There is the story of a man who told his wife that he loved her more than anything else in the world, and he wanted to have a candlelight dinner with her. He said for her to hurry up and fix dinner and he would rush home just as soon as the poker game was over.
There are many types of love, but I seriously doubt if that is one of them. Too often, we utter the words of love, but forget to back them up with heart felt actions. But that is how we “do” love. Today, I want to talk about God’s love.
EPHESIANS 2:4-5 tells us –
‘But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved.’
So, right off the bat, we see that God loves us with a pure and total love. We cannot comprehend the enormity of His love, but we need respond to it with deliberate actions and not ignore it while taking it for granted.
God’s love is the greatest gift known to mankind, and we need to take pleasure in it. We need to honor and worship God. We need to obey every command He has given us. God cherishes our love. When we seek God with a submissive heart, His amazing love will abound in every area of our lives.
You say, “There’s a condition to it!” You are right. That condition is that before He can give you His great loving mercy, you must seek Him in your life through Jesus Christ. I personally consider that more of a privilege than a condition, however.
In GALATIANS 5:6b states,
‘… The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.’
In other words, the most important thing in your life is having total faith in God, and having that faith be seen in your love for God. Anything short of that doesn’t even count, according to the Apostle Paul. The stronger our faith in God is, the more we are able to show our love for Him in every thought and action we have.
You have a choice. You can have a life full of abundance; or one that is empty. The more you love God, the more abundance you have. The more you deny God, the emptier your life will be.
Let’s talk about the different steps involved in having a life that is full in God.
1. THE DECISION IN FAITH
Have you ever noticed how humans always look for the easy way out? We take the path of least resistance, don’t we? And we do that when it comes to feeling love, too. Contrary to popular belief, love is a choice we make. We choose to love, or we choose not to love. We even choose to love God or not. Do we love God and receive His abundance blessings, or do we choose to not love God and suffer the distress and anguish that a life without God offers?
The world is very good at what it does, and what it does is confuse man. Of course, we know the world us ruled by the devil, don’t we? He keeps us so busy we don’t know which end is up and he gives us so many temptations to choose from, we get confused and always seem to reach for the wrong choices.
The problem is that man is prideful and man doesn’t want to humble himself to anyone – even God. And without humbling ourselves, we are too prideful to listen to God tell us what He wants from us.
Man was made to associate with - and to love God. Man made a fatal mistake in the Garden of Eden and that mistake cast us away from God and into sin.
And throughout the generations since, rather than to follow the truth of what the Bible says, we conjure up everything our minds can think of to make God to fit our plans rather than our trying to fit into God’s plans.
We have denominations out there that believe in some parts of the Bible while discounting other parts. Why do they do this? Because they want to have salvation, but they want it on their own way, even if their way is wrong.
You have decisions to make during your lifetime. The decision you are making today will determine where your eternity will be spent tomorrow. Every one of us is going to live for eternity. And it is totally up to us as to where we want to live it.
We rationalize our actions to make them seem like they are okay with God - even if His word says it isn’t! That is how blind we are in our self-centered pride. I urge you to read His word daily and to meditate on what you have read. Learn what God is trying to tell you through His word and through His Holy Spirit.
You will never attain the truth of God by living what is called a Convenient Christianity. Convenient Christianity is when you live your life according to your choices instead of God’s choices. People who live that convenient type of Christianity are casual Christians who really have no depth of maturity in God at all.
That is why it is so imperative that we study His Word and meditate on them day and night. The devil puts the stubbornness in our minds that keep us from considering God in our decisions. And that stubbornness will eventually become so strong that it leads us to hell.
Too many times, we succumb to fear. I know a couple who has been severely hurt in a church environment. They now stay away from church because they fear being hurt again. I understand that fear. I have been there. When a person opens their heart and then gets terribly hurt, the normal reaction is to keep the door shut and to mistrust; to hide; to fear.
