The Love of God
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The Love of God
Good morning once again, I am Scott Willms. Uh, for those that don't know me, maybe first-time visitors...what have you. I'vebeen attending for about five years. Became an elder in January of this year and then three weeks ago came on staff at the church. Well, I've had people ask me, how's it going at the church? I said, well, let me tell you...after my first week, Julie announced that she needed a vacation and was gone like the wind for the next week. Then Justin, Sam and James also vacated the premises...were not seen for seven days. Then after my second week, Kyle disappeared the following week and Elizabeth just flat out quit. Then in the middle of my third week, Adam got on a plane headed out and has not returned as of yet. And then Kurtis let it slip that he was hoping to get his vacation started sooner rather than later. Now they all have some flimsy excuses like planned vacations and camp clarity and scheduled commits from a year before, but I feel sure you may be wondering, maybe it's Willms. So I do appreciate your prayers in my new position, and obviously the staff need your prayers too, right?
So, as you guys know, this summer we have been going through the attributes of God and so far we have seen the eternality of God and how there is no beginning ever...which blows my finite mind. And then we have seen the mercy of God, and the fact that we have a God who sends missiles of mercy in order to hit man's hearts. Then we saw the wisdom of God, and he is indeed all wise. Any wisdom that exists emanates from God the Father. And then last week we saw the holiness of God, where there is no one like him. And His holiness is truly one of the most sobering of his attributes for us non holy humans.
So today we are going to look at the love of God. And the challenge for me, as it has been for the men who have stood here in the past weeks, is...what in the world do you leave out in order to deal with the attribute of God? We have an infinite, unfathomable God, and I've got a handful of minutes when we could take years in order to cover any one of them, because it is so deep. So, I know I'm going to fail, but I'm hoping that we succeed enough that we will understand more how God loves us and in response, how we should be loving him.
The words that are in the Bible for love...there are Hebrew words and Greek words. About 6 or 7 main words that are usedthat talk about love in their various facets. The advantage of that is there is very specific kinds of love that are detailed where our English language we say things like; I love Taco Bell tacos. And by the way, I do love Taco Bell tacos. In fact, my sister once sent me a little thing, you know, a little news thing that said Taco Bell may have to reclassify that it's not really meat that they'reputting in their tacos like it wasn't enough, like it was other stuff. And I said to her, I said, listen, I don't care if it's meat or not. I just like the way it tastes, right? So, I love Taco Bell. And then we turn around and say, I love Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior. Right? And you go, huh? That really confuses the depth of the meaning. But in the Greek and the Hebrew, the word 'hesed' in Hebrew is the kind of word we're going to focus more on that coming from our Old Testament scriptures today. And in the New Testament the agape love, which both of those are God's like, strongest, highest, most supreme type of words for love that are in Scripture. So that's going to be our focus today on those two words.
So, let's begin by looking at first of all the basics of God's love. The basics of God's love. My first point here is that God is love. How many of you think that's offensive? Anybody?...even the world, likes that one, do they not? In other words, lost people. Yay! God is love. Okay, everybody likes that one, even if they really don't believe in God. The thing is, is that God is love and it does come out of him. Emanating from his eternal existence. Just like his eternality, his mercy, his wisdom and his holiness. So, we can see in 1 John 4:8 what that looks like. It says, the one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. There'sour Scripture underpinning.
The second point is God loves eternally. God loves eternally. Look at what Psalm 100 and verse five says, which we read in a call to worship. For the Lord is good. His loving kindness is everlasting and his faithfulness to all generations. It is an eternal love, and I always like to contrast. Sometimes it helps me to see things, what they are to see what they're not. And so post 19, about 1955, the plastics industry in the United States really began to make stuff like plastic forks and paper plates and all kinds of disposable. They called it the disposable Society. And so, a whole bunch of, a lot of our lives has been where you use something and you toss it. I always come to the one. And when I think about disposable ones, I think about diapers. Right. And you go, oh, well, yeah, that's, uh, a lot of, uh, a lot of waste. Yeah, those babies are productive. And there's this idea of, well, maybe it'd be better to use cloth and so forth. In the Western world, 95% of diapers used are disposable. But the idea is you use it and it's thrown away.
God's love...there is a steady hum throughout history of him loving eternally. Okay. It never has a break. There is never a Duke flicker of power. It is just always flowing. God loves eternally. Lamentations three reinforces this. It says this I recall to my mind. Therefore I have hope. The Lord's loving kindness indeed never cease. For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Is it not a wonderful thing to realize that God loves always, eternally?
