Okay, take your Bibles to Revelation chapter 2, if you will. Revelation chapter 2. Revelation chapter 2. I want us to look at verses 1 through 5. Now, we've gone through the message of the seven churches, but I want us to look at a different passage of Scripture. I want us to focus in on this. Revelation chapter 2 verses 1 through 5, the Bible says, unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write, these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them that are evil. Thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, hast found them liars, and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent. And let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, I pray in these next few minutes you'd speak to our hearts from your word. You'd give us a truth that'd be helpful, a truth that would challenge us in our own walk with you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. In this passage of scripture, we have this letter to the Church of Ephesus Just recently, we've gone on Sunday nights through the seven churches of Asia Minor, which is chapter two and chapter three. Out of these, we find that there's two that have no negative comment, but all the other five of them, not only does Jesus Christ know their works and have good things to say about them, but he also has things corrective to say about them. And as we come to the church of Ephesus, he says, nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee. He said, I know your works. I know what you do. I know how you serve me as a church and as individuals. Nevertheless, he says, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. And then he gives a prescription, and he tells us how to get things right. And so that's what I wanna speak on tonight, the path to restoration. How do you get things back when you feel that your heart is cooling off to the things of God? How do you get back where you need to be? Let's bow our heads for a prayer again. Father, speak to our hearts from your word, and I pray that you'll apply this truth to us, dear Lord, and let us benefit from it. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. It's so important to realize that our emotional level goes up and down throughout all life. It's that way in your love for your own children. You say, oh, I always love my children. Duh. Well, you always have love for them, but there's sometimes they're not very lovable. There's sometimes you're at the end of your rope. There's sometimes they try your patience. And that's the same way in the husband and wife relationship. Oh, my wife, she's a little angel. Harping about something all the time is what the joke goes on to say, but hopefully that's not the case. But I'm just saying, there's always those challenges. And the thing is that what's really hard for us is to keep love at the maximum level. That's very hard to do. And so what you'll find is most of us don't stay there. We will climb up that mountain and live there for a little while, but then we'll climb back down a little bit. So how do you keep your love going? How do you keep it going in your relationship? How do you keep it going with your children? How do you keep it going with best friends? Sometimes best friends drift, they're real close together, and then you find sometimes there's a season you tend to drift apart, and then you connect again, and all of a sudden, you're best friends, you're best friend again. But there's those seasons of life, and there's those ups and downs. And naturally in life, in all of our relationship, there's an ebb and a flow, an ebb and a flow. There's a cycle to life and there's a cycle in all of our relationships. And sad to say, there's a cycle also in our relationship with the Lord. If you've been reading your Bible for many, many years, you're going to have to realize there's going to be times you pick up the Word of God and you're reading the Bible because you know you're supposed to be reading the Bible. But hopefully, the vast majority of time, you're reading the Bible because God's speaking to you. And you're getting something. And you're writing down things. And you're enjoying what God's saying to your life. But you're going to reach those times in your life where you're just going through some motions. Now that's a natural thing. But what you don't want is to get to a place where that becomes the norm. So it's natural to go through the motions sometimes in every relationship in life. But the danger comes when that letting things become mechanical takes over and that's all you're having is just a mechanical relationship. And that is exactly what the Church of Ephesus was experienced. This church was 41 years old. That's 41 years since the resurrection of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and since probably 41 years since it was one of the earlier churches the Apostle Paul founded, probably 41 years since the Apostle Paul founded the Church of Ephesus, now it's being written about in the Book of Revelation. Revelation was written somewhere around 95 AD. So it was the last book in the Bible, or what's called the canon of Scripture, the recognized Scripture, is the last book