Serving Jesus is a Choice
Show Your Love For God
Part 3
Good morning! Welcome to another privilege to worship. The theme for these messages is, Show Your Love. I copied this phrase from Steve Harvey when he hosted the Apollo Theater. Whenever Steve Harvey introduced a contestant, he would always tell the audience to show their love for the contestant. The people showed their love for that contestant by clapping. For the past two Sundays I’ve been speaking from the subject, Show your Love for God. Showing your love for God is very important to all who are in Christ Jesus. Showing God that you love Him is an intricate component of your relationship with Him. One of my responsibilities your pastor, your shepherd, teacher of God’s word and administrator of this church is to help you come to love our God more. If you all do not fall more and more in love with God, then I’m leaving out a vital, vital, vital component of my stewardship. Our ability to live and worship together, and serve the Lord effectively is empowered by our love for God. Your love for God should compel you to make changes in your life by His grace under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Our walk, talk, and how we relate to each other God is supposed to be an outgrowth of our love for Him. My personal quest for the rest of my life is to honor Jesus. I want Him to be glorified in all I do. In my own quest to show God that I love Him, I want to respect Him for who He is. I want us to honor, glorify, and respect Him for all that He is. This manner of living that I desire for our NCES family, can’t be forced. I can’t guilt you into a better relationship with God. An intimate and vibrant relationship with God only be accomplished through hearts that love Him. When you love someone, you want the very best for them. As far as it depends on us, we should want God our father to be respected and glorified for the great God that He is. My personal desire for our NCES family is that all of us to show God that we love Him in our thoughts, words, and actions. Jesus said, Mark 12:30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' Here is the question we’ve been trying to answer for the pas two weeks and today as well. How do we grow in our relationship with God so that we can show Him that we love Him with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength? We are in a relationship with God. Christianity is a relationship. A relationship must be developed. God has done His part in this relationship. He’s given us Jesus Christ to establish the relationship. He’s given us His Spirit to live within us so that we can commune with Him. He’s given us 66 books that tell us all about Him and what He is like. He gave us access to His throne of grace so that we can come boldly to His throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace to help in a time of need. He told us that if we come to Him in prayer believing that we can ask anything according to His will and He will hear us and give to us the desires of our hearts. God even went further in expressing His love towards us by telling us that in our relationship with Him, our eye has not seen nor have our ear heard all that He has prepared for those who love Him. God has done and keeps doing everything possible to not only demonstrate His love for us but to make it possible for us to have a loving, intimate relationship with Him. for any of us to have an intimate loving relationship with God we must grow in our love for Him. So then how do we grow in our love for God? We grow in our love for God by giving ourselves to getting to know Him and by putting Him first. As we learn about how God is and what He is like is, what we learn about Him makes us love Him even more. As we grow in our love for Him, we put Him first. Our God is such a great God that he cannot be second in our lives. He will not take the place of an afterthought. Putting God first testifies to Him that He is the most important person in your life. No issue, obstacle, circumstance, person, or desire comes before Him. Today I want to push us a little bit more in how we grow in showing God that we love Him. Please remember. Our love is seen in what we do. There is another thing will really cause you to grow in your love for God even more than you do right now. We show God that we love Him…
I. By Trusting Him – God gets excited when you trust Him because your trust in Him affirms your belief in who He is. Now please get this. When you trust God in your situation and in the daily affairs of life, your trust in Him becomes an opportunity for Him to show you how great He is. Your situation, whatever it may be is an opportunity for you to affirm your belief in who God is but it’s also an opportunity for God to be glorified through your circumstance. In your situation, whatever that is, you may need His grace to get through what you’re going through. You may need His power to open doors for you. Your trust in Him affirms what you say you believe about Him, but your trust in Him allows Him several things to take place. Your trust in God allows Him to express His love for you and to be with you in your circumstance. You trust in God allows Him to be glorified through your circumstance. When people love each other, they go through circumstances together. Your reliance on Him is an expression of your love for Him because you’re telling Him that you’re turning to the One you love most to be with you in your situation. Sometimes there are things that you go through that you only want those who are close to you to know. God wants to know that He is the one you want to know because you bring your situation to Him first and trust Him to see you through. The writer of proverbs said this. Prov 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. I’m going to explain this verse and point you to other verses. There are many verses in the bible where God beckons us to trust Him. In fact, God got upset with Israel numerous times because they trusted in other nations, other gods, or even in their own strength. We affirm our love