Love Our God

Today we begin our sermon series in which we are going to be looking at our three-year vision for the church. Our mission does not change, we are with God’s help continuing to form believers, develop followers, and release disciples.

Our vision is the ways in which we are going to continue to do what was started in 2021. We will be looking at the ways we will be accomplishing our mission. Any mission and vision of the church needs to start with two important concepts within scripture, loving God and loving our neighbor.

Today we are focusing on what it means to “Love Our God.” Our scripture comes from John 1:43-51, the words will be on the screen.

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” 50 Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Please pray with me…

Everything that we do as a church and as individual Christians should begin with our faith in God and our love for God. It is because of our love for God that we should want to connect with God.

It is due to our love for God that we should desire to get to know him better. It is because of our love for God that we should want to be doing what we are doing today, worshipping God through prayer, singing, praise, and hearing the word of God.

God is the one who created us and loved us first. This should be the defining reason why we should desire to be with him, show our love to him, and be willing to serve him. We have a God of love and forgiveness.

As Christians we believe that God loved us so much that he saw the sin, corruption, and overall mistreatment of those within society and decided to allow a part of himself, His Son, to come down to earth to become our example on how to live our lives.

But we know that wasn’t the only purpose. We know that a sacrifice had to be made and it was Jesus that would eventually die on a cross as the sacrifice that allows humanity to be able to have their sins forgiven and their souls to have eternal life with Jesus in Heaven.

Our first reading is the way that the Jewish people expressed the concept of how they were to show their love to God. They were truly following God when they were attempting to show their love to him with their heart, mind, soul, and strength.

We have Jesus expressing this same understanding of scripture when he is asked the greatest commandment. His answer was to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength, and the other is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

We will focus more on “love your neighbor” next week. Our love for God should affect the way that we act, react, and treat those that are around us. But what does it mean for us to love God with our heart, mind, soul, and strength? It means that we are willing to love God with our whole self.

We love God with our heart when we are engaging with God in a way to show him that he is internally what guides and directs the way we live our lives. It is through our love for God that we live to be who God desires for us to be.

This will mean for us deciding that we are going to attempt to follow the laws and values expressed by God within scripture. We want God to be so embedded within our heart that our natural reactions will be the reactions that God desires for us to make.

We desire to live out the principles God speaks of within scripture such as the ten commandments. The Jewish people attempted to also do this to show they loved God with their whole heart, but their attempt was for the wrong reason.

They seemed to be trying to earn God’s love through their actions. They were following the ways of God to prove that they were “good enough” to be in a relationship with their God. We know that this is not only not possible but also is not needed.

God loves us as we are and desires to be in a relationship with us. He does not ask for us to follow his ways in order to “earn his love.” God wants us to choose to follow his ways because he first loved us.

Our Desire to love God with our mind leads us to seeking out ways to receive a greater understanding of God. It is us wanting to understand the will of God in such a way that it becomes ingrained into our heart.

Our head knowledge becomes a part of the desired actions that our hearts want to perform for God. Knowledge of God alone allows us to say the right words. It is through incorporating the knowledge we receive about God and the willingness to use that knowledge to better serve God, that leads us to being able to live our lives as God desires for us to live.

We can look at the response offered to Philip by Nathaniel in our Gospel reading that shows what head knowledge alone can cause. Philip tells Nathaniel that we have found the Messiah, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth.

Nathaniel immediately dismisses what Philip says because of what he has been told regarding the Messiah. When Nathaniel says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He isn’t saying that all people from Nazareth are a bunch of jerks.

What he is remembering is the knowledge he has received concerning the Messiah. The Messiah is to come from Bethlehem of Judea. Therefore, if Jesus is from Nazareth than Nathaniel automatically dismisses Jesus as being able to be the Messiah.

It is not until Jesus speaks directly to Nathaniel that we have his head and heart intertwine. It is Jesus knowing Nathaniel before he had even meant him that leads Nathaniel to accept the possibility that Jesus is the Messiah.

Using what we know about God to have us live the life God wants us to live is the goal. We do this through getting to know God through the word of God. The best way for us to increase our knowledge of God is to spend time learning the scriptures.

We are blessed to have a number of ways that we are able to do this. We have the Bible itself that we can read and learn from. We have devotionals such as “The Daily Bread” or “The Upper Room” that we can pick up at the church or read online.

We offer a live devotional every weekday at 9 am on our Facebook page in which we look at how the word of God can impact our lives. There are apps available on our phones that offer various short devotionals that can help us receive a better understanding of God.

This does not include the Bible studies we offer on Wednesday afternoons both in-person and through Zoom and on Thursday evenings by Zoom. There are a number of ways out there for a person to learn more about God.

There is no excuse to not be able to find a way to get to know God better and to learn how that knowledge can help us become the person that God desires for us to be. We need to be willing to want to take the time to spend with God.

This leads us to looking at how we love God with our soul. This is our desire to want to have a close, intimate relationship with God. We can increase the possibility of having this type of relationship when we are willing to spend time with God.

We often do this through praying to God. Prayer is how we can let God know about the areas of life where we are struggling. It is through praying to God that we are able to let God know that we desire to have his help in our lives.

We know that God can help us without us asking but God will often wait for us to ask before he will intervene. A good example of this would be when God asks Moses to go to Egypt to free the Israelites that were enslaved there. God says that he is intervening into their situation because he has “heard their cries.”

A second important discipline that comes with prayer is a willingness to listen to God. We may often ask for God to intervene, but we will not take the time to allow God to offer us how he can help us or what he would desire for us to do in order to help ourselves.

This can be difficult because we might have to quiet our minds and remove life’s distractions. This is not always easy to do in today’s society. But when we take the time to do this what we will discover over time is that we will receive a greater understanding of what God desires for us to do.

This does not mean that you will hear an audible voice. What we need to do is discover how we are able to best hear from God. It may mean getting out into nature. It could mean being willing to listen closely to what others are saying to us that may lead us to understand what God desires from us.

Personally,my way of connecting with God has changed over time. It used to be while lying down and quieting my mind. It seems to be more often I hear from God now when I am walking the dog.

There is no set way for us to hear from God. We have to be willing to experiment and discover how we are best able to hear from the one that loves us enough that he wants to be in contact with us.

We also show our love to God with all of our strength. This is our willingness to become the hands and feet, and voice of Jesus. It is us deciding that we are going to serve those around us because of the love that God has shown to us.

We will get into this more next week, but it is often through a willingness to step out of our comfort zone and serve those God places before us that will allow us to let those around us know about Jesus.

We have Philip fulfilling our calling to let those around us know about Jesus in our text. We have Jesus connect with him and after developing a relationship with Jesus, Philip wants to spread the word about Jesus to others.

He begins with someone that he knows. We know Jesus will later have him and the other disciples speak to those they don’t know about who Jesus is and what he has done. We are called to do the same. We are called to help those around us know about the one who saved us and desires to save them.

All of these ways that we show our love to God are intertwined with each other. We have to have a heart to serve God. We need to seek the knowledge of how God desires for us to serve him. We have to be willing to connect with God in such a way that he can tell us what he wants us to do.

And then we need to have the faith to step out into the world and do what God desires for us to do for him. Our mission and vision can only be fulfilled if we are willing to connect with God with our heart, mind, soul and strength both as a church and individually.

We all have gifts given to us by God to use to strengthen and grow the kingdom of God. Let us be willing to show God our love for him because he was willing to first love us.

Let us pray…