The Continual Pursuit Of God’s Love
Psalms 139:13-18 NIV
This is David’s realization of God’s amazing love and attentiveness to every humans soul and existence!
13. For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15. My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16. Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17. How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18. Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
Before we ever were, we were with God. TBS “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
The Omni presence of God, spent an entire lifetime with us before we were ever born. All our days were written down and lived in Gods eyes, before we had ever lived the first day!
How many times have we heard someone say, before giving their life to Jesus? I just felt like something was missing in my life, something of a spiritual nature.
What is missing in a persons life before they come into a relationship with God through Jesus his son, is the love they already felt, in the beginning at their conception!
It’s not the presence of God’s love, that’s missing. Because Gods Love is everywhere and anywhere, all at the same time. God’s Love knows no limits in its ability!
Its the ability to be inhabited by and experience the presence of God’s love, like they have already experienced before!
Luke 15:3-7 NIV
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
According to this scripture, every soul originates from and belongs to God in the beginning of life! Time, influence of the world and the accuser, constantly tries to steal our relationship we have with God, at every stage of life!
Illus. No Matter What
Ryan Stevenson from the group “Mercy me”
A lot of us grew up believing
At any moment we could lose it all
And at the drop of a hat
God might turn His back and move on
A lot of us feel like we blew it
Thinking that we're just too far gone
But I want you to know
There's still a hope for you now
No matter what you've done
You can't erase His love
Nothing can change it
You're not separated
No matter what
The accuser has gone to great lengths, to fool and trick all of society into thinking and believing,
*God’s not the same God He once was!
*The thought God’s not Real, or doesn’t exist!
*If God were real, why would He allow things to happen and get so out of hand in a persons life and in the world?
*That if you you enter in relationship with God, you would have to forfeit everything else!
*The promises of God are to good to be true!
*If God were able to do all the good for a person He says, why would He want someone who is not good, who has made bad decisions and is not worthy of receiving them!
The list is long and the accusers fabricated lies are to many to count! But the truth is no matter what you’ve done, you can’t outrun or escape God’s Love, or God’s plans He has for you and will always have for you!
Many have tried, zero have succeeded!
Well what about so and so, they were rotten their entire life? They may have made a choice to live the way they did, but the way they lived their lives, doesn’t change the fact there was always an opportunity for them, to live and lead a different life! Even to the last milli-second of their existence, God has always had plans for them and continually Loves them!
The accuser bellows the message of there’s no hope! With God there’s always hope! And the accuser knows this better than anyone, because he has tasted the goodness of God and has never one time forgotten the experience.
The devil may try to con everyone into believing otherwise, but he knows better! The hope Jesus died to extend, is an eternal hope!
The Bible is full of examples, of people referred to as heroes who give us hope! In the book of Exodus we find the story of Moses. We know when Moses was born there was a decree to kill all Hebrew born males and his mother hid him until he was three months old.
She didn’t give up hope though, she made a plan and trusted God would take care of him. She made a papyrus basket, and let him go by the river where Pharaohs daughter normally bathed.
The plan was quite ingenious! When Pharaohs daughter discovered the baby, Moses little sister would innocently show up just in time when the woman asked if there was anyone who could nurse and take care of the child and of course she went and got her mother.
I mentioned Moses mother had a plan! But truthfully, a plan so ingenious and a plan that worked so flawlessly could’ve only been planned out in the beginning of Moses life and thought of by God!
Fast forward 40 years in Moses life and influence by the world he grew up in.
Exodus 2:11-13 NIV
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
The man then said, if I don’t stop…will you kill me like the Egyptian you killed yesterday? Word traveled fast of what Moses had done and soon got around. When pharaoh heard what happened, he sought to have Moses killed. And so Moses fled into the desert to escape the wrath of pharaoh.
While Moses may have escaped the wrath of pharaoh, he never escaped the plans, nor the pursuit of the love of God! God eventually used the miracle of a burning bush, the fire never consumed, nearly 40 yrs later to get Moses attention!
And while up until that point Moses may have thought God’s plans for him at long since passed him by. God’s plans for Moses had only begun!
Moses with God’s magnificent help, came out of the desert and into the land of Egypt and rescued some 2 million Hebrews from the clutches of slavery and the misery of the hand of pharaoh!
Moses with Gods help, led the children of Israel out of slavery and bondage, all the way to the promised land! God also gave Moses something which directly affects all of us still to this day! The 10 Commandments which has been and is still the moral compass of the world!
There are many more examples like Sampson and David, Elijah, Ruth and Naomi. Peter, Paul and the list is long and still growing by the names which are being added daily to it! Individuals God never gave up on, or God’s Love and plans never stopped pursuing until they realized their destinies!
GOD'S LOVE AND THE WEATHER VANE
One day, C.H. Spurgeon was walking through the English countryside with a friend. As they strolled along, the evangelist noticed a barn with a weather vane on its roof. At the top of the vane were these words: GOD IS LOVE. Spurgeon remarked to his companion that he thought this was a rather inappropriate place for such a message. "Weather vanes are changeable," he said, "but God’s love is constant."
"I don’t agree with you about those words, Charles," replied his friend. "You misunderstood the meaning. That sign is indicating a truth: Regardless of which way the wind blows, God is love."
Source: From a sermon by Bruce Howell, "The Essence!" 2/21/2009
Take time to remember this week, we are the hands and feet of God which brings good news to the world. We are also the winds of God’s Love, when we tell the story and speak the good news of the message of the Gospel, to the lost sheep Gods Love is in the never ending pursuit of!
