What do I need to do? I need to yield to the Holy Ghost's direction. How many of you have felt the Holy Ghost talking to you about something, about a relationship, about an attitude, about something that keeps happening in your life, but you kept pushing it aside? He was trying to help you face something that's holding you back. Oh but it's just too painful, I don't want to go there. Well okay, don't go there, but you're going to cycle through the problems until you do go there. Going there means having the courage to face your pain, bring it to the open in relationship with someone or with God, and then get to grips with what you need to solve, whether it be a bitterness, whether it be unforgiveness, whether it be some judgement. Whatever it is, God wants to heal you. He loves you. He went out to get the older boy and bring him back in. How come the older boy didn't get into the party? His own attitudes kept him out. He would rather be right in his own mind, than enter relationship and celebration. He would rather stay in a place of anger and resentment, than to move out of that into party time in the father's house!
That's what God has in mind - party time in the Father's house, where people are filled with His love, filled with the extravagant love of the Father - but you've got to open your life for that. So yield to the Holy Ghost. He'll tell you what to do, and then it may be that you've got to spend a bit of time renewing how you think, and how you act. We'll teach some things on that next year, how you think in relationships, how you interpret life, when you feel something, what am I feeling? Where's it come from? What do I believe? What does God's word say? It takes time to reprogram your thinking, but you can do it with the word of God. The truth is you're loved, truth is you're accepted, truth is nothing can separate you from the love of God. Now let me just show you something, and I'll finish with this.
When you go through adversity, affliction, difficulty or pain, the first thing you feel is unloved, and what comes out of your heart is what's in there. If you believe you're unlovable, then you'll struggle with the pain and isolate, but God loves us, and when we're in pain and difficulty, He wants us to come near to Him, and near to one another, not run away. If we can start to change those patterns, God's going to bring such a river to here, right now there's a river flowing through the church, to heal hearts, to heal broken relationships, particularly men. I want to tell you now there is a river flowing. It's been flowing for some months now, and it's been touching man after man after man, to heal broken hearts, restore lives, and start men connecting in a different way. That's why we're having this breakfast coming up. It's to start talking about that journey that men need to make, to move out of isolation and into being connected and whole.
In this last few months God has moved in the church. You just ask Lyn, man after man has come and broken down in a presence, weeping as God has put the finger on the issues that block relationship. I've been facing and experiencing these things happening. I've had people come to me, same thing; men weeping as God touches their heart. This is a time in the house of God, when God is doing something fresh to connect us. The biggest reason people are disconnected is this: we've got blocks in the heart from being able to love, and we need a revelation of God's love, and a removal of the blocks. God doesn't want you to think like a victim! He says no matter what happens, so someone messed you around and betrayed you? Oh, we're more than conquerors through Christ Jesus who loved us - and notice it's not self-help stuff. We're conquerors through Him, through a person, through a person who loves us, a loving person see?