Journeying Through Divine Love: Understanding God’s Affection, Embracing Vulnerability, and Its Transformative Power on Life

Part 2 of our Advent season.

Last week, james did an excellent job of giving you the first guarantee and that's basically you can please God through your faith.

That's how it's always to work and always will work around here Today we will look at part 2.

And today, as you know, is the advent of love.

Renee Brown is someone you may or may not recognize the name in business sectors marketplace.

She's pretty well known.

She's an acclaimed writer, speaker.

She gave a TED talk a few years ago and it just boom, it just went viral all over the country.

And basically in that short TED talk she said everybody within the sound of my voice, and everybody in the world, I believe, has two irreducible needs One is to be loved.

The other is to belong to some group, some community, to be loved and to belong.

So why isn't that actualized in all of our?

Because, she said, we all can be shame-based people.

What we want the most we shy away from because for most of us there's something in here and here that is believing I'm not good enough, I'm not going to be smart enough, I'm not going to be accepted, so I just don't want to bother with what could be the rejection and the shame is linked to a lack of vulnerability.

Today, in our culture, we call it being real.

Oh, I like him, he's real, I know she's a fun, she's not real.

That's the same as saying vulnerability.

The only way to be truly in a community and be in a love relationship is you have to be vulnerable.

You know that if you're married right.

You know that if you're in one of our life groups now, especially at the leadership of the life groups no vulnerability, no community, therefore no fellowship.

So we all want to be loved and we all want to belong, but the big blocker is because of this shame.

I just don't want to be found inadequate or fall short.

So I'm sure not going to give you any information about me.

You won't like me.

Maybe stops us dead.

So there's this big gap and many, many, many people today are really borderline suffering over that.

The two things they need the most.

They're pretty void.

So hence we are the most medicated, addicted, the most depressed society in the history of the world.

So what do we do about that?

The fact that you're in the room and thank you for being out there watching the fact that you're watching today, I think, makes me believe that, at least as a starting point.

There's got to be some higher ability outside of us who can come in and inform us of how to bridge that gap.

That someone outside of us is none other than God Himself.

And let me tell you this God's love will change you.

Yes, the cross was the measuring point.

The resurrection started and activated, but you've already heard twice from the Scripture His love was the prime motive.

So let's just boil it all down to its simplest form it's the love of God that will change you forever.

We call it transformation.

One of our core values is and we'll be talking about it on Christmas Eve because we'll be baptizing some people again nothing, nothing is better than a changed life Absolutely nothing.

And so that's why I'm so excited about this today.

First John how about turn to 1 John, chapter 3, verses 1 through 3.

1 John 3:1–3

Don't go to the gospel of John, because you'll not be at the right place.

There we are in.

1 John First, john is right before Revelation.

That helps.

Right, it gets you to the back.

You go left, you'll get to 1 John, written by the apostle John.

He also had a moniker after the resurrection and ascension, he became known as, through His writings, the apostle of love.

So it's fitting that we study what John had to say on the day we do the advent of love.

John stood at the point in his life at this point as he's writing this.

He also wrote Revelation.

He's an old man.

He has out, he has survived all of his buddies, the 12.

They're all gone except him.

We're now possibly five to six decades after the resurrection and ascension and he's looking back on all of that and it's scary almost how much of 1 John sounds like the beatitudes of Jesus in Matthew 5.

That means to me he was a good listener and a good disciple of the one he was following.

Right, jesus had this profound effect on him that he never really got over.

His changed life lasted forever and just accelerated, even through persecution.

At this point he's on an island called Patmos.

He's not there of his own free will.

He's not free to come and go because he's been exiled there.

That was the option to a martyrdom of his own life and he is still cranking out material, though that basically says not only was Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the prime motive is love, because I saw his love for three years every single day change people around me, and namely it changed me forever, and so he's an authority on the subject, is he not?

So it's pretty good, pretty cool, that we're going to study him today, because where he's after same place Paul was after writing to churches same place Peter does.

Same place we do today, because it's still applicable today if you are going to be a Christ follower in the true sense of being vulnerable before God and being willing, as Mimi just said, hey, man, obedience is the most important thing in the world.

If you're in that mode, or you want to be in that mode, let me just cut to the chase and say it's going to take some old fashioned courage at some point, which comes from a Latin word pronounced core, which just means heart.

It means your heart expands to where it's not that you're not still afraid, but it overcomes the fear and through the power of Jesus and then, namely, the Holy Spirit today, oh, you'll do what you've been asked to do.

You'll be obedient, and it's not that you are super unafraid.