Then the third point. God indeed does love the world. Okay, we know this because we're going to look at the most famous verse in scripture, John 3:16. It says, 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. So there is God loving the world. Otherwise, there wouldn't be anybody here that would be able to come to him and to be redeemed to have your sins forgiven. He has to love the world; he came to seek and to save that which was what?...lost. Okay. And so these basics of God's love, he is indeed love. He loves eternally. And he does love the world.
But now the second point I want to look at. And this we're going to spend a good bit of time. So, don't get your hopes up that the first point was short.
Because the second one is long. Okay. So the next is the glories of God's love. The glories of God's love. God loves his chosen people in a very special way, in a very special way. It is a concentrated and more intense and more encompassing love than a general love for the world. It is a covenant love. And thusthe word of hesed in the Old Testament, which is used like over 230 times, that word shows up. So you ladies, when you were studying Psalms, you came across the word hesed, often...translated loving kindness or steadfast love, or sometimes mercy. You'll see that word, uh, and once you've once you'veidentified it and you read through the Psalms, you won't read far without coming across his great loving kindness.
So the first thing under the glories of God's love is he delivers this steadfast love...this covenant love. This dog not letting go of the bone love, right. He holds on to this and he delivers it to... I've got good news for all of us. He delivers it to unworthy individuals. There isn't a single person in here who is worthy of God's love. You may be thinking, you don't know me. I don'thave to. Because the Bible knows you and God knows you're a sinner like me. And like everybody else in here. He delivers his love to unworthy individuals. In fact, Jacob in Genesis 32:10 said, I am unworthy of all the loving kindness and of all the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant. For with my staff only I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies. You see, Jacob knew he wasn't worthy. And yet God had chosen him and blessed him. But how about a NewTestament version of it? Romans 5:8, but God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You want to talk about being unworthy? We'reunworthy. We're sinners at our core and sinners by will on top of that. Thank heavens we have a God who delivers his steadfast love to unworthy individuals.
The second point here is he delivers salvation to those desperately in need, desperately in need. David in Psalm 13 says it this way. How long, O Lord. Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day. How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God. Enlighten my eyes or I will sleep the sleep of death. And my enemy will say, I have overcome him, and my adversaries will rejoice when I am shaken. But I have trusted in your loving kindness. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. So you see David in a desperate situation, how he knows that God's loving kindness and steadfast love is there, and he knows he can claim it.
When we go to the New Testament, we go to what is one of my favorite passages of Scripture, and I quote it often...it'sEphesians 2:1-10 one. So hang with me as we read these words, because I can tell you this, the words on the screen are more important than any of the words that will come out of my mouth today. It is the word of an Almighty God, and he says this. Paul writes, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power, of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience among them, we too, all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest...period. Do you understand how desperate the situation is for all of us in these first three verses of Ephesians two? Were damaged, doomed, damned, and a whole bunch of other bad things. We are children of wrath like everybody else. Until we get to these two glorious...the worm turns with...But God.
But God. And what is the but God? Notice what it says, being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
So you see the desperation of the first three verses. We are hopeless without God's love. And it's such a glorious truth to know that his love comes to unworthy individuals like me. It comes to people who are desperate for salvation like me. And it comes for you too.
The third point here is he delivers forgiveness repeatedly to his chosen. We have a forgiving God and it's driven out of his love for us. So when we look at the Scripture of Moses writing in Numbers, chapter 14 verse 19, he says this, pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your loving kindness, just as you have also forgiven this people from Egypt even until now.
You see, even once you enter into a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ, do you become sinless? No. No. And we need God's forgiveness. And I'm going to say we need God's forgiveness on a daily basis, because I don't think we ever hit a day where we fully give him all the praise and all the glory and all the honor, and bend and bow to him and worship him the way that we should. I think we miss the mark every day, which means we need forgiveness from a loving God, and he just keeps delivering it. Jesus dealing with Peter in the passage of John chapter 21. Peter has just denied Christ days ago and he says, I'm going fishing. He goes. He's fishing. The encounter ends up happening on the seashore. When Peter recognizes its Lord...jumps...goes. The Lord already has fish cooking for breakfast. Okay. He's already.
I want to see that in heaven, by the way. Time out. I want to see in heaven. Did Jesus just. Did he fish or did he just say fish...grill, you know, and they popped up, right. Because we know that he told Peter, go out there and catch a fish, open his mouth and there will be the tax in there, both for me and for you, that you committed to that really, we shouldn't pay, but I'm doing it anyway. We know that he has control over all the animals.
