Jesus Loves...Me?
Jesus Loves me this I know
For the bible tells me so
Little to ones to Him belong
They are weak, but He is strong
In the religious world, there are some who think that the song we all learned as children,
nowadays is sending the wrong message out.
It should be an all inclusive message of, Jesus loves everyone....
And that is the truth, in and that of itself....
because it does say in
John 3:16 For God so Loved the world...
and that's about as open ended as it gets...that does include everyone!
But until you truly realize how much He loves you, you are never going to experience all that He has for you...or as the army says "be all that you can be" for The Lord!
Gods Love, is the key to everything....without His love for us...
we would be finished..we would be nothing!
Everything He has ever promised us, done for us, or given us...
all hinges on and because of His immense Love that He has for us...
Not that we have for Him
1st John 4:17-19 MSG
17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
There are many today who talk about the love of God, who are total strangers to the God of love.
TBS. our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s..that means we have what He has..
Until a person can sing Jesus Loves me...and grasp how much His Grace can truly mean personally....how can you portray it to your fellow man?
illus. if you had a bottle of honey..and you were trying to tell everyone
About it..and how good it was, how sweet it was,
About all the health benefits You could receive from it..by trying it and using it
In your daily diet...and you had never tried it, or realized
those benefits for yourself...
Don't you think it would be kind of hard to accurately describe
what it could actually accomplish for them in their life?
illus. Years ago, a large Atlanta church was televising the service where they had asked a retired 92 year minister preach from its pulpit.
There was a warm welcome as he was introduced and, as the applause quieted down, the old man rose from his high back chair and walked slowly, with great effort to the podium.
Without a note or written paper of any kind, he placed both hands on the pulpit to steady himself and then quietly and slowly he began to speak.
"When I was asked to come here today and talk to you, your preacher asked me to tell you what was the greatest lesson I ever learned in my 50 odd years of preaching.
I thought about it for a few days and boiled it down to just one thing that made the most difference in my life and sustained me through all my trials.
The one thing that I could always rely on when tears and heart break and pain and fear and sorrow paralyzed me. The only thing that would comfort was this verse:
"Jesus loves me this I know. For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong, We are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me... The Bible tells me so."
When he finished, the church was so quiet you actually could hear his foot steps as he shuffled back to his chair. (www.blufftontoday.com/node/8060)
Numbers 13:1,2,23,26-28,30-33 NKJ
1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel; from each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.”
(Now these were all men...who had witnessed God do the impossible...
When He had brought the entire nation of Israel out of Egypt...
and not only bring them out..but also completely sustained them day after day, in a dry desert wasteland!
So these men had seen the impossible, become possible countless numbers of times)
Vs. 23 Then they came to the Valley of Eshcol, and there cut down a branch with one cluster of grapes; they carried it between two of them on a pole. They also brought some of the pomegranates and figs.
(Can you imagine what they thought...when they saw grapes, that one cluster
Took a pole and two men to carry....those grapes must have been
the size of apples...to have been that big?)
Vs. 26 Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us.
(It's important to note here...this is the land that God had already told them
That He was Giving to them)
It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there.
(Remember what we read in 1 john chapter 4 earlier....Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
Clearly all of them, had seen the Grace and Love of God at work in their life...
but like the honey I told you about earlier....there's a big difference
between seeing and actually tasting it for yourself...and realizing how sweet Gods Grace and Love really is! Amen?)
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” 32 And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. 33 There we saw the giants[d] (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
Joshua and Caleb were the only two, even though God had already told them all
That He would give the land to them,
that thought they could do it and realized God Loved them enough to let them
Possess the Land.
TBS. Joshua and Caleb were the only ones of the 12 spies that ever did
occupy the land that flowed with milk and honey.
We have the same opportunity of promised land in our lives available to us.
I can see right now, someone is thinking...
Now wait a minute, that was a physical place...God promised to them.
Did they have life there?
Was their abundance there?
Was Gods love involved in the equation?
John 3:16,17 NKJ
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Gods love for us...is a gift to us...that we have to choose to receive right?
Gods Love is the key to everything!
Now wait a minute...I thought Jesus was the key...Jesus is the link to the key!
Without Gods immense love for us first....He never would have given His only begotten son!
That's why it's impossible to experience everything God has for you, until you realize how much He truly Loves you
He Loved you enough to give you His most prized possession...
With out the guarantee..you would ever accept or Love Him back!
Yes...Before there was ever a manger..
God had already acknowledged there would be a cross..
His gift would come to us...at great expense!
That's how much Love God has for you!
That's how much Gods Loves me?
Yes....and when you realize how much that is,
how much that Love actually costs Him...
you realize how precious his promises are to you...and that He didn't
Make them idly to you....
Because there all guaranteed by the gift of Love, His son Jesus and reason He came.
John 10:10 NKJ
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
The MSG says it this way; I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
The abundant life is a promise, it is the promised land...God has already prepared for you.
Jeremiah 29:11-13 AMP
11 For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart,
Gods plans for you..are just that, there His Plans
And there Great Plans...there awesome Plans
But until seek Him out and call on Him and realize how much
He loves you...
They will never be your plans...and God wants them above all...to be your plans
There All made possible by the fact that God loves you and Jesus Loves you
There is nothing impossible and nothing that can't be overcome...
When you realize how much you are loved by your Heavenly Father!
ILLUS: Tony Campolo recalled working at a Christian junior high camp.
And One of the campers, a boy with spastic paralysis, was the object of heartless ridicule. When he would ask a question, the boys would deliberately answer in a halting, mimicking way.
One night his cabin group chose this boy to lead the devotions before the entire camp. It was one more effort to have some "fun" at his expense.
Unashamedly the spastic boy stood up, and in his strained, slurred manner - each word coming with enormous effort - he said simply "Jesus loves me -- and I love Jesus!"
That was all.
Campolo said that conviction fell upon those junior-highers. Many began to cry. Revival gripped the camp. Years afterward, Campolo says he still meets men in the ministry who came to Christ because of that testimony.
Which leads me to the question..
What will God be able to accomplish not only in your life..
But in the lives of those around you...
even total strangers..
When you grasp the Love that God has for you?
Ephesians 3
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,
You see.. It's up to us...as to how much of Gods love we want..
Paul's prayer was that we would know the love of Christ
which passes knowledge
Mark 6:39-44 MSG
39-44 Jesus got them all to sit down in groups of fifty or a hundred—they looked like a patchwork quilt of wildflowers spread out on the green grass! He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to the disciples, and the disciples in turn gave it to the people. He did the same with the fish. They all ate their fill. The disciples gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. More than five thousand were at the supper.
Notice it said...they all ate their fill
When it comes to the Goodness, the Love of God...
You can have as much or as little as you choose..
I choose much!!
It's only when you experience Gods love to the full..
Will you ever have an abundance of it to give away..
And not just because you know about...
But because you've tasted of it..
And you know how sweet and good it really is!
Amen?
Do you receive it today?
Let's pray
