Loving God means...

Loving God means...

If you’re going to love God, you have to learn to love the things He loves and hate the things He hates.

LISTEN TO STEVEN ATHERTON PREACH

Service Notes For Wednesday 2017-11-29

SPEAKERS:

  • Steven Atherton

SCRIPTURES USED:

1 John 4:7-8, Deuteronomy 28, Deuteronomy 29, Deuteronomy 30, Deuteronomy 30:1-6, Numbers 16

SUBJECT:

  • If you’re going to love God, you have to learn to love the things He loves and hate the things He hates.
  • Love – not what most Christians know of as love, but real love.
  • Are you deserving of love?  No!  Even if you were to say you are deserving of some love, the fact of the matter is the love you receive from God far exceeds anything you deserve, at all.  He then tells us to love others as He has loved us.
  • Romans 12:9-10 – Let love be without dissimulation (sincerely, nothing feigned or fake).  Abhor (detest, want to escape & flee from) that which is evil. 
  • Our nature and the things we tend to set our affections on are the opposite of those things that God loves.  We have to humble ourselves when we recognize that the things we love are not the things that He loves.
  • If you are going to be in Him you have to learn to love one another as He loves them.  That includes those who curse you, revile you, despitefully use you.  This thing called love is greater than what we operate in.
  • When you came to know the Lord you had a whole lot of things you loved.  Are you going to continue to embrace those things?  Or are you going to embrace the things the Lord loves?
  • Everything we loved before coming to know the Lord was tied to pride and selfishness.  The love of Christ has no selfishness in it at all!  Where is the selfishness in dying for every person from every age who are going to die in their sins because they reject you?
  • Jesus took the sin of absolutely everyone on Himself.  Whether they would embrace Him or not.  Whether they would receive Him or not.  That is an act of love.
  • Loving one another is about a preference for others over yourself.
  • You can know every word of the Scripture by heart, quote it at will, preach every Sunday morning or Wednesday night, mesmerize people with your knowledge of God’s Word and still not have any love of God in you and not know God at all.
  • If you say Jesus is the son of God and He died upon the cross, that does not mean that God dwells in you, because if you reject those whom He sent to you and the Words He has given you, then you don’t have the Spirit of God.
  • There is not a single thing that you can do that will save you.  If you confess that in order for you or anybody else (even the worst person you can imagine), to be saved, there is nothing you can do to be saved and it is entirely and completely by Jesus Christ alone, then God dwells in you.
  • There has never been a generation in which the power of God has not been made manifest.
  • Nobody, including Jesus Christ, have ever been able to do the Works of God in the flesh.  It is done by the Spirt of God.
  • Have you struggled with your heart being troubled?  Perfect love casteth out fear.
  • You kid yourself if you think you can serve God if you don’t serve those over you or love others.
  • There are not many who call themselves Christians who truly love God! 
  • If some say they are Christians and do lie and are in danger of hell fire and they are your enemies, if you don’t love them, you can’t say you love God.
  • Deuteronomy 28 is the blessings and curses of God.  Deuteronomy 29 talks about the consequences of rejection.  Deuteronomy 30:1-6 talks about God circumcising your heart to love the Lord.  If you will turn back to God and obey Him, He will circumcise your heart that you will love Him with all your heart, with all your soul and that you may live.  Because without that circumcision, you can’t do the other part – loving one another.
  • Moses fell on his face to ask the Lord to give them a way out, not for himself, but for Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and those who were with them.  God would kill everyone who joined with Korah, Dathan & Abiram but God would not have killed the righteous with the wicked.
  • Numbers 16:48 – Aaron stood between the dead and the living to protect the living whom God would otherwise destroy.  That’s an extraordinary example of love for the sake of the people.  This is the love of God at work.  That’s what Jesus did for us, that’s what God asks us to do for others.
  • We are going out into a world that is alienated from God and a Church that has rejected Christ and are likely to reject us, but we have to love them enough that they might yet have a chance to hear and repent.  That’s an extraordinary love and an extraordinary power.  We are going to have to be perfected in that love in order to walk in it.  That is a work that God can do in each of our hearts.