So he was fixing breakfast and it says this. So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my lambs. He said to him again a second time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him. Shepherd my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grievedbecause he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, tend my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wish, but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go. Now this, he said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had spoken, he said to him, follow me. Peter had committed the denial of Christ three times outside Caiaphas house when he was approached by people and said, hey, you're one of them...three different times. And now Christ asked him three different timeson
the beach a few days later, and it had to be ringing in Peter's head, right? And yet when he finishes this exchange, he says, follow me. His forgiveness was.. Peter, it's time to get up and start following me again. How many of us at times have failed so miserably? Sinned grow grotesquely and then wonder if God can even forgive us? The answer is because of his great love, He does and will when we seek repentance and turn from our sin and turn to him. As a result, his forgiveness of Peter leads to...not so many days later, Peter is going to preach at Pentecost when the church is just launched. Think about that. The guy who had denied him, just not so many days earlier. Thank heavens we have a God who loves us enough to forgive us of all our sins and transgressions.
The fourth thing he delivers to people in life's difficulties. If you live long enough, you are going to experience life difficulties. Seems right now in the church we've got a lot of people with life's difficulties, and it's a glorious truth to know God's love hasn't ceased in the middle of those because remember, his love is eternal. It is a constant hum throughout history. If you are in relationship with him, it is covenantal. He is not ever stopping to love you. Even in the midst of life's difficulties.
So if we looked at Joseph in jail in Genesis 39:21, this little word says, but the Lord was with Joseph, and extended kindness to him. By the wat that is the hesed word. That is the lovingkindness or steadfast love. And he delivers kindness to him, andgave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. Joseph is in jail for no fault of his own, and God is loving on him even still.
And when we go to the New Testament in John 11, we see the story of Lazarus and Mary and Martha. And you recall Mary and Martha were hoping Jesus to come right away when they said, Lazarus is sick. Jesus deliberately waited a couple more days and to show that the glory of God was going to be experiencedin a radical way. Lazarus actually dies. So when we see this passage in 11:3-5, look what it says. So the sister sent word to him, saying, Lord. Behold, he whom you love is sick. But when Jesus heard this, he said, this sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus. Then goes on and a little later in the chapter, in verse 33, it says, When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her all sleeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled, and said, where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. So the Jews were saying, see how he loved him. You see, Christ was moved in his humanity over the effects of sin and the death that is inevitable. I just had my first Sunday school superintendent, Baptist church. I grew up. And you had a Sunday school superintendent, right? And he just passed in the past couple of days. And when I think about the difficulties that all of us have dealing with the loss of loved ones, friends, family, and if you live long enough, um, a whole bunch of them you end up burying. Aren't you thankful God's love is constant to us in our grieving and mourning and in our loss. He loves.
And I must speak to about the fifth thing...he delivers in all his promises the glories of God's love. He delivers on all his promises. Unlike me, because sometimes I will, with the best of intentions, say I will get that done and then forget, right? God says, I will do. And he does it...100% of the time. When he proclaims truth in His word to us, when he gives us instruction and he says, do this and this will happen. Guess what? It does. Okay. I am so thankful. He delivers on his promises. Look at Solomon in First Kings chapter eight, verse 22. Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands toward heaven. He said, O Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath. Keeping covenant and showing loving kindness to your servants who walk before you with all their heart. Who have kept with your servant my father David that which you have promised him. Indeed you have spoken with your mouth, and have fulfilled it with your hand as it is this day. So you see. Solomon was praising God for the promises that he had made to Solomon's father, King David. And this temple was actually built as God had promised it would be under Solomon's reign. So we see that.
But how about the New Testament side, this single little verse? John 13:1 says this, now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come, that he would depart out of this world to the father, having loved his own, who were in the world, he loved them to the end. In other words, when Jesus said, I love you, it's delivered all the way to the end. Again, it'seternal. He is love. True or false, his apostles were just the model citizens the entire time under Christ. With three years spent with Christ, they nailed everything, right? False, right. The fact is, they were sinful men who still needed repentance and needed God's forgiveness. Of which we've already looked at. He graciously gives. And so when he says something, it is going to happen.
