Well, good morning, my friends, and welcome to the Heritage Hour. I’m Mark Gonzales, your pastoral or soul care encourager here in Southwest Florida. And I’m so delighted to be with you on air, online, and in media ministry for, wow, 35 years now.

So thank you for sitting with me at the feet of the Lord to listen for His heart to touch our hearts. Well, if you’ve been with us, you know that we’re right in the middle of a series I’m calling Soul Care Portraits of God. As you know, I see portraits of God throughout all of the Scripture because the Scripture points us to Him.

And so I see His heart and character through these portraits, these two-word portraits over all of these years.

And so we’re looking at soul care portraits of God. And just a reminder that I’m defining soul care. And it’s kind of an ongoing definition, tweaking it as we go along.

Soul care is simply about two things. Our divinely unique or our God-given unique heart wiring and heart wounds, which the Lord yearns to lovingly heal and reveal to the degree we abide in him to bear much fruit. Today, as we come to the fifth in this series of eight broadcasts on the subject of soul care portraits of God, we’re going to talk about how to go deep, how to abide deeply in the Lord. The scripture gives us another metaphor we’re going to explore.

Here’s the preview. He is our deeper dive. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Scripture tells us above all else, guard your heart for from it flow the springs of life.

And again, the way we do that is by abiding or marinating in Jesus Christ. And again, we’re going to talk about that today. And just a quick recap, we opened with a broadcast about how he is our soul care shepherd. And I want who are experiencing him as a soul care shepherd, the soul care shepherd.

He’s our restoring shepherd according to Psalm 23 and our rest giving shepherd according to Matthew 11. And we explored that. By the way, experiencing God was a great, great discipleship series that came out in the 90s. It’s still around.

It’s talking about the importance of not just getting head knowledge about God, but experiencing God. You don’t stop with the head knowledge. You keep going deeper in heart today is a very special message that helps you get five portraits underneath the deeper dive portrait that is a progression of going deeper in the Lord Can’t wait to share it with you because I do want you to experience the Lord as your soul care shepherd. And then secondly, we talked about how he is our healing shepherd or our healing creator, actually, is what we said.

He’s our creative designer. He’s our creative healer. And we explored that in the third one even more deeply in the third message. And then in the next broadcast, the last one, how he is our constant conversation.

In the beginning was the logos, the word, or can also be rendered conversation. In the beginning was the conversation. The conversation was with God. The conversation was God.

And the conversation became flesh and dwelt among us. We saw him as our eternal conversation, internal conversation, whispering conversation, tested conversation, and our focused conversation. Today, we’re going to talk about how to experience all of this at deeper and deeper levels. It’s one of the most important portraits that the Lord has given me to share over the last several years to help people really assess where they are in their journey with the Lord. because we’re going to be floating in and out of these deeper levels, these deeper portraits with the Lord.

That’s just the way it is in real life.

And so I want to share that with you today. It’s called He is Our Deeper Dive. We’re going to be all over the scripture, but we’re going to start off over in Psalm 42. And just a reminder that all of these broadcasts are archived on my website. and there are also some printable outlines of these broadcasts and other tools that I’ve been mentioning at my website at markpg.org that’s markpg.org I call it helping you hear God why because that’s where our soul care comes from the Lord himself to the degree you abide in him to bear much fruit to the degree how deeply you dive into him personally, experientially.

I really want you to experience God.

And so we’re going to talk about that today. And this becomes a great tool for you to assess where you are in your journey, to help others do the same. And because the Lord has this desire to have an intimacy with you that changes everything. so markpg.org helping you hear God where you can find these broadcasts you can find more printable tools some articles of those also written and stuff that they can really help you in your discovery of all of these soul care portraits of God and how he wants you to dive deeply into him And as we get started as is our custom, oh, let’s just go before the Lord and ask him to speak, shall we? Lord, I love coming into your presence.

I love sitting at your feet. I love gazing in your eyes to listen for you to speak to us heart to heart. And Lord, I pray I’ll be able to share with my brothers and sisters the things you’ve been sharing with me, these deeper level things that make all the difference in the world, that lift us up out of a Christian life that may be kind of dry and dusty and duty bound. And instead it be vibrant and alive and personal and intimate. so help me Lord as I unpack this for my brothers and sisters today I pray thank you Lord thank you Lord for loving us so much far beyond we can we can fathom oh we love you Lord we pray this in the powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ by his precious cleansing and healing transforming empowering and forgiving blood amen amen and amen all right my friends well as i mentioned our overall portrait is how he is our deeper dive that’s the soul care portrait we’re looking at today five more under this that progression about diving deeper into the lord i pick up this metaphor and theme out of psalm 42 where the scripture says in verse 1 as the deer pants for the water brooks so my soul pants for you, God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. And then later in verses 5 and 7, Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you restless within me? Deep calls to deep.

