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The speaker warns against following the advice to "follow your heart," saying it is deceptive and wicked. The church has undergone a name change and a shift in focus towards authentic discipleship and identity. Authentic discipleship means following Jesus' teachings and surrendering to His will. Authentic identity means becoming who God created us to be and pursuing that purpose. The church's vision is to build a community of fully devoted followers of Christ. The first step to authenticity is seeking God. Being saved means being rescued by Jesus and requires a response in our lives. Seeking God is a crucial part of discipleship. Your heart will always deceive you. Don't take the worldly wisdom of just follow your heart. Listen, it looks really good in script, text, over a nice landscape posted on Facebook. Follow your heart. It'll never lead you wrong. It looks great inside of a Hallmark card when you're trying to encourage somebody. But let me tell you, follow your heart is about the most wicked thing that you can tell somebody to do. Welcome to Elevate from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama with Pastor John DiQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life for God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message and welcome to Elevate. It's been a big, it's been a big month for our church. And last week we came together and we really just kind of laid out the vision for what God has given us for Authentic Life Church. The reason behind why we've changed the name and the direction and the focus that we're going together as a church in our leadership, in all of our people, in our students, in everybody going in this direction. But it's more than just a name change. It's more than just a new way to brand ourselves. It's more than just a new color scheme so we can have green everywhere. It's an identity shift. It's an identity shift for our church. It's an intentional focus for how we'll do discipleship. An intentional focus for how we will raise up people into the authentic calling of who God has created them to be. And so we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean then to live an authentic life for Christ? Well, we talked about this. Authentic means real, genuine, not counterfeit. Real, genuine, not counterfeit. In other words, we're the real deal. And there's two areas of authenticity that we've discussed over the last two weeks. We talked about biblically authentic discipleship and we've talked about authentic identity. Biblically authentic discipleship is found when we follow Jesus the way that He said that we are to follow Him. Did you hear what I said? Biblically authentic discipleship is when we follow Jesus the way that He said we ought to follow Him. We can't follow Him on our own terms. We're not the one that put the plan of salvation in motion. We don't get to make this up as we go along. Right? There is authentic discipleship and that is what Jesus says. And if we look in Matthew chapter 16, beginning in verse 24, it says this, that Jesus said to His disciples, whoever wants to be My disciple must... And whatever follows there, whoever wants to be My disciple must... Whatever follows, that is the requirement of what He wants His disciples to be. That's what they have to do. And there are many things that could have followed these words. It could have been, if whoever wants to be My disciple must attend church regularly. Whoever wants to be My disciple must wear Christian t-shirts primarily. Whoever wants to be My disciple will never show up late for church because they know it starts at 10 a.m. on the dot. Alright. But these are things... I know, already I'm stepping on toes. I've been preaching for three and a half minutes. Alright. But these are things that we value. Right? We value our church attendance. We value our Christian music. We value our Christian t-shirts. But we value those things falsely because our appearance and what we look like on the outside really doesn't mean a whole lot to Jesus. What He said was, whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. That is biblically authentic discipleship. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. That means on your way to die. That means that you don't have any more goals and dreams and plans for you. Now you're taking up Jesus' goals and dreams and plans for you. Right? A dead man doesn't have dreams and goals for the future. Right? If you're on your way to the electric chair, you're not going, hmm, I wonder what I'm going to have for dinner tomorrow night. Just being real, right? That's what it means to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him. We take on His goals and His dreams and we do things His way. Does it mean perfect? Whoever is perfect in here, raise your hand. Somebody always will raise their hand and say, I got you. No, we're not perfect. There's a church down the street, big letters on the side of their church that says, no perfect people allowed. I don't know if they're checking. I don't know how they're managing that. But I'm pretty sure that there's no perfect people in that church either. And maybe the church you used to go to where you used to live was a real great church, but I promise you there's no perfect people there either. Why? Because you're there. Right? There's none of us that are perfect. Authentic does not mean perfect. It does not mean perfect, but it does mean that I am daily taking up my cross. I'm daily denying myself and I'm following the Master's plan for my life. And Jesus' way was complete and total surrender and abandonment to the will of His Father. We're going to talk more about that today. But the other element of living an authentic life for Christ, we talked about biblically authentic discipleship, but this other element we've been discussing is biblical