TV 1746 | The Love of God Conclusion

There needs to be a bedrock conviction where we know that God loves us. You know, I was thinking about this and part of me would love to just have this overwhelming, you know, waves of glory flooding my soul and then I know, okay, God loves me because I feel it. But all I have to do is look back and I've got, you know, there are people here older than I am, but I got a pretty good ways to look. And I can look back in my life and see how many times God has shown mercy. He's directed my path when I didn't know the way to go, but I left it in His hands. He taught me how to surrender and it's a whole lot easier to surrender to somebody that loves you than someone who's just a mean boss. I remember my dad, in his early days before he met my mother, was a preacher in North Georgia. I mean, he got to the point where he joined the army during Second World War as a chaplain and wound up in Boston and married my mother and here I am. But anyway, before that, he was a preacher in North Georgia in some small churches and he tells a story or he told the story about talking to one man and about the demands, the gift of the gospel and the reality of it. And he says, you know, I can trust somebody who died for me. I mean, that's the witness. That's what enables me to see him not as somebody who just demands that I bow down, but somebody who's worthy. Praise God. Praise God that He is worthy. I can do that with joy and with freedom because I know that I'm bowing to somebody who absolutely loves me and has my best interest at heart. And that enables me to trust Him when it doesn't always feel good, when it doesn't look good, when I don't know the way and I have to believe Him and I have to trust Him. This overriding reality is that I know He loves me and so I am going to trust Him still. And I can tell you for young people particularly, you're just getting started, I can look back when I didn't know the major issues of life.

I didn't know how my life was going to go exactly and it didn't go the way I planned. But I know exactly, I can tell you as a clear testimony, God is faithful. And He has shown me His mercy and His love beyond my imagining. Praise God. He has been faithful to me and yet when I look back, I don't have to look back very far. When I look back and look inside and I see so many shortcomings, I see needs, I see things He's working on. And yet that didn't stop Him from loving me and caring about me. Praise God. Don't you want to be like Him? Praise God until somebody comes along that you just don't like, right? Well, God is going to help us and He is helping us. All right, dear friends, all right, His love is made complete. And there's so much. I'm going to go ahead and just read something. Well, let me go down in verse 16, the middle of 16. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us. Again, is God's love complete? I believe we've got a lot of people here that know that in a measure that God loves you. But that's not enough. God wants that love to permeate everybody who comes in here. Not just the ones you like, but every single one, all right? This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment. In this world, we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.

Now, this is a statement about our relationship with God. It's not a matter of laws that I've got to stand up to and if I don't do it perfectly, I've got to be afraid or I'm constantly afraid that I'm going to come up short. Perfect love says, wait a minute, that's not the basis of our relationship here. Yeah, there are things I want to do in your life, but I love you. And I'm here to help you do everything I tell you to do. If you'll just trust me and yield to me, I'm going to transform you and I'm going to make you ready to stand with me in white on that day and have a brand new creation handed over to you, one that you won't mess up. Because everything that's wrong with you now will be fixed because Jesus paid it all. To Him be the glory. Lord, I want to serve somebody like that. I want to love them. And I want to have a greater love for you to where your welfare is my happiness. If you're doing well and people are being blessed and helped, that's what gives me peace and satisfaction. I mean, I could sit here and say, oh, I'm having a great time. What's the matter with you? That's not it at all. I mean, Jesus had this perfect relationship with the Father. He could have said, well, these crazy people out here just got to put up with them for a while. No. He loved the unlovely. My God, look at the woman of the well. And she knew that she was a sinner, but she felt His love and compassion for her. Oh God, give us that kind of a heart. Praise God. So anyway, the one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us.

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. That's strong word, isn't it? For whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. And He has given us this command. Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. Praise God. There's so many things that, like I say, you could go so many different directions with this. How about 1 Corinthians 13? Let's just refresh our minds with the truth because Paul here was dealing with people who were ... This is 2 Corinthians 4, 1 Corinthians. We'll get there. Paul was dealing with the issue of spiritual gifts and how we are unable to help one another because God gives us supernatural ability, but he wants to make a pretty important point in the middle of that. Because he said, you could have all of that. You could have great power and great revelation and just amazing things that God could do through you that were supernatural, but that's not what it's about. You could do all of that and be worthless. Wow. What are we valuing above all? What's the most important thing? And that's where he starts. He says, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I am only resounding gong or clanging cymbals, nothing but noise. God could speak powerful words through somebody, but if they didn't have love, it's noise. I want everybody who hears me to know that God loves you. He's not waiting for you to get better before he loves you. He's the only one who can make you better.

