The Heart of the Matter

Well, hey, my name's René, and I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and I'm super glad to be back from sabbatical. You might know that every seven years this church gives the pastors an amazing gift, and I'm well aware that very few people get this gift in the world. Every seven years, the pastors get the whole summer off, and I just came back from my summer off, and the first thing I want to do is thank you, the church, so much for what you've done. It was such a renewing time, so put your hands together and thank the church for providing all the pastors here with the sabbatical. Super cool.

And also, I just want to thank all the people of this church on the staff who had to put in extra time and pull extra duties to make this sabbatical possible for me, all the people who spoke this summer, all the people who put in extra time returning phone calls and emails. Would you agree we have an amazing pastoral staff at this church? Absolutely amazing.

Well, today I want to just take 10 minutes to tell you two stories that happened to me while I was on sabbatical, and then I'm going to introduce my friend Mike, who's going to take the rest of the message time. So first story, while I was away, we spent a lot of that time reconnecting with relatives in the beautiful country of Switzerland. These are all pictures I just took with my phone. This is just absolutely stunning. How many of you have been to Switzerland and can about, I mean, it's amazing. It is just beautiful.

It's funny because people told me, "Man, that iPhone takes good pictures," or, "Man, you're a good photographer." I said, "No, no, it's the subject matter. Nobody could take a bad picture of this place." And next weekend, I am so looking forward to telling you the biggest lesson I learned up there in the Alps, and I call it how to make every day a masterpiece. And that comes up next weekend. I know it's Labor Day, but try to make it out. I cannot wait to share that with you.

Well, while we were there one day, we go up to a super remote location in these Alps, and this is so remote. Let me just show you how remote this was. To get there, you have to drive to the end of a glacial valley. In fact, it's this valley right there, the Lauterbrunnen Valley. And once you're at the very end of this valley, you have to leave your car there, and then you take this tram, and you take this tram up to this tiny little village, and then you walk a little ways, and then you take another tram to this even tinier little village, and then you get out and you walk a ways, and then you take another tram to the top of this mountain where it's so high there is no village, and then you walk a little ways, and then you take another tram to the top of this mountain.

In other words, you have by degrees left civilization behind, right? And you are just in the middle of nowhere. It feels like you are up in the North Pole when you're there. All they have is this visitor center with a restaurant and a movie theater, and then you walk out onto this trail. I mean, when you're up there, you just feel so detached from the cares of the world. I walked out onto this path, and all I could hear was no human voices. And that was, "Anybody here ever get peopled out?" Do you know what I mean by that phrase? "Peopled out," where you're just like, "I just, I'm at work, and my relatives and everything, I've just heard enough. I just want to get alone." And I was alone.

All I could hear was the mountain breeze, and I just closed my eyes, and I stood looking at this scene, and I just felt the mountain breeze caressing me. And then after a while, I felt like it was whispering my name, "Past René, Pastor René." And then I opened my eyes, and I realized it was whispering my name because there was somebody standing right in front of me saying, "Past René, I'm from Twin Lakes Church. I can't believe you're here." It was Pam Samuelson from Twin Lakes Church, so I pushed her off the mountain. No, I didn't really. Actually, I recognized Pam first, and we had a great time reconnecting.

Then Pam goes, "Hey, something crazy. My husband and my twin boys are actually back in the visitor center at the movie theater. They're watching the movie about this place." And I said, "I've got an idea." And so here's what I did. True story. I went back up the trail to the visitor center, and I went into the movie theater, and I saw Pam's husband and their twins just sitting there watching the movie. And so in the dark, there was a space right next to her husband. And so I went in and I sat down just quietly in the dark, and they didn't notice me or anything. I just sat there.

And then when the credits rolled and the lights came on in the movie theater, I turned to them and I said, "You know, I've noticed you haven't been at church for two or three weeks." And I have searched the globe to find you. Now what is your excuse? Pam's husband just kind of does a double take, and then he just starts laughing, but I wish I would have had a video camera going on the boys. It was so awesome. The look on those twin boys' faces, they just kind of went... They looked at each other and looked at me like this look on their face like, "Our pastor has superpowers!" Those boys will never miss church again the rest of their lives.

So we had a great time, and I'm going to tell you more about it next weekend, but it was a fun time, but it all started, the three months started, as some of you know, with something very, very tough for a family, but very moving. Second story, you might remember about three days before my sabbatical began, my mom passed away. I last saw mom on Mother's Day. There we are on Mother's Day, and so that's the middle of May. I didn't know she wouldn't live to the end of May. Actually less than two weeks later, she was dying.