And that ties into my last sub point under the glories of God's love, how he loves his people in a special way. Is he delivers confidence for the future. He delivers confidence for the future. One reason that I am as confident as I am, as I stand before you today, is because I believe and take God at His Word, because he can be trusted. We've been looking at that. So when we look at King David in Psalm 23:6, he says this. Surely goodness and hesed, loving kindness or steadfast love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Forever. That eternal God, with his eternal salvation and his eternal love, and his eternal mercy, and his eternal wisdom and his eternal holiness, I will dwell with him forever, not because I'm all that, but because Jesus Christ is all that. God's love delivers confidence for the future. And then Paul wrote it this way in Romans chapter eight. He said, who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword, just as it is written for your sake, we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the, what?...love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. The laundry list of things, and you can see, as Paul is writing this, I can envision in my head that he probably had to stand up with the glorious truths that he was penning under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What a loving God who loves his people in a very special way.
Well, now we come to the controversial third point. The problem with God's love. The problem with God's love. Now, I propose this point to market research of three people. Okay. My wife being the first one. Then Julie and Tina got to be the next. And I said, do you think people will rush the stage and try and kill me when I say the problem with God's love? And they thought, no, I think they'll give you a little bit of time, you know, to sort that out. So there are elders sitting close to can remove me. They do have replaced knees, the ones that are closest. So it may take them a little bit to get up here.
But the problem with God's love. Here's a little secret for you. The problem is
on man's side of God's love. God's perfect. His love is perfect. It is without flaw. The problem is this...his love does not, will not, and cannot trump or outweigh his holiness. It cannot...ever. The reason this is a problem is because we live in a society when the "religious-ish" which they say, well, God is love, therefore I can live any way I want. Everything goes, anything goes right. Is that not the society we live in? It is God has to let me not only let me, but almost thank me for my lifestyle. No, no, his love does not, will not and cannot trump his...and when I use the word trump, I'm talking card game. Rook. All right people. Anybody play rook out here? Okay, I got a few of you, fellow heathen. Thank you. Um, so in college, my major pursuing a bachelor of religious ed. But I tell people I said I minored in rook. Now, when I tell young guys that, they kind of. Because they've grown up in the age with silly, uh, college degrees you can get. They kind of look at me. Oh, minored in rook. I said, no, that's a joke. I just spent 20 hours a week playing rook at night. And so rook has all of the, uh, suit of color, and you have to count trump because trump can take any card. If it's not a higher trump, it can just boom. It takes it. And it's a point system. And I'm looking forward to just bring this up. I eyeballed some of you. We'll have to start playing some rook.
God's holiness cannot stand one ounce of sin. Not one ounce of I'll do it my way. Okay. His love is governed by his holiness. The way that I equate this in my head is how many of you ever had the delights of food poisoning? Has anybody had the delights of food poisoning? Okay. Having had food poisoning a couple different times in my life, here's what I know. Your body will revolt until every last speck of food poisoning is gone. Okay? And that's what I think about when I think about God's holiness. Because when I stole candy from my mother's purse when I was a little boy, I was damned to hell by holy God. Let'smake no bones about it. Any sin with a holy God has to be removed, has to be thrown out. He revolts against it. So this is bad news for the person who thinks you can live any which way that you want, and God still has to approve and love your behavior. That's just not the way it is. John 3:17 says this. For God did not send the son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judgedalready 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 anyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. So you see, John 3:16 says, God so loved the world. But John 17 and following says, you cannot continue to live in the way you are rebelling against him, rejecting his gracious gift in order to solve your sin problem. There's a theologian todayJason Deford. Who says I'm not okay, but it's going to be all right. It's not okay, but we're all going to be all right. That theologian is JellyRoll. Okay, Jason Deford's his real name. But by the way, R.C. Sproul says everyone's a theologian. They'reeither good or bad or various degrees in between. But when I heard this catchy song on the radio in the store, I went, oh, that's. And then I start because I can't help myself. I go, you know what? I'm not okay, and we're not okay. But guess what? We'renot all going to be all right either. It is only going to be those who bend before a holy God. Repent of the sin that you are practicing and harboring and come to him, pleading with him to save you, Trusting in him fully to do what he said he would do, which is to forgive you. And enter into covenant relationship with him. 1 Corinthians 16:22 says, if anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Maranatha!...meaning Lord, come.
Matthew 7:21 through 23. The most terrifying passage in Scripture for good church people. Okay, good church people. This passage should terrify good church people who are not fully loving God. It says this, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my father who is in heaven, will enter. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, you who practice lawlessness. We're talking about the religious, the quote unquote good here...that you're trusting in your parents faith and you'rejust kind of along for the ride. What God's Word is saying to you is, no, you don't get to ride your parent's coattails into heaven because the way is narrow. You go in the turnstile one by one, and you also go in without carrying, like the massive duffel bag. You go in with nothing but faith and trust in Jesus. That's it. Sothis is one of those sobering passages that we can have people that are serving faithfully in HBC, and you've never really come to know God and love him in the way that he requires.