I am sure that we all know about how oil and water do not mix. Oh, you can stir them up, but as soon as you stop, they will separate, won’t they? Fear and faith are the same way. For a very short period of time you might be able to ’act’ like you can have both, but they will quickly separate because you cannot have both.
Where there is fear, there is no faith. Fear is from the devil. Fear keeps us afraid and away from Christ. Faith gives us the boldness God wants so much for us to have.
PROVERBS 28:1 tells how many of us feel.
‘The wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.’
Now certainly, none of us think we are wicked, but when we are not walking with God we are walking with the world, and those in the world are wicked because they are away from God. And when we are in the world, we feel fear.
When we have fear, we have no faith. One will push the other out of our lives. So, how do we get faith if we are full of fear? We get faith by making a decision to follow the basic steps of all new Christians: we start praying on a daily basis; we start reading the Bible on a daily basis; and we begin to meditate on what we have read.
When we do these things with a seeking heart, we will soon start to see our faith begin to grow, and the more it grows the less fear we have. And the more faith we have, the more love we will feel for and from God. God is love, and in love, there is no fear.
2 TIMOTHY 1:7 talks about what God did not give us.
‘For God did not gives us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.’
If we love God enough to seek Him in our lives; if we love God enough to make daily decisions to follow Him; our fear will be displaced by His love for us. That is why it is so important to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, as it says in MATTHEW 22:37. Just as a small child has no fear when wrapped in the arms of its parents, we have no fear when wrapped in the arms of our God, who loves us.
In PSALM 91:4-5, God gives us a loving promise.
‘He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night.’
He said you will not fear. So will we accept this promise and refuse the devil’s fear? To have faith that replaces fear, you must do something very exciting. You must look for ….
2. YOUR DWELLING PLACE IN GOD
God came as man into our world to tear down the walls of confusion and distortion that the enemy has placed around us. He came to restore our loyalty and devotion to Him. He gave us a book bound in love, and whoever loves Him honors the covenants God made in that book.
1 JOHN 3:5 tells us,
‘But you know that He appeared so that He might take away our sins. And in Him is no sin.’
God’s love is so powerful it destroys those things the enemy puts in our way to keep us away from Christ. When we dwell in Him, we can have that total peace that surpasses all understanding. When we dwell in His mighty love, we can have our souls restored unto the Creator. It is God’s love that works miracles; not anything we might find in this sinful world.
I am sure you have often heard that we are to speak God’s word. You can remember your thoughts, but you will remember what you hear longer. So when you speak fear out loud, your ears hear it and your mind remembers it. Then you begin to act upon that fear. When you speak faith out loud, you hear it and your mind remembers it. And then you begin to act upon that faith. Now, make a decision: Which belief do you want your mind to remember the most? Faith or fear? The word of God or the word of Satan?
All of us have times when we feel alone, away from God, insecure, or scared. We should remember these feelings come from the devil, and the only reason he makes us feel them is to divert our attention away from God.
When we feel alone and far from Christ, remember how much He loves you.
1 JOHN 4:7-11 gives us another example of how much God loves us.
‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love.’
He continues, ’This is how God sowed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. That is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.’
When you feel far from Christ, remember where your dwelling place is.
In 1 JOHN 4:15 says,
‘If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him…’
When we feel those feelings that are negative, just remember that in HEBREWS, it promises us that God will never leave us or forsake us. As humans, it is hard to love and depend on something we cannot see, isn’t it? That is precisely why we need to live by our faith, not by our sight. We might not be able to see Jesus with our eyes, but we can see the many evidences of Jesus around us, can’t we?
Last week, I preached on …
3. LOVING YOUR BROTHER
Christians are called to love each other, but too often we treat each other very badly. I said we get angry with someone and go tell others how we feel, but in doing so, we create an attitude of sin within the church. We create division, and that is something God hates. I talked about how God will punish the person who does this on Judgment Day.
