We have tried to work out in practical details what we meant by this in an earlier preaching series that involves 4 different aspects of how we can grow in this love of Jesus:
1. Receiving Love
2. Loving God
3. Loving one another
4. Loving others
How did we first receive Jesus' love ?
At some stage of our life we first saw the tremendously amazing love of Jesus shown on Calvary. As we turned from our self-centredness and our sins to Jesus, he accepted us, and fully forgave us. Jesus' unconditional love floods our hearts and we began to follow Him, in faltering steps, not only to receive his love and forgiveness, but to open our lives to His Holy Spirit who began his work of transforming us to be like Jesus…….
I can very
vividly remembered that day when I prayed and asked Jesus to come into my
heart. I wasn't very sure whether he
heard me, and so repeated several times.
There was no flash of lightning or writing in the sky, but deep inside
me I knew Jesus has heard me and he has come into my life. There was a very
strange sort of love I experienced and I suddenly felt like loving everybody
around me. It was a bit like walking
on air. Almost unreal. It was a very special experience and I was
hoping it will never go away. Maybe you have
never taken that step and wished you too had a
person to person encounter with
Jesus, you too can begin that today, as you invite Jesus to come into your life
and be your Saviour, Lord and King.
Receiving Jesus
love is a wonderful beginning. But it is
just the beginning. Have you ever thrown
a stone into a river or a lake ? Ripples
begin where the stone landed, in ever widening circles. That love of Jesus is the beginning of that
ripple into our lives and it somehow gets multiplied, first back to him and
then forward onto others. But love does not
occur in isolation. Even as we receive
Jesus' love so we learn also to respond in love to Jesus and to others……So we
begin our faltering steps, like a child in learning to love God….
What are some of
the ways we can show our love to God ?
Spend time with him, in prayer, in worship, in doing things that please him, in obeying his commandments, in listening to him, in doing things together with him.
Spend time with him, in prayer, in worship, in doing things that please him, in obeying his commandments, in listening to him, in doing things together with him.
"If you
love me, you will obey what I command……
And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever- the Spirit of truth" John 14:16
"Whoever has my commandments and obey them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love him and show myself to him." John 14:21
"If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching . My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him". John 14: 23
Here, 3 times
Jesus links our love to him with our obedience to him and what he tells us to do.
Yes we can express our love for Jesus in many different ways, but what
Jesus values most is what we actually do in obedience to what he
tells us to do. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever- the Spirit of truth" John 14:16
"Whoever has my commandments and obey them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love him and show myself to him." John 14:21
"If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching . My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him". John 14: 23
How do we
discover what Jesus wants us to do ?
The simple answer is of course to listen to what he says…… For the early disciples, they had the obvious advantage of listening to Jesus face to face. How then do we today hear what Jesus says to us ? This is a really important question and it will work differently for different people….. Just to start us thinking I have asked a couple of people to share with us their own experience of hearing God……
The simple answer is of course to listen to what he says…… For the early disciples, they had the obvious advantage of listening to Jesus face to face. How then do we today hear what Jesus says to us ? This is a really important question and it will work differently for different people….. Just to start us thinking I have asked a couple of people to share with us their own experience of hearing God……
We live in an age of very rapid
communication, and instant communication.
Young people in particular, send 20 to 30 text messages to their friends
every day and often expected an instant reply.
And with the arrival of more sophisticated cell phones, and more band
width, they can not only send words, but also pictures and presumably, in the
not too distant future, will send songs and movies to one another. With the cost of toll call coming down
rapidly, we also talk for hours with people across the word, and often through
the internet as well. In times like this, one often wonders
whether we can have just as a rapid way of communication with God. Won't it be great if I could send an email or
a text message to God and expecting a reply in the next few minutes or the next
few hours. Yet in this age of rapid and instant
communications with our friends, it seems particularly difficult to hear
God. Has God stopped speaking to his
people ?
Throughout the Old testament, we read of
accounts of people who hear God distinctly.
God spoke to Adam and Eve, and gave them specific instructions to look
after the garden of Eden, God spoke to Noah and got him to build a boat to save
the lives of his family and a selection of all the animals; God spoke to Abraham
and sent him away from his own country and town and relatives to a distant
land, God spoke to Moses and sent him to rescue his own people from Egypt…..
and the list goes on.
How does God speak then to his people and how do people hear God ?
Did God speak with an audible voice ? Yes, sometimes. Take for example, God speaking to Samuel…..
It was so loud and clear that Samuel thought Eli had spoken to him. Similarly, Saul of Tarsus… on his way to
Damascus , to drag Christians to prison, Jesus spoke to him : Saul Saul why do
you persecute me ….. ?
Today, by far the most important way
for us to hear what God is speaking is through his written word, the Bible. It
gives us a firm and clear foundation of understanding of God's plan and
purposes for all eternity. It shows us
clearly what God is like and how he has drawn up a plan for our salvation long
before we were created. And if we do not
read or study the Bible regularly we run the risk of missing out altogether on
what God wants to say to us. How does God speak then to his people and how do people hear God ?