She had Alzheimer's, but none of us saw it coming this quickly. She was in Oregon with my sister and her husband at their home, and so I flew up, and we all kept vigil at her bedside all week as she lay dying. In fact, this is a very private window into those days, but this is actually one of my favorite pictures. With all those beautiful Swiss pictures, this is one of my favorite pictures from the last three months. My little sister, Heidi, comforting mom. Now you have to realize our dad died when we were both very little, and for most of our lives, it was just the three of us, mom, Heidi, and me.

As you can see, my elegant personal style was already well-defined by eight, but there we were like the three musketeers, right? So it was quite a transition when mom was gone too, and joined now, buried with my dad over in Las Gatos Memorial Cemetery. And now it's just the two of us from that original nuclear family, but I tell you this because listen, what gets you through tough times like that? How do you keep it together?

Well, I want to show you something. I kind of sneaked a picture. Look at Heidi by mom's bedside. What is she doing? Shout it out. Reading what? Reading the Bible. And she didn't just pick up the Bible in that moment. This has become a lifetime habit of Heidi's. You know why? Because both of us saw our mom doing it. Every day, she didn't tell us to do it, but we saw her doing it every single day. And Heidi stayed rooted spiritually, and that gave her a context to understand what was happening to mom.

And then one of my proudest moments this summer as a dad was seeing my three kids speaking on this stage at their grandma's funeral, and all of them, I didn't know what they were going to say, all three of them rooted their comments in God's word, and it was such a blessing to me to see that passed on to another generation. They'd been rooted spiritually. And that's exactly why we want to start this series today. Listen, church, I love you. I really love you. That's become clear to me as I've been away these three months. And I want you to be okay. And yet tough times are going to happen to you and to me.

So in advance of those times, you need to get rooted and really, really develop a Christian context for all of your thoughts. Here's the key verse for this whole four-week series. We're doing a four-week series in spiritual growth and then our fall series in the book of Revelation, all right? But here's our key series for the next four weeks, Jeremiah 17:7–8. This is great. Look at this. "But blessed are those who what? Trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence." They are, watch this, they are like what? Trees planted along a riverbank with roots that reach what? Deep into the water. Watch this. "Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green and they never stop producing fruit."

Do you want to be able to face the heat and the drought that comes up? How many of you, raise your hands, how many of you want to be able to face the heat and the drought that comes up in life? Most of you, that's good. Because to do that, you can't when the trials come suddenly go, "Oh, I got to start thinking Christianly now." What does the Bible say? You got to put down roots now for those times that are going to come up later, that will come up later for sure.

And putting down to it's growing spiritually, being like one of those trees, this does not mean accumulating a bunch of head knowledge. That's what we think of sometimes when we think of growing deep or spiritually, "I just got to learn more facts about the Bible." Now, what it means is learning some basic, simple, daily habits that will change your life. And to tell you about the first of those habits, I want to introduce you to somebody who I love and respect deeply. Mike Romberger is the new executive director at Mount Herman Christian Conference Center. He comes from a church in Littleton, Colorado, Mission Hills. While he was there, that church just exploded.

A national magazine listed it as one of the top 10 growing and most influential churches in America. But where did I say that church was? Anybody listen to that? Littleton. That ring a bell? The Columbine High School shootings, the Aurora Theater shootings. Mission Hills Church was the anchor for that community during those times. And I believe the Lord used Mike's deep spiritual life to lead that community through those times. I'm so privileged we have him here to share the very beginning of this message. Would you please join me in welcoming Mike Romberger?

Thank you very much. Well, good morning. Good morning. It's situated. It's great to be here. It is a privilege to be at this church. And René and I first met a number of years ago when we were in our early 30s. We were at a conference together with Leadership Network. It was in Colorado Springs. It was at Glen Eyrie, the headquarters of the Navigators. And it was a group of pastors that were invited that were 35 or younger and pastored a decent-sized church.

And the first time I had a private conversation with Ray and I found out where he lived, I said, "Oh, do you know about a place called Mount Herman?" Because I've been coming to Mount Herman since a six-year-old boy. My mom and dad began to bring us when I was young. And we've been coming ever since then. And he says, "Oh, yeah, I know Mount Herman." And then he asked me, "Was I going to be going to Mount Herman that summer?" And I said, "Yes, we were." And he says, "Well, who are you going to hear when you're there?" And I said, "Well, we're going to hear Luis Palau and then some guy I've never heard of before." And René said, "Well, that would be me. That would be me."

