Alright, hey everybody.  Welcome to Valley Creek and welcome to Jesus.  I am so glad you are here with us today.  Hope is here, everyone is welcome and Jesus changes everything.  We are one church that meets in multiple campuses that carries the hope of Jesus to thousands of locations, a movement of hope for the city and beyond.  And on most Sundays, we simply broadcast the message to all of our campuses.

All of our campuses have a worship team and we do the same songs but different worship teams.  We broadcast the message.  And so today, we are broadcasting the entire service so all of our campuses, all of our services are doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.  There's something about being reminded that you're a part of something bigger than yourself, that you're literally singing, and doing, and declaring, and praying and hearing the same thing as everyone else.  So come on, let's give it up for our Denton campus.  Come on, wherever you are, let's give it up for our Flower Mound campus.  Come on, let's give it up for Gainesville.  Come on, wherever you are, how about Lewisville?

Come on, we're not done yet.  Let's give it up for The Venue.  And then let's give it up for online people all over the world.  We are so glad that you are here with us.  We pursue unity with everything that we have.  We are a family on mission.  We are a part of something bigger than ourselves and there's something important on these days that remind us of that.  We live so much of our lives independent and disconnected, but this reminds us that we're a part of something bigger than ourselves and that we need each other and that you're a part of thousands of other Valley Creekers following Jesus together.  So welcome to Valley Creek and welcome to day three of Re.

Now if you say re, what's that?  Well, for the past three days we've having a three-day encounter with God.  Re, those two little letters that if you put in front of any word changes everything.  Restore, renew, redeem, refresh, revive, recalibrate, receive, rest, reconciliation.  There is no limit to what God can do with those two little letters through the name of Jesus.  And what we're doing is we do this every year is we just take three days to seek God and we're praying and we're fasting.  That's all we've been doing really.  Prayer is simply having a conversation with God.  It's pouring out our heart to Him and allowing Him to pour his heart out back to us and listening to His voice and seeking Him and having time with Him.  And then we're fasting.

I invited everybody that's been a part of this, this year, to just fast with us.  Fasting is simply giving something up to create space and hunger and desperation for God to take all the hunger and thirst that we do on the things of this world and just for three days turn it to God to remind ourselves that our soul hungers and thirsts for righteousness.  And there is something powerful all throughout scriptures when the people of God pray and fast.  And so I'm believing that over these three days, whether you've been participating up until this point or not, that even as we as a church have been doing it, that things have been happening in your lives.  The divine strategies are being released, that wisdom is being given to some of you, that some of you are hearing God for the first time in your life, that breakthroughs are being released, that healings are coming to place, that God is moving in your life, speaking to you about your future, showing you what's important and what's not, that He's just been at work in the midst of our sense of, God, we just want to meet with you.

See if we're honest with each other, the church of Jesus at large is used to casual consumerism and entertainment.  I think if we're just honest, we could say like the church at large, we're just kind of casual in our approach with God.  We can be a little apathetic, we can be a little laid back, a little bit casual, kind of come and go as we please.  We want to consume, we want to be entertained, we want to be inspired.  And while there's nothing wrong with some of that sometimes, this is a season for passionate prayer and fasting.  God has changed the times in the seasons over these last few years and so this is a time for intentionality.  It's a time for focus.  It's a time for determination.  It's a time to say, God, I will seek you first, your kingdom and your righteousness and let you take care of everything else.

And that's part of what following Jesus looks like.  You see, God tells us that if we will return to Him, He will return to us.  That if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us.  And what's interesting over these couple days as we choose to return to the Lord and draw near to Him, we find Him returning to us and drawing near to us.  But the paradox is this, He never left.  He says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."  So when He says I will return to you and I will draw near to you, what He's basically saying is, you will rediscover that I've always been right here.  And we're reminding ourselves that He's here.  You see, the past two years a lot of things got stripped away, a lot of things got removed, a lot of things got taken out of your life and mine, but the Bible tells us in First Corinthians 13 that these three remain, faith, hope and love.

And so what we've done for these three days of Re is we've gone to faith, hope and love.  Re-faith, re-hope and today is re-love.  On the first day, we talked about re-faith.  We said it's okay if you've lost some faith, if you've got some doubt, if you've got some unbelief in your life.  How do you build back your faith?  Well, not by looking at your faith.  The Bible tells us, you build your faith by – faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.  So we declared scriptures over who God is over our lives.  Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, so we turned our attention and looked to him.  And the Bible tells us that if we are faithless, he remains faithful.  So his faithfulness fills us with faith.  That was night one.  Night two was re-hope.  And we said that after this last season, it's been real easy to have lost our hope in a lot of things.