He just wants us to surrender to that love and let him change us at the heart level. Thank God. And here's another thing that people value. If I have the gift of prophecy and I can fathom, I can understand every mystery. I know everything about the Bible. I got the Bible memorized. I know all of the doctrines. I got them just right. Is that what's important? I mean, yes, knowledge has its place, but you can do all of that. And if I have on top of that, if I have faith that can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. It's pretty plain language, isn't it, as to what matters to God. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship so that I may boast, look what I'm doing, but do not have love, I gain nothing. And then these words that cause us to say, wait a minute, this ain't me. Love is patient. I know everybody here is patient, right? You know, one of the biggest things that Paul said that we need to put up with each other. Well, everybody's got to put up with you too. There's not a person here who doesn't have things that God's still working on. But does God put us aside because there's still stuff to work on? Does He say, I'm going to hold my love, I'm turning my love off until you fix this? His love is what comes and fixes it. In fact, He may send the difficulty that you need in order to fix it, and it's not because He's angry at you, it's because He loves you. If He spanks you, it's because He loves you and knows where it's going, and He longs to set you and me free from things that we need to be set free from. Love is patient, love is kind. Does not envy, oh how we are so self-centered as people that I'm not as good looking as

they are, I'm not as smart, I'm not as popular, and it's all about me, saying, just being upset because I'm not like somebody else, I don't have what they have, you know, on and on and on it goes. But love realizes, I'm who God made me, I matter to Him. He loves me, He made me, He has a place for me in His eternal kingdom, what am I trying to be somebody else for, or be upset about who I am and how He's made me? He loves me. If He loves me, doesn't everything else just kind of fall into place? Love does not boast, not about lifting up my ego and making me feel good because of that. It's not proud. It does not dishonor others. Wow, don't we need to have a love and a respect for one another? It's not so quick to just put somebody to the side and talk about them and all the things that we do as human beings, but there needs to be that sense that I see your need but I love you, praise God. It's not self-seeking, it's not easily angered, that's ... I'm going to question that one because there's different translations and that easily is ... it's easy to put that in there because it's like saying, well, you can get angry, just don't do it easily. But the original just says provoked. You think about on a personal level, how many times things were said about Jesus, to Jesus, where it was like somebody was trying to push his buttons. We've all got buttons. We've all got areas where if somebody pushes our ego and just challenges it in a wrong way, man, we're going to get upset. And yet love doesn't do that. We are secure enough in His love and we realize it's not about me and I'm okay. If God is with me and I love Him and He loves me, I don't have to win everybody's approval. I'm going to be the person He designed me to be and my welfare does not depend upon the opinions of other people and how they treat me even.

How do they treat Jesus? Not too good. And yet there He was at His trial and they were saying all kinds of nasty things. They had beat Him to a pulp and He didn't answer a word. As a sheep before his shearers was dumb, so He opened not His mouth. Wow. Only a divine miracle that can change any one of us and make us even remotely like that. But that's where God's going with all of it. We can have every other doctrine just right and get it and understand it, but this is the center. This is what it's all about. Keeps no record of wrongs. You know, you have that silly saying, all right, I'll forgive you, but I ain't forgetting. Will God help us to just be able to let things just slide off of us and go forward with a free spirit? Because if you're keeping something, keeping a record of somebody else's wrong, you're the one in prison. How many times, even the world understands that in a measure. You're the prisoner. We've got to learn not to take things personally and just let them slide and say, Lord, I'm yours. I'm depending on you. My welfare does not depend upon what happened and how people treat me and how they push my buttons. You take over my buttons. I don't have any. It doesn't matter how they treat me and what they think of me. I'm yours. I have a hope beyond all of this life. Not only that, the very thing that enables.

That enables me to be a light is that I don't react like everybody else. How are people going to know that we're His disciples again? We love one another. And of course, Jesus didn't stop there. He said, love your enemies. Oh boy, now you're getting pretty ridiculous here. My enemies? Only God's power in us can help us to see past every other issue. My welfare does not depend on it. And my interest is so much in doing right by them and letting God's love actually possibly reach them. How are they going to ever see Him if they don't see Him in me? I could be the best soul winner around if it's a matter of getting people, of reciting the gospel and getting people to make decisions. What good is that? A lot of that's empty anyway. It becomes a form so much of the time. But God wants people to sense something in us that they just don't find in the world and have God touch their spirit and get right past their defenses with the love that reaches out and says, I know. And they know there's stuff wrong with them if they're honest. But to actually confront the Spirit of God that communicates to their hearts, I love you. I care about you. I have made a way where you can know me and have a hope that goes beyond anything this world can ever give you. Wow. How are they going to know that unless we let God change us and we're willing to do these things, not to fake it, not to say, okay, I'll paste a smile on and try to do the right thing.