that was written. John is on the Isle of Patmos. John is well up in years, in his 80s or older, and he's writing this. And it's been a long time since the resurrection of Christ, and a long time since the gospel's been spreading out throughout the known world. Now I know 40 years is not a long time. You would think that if a church is only 41 years of age, it'd still have some enthusiasm, still have some excitement, still be enthused about the things of God. But on the other hand, we find that's not natural in our world today. If you do studies about church growth, you're going to find that most new churches peak at 20 years of age. Most churches will reach their pinnacle at 20 years of age. So churches that continue to grow after they're 20 years ago are a rarity. They're very rare. And so usually you have a time of growth and then you have a time of plateau and then you'll have a time of decrease. And sad to say that is the natural pattern of church growth across this country. Some of the greatest churches of my generation, many of them do not exist anymore. Some of the greatest churches that you may have known as a child, many of them are not around anymore or are a mere shadow of what they used to be because you have that natural time of church growth. Something I always work for here at Grandview Baptist Church, we're 32 and a half years of age. And I tell our staff all the time, I don't want to be one of those churches. I want to keep growing until Jesus comes. And so we keep fighting and pushing. And so someone said the other day, y'all are always doing stuff there. Well, we're always pushing at it. We're always trying to reach more and more and more for the cause of Christ. We're looking to keep growing and growing and growing and keep reaching and reaching and reaching, and we want to do that till Jesus comes. Because I believe that's what Christ wants. That's not the natural pattern. God wants you to be always on fire for Him. Always on fire for Christ. When I was a teenager, we'd hear that terminology a whole lot. You don't hear it much today, but people would ask in youth meetings, are you on fire for God? And as teenagers, we were challenged to be on fire for God. And sometimes as teenagers, we didn't even know what they were talking about, but we were just wondering, am I on fire for God? And we thought, well, I think I am. I mean, I'm excited. But that's what it means. Are you excited about the Lord? Does the Lord direct your life? Is the Lord involved in your passion? Are you passionate about God? And so all of these things come to play, are we on fire for God? Here was a church that was, the Church of Ephesus. The Apostle Paul was there three years. Every other church that we're gonna read about in chapter two and chapter three that we studied through as we went through on Sunday nights through the book of Revelation, every other church was started out of the Church of Ephesus. It was the mother church. But think about this, if the church that started everything is losing their first love, what's going to happen to all the other ones? If the church that was the mother church of those churches in Asia, that all those churches were started as Christians were sent out of Ephesus, if that church gets cold, what's going to happen to the others? You know, I don't want Grandview Baptist Church to ever get cold to the things of God because in some small measure, we have an influence on other churches. In some small measure, we have an influence to encourage others. We just had our youth explosion. We had a church from Tucson come and learn how to do that because they want to do that later this year. I had a church from Texas today text me and message me, and they want information because they want to learn how to do that. Last Easter, we did the hunt. This year, about a dozen different churches did what we did last year. And then this year, we just went to multiple parks. Well, this year, a lot of churches went to one park. And we told them how we went to multiple parks, and guess what they want to do next year? They want to go to multiple parks. They want to think, man, if we had 400 in one park, maybe if we went to two, we could have 800. Maybe if we went to three, we could have 1,200. Maybe if we branched out. And so I believe that God is allowing us to have a little bit of influence. But because of that, we need to keep our hearts on fire for God. We cannot allow ourselves to get cold to the things of God. Well, that's exactly what took place in the church of Ephesus. Now, wait a minute. I just said everybody can't be red hot all the time. So there's going to be times where we're not red hot for the things of God. The challenge is we can't stay that way. We can never be satisfied with that. In your life and the life of our church, we can never be satisfied with that. And so, the path of restoration, how do you get it back? You see, the Word of God not only tells us the problem here in this passage of Scripture, it also gives us the solution. The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And it's interesting here, it mentions for reproof, for correction, for instruction. Now someone