authenticity or authentic identity is what I mean to say. Authentic identity. If you read in Philippians 3 verse 12 it says, Not that I have already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. What he's saying is I'm not there yet, but I'm trying to be everything that Jesus has desired and created me to be. There's a reason that He rescued my soul, saved me, took me out of the miry clay, set my feet on a rock, gave me joy unspeakable and full of glory, gave me peace that passes all understanding. There's a reason why He did that. There is an authentic you. Now there's you, right? There's the you that has been shaped by your childhood and your past and your decisions that you've made. It's been shaped by the goals and the plans and your drive for success and dare I say, your selfishness in your life. There's that you. And when I say you, I mean me too. But then there's the authentic you. There's the real you. The one that Jesus took hold of you to become. We all live in a false sense of who we are until we meet Jesus. And then He begins to transform us and we begin to become our real selves, the one that matches that heavenly blueprint that God drew up for our lives before the foundation of the earth. That's authentic identity and there's got to be a pursuit towards that. We can't just say, yes, Jesus, and then just go on living the way we've been. There has to be a pursuit towards authentic identity. And if you today in this room are listening online, if money or reputation or sex or power are your motivators in life, you'll never be your authentic self. If God's will, His Word, Jesus' teachings, and His desires for you are what motivates you, then hold on because you're about to go for a crazy transformative ride for the rest of your life. That's authentic living. And the only way to walk in biblically authentic discipleship and authentic identity is what we've laid out. This is our vision statement. We read it to you last week several times. Authentic Life Church exists to build a community of fully devoted authentic followers of Christ. Fully devoted. That means not one foot in the world and one foot with Jesus. It's not riding a fence. It's not compartmentalizing our lives. It's fully devoted. My life belongs to Jesus. Fully devoted. That is the key. And the question is are you completely sold out and surrendered to God's will for your life? And it doesn't matter if you're 12 years old in this room or if you're 82 years old in this room. Have you surrendered your will to God's will in your life? Because until we are, we can't be authentic because we'll be seeking the wrong things. So that leads us. We talked about what we call life steps and how we truly become authentic and live a fully devoted life for Jesus. And the first one we're going to talk about today is that saved people seek God. And we're going to hit these other two in the upcoming week. Save people, serve people. Save people, save people. But these are not just nice things because they fit well on a banner. These are things that Jesus modeled in His life. These are things that Jesus taught us to do. These are things that Jesus' apostles as they wrote the Bible, as they wrote the New Testament taught us to do, showed us how to do, modeled it for us and gave us instruction. We use the term saved people because that's what we are. We can't ever forget that. Can I tell you, you can't ever forget that you're a saved person. We sing a song sometimes called I'll Never Get Over It. I was dead in my sin but your love didn't quit. I'll never get over it. We haven't just had a mental agreement with a good philosophy. And oftentimes that's what happens. People come into church and they agree mentally with a good philosophy. It's a good philosophy of life. Love people. Serve people. Right? There's good philosophical things in the Bible. But we are not signed up for a mental agreement with a philosophy of life. We are saved people. Saved from the consequences, the eternal consequences of our sin. Saved from bondage to what sin does to us. Right? We're saved. We're saved from the wrath of the coming days when judgment comes down. Right? That there's coming a day. And we're saved from that. So that's who we are. We've been rescued by the blood of Jesus. We're saved. And that demands a response. It demands a response. A response from our life. And so our first step, if you will, authentic discipleship is to seek God. Now that's a simple statement. Two words, right? Seek God. Four words. Save people. Seek God. And it's simple, but it's profoundly important for your discipleship. For you becoming authentically who God has called you to be. And so it requires an understanding of what it truly means to seek God. And listen, I'm talking to you today. Young person. New believer. Old person. Long time Christian. I'm talking to everybody in this room. Online. In the room today. I want you to know that the Holy Spirit wants to speak to you today about what it truly means to seek God. Let's read Isaiah 55 beginning in verse 6. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Father, I thank you, Lord Jesus, for your word, and I thank you that today you're going to show us something through your word that's going to help us to be truly, biblically authentic disciples walking into our authentic identity, Lord, teaching us to be fully devoted followers of you, Lord Jesus. I pray, Lord, I'm a frail, flawed human, Lord God. But Lord, this is your word, and I pray that as your word goes forth, that your Holy Spirit, Lord God, would use it, God, to pierce the hearts of those that are within its hearing today. In the name of Jesus. Amen. So before we go any further, let's talk about what seeking God is and what seeking God is not. There's a Hebrew word that is used here when it says, seek the Lord while he may be found. This word translated seek, the word is darish. I think it's how you pronounce that. But it carries the connotation of following and frequenting. Following and frequenting. So seeking God is following His ways and frequently coming before Him. Following His ways and frequently coming before Him for instruction. Right? So you can be seeking God as you are loving the homeless person on the corner of Azalea and Airport. As you follow the ways of Jesus, you are seeking God. You're following His ways. But then there's that frequenting, that coming before Him, getting into His word, getting into His presence, getting into a place where you can encounter Him face to face and say, God, what is it that you need and that you want and that you desire from me? What is it that you need me to change, adjust, move around, shift, transform in my life? Following and frequenting. Now what seeking God is not is coming to Him with our agenda and expecting Him to bless it. Now that sounds pretty obvious, pretty elementary, but it's something that we do frequently. We seek our will and then we find a verse and we spiritualize it. Now don't all shout me down now while I'm preaching. You know, God must want this for me because it's the American way. So God must want it for me. God will work it out for me. God will give me the desires of my heart and we convince ourselves that everything that we want is God's will for our lives. And then we find ourselves in a crisis of faith when everything doesn't work out like we expected. I'm preaching a lot better than what I'm hearing, but what that means is you don't need to shout me down. What it means is you're taking it in and I'm going to take that as conviction falling upon us this morning. God's job is not to bless our agenda. I think I'm going to put that on a bumper sticker. Authentic Life Church and then right next to it you can put God's job is not to bless my agenda. Proverbs 19, 21 says this. Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. It's only God's purposes that are going to prevail in life. So let's not get cocky with God. At the end of the day it is only His purposes that will hold steady and be accomplished. So we may as well seek that and do that, do what He wants and not what we want. Back to Isaiah chapter 55. It says in verse 6, seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. We said the word here, translated seek, means to follow and to frequent. But look what it says in verse 7. Let the wicked forsake His way. This is tied together. This is a passage of Scripture and all these thoughts are dependent upon the previous thoughts. So let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on Him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon. Do you see what is tied to seeking God? Forsaking your own way. Right? It says seek the Lord while He may be found. Next verse. Let the wicked forsake His way. It's not even the next sentence. It's all in the same sentence. Let the wicked forsake His way. That means turn off your GPS for your life and follow His plan for you. Do you ever open up your GPS on your phone and you put in an address? You've been there before. You just want to see if there's a better way to get there. That's my excuse. But you look at it and you're like that's not how you get there. You ever been there? You're like GPS is confused. Like it's taking me somewhere but that is not the address that I typed in to my GPS. It's getting you somewhere. It's confident. It's very confident. Hey, you want to get there? Make a left here. Make a right there. Right? Get in this lane. Bare right and then make a left and your destination will be on your left. You're like, I was looking for Whataburger. That's like, you know, you're taking me to the nail salon. Like I don't get it. Right? The GPS, you know, there was a problem with GPS for people coming to this church. Maybe some of you have experienced that problem. Maybe the first time you visited this church. People have trouble with it. I don't know if it's been fixed and I don't know which GPS map it is. Apple or Android or Google. I don't really know, but it would lead people to Michael Boulevard. The problem is as the GPS confidently led you to 37 50 Michael Boulevard, what they were doing was taking you about two miles down the road. I actually did it myself one time. I'm like, you know what? I need to get back to the church and I'm over here and and maybe I want to see if there's a shortcut to get me off the airport. And so I started following the shortcut and I'm like, I never knew that that road connected me to Michael Boulevard. That's so weird. How come I didn't know that I've been here for 12 years? Well, it wasn't taking me here. It was taking me somewhere else. It was the wrong destination. It was confident. It was taking you turn by turn by turn, but it was the wrong destination. It'll get you somewhere. Just not the right where now for me, whether the GPS is right or not, I'm still going to get lost, but that's just me. Pray for me. But that's what it's like when we follow our agenda and our plans for our lives. We go so confidently about our lives. We make this decision. We make that decision. We go here. We go there. We say this good thing. We do that right thing. Making our plan following the money using our worldly wisdom and we definitely get somewhere. Just not where God intends for us to go. Listen to me. Your GPS is wrong. My GPS is wrong. To be a truly authentic follower of Jesus Christ. We need to have a real revelation of just how depraved we are. We really do. If you're going to call yourself a saved person, you've got to be keenly aware of what you've been saved from. Just how poorly I am at plotting the correct path for my life. Jeremiah 17 9 tells us this. The heart is deceitful above all things. And desperately sick. Who can understand it? Our default setting is sinful. No matter how good our intentions are, how