Oh, my friends, no matter how deep your valley, he is deeper still. The deeper you dive into the Lord, into intimacy, the more you will experience the victory and the peace in the midst of the storms that he writes about and shares with us throughout all of the scriptures. And I love this because it’s a picture, it’s a word picture we can grasp diving deep, no matter how deep are valleys. These are the heart wounds we have in our definition of soul care Remember soul care is about two things our heart wiring that our spiritual gifting and all the ways that the Lord has created us so uniquely And we don know ourselves that well And so our journey is to discover more about ourselves in him heart wiring but then our heart wounds We all have heart wounds but no matter no matter how deep those wounds my friends he is deeper still That what we going to be talking about today as deep deep wounds call for a deep deep dive into Jesus himself.

Is that cool or what? Man. Hey, as a matter of fact, for years, when I was pastoring at the local level, I would have a children’s sermon and the children’s sermon would be a story I would share with them. I’d call during the welcome time.

I’d say, okay, well, we’re welcoming each other in the name of the Lord and greeting each other. All the kids are coming up for their story time. And man, they’d run up and they’d sit at my feet as everybody else greeting each other and we’d settle down and I’d throw a picture or something up on screen and tell them a story and it was actually related to the coming sermon and over the years parents would tell me you know I gotta tell you I love the children’s story it really helps me understand your message better so here’s the children’s story for this particular theme about how he is our deeper dive. Once there was a little fish.

His name was Fred. And Fred loved swimming around in the shallow parts of the ocean there by the shore. And he looked on shore and he saw that there was a wonderful carnival. It looked like it was wonderful rides and cotton candy and sunbathing on the beach and throwing around the Frisbee.

And he yearned to go on shore and do that because it looked like so much fun. And he would watch it day after day in those shallow waters until one day he couldn’t resist. He flopped up on the shore to experience all that fun at that marvelous carnival or amusement park with all of those rides and all of that food and all of those games and all of that.

But of course, as a fish, the first thing he noticed was, I can’t breathe. And he started flipping around. On the beach there, he was dying. He didn’t belong there.

He wasn’t made for the beach. Fortunately, little boy and little girl happened to be walking along, saw him, went, oh my goodness, and they picked him up and they threw him back into the sea, and oh, how he was just so relieved to get that first gulp of salt water. He reflexively swam over to his parents, and mom and dad, you won’t believe what just happened, and he explained it to them, and they said, oh my goodness, Freddy, what are you doing there? Fish don’t belong on the beach, they belong in the waters.

Oh, I know that now.

Son, as long as you swim back and forth in the shallows, you You’re going to be enticed to fly from there and you don’t belong there. Plus, the oceans are so deep, you could spend a lifetime exploring the depths of the ocean and you will never experience all the wonder that’s possible when you sweep, when you swim deep, when you dive deep. Well, that’s the Christian life, my friends. when we first get saved and we stay in the shallow waters of that and don’t go deeper in the Lord himself, we get more easily enticed to flop up into the land of sin. And that’s not where we belong.

We weren’t created. We became new creations in Christ made for the deeper dive into him.

So, what does that look like? that is a great little story to explain the big picture of how the Lord wants us to abide in him, to marinate in him. And in this case, this metaphor to dive deeply into him. And over the years, my friends, here’s how I’ve come to understand the progression of our deeper dive in Christ, to experience him as our deeper dive. Here’s the first level.

He is our merciful savior. This is a basic. Matthew chapter 9 verse 36. Seeing the crowds, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd.

Listen, just like that little boy and girl were merciful and picked up Freddie, the fish, and threw him back in the water where he belonged, so the Lord sees us distressed and downcast. downcast. That means, by the way, to be upside down on your back like a turtle on its shell. Sheep would fall down and roll over and because they were so woolly, they couldn’t get back on their feet and they would die just like Freddie would die on the beach.

But because of the mercy of the Lord Jesus, he sees us that way and he invites us to be saved, to become one with him, to be born again. He wants to draw us unto Himself that we can enter a personal covenant relationship with Him and be with Him and experiencing Him deeper and deeper for the rest of our lives and forever. I hope we never lose our sense of wonder at the miracle of our salvation. Scripture says we are blinded by the God of this world, that we are held captive by the devil to do His will, and it the Lord who rescues us as downcast sheep and brings us unto himself Never lose the wonder of the Lord as our merciful Savior who actually, in another metaphor, which we’ll get to later, asks us to marry Him, to become one with Him, a proposal.