So we became dear friends right off the bat. Not necessarily with that comment, no. But it's been great over the years. We've spoken together at Mount Herman. We've gotten to know each other over the years. And it's so great to be here. I love how much you guys love Christian camping as well. You have your own camp, Camp Hammer. It's a great camp. It's infecting so many lives. And then on top of that, very involved at Mount Herman. And that's unusual for church to not only be involved with two camps, the little and most of them no camps. And René is on our trustees. Mark Spurlock's coming on as a board of director. We also have Robin Spurlock, who's on the trustees. And so many of you know Mount Herman and I know love it. So it's a great privilege to be here. Thanks for this opportunity.

And I feel passionate about this subject that René has asked me to talk about today because of my own personal journey of trying to go stronger and taller and deeper with the Lord. But growing spiritually can be a tricky thing. And I actually, as a pastor, begin to do things backwards at our church when it comes to growing spiritually. I was involved in a doctoral program. I was involved in writing a doctoral dissertation. And I was writing it on strategic planning. I had taken our church through a nine-month process of strategic planning. We come up with a vision statement and a mission statement. We had come up with five-year goals and job descriptions and all the things you're supposed to do with a strategic plan.

And then it was a summer up here at Mount Herman in the middle of my writing of the dissertation where we heard Bruce Wilkinson from walks through the Bible ministries at the time preach on John 15 where Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches. You who abides in me would bear much fruit," etc. And it was that week that God spoke very clearly to me by telling me that he did not want me to be a leader who led through strategic planning. But he wanted me to be a leader who led through the being, through the heart, through the inner person first. It changed my leadership in a dramatic fashion.

I went back to the drawing board. I literally got rid of my previous dissertation and started from scratch and delayed graduation a year. And I titled the new dissertation "Pastoral Being," B-E-I-N-G, leading from the inside out. Please listen carefully. It is possible to do all sorts of things for the Lord and not grow spiritually. It's possible to be in a small group and to be in a Bible study and to serve at the church and to not get closer to the Lord. It's possible to have that if you're not doing it from your being but you're leading from your doing.

So I want to talk about the why of spiritual growth this morning. And this message is going to be personal for me in that I'm going to be leading you to my life verse that's found in Proverbs 4. So if you have a Bible, if you would take it and turn it to Proverbs 4. And you can find the book of Proverbs pretty much in the middle of your Old Testament. If you just go pretty much to the middle, you'll find the big book of Psalms and then just go to the right of it and get to Proverbs 4.

And in this section, Solomon, the writer of this portion of Proverbs is writing to his son, probably to Rehoboam who is the future king of Israel. And listen to what he says beginning in verse 20 of Proverbs 4. He said, "My son, be attentive to my words, incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight, keep them within your heart. For they are alive to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left. Turn your foot away from evil."

In the midst of this is my life verse, Proverbs 4:23, which says, "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life." When the Bible refers to the heart, occasionally we'll talk about the physical beating heart of a human body, but the majority of the time it's talking about the heart being the seat of the emotions and the will, the control center of a life, the being. Who you are deep down, the real you. Proverbs 4:23 says, "Keep your heart," or as other translations put it, "Watch over your heart," or "Guard your heart." You see, we guard what is most important to us, don't we?

If we have children, we try to protect them and put some hedges around them so they won't be harmed. If we're married, we try to hopefully protect our marriage and guard it for health and longevity. If we have a career, we try to make sure we go to the right schools and get the right diplomas and get the right training so that we can do well in our career path. We care about our health and we try to protect it and we go to the doctors and have checkups and the dentists and have checkups to make sure that we're doing okay with our health. We try to protect our home and we lock the doors, some security systems in their homes. We try to protect our financial portfolios. The things that we deeply care about, we guard and protect. But do you guard your heart? Do you guard your heart?

King David of whom it was said was a man after God's own heart said these words. The king said these words, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting." David said to God, "Evaluate my innermost being. Evaluate my heart. Show me from the inside out where I am not right with you." And I'll try to make adjustments with my inner being. So how do you guard your heart? How do we do that? And I want to give you just a brief list of a few things that might seem somewhat old fashioned but humor me, okay?

Like, protect what you watch. Protect what you watch. So in Colorado, we had a direct TV. We haven't hooked up a TV yet here. The first many months since we've been here, it's been camp and we haven't had any time to watch TV. So we're going to hook it up soon because priorities. Football playoffs are coming and football's coming, so priorities. But direct TV has a parental control that you can put on there that you can limit what people will watch. You can say, "Only watch up to PG rated or PG-13 or whatever." You can set that as a parent. And so we did that. We set our limit on the television and I didn't have the code. My wife had the code. Did you get that, guys? I didn't have the code. She had the code. And it kept me from a weak moment because what am I going to do? Go up to her and say, "Hey, honey, I really like the code because I like to watch something inappropriate right now." You know, you're not going to do that. But to purposely guard what you watch, what you put inside of your heart, it does affect your life.

