Experiencing God III:
‘Loving God’
Sermon Review
25 March 2001
Matt.22:34-4
In the N.T. the love of God is very hard to either miss or dismiss. God is described as being love – 1John.4:8; the motivation behind salvation is love - John.3:16; love fulfils the whole intent of the Mosaic Law and the teaching of the prophets – Matt.22:34-40; and Christians are called to love God and others - Matt.22:34-40. Love is at the heart of Christianity. I have no doubts that it is because God loves that He has arranged salvation as a relationship in which love can be experienced. Paul believed that it was important for people to understand His love as well as experience it. Eph.3:17b-19. God intentionally pursues a love relationship with all people – that is the way He is, and the way He works.
Loving God is important, but not always easy: For the Christian, like most ordinary people, the constant temptation is to believe in God’s love when things are going well, and to disbelieve it when things are tough. In so far as God is concerned, Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross is intended to dispel all doubts for all time eg. 1John.4:9,10, irrespective of our life’s circumstances or experience eg. Rom.8:35-39. As a child it is easy to say to our parents, ‘You don’t love me’, if we can’t get our own way. As adults it is also so easy to say the same to God when things don’t go how we want them to. Illus.: ‘Spurgeon, the noted English Pastor and Writer, once noticed a weather vane on the roof of a barn with an inscription underneath which said, '‘God is love'’ '‘Just what do you mean by putting that text there?’ Spurgeon asked the farmer. ‘Do you think God’s love is changeable like the wind’ ‘Not at all,’ the farmer replied, ‘it simply means ‘God is love’ no matter which way the wind blows."
Loving God is easier if we truly believe that he loves us:
When we think of love, we tend to think of a young couple, or mother & child, or old friends getting together, and the feelings involved. The Greek language has a number of words for love, but for God’s love it uses the word ‘agape’. This term moves beyond human relationships and has been described as the perfect, consuming, unfathomable, unconditional love of God." It is completely unselfish, forgiving, and dedicated to your complete welfare. The most generous or benevolent act of a human being could not compare with the magnitude of God’s eternal unshakeable love for you. God’s love is so strong that He is described to be a ‘jealous God’ Deut.4:23-24. This does not mean petty or selfish, only wanting to keep you all for himself in the way people are jealous. Rather it means that He loves people so much that he desires passionately that we give him chief attention and the adoration of our heart, not to someone else, or something else. It also means that he fights for our attention and our heart. If we know that he loves us so deeply and consistantly, then it is far easier to love him in return 1John.4:19
I also believe that it is equally important that behind his love we believe lay unmatched knowledge, power & wisdom, not a mere ineffectual sentimentality. His involvement in our lives, and life’s friction on us, is far easier weathered, even enjoyed, if we know that He is both capable of changing anything, and if he does, or if he doesn’t, the motive of love is the guiding principle.
Are you honestly able to say this morning that you really and sincerely believe that the wise, incredibly powerful God who created this world deeply loves you, and is concerned about your ultimate welfare? If you can then it will be relatively easy to move to a point in your life where you can say that you love God deeply and sincerely, irrespective of what happens in your life? This is an important step to take for God has created us for a love relationship with Himself, and if we cannot seem to accept His deep love for ourselves, irrespective of our life experience, then we are in trouble at the heart of our Christian faith and experience. We will find it extremely difficult to love, trust, and obey him. To experience God, we need to learn to love him. Remind yourselves the following this morning. If we do not love him, then…
1. Obedience will tend to be difficult: Christian responses to God will be erratic and often contradictory, or reluctant and resentful where doubts prevail concerning His love for them. Loving God makes it far easier to listen to God, and follow Him – thereby being a living sacrifice, and as a consequence, experiencing the goodness of the will of God for ourselves Rom.12:1,2. Negative attitudes toward God effects our willingness, even our ability to do what God asks of us Matt.25:24,25. Love & obedience are inextricably linked John.14:21.
2. Performance tends to replace relationship: Duty unrelated to our hearts grows more likely the less we love God eg. Isa.29:13. Performance orientation kills love by breeding excessive guilt, shame, and finally resentment and discouragement. If we cannot accept the fact of God’s constant love, our own sense of divine and self acceptance will be forever see-sawing on the basis of our performance. If we believe that we have pleased God, then we will feel accepted; when we fail we will feel rejected. The Scriptures make clear that acceptance by God (justification) is a gift, not earned, and as a result of God’s love for us John.3:16; Rom.4:4,5,25; Eph.2:8,9 etc. We need to reflect on the fact that there is nothing that we can do to make God love us more, nor is there anything that we can do to make him love us less. He loves because He is love.
3. We will be less inclined to spend personal time with God: eg. John.4:18 Love draws, fear repels. Loving God is helped by spending time developing our devotional life. If we have a love relationship with God we will be more likely to miss not having those times together to deepen that relationship. If we do not have that sense of loving and being loved, then we will have to drive ourself to spend time with God so that we can have a relationship with him. The distinction between the two is found in the area of love. If we love him and know that we are loved by him, we will want to keep coming. If we doubt that love, then we will struggle to come.
4. We will be influenced more by our past than our future: eg. Many things in our past have strong influences upon us in the now eg. personal handicaps, troubled family background, personal failures, shame, or even excessive pride over successes, fame, recognition etc. Yet God is preparing us for the future and wants us to shape our lives on His future for us, and not our pasts eg.1John.3:1-3. Paul confronted this problem by forgetting what lay behind and striving to fulfill in his life the purposes behind Christ taking hold of his life Phil.3:12-15. And why did he do this? Because he was passionate about getting to know Christ better. He loved God because he knew that God loved him and had shown great mercy to him Eph.1:4,5; 1Tim.1:15. Q. Do you honestly think that you are being shaped more by your past than your future? If so, then look at your love relationship with God for the remedy. God is trying to prepare us for eternity. That is why he asks us to love and trust him so his future plans for us can be the primary shaping agents in our lives.
Conclusion:
God is loving, that is why He has arranged salvation as a relationship in which love can be experienced. He loves us with an everlasting love (eg. Jer.31:3), so that we will love Him in return. We need to both know, and in turn, rely on that love 1John.4:15,16.
Once you are convinced of His love, and His wisdom guiding that love, you will find it far easier to love him – to actually allow gratitude, adoration, closeness, respect, affection, tenderness and a holy awe well up inside you; to draw aside into worship, publicly and privatelyand express these feelings to him. And of course being convinced of his wise love will make it easier to obey him, to draw close to him, to mold your life on his plans and purposes for you, and to experience God in your daily life. God is worthy of our love and trust; our doubts and reservations, our constant cries of mistrust because life is not going how we want it to, darkens, trivialises, and dismisses His primary statement of love – the cross. If we will but love him deeply, even though we have not seen him, irrespective of our life circumstances, we uphold his integrity, affirm his character, endorse the veracity of the gospel, and open ourselves up to a far deeper, far broader, far higher, and far wider experience of God in our lives than we could ever imagine. God has always intended a love relationship with people – always keep in mind the ‘agape’ love with which God loves you, and don’t cheapen and destroy it by loving God with anything less than all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul!
Blessings