Leon Fontaine - The Heartbeat of Jesus
True story, young man named Jacob is dying. He's got heart disease and he's on the transplant list waiting for a heart. He gets the news just in time that a young 19-year-old university guy was killed of a gunshot and so it's a match, his heart with his heart. He goes into surgery and receives this 19-year-old boy's heart, strong, healthy, and gets a brand-new lease on life. Few years later he gets a phone call, he's track down by a man. Who says that he is marrying the mother of this 19-year-old boy who died, and he'd received his heart. He asked him if would come to the wedding and celebrate with him and his new bride, this mom.
He flies him in and it's, the only person at this wedding that this mom doesn't know is this young man. And then he literally interrupts the wedding ceremony at a certain point and had the camera people ready to tell her that this young man at her wedding has her son's heart. So you know the emotions that's gonna go on. And as I was going through the story all the pictures are there and you just kind of relived it. The first thing she wanted to do was someone find a stethoscope and she wanted to listen to the heartbeat of her son. So the picture show this mom in a wedding dress, her hair beautifully done up with a stethoscope in her ears, one button undone on this young man's shirt as she's standing listening to her son's heartbeat.
And I thought to myself, when God looks at your heart, does He hear the heartbeat of Jesus? As a believer who's given your life to Christ, do you carry the heartbeat of Jesus? It's an important question and it's one that I want you to think about today as I just unpack the message that I've got. We live in a world that is so focus on pleasure. And when you focus on pleasure, you make fatal errors in judgment. It's one of the worst things you can do, is live your life but each day is trying to think of what kind of pleasures you can find today. And there's nothing wrong with pleasure, to go to a movie, to take your spouse out for a date, to play football with your kids. I mean, to get out with other couples and just laugh and talk.
There's nothing wrong with the pleasures that God has put in this world. But if you pursue them, you will be so far off course because you'll make wrong decisions. You'll think finding pleasure, living pleasure, having pleasure, is a predominant thing and therefore you'll make grave errors in judgment. We live in a world that is so focus on pleasure and the errors they make are fatal to their marriage, fatal to their health, fatal to the generations of their family. We need to know that purpose is deeper, more powerful, more long-lasting than pleasures. And if you'll pursue and stay camp on purpose, what is your purpose?
That the pleasures that you enjoy will be lasting. They'll be deeper. Because you're not pursuing them, they'll have no ability to change your decision-making process. Because your decisions, your life, the way you think, the focus of your compass in life is on the purpose for your life. That's what I wanna talk about. I'm always thinking, praying, always starting messages. I was doing one on business as I was doing this one for the church service today. I was reading through the difference between leadership and management, and how that so many people get stuck in management. Management is interesting. It's planning, budgeting. It's organizing, staffing, controlling, problem solving. All of these things are management and most people are stuck in managing their lives over and over where it is.
There's nothing wrong with that. We all need to manage well. I teach management all the time. I think its missing principles in most Christians today. But leadership is different. Leadership is a vision that looks out into the future. It aligns yourself with your vision. It inspires you, the people in your family, people around you to go for it. It takes on the obstacles and it goes through because you are in leadership mode. And if you don't get in leadership mode and you stay in management mode. You simply re-manage where you are for the rest of your life. What's your dream for life? "Well, you know, and..." If it takes you 30 minutes to tell me your dream, you don't have one.
All it take you few sentences to literally just say, and I don't mean get deep and get spiritual. I don't mean, I just mean, "Where are you going"? "Well, you know, I don't know". No. Wrong, wrong. Where are you going? "Well, we'll have to see 2018 is coming and it just depend". No, nothing depends. Obstacles are something to go through, go over, go around. If you don't know how to get past it. I mean, ask Jesus put them against the wall. He's the door to everything. But we don't live our lives managing, re-managing, better managing, problem solving, new systems, better systems, for the same old life you've always had. That's like Groundhog Day with new systems. Leadership is crucial. Leadership deals with the issue as well as what is your purpose. I mean, what's the purpose that you have put? And most people the purpose is pleasure, most people it's just to enjoy myself.
If I ask parents about their kids. What do you want for your kids? The mistaken thing that comes out 90% of the time is, "I just wanted them to be happy". Huge mistake. It teaches your kids to pursue their happiness which is found nowhere in the Word of God. We must figure out our purpose. We must know and envision how we're gonna fulfill that purpose. It doesn't mean we have one dream. I've got a dream that is foremost for my relationship with God, my marriage, my kids, Springs Church, for holidays, for finances, to be just vision filled, to be looking forward as to where you're going. Don't make the mistake of thinking pursuing money that you knew and good at it. We got a planet full of people more millionaires being made than ever before, more billionaires being made than ever before. I mean, one day opening up the stock market and someone can move 12 billion dollars the other day. I mean, money. Come on! Really? Money? Or how about you?
