner while I'm focusing on the urgent. The urgent always gets your attention, and the important gets shoved in the background. Like the Pharisees of old, I recite the Shama twice a day. In my case, we're singing songs, but I didn't live up to them. So what does that mean to me? What does it mean to me for Jesus to be the axle of all my priorities? How have I been trying to love Jesus more deeply every day, more intimately every day?

How do I love him with my mind? I want to tell you, it meant for me to make a willful decision to give him the first fruit of the day, not the rotten fruit when I'm exhausted at night. You see, loving Jesus with my mind, it meant a willful decision to give him the first fruit of my money by systematically organizing it in a way so to avoid forgetfulness. Loving Jesus with my mind means that I make a willful decision to stop and consult him before making any decision.

And I promise you, once you get in that habit, you will develop it and become a great habit for your life. Loving Jesus with my mind causes me to constantly make decisions with his reputation in mind, not mine. We often start off, how is this going to impact me? How is it going to affect me? I don't care about my own reputation. His reputation, all that matters. Loving Jesus with my mind causes me to reorder my priority, all my priorities of how I use the leftover money after my giving the first fruit. That way I'm not wasteful. Loving Jesus with my mind means saying no to every and any opportunity that keeps me from worshiping with God's people on a regular basis.

And the list goes on and on and on. In the last message, I told you that to love Jesus deeply and to love him intimately is to love what he loves, is to love what he loves. When you place what Jesus loves at the forefront of your mind, you will make the right decision every time.

I tell you, when I don't do that, I blow it every time and I know it. And that's what it means to love Jesus with your mind, soul and strength. In the next message, I'm going to show you how to love Jesus with your imagination because this is not a topic preachers preach on, but it is vitally important how to love Jesus with your imagination. But suffice it to say, to love Jesus with all your mind, you have to let the past be the past.

Past failures, past successes, I don't care what they are, let the past be the past. You will not be able to move forward in loving Jesus deeply and intimately. You will not be able to grow in your love for Jesus as long as these chains holding you back, as long as that tape recorder is playing in your head of all that happened in the past.

You have to let the past be the past. God can set you free from the past pain so that you begin to continue loving Jesus with your mind. Your mind has to be set free and only Jesus can set your mind free. Amen? Not long ago I was reading about a man who went to see his doctor because he was concerned about some memory loss. And the doctor did some tests and some examinations and finally he gave him the results and he said, We cannot help your memory without the possibility of impairing your eyesight, the choice is yours. And the man really struggled with that decision and finally he said to the doctor, he said, Doc, I would rather see where I'm going than remember where I've been. Amen?

What a wise man. Beloved, you can do that in loving Jesus with your mind. You cannot control what happened in the past, but you can place the past under the blood of Jesus, then intentionally, definitively, decidedly, that you love Jesus with your mind.

Shall we pray together? Wherever you are on the spiritual spectrum, whether you know Jesus or you don't know Jesus, if the Holy Spirit has spoken to you, has convicted you, would you act on that conviction? Or if you don't act on that conviction, you're going to remain hostage to the past, past sin, past pain, whatever they may be. If you don't know Jesus, say, Lord Jesus, come into my life, set me free. You know Jesus, theoretically and intellectually, you understand everything in the Bible, but you're still held back by the past.

Say, Lord Jesus, set me free so I can love you with all my mind. Father, we thank you. You are the God of grace, and the grace is just unexplainable. And I'm so grateful that it is, for if it is explainable, I wouldn't be the recipient of it. But thank you that it is amazing. It is astonishing.

It is surprising. And it's wonderful. Let your grace flow among your people right here and around the world as people watching online. And thank you, Father, that you are the God of power and might, and you can accomplish far more than we can even imagine.

For we pray all this in Jesus' name. Dr. Michael Youssef on today's Leading the Way, encouraging you to intentionally, definitively, and decidedly love Jesus with your mind. And if you're unsure about your spiritual journey, we have pastors who would love to speak with you. You can start the conversation at ltw.org slash Jesus. And before we completely run out of time today, Dr. Youssef has joined us here in the studio to talk just a little bit about his newest book.

It's called Never Give Up. And Dr. Youssef, this book offers Christians practical content about persevering in the face of trials. So what would you say are the greatest hurdles that are keeping 21st century believers from persevering in their race of faith?

And also if you would take just a moment and speak to those challenges. I think the temptations that are facing the 21st century believers is the same temptation that Adam and Eve faced in the garden. We all want to be like God. Do you want to be like God? Do you want to be in control of your life?

Do you want to be in charge? Or are you going to surrender to the sovereign God and obey him? Because that's what surrender is, obedience. God said, don't do it. Adam and Eve said, oh, but when they heard the devil tempting them, they said, well, you can be like him and they want to be in control. They didn't want to obey God. And that's the same temptation from the days of the garden. Now it's accelerating now because of all the stimuli and all of the technologies and all of the things, the visual things that we are experiencing. But it's the same temptation.

It was visual for them. This is a garden. This is a tree.

This is what you really should be going for. You got all the other trees, but this is the one that God said, don't do it. And so today people are doing the same thing. They're going for the tree that God says, don't go there. And so the temptation is always the same. It's the temptation of people of Israel.

God said, obey me alone, worship me alone. And they said, well, you know, there are Baal worshippers over there. They seem to be happy. We want some of their happiness. So they weren't tempted to go that way. So we are seeing it today.

Lots of Baals, lots of Ashtaroth, lots of foreign gods that on the Internet, everywhere you turn. So the temptation is the same and we need to be able to say, regardless of what happens and regardless of who does what, we, like Joshua said, as for me and my family, we shall worship the Lord. Get more details about Never Give Up when you visit ltw.org, ltw.org. Oh, and you can also call and speak to a ministry representative. The number is 866-626-4356. That's 866-626-4356. The program is furnished by leading the way with Dr. Michael Youssef.