has stated it this way, proof is telling you what's wrong, correction is telling you how to get what's wrong right, and instruction is telling you how to get what's right staying right. So God wants to tell us what's wrong, how to get it right, and how to keep it right. And that's exactly what the Holy Spirit is saying to this church of Ephesus. You've left your first love, But let me tell you how to get it right. And I want us just to look this evening for a little while on this subject of how do you get it back. When you start feeling the love of your life start draining a little bit and start getting cold, how do you get it back? Maybe that's happening in your relationship. Maybe you feel that way toward your own children sometimes. Maybe you feel that way about a ministry you're in. Maybe you feel that about your church or about your Bible reading or your prayer life or some area of spiritual growth or some relationship in your life. How do you get it back to your first love? And the Bible tells us. It says, first of all, remember. Remember, notice what it says in verse 5, Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. So he's telling us three things here, he's saying first of all remember, secondly repent, and thirdly resume the first works. And that's what he says, do the first works or resume the first work. Get back to doing what you're supposed to do. And so I will look very briefly at these three things. First of all is remember, secondly is repent, and thirdly is to resume those first works. Now remember, first of all, if you've ever been closer to God than you are right now, you've fallen back to some degree. Now, when I was a teenager, I'd go to conferences and they'd always say, if you were ever closer to God than you are right now, you're backslidden. And I was thinking, well, I must be backslidden. I mean, you know, I think I was closer to God maybe three days ago than I am right now because this morning it was a rough day and I only got to read maybe a few verses. And so, you know, I was always trying to think, am I at my peak? The obvious answer is no. Every day was not the best day of my Christian life. Anybody else relate to that? I mean, here we are on a Wednesday night. Was this the best day of your old Christian life? Well, no. No, it probably wasn't. So that sort of argument, if you're ever closer to God than you are now, then you're backslidden. I have to assume that we live in a continuous state of backsliding, and every once in a while we hit a peak where we have one day where we're ahead of the game, but the rest of the days we're behind. But that's not a reality. Because God's not trying to gauge if you love Him more today than you loved Him yesterday, You'd hear people, do you love God more this year than you did last year? Or do you serve God more this year than you did last year? And quite frankly, I used to always say, well, yeah, you ought to serve God more this year than last year. But you know, as you get older, you get to that place where you don't hardly do anything as much as you did last year. You sure got as much as you did last year? Well, no, but my walker only goes so fast, you know. I only, I got this riding machine, but it only goes in first gear. I mean, you know, after a while, you get slowed down. The very nature of getting older, we slow down. You know, we pass out 10 tracks and say, let's go take a nap. I mean, it's like, You can't serve like you want served. Our bodies change, our life change, our responsibilities change. You teenagers, I'm so proud of you. You get to serve God and just think how you were working for Easter and then working for Youth Explosion and then working for Ladies' Conference, then working and working and working, and that's great. But you don't have a husband or wife at home. You don't have children you need to go do something with. You don't have a job you have to be at to pay the bills. Say, well, I have a job. Yeah, I know, but it's not pay the bills. I'm just saying, you get older and you get full of all these responsibilities, and so you have to find time to serve God. But that's just natural. So you really can't gauge have you left your first love based on are you doing more than you did last year or 10 years ago or 20 years ago. You see, you cannot gauge an inward feeling by outward actions. Now, I know outward actions are always fed by inward feelings. I know that. But what happens if we're not careful, we can do outward actions without any inward feelings. I mean, you can teach a Sunday school class and you hope it did something to the student, but it didn't do anything for you because you didn't give it what you should have given it. And sometimes if we're not careful, we can just serve God by sort of rote memory. I know how to do this, let me do this. and not rely on God like we should. Every once in a while we need to just remember where are we? Where are we in our spiritual journey? Where are we with our relationship with God? Where are we with our walk with God? We need to remember that. Matthew 24 verse 12 says this, and because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. Now may I remind us in