Do You Know This Jesus?

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, do you know Jesus? Well, I hope you do. People say they do, but how well do you know Jesus? Do you know the Jesus that says, I’m going to spit you out of my mouth? I’m going to teach you about that on the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:12 – (Steve Gray): You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:37 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:12 – (B): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:24 – (Steve Gray): Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast, your voice of revival. Today we’re going to talk about how well do we really know God? Or how well do we really know Jesus? And bring out a few things that most people might not think it’s even God talking to them or it’s God sharing the word with them or whatever. Oh, that can’t be Jesus. Because you ask people, who is God and God is love, God is mercy, God is good and all that’s right.

0:01:50 – (Steve Gray): And. But they have no idea that Moses said God is a warrior. What? I’ve been in this however many years and met, you know, probably thousands of pastors over, especially during the revival years, when hundreds would come, you know, through those years, hundreds and hundreds. And I would ask them these things, and I never had one. I never had one leader or pastor say, God is a warrior. They said all the other things.

0:02:21 – (Steve Gray): So what’s happened is I think we’ve. And of course, that’s Moses, a Hebrew take. And I think we’ve commercialized Jesus so much and made culture. We have a culture Jesus and a commercialized Jesus, which are the same. We’ve commercialized the popular Jesus. And so we say, well, you know, who is Jesus and what do we do? And you know, our kids go to Sunday school all over America. And what’s the first thing they. What’s the first song they learn? Jesus loves me. This I know. And you think, well, Pastor Steve, you’re going into bad territory. What are you trying to say here? What are you trying to say?

0:03:00 – (Steve Gray): And of course Jesus loves you. Of course. I’m just saying that’s not where we should start. That’s not where the Hebrews, I’m talking about Moses and the Hebrews started. They started where God told them to start. They didn’t start like God didn’t say, listen, I want you to make sure your kids know that I love them. And I want to make sure you know that I love you. Well, that’s the Americanized one. You know, go by a church and it’ll have a sign that says, smile, God loves you, or something like that.

0:03:30 – (Steve Gray): But you’re never going to do what God said to do. How well do we know God? God, when he started out and got a people and he said, people and their children, you know what he said? He said, here’s my commandment. Love me with all you got. Everything, heart, soul, mind, strength. Love me first. Love me, love me. And so the goal was to get people that loved God with all they are to experience then the love of God.

0:03:57 – (Steve Gray): So it’s secondary, it’s important. It’s not the root of how God gets started with a people. So just imagine that if kids went to Sunday school and, and, you know, a few years. And during those early years, both parents and Sunday school teachers and pastors taught them how to love God, the importance of loving God. And it didn’t matter whether you felt love for God. It’s that you turn your energy towards love for God. And you know, if you do that, if you start loving God with all you are enough, you’re going to feel the feelings come. But that’s the Greek mind that you can’t, you can’t get it if you don’t feel it. Imagine if God was Greek oriented, how God said, you know what?

0:04:39 – (Steve Gray): I just don’t feel like loving you. I just don’t feel it. You look at you and say, you know, I’ve kind of seen how your life is going and I’m just not feeling it, you know, but that’s so, that’s just. How much do we know about God? That first of all, he says you should love God. First with all your heart, then. Yet do we learn God loves us. Yes, it is a great thing to learn and it’s a doctrine we need to learn and everybody needs to hear it. But it’s not the first thing we need to learn. It’s not the first thing we need to hear. The first thing we need to do is where God started with his own people and said, learn to love me. It’s a commandment to love me.

0:05:15 – (Steve Gray): And Jesus said it’s the first and greatest commandment. Right. And then of course, the second part of it was to love others. And it never did bring up to know God loves you. So we’ve just over the top in America at least. And then that spreads to everybody where what the main message of the gospel is, is God loves you. That’s the main message. And it’s not. It’s a message, but it’s not the starting point. And so we’re weakened from then on because we’re not starting where God told us to start. Well, that’s very radical for some people because.

0:05:51 – (Steve Gray): And ministers and churches. Cause they’ve been. That’s what they do. They don’t teach how we must love God. And that’s our starting point. And then everything else comes after that. And that was God’s plan. Okay, so anyway, I was talking today too with someone about all the politics going on and all the wars. There’s a lot of wars going on everywhere. And I just suddenly realized, and this is just still knowing God again.

0:06:15 – (Steve Gray): I suddenly realized in all my life, when I was very young, so I won’t sound too old then when I was very young, the Vietnam War was going on. It went on for a long time and then it just ended. Finally. They made deals, you know, they made deals. But what they just shook hands, so to speak, and get you, we’ll give you the north and you take the south. Sort of what they do. Korea too. North Korea, South Korea.