It's because that there is one more powerful than the fear in you, now directing you and now in charge of your life, and you're willing to be obedient and just let the chips fall as they may.

Are you following me?

Okay?

So here we go, you ready?

We're going to read just three verses at this and we'll bring in some other parallel Scriptures, so if you want to write those down for devotion this week, but that's all we need to talk about today, because these first three verses of Johnfirst John, chapter 3, are just so incredible.

John 3 · chapter mention

Verse number one what are some elements of this love that changes us forever?

The first thing is a possessive love when God gives it Firsthow about verse one?

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.

The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.

He starts right out saying how great, how magnificent is the love.

I tried to research that Greek word a little bit, and itthere's a lot of words for great, as there are others in Greekin Greek languages, you know.

But this particular usage of great meant John.

In essence is saying how out of this world is this kind of love?

Where didanother way it could have been translated?

Where did this love come from?

Because this is an alien love.

This is athis is a step up from any human love we've ever experienced.

And then he says, hey, you got this kind of love and you've accepted it.

You are called children of God.

Well, those of you with preschoolers, or you remember the day you had preschoolers, little ones, toddlers, or you got grandkids in that mode.

Now you know how dependent they are on an adult in their life right, absolutely for everything.

They're dependent for everything.

And he's saying you should be like a child before God.

That takes care of the vulnerability point, doesn't it?

That means with him we've got to be super honest and super vulnerable.

Because he wants not a token, shallow, superficial relationship, y'all, he wants a high relationship, high touch relationship.

He wants us checking in every day.

He wants us not to just pray a lot but be in a spirit, an attitude of prayer every day as we go along.

He wants us to not give some token quick five minute readings in the Scripture because, hey, it's Christmas and I guess I need to go find my Bible and, you know, read something about God in there.

No, he wants us hungry for it.

He wants us digesting it and wanting more.

That's a high touch, high relationship.

The people we love the most on earth.

We stay in touch with a lot, don't we?

And it should be even more with him.

This y'all is the beauty of the incarnation.

God comes to earth in the middle of a broken, broken, terribly volatile, violent, hostile, oppositional, polarized culture, and in the middle of all of that he says let me see how tough I can make it here.

If that's not enough, let me pick out two peasant parents who have not ever been parents yet, who have no experience and no real resources, and half their hometown thinks that they're just wicked.

Now, anyway, let me see if I can drop my son in the middle of that family.

Oh, and if that's not hard enough, let's get the king all stirred up to where he wants to commit infanticide just to make sure that this baby is wiped out.

And that's what happened, fully divine, but fully human.

Because now, when we struggle, jesus says man, tell me all about it.

I know a little something about that.

And when we give an excuse that we think is valid, we get to hear man, you're going to have to do better than that.

You know my story right?

Sorry, I don't want to hear it.

And it's the greatest relationship in the world.

So my application question to this possessiveness.

God Himself says in the Old Testament man, I'm a jealous God.

I'm jealous for you and it sounds threatening until you understand what type of love he has.

That's one of the highest compliments you'll ever be paid, by the way.

Is that the Creator and the one who holds this creation together as we speak today, is telling you, out of all the seven billion people on this earth, that, hey, man, I want to relationship with you and I'm willing to fight for it.

Because why?

I'm just jealous?

I'm jealous of any competition.

So can I ask you a personal question, because I know most of you pretty well here when you're going to get over your need to control the situation, when you're going to get over your authority issues oh, I don't have no authority issues.

Oh really, oh really.

Well, I just happened this week to sit down and make a list of some markers of maybecan.

I read you about four little questions to ask you and this applies to me too, because I'm guilty of this too you could have authority issues if Do you ever enjoy not go there, but do you ever enjoy having an argument with an older person?

If the answer to that is no, the follow-up part B do you ever enjoy having an argument with a younger person.

Number two do you like to blame other people for your bad behavior occasionally?

Number three do you ever find yourself in the car arguing with the GPS directions you've been given?

It's like no, I know a better way.

Could that be?

Possiblyit's not that you're so much smarter than the computer.

It's because you just don't like to be told what to do.

Here's one, appropriate for the holiday season.

Some of you go and go to family get-togethers, part office party, something to do to Secret Santa or some people called Dirty Santa, you know, and there's always a spending limit.

They'll tell you.

And if you hear, like don't spend over $30, how many of you spend $34 just to be in charge of the situation?

You're not gonna tell me how much to spend.

And my last one, I guess, is how many of you whether it's hospital receptionist, office receptionist how many of you try to sneak past a receptionist somewhere just to see if you can get by with it?

Then you may have authority issues.

My guess is that gets most of us in the room.