that passage of scripture, it says because iniquity abounds, does anybody think that may be happening today? And when it says the love of many shall wax cold, is that talking about unbelievers or is that talking about believers? Believers, right? Because iniquity about... Now, it doesn't necessarily say the iniquity is in the believers and that's why their hearts were waxing. It's just we live in a sin-cursed world that is just more sinful, more sinful, more sinful. And sometimes, quite honestly, it's like putting a frog in water and then turning the heat up and, you know, letting it boil. And before you know it, you got boiled frog. Because as long as you raise the temperature gradually, that frog will never jump out of the water until it's dead. But all around us, we see the temperature of this world's iniquity getting hotter and hotter and worse and worse and worse and worse. And what happens is we get acclimated. We just get acclimated. We don't cringe when we hear curse words anymore. We don't cringe when we hear about things anymore. In fact, almost as Christians, we've lost the ability to blush. Remember when we used to get embarrassed when things were said? We get acclimated to this world. But notice it says, because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. Now let me just stop here and say, if it says the love of many, and many, I'm just going to have to say that many is maybe the most part. So if that's true, that if the love of many shall wax cold, then could it be that you and I at times in our life and in our walk with God could be a part of that many? I mean, if we're just being honest with each other and honest with God, couldn't you say that sometimes in your life you're a part of that many? I think definitely there's been stages of my life or times in my life where I felt like You know, I was part of that many. Now I fight that. I work against that. But I don't want to stand before you and say I'm super Christian and never had those challenges. There's times I've read the Word of God because I was supposed to read the Word of God. There's times I prayed because I was supposed to pray. There's times I was at church because I was supposed to be at church and my wife said, you're the pastor, you need to be there. I don't wanna go, you're the pastor, you gotta, okay. That's a joke. But I'm just saying, there's times you look forward to something and there's times you just do it. The love of many shall wax cold. So if it's waxing cold, how do we unwax it? How do we turn that thing? And by the word, that word wax means to grow old, grow cold, not old, cold. The love of many shall wax cold. It means to grow cold. So if our heart is growing cold to the things of God, how do we break that up? How do we turn that thing around? Well, first of all, we've got to remember. Remember. Don't ever let your love for Christ become mechanical. How about your faithfulness? Are you being as faithful to Christ as you should be? How about your sharing your faith? How about convictions that you believe? Last Sunday we passed out three cards and I said, I'm going to ask you next Sunday, I'm going to ask you, did you pass out these cards? Hey, I passed out all mine. I'm going to get some more. But I passed out all mine today, this morning at the chamber meeting. But are you doing what God wants you to do? We can all do a little. I mean, you've got a 40-hour job, a 50-hour job, you've got family, you've got children, you've got responsibilities, you've got a husband, you've got a wife, you've got relationships, you've got things to do at home, you've got a sunny day, so that means the yard needs to be mowed, right? There's work to do. I mean, everything's overgrown. You've got to get out there. So there's all these things to do, but you're setting aside some time to serve God. You've got to do that too. And so I'm gonna be asking this Sunday, have you passed out those cards? I'm hoping a lot of people be able to raise their hand. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I passed out those cards. Now, if you're here and you're saying, what cards? Well, we have those on the information desk. Go get those cards. And pass out three of them. And this Sunday, I'll ask you. We can't let our love for Christ become mechanical. We can't let our faithfulness become mechanical. We can't just sit and soak and sour. We've got to sit and soak and serve. There's got to be an inflow, there's got to be an outflow. You know, in the south you have these lakes that are little ponds that are built all over. Every little farm has a pond that they've built because most of them would have cattle of some sort and cattle have to have a place to drink. And so you find a low area in the farm and you get a bulldozer or you get a backhoe and you dig it out a little bit and you've got a pond. But I've been to many of those ponds where they have an inflow but no outflow. And if you have an inflow and no outflow, what happens in the summertime is they have something called an algae bloom, which simply means that the top of that pond turns green with like an inch of slime. And there's no southern boy or girl that looks at a pond