In a world filled with marketing and social media and Instagram and Facebook and how to get your products out there and how to get known. Your names gonna be on everyone's lips and everybody knows your name. We live in this marketing world. But yet John the Baptist gives us a key to being great when he says, "I must decrease, that He could increase". You know the Bible got some unbelievable principles. It doesn't mean you should decrease in love. It doesn't mean you should decrease in finances. It doesn't mean you should decrease in doing great things for God. But if you focus on pleasure or you focus on you. We gonna get my name up there. We gonna get my brand everywhere. We're gonna get this thing.
Listen, I understand how to work it, go for it. Marketing, advertising is crucial. I'm not talking about how you do it. I'm talking about the attitude of your heart when you do it. Is that your purpose? If it's just one of the ways you managed. Great! But if it's your whole purpose, there's nothing that's gonna take you on a trip to depression faster. The looking after your own brand, your own you, what you look like, what you sound like, what people think about you.
Today, I wanna, I want you to seriously consider some things. Don't become complacent. If you were to ask me, "Leon, what's the biggest battle you fight"? I would tell you without hesitation. It's complacency. I fight it every day on my life. I hate it. I hate how fast this 54-year-old body wants to nap. I hate how fast this man wants to go, "It's good enough". I hate how quickly it goes, "We've done so much for God". When we haven't scratch the surface of a world that is dying and lost without Jesus Christ. And I must get up and say, "We've got a purpose. We've got something bigger than just us that we must go for". Jesus is very clear in the last chapter of Matthew, the last chapter of Mark when He says, the authority has been given to me. Now you go into this world share the Gospel, disciple nations.
In 1 Corinthians 14:12, it's an interesting scripture and I wanna explain it to you because people miss this key scripture. It says, "Even so, since you are zealous for spiritual gifts," And I am. I want God to use me with gifts of healings. I want God to use me with the word of knowledge, to show me who to talk to, how can I change someone's life. I want gifts of miracles flowing in my world. And all of these gifts were not designed to just work in church. In fact, they weren't designed for the church. They were designed for the streets. They're designed for your marriage, your business, to keep you safe, to protect you, to bring healing when disease pushes against you, to protect you when someone's moving in on you, to raise you up businesswise, raise you up financially.
When we talk about the spiritual gifts, it wasn't designed for us all to be weird in church. These spiritual gifts are to help us in all that we do in life so that we are supernatural people. And it says, here's the purpose for them. Let it be for the edification of the church that you seek to excel. Where are you excelling? The word "edify" means "to build it up". Are you helping to build His church? Are you helping? Are you rolling up your sleeves and saying, "Hey, where can I help"? One of the things I love about Springs Church is the lack of ego that exist in the volunteer teams. We've got doctors and nurseries. Millionaires parking cars. When you ask them why they do it, when they pay someone to do that in their business? It is because this is their family. And when your home, you don't mind doing anything. It's your house. It's your home. You are called to use the spiritual gifts to edify, to get the church of Jesus Christ moving, to build up His church, to build up the people around you. It's not about you getting you to where you think you should be.
The apostle Paul was interesting. In Galatians 1:13, he says, "For you heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure tried to destroy it". He was locking up women, locking up men. I mean, he was responsible for murders of God's people. God got a hold of him with a bright light, knocked him off his horse. He said, "Paul," He said, "Yes". Why you're persecuting Me? And Paul's thinking, "Who you"? You see, when people comes against you as a believer, they come against the church of Jesus Christ. Because you are the church and Jesus needs you to prosper. He wants your family, your marriage, your home, your finances, your career. Everything about you, He's died to give you life and more abundantly. But your purpose isn't to pursue it.
It says in Matthew 6, seek first the kingdom of God and where it can go and what it can do and how you do it. And all these things the Gentiles want, are all gonna flow into your life. Of all the thousands of verses, that one is very unique, saying that you seek first the kingdom and everything else will be added. You are a Christian, if you've given your life to Jesus Christ. What's a Christian? "Oh, that's one of those guys who goes to work and preach to everybody". No, that shouldn't be a Christian. A lot of times I listened to some of these brilliant minds. They're all atheist. No, not all of it. The one I listened are atheist. As they come against the Bible, come against Christianity and I literally agree with them 90% of the time because they're talking about religion and I hate religion, too. What religion has done here? What religion has done there? And I go, "Amen. Amen"! I'm talking to an atheist because I get it. I hate religion and what it's done. But I love the church of Jesus Christ and what a relationship with Jesus will do in our lives.
