Deep Love

What is the best part of God’s Love?

Survey says....

“That he is a forever friend that will always be with you.”

“That you can talk with him and he will always be there.

“That it’s unconditional. That it will always be there and that when you learn to follow him you can share in that love together.”

“not conditional on me and my performance”

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Friendship (Father/Husband & partnership by the Spirit)

Unconditional

eternal

Invitational

For everyone

Sacrificial

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God’s Love is such a vast topic. In fact: God is Love. You cannot have Love without God. And you cannot have God without Love.

It’s not just an abstract word. It’s a discription of God’s nature that flows out from Him to us and through us to others.

Even those who don’t know or believe in God unknowingly partner with the image of God in them when they love well...

....and where we use the word love to decribe something that doesn’t resemble God’s nature. Something impatient, unkind, selfish, self-centered, and possessive....we are describing a different creature altogether.

Many people’s disappointment in love is rooted in attempting to divorce the feelings of love from the person of God. To experience the warmth, closeness, and intimacy that our soul seeks in a relationship with God.

But we get that idea from somewhere. God’s love is unquenchably desireable. It fills up space inside us that is empty without Him...and He wants us to experience His love.

God’s Love Invites Us

1 John 4:19 ESV

We love because he first loved us.

John 6:44 ESV

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

God loved us first.

LOVE IN THE BIBLE:

Throughout the Bible we see story after story describing God initiating a relationship of love and intimacy with someone.

Adam & Eve - created to walk in the garden as friends

Enoch - walked with God

Abraham - called personally, invited into a promise God initiated.

Hagar - seen in the wilderness

Moses - called while shepherding

Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah - each a unique experience of God’s love and calling.

Disciples - each called uniquely and personally to walk with him

The whole bible is just a record of people being invited in their time into a loving relationship with God...and led by that love into obedience for a purpose of greater love to even more people.

LOVE EXPERIENCED TODAY:

“My heart was so full of love that it overflowed. My cup ran over with blessing and with love; and I could not feel that I was sinning against God. Nor could I recover the least sense of guilt for my past sins.” - Charles Finney

“And from the time that it came to me, I often desired to know what was our Lord's meaning. And more than fifteen years afterward, I was answered in spiritual understanding: ‘Would you know your Lord’s meaning in this? Know it well: love was His meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did He show you? Love. Why did He show it? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same.’”

— Chapter 86, Revelations of Divine Love - Julian of Norwic

God’s Love invites us:

By Blaise Pascal

    The year of grace 1654,

    Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.

    Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.

    From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

    FIRE.

    GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob

    not of the philosophers and of the learned.

    Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

    GOD of Jesus Christ.

    My God and your God.

    Your GOD will be my God.

    Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.

    He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

    Grandeur of the human soul.

    Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.

    Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

    I have departed from him:

    They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.

    My God, will you leave me?

    Let me not be separated from him forever.

    This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.

    Jesus Christ.

    Jesus Christ.

    I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.

    Let me never be separated from him.

    He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:

    Renunciation, total and sweet.

    Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.

    Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.

    May I not forget your words. Amen.

The funny thing is that I had a section of this quote in my head but couldn’t remember who it was by so I went hunting, as you do, on the Google.

I think I searched: “Estatic experience of God’s love” and up came so many personal stories, blogs, and testimonies from everyday people that I had to get out Chatgpt and start getting super specific to get the quote I was looking for.

The great part about that is that experiencing God’s love is widely available. From the bible, to historical figures, to everyday people God pours out his love generously in ways we can engage and experience Him.

Just last week at Alpha I met a new friend who was there because only 2 weeks prior God had given her an experience of his love much like Pascal described.

I know my first personal encounter with God was one part deep conviction and repentence and one part deep love poured out.

Romans describes love as “poured into our hearts” and it’s a very tactile description....I know what it is when a love outside of myself is poured into me, through me, fills me. I am so conscious of my own love depravity that His presence in me fills places that feel empty apart from Him.

Romans 5:5 ESV

and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

God’s Love Anchors

 This experience of outpoured love is a gift of presence and a gift for perseverance. An anchor for our most difficult experiences.

In context this is about the ability to stand up under persecution.

Romans 5:1–5 ESV

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

God’s love is the sustaining power for that because it points to something immeasurably valuable that is also eternal.

We can let other things go if we have this Love.

As I was preparing the scripture that came to mind most...sort of ever present was:

Lamentations 3:22–24 ESV

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

This is a great verse for a song, or a bumper sticker or a Christian mug. But I promise you you will never write another song from any other verse in Lamentations because it is a horrible, tragic, painful, angry, grief-filled prayer of a person who has seen the end of all things.

Lamentations 4:4–5 NET

The infant’s tongue sticks to the roof of its mouth due to thirst; little children beg for bread, but no one gives them even a morsel. Those who once feasted on delicacies are now starving to death in the streets. Those who grew up wearing expensive clothes are now dying amid garbage.

Lamentations is post-apocalyptic.

After civilization fell. After the city, the temple, the affluence ground to dust, burned and there are bodies everywhere - the helpless and innocent destroyed.

It’s a beautiful-ugly poem. Beautiful for it’s rawness, honesty and humanity and representation of the kind of suffering that we all fear. It could be written in our time out of Sudan, or Gaza, or Kiev...