Secondly, protect who you allow to influence you. Protect who do you allow to influence you. You know, with your kids, if you have kids, you say to them, "Be careful who you choose as what?" Friends. Because who you choose as friends is going to make a difference in often how you're influenced and how you will ultimately behave. That's the truth for adults as well. Be careful who you choose as friends. Be careful with the influence that you allow certain teachers and certain professors. Some of them, you want them to have huge influence in your life, but other ones you need to be careful about their influence. Even talk show hosts and what you listen to on the radio and all the political things that you can put into your head. You got to be careful of that. Even a counselor, be careful with the advice you get.

I've always been amazed at someone who is considering getting a divorce, how often they will call their divorced friends to get advice, but they won't go to the couple that's been married for 50 years and ask them for advice. Protect who do you allow to influence you. And then protect what you read. Protect what you read. And we can go to a list of what you shouldn't read and look at, but more so protect what you read by what you put into you. And may I say to you that there's no substitute for placing into your heart the very word of God. The word of God. Let me say that again. The word of God. This is His word. These are His direct communications with us. It's a blueprint for how we're to live our life. It's the guidebook and it teaches us who He is. And it makes us fall deeply in love with Him and to live a life that is pure before Him by placing the truths of this book deep within our inner being. Protect what you read.

So Proverbs 4:23 teaches us to keep your heart, it says, with all vigilance. With all vigilance. Vigilant in a dictionary simply is defined, "Keenly watch to detect danger. Ever awake and alert. Sleeplessly watchful." Another translation say to do this with all diligence or above all else. We have four children and teaching number four now to drive. The other three got it. They're all older now. Number four, just turned 16 two days ago. He's still a few hours away from getting his license. And one of the things I teach all of our kids is this. I call it a 360 degree bubble. Always be aware of everything that's around you. Not just what's right in front of you, but what's to the sides of you and what's behind you. And all the time you have to be vigilant, constantly aware of what's around you. Same principle here. Vigilant. Always aware of where you are spiritually and where your heart is. Guarding that. It's like placing a navy seal over your heart to protect it.

Now, if I could take a moment to talk to middle aged men. Can I do that? You don't have a choice. And maybe I want to talk to middle aged men because I is one. And if you are wondering, "Am I middle aged yet? Am I there yet?" If you even just slightly ask that question, welcome to the club. You are one of us. The second half of life can be very dangerous for men spiritually. A lot of men at this stage of life have become successful or the other side where they are very disappointed at where their life has turned out. Some are bored with their life. Another business transaction is just 150 in a line of many business transactions over the years. It doesn't have the excitement anymore. They're tired. You're in a place where you're just going through the grind because the money you make is significant and you can't imagine doing something else right now. You're kind of stuck in a hamster wheel and you're susceptible to letting your guard down.

You've been there. You've done that. You're no longer mentored. You are now the mentor. People come to you for help. They come to you for expertise. And here's the issue. You've arrived and you're no longer vigilant in your life spiritually. You let your guard down. You're in danger of a fall of some sort. Maybe you've let your guard down morally. There's things you're letting into your life that you never let into your life before and somehow you feel entitled to that. Maybe if you're married, you have been letting your guard down in your marriage and you're not cherishing your wife like you used to cherish her. You're not dating her like you used to date her. You're allowing conversations with other women that you should never have. Maybe you're letting your guard down with your kids and you're not vigilant there like you used to be. You used to be the dad on the floor playing with them. You used to be the dad in the pool throwing them around and now they're teenagers and they're more difficult and so you distance yourself from their lives. And maybe you're just letting your guard down in your pursuit of being a godly man. It's hard work to be a godly man. Do you realize that most of the men in the Bible who fell morally fell in the second half of their life?

So as we were preparing to move here, I moved here in May and Jane and the kids moved here in June. We were going through a bunch of our stuff to try to pare down of what we would move and get rid of a lot of things. In the meantime, I went through a box that I found that were things that I had given to my mother and father and they had given them back to me. I know that sounds weird. They had actually moved two years previously. They had moved into a retirement center and they were downsizing. So I had given them things over the years and they handed it back to me, a lot of those things and in there was a stack of letters that I had written to them in a one year period of my life. I traveled for a year during my seminary years. I took a year off seminary and I traveled with an author and a speaker, a guy named Josh McDowell. And maybe you've heard of him. His son, Sean, who was a little kid back in those days is going to be one of the people here for the apologetics conference. Now he's a PhD, but he was just a kid back then.