We're going to have to say, God, I want to do the right thing, but I want it to be real. And you're going to have to do it in me, but I'm willing for you to do it in me. I'll tell you, God will do something that is supernatural. And of course he goes on and talks about not delighting in evil, rejoicing in the truth and so forth. Love never fails. There's one other scripture I just want to make a brief reference to that we've known from many times over, and it's in the end of chapter three of Ephesians. I guess I have to turn a page to do this one. But Paul's prayer is more in this instance than just, I want you to know everything about the gospel. I want you to understand so many different things. He does pray that, but this one, he says, for this reason, verse 14, I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Anybody here need faith to just say, Lord, I know stuff's wrong, I know I don't always feel it, but I believe in your promise. I believe in it right here, right now, that you could help me to be the person you want me to be. That's a process. We learn. We don't get it all at once, but that ... Do you think God wants us to pray that way and to really make that kind of a choice every day? I do. I know he does. But here's the thing that makes it the most important thing, and I pray that you being rooted and established in what? In love. See, that's where the roots have got to go all the way down past everything else into

the love of God. Then we realize that's the source of everything that you and I need, that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and how long and how high and deep is the love of Christ. Somehow, the thing that just got to me this week was how little I know about that. It's so easy to be satisfied with, well, I know the doctrines, I can expound the scriptures, I can do this, I can do that, but to really have a heart revelation of his love, and he's talking about something that is inexhaustible. It's beyond anything we could ever experience, so we're just sitting there saying, yeah, I can touch it. I can see it. I know it's there. God wants us to lay hold of that in a deeper, wants it to become more real. If we'll pay attention to how God works in our life, we'll see His love in action because love without action is not love. Right? It's another scripture truth you see. God puts action behind His love and He works in us to help us to know Him deeper and more and have greater rest. Remember rest? Where do I get that from the fact that He loves me and He's done it all, to Him be all the glory. Praise God. To grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love, that's an experiential knowledge, that surpasses knowledge, okay? I see that in more than one way. It's more than you can ever figure out, but this is much more important than just knowing all about everything. You could know all about the scriptures and if you miss this, you miss everything. That make sense?

So why does He want this? That you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, so forth, according to the power that is at work in us. Every other truth, every other principle rests upon this foundation. It's the one thing that matters most and that's the love of God that's a reality that He wants you and you and you and you and you and me to actually know in a deeper way. I believe we can go to Him and ask Him, Lord, I want to know your love in a deeper way. I'm willing, Lord, to allow my vessel to express that, to let go of the things that have hindered me in my relationship with others. Let there be a greater love that flows. Thank God for everything that I see and there's plenty. God's at work. We got a people here that love God and that love one another, but we got room to grow, don't we? We always got room to grow. I believe the things that He tells us in here that are so far into human nature, God can actually bring us to a place where they are real, they are possible, they'll happen in a greater way. We want a light to shine in this hour. It won't shine because we got better doctrines, a better program, better this and that. People can have all of that and if they miss this, they miss everything. But the literal practice, the literal understanding and apprehension of the love of God, that I am loved. Right now, I am loved in spite of everything that's wrong, everything that needs Him to do something about, I am loved right this moment. And because I'm loved, I can just yield myself and I can become the person that He wants me to be, step by step by step, and I can show love to others. And let go all the issues about me, because He cares, He's the one who's going to work on me.

I don't have to worry about me, I need to allow Him to use me to help other people. And if I do that, I'm going to become more and more like Him and His kingdom is going to absolutely come to pass and it's forever. I'll tell you, what a central thing. Is there anything more important than this? This is it. The love of God is real. Praise God. This has been the Midnight Cry broadcast. If you would like a DVD or CD of today's message in its entirety, please request it by program number. While it is not required, a donation of $10 for DVDs and $5 for CDs is suggested to help with expenses. Also for those who request it, we will send you our quarterly publication, the Midnight Cry Messenger, free and postage paid. Send your requests to Midnight Cry Ministries, Post Office Box 685, Southern Pines, NC 28388. We invite you to join us again next week at the same time, and may God richly bless you until then.