God's Love Changing Me Series

Pataskala Nazarene

January 21, 2007

God’s Love Changing Me

John 3:16

Introduction:

It’s the first thing we want our children and grand-children to understand about God. We show them pictures; We tell them stories, and We teach them songs about it. It’s basic; It’s fundamental; It’s essential to our faith. Nothing else makes sense if we don’t understand this. God loves us! Do you believe that? But it’s even more than this! God is Love! This morning – it’s my desire that we all be seekers. Within all of us there are those things which we strive for and desire. We all have goals;

we all have dreams. And in every one of us there is the hope that those dreams will come true.

In our Spiritual Quest to find the Power to be Free in our relationship with Christ and others, we come to this 3rd sermon in our series and we find today something that every one of us desires more than anything: LOVE. Let me ask you - What is it that you are seeking? The fact is - all of us are involved in the living of life. But in this process, we find that things don’t always go as smoothly as we would like for them to go. The road of life has bumps and the road of life has many potholes. And as we weave ourselves around those hairpin curves and struggle to climb over those steep hills, we find that some things which we thought were important no longer seem to be as important to us. At some point, all of us struggle and have problems. I face them and you face them.

Everywhere you look you see people hurting and in need.

In 1971 Tim Clay had a hit song. It was number 61 in the top 100 on February 14, 1971.

The words of the song were, "What the world needs now is love sweet love, not just for some but for everyone."

Greg Jones says, “I have often wondered if the person who wrote this song ever read this verse. In the love gift of Jesus Christ provided by God for the world we have been given love in abundance. All the love we need can be fond at the cross! Love to save. Love to heal. Love to deliver. Love that will bring you peace with God and peace with mankind. We don’t have the capacity to love anyone apart from the love of God. Wives can not love their husband’s right apart from the love of God. Husbands can not love their wives right apart from the love of God.

Mothers and fathers can not love their children right apart from the love of God. Children can not love their parent’s right apart from the love of God. Brother and sisters can not love each other right apart from the love of God. It is in discovering God’s love for us that we learn how to love each other. I can see why the theme of this popular 1971 hit song seems so true to so many. They were simply unaware of the love gift provide by God. They are caught in the allusion that what the world needs now is love when in reality God has met that need.”

Christian friend, you and I must believe that God who is in heaven loves us with an everlasting LOVE.

1) The first thing I want us to see is God is Love!

“For God so loved …” the first part of John 3:16 says.

Illustration:

Let me relate this story to you: Some of you might remember back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, the pot-bellied pig craze when people were spending hundreds of dollars to own one of those exotic house pets imported from Vietnam. It was amazing. When Dru and I lived in Westerville, we had neighbors who owned not just one of those pigs, but two; I think they had 3 at one time. They treated them like pets. They lived in the house with them. I was simply amazed. When I asked about the pigs, my neighbor explained to me that they did their thing in a litter box down in the basement. I heard them squealing one day and looked over their fence to see them giving the pigs a bath on the back porch. Now folks, when I was young I was around pigs and hogs on the farm. This was a new phenomena to me. When I saw all that I was glad that I was half way normal and owned a dog. Do you know what I mean? But anyway let me get to the real part of this story. The potbelly pigs didn’t pan out to be what they were supposed to be as pets for many of these people. They were supposed to be gentle. Only gain up to a weight of 40 lbs. They were supposed to be very smart. Yeah! (Maybe that little pig in Charlotte’s web.) And you could put a leash on them and walk them like a dog down the sidewalk.