God’s Heart is: That We Give His Love Away

God’s Heart Is That . . .

We Have Freedom from Injustice

Which only happens when we love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). Every one of us has a responsibility to act responsibly.

We Know Him

And know him like never before— to know his heart for us.

To know him deeper, know him better, know him so well we know his design and desire. To know him so well we can always hear his voice in the cacophony of sounds and temptations around us.

We Experience His Grace

And that grace is the source of our forgiveness. So we confess and receive grace, we learn how to give ourselves the grace of forgiveness, and we learn how to be forgiving and graceful to others.

We Love Like He Loves

We are commanded to love, God, then Neighbor (and ourselves) and love others in the church. His love is unconditional, unfathomable, undeserved, and almost unbelievably wonderful.

When we love like Jesus loves, we see others with the eyes of our Lord, not with the eyes of our own preferences. We can love the unlovely, love the unfaithful, love the ungrateful, for God loves us even when we are those things.

Love is costly. Expect it to cost all you are, all you have; but God will give you more of his love in return.

We Are Devoted to Him, Not a Substitute

God is a jealous God, and yet we are prone to build idols for ourselves, or to make idols for ourselves, or to treat another human being as if he or she were the end of all our desires.

Don’t let anything get in the way of a pure devotion to the God of our Salvation, not the god of our selfishness.

We need a savior, not a senator. We need a heart repairer, not a house representative.

The Roman Emperors, starting with Augustus, got the idea that they were so powerful that they should be worshiped. Dissenters were disassembled; at least their head was removed from their neck. Yet every one of those have died, most of them because of violence. They could not even save themselves.

We need a perfect God, not a procurator given as a substitute. Be careful where your heart lies.

When you know freedom from injustice, when you know God and when you experience His grace, when you love like he loves, you will only want God to save your future, for only he can, no matter who we may prefer in politics.

We Become Peacemakers

The world is blown apart by the lack of peacemakers. There is no peace and no desire for peace, it seems.

Making peace happen in our upset and selfish world is difficult. It can be as costly as the love of God which drives us to love the awkward and the obstinate.

We Become Like Jesus

For that is the end measure of our discipleship. We take baby steps toward being like Jesus all the time; the Bible promises that we will finally “get it” when Christ returns and we see him in all his glory.

But in the here and know, it is a good thing to look at Jesus as our model, as the one we follow, as the one whom we copy.

God is honored when we honor his son by learning his ways and his heart for acting out a love that gives itself away.

We Give His Love Away

Loving all by itself is part of giving away God’s love.

But I want to look at another side of that task of giving away the love of God:

That is through doing something that is attached to a word that makes us afraid:

In the Greek, it is euangelion. We change it just a bit for our English ears and the world become evangelism.

An evangel is a bringer of good news. And the good news that we are supposed to give away is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

How DO we become someone who gives God’s love away?

Well since, love is doing the very best for the one that is loved, no matter what the cost, it helps that we first start loving those whom God loves.

And that list is a lot larger than any list we would make. God loves the world. The whole world. The sinful, stinking, selfish, souls of mankind, even when they have no interest in getting a dose of good from God.

Here’s why we need to get into that frame of mind: so that we see the sin and see the solution is salvation.

Here’s

God’s Heart For The World:

2 Peter 3:9 NET

9 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

A Lost Boy and a Loving Father

Way back, a generation ago, almost, God showed me something about his love in an incident that I witnessed in a campground in Canada.

We can go back 10 years to 2012 and that’s not far enough. Go back 20 years, to 2002, and that’s not far enough. Go back another 7 years to 1995, and I think that’s about right for this true tale.

On the way to Camp Meeting

for Western Canada.

The campgrounds owned by the churches of God in Western Canada is outside a town called Red Deer, Alberta.

Pastor: Pleasant Valley Church of God

Travel from Vernon, BC

North on HW 97

To Sicamous

Join Highway 1

Canadian rockies

Glacier National Park of Canada

Revelstoke

Rogers Pass

Golden

Lake Louise

North on HW 93

Icefields Parkway

mountains, glaciers, rivers, lakes, bear, deer, elk, moose.

Toward Jasper, Alberta

Saskatchewan River Crossing

East on Hwy 11 toward Red Dear

Provincial Campground

Stayed 1 night

Large campground

near hwy

Brick washhouse

many looping roads for camping

1976 Dodge bubble-top camper van

Set up, slept,

Up the next morning

Walking around the camp

10-yr-old Boy in tears

Imagine this was you. . .

Went to the washhouse.

Turned the wrong way maybe

Got lost

Kept turning on different roads,

over and over, none the right way.

Desperate, lost, alone, losing hope, wondering if he can get back to dad.

Walked with him a bit...

Saw a man turn a corner from a lane a couple loops

It was his Father.

Saw him

Ran into his arms

Fell on his neck and just bawled. for a bit.

A Father’s Love

“Dad, I was lost, I couldn’t find you. I didn’t know where I was! I’m sorry I got lost”

His Father said to him, “Don’t worry, I knew where you went, and I was looking for you. I have you now.”

God Knows Where We Went

God is Looking For Our Return

Jesus is the Way Back

John 14:6 ESV

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

God’s Heart Is That We. . .

Share the Joy of Recovering the Lost

The command to go

Matthew 28:19–20 ESV

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Invite People to Come to God

Romans 10:9 ESV

9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Romans 10:13 ESV

13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Is This A Job for Professionals?

Romans 10:14–15 ESV

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

The Commission is to All Disciples

Mark 16:15 ESV

15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.

Jesus Has Your Back

John 17:15–17 ESV

15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Jesus Knows the Stakes

John 17:18 ESV

18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

John 17:20 ESV

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,

Jesus Prays for Our Walk and Our Witness

John 17:21 ESV

21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

John 17:23 ESV

23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

The Holy Spirit Blazes the Trail

Acts 1:8 ESV

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Just Share is Your Experience

1 John 1:3 CSB

3 what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.