9-19-21 The Foundation of Relationship: God's Love

This story comes from Billy Graham (yes, that one). He tells of a time early in his ministry when he arrived in a small town to preach a revival meeting. Wanting to mail a letter, he asked a little boy where the post office was. When the boy told him, Graham thanked him and said, “If you come to the church this evening, you can hear me give directions on how to get to heaven.” “I don’t think I’m going to come,” the boy replied. “You don’t even know how to get to the post office.” At the end of a service one day, a pastor asked the congregation to write some quick prayers on a piece of paper and put them in the prayer box. Here are some of the responses he received: “Lord, help me to relax about insignificant details—beginning at 7:41:23 A.M., EST.” “God, help me to consider people’s feelings, even if most of them are hypersensitive.” “Father, help me take responsibility for my own actions, even though they’re usually not my fault.” “Dear God, help me not try to run everything. But if you need some help, feel free to ask me.” “Lord, help me to be more laid back, and help me do it exactly right.” “Heavenly Father, please help me take things more seriously, especially having a good time.” “God, give me patience, and I mean right now!” “Lord, help me not to be a perfectionist. (Did I spell that correctly?)” “Lord, keep me open to other people’s ideas, wrong though they may be.” Amen. We’ve been in a series about following Jesus - the fancy church word for that is becoming a disciple. We’ve talked about how it all starts with choosing to follow Jesus - from our hearts making that choice, no matter what may come our way. And unfortunately, what’s going to come our way is persecution. Jesus just came out and said it - if you follow him, you’ll be hated. The gospel, following Jesus isn’t a bait and switch - we’re not trying to get you to sign up for following Jesus because if you do you’ll be happy, have money, and avoid problems. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 1 That’s just not true. The gospel is about what’s true. It’s about following Jesus so we can have life; not just eternal life, though that is an amazing perk, but it’s a new quality of life, a new kind of life. And the kind of life Jesus demonstrated and leads us in is one of peace, joy, love, faith, obedience. It’s a life marked by connectedness to God Himself. Jesus said in Matthew 28:19-20 NLT “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” What He is saying is that we need to teach people to follow God by obeying His commands. And He says He’ll never leave us - He is going to help us obey God as we make the choice to do it from our hearts. Remember, the Holy Spirit is the One that changes our hearts as we put effort into our relationship with Christ. God is not opposed to effort, He’s opposed to earning. I’ll say that again, God is not opposed to effort, He’s opposed to earning. In other words, this isn’t legalism, we don’t “do good enough to earn God’s favor, grace, and love,” it’s a gift. But we do put effort (starting from our hearts and outflowing into our hands) into following Jesus, obeying His instructions and directions, and developing a relationship with Him. And over the next few weeks I want to talk through a few relational aspects of following Jesus. In other words, as we follow Jesus, we need to develop relationships and put effort into how we operate within those relationships. There are three areas of relationship we need to learn how to follow Jesus in. 1) Our relationship with God. That’s what I want to start with today. 2) Our relationship with ourselves. That may be a strange way to say it, but the way you relate to yourself is important. Some people can’t stand to spend time with themselves or with God, and that’s a problem. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 2 3) Our relationships with other people. These relationships with others show off our relationships with God and ourselves. In other words, this is where what’s in our hearts starts either flowing out in rivers of living water or starts oozing out toxic sludge. So the goals are to love God completely. Mark 12:30 NKJV And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.” Then love ourselves correctly so that we can follow the Lord and worship Him the way He wants to be worshiped. 2 Timothy 2:15 NKJV “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” And then we need to learn how to love others compassionately. Galatians 5:14 NKJV “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So these are the things I want to dive deeper into over the next few weeks. Let’s pray before we jump into the word today. Father in Heaven, thank you for the time we have together today. I ask you to speak to us through Your word. I ask You to make Your word alive like a two-edged sword, penetrating between joint and marrow so that we might be strengthened, built up, and grounded in Your love, faithfulness, goodness, and grace. Jesus, we want to be better followers of You. Teach us Your ways, show us how to grow in You, and may Your Name be glorified in all we say and do. Holy Spirit, fill this place today and birth in us a new and sustained passion for our relationship with You. In Jesus’ Name, amen. Today, I want to talk about loving God completely from our hearts and how loving Him that way (from the heart) helps us follow Him better. God is a relatiotional being. That means that He is a personal God who loves us and wants to be in a relationship with us. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 3 And He didn’t just die on the cross, go away back to heaven, and just leave us an owners manual so we could kind of ‘figure things out’ until He comes back. No, He said He’d never leave us. That means in relationship with us; that means He is there for you all the time. The difference is, though, that He’s invisible. We can’t see Him with our physical eyes. That can sometimes cause problems. But God is available to us in relationship. That means we can talk to Him, and He’ll talk to us. It means He will help us with things and be there for us when we ask Him. It means He will provide for us when we’re in need and we come to Him. Don’t get caught up on the fact that He’s invisible; He's all powerful, all knowing. He’s willing, ready, and able to be there for you and me at all times. The Bible calls our relationship with God a new way of life - remember it’s a different quality of life. Hebrews 10:19-20 NKJV “Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh.” In other words, we can have a relationship with God not based on what we do, but what Jesus has already done, and the way is open for us to have this relationship with God every single day. Because the infinite and personal God loves us, He wants us to grow in an intimate relationship with Him; this is the entire reason we were created - to know, love, enjoy, and honor God.1 And so God’s love towards us, people who were born into a world poisoned by sin, is the foundation for our faith, our hope, and our relationship with. Jesus said, John 15:9 NKJV “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.” He’s saying that the relationship we have with God is love, it’s based on love, and it continues in love. In other words as we abide in Him, we’re abiding in His love. That word ‘abide’ may be strange to our modern language. But it means that we need to try to stay in a place of His love. 1 Boa, Kenneth. Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation, P27. Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2001. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 4 We need to train our hearts so that we don’t forget, we don’t get away from the keen awareness of His closeness, His love, and His grace. It also could mean to wait inside of something. In other words we wait for God to come to us inside of Jesus’ love. That means that no matter what we face in life, we need to put God’s love for us in front of our minds so that we’ll be able to stick close in relationship with Jesus. God’s love is spontaneous and never-ending - He loved us because He chose to love us. He wanted to love you and He will continue to love you; and if we have responded to God’s offer of forgiveness in Christ and entrance into a relationship with Him, then nothing is ever going to be able to separate us from His love or diminish it.2 Romans 8:35 NKJV “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” This means we are secure in God’s love for us - nothing we do will cause God to love us more or less than He does right now. If there’s anyone here who has experienced pain or rejection caused by performance-based acceptance or conditional love, this might sound too good to be true. Isn’t there something we have to do to get God to love us? Isn’t He angry with me if I don’t read my bible enough, pray enough, or say some swear words when I stub my toe? If we’re scared other people would reject us if they really knew who we were inside and bad thoughts we’ve had and things we’ve done, wouldn’t the perfect and holy God of the universe also reject us? No. He doesn’t reject us - He calls us to come to Him so He can wrap us in His arms and flow His love, peace, grace, mercy, and strength into us. One of my favorite old poems is by George Herbert and goes like this; 2 Boa, Kenneth. Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation, P30. Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2001. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 5 Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lacked anything. "A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here": Love said, "You shall be he." "I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on thee." Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, "Who made the eyes but I?" "Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame Go where it doth deserve." "And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?" "My dear, then I will serve." "You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat." So I did sit and eat.3 Beyond all human faith, beyond all earthbound hope, the eternal God of love has reached down to us and, in the ultimate sacrifice, purchased us and made us His own. How are we supposed to respond to His immense, unending love? Sometimes this truth seems so remote and unreal that they don’t quite grip our minds, wills, or emotions. We might sing worship songs in church and learn about God’s love through classes or bible studies but miss the radical implications for our everyday lives. 3 Herbert, George. “Love (III).” The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Verse & Prose, Broadview, 2001, p. 146. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 6 Spiritual truth doesn’t do us any good if we limit it head-knowledge and don’t internalize it. It can get diluted through cultural, emotional, or theological filters and get reduced to just a mental belief that we agree with instead of a daily truth and reality we walk in. But the better we know God, the more we will love Him. And the more we love Him, the greater our willingness to trust, obey, and follow Him in the things He calls us to do. You see, Paul’s deepest desire for the people in the church was that they grow in the experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ. That they would have a deeper and deeper relationship with a person, with God. This isn’t head knowledge, it’s personal knowledge that is birthed out of a relationship. Ephesians 1:17 NKJV “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him” Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship that is born out of love! And Jesus invites us to the highest calling of all time - intimacy with Him. And it takes two things to grow in this intimate relationship with Jesus. It takes time and it takes obedience. It takes time to cultivate a relationship with another person. So unless we’re willing to set aside some of our time for Jesus through things like prayer, solitude, silence, and reading His word, we’ll never have an intimate relationship with Him. And if we’re not willing to do what He tells us, He’s not going to tell us any more things. And so my point today is that Jesus simply wants to be in a deepening relationship with You and me. And we can have that relationship, we can approach Jesus without shame because of His love, His grace, and His faithfulness to us. Jesus said Matthew 11:28 NLT “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 7 In contrast to the heavy burden of legalism, of trying to get all the rules right so we’ll be accepted by God, Jesus calls us to a free, open, loyal, and loving relationship which enables us to obey the law of the New Covenant, the law of love. And so today, as I begin to close, I simply want to ask; are there burdens you have today that are too heavy for you? Bring them to Jesus. He’ll take them and give you His peace instead. Have you been feeling His deep love in your life? If not, come to Him today! Commit to putting Jesus in the forefront of your mind so that you can talk to Him when you go through hard days. Internalize His great love for you so that it becomes a practical relationship. Don’t let the fact that Jesus is invisible block you from entering into a friendship with Him. In the book Song of Solomon, we see this illustration of a bride and a bridegroom to show us how much God wants to know us, His people. And He doesn’t want to know us on a superficial level, He wants to know us at the depths of who we are. Song of Solomon 5:16 NLJV “His mouth is most sweet, Yes, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, And this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem!” In other words, when you approach Him, Jesus will speak sweetly and kindly to you, He’ll love you and care for you. He may say hard things, sometimes, too, as He always speaks the truth, but you are His beloved! He made you, He knows your heart, and He cares for you. And He’ll never stop. John 10:25 NKJV My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. 30 I and My Father are one.” We can’t hear Jesus' voice, we can’t feel His love, we can’t practically abide in Him if we won’t make time for Him. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 8 And so following Jesus, once we’ve committed to that, starts with listening to His voice. It starts with going to Him and simply talking to Him and listening to what He says. It starts with thinking about what He says through His word and internalizing it. It starts with resting in the fact that He loves you, and He gave His One and Only Son so that He could get time with you, be with you, and pour out His blessings and grace over you. The Foundation of Relationship: Love | 9