like that and says, let's go swimming. I just can't wait to dive into that. I have not only swam in country ponds or farm ponds, I've baptized in ponds like that, but not the ones that are covered with green. Not that. You see, in order to prevent that, you've got to have an inflow and you've got to have outflow. You've got to have moving water. But that's the same thing in your life. You've got to have an inflow. That's your Bible reading and prayer life. That's your preaching and teaching and listening. But you've got to have an outflow. You were not meant to be a reservoir. You're meant to be a river. You're not to collect all this truth. You're to pass this truth through you. You're to be a conduit of God's blessings, a conduit of God's wisdom. What God teaches you, He wants you to teach someone else. You pass it on. You pass it on. And so you have to remember. Now all of these things, faithfulness, sharing your faith, convictions, maybe that you believed before that are right or wrong, all of these are outward manifestation of an inward problem. So in other words, if you're not as faithful or you're not sharing your faith or you're not doing some of these other things, those are just outward manifestations of an inward problem. And the inward problem is we've left our first love. We can't allow that to happen. You gotta fight that. Nothing's more wonderful than being a Christian. And nothing's more miserable than being a Christian when you're not doing what God wants you to. Nothing's more wonderful, but nothing's more miserable when you've left your first love. Nothing's more empty than going through the motions thinking the motion's gonna get you where you ought to be. It won't. It won't. If things change, it has to change on the inside first. And you change the inside first and the outside things will come along. The first thing is remember, the second thing is repent. Now the biblical word for repent means to have a change of heart or a change of mind. It's a military term, almost like a sergeant would say about face. You're going in one direction and it is a turnaround of your heart, it's a turnaround of your mind, it's a turnaround that involves your actions as well. But it starts in the heart, it goes to the mind, it goes to the actions. But it has to be a change of heart. And that change of heart has to take place. We have to have a changed heart. That means we have to be in love with Christ again. You have to fall in love with the Savior again. a changed heart. How's your heart? I was talking to a man today at chamber, and I prayed for him this morning. I have a prayer list with 400 plus names on it. And as I was praying over his name, I was just thinking, I haven't seen him for months. And he happened to show up. So I said to him, you know, I was praying for you, and I haven't seen you in months, and I just prayed for you this morning, and here you are. His name's Eric. And I said, Eric, I prayed for you this morning. It's so good to see you. And he said, well, it's good to be seen. I said, how you been doing? And he said, well, I just had bypass surgery three weeks ago. I said, you did? Yeah. And he's a young man. I would guess he's mid-40s, maybe early 40s. I said, wow. And we talked a little bit about that. I said, now, did they open you up to do that? He said, no, no. They just cut a little bitty place in the side of my chest, and they did it with robotics. And I know that surgery is available. And they did it almost robotically with instruments. And they did the whole surgery from that little bitty incision in the side of his chest. He said, in fact, two days later, I was home and walking around and drove back to my follow-up visit. I was fine. I said, well, praise the Lord. And he heart damaged. And he said, no, they said there was no damage there. He said there should have been, it was completely blocked, but there wasn't any. Now I'm talking to him about his heart. Now, if your heart goes bad, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. Gary Fechter is on the back here and he's had heart problems for many years. Doctors said he should have been in heaven five years ago. His heart operates probably less than 50%. So he has to move slow and careful. The 16th of this month, Al Masbury, sitting right beside him, is going to have a clip put on his heart valve to help solve a problem. If I was the rest of you, I'd move off that row because everyone has... We're just going down heart problems here. But when your heart has a problem, that's a serious thing. About a year and a half ago, I had a meeting with a doctor and my wife and she knew her heart was getting bad and our insurance company had a change and it dropped one hospital and picked up another hospital. And so she went through months of meetings with a surgeon who said, yes, you need surgery. And then she goes again and they said, well, I'm sorry, we're no longer on your insurance carrier. Well, what do I do? Oh, you got to start this all over again. And so, I just got online and started researching doctors around and I found one that had actually YouTube video and he said he did 7,000 heart surgeries, 7,000 valve