“There are many Christians, in the church, whose love has waned and grown cold. Why has this happened and what should we do?” This sermon “Faith in God’s Love” was preached by Ps Pamela on Sunday 17th September 2023.
Sermon Transcript
What girl doesn’t love a decent romantic story? (Actually, some men do too!) The Notebook, Pride and Prejudice, Casablanca, and the Titanic were all very popular movies because they’re great love stories. (For many women, not me I like a good sci-fi, but for many women, there are few things better than curling up on a sofa, on a cold winter’s night, in the pjs and thick socks, with a bar of chocolate, and a box of tissues, watching a well-produced romantic movie. This is not a waste of time; the estrogen hormone demands it.
I was reading some short romance stories the other day and this true story really stood out to me.
“When Camre Curto gave birth to her son, Gavin, she suffered a stroke and a seizure, which caused her to be placed in a medically induced coma. When she woke, both her long-term and short-term memory were gone, and she did not know who she or her family was. A few months later, she still didn’t remember her husband, Steve. Steve recalled, “We were sitting on the couch, and Camre said to me, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I know I love you,'”.
Those words inspired Steve to write a book titled But I Know I Love You. The purpose of this book was to help Camre remember their 10-year love story. It recounted everything from their very first date to their wedding to the birth of their son, Gavin. It worked, and today, I’m happy to say, Camre knows, and now remembers, both Steve and her son Gavin.
Isn’t that lovely? ‘I don’t know who you are, but I know I love you,’
This reminds me of when the nurses first placed my firstborn child in my arms. I said something like “Hello Ryan, I’m pleased to meet you, I love you.” I’d only just met him, but I knew I loved him.
Love is a wonderful, powerful thing. In fact, it’s probably the most powerful entity in the universe because the Bible tells us that GOD IS LOVE. And there’s nothing more powerful than HIM.
Ps Vicki mentioned the other week that Karl Barth, a famous theologian, was once asked, “What is the greatest thought you ever had?” His answer: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
If you are a born-again Christian today it is because your first spiritual experience with your Creator was having faith in His love.
When you first believed you didn’t just have faith, but you had faith in something.
And that something was that God loved you, and that love was demonstrated in the sacrifice of His Son so that YOU could have eternal life.
Your first seed of faith was based on God’s love for YOU.
That’s how Christianity begins.
God reveals His love to you through the cross.
And it is faith in the revelation of God’s love that brings you salvation.
This is the beginning of our Christian experience.
FAITH in God’s LOVE
And as we grow in our Christian experience; as we read His word, we begin to realize just how amazing His love is for us.
J.I. Packer, in his book ‘Knowing God’ writes: –
What matters supremely, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – that He knows me. I am written on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him because He first knew me and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore when His care falters. This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort…in knowing God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for good. There is tremendous relief in knowing His love is utterly realistic, based at every point of prior knowledge of the worst of me, so that no discovery can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me.
Wow what a revelation of God’s love JI Packer has!
Here’s another quote from David A. Redding who wrote (Jesus Makes Me Laugh with Him)
There is no other blessing I can give you, no other gift so precious, no treasure so refreshing, nothing that can provision you for the journey we are all making, than to tell you that Someone is searching diligently for you. He is not a stationary God. He is crazy about you. The expense to which He has gone isn’t reasonable, is it? The cross was not a very dignified ransom. To say the least, it was a splurge of love, and glory, lavishly spent on you and me: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” “A shepherd having a hundred sheep, if he loses one, leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one and searches diligently until he finds it.”
God is like that shepherd. That is enough to make me laugh and cry.
God loves YOU.
Even when you gave Him no pleasure. Even when you served Satan, and your behaviour was a filthy, offensive stench to His nostrils. He still loved YOU.
That is Agape love. God’s love
There are several Greek words for love in the New Testament, but the two most common are agape and phileo.
Phileo defines a love found among friends.
It is an affectionate love that is conditional.
Phileo says, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,”
or “You treat me kindly, and I’ll do the same.”
On the other hand, agape is the unconditional love of God.
It is not based on performance or even whether it is returned.
It is a love that gives even when rejected.
It is this love that God revealed to us on the cross.
It is this love that sprouted the seed of faith within our hearts.
In Christianity, faith and love go hand in hand. In fact, as far as God is concerned Faith is ineffective without love!
In 1 Corinthians 13
1If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
5does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
6does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
9For we know in part and we prophesy in part;
10but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
11When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
12For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
13But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
As Christians, love is the fertile ground in which our hope and faith grows.