And I got to travel parts of the country and world with Josh that year as an intern. And I wrote letters to my mom and dad and I found this stack of letters in perfect chronological order with a rubber band around them. And so I opened up the first one and began to read it. And then I read the next letter and then the next one and I sat on the couch in the basement for almost three hours reliving a year of my life. You know what I saw in those letters? I saw a guy who was 23 years old who was hungry to learn. I was hungry to know everything I could about preaching and communication to learn from Josh. I was hungry to learn about being a pastor. I was hungry to learn about love as I got engaged that year to Jane. And that came out in those letters, how badly I wanted to be a godly and a good and a nurturing and a cherishing husband. I was hungry to learn and to grow.

When I got done reading that year of my life, I sat there on that couch and I asked myself, am I still this hungry? Or have I arrived? Lack of vigilance is a time of danger because sin will hurt you and harm you. It always does. It always will. So now for middle-aged women. No, I got nothing for you. Sorry. I got nothing for you. So why is spiritual growth important? Why? Why is a proper heart before God important? Why? Proverbs 4:23 says this, "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it, from the heart, flow the springs of life." Springs of life. "Out of the heart flows the springs of life." Or out of the heart flows stagnation or death, just like a human heart. When the arteries are clogged up, you're going to have real problems with your health and possibly even a heart attack and even possibly death. But when the arteries are cleared out and the blood flows properly, there's health through the heart. Same is true spiritually.

Now let me show you a specific teaching of Jesus. There was a New Testament argument and what was happening was they were bringing food and sacrificing it to idols, but they weren't eating that food, and they would bring that food to the marketplace to be purchased. And the argument that the Jews asked was, "Is it okay to buy that particular food?" Because it had been sacrificed to the idols, and Jesus responded to this question by saying this in Matthew 15. "And he called the people to him and he said to them, 'Hear and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth this defiles the person.'" And Peter said to him, "Explain the parable to us." And he said, "Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person."

Our actions, our reactions, our speech, our behavior all stem from the condition of the heart. External is just a mirror of what's going on inside. What flows out of a life is determined by what is planted and what's cultivated in the heart, for good or for bad. So get this, our heart controls the springs of life spiritually, as the New Living Translation puts it. "For it affects everything you do." The heart affects everything you do. Here are some verses that I embraced as a young man that are still important to me. Psalm 119 says, "How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you. I may not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." Now listen again to what David writes about the heart when he said this in Psalm 24, "Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart." The condition of our heart affects everything we do.

The pastor in the Northwest, his name is Jan Hetiga, wrote this in his book Follow Me. He said, "It's the part that isn't seen that shapes what is seen." Gordon McDonald in his book Ordering Your Private World said this, "If my private world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity." And I say all this because for the next few weeks René is going to be pointing out and leading a charge for involvement in going deeper in your walk with God. But if it doesn't start from the heart and it's just some outward action, it's really not going to make a difference in your life. Jesus boiled it down to something very simple. It's not complicated what he said. He said this in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. He said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." They shall see God. A transformed life begins with a transformed heart.

So what to do with this? Only you know the heart condition before God that you have. And so as you get ready to hear these next few weeks of sermons, and I really hope that you'll be able to be here for all three of them, the first thing to do before we get there is to do personal stock of our own heart and to make things right before a God who loves you and wants to work from within your heart out. To come clean with where things are not right and to ask God to renew you and refresh you and forgive you. So I'm going to ask you if you would, would you stand up? And if you so choose to actually put your hands out in front of you as a physical demonstration of before the Lord, "Lord, this is my heart. This is my inner life." And I want you just to take a moment right now between you and the Lord privately. You don't have to tell anybody else about this conversation that you're having with him. Tell him the areas in your heart that aren't right right now. He already knows, by the way, but it'd be nice for you to come clean with him.

So just right now, take a few moments and just share those things that you know are not right in your heart. And then tell the Lord you're sorry for that, that you've let your guard down. And ask him to forgive you. And he promises to forgive. He doesn't expect us to be perfect, but he does expect us to get our hearts right before him. Now ask the Lord to renew you from your being, from your heart, from the inside out, to refresh you and to renew you. I know this might take weeks of work with the Lord. There might be multiple layers there, but here's a start. "Lord, refresh me and renew me." Dear Lord God, we stand here with hands open. We're saying to you, "Lord, we care about what goes on in the innermost being of our life." And Lord, the things that we need to get right before you, we bring those to you. We ask you to forgive us and to clean us. We ask Lord for you to make our hearts vibrant before you. May our hearts be open to the instructions that we're going to be receiving from today and the weeks ahead. That there'll be instructions from you Lord and from your word. And may we grow deeper spiritually in you. this in Jesus' name, Amen.