replacements and I watched it. So I called them up and said, you know, could I have an appointment? Why do you need an appointment? And I explained my wife, da, da, da. And surprisingly enough, they let us have one that Friday. This was on a Monday. Let us have one on a Friday. So, oh, no, no, no, no. It was faster than that. I called on a Monday, and they let us have one on a Wednesday. That's right. It was two days later. And so that was odd. And so we got there, and he spent two hours with us. just sitting and talking about it and showing a model of the heart. He said, now I've looked over all your information, the other hospitals sent it all over. He said, you have a very serious condition with a very simple solution. He said, now you won't live this year. You will not live the rest of this year unless we do this. That's how bad it is. It's a very serious condition, but a very simple solution. All we do is go in there, cut the top of your heart off, pull it back, reach in there, get that old valve, yank that thing out, put in a new valve, put the top of your heart back on, stitch it all up, you're good to go. I said, well, I read you did 7,000. He said, well, that's old. I've done 9,000 of them. Very simple. He said, I can almost do it in my sleep. Please don't. You know, he had such confidence about his ability to change her heart that through the entire process, neither her nor myself ever had a worry. We never even thought, well, what if? We never had anticipation. We never worried. It was just like, he knows what he's doing, he's gonna fix you. You go to sleep and you're gonna wake up fixed. And we had that confidence because that surgeon had done so many of these surgeries. May I remind us there is a great physician who has fixed so many hearts in so many Christians. And if you have a problem with a cold heart, Jesus has the answer. He can fix that. He can fix that heart. And He can give us a right heart again. Remember what David prayed in the Psalms, renew in me, O Lord, a right heart. Renew in me a right heart. And so Jesus can do that. And we find here we have to have a changed heart, we've got to have a changed attitude. We've got to be living for Christ instead of living for self. And then we have to have a changed involvement. Now, out of a heart and attitude involvement, only one of these are outward, and that's our involvement. But you cannot change your involvement and change your heart. You change your heart, and then the involvement will change. But never think because you join the choir, start teaching, start ushering, start passing out gospel tracts, that that in itself is going to change your life. It's not. When my wife needed a heart valve replaced, exercise was not the answer. In fact, that would have caused greater problems. There was nothing that could be done externally that would have fixed that internal problem. You had to get into the heart to fix the problem. And so it is with our Christian life. And by the way, so it is with you and your wife and you and your husband. Fellas, you could give her a bouquet of flowers every day, but that's not going to change your heart. You change your heart and then you give those flowers and it means something. But giving flowers, that's not going to mean anything. You could mop the floors, you could clean the house, you could vacuum it all, and she'd love it. But that's not going to change your heart. The problem is always an internal thing. So we change what's inside, and then the external actions will change. But God is the great physician, and God is the one that has to operate on our hearts. You could have handed all the tools to my wife, but she cannot operate on her own heart. Someone else had to do that. And don't you think that you're going to turn your heart around by yourself? You're not going to do that. The Lord can. But you're going to have to humble yourself to go to the Lord. Now, when I'm talking about humbling yourself, I'm talking about all of us. I think I put myself in that same crowd, that every once in a while, I can find myself doing things mechanically. Every once in a while, I can see that my passion level is not where it ought to be. I do not always live on the mountaintop. But God has to do a work in our heart on a regular basis. And every time I pick up God's Word, I'm asking God to do something to my heart. I'm asking Jesus to do something to my life. I don't just pick it up and say, well, it's time to read it. I said, Lord, please speak to my heart from your Word today. I mean, I was reading the 2 Chronicles 3 chapters this morning and I was asking God to do something in my heart. But He's the only one who can. You can look to Him. So you've got to remember, you've got to repent, and then you've got to resume, do the first works. And what's interesting, an inward change will always result in outward actions. An inward change will always result in outward actions. When you change your heart about your mate, it will change your actions towards your mate. When you change your heart about your children, it will change your actions and interaction with your children. When you change your heart about your church, it