Not because we’re Cinderella, pretty and sweet and wholesome. We’re the evil stepsisters. Scripture says sin separates us from God. and he’s the one who says, but I’ll marry you anyway, and I’ll change you from the inside out. I’ll cleanse you by my blood.

I will transform you into a new creation. Wow.

Now, all that’s wrapped up in our salvation, but we don’t really get all that instantly, do we? We have to dive into Jesus, dive into the scriptures to discover all of this.

So don’t stay at level one. I’ve got my salvation. I’ve got my ticket to heaven.

Now I can sin like the devil. Well, listen, if you still want to sin like the devil, guess what? You were never saved. Scripture says they went out from us for they were not of us.

Because if they were of us, they would have remained with us.

But they went out from us to show they never were really of us.

So, He is our merciful Savior. That’s our salvation.

But then we need to go to level two, dive deeper, and discover that He is our gentle teacher. You see, the disciples called him rabbi, which means teacher. And the scripture says that we just start with the milk of the word, the basics, but then we get into the meat of the word as we get older and go deeper into him. We need to experience him as our gentle teacher.

And I call it that because Mark 10 verses 13 through 14 puts it this way. And they were bringing children to him so that he would touch them, but the disciples rebuked them.

But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said, allow the children to come to me. Do not forbid them for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. The marvelous truth here that he loved children. He taught children.

He was gentle with children and we are his children, my friends. The teacher is a gentle teacher.

Now, we can get stuck here because in our zeal to be, you know, people of the book, to be really devoted to the scriptures, you know, we can get totally caught up in a focus on the doctrine and theology and hermeneutics and creeds. We can argue about the parables. We have the controversies, all these different perspectives, primary, secondary, and tertiary theological issues, simple, complex, all this. I mean we can get so tied down into a zeal to be Bible scholars We forget that the scripture says that Jesus said Listen you search the scriptures because in them you think you have life but they point to me He is our gentle teacher.

We are his disciples or followers. We are his children. We get to sit at his feet, gaze in his eyes, and let him speak to us heart to heart. And by the way, don’t misunderstand.

I’m not against doctrine, theology, or meditators, creeds, all of that. In fact, I took the three major Reformation catechisms, which actually have pretty much the same scope and sequence. The Heidelberg, the Westminster, and then the Baptist catechism. Blended them together into one set of 95 questions and answers.

I call it the story of God and man. I put it in the children’s picture book. Why is it that man is here to glorify God forever with cheer? What book did he give us to direct as his own?

His infallible scripture, the Bible alone. What do the scriptures primarily teach? They teach what a man should believe, do, and preach. Who and what is our God up above?

He is holy, eternal. He’s the spirit, the dove. He’s unchangeable wisdom. He is justice and love.

And that’s just the first five of 95 Q&As that I condensed from those three originals. Put it in rhyming verse. Put it in a children’s picture book called The Story of God and Man. and we set it to music, put it on YouTube.

So I’m into theology, but that’s not where you stop. That is just another level of discovering and experiencing the Lord Jesus, which brings us to number three. We’re not just to embrace and rejoice in our salvation because he is our merciful savior and not settle into gentle teacher and stay there.

But we’re to remember we’re here to serve in his kingdom and to build his kingdom. He is our gracious master. That’s what Lord means. He’s our gracious master.

He describes it pretty clearly through the scriptures over in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verses 24 through 26. I tell you, there was a season in my life at the University of Texas at Austin many, many years ago in Campus Crusade, and I discovered my spiritual gift was prophecy and man, I would just roam around and blow people away with, this is the truth. You need to repent and you need to get your act together. This.

And the Lord said, Hey, a prophet is not somebody with a wielding a sawed off shotgun. It’s a doctor with a scalpel. You know, when to cut, how to cut there blood but it done under anesthetic And he gave me this passage I about to share with you and why I see him as our gracious master because it says in 2 Timothy 2 24 through 26 that the Lord bondservant must not be quarrelsome but kind to all able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those that are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth. See, God grants repentance, not our cleverness, not our berating them, not our scolding them.

It’s It’s the kindness of the Lord that leads to repentance.

So it says, if perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth, that they may come to their senses, because they’re out of their mind, see, and escape from the snare of the devil, being held captive by him to do his will. He’s our gracious master. We’re the bond servants. We’re the voluntary bond servants that he describes here.

He’s demonstrating the spirit and calling us to a spirit of how we interact with one another. He is our gracious master, not a taskmaster.