Matthew 5, 8, I told you to be attitudes or sound a lot like John and vice versa.

And Matthew 5, 8, jesus said blessed are the peacemakers.

Why?

Because they will become children of God.

The same terminology.

A peacemaker is running the risk of shame and vulnerable enough to walk into an unpeaceful situation and be used by the Holy Spirit to bring hopefully, ideally reconciliation, not just an absence of conflict, but reconciliation where opposites now agree for that to happen and I was talking to somebody on the front porch about this it's more than the fascinating thing about debate experts and other negotiators and everything is.

They have the ability to get somebody who is convicted beyond all reason of a certain ideology to give that up and turn all the way around opposite direction and embrace another behavior.

There's one guy in particular I read about.

He is known now as an African American gentleman being able to walk into a white supremacist group and engage the leader, and not that day, but over time, one on one, to win the trust and the respect of a white supremacist leader, to not only turn away from his thoughts and beliefs but to embrace this man as a brother.

And I read of one occasion where one KKK leader from several years ago not only did a turnaround, but he asked this African American brother now to stand in at his daughter's wedding for the family.

Now we believe.

When God loves you, he changes you, and there's nothing better than that.

Number two let's read verse 2,.

It's a progressive type of love, it's not one dimensional.

How greatoh, I'm sorry.

Verse 2, dear friends, now we're children of God, and what we will be it has not been made known yet, but we know that when he appears we shall be like Him, for we will see Him as he is.

The relationship we have through Jesus right now, let's just say it's kind of a deposit or it's a down payment.

You have 100% of the Holy Spirit.

I'm not saying that.

But our world still is broken.

We are still sinful, we still stumble, we still are like this some days.

But overall our charge is the fancy church words called sanctification, and that means you're growing and maturing in your faith a little bit, day by day and over time.

You're still notPaul says.

You know he started a good work and he'll complete it when, on the day of his return.

So it's not till the very end that we will know Him and be like Him as he is, and that's what this verse means.

But in the time now we have to be students and followers of Jesus Christ.

Why is that?

Because he wants us dependent on Him.

He actually wants us to need Him for daily advancement, and so we're never going to know anything, paul said.

I see things like real darkly through a glass, a colored glass, right now, but one day, one day, it's all going to be clear.

Y'all, I'm sure in this room.

If it hadn't happened to you, it's going to happen.

There's a day has been, or a day coming, that some things that knee-buckling, disappointment, the crisis affect your life forever.

Stuff is going to happen and our first response is why, right, why Explain that to me, lord?

And most times we don't get the.

Why we get something better.

We get His presence and the Holy Spirit comes into it, and I'll do this in the point three.

There's a reason that happens too, but for now, he wants us dependent and vulnerable to Him as we continue to grow.

How much we mature and how much we grow is partly a function of how well we do this.

Mimi said it so well, man, when he says do something, you just obey it.

This vulnerability to Him, this drop your pride and be open and honest and vulnerable to Him, that we need Him because why we are called children.

That didn't mean like 18-year-old child.

That meant in the language that meant like young, young, young child.

We are children of God.

I always give a little plug for this, and this is my time to do it today.

What are you doing the other six days of the week to get increasingly closer to God?

Cnn and Fox News don't cut it.

I'm sorry.

Following your localyour favorite politician, sorry, that's not building your walk with God.

Watching reality TV and now step on my own toes.

You love college football, man.

It's good entertainment, but it's a poor disciple.

You got to have the real thing, and all the substitutes just don't work.

We have a couple of ladies here that started a class a while back.

It's called journaling class, and that thing hasit's just mushroomed.

And a lot of you ladies in the room, maybe some of you watching out there you're a part of it, right, and they meet once a week.

They're about to wrap it up for this semester, but it's been incredible how that is not only proliferated here, but it has jumped to other churches, where other churches are saying, hey, what are you all doing, and could you come over and train us how to do that?

It's not the power of journaling.

It is a tool, though, that God uses to draw us closer to Him and anytime that happens, that's a good thing, it's a very good thing and I am going to continue to challenge you.

Look out spiritual formation.

Come up with a plan If you're not sure how.

Get someone to help you.

Do a plan of how am I going to grow daily in my walk with the Lord, because this is attached to last week hope.

If we're not growing in our daily walk with the Lord, we're not going to remain hopeful.

And as Paul says so well in Romans 8, verse 24, he says hope is not something seen, it's unseen.

Romans 8:24

He said why would we hope in something seen?

Because then we're hoping in something we already have.

Nobody does that.

Nobody hopes in something you tangibly already have.

