05.03.2015 How Do We Show Love to God?

05.03.2015 Grace Summit Sermon from Grace Summit on Vimeo.

God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He? About a month ago, I prepared a lesson for our home-group – and in the meantime, I’ve not had the opportunity to share it – and then I got the call last night that we needed a teacher this morning –
Lord, Jesus, we give this time to You – You have prepared these words for this morning – thank You – and thank You for giving us this part of Your word and how much You love us. Open our hearts to hear a word from You – be with us in our time together – in Jesus’ Name – Amen.
Carol texted the girls this morning to tell them that I’m preaching – so my son in law texted this back – “This is the only sermon you need – Sin is bad, God is Good, there is salvation in Jesus!”
I have a book called Holiness Day by Day from Jerry Bridges – I came across a few pages that I’d like to share from – Mike recently preached on 1 Cor. 13 and 14 talking about love. The chapter deals mainly with loving one another and how to treat one another. I’d like to expand on that – how to not only love one another – but how do we love God? How do we show that? How do we express our love toward God? We do it primarily through obedience – Jesus obeyed so well that He never committed sin – and obeyed so well that He died on the cross – not only a physical death, but a spiritual death, to be separated from God. Jesus loved the Father so much that He was willing to obey.
How do we express love for God? Through obedience. What causes us to want to obey? What is the motive behind that? It should be because we love Him – He loved us. That should be our motive – because we love Him. We’ll look at that a bit and expand on it.
How do we love? What is love? There is a litany of songs that try to describe love. Love is not just a feeling. Well, it is a feeling too – but how do we express it? Love is a verb – an action. Love needs action to give it hands and feet. I could tell my wife I love her every single day – but if I don’t do anything to show it – if I don’t put actions behind it, it is useless.
In 1 Cor – Love is a noun – Love is ____ Patient, kind, rejoices with the truth, protects, always trusts, hopes and perseveres. Those are the feet and hands. To be patient – that is an action. Love is kind – you have to put it in action – you can’t just say, I’ll pray for you and not do anything. If you just SAY I love you, it is empty.
Jesus talks about the end times – did you visit me in prison or when I was sick?
Is it enough to love through action? Think about loving your enemies – When Jesus said it – they must have been like, You have got to be kidding me! The Samaritan? Those kids who ride their bikes on my lawn –
Why is someone your enemy?
Someone who has ill-will toward you.
Road rage.
Someone who broke your trust?
Let’s expand – Why is he your enemy – what harm has he caused?
They did personal destruction in our home.
How else?
Being hurtful. Personal attacks – emotional attacks – words can cut deep.
Jesus said to love that person – so when you show love to _______ - I’m sure we can all think of someone – maybe someone you don’t get along with. When you show love to _______ are you looking out for his welfare (just so he won’t harm you anymore? – to keep him off your lawn – or to get him to stop injuring you? Is that love? That is manipulation. When you show Christ’s love, it is for THEIR good – We want them to feel the love of God.
Let’s go back to the beginning – the way we show love is through obedience – but can you obey God without loving Him?
What are some reasons for obeying Him without loving Him?
We fear His wrath – we fear punishment!
Good answer – one of the top four! What other reasons?
TO look good. Fitting in. Doing what others are doing.
Some of us have a compliant nature.
Another one – we are afraid He will withhold blessing from us. Even though we know we are saved by grace and there is nothing we can do to earn it – we fear disobeying because we’re afraid He won’t bless us.
What is wrong with that?
It is the wrong motive. We must love God with the right motives. If we obey with the wrong motives, it is selfish.
To love God is the only acceptable motive. To do what is best for God and not what is best for me.
Only conduct arising from love is worthy of the name of obvedience. So when we love God, we need to do it in the proper way – not with improper motives, but with the proper motive.
It can be difficult to make the right decision with the right motives. Keep this in mind – let me run through some of those motives again.
The fear of punishment
Withholding of blessing
Conforming to Christian culture
Just naturally compliant.
So the only way – in 1 Cor. It tells us to love one another – remember the greatest commandment? To love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength – and then to love our neighbors as ourselves.
How can we develop our love for God. It takes work, doesn’t it? Like in marriage, those feelings are so strong at the beginning – but then those little things start to nag at us, right?
How can we develop our love for God so that our obedience is motivated by love – and not any of those other reasons?
Scripture gives us the first clue:
1 John 4:19 – we love because He first loved us.
Christ dying on the cross – He showed love to me this morning by pointing me to these notes! Our love to God can only be a response to His love to us. If I do not believe that God loves me, How can I love Him.
He is for me, not against me!
But what keeps us from believing God loves us? – What holds us back from that?
We don’t think we are worthy –
He is not answering our prayers in our time-schedule.
Have you ever had someone judge you in some way – whether right or wrong? We often feel like we are judged wrongly.
It makes it difficult to feel love when we think we are being judged.
If you feel unworthy of God’s love – where does that come from? Guilt – feeling judged by God.
“The same tender conscience that allows us to become aware of sin can also weigh us down with guilt”
God gave us an amazing brain that makes us sensitive to sin in our lives – if we do something wrong – God can prick our conscience to make us aware of that sin – but that same awareness can make us feel like a horrible person who is not worthy of God’s love – we feel judged for what we have done. When we let that cloud our thinking – we can’t let that love flow back to God – like putting a damper on things.
Mike recently shared – it mayhav ebeen a few years ago – Mike talked about guilt – you sin, you realize it – you confess it – and then it is gone! It is a waste of time to think about it again, except to use it in a way to prevent you from doing it again.
To drudge and harbor it up is to deny the power of the cross and what Christ has done – it is saying to Jesus that His shed blood has done nothing to forgive our sins. Don’t let guilt hinder you loving God back. If you feel someone is judging you, you can’t love them. You can’t love God if you feel under His condemnation.
When we hold it in – and harbor guilt – there is not purity or sincerity of heart in our relationship with God. God has washed it clean and we keep trying to throw guilt back on.
We cannot love something or someone who is against us and doing terrible things to us – and if we believe that about God – we can’t love Him with proper motives.
So we must constantly take those sins to the cross. Only the blood of Christ cleanses our consciences so we no longer feel guilty.
We know how to love one another. We are supposed to love God through obedience with the right motives.
You have seen children – who do things with a nasty attitude – and that is not showing love.
One of the hindrances to love and pure motives – is to allow guilt to hinder you from loving God with proper motives.