When we first connected with God; God not only revealed His great love to us so that we might believe in Him, but He did far more than this
In Romans 5:5 it says that
…God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.
You see we didn’t just get a vision of God’s love, but He gave us His Agape love by literally pouring it into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
God is love and when His Holy Spirit entered our beings we automatically received His love by faith.
That means that when we first began our salvation God immediately gave us the ability to love as He loves.
I am going to repeat that because it is very important,
when we first began our salvation God immediately gave us the ability to love as He loves. To love with an agape love.
The love God sheds abroad in our hearts is the same love Jesus has towards us.
It is unconditional.
It is not based on performance or even whether it is returned.
It is a love that gives even when rejected.
Agape loves regardless of the response.
This is the love that God has given to us as born-again Christians.
That’s why Jesus said, in John 13:35 “Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
“Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
This is our outward sign of who we are!
LOVE LOVE LOVE
So, what has happened to so many of us?
There are many Christians in the church whose love has waned and grown cold.
If our Christian walk began because of our faith in the agape love of God.
Then surely we need to continue to develop our faith IN the agape love of God.
Not just our faith, we don’t just develop faith, but faith IN the love of God.
Because that will be the area in which Satan will challenge us the most and will do his upmost to destroy.
You get some Christians, who speak faith,
But they don’t exercise any love.
Well, what is the whole point of that?
It means nothing.
That is not what their salvation was based on!
It is not what it’s all about.
Salvation was based on faith IN God’s love.
Faith in God’s love is our foundation.
That is it,
That is how we are born again, that is what sets us apart.
That is what ensures healthy Christian growth (continued development of faith in God’s love)
And that is what will see us through those pearly gates in glory – Faith in God’s love.
Galatians 6:8-9 (NIV)
8The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit (the Spirit of love), from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
We need to realize that when we sow the love of God we will reap the love of God.
We need to develop faith in this spiritual law.
We got saved by it, but we need to continue to develop it in our lives.
We run hither and thither seeking to have our ears tickled.
What will bring us success, what will bring us prosperity, what will bring us happiness? What will bring us healthy longevity?
How can I enjoy my Christian walk?
How can I be victorious?
How do I face up to the evil that surrounds me? What is God’s will for me?
When all along God simply wants you to continue what was started on the day you got saved. And that is to GROW your faith in God’s love. GROW IN GRACE.
In Jesus’ greatest hour of need, His closest friends (the ones who said they’d be there for Him no matter what!) THOSE friends deserted Him. Judas coldly, and callously, betrayed Him with a kiss. Peter vehemently denied Him with swearing and cursing. And the rest? Well, they fled so abruptly that one of them left their clothes behind.
Jesus had deeply, personally invested in these men. He had cared for them for over three years feeding, teaching & loving them.
Yet as Jesus died for the sins of the world, He forgave them. He released all of them from His friends who had deserted Him to the Roman Guards who had crucified Him.
They didn’t ask for forgiveness, yet He freely gave it.
Jesus had faith in the Father’s love.
Jesus knew that because He had sown love He would reap love from many sons and daughters of the kingdom.
Because of His sacrifice of love, they would love Him.
Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.’
That you may be sons;
that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.
The truth is if you
‘Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you’ then you are developing and exercising faith in the love of God.
Because no matter what, you are believing and acting on that belief that God’s love can overcome any obstacle of hatred and discord.
And this will bring a spiritual return of love not just to you but to the whole kingdom of God.
However, if you
Hate your enemies, curse those who curse you, do wrong to those who hate you and damn those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
Then you are sowing to the flesh, and you will of the flesh reap corruption.
Our Christianity isn’t just about our faith.
It is about our faith IN GOD’S LOVE.
Do you believe in His love enough to love as He loves?
Do you believe in His love enough to love as He loves?
Because His love casts out all fear.
If His love is working in your heart you don’t have to fear anything because you know your Father loves you so much so that He’s going to see you through.
His love can change the blackest, bleakest heart.
Ephesians 3:14, 16 – 21 (New International Version)
14For this reason…16I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, 21to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.
Romans 8:28
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,
The key my dear people to entering His kingdom,
The key my dear people to Christian growth,
The key to being a truly blessed person,
is faith in God’s love!
Believe in His love, grow His love in Your heart, and simply do His love.
And you will experience His overwhelming goodness in your life! I finish with this verse, I’ve already read it once, but this first verse says it all.
John 13:35
“Your strong love for each other will prove to the world that you are My disciples.”
Amen