for God when we trust Him no matter how grave our circumstance may be. Now let me help you. This word trust in these verses means to rely on fully. Please notice that this word trust is contrasted with the word leaning. Leaning means to support oneself. You cannot trust and lean at the same time. When you trust you are depending solely on God. When you lean you are depending on yourself. Whenever you depend on yourself you leave God out. When you love someone, you include them in what you’re doing. Now if you are leaning on your own understanding, i.e., what you think, what you feel, or what folks say, you leave God out of the picture. God’s desire for us is to rely on Him fully. God desires to be an intricate part of your life. He wants to interact and intervene in the affairs of your life. When you trust God in your situation, you are saying to Him you not only believe all the facts about who He is. You are saying that what you’ve learned about Him is enough to place your full faith and trust in Him. You are also saying to God by your trust in Him, that you believe that His promises are good. Therefore, you are relying on God to do in your life what needs to be done. It’s one thing to say you love God but it’s another thing to show Him that you love Him. God demonstrated His love for us when we were in a spiritual condition that could only be remedied by an act of love. All of us were born in sin and shaped in iniquity. We were all bound for hell and had no way to be redeemed. In our sinful condition, while we were most unlovable, God demonstrated His love for us in that He gave Christ Jesus to die for us. Genuine love must be demonstrated. Since love must be demonstrated our love for God needs a situation or circumstance in which to demonstrate our love for Him. When we trust our heavenly father in the affairs of life, our trust in Him demonstrates that we love Him enough to allow Him to work out our situation but for His glory. When we love God back, He gets glorified. God is so committed to our well-being that He said this about His commitment to us so that we can have no trouble trusting Him. Folks this is beautiful. Isa 43:1-7 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.4 Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.5 Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.6 I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold ;bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth,7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." This is God telling us how much He loves us and what He wants to do in our lives. Our trust in God gives Him the opportunity to further demonstrate His love for us pass the cross. The cross is His greatest demonstration of His love for us, but His love does not stop at the cross. God expresses his love for us even in the daily affairs of life. When we place our trust in Him, that is one of our greatest expressions of love for Him. Look at what the psalmist said about trusting God. Ps 62:5-8 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. 6 He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. 7 On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. 8 Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. All throughout the scriptures, God beckons us, and in my opinion, He begs us to place our trust in Him. Allow me to share with you just a few verses where God is encouraging us to trust Him. In Ps 4:6 - Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord.
Ps 9:10 - And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.
Ps 31:14 - But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, "You are my God."
Ps 40:4 4 Blessed is the man who makes
the Lord his trust,
Isa 26:5 4 Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. These scriptures are just a smidgen of the numerous times that God encourages us to trust Him. Our trust in Him is one of the most beautiful ways we express our love for Him. Now there is a caveat to trusting God. You cannot live any way you want to live and then trust Him to fix it or work it out. When we are trusting God, we must do so within the framework of His word. That brings us to the next way we express our love to God.
II. By Keeping His Commandments – The apostle John said this in 1 John 5:3. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. I want to help all of us with these verses. John said that the way we love God is by keeping His commandments i.e., obeying His word. John emphasizes the fact that God’s commandments are not burdensome. The word burdensome means heavy, weighty, or grievous. I’ve often heard people say one reason that they do not want to be a Christian because Christians don’t have any fun. You can’t do anything fun as a Christian because you are trying to keep the commandments. There are still other Christians who say that when you keep His word it’s doing too much. You don’t have to be all that serious about obeying God. Taking time to learn about Him and walking in obedience is just too heavy, too burdensome. Coming to worship and going to bible study or MC meetings all the time is too much. Jesus made this statement in Matt 11:29-30. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." When we commit to obeying God’s word, that commitment to obeying God’s word is not heavy. Your obedience to God’s word lightens, lightens, make easier the task of living. For example, when we walk in obedience to God’s word some of His blessings in your life come from the sins you didn’t do. Sin is the most destructive force in our lives. When we walk in obedience to God’s word, we avoid sin and its consequences. Often, the consequences of our sins are far heavier, more burdensome, and more stressful than our walk in obedience. I’m going to make a statement that may offend some people but my statement is true. A lot of people suffering from stress and depression are really wrestling with the consequences of sin or a sinful lifestyle. If you don’t believe my statement talk to someone at a DFACS agency. DFACS is being overwhelmed with foster care because the sinful lifestyle