smart or well meaning your heart will always deceive you. Don't take the worldly wisdom of just follow your heart. Listen, it looks really good in script text over a nice landscape posted on Facebook, right? It looks really good as a mean follow your heart. It'll never lead you wrong. It looks great inside of a hallmark card when you're trying to encourage somebody. But let me tell you, follow your heart is about the most wicked thing that you could tell somebody to do because the Bible says that your heart is deceitful or as other translations say it desperately wicked. You can't follow your heart. It will get you in trouble every time your heart will lead you toward greed, toward revenge, toward selfishness. It will not lead you toward God's plan for your life or toward your authentic identity. That's why Jesus said, whoever wants to meet my disciple must deny themselves or change the GPS that they're using. You've got to come to a place where your default desires and wants and goals play fiddle to God's plan for you. And it might mean that you'll be uncomfortable. Oh no, I said it. That is not the American way to be uncomfortable. It's not what's being preached in today's culture, but that's what it's going to take sometimes to follow God's perfect plan for you. Stepping outside of yourself, pushing past your limits, pushing past your fears and your insecurities and allowing God to take over for some of you. You know what God is saying in your life, but you're too afraid to just go like this. And he said, if you want to follow me, it's going to be uncomfortable. I'm going to put you out on a limb so that I'm the only one that can catch you. That's how God operates. It might mean that you'll never be rich. It might mean that you'll have to face some really fearful situations in your life or that you'll be persecuted. Are you okay with that? I'm really asking that question. Are you okay with that? I'm asking myself that question. John, are you okay with that? Maybe never being rich. Maybe never being somebody that people know and read about in a magazine. Maybe never being able to be completely comfortable and just being able to sit back and relax in life. Am I okay with that? Paul said, I've been poured out as a drink offering. It's like every ounce of me has been poured out, all the way to the end. He was in prison, where many people, if they got put in prison, would just sit there in a prison cell, just ruining the day that they got put in prison. Just upset, complaining about the prison food. And he's writing the Bible to the very end, following God's plan and purpose. Are you okay with that? Are you alright with being uncomfortable? Are you okay with the fact that you're going to maybe have to give more of yourself than you ever imagined? What I'm preaching right now is not good church strategy. But what I'm saying is, if you truly want to follow Jesus the way that He prescribed, it's not about you, it's about Him. You've got to go His way, not your way. You've got to stop adding Him as a bolt-on. Sometimes He's like the sidecar, but we're still driving. But this is what Jesus modeled. This is what Jesus showed us, and how to truly seek God. Remember, seeking God is coming to Him with our agenda and asking Him to bless it. It's discovering and choosing His will first and foremost in our lives. Right? Jesus even said, right, you're all worried about what you're going to eat, you're all worried about what you're going to wear, and I'm telling you, seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you. Seek first. Follow and frequent. Follow and frequent. Doesn't mean come to church and all of these things will be added to you. Seek first the Kingdom of God. Lay yourself down. Right? Take the heavenly GPS and let the destination that He already pre-programmed for you lead the way. So Jesus gave us an example of what really seeking God is in His life. Matthew 26, verse 39, it says this, and going a little farther, He fell on His face and prayed, saying, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup come from Me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. Let me paint the picture here for this verse. This is after the Last Supper and Jesus' disciples that He had with Jesus, His disciples, and Judas' betrayal was already in motion, and the time was now that Jesus was going to be led to the cross, and He's in the garden of Gethsemane, and He's praying. I understand Jesus was human, and so His natural inclination was to preserve His life. We all have that within us. Right? When the stove is hot, we recoil. Right? We look to preserve life. So this is what's happening, and He comes to God in this sorrowful moment, this anguish-filled moment. The Bible says that He was so full of anguish that He was sweating blood in this moment, and He says, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me. He's afraid. He's apprehensive. He's terrified about what He is about to endure. And He's saying it in His prayer. He's saying, God, I don't want to die. I don't want to be tortured. I don't want to be beaten. I don't want to be spit on. I don't want to be forced to carry a cross up a hill with a broken, beaten, bloody back. I don't want to be paraded through the streets like a criminal. I don't want to have nine-inch spikes hammered through my wrists and my feet and hoisted up to hang on a cross until I die. God, I don't want that. I'd rather not have to go this way, Father. Yeah, that's a lot in that little sentence there. If it's possible, let this cup pass from Me. But that's the heart of Jesus' prayer. He's coming to His Father with His fears. He's coming with His anxieties and His desires and His apprehensions. But what He says next is what reveals the heart of a true, authentic disciple that understands truly how to seek God. He says, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