Did God speak with an audible voice ? Yes, sometimes. Take for example, God speaking to Samuel…..
It was so loud and clear that Samuel thought Eli had spoken to him. Similarly, Saul of Tarsus… on his way to
Damascus , to drag Christians to prison, Jesus spoke to him : Saul Saul why do
you persecute me ….. ?
Next week Paul Vink will share with us some
of his insights on how to come to read the Bible for ourselves, without
preconceived ideas, in order to discover what God is really saying to us
individually. And in preparation for
that, Paul has produced a handout for those of you who are interested to pick
up at the foyer. The following week, Mark Boyce will share
with us how God speaks to us corporately as a people during worship and when
gather together.
Does God still speak to individuals then
outside of all these channels ?
I
believe he does……. God is not a distant
uninterested third party. He is
intensely interested in you and me as individuals. He has an intimate knowledge of each one of
us. The Psalmist in Psalm 139 paints a picture of God's tremendous knowledge
and involvement with us in our creation, and ultimately his tremendous desire
for our good. The NT gives no less. Even the hairs on your head are numbered. Now many parent love their children to bits,
but no earthly parents have ever taken the time or trouble to count their
children's hair. God has. Jesus said.
You are infinitely more valuable than sparrows, and if God took care of
sparrows how much more will he take care of you……
I
believe he does……. God is not a distant
uninterested third party. He is
intensely interested in you and me as individuals. He has an intimate knowledge of each one of
us. The Psalmist in Psalm 139 paints a picture of God's tremendous knowledge
and involvement with us in our creation, and ultimately his tremendous desire
for our good. The NT gives no less. Even the hairs on your head are numbered. Now many parent love their children to bits,
but no earthly parents have ever taken the time or trouble to count their
children's hair. God has. Jesus said.
You are infinitely more valuable than sparrows, and if God took care of
sparrows how much more will he take care of you……
I believe God wants to be involved in our
lives. Further more, I believe that God wants us to be involved in what he does
in the world. Jesus modelled for us what
God wants to do. To heal the sick, to
give sight to the blind, to give good news to the poor, and to set the captives
free. But we cannot do what God wants us
to do unless we can hear him….
God is sovereign and he speak to whom he
wants to and when he wants ….. we cannot
manipulate God so that he will speak to us…. In fact God has often spoken to
people who least expected him to speak…. Balaam was such a one….. But there are
ingredients which are helpful to us if we want to hear God speak….. Believe that God wants to speak to
you. Probably the biggest hurdle in listening to
God is our reluctance to believe that God does want to speak to us…. We sort of feel that the God of the universe
is far too busy or far too important to take time to notice us, after all he
has got a billion or more of other individuals on earth to think about.
What we fail to realize of course is that
God can multi task a lot better than all of us put together, or all of our
computers put together. It is no problem
for God to speak to listen and to deal with all of our issues at once. It is no problem for God to understand each
one of us infinitely better than even we ourselves. Not only it is no problem and no trouble
for God to speak to us as well as listen to us.
God wants to speak to us because he is a God of relationships and
relationship does not get very far without speaking listening and understanding.
Right from the beginning, we read of the
creation account of men and women : let us
make men in our image….. that is
with the same capacity to love, to understand, to communicate, as the triune
God, Father and Son and the Spirit themselves…
God wants to speak to us so that we may
know how he feels, how he feels about us, what he loves to do in our lives and
in the lives of others. Sometimes he
wants to speak to us to encourage us, sometimes he wants to speak to us to warn
us of problems and dangers, sometimes he wants to speak to remind us of things
we have forgotten, sometimes he wants to speak so that he could send us for a
task…. (e.g. Jonah, Moses, Isaiah)…. But
often God just enjoys talking to us in response to our love for him. If we want to listen to God, we better
believe that he does want to speak to us…. Give space for God to speak to you…..
Yes I believe that God wants to speak to me, but I can't hear him speak. And the more I tried to listen the more silent he seems to me. Yes it does happen and some of the most silent moments seems to be the darkest part of our lives as well….. I can't understand it. But it happens. God is sovereign and he chooses when he would speak. For nearly 500 years between the old and new testaments, God seemed to have gone completely silent, before he sent his Son Jesus into the world as his final and most important revelation to men.
But
more often than not, we can't hear because we have not allowed some space for
God to be heard. To hear God we need to provide space
and quietness and more important stillness for God to be heard.
If we jam pack our lives with endless activities, and sound and noises, then
what God would like to say could be drowned out.
It is unreal though to live in a completely
silent world, and people who have gone away for silent retreats may or
may not hear God in the midst of silence.
What is important is not just the absence of noises, but the absence of
constant activities that occupy and preoccupy our minds. I often find that God speaks in the middle of
some activities, like walking or doing repetitive and fairly mindless tasks
like mowing the lawn, ironing, walking the dog, etc. and often he speaks through the things that
we see.