0:06:41 – (Steve Gray): And then, you know, Iran took the hostages, which I don’t know if you’re too young to remember that for what, however long it took them and didn’t return them. And then President Reagan came in and he got them instantly returned. And then we just sort of shook hands and did nothing about it. And they didn’t pay a price at all. And so now as we look now we’ve got wars in the Middle east and other countries too, but they’re the ones we focus on. And you know, there’s Iran and there’s Gaza and there’s all these things and People are fighting and terrorists and all that.

0:07:19 – (Steve Gray): And so we continue to have that spirit, if I can call it that, that attitude, which could be a spirit, that attitude of we just want to. We just want to get it to where we’re shaking hands and sort of like that’s what God wants to do. God just wants us to shake hands and try to do better and we’ll try to work this out. But if you study in the Bible, that’s not how God operates. God operates in unconditional surrender. And I was sharing, like, the last unconditional surrender that I know about was World War II.

0:07:55 – (Steve Gray): It was unconditional. We’re going to keep fighting. We’re going to keep doing this. We’re going to keep bombing. You know, with Japan, they did two atomic bombs and they said, if you don’t surrender, you’re going to get a third party. And so then they got unconditional surrender. That was it. And of course, now Japan’s a great ally of ours. Germany is a pretty good ally of ours. Yeah, from when the Nazis. It wasn’t really all the Germans, but the Nazi party wanted to destroy Jews and they wanted to destroy love, to destroy all the nations and take over Europe.

0:08:29 – (Steve Gray): But when it got down to it, unconditional surrender. And so we have to remember that’s the kingdom of God, you know, why we need to remember it, first of all, is that’s how God looks at us. God doesn’t come and shake hands with us. Right? Jesus is not our, you know, he’s not our counselor. He’s not our counselor where he comes and we just work things out, you know, and figure out why we do what we do and all that kind of stuff. It’s. Unconditional surrender is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

0:09:00 – (Steve Gray): You have to die to yourself, pick up your cross, follow me, be a disciple, all those things. But we leave that out because. And I said. And I hypothesized, I guess, that I’m thinking like, well, if you grew up and you never really saw an unconditional surrender in any war or any country to another country, and you never saw that. It was always, you know, we’ll work this out. Then there’s nothing to look at and say, oh, now I know what unconditional surrender is.

0:09:29 – (Steve Gray): I know what we need to do. So today we need, you know, in my opinion, and this is nothing against any politicians. I’m not a politician, so I don’t really have the place to tell, you know, politicians what to do with politics. However, I am in the spiritual. I walk in the Spirit. I work in the spirit realm. It is my responsibility to share with them and everybody else what the spirit of the Lord is saying.

0:09:56 – (Steve Gray): So that I could take. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to take it to some. Some people and say, look, you want God to get behind us and do it? Then the spirit of the Lord would say, unconditional surrender. That’s how he operates. And you know, a terrorist or whatever, unconditional, just go and do it. But they’re afraid. And he said, and then the spiritual person says, don’t be afraid. God backs that up.

0:10:21 – (Steve Gray): God gets behind that attitude that that’s what God’s saying. We have to get this cleaned up and turn this thing around. Just like Japan and Germany have been turned around. And I’ve been to both countries and my dad fought in the war, both in the Pacific and the Atlantic, and was also in the Battle of the Bulge. And so I was influenced about Japan and Germany. And then when I went to those countries to minister, I had to clear my head a little bit, like, this is not the one that my dad taught me on, you know, but anyway, so think about that. Think about your own life, how unconditional surrender is not in the Christian culture.

0:11:02 – (Steve Gray): Right? It’s just come in and we’re going to teach you that you’re accepted by God just like you are. And we’re going to teach you to be able to accept yourself, love yourself. We’re going to help you get better in yourself so that you can just try harder. Cause God loves you. And he’s very merciful and forgiving. And he is. But that’s not all he is. So with that in mind, I was starting to read the Book of Revelation, which is important because it starts out in the Book of Revelation with Jesus coming to churches and giving messages to churches. So there’s no way to escape it, that he’s talking to unbelievers or that he’s not talking to us?

0:11:44 – (Steve Gray): Cause these are in here as an example. The Bible says this book’s an example to us and Israel’s an example to us. You know, the scripture part in the Old Testament. And so as you do that. So, okay, so if he’s speaking to churches, is there anything about him in here that I don’t understand, I don’t get, or I’ve never been taught, or I’ve never just got the revelation that there’s a part of this Gospel and a part of this Savior of mine, this Son of God, this Jesus, this King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There’s a part of him I don’t know.