And ugly for the suffering it depicts - that we want to turn away from.

But even in that darkest of dark place it is the Love of God that anchors Jeremiah.

Not the feeling of the love of God mind you....he is not feeling that right now. But the eternality of the faithfullness of God’s love. He clings to the knowledge that in all of time God has never forsaken his love and so even in the darkest place there is a thin strand of hope.

The psalmist reflects this experience too in one of m favorite psalms.

Psalm 13:1–6 NIV

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.

God’s love anchors us in suffering.

The end of the verse from Lamentation talks about God as “his portion”.

Lamentations 3:24 ESV

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

This is an expression used in a number of places in scripture to talk about the preciousness of the love relationship God offers.

The best way I know how to express this is with pie.

Let’s say each of these pieces had a label on them representing good things in life.

God’s love

health

security

living in peace

family

wealth

meaningful work

affirmation of others

Which pieces would you take?

probably all of them right?

What if you could only choose one? I know you know the “right” answer but it’s actually not that easy to choose.

But only one of these will last forever.

So....to make the Lord as your portion means that you understand that this love relationship with God is the most precious thing that exists.

“Picture in your mind a tall ladder leaning against a wall. Now think about your life as a process of climbing that ladder. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy to get to the top of the ladder and find you had placed it against the wrong wall? One life to live and you missed it!

Your relationship to God (Father, Son, and Spirit) is the single most important aspect of your life. If it is not right, nothing else is important.

If you knew that all you had was a relationship with Him, would you be totally and completely satsified?

Many people would say, “Well, I would like to have that relationship, but I sure would like to do something” or “I sure would like for Him to give me a ministry or give me something to do.”

We are “doing” people. We feel worthless or useless if we are not busy doing something. The Scripture leads us to understand that God is saying, ‘I want you to love me above everything else. When you are in a relationship of love with Me, you have everything there is.” To be loved by god is the highest relationship, the highest achievement, and the highest postition in life.

That does not mean you will never do anything as an expression of your love for Him. God will call you to obey Him and do whatever he asks of you. However, you do not need to be doing something to feel fulfilled. You are fulfilled completely in a relationship with God. When you are filled with Him, what else do you need? - Henry Blackaby “Experiencing God” pp84

God’s love is Forever

Romans 8:35–39 ESV

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The power of the gospel is that it is a salvation by God’s love that can exist on the other side of death.

Everything else that loves us or that we could love is subject to death. God’s love alone is eternal.

Psalm 136 ESV

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who by understanding made the heavens, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who spread out the earth above the waters, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who made the great lights, for his steadfast love endures forever; the sun to rule over the day, for his steadfast love endures forever; the moon and stars to rule over the night, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, for his steadfast love endures forever; and brought Israel out from among them, for his steadfast love endures forever; with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who divided the Red Sea in two, for his steadfast love endures forever; and made Israel pass through the midst of it, for his steadfast love endures forever; but overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who led his people through the wilderness, for his steadfast love endures forever; to him who struck down great kings, for his steadfast love endures forever; and killed mighty kings, for his steadfast love endures forever; Sihon, king of the Amorites, for his steadfast love endures forever; and Og, king of Bashan, for his steadfast love endures forever; and gave their land as a heritage, for his steadfast love endures forever; a heritage to Israel his servant, for his steadfast love endures forever. It is he who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever; and rescued us from our foes, for his steadfast love endures forever; he who gives food to all flesh, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Experience Love

The love of God for you is true - whether you realise it or not.

However, the best kind of life is one where we share in that love with God relationally.

There is so much more to be said about a life in God’s love that I can only hope to just remind you of what is true and whet your appetite for more...

I can only invite you to persist in cultivating this relationship. In attending to it when it seems limp or dry. In recognizing moments of hopelessness, anxiety, and despair as a thermometer for your love life with the Lord and

re-engage where needed.

From Henry Blackaby: Experiencing God

God created the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, for a love relationship with Himself. After Adam and Eve had sinned, they heard God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. They hid from Him because of their fear and shame. Try to sense the heart of a loving Father when he asked that wonderful love question, ‘Where are you?’ God knew that something had happened to the love relationship.

When your relationship is as it should be you will always be in fellowship with the Father. You will be there in His presence expecting and anticipating the relationship of love. When Adam and Eve were not there, something had gone wrong.

Early each day I have an appointment with God. I often wonder what happens when the God who loves me come to meet me there. How does he feel when He asks: “Henry, where are you?” and I am just not there. I have found this to be true in my own walk with the Lord:

I keep that time alone with God, not in order to have a relationship with the Lord, I want to meet with Him in my quiet time. I want to spend the time there. Time with Him enriches and deepens the relationship I have with Him.

I hear many persons say, “I really struggle trying to have that time alone with God.” If that is a problem you face, let me suggest something to you. Make the priority in your life to come to love Him with all your heart. that will solve most of your problem with your quiet time. Your quiet time is because you know Him and, therefore love Him, not only in order to learn about Him. -

2 Corinthians 5:14 NIV

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.

All ministry, mission, transformation flows from the love of Christ for us and in us.

So...before we can move on to Grow and Sow..we need to deeply invest in knowing God’s love and walking with Him.

If that was all there was. It would be enough.

PRAYER

The love of God compels us...

The Lord is my portion....

First Love: