Experiencing God - Reality 2

Well, in your Bibles, you can turn to Exodus 3.

We're continuing in our sermon series on experiencing God, and we've been looking at the life of Moses and some of the things that the ways that God was encountering Moses, that Moses experienced God.

And as we prepare for that, we're going back to kind of the same ideas that we looked at last week as well, where we're looking at these ideas from this book, Experiencing God, where there are these seven different realities that get unpacked about how God moves, how God works in the church, how he works in our lives.

And what we're saying is we can look at Scripture, and as we look at Scripture, we can then look back to look forward of like the ways that God worked then, he can continue to work now.

The way that Moses experienced God will likely be similar to the way that we experience God.

Now, it will be different because we know more, we have more of the revelation that has been given to us through Jesus coming, living the perfect life that we could never live, dying on the cross, being raised from the dead, so that anyone who would call upon his name could become a child of God.

And so as we continue to look at that, we're looking at these ideas.

And these ideas are really helpful for us to wrap our minds around the ways that God is at work around us because we want to just be aware of where is God working around us and how can we partner with him in doing that work rather than saying, God, here's what I want to do, will you just bless this thing?

We say, God, what do you want to do?

Where are you already at work and how can I join you in that thing instead?

And it's a reposturing of our heart of saying, I don't know best.

God, you do know best.

And so I want to listen to you.

I want to be humble to what you have, even if it's contrary to what I think might be better.

Because we tend to do that, right?

We're like, in my very full knowledge of being 37 years old, I have got a really good handle on this.

And I know that you're perfect in wisdom, God, but maybe I know better.

And we're silly in that way of thinking that even if your number's a little bigger than 37, uh, that we've got this uh monopoly on what to do better than the Lord.

And so uh in John 12, 26, Jesus says, If anyone serves me, he must follow me.

And where I am, there will my servant be also.

If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

So if we want to be experiencing God, we want to be where Jesus is.

And so we say, Jesus, where are you working?

How can I join you there?

Uh, experiencing God, uh, it's a great book because it doesn't teach you something new.

It's not like a TED talk where it's like, here are the new, fastest, best ways, shiniest ways for us to experience God.

No, uh, this is actually us saying, here's where we've seen God work in Scripture, here's how He speaks to His people, here's how we can position ourselves to experience that as well.

It's not a step-by-step approach, but rather it's a love relationship through God.

This approach shifts from a world where you're the center to putting God in the center.

And when God is on the throne, he's leading our lives, that's when your joy is going to be full.

That's when you're gonna be able to say, I actually it's not all up to me.

I can trust God to be God, and I can just be James.

And the world tends to work better, my world tends to work better when I stay James instead of trying to play God, right?

Um so uh as we look at this, we've been looking a lot at Moses and his life, and uh just a quick review: we were made to experience God in very real and tangible ways.

And the truths that we cover are a foundation to who we are as a church and as disciples of Jesus.

Uh, we hope that you will continue with us on this journey as we are all changed to be more like Christ personally and collectively, that we would see uh that we would become a church that experiences God together.

Not uh we're all on this journey individually, but also we're uh collectively growing in maturity, growing to become more like Jesus.

We're growing, uh, as we said in the last series, because we know we're made for more, we're growing and becoming more and more like Christ, who's the head, who's building his body, the church here.

And so uh last week the principle that we talked about was this reality that God is always at work.

He's always at work around you.

And we talked about this other prerequisite: a relationship with Jesus.

Like if I'm talking about experiencing God and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, none of this is going to make sense.

We have to recognize that, yes, we have all sinned.

We have to recognize that the wages of that sin is death.

Our just penalty is death or separation from God.

We have to recognize that God demonstrated his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He made a way when we were his enemies for us to be brought near to the Father.

And how do we receive that gift?

With the kids, they say, A, B, C, admit that you have sinned, believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose from the dead.

C, uh, choose to follow him, confess that he is Lord.

Uh if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one is confess one confesses and is saved.

Romans 10 13, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

First, before you can experience God, you have to have a relationship with God.

And that starts only through trusting in the perfect and complete work of Jesus Christ.

If you have done that, awesome.

Let's work on experiencing God together.

If you have not done that, let today be the day of salvation.

Let's let's move together towards Christ.

Let's take a step of obedience together today.

Uh, and the reality that we're going to look at today is this that God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.

God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is both real and personal.

And this reality is almost one that you would be like, uh duh.

Oh, God's love.

Haven't heard that sermon yet.

It's a good thing that you hear the God's love sermons, right?

We need to hear, we need to be reminded of God's love because we've been loved by really imperfect people around us.

And because if we're not careful about uh making sure that we're really clear about the way that God loves us, what we tend to do is we say, God loves you like a father, and you say, Ooh, I don't know about that one, because my dad wasn't perfect.

My dad had, when you say dad, uh, there's all this baggage that comes up.

When we say God forgives, we think of somebody who said they forgave, but then held a grudge.

And so we tend to bring our broken, marred worldview into how God treats us, and that's not how God loves you.

God uh loves and he loves and he demonstrated that love in a way that would remove all of your past, present, and future sin from you.

Because Jesus lived the perfect life you could never live.

He gives you his righteousness, and so that your sins will be separated.

You as far as the east is from the west.

It's not broken relationships we have around us here.

It's not holding grudges, God doesn't hold grudges.

God is pursuing a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal.

And when we think about Moses, like Moses uh he he kind of had like the mountaintop moment, literally.

That was also like the figurative mountaintop moment, right?

Like he would talk to God as a man talks to his friend, and we've got a slide with that.

Uh, Exodus 33, 11, we see the way that the Lord of Moses spoke.

God pursued a continuing love relationship with Moses that was real and personal.

The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend.

Like, that's goals for your relationship with the Lord.

He has a love relationship with you where he's pursuing you.

It's real and personal.

He speaks to us as a friend speaks to a friend.

Like, I would love to have a relationship where I hear from the Lord as a man speaks to his friend.

Uh like Moses did incredible things.

He would write the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch.

But first it was that the Lord pursued a love relationship with him.

God took the initiative to come to Moses and initiate that love relationship with him that was both real and personal.

And later we see in Exodus 3, uh, how does God do that?

Verses 1 through 4.

And we're going to stand up for the reading of the word.

I'm going to invite you guys, stand up, and I will read the word because this isn't James's word wisdom, these aren't James' words, these are God's words.

Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of the bush.

He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight.

Why the bush is not burned?

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here I am.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

You guys can grab a seat.

Lord, uh, thank you for your word.

I pray that you would speak to us today as we look at uh the way you pursue a love relationship with us, and that uh, Lord, it would become more real and more personal to each of us today.

Uh that we wouldn't just say, Okay, I've heard that one before, but that we would be humble and that we would be ready to learn uh from you and from your word.

And so, Lord, uh would you speak through your word?

Would you work in this time?

Uh we dedicate it to you.

This is all for your good, for your glory, for your kingdom.

Build your kingdom here.

We trust you.

We pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So Moses might have come to this mountain for a time of worship, right?

He's he's out, he's tending the flock, uh, and he leads them to the west side of the wilderness.

He comes to Horeb and he encounters God.

He experiences God here.

The Lord appears to him, the angel of the Lord.

A lot of times when we see angel of the Lord, uh, that's pre-incarnate Jesus Christ, who is showing up in the Old Testament.

And so we here we see Jesus and Moses together appearing in the flame of fire, and we see uh that Moses says, Man, I've never seen this before.

It's a burn, a bush that's burning, but it's not being consumed.

Let me stop, let me set aside, and let me listen to what is this?

And the Lord says, Moses, Moses, and then Moses responds, here I am.

He responds to that call as Moses is pursued in a continual love relationship by God.

And we there are countless texts throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy that illustrate with uh this pursuit of a relationship from God to Moses, that Moses was being pursued by God to have this relationship because Moses was flawed.

Like he was uh stubborn as God called him.

We'll see in a in the coming weeks that uh he had a million excuses of why he shouldn't be the one who would lead the Israelites out of Egypt, out of bondage, out of slavery.

Uh he thinks he knows better.

And then as Moses is leading a stubborn and hard-hearted people, uh, he's like, you can see the frailty of man in Moses oftentimes.

And we see that Moses is not a perfect leader, but God draws him in.

He continues to pursue him, even though he's not a perfect leader, because God is pursuing Moses in this love relationship that we see.

And for some of us, that the wording love relationship even makes us uncomfortable.

Uh, it is a pure holy love relationship that God wants.

He wants to spend time with you.

The way that I want to spend time with my kids, the way that we delight in our people and we gravitate towards them.

He delights in us even though we don't deserve it.

He says, You're mine, and I'm calling you to myself, and I'm gonna continue to pursue me even when you fail.

Because it's not about your performance.

You can't measure up, you can't perform well enough.

But he says, I have called you to myself, and I'm gonna keep pursuing you even when you're stubborn and rebellious.

The way that we often do for our children.

And we can praise God for that because that is great news because we fail, we fall short, and we say, I don't know why I did the thing that I shouldn't have done, Lord.

But he continues to pursue us.

He continues to love us.

Even though Moses was stubborn, flawed, God continued to pursue a relationship with him to draw him back.

And then we see later in Exodus 24, 12, 15, 16, and 18, which I know there's a lot of verses there.

Uh it's a mouthful, but we'll put them up on the screen.

We see God pursued a continuing love relationship with Moses that was real and personal.

The Lord said to Moses, Come up to me to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.

And then verse 15, then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain.

The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days, and on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.

And then verse 18, Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

God said, Hey, we got a meeting, we got a camping trip, come on, forty days, forty nights, come up to the mountain, let's meet face to face as a man talks with his friend.

The Lord spent time with Moses.

See, God created us for a love relationship with himself, and he delights as we delight in spending time with him.

And if I say, hey, God delights in spending time with you, uh, we should set aside regular time to do that, to enjoy that.

You're like, man, is that just another thing to do?

It would be beneficial for you to do that, but it's not a have to do.

It's I get to spend time with the creator of the universe who delights in me.

And I want to spend that time with him because he wants to spend that time with me, which blows my mind because I'm like, why would you want to spend time with me?

And that should that should blow our mind that the God, the creator of the universe, wants to spend time with us, that he loves us.

He's pursuing a relationship not just with Moses, but also with us.

Now, your face isn't going to shine, likely.

Okay?

I'm not guaranteeing your face will shine, uh, that you'll have to put on a cloak over your face so that people can see, oh, did James hear from the Lord today?

Did Moses hear from the Lord today?

Is his face shining and glowing?

No.

Ah, must be a tough day.

Uh your face will likely not shine.

You will likely not hear from a burning bush.

But I wouldn't say you won't, right?

It's not likely.

It has happened before.

God could do that again, but God has also given us his word, which Moses helped to write.

So obviously things are a little bit different in our time period than his, but uh, the Lord can still speak and reveal things to us today.

And we need to come with that same expectancy that God wants to speak to us through his word.

Isaiah 43:10, God didn't just speak to Moses, didn't just pursue Moses, he also pursued Isaiah.

Isaiah 43:10

But you are my witnesses, O Israel, says the Lord, and you are my servant.

You have been chosen to know me, believe in me, and understand that I alone am God.

There is no other God, there never has been and never will be.

He's speaking to Isaiah to say, Hey, I have chosen you to know me, to believe in me, to understand that I am God.

There's no other God.

He's speaking to Isaiah, saying, Hey, I've set you apart for this purpose.

I've chosen you.

That's love language that we see.

We see how personal, how real that is, how tangible that is.

God initiated that.

He's the one who pursues.

Every assignment that God gives you is a new venture of faith.

You know him, you love him, you believe him, you trust him, you obey him, so that you can know him, love him, believe him, trust him, and obey him for the next assignment.

He reveals this to us so that we can walk closely with him, so that we can continue to go deeper in that love relationship.

Because the more that I know God, the more that I love him, the more that I love him, the more that I want to obey him, the more that I obey him, the more that I know him.

It's this circle, this cycle where we grow deeper in love and grow deeper in obedience, which then makes us grow deeper in knowledge of the King.

And these are connected.

Our love, our knowledge, our trust, our obedience.

God pursues a continuing love relationship with you.

So we've got another slide, it's probably the first one, with you that is real and personal.

Not just like anybody.

I want you to put your name, if you're taking notes, write your name in the blank instead of you.

God pursues a continuing love relationship with Rhonda that is real and personal.

God continues, he pursues a continuing love relationship with Ken that is real and personal.

And as you recognize that it's not just like, wow, yeah, God loves everybody.

No, God loves you and he called you to himself.

He's drawn you, he chose you to be his.

Or the NLT says it slightly different, which shows how God pursues us.

I have loved you, my people.

Long ago the Lord said to Israel, I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love.

With unfailing love, I have drawn you to myself.

He showed continual, steadfast love to his people.

He's saying, Hey, I have this everlasting love for you, and I've continued showing this faithfulness to you.

God loved Jeremiah with this everlasting love as well.

He drew him near with his loving kindness, and he draws us near the same way through his unfailing love.

It doesn't feel like the relationships around us that have like a quote of, This is how many times you can wrong me, and then I'm out, it's over, we're moving on.

No.

Like it's not a transactional relationship, it's a love relationship.

And when we see a love relationship, I'm reminded of uh the first and great commandment that Jesus says in Matthew 22, 37 through 38, he's tested, and they're saying, What's the great and first commandment?

What's the greatest commandment?

What should we focus on doing?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment.

Can you describe your love relationship with God by saying, I love you with all my heart?

For most of us, that's a no, I try, but I fail.

I I give you a lot.

Maybe I can say I love you with 90% of my heart, but there's that 10% that, man, I am a trifler.

I I go back and I start running after things I shouldn't run after.

Or maybe you say, Yeah, I got it.

And way to go, you should disciple all of us if you are the one who has nailed it.

Uh that that relationship is real and personal.

Like we can say that we love because God first loved us.

Like we love because we've been loved by God, and that love has transformed us to then love others.

We know that God loves us, and we've already had this verse before uh today.

Uh Romans 5.8, God shows his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were rebels running the opposite way, uh, his enemies, Jesus said, Let me pay the price to draw you near.

Let me draw you near to me.

This love is real and is personal.

And we're looking at a lot of different texts because you could fact check this idea against all of Scripture and say, I see God's love, I see God's pursuit.

He wants a relationship with this people that is real and personal, and you'll see it throughout his word that he has a plan for redemption, a plan for redeeming a stubborn and rebellious people.

And he says, I'm gonna make a way for you, even though you don't deserve it, even though you're gonna need a ton of grace, I'm gonna make a way for you to be made whole, I'm gonna make a way for you to become a child of God.

We love because we're loved by him.

He initiates that love relationship, that relationship, he demonstrates it most clearly by sending his son Jesus to die an excruciating death on the cross to make our love relationship with him personal and possible.

But it all starts with love.

And so I'm gonna go to an obscure verse that most of you have never heard before.

Uh John 3.16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.

It all starts with love.

Like he demonstrates his love so clearly for us, he initiates this love of saying, You could never measure up, so let me send Jesus, my son, to pay the price so that you can be brought near.

Even though we don't deserve it, even though we couldn't earn it, I'm gonna show you this love in a way that's undeniable.

Because some of us say, like, I love God, I love you.

And maybe in a relationship you've said, I love you, I love you, I love you.

And you're like, but your actions aren't really showing it.

Right?

Like, love moves.

Love does, love acts, it's a verb.

We we take action with our love, and your love, your actions will show if your love is there or not.

Like we say, I love you, but we keep hurting that person.

Not the kind of love that we receive from God.

He has He is love.

Like God is love.

And that is incredible and mind-blowing.

And we see that He loved the world in this way.

And that real Christianity is not merely a religion.

It's a relationship with the person.

That God created us for a love relationship with him.

More than anything else, he wants us to love him with our total, our whole nature, our whole person.

He's the one that pursues that love relationship with us.

Even though we don't naturally seek him on our own.

Everything that we are going to do and experiencing God has to come from this place of love.

Because if you don't have love, it's just duty and it's begrudging obedience and it dries up real quick.

You say, James, you just keep telling me what to do, and it's not working for me.

This Jesus thing is not working.

Well, if it's not happening through love, through a lens of love, it won't work.

You'll burn out.

You'll say, I don't really like this thing.

Christianity is a terrible hobby.

It has to be from a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That even though you fail, even though you don't measure up, he says, You're mine, and I'm going to make you whole.

And I'm going to, after I've lived the perfect life you could never live, I'm also going to give you the ability to walk in freedom and to no longer choose sin and no longer return to your vomit, but to actually walk in freedom and walk in love and walk in grace.

And then we're able to obey him and we're able to experience real joy.

That's not a life of fear of, man, if everyone just knew this, these secret sins I had, I would be ruined.

No, like here's freedom.

Here's life.

Walk in that life.

Walk in that joy, walk in that peace.

God has this relentless love for us.

1 John 4, 16, we've come to know and believe that God, the love that God has for us, God is love.

And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Like we could have just gone to 1 John 4 and said, this is our message.

We see God's love over and over and over again.

In 1 John 4, we should have a slide for that, maybe.

God has this relentless love for us.

No slide, okay?

The greatest truth in all scripture is this that God is love.

And as we understand this truth in its full dimensions, it sets us free to enjoy all that is ours as a Christian.

But you have to accept this reality that God loves you.

If you grew up experiencing unconditional love in your family, this might be easy for you.

But if you didn't, if your family was rough like many of ours, this might be really hard for you to believe.

This unconditional love without strings attached, this love that's greater than all of your sin.

God loves you not because you deserve his love, but because his nature is love.

Because God is love.

And the only way he will ever relate to you is love.

Like his love for you gives you an inherent worth that nothing can diminish.

And if you are in Christ, you can only ever see his love.

No human can comprehend his love for us as his children.

Our limited experience of human love hinders us from understanding God's unconditional love for us.

But his message is clear.

When we reject him and turn our devotion elsewhere, our rejection carries the same pain as adulterous betrayal.

God's love for us is incomprehensible that we would even reject him.

It's hard to fathom that he could still love us after we've rejected, ignored, or disobeyed him.

But his love is completely different from ours.

His love follows us to the depths of our sinfulness until he's reclaimed us.

His love is undaunted when we run away from him.

He continues to pursue us.

That's the incredible love he has, and he's demonstrated to us.

If you can't accept the truth that God loves you, you'll be limited in the ways that you can relate to him.

It takes to receive that love from him.

And you might instead resent him because you start to layer these broken relationships on your relationship with God.

And you say, God doesn't see me that way.

God's holding my past failures against me.

No, he's not.

Which, as a loving parent, doesn't mean that he says yes to everything you ask.

Because as a loving parent, you don't say yes to everything that your children ask for.

You don't give them things that would destroy them.

You don't give them things that they're not ready for.

Are you assured that God dearly loves you?

Are you set free to enjoy the way that He expresses His love on you each day?

Love is greater than religious knowledge.

Love is greater than religious knowledge.

John 5, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees who think they know it all.

And he says, You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life.

And it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Like you can memorize a lot of Bible verses, you can study the Bible.

And sometimes we say, like, God, I love you so much.

I just I love your word, and I really want to like highlight all the pages, and I want to know everything and understand all the deep things of Jesus that not everybody understands.

