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Our response to God’s love
A Passion to know God
3 “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today.
1. God knows everything about you. He knows your strengths, abilities, and accomplishments. He knows your desires, dreams, hopes, and goals.
2. He knows what thrills your soul and what breaks your heart. He knows your past, present and future. He loves you and knows you.
1. How well do you know God? Do you know what pleases Him? Do you know what breaks His heart?
2. As Christians, we should have a passion for God.
Phil 3:14: Paul expressed his passion by “pressing toward the mark of the prize of the high calling”
Our knowledge of the Lord
1. We should have a desire to understand who God is, how He works, and what he desires. Not just a head knowledge alone, but knowledge that bears itself out of our experience with the Lord.
2. it’s not knowing about God, but knowing God, but genuinely knowing God. It means we feel His presence in any situation of our lives. We feel His presence and His power operating in our lives.
3. Paul called for the Colossians to pursue such a knowledge. Col 2:2-3
2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,
3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
4.Paul is wanting to encourage them, to be knit together to unite in love. To be unselfish.
5. Those who have a passion for the lord place a top priority on knowing Him. The relationship with the Lord is above all other relationships. Even our loves ones. If we do this, all the other relationship will work out.
8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ
? What have you lost or sacrificed in pursuit of a deeper relationship with Christ?
? What things might be holding you back from knowing God more deeply?
Knowing the greatness of God.
1. If you have a passion to know God, you have a passion to a have understanding of the greatness of God.
2. There are a lot of great things about God’s love, but the greatest thing is His love. The more you know the greatness of God the more you will value His love that He extends towards you.
12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Knowing the Lords goodness.
1. We can discover the goodness of God in so many ways, in so many situations and in so many times.
2. The more you discover the goodness of God, the more you see the goodness to God. He loves us in good ways, and His goodness is always expressed with the love toward those who seek His heart.
? When have you expressed Gods goodness in your life?
Knowing the Lord through identification with Him.
1. Some ways, and maybe even the main ways to know the Lord are through prayer, praise and having an understanding of God’s word, and our identification with the Lords life: Elab on all that Jesus went through.
A Knowledge of His suffering
1. The more you walk with God and the closer your walk becomes, you will likely experience rejection and alienation from the world.
2. You will be misunderstood and ridiculed just like He was. We are going to be criticized like He was.
3. He will be tempted like He was, tempted to pursue things that satisfy self. Elab
4. You will be persecuted for your faith. Elab
5. The Lord does not immunize ur from troubles and struggles, but what we do have is the Holy Spirit to confront, overcome and endure troubles and struggles victoriously.
A Knowledge of His victories
1. The more we seek to know the Lord and have a passion for living out His life on earth, the more we are also going to know His victories in the spiritual realm.
2. Jesus told His disciples’ about the life that they would experience after His resurrection and after He sent the Holy Spirit to them: John 16:23-24
3 Jesus promised His disciples that they would:
15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
(Experience great protection against evil and power over evil)
18 “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Mat 18:19-20 (Answered prayers)
To know the Lord is to identify so fully with His life that you experience what the Lord experienced here on earth: sufferings and His victories.
This will helps us to learn more about God’s great love that God always loves us no matter what the circumstances are around you.
20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.
21 But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.