0:12:21 – (Steve Gray): I don’t understand, and I’ve never been taught, and I don’t know how to. And I don’t know how to process it. Is there anything in this book that would grab hold of me and say, you know, I don’t really know him. I know the culture, the commercialized Jesus loves everybody and everything’s okay. I know that, but what don’t I know? So anyway, I looked in the Book of Revelation, and I went to one that a lot of pastors preach, the Church of Laodicea.

0:12:56 – (Steve Gray): And I was sharing, because this is one pastor kind of preaches where he says, I know that you’re neither hot nor cold, but you’re lukewarm, and I’m going to spit you out of my mouth. And I kind of chuckled at that and said, that’s when a pastor’s kind of upset at his church and he preaches the Church of Laodicea, you’re going to get spit out. But nobody takes that seriously. I don’t even know people as I’ve preached it or seen it preached, where people hear that and they go, oh, my God, have mercy on me, a sinner. God, have mercy on me, a lukewarm.

0:13:26 – (Steve Gray): Because they just don’t see it. And that’s the problem with the Laodicean Church. They didn’t see themselves. Because it says here that what they say, he knows their deeds are neither hot nor cold. And you’re lukewarm, but you say you’re rich, you’ve acquired wealth. You don’t need a thing, Right? They don’t need anything. We’ve acquired wealth. And when you do that, it’s easy to move into. We don’t need anything. And God must be pleased with us because we’re doing so well, or at least we’re doing good, you know?

0:14:00 – (Steve Gray): And then if something bad happens or it keeps happening, you know, people say, well, maybe God’s trying to tell me something, but if things are going well, at least good enough, we get to, okay, I can live this way. I don’t have to go chase after God. I don’t have to be on the floor of my church crying out to God for revival. I don’t have to go. I mean everything. And so Jesus says, you see you that way, but I see you as miserable, blind, naked.

0:14:26 – (Steve Gray): And so he says, you say this about yourself, but I’m saying this about you. So he says, that’s where he says, listen, if you don’t get this together, I’m going to spit you out. Of my mouth. And I was explaining that the hot and cold is not hot and cold spiritually it meant hot and cold water. Because they had viaducts coming, you know, that they, these kind of pipelines they built to bring water into Laodicea. And they had enough money to build them.

0:14:53 – (Steve Gray): And so they had one that. Let’s just make it simple. One brought hot water and one brought cold water. And by the time it got down to them, it mixed together and you know what it does? The hot affects the cold, the cold affects the hot. And all of a sudden it picked up all these minerals along the way. Stuff from the ground, stuff from the air, stuff in these pipes, they made whatever and it picked up that stuff and by the time it got to them, they’d take a drink of it. And guess what? It wasn’t hot, it wasn’t cold, it was lukewarm. So all you have to do is go where people go get a drink.

0:15:29 – (Steve Gray): Especially out of towners that didn’t know any better just go watch them. And they take it, they take a drink, it’s so bitter and it’s lukewarm and they spit it out of their mouth. And so God uses Jesus, used that as a picture, says, this is how I feel about you, this is how I see you. I’m going to spit you out of my mouth. And I’m thinking like, I don’t think we know that Jesus, we don’t know it. Nobody’s going to even bring that up that he would do that.

0:15:56 – (Steve Gray): And if we, and if we were there and we, and he came and said this to us, we would probably think the devil’s shown up, a demon’s talking, talking to me. And so he tells him, he says, you know, you’re pitiful, blind, naked, you know, you need to go, you need to go take care of it. You need to buy gold from me and white clothes from me and SAP for your eyes from me. And those are all symbolic things to Laodicea too. But we’ll don’t need to talk about that.

0:16:24 – (Steve Gray): And so then he brings that great line that we know. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And if anybody lets me in, I’ll come and have fellowship and eat with them. Well, that’s almost, almost 100% been taught as an evangelistic message that Jesus is standing at the door of your heart. If you just open the door and, and let him in, he’ll come in and fellowship with you. And totally out of character.

0:16:52 – (Steve Gray): He’s telling a church, I’m outside, I’m not inside. How many churches say on Sunday morning God’s in the house? And you go like, well, if he is, he’s not showing himself very much. You know, it’s not affecting us. Where’s the transforming power? That’s because he’s outside of most churches knocking. He says, you have to open the door before I come in. You can’t just sing your songs and say, God’s in the house.