Uh, and we start to make it more like a study than a relationship.

And he says, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, but hey, the eternal life is in me, Jesus Christ.

And God's word will show us that.

But Bible study alone won't give you eternal life.

You could memorize the whole Bible, you could be able to discuss uh minute issues of biblical scholarship and yet fail to experience the truth of its pages.

If your knowledge grows big and your heart grows cold, that's not a life pleasing to God.

That's not, you're not experiencing the love of God.

You're not experiencing God.

It's a subtle temptation to prefer the book to the author, but a book won't confront you about your sin.

The author will.

Books can be ignored.

It's much harder to avoid the author when he's seeking a relationship with you.

The Pharisees in Jesus' day thought that God would be pleased with their knowledge of his word.

They could quote long, complicated passages of scripture.

They would love to recite and study God's law for hours on end.

Yet, Jesus condemned them because although they knew the scriptures, they didn't know God.

They were proud of their Bible knowledge, but they rejected the invitation to know God's son.

And like, we we don't want to be a church that like produces like Bible trivia champs.

I want you to know your Bible.

I want you to know your Bible and love the word of God because you'll fall in love with the Son as you spend time in his word.

But it's not the word alone.

It's the word, capital W.

The Son.

We gotta pursue our relationship with the Son.

And like we get tempted to turn to substitutes that don't satisfy.

They're not necessarily bad things in themselves.

They might include serving the church, doing good deeds, reading Christian books, like maybe if I just lead this ministry, then God will really love me.

No, he's not gonna love you any more or any less based on your performance.

Like you have to hear that.

God will not love you more or less based on your performance.

He loves you perfectly.

Now live in that freedom.

Like enjoy that freedom.

You can fail in the world and be rejected.

When you fail, God says, you're still mine.

Enjoy that freedom.

Like take a deep breath.

Experience that grace.

No amount of Christian activity will ever replace your relationship with Jesus.

Paul in Philippians 3 says, everything I've done before, all of my spiritual resume, it's all garbage, it's all refuse, it's all dung compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ.

Never become satisfied with religious activity rather than a personal, vibrant, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

So as you study your Bible, you might sense that God has something to say to you directly through the verses that you're reading.

And I want you to just think of that.

Like take a moment to realize that the God who spoke and created the universe is now speaking to you through his word.

He wants to meet you there.

So we should come expectantly as we open his word and we say, God, would you speak to me?

I don't want this to just be a mental exercise.

I want, I trust that you're going to speak to me.

Would you speak to me today as I open this word?

Every time you open God's word, do it with this holy expectation that he will meet you there.

And you can start doing that even now as we open up another verse today.

You can start as we open up, you open up the word alone after this.

Come to Scripture with this expectation.

Like if Jesus could speak and raise the dead, calm a storm, cast out demons, heal the incurable, what effect might his word from him have on your life?

On the parenting situation that feels hopeless, on the business situation that feels hopeless, on the family relationship that feels hopeless.

Like he can resurrect those things as well.

He can breathe new life into what seems dead.

Well, you look to him because his love is greater than religious knowledge.

And his love will lead you into joy.

His love will lead you into true, beautiful, wonderful joy in the Son, in Jesus.

John 17, another incredible passage.

Jesus says this in verse 13.

Now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I'm coming to you, Father, and I've spoken these things to my disciples, to this world, that those who follow me might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

Like Jesus wants our joy to be fulfilled.

As we look to his word and we recognize that he wants a love relationship with us, that he's continually pursuing this love relationship that is real and personal, he wants to lead us into joy.

If anything ought to characterize us as a people, like they say, those Taylor Bible church people, they are full of joy.

Like that should be the word that comes up with our name.

That should be the word that comes up with a follower of Jesus.

Jesus spoke many times to his disciples about his joy being complete and full in them.

His disciples were filled with joy as they realized who they were, children of God, joint heirs with Christ.

Heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified in with him.