What we hope for is something not yet, but it's coming in the future.

Can't see that yet.

And then he says in 2 Corinthians 4, 18, for the seen elements, the things we can see, are temporary, but the unseen things of God are eternal.

And I got to tell you what has gotten me so fired up lately.

I'm hearing random.

It happened again this morning.

I'm hearing randomly from so many of y'all and I'll just kind of cut and give it one sentence summary, something's going on and I don't know what it is, but the explanation of that is you are stirred spiritually in your soul to the point that you're reading things and doing things that you have not done much in the past.

They're all related toward locating God.

Where's God in this situation?

He will never disappoint you, because that's what he's been waiting on to happen.

So how do I get someI've also heard this a lot.

I'm just stuck, randy, I accepted Christ a long time ago, but here I am, 20 years later or whatnot.

I'm stuck.

How do I get unstuck?

That's a matter of motive.

Also, can I go back to since love, god's love changes you.

Can I go back to a motive?

Write this down 2 Corinthians 5, 14 and 15.

2 Corinthians 5, 14 and 15.

Christ's love compels us.

There's your motive, there's your main motive right there.

Christ's love compels us.

Why?

Because we're convinced that one died for all, therefore all died, and that he died forsince he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him.

The love of Christ reminds us.

You know what, friend, it's not about you, it's about Him.

But that's the best, most free and liberating thing in the world, because once it's not about me and I understand that I can be more vulnerable to Him, I can trust Him more, I can be more hungry and thirsty for what he has for me.

Why?

Because I'm more dependent on Him and my growth level will go up.

My prayer is that, in all the glitter and the social stuff and the gift giving and the great music and the stuff like that of Christmas time, that you will still have a hunger that is growing in you.

That none of that, with the exception of today's musical, because that's all Christ-centered, right, eddie?

I mean, that's the best stuff.

All that is a tool also to put us in the presence of God and hear what he's telling us, which is unseen.

I'm talking about all the other stuff that that will leave you cold, that that will leave you likethat's just like potato chips when I was looking for a sirloin steak and I'm still hungry.

Number three is there's this purifying effect.

Look at verse 3, everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as he, just as Jesus, is pure.

Here's what that means.

Y'all.

God loves your, he loves you, but he loves your soul.

He loves you to the bone.

No, that's not even right.

He loves you past the bone and the marrow and the stuff he loves you, into the unseen part of you which is your spirit.

And when your spirit and His love get together, you'll never be the same Changes you and we're back to shallowness.

Man, if you want some horrible definitions or exhibitions of love, just get on social media, get on TV day, get on whatever media you enjoy for taking up.

There's everything but true love out there and the world continues to spin.

I read about a lady got really concerned.

Her husband didn't show up for like all day and all night.

These days she's like something must have happened.

It can't be good.

She calls her neighbor.

Her good friend says will you go down to the police station?

I need to file a missing person's report.

Sure, I am so sorry they go down there.

The detective comes out and says I just need to get some information on your husband.

Describe physically your husband.

She says well, he's about six foot two, black, wavy hair, just chiseled body.

He's really fit.

What else about him?

Well, the kids love him.

He's a faithful husband, just, I mean everything he puts his hands on at work, at prosperous.

And her neighbor at this point couldn't take it anymore.

She said whoa, whoa, julie, that's not even like close to being accurate.

I know you're upset, but you know Ralph is short and dumpy and he hadn't been off the couch in 20 years hardly, and the kids despise him and, you know, got laid off the other day because he wasn't producing at work and everything like that.

And she says I understand that, but who wants him back?

There's a lot of demonstrations of love that are not really accurate, as we know.

Romans I'm sorry, matthew 5, 8, blessed are the pure in heart, the purified.

What are the pure in heart?

Why?

Because they will see God.

God is shaking everything that can be shaken.

He's shaking educational systems.

He's shaking institutions.

He's shaking Fortune 500 companies.

He's shaking nations.

He's shaking political regimes.

He has shaken everybody's health in the last three years with a pandemic.

And what I feel in my bones though I'm not in a prophet, I've heard from people who may be prophets, though don't expect this to just suddenly go away and get all better.

It may get worse.

He's shaking his institution the church too, by the way.

Why?

He wants to reveal the unseen.

He wants to reveal what cannot be shaken.

The only question, the only thing we can control about that is, will we be the one standing on that rock?

Will we be the one still standing?

Because when he gets through shaking, he's going to need some people he can trust and count on.

He's going to need the body of Christ to be strong and secure, because it's so strong and secure and changed by his love through this.

I think it's as simple as that.

So here's my last.