0:17:18 – (Steve Gray): Cause I’m there. You just assume I’m there. But in this case, he was outside knocking, and they needed to open the door. If anyone would open the door, he’ll come in. And so he says to the one who’s victorious, will I give the right to be with me on my throne? Victorious. Victorious in what? He says, okay, you need to be victorious. Victorious in what? Victorious in seeing who you really are. Victorious in beating this lukewarm stuff.

0:17:46 – (Steve Gray): Beating it, Getting rid of it. Getting it. And beat the church. You know, Beat the system that’s got Jesus outside the door knocking to get in. And nobody’s opening the door. Cause they already say he’s here. All right, All I’m trying to say is, do you know this part of Jesus? What about over here in the churches of Ephesians? That’s another one. Cause they’re doing a whole lot of things right. He lists all the stuff they’re doing right. You know, they persevere and they don’t tolerate wicked people. And he’s like, this is a pretty good church. This is beyond the churches we see.

0:18:24 – (Steve Gray): They’re doing so much better than the churches that are not near this spiritual on this level. And you’ve persevered and you’ve endured hardship and you have not grown weary, you know, So I guess they’re not going to get a sermon like, you know, just hang on. It’ll get better, you know. No, he says, you endure it. Okay, then what happens? Then that’s all great. Then what happens? He says, oh, well, wait a minute.

0:18:51 – (Steve Gray): Let me bring up one thing I do have against you. You say, well, what’s that? He says, you’ve lost your first love. You’ve forsaken the love you used to have for me. You don’t have now. You need to repent of that and get back to first love. Kind of like saying, love God with all your heart. The commandment, Love God. Learn to love God. You have to love me. You know, and maybe they were doing what we do.

0:19:16 – (Steve Gray): They were doing good and they preached. Jesus loves you. God loves you. Jesus loves me. This I know. And maybe that’s what they were preaching. But that’s what we. That’s kind of a universal message everywhere. Just remember how much God loves you. And yet he goes in and says, I don’t like this. Consider how far you have fallen. Fallen. They’re doing better than most churches I’ve ever seen. And yet he says, they’re fallen. You know why they fell?

0:19:43 – (Steve Gray): They’re falling. Cause of their love towards God was not what it should be. They had good works. They had good programs. Just like today, we got good programs, good works, everything we offer everything, you know, but we’ve lost the very thing, the presence of God. So what does he do? Is this the Jesus you know? And he says, you have to repent and do the things you did at first. And then he says, but if you don’t.

0:20:10 – (Steve Gray): If you don’t take this seriously, then I’m going to come and I’m going to remove the lampstand from your church. And this was. Of course, this was one city church. They didn’t have the first church of Ephesians, the second church of Ephesians, the last church of Ephesians. They had one church and the church was off the mark, doing good things, but they had lost the love. So if the love is not there, the first love is. If you don’t have that, then all the other things to Jesus don’t apply.

0:20:39 – (Steve Gray): And he says, I’m going to remove the lampstand. And he said, you have this in favor. There’s certain things that you don’t like, but I’m going to remove the lampstand. And what’s that mean? What happens? What is that symbolic of? I’m going to come and remove the lampstand. That means the light’s going to go out, the spiritual light. You’re going to still be doing all these things. And. And just like the other church, Laodice, you’ll still think. Laodicean church, you’ll still think you’re pretty good, doing good, and all that kind of stuff. But here, if you don’t repent, the lights are going to go out.

0:21:11 – (Steve Gray): Not physical. No. That’s the problem. The light of the lamp will disappear. But you’ll still have church. You’ll still have church. Case of the Laodicean. And Jesus will be outside, knocking, waiting for you to get it together and come in. So is this the Jesus? Is this the Jesus? You know, would you ever even dream that your church or somebody else’s church or denomination that Jesus has said this to them and they didn’t pay attention, that he actually came? Or they say in their heart or we preach. You know what?

0:21:43 – (Steve Gray): I think the lampstand has been removed. We don’t have the power. We don’t have the presence. And most of all, we don’t have the love. This kind of love, that’s first love. Love me like you did at first. First love. First means first. And so my point today is not to say you need to love him first, although that’s there. My point being is that you don’t need to repent of being lukewarm. But that is there too.

0:22:10 – (Steve Gray): My point is how we don’t even know this Jesus, this portion. We don’t know who he is. We don’t understand his attitude. We don’t understand unconditional surrender. We don’t understand the level of commitment. We don’t understand what it means to be dedicated, to be a disciple, to give our lives totally to him. So we’ve made Jesus into kind of an Americanized Jesus. One that fits our personality and one that keeps us comfortable. Right. One we’re comfortable with. I’m very comfortable with the Jesus that it’s all about me and that loves me and he’s come to help me do better.