will change your involvement in your church. When you change your heart about your relationship with the Word of God, it will change your involvement with the Word of God. So the whole key is changing the inside. And that's what the great physician does. And he's done more than 9,000 surgeries. He's an expert at it. He's never failed a willing patient. He's never failed a willing patient. But he won't do surgery if you're not willing. He's not going to change your heart if you're not willing. There's no doctor in this world that's going to send a team of of his assistance to capture you at your house and then tie you, bind you up, take you to the hospital, do surgery on it because you need it. You've got to be willing. You've got to sign the dotted line that you're willing for him to work on you. And you and I have to do that with God. We have to go to the Lord and say, Lord, I'm willing. I know there's some things in my heart that need to change, and I'm willing. And I know that you're the great physician, and I'm asking you, make some changes in my heart. Make some changes in my life. But when those changes take place in your heart, it's gonna be manifested in your actions. Because I can't see your heart, but he says, Remember, he says, repent, and then he says, do the first works or resume the first works. Repeat the past, your past faithfulness, your past sharing your faith, your past convictions, your past beliefs, the things you used to do for Jesus long ago. I mean, you'll start reading your Bible like you did when you first got saved and you just couldn't get enough. Remember when you went to church and it's all new and they're singing something about trust and obey and you're wondering, what? Or blessed assurance and you didn't have a clue what he was talking about. And you're singing all these choruses and all these hymns and different songs and they're singing a little chorus, maybe something like, Oh, now I'm just thinking all these different courses. Like, this is the day that the Lord hath made, and I will rejoice and be glad in it. And you're new to church and you say, what do you mean, this is the day the Lord? Well, he made every day. What do you mean this day? So you start analyzing everything that's going on. It doesn't make much sense. But you know that God is speaking to your heart, and so it doesn't matter that that you don't understand it all, you know your life's being changed. You know, after a while we know all the songs, we know all the movements, we know all we're supposed to do, but we're missing what God's supposed to be doing here, here. And by the way, that's why we came to church, for God to do something here. And so, when we come to the Lord, He'll make those changes. We'll repeat the past in our faithfulness, sharing the faith, serving God, other things. It will reinforce the present. When God changes our heart, we'll be confident about what we're doing. All of a sudden, if you're serving God now, it means something to you to stand before that class. and share the word of God. It means something to you to stand in a choir and sing his praises. It means something to you to serve in a church, whether it's lofty or lowly, it really doesn't matter. But if you have a place you can serve God, you're good. Because the heart's in it. The heart's in it. David said, I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. He's saying, I don't need a fancy place. I just want to serve God. Reinforce the present and then reestablish a future. There can be no future unless the first works are done again. There can be no first works done again unless the heart's changed. So what's the real problem? You and I, you and I have a heart problem. I'm not saying you have that problem right now. I'm just saying you and I are prone to have a heart problem. And every once in a while, the great physician has to do a little work on our hearts. I've had him had to work on my heart many, many times. Many, many times. And if you've been a Christian very long, he's probably had to work on your heart several times. prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. That ought to be a prayer of every Christian. That's a beautiful song. But the thing is, we all from time to time need heart surgery. Now, if you're at that place where you're not exuberant about everything you're doing for God, it doesn't mean you have a cold heart. But it does mean you're in danger of having one if you stay there. All of us are going to visit that place, and that cannot be helped. And if you're looking for more than that, I'm just telling you, that cannot be helped. But you don't have to live like that. You're going to have seasons of time where you're not as excited about the things of God as you should be. But that's normal. I'm just telling you, that's normal. And if you're going through that right now, that's normal. But what's abnormal is to be content with that and just stay there. That's not what you want to do. So you may be there and you may visit there, but you don't want to stay there. You want your heart back with the Lord. And the Lord has to be the one to do the surgery that will turn things around again.