And you rediscover hope by looking at the promises of God.  So we grabbed a hold of God's promises and prayed for each other and God moved in a powerful way last night bringing healings and breakthroughs and restoration and a renewed hope being filled in people's lives.  And today is re-love.  It's about going back to love because just like the Bible tells us, it's very easy for a lot of our love to grow cold.  And maybe over this past season, your love has grown cold, your love for God, your love for people.  And so how do we get that back?  Well, the bible tells us we love because He first loved us.  So today is just about receiving God's love for you and believing that that's going to recreate love in our hearts for Him and for the world around us.

So for these next few minutes is a little bit of a different day, it's Re day three.  Will you just even close your eyes with me for a moment?  And can you just choose to say, Lord, I want to have an encounter with your love.  Lord, I want to enjoy you for these next few minutes.  I don't have anywhere to go.  I don't have anywhere to be.  I just want to be here in your presence.  Lord, I need a fresh touch from you.  I need your love to be poured out in my life.  Holy Spirit, we invite you into this room.  Come and show us the love of the Father for us.

Re-love.  We need to go back to love.  Because if we're honest, over these past two years the spirit of fear has been wreaking havoc over our world and over our lives.  The spirit of fear.  See, fear is not an emotion, it's not an opinion, it's not a feeling, it's not a perspective, it's a demonic spirit that has come to steal, kill and destroy.  And when fear, the spirit of fear takes root in our lives, it causes us to start acting and living and behaving in all kinds of ways that we wouldn't normally do.  The spirit of fear makes you live in bondage.  It causes you to become controlling, to start controlling situations and circumstances and people and scenarios.  It makes you feel insecure and unsafe, unwanted.  It makes you critical and negative.  It gives you a poverty mindset, a scarcity dynamic.  It leaves you with this joyless, weary, overwhelming life.

It is a spirit from the pit of hell.  But the Bible tells us that you haven't been given a spirit of fear but of love, power and a sound mind.  God has not given you a spirit of fear but the spirit of fear has been released in this world and it has come to take root in our lives.  And so we must be aware of it and we must say, you are not welcome here.  And so the question then is how do you get rid of the spirit of fear that wants to work in your life?  Well, usually the way you get rid of something is by doing the opposite of it.  And a lot of us think the opposite of fear is faith.

If I just had more faith, I wouldn't have this fear in my life.  But faith is not the opposite of fear.  Love is.  First John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear."  When I allow the love of God into my life, the spirit of fear is driven out.  Why?  Because the spirit of fear can't stand in the face of God's love.  And so every place you and I fear is a place where we're not receiving God's love for us.  I want you to think about this with me.  Every place you're afraid is a place where God is inviting you to receive His love.

If you're afraid of COVID, if you're afraid for your family, if you're afraid for your future, if you're afraid for your body, if you're afraid for your job, your finances, a scenario, a situation, a circumstance, the unknown, wherever there's fear in your life, that's a place where God is saying, why don't you let me love you there so that fear can be cast out and driven away in Jesus' name?  And sometimes the challenge for us is we think, I'm not afraid.  The truth is that the spirit of fear gets into all of our lives at different times and places.

And fear often masquerades itself as wisdom.  Oh, I'm not afraid.  This is just a choice of wisdom.  Fear can masquerade as religion.  It can masquerade as activity.  It can masquerade as peacekeeping or people-pleasing.  It's really just fear though that's at work in our lives.  And God's inviting us to receive His love.  See, all throughout the Bible, one of the most often repeated phrases is, "Do not be afraid."  And what often follows it is, "for I am with you."  It's like God's saying, do not be afraid for I am here.  And if God is love then what he's saying is do not be afraid because love is here.  Do not be afraid because you are loved.

It's love that drives out our fear.  And what's interesting is that commands of belief are a whole lot harder to obey than commands of action.  Commands of belief, when God commands us to believe something, those are harder to obey than a command of action.  Fear not is a whole lot harder to obey than tithe.  Do not be anxious is a whole lot harder to obey than make disciples.  Be joyful always is a whole lot harder to obey than serve.  Commands of belief like do not be afraid are harder, why?  Because they require us to submit and surrender.  They require us to open ourselves up and just receive from God.

And so I think today, the Lord wants to say to so many of us, I love you.  Maybe you forgot, maybe you've never heard, maybe you think, oh yeah, yeah I know that.  But no, no, do you believe it?  Are you living it?  Are you letting it drive the fear right out of your life?  Re-love is not about you loving God, it's about you letting Him love you to set you free.  No matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, no matter what these last couple years have looked like, no matter the condition of your heart, no matter the condition of your soul, no matter what you're tangled up in, no matter what you are in bondage to, He says to you today, I love you.

First Corinthians 13 talks about what love really is.  And if God is love then this is really a declaration of who God is to you.  So let me just speak this over your life.  God is patient, God is kind.  Jesus does not envy and Jesus does not boast.  The Holy Spirit is not proud.  The father is not rude.  He is not self-seeking.  He is not easily angered.  And God keeps no record of wrongs.