They were dead in their sins, but they were made alive in Christ.

They had once been helpless victims of death, but now death had no hold over them.

O death, where is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus.

He's given us this incredible salvation, and our joy should be full.

How could we be anything less than joyful?

Our love for him won't grow unless we spend time with him, unless we listen to his voice, unless we experience his love for us.

If we find that our love for Jesus has waned or we struggle to serve him, it's often a clear sign that we haven't taken time to sit at his feet and be with him.

Like, delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart, more of him.

As we delight ourselves in the Lord, he gives us what our hearts long for, which is more of him, and our joy becomes more and more full.

And the things that we thought were so significant and so important here on this earth become smaller in light of his surpassing worth.

He's worthy of our worship and our praise.

We should be satisfied in his love, satisfied in his joy.

It's one of the fruit, it's a fruit of the Spirit, after all.

This joy is unlike any happiness produced by the world, it fills you, permeates everything you do.

Jesus didn't pray that you'd merely be happy or escape grief.

He prayed that you'd have the same joy that the Father had given him: a divine joy that comes from a deep, unwavering relationship with the Father.

That's the way our joy can be full.

That's the way our joy can be grounded through the pain, through the sorrow, through all the hardship.

John 16, 33, I've said these things to you that in me you may have peace.

In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

If we're going to have peace that doesn't make sense, we have to be found in Jesus.

We have to be rooted and grounded in his love.

And so I think when we're thinking about what does that joy look like for you, you could think about your salvation experience.

When did you trust Jesus alone for your salvation?

And like this joy grabs you, it grips you, it moves you.

And then, like, when else have you seen his joy?

Like when I think about the joy, the highs, the big moments of joy, oftentimes it is around these experiences, but this joy that he has for us, it's not based on experiences alone.

It's based on knowing him more and more.

So, what does that look like for you to experience the love of Christ, the joy of Christ?

And this love leads us to abundant life.

Jesus says, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Jesus wants us to have abundant life, this full joy that doesn't get taken away from us.

Just when the cowboys forget to show up on a Sunday or the Aggies forget to show up on a Saturday or just don't look like they're ever going to be any good anymore.

He wants a joy that's greater than that, that's greater than your circumstances.

It says, Let me show you this love.

And would we be satisfied in him?

See, time and time again, God would invite Moses to talk with him, to be with him.

He would initiate and maintain a continuing relationship that was personal, this relationship based on love, and daily he would fulfill his purposes through his friend, Moses.

This relationship with God was very practical.

Like he would provide for his people through Moses and his leadership.

And our love relationship with God is also practical as he guides us each day.

We say, God, I don't know how I'm going to do it today, but I trust that you're going to work in this situation in ways that I can't.

And I'm going to have to trust you.

I'm going to have to remain in you.

I'm going to have to abide in you and in your love.

Love like the love from the Father.

Jesus said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by my Father.

He often referred to God as his Father, and this is going to give us different pictures for each of us based on our relationship with our fathers.

For some, it'll bring up a picture of love, laughter, respect, acceptance.

To others, fear, rejection, disappointment.

These variations reveal why it's so important not to take your understanding from of your heavenly father from your experience, but to take it from Scripture, from God's Word.

So as we grow in understanding the love of the Father, we recognize that He was willing to pay any price in order to rescue us.

We recognize that He loves us so much that He's willing to discipline us because of His great love for us, to bring us to Christian maturity, to bring us to grow and find depth in our relationship with Him.

That even when we rebel against Him and reject His love, He continues to do what's best for us.

He doesn't make His love for us conditioned on our love for Him.

He loves us even when we aren't loving, even when we don't deserve it.

This gives us a biblical picture of what the Father is like.

And if this hasn't been your experience, it can be now.

He's adopted you, He wants to love you in a way you've never experienced.

So would you look to the Father and would you look to His love?

A love that is uniquely personal.

We see the way that Jesus loved Zacchaeus was different as well.

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.

Hey, we're coming to your house.