Now, these are the three levels that we get stuck in. I get stuck here over the years as I think back.

But our duties as bond servants can turn into just duties if there’s no heart attached to it. If you’re feeling dry, you’re feeling bored, if you’re feeling even resentful that you’ve got to do all this Christian stuff, It’s because you’re not going into the final two levels, diving deeply into levels four and five, which are the two that he calls great mysteries. And here they are. Just keep swimming, my friend.

Just keep swimming. Don’t get stuck. Here’s number four. He’s not only our merciful savior and gentle teacher and gracious master, but he’s our loving father.

Or you can say loving bridegroom. Loving bridegroom. Ephesians 5 puts the mystery this way. Listen to this.

5, verse 31. The context is all about marriage here on this earth.

But he says this. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother, be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Verse 32. Watch this now.

This mystery is great, but I’m speaking with reference to Christ and the church. my friend he’s our loving bridegroom we are his beloved bride we get married we become one you know that in the metaphor of and the actual practice of marriage ceremonies where two become one it’s the same in christ i’m going to talk more about that in level five but it’s his unconditional love versus an earned love when you get married it’s not a and it should be an unconditional love. It’s not a performance-based love, right? We don’t have to earn love. It’s there.

We bring in baggage and brokenness and wounds and sin, and yet the Lord loves us unconditionally. While we were yet sinners, he died for us. It’s an unbridled love, not a guarded love. He doesn’t hold back.

And those activities we talked about as being his bondservant, he’s a gracious master.

But as our loving bridegroom, these are loved-based things that we do, not duty-based things that we’re to do. It changes everything. Do you realize that on a scale of one to ten, the Lord always loves you at a level ten, even when you mess up, especially when you mess up, because you need him all the more. That’s his unconditional love.

Don’t reduce the love of the Lord in all. In fact, what’s the greatest commandment? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s about love above all else. guard your heart for from it flow the springs of life above all else it sells elsewhere in scripture keep fervent in your love for one another for love conquers a multitude of sin don’t diminish love to some daisies and green hills and lollipops kind of thing It deep It powerful It a mystery Do you experience him as your loving bridegroom or loving father But the last one is even deeper than that.

He is our fruitful oneness. It’s the greatest mystery of all. It’s the deeper dive. And by the way, just to remind, we’re going to be swimming out in and out of these levels all the time because life just happens heartaches happen things happen and we just distractions all kind of stuff he wants us to stay as deeply as we possibly can in him and it’s in our oneness with him it is the greatest mystery colossians 1 26 and 28 verses 26 to 28 and then verses 3 chapter 3 verse 3 put it this way the mystery which had been hidden from the past ages and generations but now has been revealed to his saints is christ in you the hope of glory so that we may present every person complete in christ though you have died and your life is hidden in christ you a new creation my friends second corinthians 5 puts it this way if any man is in Christ he a new creature Old things have passed away Behold all things have become new You know how new you are You became one with him He’s divine.

You’re human. You’re a divine and human creation now. He’s the ultimate one, to be sure. He’s the lead, to be sure.

But we’re actually new creations. We are not caterpillars crawling in the dirt or on the leaves. We’ve been transformed into butterflies to experience life in Christ. And then back to John 15.

I’m the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Abide in him, marinate in him, dive deeply into him.

My friends, the deeper you dive into these layers and experiencing him as our merciful savior, our gentle teacher. Go deeper, gracious master. And then just keep swimming, just keep swimming. Remember Dory, right?

From Finding Nemo. Dive deeper in experiencing him as your loving bridegroom and as your fruitful oneness. It is in your oneness, your union with Christ. Christ in us, the hope of glory.

That’s where the empowerment comes. That’s the internal voice. That is who we are in Christ my friends Don try to do stuff from the outside in Do it from the inside out You will bear fruit to the degree you stay rooted and connected to the vine You will breathe the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, the seawater, the deeper you go. And by the way, when there are hurricanes up above, and there are tremendous hurricanes in this life now, aren’t there?

Always has been, always will be.

But the deeper you go, the less you experience the harsh winds up above. You’re hidden in Christ. He is your deeper dive. Don’t settle for anything less.

And when you find yourself having through neglect or hurt floating up to the top in shallower layers, you’re still saved. Oh, but oh, how he wants you to swim deeper. And if you don’t, he’ll flop up on the beach and get into some serious sin problems, right? He is. our deeper dive.

Oh, thank you, Lord. We love you, Lord. And we want to dive deep. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Well, I’m Mark Gonzales, and I hope you’ll check out my website at markpg.org for more. Until next time, dive deeper into Jesus, our deeper dive.