God does not delight in evil but He rejoices with the truth.  Jesus always protects.  The Holy Spirit always trusts.  The Father always hopes.  God always perseveres.  God never fails

So can you right now even just open yourself up and say, Lord, I invite you to re-love me?  Would your perfect love come and cast out my fear?  And may I have an experience and an encounter with your love, your everlasting, transforming, supernatural, freeing love?  You love me.

Why don't you go ahead and grab a seat for a moment?  And what we're going to do is we're going to start this year, we're going to re-love by taking communion together.  So at all our campuses, it's going to be start being passed out.  And as it gets to you, it's for anyone who has put their faith and their hope in Jesus, who has said, Jesus is my Lord and my savior because by partaking what you're saying is that Jesus' body was broken and his blood was shed for me.

And if you haven't done that yet today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day to reach out and grab ahold and say, Jesus, I receive your love for me.  You see, on the night the Lord Jesus was betrayed, he gathered with his disciples in a little room and the Bible tells us that that night he showed them the full extent of his love.  And he got down on his knees and he washed their feet.  The God of heaven, the savior of the world, washing the feet of men.

And then they had a meal together.  And in the meal, he reminded them about what he was about to do.  And he told them that they should do this regularly so that they would remember not their love for him, but his love for them.  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God.  This is how we know what love is, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  This is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and gave himself up for us.

God has drawn you with loving kindness.  He has loved you with an everlasting love.  And He is in the process of re-ing all things in your life because these three remain, faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love.  In other words, receiving God's love in your life is the most important thing you can do because all other things flow from that reality.

Even as we were singing, I just got the sense that the Lord was breaking open some of your hearts that have just been hard for so long, the tears were running down some of your faces and you didn't even know why, that like rain falling from the sky the love of God was just washing over you, healing, forgiving, freeing, experiencing the Father's embrace to say, I love you.  You are my beloved son or daughter and in you I am so well pleased.

See, on the night the Lord Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and he gave thanks and he looked at his disciples.  He looks at us and he says, as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me, not of you or your fear or your hardship or your brokenness or your pain, of me, who I am and what I've done.  Can we receive the wholeness that Jesus offers together?  And in the same way after the supper, he took the cup.  He said, this is the cup of the new covenant, a new agreement, a new deal that I am making with you.  It will now not be about what you do, it will forever be about what I have done.

And as often as you do this do this in remembrance of me?  By faith, can we receive the shed blood of Jesus that forgives us, cleanses us, purifies us, settles us, that res us?  Let's receive the love of God together.  For those of you that have been fasting with us, this is the perfect way to break a fast because Jesus is the bread of life and the spring of living water.  He is the answer to the hunger and thirst of our lives.

And so here's what I want to invite you to do at all of our campuses or wherever you are in the world.  I want to invite you, if you want to, to just take a moment and kneel with me before the Lord at the beginning of this year.  If you don't feel comfortable or you're physically unable, you can stay in your seat but I want to invite you to kneel before Jesus as we start this year and just offer him our lives.  See, kneeling is just a sign of submission and surrender.  It's a sign of honor and praise.  It comes with a level of humility and hunger.

And there's something about humbling ourselves before the Lord enough to just say, God, I need you.  You are God and I am not.  And I want you to be the Lord of all of my life.  And so maybe in your own way right now, can you even submit and surrender the things of your life to the Lord?  Can you submit your family?  God, I submit my family to you.  I entrust you with my family to lead and guide us and heal us and restore us.  Can you submit your work to the Lord?  God, I give you my business.  I give you my career.  I give you the ambitions and the dreams and the desires of my heart and the striving and the struggling and the worry and the pain.  Lord, I submit my business all to you.

Students, can you submit school to God?  Lord, I give you school.  I give you education.  I give you the time that I'm there.  I want to do it with you, Lord, not by myself.  I don't want to get caught up in the things of this world and the other students, I want to be set apart.  I want to live a holy life walking with you.  Can you submit your finances to the Lord?  Lord, I give you my money.  I refuse to let money be a god in my life.  I refuse to live with greed and entitlement and this love of the things of this world so I submitted to you.

Do with it that what you want me to do.  Can you submit your heart to the Lord?  And maybe in your own honest way, tell Him where it's been and where it is.  Maybe ask Him to restore to you the joy of salvation, to heal the brokenness and the pain, to awaken you to life again.  Jesus, we humble ourselves at the beginning of this year.  You are Lord and we are not.

You are king of the kingdom and you have graciously invited us home.  So Jesus, would you re-faith, would you re-hope and would you re-love in my life?  Lord, we start this year not by asking you to change our circumstances but by asking you to change us.  Can you even do that right now before the Lord?  Can you say, Lord, I've been so focused on the circumstances and the situations, but I just want you to change me?

I want you to re-me.  I want you to do a deep work in me.  I want you to call out to the broken parts in me.  Let Jesus do that which no man can ever do in your life, set you free and make you whole.  We love because you first loved us.  So today, Jesus, we receive your love in our lives, in your name we pray, amen.