As far as the purifying thing, I still struggle understanding a lot of things about God.

This is, frankly, one of them.

So let me try to explain something that I don't fully understand to you.

How can a God of love be also a God of wrath?

Those two are polar opposites in most ways of human thinking.

Let me throw this out to you God's wrath is part of what makes his love so strong, because he's got over everything and he created everything.

But do you believe this?

I hope you do, because it's true.

He also suffers.

When you suffer, he has emotions, he sees it, he feels it, he grieves, and you know what, frankly, makes him grieve?

He grieves when his people, people of God, settle for shallow, superficial, nominal beliefs and they do not grow.

That breaks his heart, because we're settling for a life that is nowhere close to the life he planned for us.

And so he suffers because his wrath and his love in tandem ends up in a suffering mode for us.

He hates what makes us fall short, but he loves us.

A writer by the name of Moltman, years ago, said we're God incapable of suffering than he would be incapable of love.

You believe that If he didn't have the emotions to suffer when we are hurting, he wouldn't have the emotion and the fiber to love us with that alien love which is changing us right and left, and he's changing people every single day?

Don't believe he's not.

Where evil rises, grace abounds even more, and we're going to see more and more of that.

We're going to see more and more pain and more and more disappointment, and we're going to see some more and more people act weird ways.

But we're going to see a rising of more and more people who have had their lives changed forever by the power of God.

So hang on and buckle up.

Romans 8 is another read for this week if you want to do that.

One of the most fantastic definitions of the love of God is there, romans 8, especially like 35 through 39 along in there.

I'll tell you a really quick story because I'm out of time to kind of again grapple with how enormous was the sacrifice of Jesus for all of us.

Thirty something years ago, a Northwestern airline flight, flight 225, was on the tarmac at Detroit International Airport, packed out, loaded 156 people on board.

It takes off and somehow that they're still not sure up even to this day Somehow, as it got airborne it tilted to the left, back to the right, it clipped a light pole and then it spun it right into the ground.

It smashed into the ground, skidded hundreds and hundreds of feet, came to rest in parts and pieces in a four-lane intersection of the highway.

155 of the 156 people all perished.

Then One survivor, a four-year-old her name was Cecilia.

Took him a while to find her because the wreckage was just so.

Can you put the picture of the wreckage, not the plane, up there, saber?

Thank you, it's hard to tell what even that was.

Sifting through it.

One of the firefighters heard, he thought, a faint cry.

He looked over under some of the chunks of wreckage and a little arm came out.

We're not 100% sure because she was not cognizant so much at that time and she was only four, but what is thought to have happened was the mom.

In the few seconds that she had before impact, the mom unbuckled herself, laid herself across her child, her daughter, and hung on for dear life as a human shield.

The rest of her family, the other three people in her family, all perished at the scene.

She made it Years and years later she actually reached out and found the firefighter that found her that afternoon in the wreckage, and they became fast friends and, in 2008, when a beautiful young lady, cecilia, got married, guess who stood in at her wedding?

The firefighter.

It is an amazing story of the love of a parent, though, is it not?

And there's not a personthere's not a mom in this room that wouldn't say oh man, I'd do the same thing.

Of course you would.

How love is the greatis?

The love of God?

How great is the love of God that he would go way beyond that and not pay some price Himself, but to send His only Son to be brutally killed, as totally innocent as us, who are not even parts of the family and who, for the most part, don't even want to be, only to raise this Son to life and to give us a path to salvation?

I got an invitation for you and you'll hear it again this afternoon and tonight in the musicals man.

I got the greatest invitation in the world for you and I want to say yes to His love that will change your life forever.

And if you're willing to do that, to live the life that he has for you, to pursue Him with all your heart, soul and mind, and I can tell you it won't be easy, but you'll never, ever regret it.

Now I know people always get spooked because when we have the orchestra pit here, you think you know I can't get down there.

Look, this thing is we could drive a truck through these two aisle ways right here.

So Rhonda's going to be standing here.

I'm going to be standing over here, like every single Sunday.

I'm going to invite you Don't be so shy, don't deny your vulnerability and your dependence on the Lord to stay away from coming to the altar if you need to for a next step decision or for prayer, got it?

Eddie's going to come on up.

Marsha, she's going to help us out too.

Let's stand and let me pray for you and I'll see you down here.

Lord, we are in need of so many things, but yet primary today is we just are trying trying to understand your love, which is so foreign that we have really no great comparison until we open the gospels and we see the incarnation of Jesus, your son.

And so thank you for loving us enough to change us and to direct our future, and to do it all as an act of grace, not of works.

So, lord, we are yours, amen.