I was driving to a prayer gathering early
one Saturday morning, and the sun shone through my windscreen and suddenly I
saw how many dust particles there were on the screen which made driving
difficult. Now I have never realized how
dirty the windscreen was until light shone on it….. This is true in our own lives too, that often
we are not aware of sin in our lives until we allow the searching light of
God's word and powerful light of the Spirit to shine on it.
Sometimes when we pray, as we pour out our
request to God, do we pause to see if God will say something to us concerning
what we asked. Too often we are so
filled with our own needs that we failed to hear what God wants to say to us
and therefore miss out on the God's responsive love…… I find writing down my prayer is a good way to
keep awake while I am praying….. but one of the side benefits is that my hand
is usually slower than my mind, and God sometimes chipped in with a word about
what I prayed about…… Quite a memorable one was when I was praying for a couple
who longed to have a child…. It was something that I have prayed for a while,
and written the prayer many times over, but this time I suddenly got very
excited as the Lord whispers in my ear, don't pray any more, they are going to
have child soon and they will call their child so and so. Wow.
Am I just hearing my own desires, because that can happen easily….. and
so I said nothing to the couple, not wanting to hurt them in case this was just
my own imagination. A week later, while
I was sitting next to one of them, I was told, yes, the child is on the
way…… and yes the name is correct too as
I discovered later.
Learn to tune in to what God is
saying….
Just as a radio is able to receive certain
stations, provided you tune it to the frequency of the station. The radio waves are there in the room, but
you will hear nothing until you tune in to those frequencies. In the same way, we need to practise tuning
in to God's frequencies. It's a pity
that there is no visible dial that we can turn to get into God's wave length,
but I believe a heart longing to hear God, and a heart who like Samuel is
constantly saying speak Lord, your servant is listening….. may get you into
God's frequency. One characteristic of
God is that he desires those who seek him : and you shall find me if you seek
for me with all your heart…. And sometimes he is actively seeking those whose
hearts are towards him.
Invite God to speak to you…..
Some of you may have heard John Wimber when
he came to New Zealand about 15 years ago.
John has brought much freshness and insight into the area of worship and
into the area of healing. Unless other
so called faith healers, John seldom prayed for people himself. He always encouraged the congregation to pray
for one another. He always said, when
you pray, the most important thing you must do is to listen to what God is
saying about the person as well as to watch what God is doing in the life of
the one we are praying for. If someone
wanted healing for his back, or his shoulders, or his knees, instead of rushing
into prayer for God to heal him of the actual problem, he would encourage us to
first invite God to speak into the situation, and tell us what he wants to do;
it may well be there are other things God wanted to fix in the person's life
and the presenting problem is just what is needed to get the person's
attention. So we learn to pause, to ask
God to speak and then we often found that the real problem of the person is not
just the physical ailment but something much more significant. And God wanted to deal with that problem as
well as giving the person physical healing.
How do I know what I hear is from
God……?
The
most significant and most reliable way of hearing God is through the scriptures
: the living Word of God, the Bible. In
fact we need to know the Bible really well to be able to have some measure of
security of knowing that when God speaks we can recognise that it is his
voice.
The Bible gives us a very accurate insight
into the God that we believe in, shows us his heart, his passion, his way of
doing things, and the way he will speak.
And by that I don't mean just the way English is written in the
authorised or King JAMES version, with thees and thous, but the way his love,
his holiness, his compassion, his mercy and his personality are shown. To be able to tell and
distinguish whether
what we hear is from God, from ourselves or from the Devil, we need to be
soaked in the Word of God. We also need
to keep a close personal relationship with Jesus : he said : my sheep hear my voice, and they
follow me…..
The most amazing thing about God is of
course his grace and mercy. There is no
need to be perfect and faultless and a goody good to hear him speak…. Sometimes
when we are in mess and highly critical and most unlovable, when no one will
bother about us to want to speak to us, God moves in and spoke his gracious
word. I had such an experience quite a
few years back which has made a very strong impression on my mind.
I was attending an Easter convention in
Waikanae all by myself. I was feeling
dried up spiritually and desperately needing refreshing and renewal.
Unfortunately the worship leader that morning really annoyed me in his self
centred way of leading worship. Instead
of getting on with the job he was carrying on with lots of items and lots of
clever but irrelevant remarks which had the consequence of leaving very little
time for the speaker. Here I was,
wanting just to hear something really uplifting from the speaker and he had to
rush through his message, being given less than half an hour to speak and felt
deprived and hungry and angry.
After the meeting I ran away from all the
superficial conversations and retreated to my bungalow which was quite a
distance from the main camp, and sulk, feeling very sorry for myself...... I was even critical of God and I said God why
do you want us to worship you......Isn't that a bit selfish....surely you don't
need my worship....you are complete in yourself. Only insecure people need praise to boost up
their self image, but you don't need that......
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