0:22:49 – (Steve Gray): He’s come to help me through my struggles. Yeah, that’s all true. But that’s not all he is. That’s not all he is. Our God is a warrior. And he comes and he says, I do not tolerate lukewarm. I do not tolerate losing your love for me. And you got all these. You love all the things of the world you love. You love all these things. And I’m working on. I’m finishing up this new book right away. And I wrote in that I said, I know you say you love God, but the problem is I heard you say you love pizza, too.

0:23:22 – (Steve Gray): And so I know that you love God, you love pizza, but if it comes down to choosing which one. So you want to go out for pizza? And they say, I know we’re having. There’s prayer at your church tonight, but let’s go out for pizza instead. We need a night off. So you love God and prayer’s going on. Maybe prayer or worship night or whatever’s going on at your church, but we love pizza, too. Which is going to win. You already know which one wins.

0:23:48 – (Steve Gray): It’s rare to find someone that can override those things. All the things that they love, sports and entertainment. So that’s what I’m trying to bring us to. I’m being the voice of revival. Cause what’s going to happen if we deal with. If we deal with the first love. If we deal with our lukewarmness, we’re going to have a true revival, a deep revival. I appreciate the stirrings that are going on, especially in young people, that the stirrings. And I read the article, maybe you saw it in the news. Young men are coming back to the faith.

0:24:20 – (Steve Gray): That’s also good. That is signs of the revivals trying to happen. But eventually we have to meet the entire Jesus, not the one that we just go and worship and raise our hands. And that’s good. I don’t want to sound critical. It’s good. It’s a great starting point. But we’ve have to move from standing there just feeling loved and cared for and we love God and God loves us and all that. We’ve got to turn to a real first love and we’ve got to get rid of lukewarmness and really turn to the dedicated life that Jesus called us to.

0:24:57 – (Steve Gray): Otherwise we will never get to a true revival like they had. And the true revival, they had raised up other kinds of people, right? They had other kinds of people that were just as loved as you are by God. But they gave their entire lives to this. And many of them actually died for this and were willing to die, willing to be persecuted, willing to pay the price. I don’t want to be persecuted. I don’t want it to cost bunches and I don’t want it to happen to our country.

0:25:28 – (Steve Gray): That’s why we need revival now, to take its shape and get the power and presence of God really going in to where we are totally absorbed by the glory of God and the presence of God. That just takes us into a realm that they lived into, that they lived where they saw. They did see signs and wonders and miracles. And I have people say, oh, where are the signs, wonders? We need to get the signs, wonders and miracles again.

0:25:54 – (Steve Gray): Maybe so, but we need to get our first love again. That’s the starting point. We need to get rid of this lukewarm Christianity that lets us feel good about ourselves as we are and does not move us ahead. Doesn’t want to offend anybody, doesn’t want any. We’re so afraid somebody will leave the church if we really say what needs to be said. That’s lukewarm. And you know, if he says he’s going to spit us out of our mouths, I wonder how many people already have been.

0:26:23 – (Steve Gray): But you can repent, you can come back, you can fix it. That would be revival. If you’re in there. If we’re fixing our first love and we’re repairing the lukewarmness among us. And we’re changing and growing in that. Revival has begun. Maybe that’s what’s starting. But we need to move it on. Cause right now it’s happening in many places, except in the churches. Where’s the church that we say, wow, wow, look what’s happening there. All right, so that’s enough.

0:26:52 – (Steve Gray): You can go to stevegrayministries.com, and be watching. The new book will be there soon. It’s called Revival or Ruin. And it’s about what’s happening in America. It’s talking about the spiritual and the political. And political is happening. But the spiritual needs to influence the political so they can make good decisions, backed up by God. And we’re supposed to be the people that share the spiritual. They’re the political. We share the spiritual, and then we put it together, and the spiritual influences the political.

0:27:23 – (Steve Gray): That’s what it’s about. And that’s the kind of revival that talks about in the book. So Revival of Ruin will be coming out. Of course, the Mighty Like Gideon book is still there and other things to help you grow and get these kinds of messages that bring revival to our nation. So, anyway, I hope you’ll keep watching. Tell friends, be a faithful listener. Because this is all about getting you prepared for all that you need to be and all that you can be in the name of Jesus. Till next time, bye-bye.