of people has put them and their children in a fix. Folks are depressed and stressed out because of the fix their sins put them in. My own life is truly blessed because Jesus saved me and someone discipled me to show me how to walk in obedience to God. I’ve been spared the numerous issues I would have simply because I didn’t keep doing what I was doing. My walk in obedience has been the key to me overcoming the circumstances of my life. Following God’s word is not burdensome. Obeying God’s word is a wonderful thing if you will believe it and walk in it. Obeying God’s word is in my opinion, the premier area of our Christianity where we get to express our love for God daily. This is an area where the people of Jesus, the church of the living God has blown it in the pass and we are blowing it today. I pray that at NCES we hold fast to God’s word no matter what the cry of our culture may be. We are now living in a culture that is fractured tremendously. We’re divided politically, racially, economically, and whatever else you can name. The main problem is not with the culture. The culture does not know Jesus nor is our culture obligated to function according to God’s word. It is not the culture that’s displeasing God the most. It’s His own people. We fail to express our love for God, by obeying and holding fast to His word. We’re still dealing with racial issues in America. The thing that needs to happen most is for the people of Jesus to show the world that we are the family of God. One of the biggest issues that’s hurting our society is that Christians are trying to get along with the culture by compromising God’s word while still trying to please God. That is no different than trying to have two lovers. James said this in 4:4. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Over the years our churches of the living God have tried not to offend our culture by compromising, no, disobeying on God’s word. That was an issue in the time of slavery. The people of God should have risen up and stood on God’s word. How in the world can you be in a church worshipping Gid in spirit and in truth and have a separation of the races. Compromise of God’s word on any level is disobedience. Disobedience of any kind is an unloving act towards God. Please remember, love is an act that benefits the one being loved. Whenever we disobey God’s word, He gets no glory, no benefit, and no expression on our part that He comes before everything and everybody. What we have done as the people of God, is to try to go along to get along. We have become so concerned about what the people in our culture thinks about us that we’ve forgotten that we serve the one true God who has a holy and righteous standard that He will not change to get along. We want a relationship with Him while being liked by our culture. We do not have to be ugly or judgmental to our culture. However, we must keep our culture on notice that we will not compromise God’s word under any circumstances. Our culture is telling us that it’s willing to get along with the church but some compromises on God’s word need to be made by the church. Some churches and Christians have agreed to compromise God’s word. Some are now more racial than righteous. Some are now more culturally relevant than a heavenly example of Christianity. Those same Christians and churches walk in disobedience, and then come together for what they call worship. In our churches we’ve allowed race to trump righteousness. We’ve allowed our relationships with the culture to have a greater importance than our relationship with Jesus. God told us that earth and heaven will pass away but His word will never pass away yet we have allowed our culture to tell us what they think or feel is right when our God has already told us in His word what is right. The church is supposed to influence the culture. The culture is not supposed to influence the church. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. If we walk in disobedience to God’s word we dim the light of Jesus in us and decrease the saltiness of the salt that God made us to be. The world walks in darkness. That is why Jesus made us light. Our culture is in decay. That is why Jesus made us salt. Salt prevents decay. Our strict obedience to God’s word is what is needed to stop the decay of our society. When we stand on God’s word in our personal lives and the church we show God that we love Him. God said in Ex 20:3-6, "You shall have no other gods before me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Dr. Tony Evans made this statement, which is relevant for us right now. “God is not into suggestions. He is heavily into commands.” God said in these verses that those who love Him will keep His commandments. God said this in Deut 11:13-16, "And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. There are two things that I want to point out in this text. Recall that I asked this question at the beginning. How do we grow in our relationship with God so that we can show Him that we love Him with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength? Your love for God grows as you by faith walk in obedience to His word. When you by faith obey God’s word no matter what, you come to see that God is faithful. You learn through your obedience that God will do what He said he would do. As you interact with Him through obedience you come to know Him better. You begin to trust Him more. You begin to see His grace, love, mercy, and blessings on your life. As you walk in obedience to Him and interact with Him in your various affairs you begin to love Him even more. This is why God said, And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. Your love for Him will grow as you walk in obedience to Him in all facets of life. The second observation in these verses is this. This is the one most Christians want to experience even if they are not walking in obedience to God’s word. God said that many of the blessings He has in store for us are tied to whether we keep His commandments. The commandments that are easy, not burdensome.
Rev. Lawrence Robinson