In Ephesians chapter 3, I'm gonna read it out in the Message Bible. I love reading different translations. When I pull my iPad out, I don't know how many Bibles I've got, and I got a whack load of them. And I just enjoy looking it in the different nuances. It's not that there's any of them that are wrong. There's probably a couple but, I mean, it's about a difference nuance and a different thing that they're bringing out. Listen to this verse. Paul says, "My task is to bring out in the open and to make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret behind the scenes all along".
Do you know what's going on in the church Jesus Christ today? Is shocking the devil. Oh, that, you know, in North America and Canada, there is this big media blitz to leave out, all Christians are the most persecuted people on the planet, more murders in Christianity than any other denomination. They'll never mention that. But I get what the world's big leaders of countries and denominations and we sit down and begin to look at the world and divided up and what is happening here and what is happening there. And we see, the church need to recognize the greatest revival we've ever seen is going on. I've spoken with people that have baptized hundreds of thousands of Muslim men, but they'll never let their name go on. They don't want what they do going out there, because we live in a world where it makes CNN, the world knows how it's happening so be quiet.
And there's just wonderful, beautiful things going on that we're not aware of. We need to recognize that from the beginning of time God's had a secret and His secret was, He would have a people and this people would be a people who'd be filled with His Spirit, who would walk in to government and business, walk in to church, walk the street, and the presence of God would be upon them as never before. Jesus was the first born and He's saying here, my task is now to bring out this mystery and let them know you are the church. "Oh, who's that"? You and you're called, appointed, and anointed to rise up and to do incredible things. And don't do them in religious stupid way but in a Spirit Contemporary way. Contemporary and relevant not condescending or weird but yet spiritually alive and it's an attractive force to the world. In John 4:34-35, "Jesus said, 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.'"
Let's stop right there. My food. My food. My sustenance. My energy. What gives me strength. What causes me to grow. What raises me up, is to do the will of Him who sent me. Some of you are so focus on career and marriage and getting ahead and pleasure. All that you desire because they're looking at you. And you've forgotten that if you do the will of Him who sent you, it's your food. It what will bring you up. It what will meet every need. It what will make you feel like you're plugged in. It's gonna give you a sense of worthiness and significant because you're doing what God's called you to do. Pleasure will always be there at a deeper level and a more awesome way than the pursuit of pleasure. And then Jesus says, don't you have a saying, in John 4:34, he says, "It's still four months until harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look on the fields. They are ripe for harvest".
What purpose do you have? Oh, I know what your purpose is. But what purpose have you set for yourself? You see, if you look at your painting. You should be looked at your desires and you look at your needs and you look at the pleasures that you want, and all the problem solving you want out of this pressure cooker. No, but you no longer are pursuing His kingdom first, you will make fatal mistakes. Your emotions will run rampant because you were designed to be a spirit being first before a soulish being and a physical being. And when you are lined up, and you are lined up with your purpose which is to follow Christ in Jesus that I will build my church.
Therefore, it doesn't mean that we should all get a job at church. It doesn't mean, no. It means wherever you, the church are, that you bring the gospel. You bring good news. And the peace of good news you bring is entirely contemporary set to who you're talking to at the time that you're talking to them. Please don't try to be me. A lot of people are turn off by me. You be you and you'll reach people, I'll never reach. Make sure, just make sure. Think about this today, that's my whole purpose for this message. Are you living with purpose? Or you've drifted off into your own pleasures and whatever it is. Get back to purpose. Follow Christ. Bring glory to Him. And let everybody around you build up His church. Reach the lost. Everywhere you go, and you meet beautiful, wonderful people who are so turned off to religion. I hate religion, too. But you can share the good news in a way that only you could do in your way. In the way that you tell your story. Let Jesus use you.
In 2018, I believe it's gonna be an incredible year of soul winning. I wanna train every person in this church to be a pastor. We're gonna call it minister, because all of us are called to ministry. And I believe that it's gonna be the greatest year we've ever seen as each person discovers. The Bible says, he who winneth souls is wise. You know, I'll just share with one person. It will light my week up for a whole seven days. I'll just bring the good news of Jesus into a situation and I'm telling you it lights my brain up. It lights my emotions up. It lights everything about me up when you're doing the bidding of God. There's something about it and your kids will catch it. And they'll wanna live like that and your grandkids will catch this and they'll wanna live like that. And you can be generational, if you keep purpose before you.