God Love for Us Should Change Our Life

You are all here for different reasons. Many are here with questions.

What is God doing planting CoolWater Cowboy Church at Joe and Lisa’s? Some of you may have even come to see Mrs. Ann set us straight. or send the preacher packing back to Hunt Springs

You may be wondering How can we have church in a barn, or is this just a one time evangelism event?

Some of you may even being asking “How can these things be used by God?”

One the thing I know is that you are not here because you didn’t have any else to do. We all have plenty of things to do on Saturday.

If you are here, It is because God wanted you here. And if you are here it is Okay to have come with questions.

God likes questions. God uses our questions as opportunities to teach us something new about His love for us and our need to trust His love for us. Sometimes the news might not be new, but the view may remind us that God Love hasn’t changed, even though our trust in Him has faded.

Questions about God’s love and how we trust that love in everyday life are not new. tells us That God already knows our question before we ask them. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He was teaching and performing miracles that should have convinced those present that God loves them and everything He says is actually for their good.

But the Bible says, we may say we know God loves us, but Jesus knows if we really trust His love and believe enough to do what he tells us .

says:

John 2:23–25 NASB95

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.

Jesus was doing what God said to do, expecting to prove God true, even when people didn’t really believe him.

, says one of these people was a man named Nicodemus, who came to Jesus with 3 questions. First question: Are you here to set up your your kingdom.

John 3:1–2 NASB95

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.”

Here’s the question this afternoon. Jesus are you here to help us? Are you reestablishing your rule in Chatham and Lee Counties? Are you here to fix my broken family, my meaningless job, Lord I am just sick and tried of being sick and tried, are you here to fix my messed up life, in this broken world?

Now most of us would never say such things out load. But Jesus already knows what we are thinking. Nicodemus didn’t actually ask this out load, but Jesus heard what he was thinking and answered:

:

John 3:3 NASB95

Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

We cannot see what God is doing in our physical lives, until we are spiritually reborn and our spiritual lives have been reconciled to God.

Which led to Nicks second question: How can a man be reborn when he is old. You can teach an old dogs new tricks. He is to busy laying on the porch, playing in the yard, or chasing the cat. We haven’t ever done it this way before, and we can’t start now.

Jesus says, in :

John 3:4–8 NASB95

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

How can God cause us to give up our old ways? Jesus makes us a new person; gives us a new life; a life controlled and led by HIs Spirit. How can this happen? The theology term is that it is a miracle. If it is a miracle how do I know it is true? You will experience a changed heart and see a transformed life. Jesus said it is like the wind. You don’t know from where is come and where it goes, but you can see what it is doing and the after effect it left in its wake.

Jesus says we must not be amazed, but trust that what he says is true. Which brings Nicodemus to his third question: How can these things be?

This seemed to good to be true. Nicodemus Didn’t completely understand what Jesus was saying. When John was writing his gospel, he knew his first readers and even us here at CoolWater Cowboy Church would have trouble understanding how a new life must began with a changed heart. That is the reason the Holy Spirit led John to write the most revered, most known, most life changing verse in the Bible.

God’s Love for Us Should Change Our Life

God’s Love for Us Should Change Our Life

says, God’s Love for Us Should Change Our Life. One commentator says, How We Response to God’s love Determines Our Destiny (Kenneth Gangel Holman NTC; Main Idea).

John 3:16 NASB95

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Pray. As be gin at the trailhead our your new gospel drive, let us remember your Love for us, how you demonstrated it toward us, and that there is nothing in our life that your love cannot change for for glory and our good.

Today for whatever reason you came. Whatever questions you may have about life, God , and your destiny in his world remember that:

God’s Love for Us Should Change Our Life

God’s Love for Us Should Change Our Life

How We Response to God’s love Determines Our Destiny. is John exposition of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus. John Knows readers would have questions and that we would have questions. John also knows he does have time to tell his readers everything about everything Jesus said to the religious leader. I don’t have time to tell you everything about God’s love this afternoon. So let’s follow along with John as the bible tells us:

The reason God gave us His only Unique Son

John3:16

The purpose for which God gave us His Son

John 3:17

The result for which God gave us HIs Son

John 3:18–20

Our Response to God’s Love Shines Light in the darkness of a Hopeless World.

John 3:21

The reason God gave His son was for hope.

3:16: Without Christ and the cross there is no hope. We are dying in our sin. Sin is rebelling against God’s design and trusting that what He says is for our good and HIs glory. John uses the word world (kosmos) 78 times in his gospel and 24 times in his letters. Each time he used kosmos to describe people associated with a world system organized against God and estranged from HIm.

Holman New Testament Commentary: John C. The Snake in the Desert (3:14)

Looking at the snake manifested active faith. It was not sufficient for the Israelites to know that there was a snake on the pole; they had to turn in faith, expecting God’s cure. So it is with the cross. It is not enough to know that Jesus was crucified on the cross; one must look to him in faith, accepting God’s free gift of salvation.

The reason we are Planting CoolWater Cowboy Church is to demonstrate belief in God plan for redeeming a dying world.

Little girl and a horse that had already killed 3 people. I didn’t need a better trained horse. I needed a new horse. Same with our life we do not need behavior modification, we need a new life.

The purpose for which God gave us His Son

: The purpose for which God gave his Son to die on the cross.

We have already been tried. the verdict has been read. We are waiting for the sentence to be carried out.

The result for which God gave us His Son

John 3:18–20 NASB95

“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

We don’t get involved in church because we do not want other to know how bad our lives are messed up. God gives us the church for rebuke, instruction, and correction.

2 Timothy 3:16–4:3 NASB95

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,

We are starting CoolWater Cowboy Church, because church is how God keeps us in the light.

Our Response to God’s Love Shines Light in the darkness of a Hopeless World.

John 3:21 NASB95

“But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

Manifest comes from φανεροςω. It is light watching a photograph develop

God expects His love to result in our response of belief. As a result of God’s love, we should respond by believe in Jesus. Believing means we are practicing what God says expecting to prove Him right. Prove God right by living in the light.

Holman New Testament Commentary: John B. Contrast between Believers and Unbelievers (3:16–21)

Early in his ministry when Ironside lived in the San Francisco Bay area, he conducted a meeting for the Salvation Army. At the end of the sermon, a well-known socialist handed Dr. Ironside a card on which he had written, “Sir, I challenge you to debate me with the question, ‘Agnosticism vs. Christianity’ in the Academy of Science Hall next Sunday afternoon at 4:00 P.M. I will pay all expenses.”

Ironside read the card aloud, then agreed to the debate on certain terms. First, that the socialist bring to the debate a man whose life had been wrecked by sin but now redeemed for righteousness and goodness because of agnosticism. Second, that he would bring a woman wrecked by sin, an outcast prostitute, who had been rehabilitated and now lived a virtuous, happy life because of agnosticism. Ironside agreed to bring one hundred such people saved by the power of Jesus Christ whose lives would be “present-day proof of the truth of the Bible.” As the story ends, the man left the hall unwilling to take up such a challenge. This chapter describes that kind of transformation.

CoolWater Cowboy Church seeks to engage the cowboy culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ and plant other churches, expecting to see sinners saved, saints being sanctified, and Jesus gloried by changed lives.