So this is one of the problems with God's love. The second problem with his love falls into the camp of...I would suspect the majority of the people in here...is his perfect love for us reveals to me ho often my love is lacking back to him. As I've been preparing this message for a while because we got our topics a month or two ago. I've just kept coming back to the fact of Wilms, you're not loving him nearly as much as you should be loving him. Why is that? Why is that? And I think sometimes it'sbecause we grow so accustomed. Take it so for granted.
I've been married 40 years, and I'm not proud of times when I'vetaken the marriage for granted and haven't pursued my wife in the way that I should pursue her. I've taken it for granted. So it'sin our humanity often to take things for granted. But when we think about perfect love and how it should be responded to, I find it fascinating that Scripture gives us a glimpse of the perfection of love in the Godhead. Meaning, look at what John 17 says.
John 17:22 says, the glory which you have given me, I have given to them. By the way, this is Jesus praying to God the Father, that they may be one just as we are one. I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me, and love them even as you love me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory which you have given me. For you loved me before the foundation of the world. Oh righteous father, although the world has not known you. yet, I have known you, and these have known that you sent me, and I have made your name known to them. And I will make it known so that the love with which you love me may be in them, and I in them. Do you see the love of the son for the father? Okay, Yousee the glories of that. And then another verse, John 14:31 says, but so that the world may know that I love the father. I do exactly as the father commanded me. Get up! Let us go from here.
You see, perfect love is followed with perfect obedience. So we see it illustrated in the Godhead, where God the Father and God the Son, the intense love for each other. Eternal love. The constant hum. And Jesus expresses it as his love means he is going to do whatever the father has told him to do. And he did indeed do that, because he came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came to live this perfect life...never sinning. Never having a wrong thought...perfection and was crucified, taking our sin on him. Paying my sin debt and your sin debt. To satisfy the wrath of God due because of his holiness. It must be dealtwith. God the judge has to do it in this way. And he pays for our sin debt on the cross of Calvary with the Lord Jesus Christ, absorbing the wrath of God. And indeed, the world went dark for a few hours as the light of the world was extinguished on my behalf and on yours if you have entered into a relationship with him.
His perfect love, revealing our own lacking love. Um, here's the command and common sense response of how we should love him. John 14:15 says this. If you love me, you will keep my what commandments. Okay, so don't. Don't tell me. And don'ttell God how much you love him when you refuse to follow his commandments. They are not separable. You must do what he has commanded us to do. All right. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Then look at John 14:21. He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him. So Jesus, again, making it crystal clear that obedience to His Word and to his commands is how we illustrate real love. Again, if I said to my wife, I love you and never do anything at all for her, with her I just live life separately And I look at her and say, I told you I love you. That'senough. Right? It's like it's ridiculous. And yet, as Christians, how often do we live that way? We absorb all this great love of God and the glories that are in it, and yet we fail to love properly in return. I want to encourage you to seek to love the Lord more than you have been. He deserves it.
So the solution to these man problems with God's love. If you never have really loved God with all your heart, mind and strength, but you've pretended to fit in with church people or to get the blessing of your family. I want to encourage you to turn to him, to repent today. To ask forgiveness for your many manifold sins, and to change your mind and to turn and pursue him. He will save you. He is faithful. He is merciful.
And for the large majority in this room to just evaluate what is it that's holding you back from loving God fully? What are some actions of obedience that you can take that maybe you haven'tbeen doing? Not taking it seriously? May we all love the Lord more as a result of just a glimpse into his love this morning? Let's go Lord, in prayer.
Father God, we thank you for the fact that you are eternal. That you are love. That indeed you love the world or there would be no hope for any of us. And yet, Lord, we can glory in the fact that you have indeed thrown so much love at those of us who have entered a relationship with you. Lord, I pray for those that are out there wandering, confused, even. Do I really have the love of God? Do I really understand it? Do I love him that youwill help make that clear to them even now and today. Lord, may you help those that are in the room who realize my love has been deficient because I haven't been obedient like I should be to his commands. May help each one of us to look for ways to honor and glorify you with our lives that go beyond just lip service, but in hands and feet and service to you. Lord, may you bless the balance of our service and Lord as we enter intocommunion. That we will search our hearts. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