No matter how much you try to impress others with your loving words, your actions will always show how much - or how little - love you have in your heart towards them. Have you every told anybody something negative about somebody else? If you did, you sinned. Have you ever gotten angry at your Christian Brother and thought bad thoughts about him? If you have, you sinned.
Don’t try to justify it - you sinned!
1 JOHN 4:20 tells us,
‘If anyone says, “I love God”, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God – whom he has not seen.’
Many Christians say they love their brothers, and then talk about them as negative as they can behind their backs. This is not love. It is hatred, in its purest and rawest form, and it comes straight from hell. And those who do this, will go to hell - unless they truly repent, of course.
1 JOHN 3:23-24 gives us the key to living in God and loving our brothers.
‘And this is His command: To believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us. Those who obey His commands live in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us – We know it by the Spirit He gave us.’
How about you this morning? Have you been living in Christ? Have you made Christ your absolute dwelling place? Have you been treating your brothers like you love them, or do you just do it when they do and say the things you like to see or hear?
I made it very clear last week that it is okay for us to want things a certain way, but it was just as okay for others to have them go their ways sometimes, too. And sometimes, it is very needed for somebody else to get their way even if it means we don’t get our way!
So to summarize what I have just said, it is only by believing in, and living for, Jesus that we can love in the spirit of God. It is in that realm where we find the Godly faith that will overcome our worldly fears.
So, in closing, let me once again remind you that without Christ living in us, we don’t have the ability to love others. And since we are that weak, God doesn’t expect us to keep the commandment to love by our flesh. So He gave us Jesus, and in His blood we find the only real dwelling place of love.
And the one thing we need to do to get that everlasting love is to surrender our hearts to Jesus. Unbelievable as it may seem, surrendering actually strengthens our character when we choose humility as our guide.
Tonight as you lay down to sleep, go into earnest prayer and ask God to help you surrender your will to His. And then ask Him to shower His love down on you.
INVITATION
NOTE ***** BULLETIN INSERT FOR THIS MESSAGE BELOW
(When doing this insert, it will take up one standard sized bulletin page. You will insert them with the blanks and leave out the answers which are besides the blanks in (parenthesis). That way, your member can fill in the blanks as you get to them.)
THE ULTIMATE LOVE OF GOD
You have a choice. You can have a life full of _________ (ABUNDANCE); or one that is ______ (EMPTY). The more you love God, the more abundance you have. The more you deny God, the emptier your life will be.
Man was made to associate with and to _____ _____ (LOVE GOD). Man made a fatal mistake in the Garden of Eden and that mistake cast us away from God and into _____ (SIN).
You have decisions to make during your lifetime. The decision you are making ______ (TODAY) will determine where your eternity will be spent ________ (TOMORROW). Every one of us is going to live for eternity. And it is totally up to us as to where we want to live it.
You will never attain the truth of God by living what is called a __________ (CONVENIENT) Christianity. Convenient Christianity is when you live your life according to your choices instead of God’s choices. People who live that convenient type of Christianity are ________ (CASUAL) Christians who really have no depth of maturity in God at all.
Where there is ____ (FEAR), there is no _____ (FAITH). Fear is from the devil. Fear keeps us _______ (AFRAID) and away from Christ. Faith gives us the boldness God wants so much for us to have.
1 JOHN 3:5 tells us, ‘But you know that He appeared so that He might __________ (TAKE AWAY) our sins. And in Him is no sin.’
All of us have times when we feel alone, away from God, insecure, or scared. We should remember these feelings come from the devil, and the only reason he makes us feel them is to _________ (DIVERT)our attention _____ (AWAY)from God.
1 JOHN 4:7-11 gives us another example of how much God loves us. ‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is ____ (LOVE). This is how God sowed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might ____ (LIVE)through Him. That is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning ___________ (SACRIFICE) for our sins.’
*** END BULLETIN INSERT ***
