God loves us
This morning we have come together to worship and it is wonderful to praise, pray and share the word and have fellowship. We also know that in everyday life we have times of worship.
True story Through her parents divorce, her struggle with bulimia and her miscarriage Australian worship leader Darlene Zschech found a secret weapon for survival: worship. Darlene wrote her popular praise song, “Shout to the Lord” when she was struggling to cope with life.
One particular stressful day she went and sat at her piano and put a song to the spiritual truths to which she desperately clung: “Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name” and “Nothing compares to the promise I have in you.”
“A Bundle of Laughs” J John & Mark Stibbe
Worship is simply expressing our love to God.
Every time when we say to God, “I love you God,” that’s worship. Romans 12: 1 “To offer your bodies as living sacrifices that are holy and pleasing to God, for this is the reasonable way for you to worship. “Worship is our response to God’s love and we love him back when we offer ourselves to God. and that is pleasing to God.
In this mornings reading: Ephesians: 9 “He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ.” Worship is having fellowship with God, and God takes pleasure in blessing us.
The Bible tells us that God is love
God is completely made up of love, his essence, his Spirit is love and from my own experience in the Spirit, where God is, the atmosphere is not of air, the substance is love. God created us to love us, for his love to glorify his name.
We are loved by God.
One of the most humble statements ever written is in the letter of Jude verse 1, “I’m a servant of Jesus Christ and I’m the brother of James.” He forgets to mention one thing. He’s the half brother of Jesus. He continues“Can you imagine how hard it must have been growing up with a perfect brother, he was ‘always right.’ How annoying that can be, but I’m sure Jesus loved his brothers.” (John 7: 5 records that his brothers did not believe in him.) “But now Jude has become his servant and in his letter he is calling the people to receive the love of God and be in the care of his brother, Jesus the Messiah.”
Jesus calls us receive his love, to believe that God’s love is for you. He wants to fill you to the brim and overflow with his love.
We are to know God in a personal way. Worship is focusing our attention on God, knowing that he loves us, we can be ourselves, it isn’t a formal relationship, God is not at a distance, he’s like a dad that wants to spend time with us, not just for an hour on Sunday, but in everything we do because we belong to him.
We are brothers and sisters adopted by faith into God’s family, so are entitled to all that belongs to Jesus is ours as well. In our reading a fantastic promise, “He has blessed us with every spiritual blessings in heavenly places” eternal blessings to be enjoyed, joy and peace that brings contentment in fulfilling God’s purpose in this life for eternity.
The Apostle Paul takes us deeper into understanding God’s love in the Ephesians letter: “Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvellous love. 18 And may you have the power to understand , as all God’s people should, how wide how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it.” Eph. 3: 17-19 (NLT)
The Bible tells us that we have the potential to know and experience the love that passes knowledge, love that is so great that we will never fully understand it.
So how wide is God’s love for us? It’s wide enough to be everywhere to embrace all who come to him in faith.
Two, How long is God’s love? God will never, never, never, never stop loving you, because his love is eternal.
How deep is God’s love? It’s deep enough to handle anything. God’s love goes deeper and lower than your problem.
How about height? It is high enough to overlook sins. God offers forgiveness through the cross because of his love. .
God’s constant love produces 5 significant changes in our lives.
- We feel accepted rather than ashamed.
Most people go through their entire life avoiding God. And the reason why they avoid God is because they’re ashamed. They feel ashamed. Feelings of guilt and condemnation. They feel judged. And criticised. They think, God is a perfect God and I am not so perfect. The Bible says this in Romans 5:1, “By faith we have been made acceptable by God. And now, because of our Lord Jesus Christ, we live in peace with him.”
Jude didn’t feel under condemnation, when after Jesus’ ascension he joined the apostles and he didn’t need the approval of his friends and the people at Nazareth
Peter the Apostle wrote that ‘Love covers a multitude of sins,’ God’s love has dealt with all that condemned us before God. and his love we receive his forgiveness and it is without any conditions of any kind. 1 Peter 4: 8
Romans 8, “If God says his chosen ones are acceptable to him, can anybody bring charges against him? Or can anybody condemn them? The answer is no.
2. We can be bold in bringing our needs to God.
We are invited by Father God to come boldly to his throne of grace with our prayers. We can talk to him about anything, because he’s our dad, we can expect answers to our prayers.
3. We have peace in pain I don’t understand.
There are probably occasions when you have asked God why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to our family? Why now? Why here? Why this? And we’re going to see things happen in the world and ask Why?
From my own experience I believe that God sees pain differently than we do, he allows his people to suffer pain, but through suffering we find that our faith grows, to a greater depth. We learn to trust God more and more and as a result God embraces us with the peace that passes all understanding.
- We gain the courage to take risks.
Called to be loved so when someone believes in you unconditionally the way God does, it releases you to take more risks for God. I can look back and think how hard it was to step out in faith, being called to fulfil God’s purpose. But God has never let me down. My advice is to pray and then if the impulsion is still there, then to step out in faith.
- We worship instead of worry. It is so natural to us to start worrying when we become fearful over a situation. so we are reminded to pray and praise God which is worship. Like Darlene Zshech God doesn’t want us to worry.