We're going to go and I'm going to meet all your friends.

I'm going to tell them some good news.

And you might say, like, that's a weird way for Jesus to relate to a tax collector that everybody else hated.

But he has a uniquely personal love.

As he was on his way to Jerusalem to fulfill his assignment on the cross, there were multitudes around him that would throng about him.

They would crowd around him.

And then he stops to say, Let me talk to this wee little man, Zacchaeus, and let me tell him some good news.

Let me give him some good news that would then radically change Zacchaeus' life.

Jesus will also relate to you uniquely.

He knows your past, he knows what you're going to face in the future, and he'll speak uniquely directly to you.

He knows you, he wants you to know him.

So you don't have to wonder what Jesus wants.

If you're walking with the Lord daily, you'll hear from him.

You'll already be in the middle of God's will as you walk in obedience with him day by day.

Jesus won't ever give you a substitute for himself.

He's the only way to the Father.

And if you're disoriented about how God speaks, just walk closely with Jesus and walk with others who have walked with the Lord and say, I think I'm hearing from him.

Like that's why we've encouraged the folks in the group of like, as you experience God, write that down and bring it to our group and let's talk about it.

Because some of you might say, God wants me to go and buy a brand new house and a brand new car and all these things.

And like, well, that sounds a lot like you, not what the Lord's calling you to do.

I want some of those things too, yeah.

But I don't know if that's quite where the Lord's working here.

Let's let's refocus, let's let's hear why do you think the Lord's speaking to you in those ways?

And we can help each other.

Like we should be saying, hey, uh, let's listen to wisdom of those who have been walking with the Lord longer than us, and let's grow with them of saying, how do we experience God?

How can I hear from him?

How can I know that's not just uh the pizza I ate for dinner that's keeping me up at night?

How can I know that that's actually God's will?

And we're going to be talking about that in these coming weeks.

And so we're excited about continuing to unpack what it means to experience God, but bring those things of where you think the Lord is speaking to you, and let's talk about those in our groups.

This love relationship with God is more important than any other factor in your life.

This is uh uniquely personal, and it's more important than any other factor in your life.

If you're gonna experience God, it all starts here.

If you miss this part, the rest of it doesn't make any sense.

So you've got to believe in Jesus.

You've you were saying, God, where are you working around me?

And then it has to all come from this place of a love relationship with God.

What does that love relationship with God look like?

At Taylor Bible Church we say, know love, live, and tell.

We want to know Jesus, love Jesus, live for Jesus, and tell others about him.

But uh experiencing God has their own five.

Know Jesus, love Jesus, believe him, trust him, which then leads you to obey him, which would be live for him.

Uh, and then tell others about him.

We have extra because that's part of being obedient.

And if we don't say it explicitly, some of you are like, I don't have to tell others about Jesus.

Great.

Uh no, we want to be bold in our proclamation about who Jesus is and what he's done for us.

And so that's why we know, love, live, and tell.

Before we can live for him, we have to believe him, we have to trust him, which then allows us to obey him.

And so the quality of my love relationship will determine all sorts of things in the way that I experience God.

And so, as we uh wrap up, here's the main encouragement through this section.

Enjoy his love.

He delights in you.

Not because you're awesome, but because he's awesome.

Because he's gracious beyond anything we've ever experienced, and he has a love for you that is incredible and perfect.

The first step to you enjoying his love is for you to trust him alone for your salvation.

The second step is for us to just say, Lord, would you lead us today?

Like, God, would you give me eyes to see where you're working?

Would you give me eyes to see how you see me?

Give me eyes to see how you see others around me.

And like just be with him.

Enjoy being with him, and he will transform you from one degree of glory to the next into Jesus' likeness.

That's what he wants to do.

So a love relationship with God is both personal and practical.

It's probably the most important factor for us knowing and doing the will of God.

If your love relationship with God isn't as it should be, nothing else will be in order.

It's essential for you to be in a right relationship with God through Jesus.

So trust in him alone for your salvation first.