How to Love God

Dale O'Shields: Thank you for joining us for today's Practical Living broadcast. I appreciate that through this message you will learn how to apply God's word and truths to any situation in your life. Stay with us as we discover God's truths that will transform us. Would you join me this morning in welcoming our Frederick campus and our Clarksburg campus? Give them a good strong round of applause this morning. Welcome to church. Of course, we always welcome those that are joining us online as well. So glad to have all of you joining us today. Just a couple of things that I do want to draw to your attention before we actually get into today's message. Next weekend, we're going to begin a brand new series of messages for the rest of the summer called "Let us Pray." We're going to be talking about the importance and the power of prayer and equipping you to be a better prayer person, learning how to pray more effectively in your lives and see God respond to you. So don't miss that. It starts again next weekend, "Let us Pray." Also, tomorrow is the 13th of July 2026, and that day is a very important day because exactly 40 years ago, the 13th of July landed on a Sunday that year, 1986. It was the very first service of Church of the Redeemer. So we are actually celebrating our 40th anniversary. That first service, we met at what was then called Gaithersburg Junior High School. I think it has a different name now, I can't recall exactly. It's down in the Old Town Gaithersburg area. We had a little classroom back in the way, way back in the back of the school. We had to put up all signs along the hallways saying, "Keep going, you'll eventually find us." At that first service, we actually had one family from the community that came to that very first service. So that was my first challenge of faith. Would I preach to one family? I preached my heart out to one family that day. If they weren't saved, they were going to be saved by the end of the service. God met us, and it's incredible to see what the Lord has done over these years. We just want to take a moment and give thanks to God for His goodness to us, His faithfulness over all these 40 years. Four decades that my wife and I have been privileged to be a part of leading the life here at the congregation called Church of the Redeemer, and of course, so many of you that are part of that as well have been a part for many, many years. For those that are freshly a part, we welcome you to be a part of the vision God has for our future. Today, I want to give you a standalone message, one that was on my heart. I actually was going to preach it last weekend, but you might recall that I made a little change in my plans last weekend and preached a different message. I felt like it was an important message for us to hear and I trust it was something that ministered to you. I'm going to bring the message that I had planned for last weekend this week as a transitional point for the new series we'll start next weekend together. I want to talk to you for a few moments this morning about how to love God. How do you and I actually love God? How do we show Him that we love Him? As soon as I mention the topic of love, obviously it's something that most of us think about at least fairly regularly, perhaps even at some point in time every day. You think about love, consciously or unconsciously. You may be listening to a radio or music and you're hearing themes of love. In fact, there have been millions and millions of songs that have been recorded all around the world throughout the centuries. About 40 to 60 percent of the songs that are recorded are recorded about love. Think about that. About four to six out of every 10 songs written have to do with something relative to love. It's the same with many of the movies that people watch. The themes that they're aware of are all themes of what it means to experience love. I would start this morning by asking you, who do you love? When you think about love in your life, what person comes to mind? Who do you love? Beyond just the who do you love, how do you know that you love them? What are the characteristics or the representations in our life that show us that we're actually really in love with, we care for someone else? Another important question is, how do they know that you love them? How do they know that you actually have that sense of commitment to them? This is about love because love is something that's not just spoken in words. We all know that words can be very cheap and words can be said one day that are different than the next. Real love is always demonstrated by action. I thought I would start today by giving you a biblical definition, or actually biblical definitions, plural, because it's not just one. In the Greek New Testament, which is the original language of the New Testament—Greek and Aramaic, but primarily the Greek language—you'll find three words that are translated in our English Bible as love. The reason this is important is because in our vernacular, in our vocabulary, we only have one word for love that we use over a variety of things. I can say I love my wife, and in the next sentence say I love ice cream. There's a big difference between loving my wife and loving ice cream, but I use the very same word. We attach it to all kinds of things, some very deep and meaningful, some very superficial and shallow. It's vital that we understand what the Bible means when it uses the word love because when you read your English Bibles, you'll read words like love and words like affection, and you wonder what these words really mean to me and how they apply to our lives. In the Greek New Testament, there are three basic words that you find for love. Number one is the top tier of love, and that's called Agape. This Agape love is the God kind of love. It is fully sacrificial in nature. It is the top tier of love. It is all the other kinds of loves multiplied hundreds and thousands of times over. It's the greatest love that you and I could imagine. It's defined for us in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Paul gives the definition of what Agape love is. There's another love spoken of in the New Testament, and that's the word Phileo. The word Phileo is a friendship kind of love. It's where you have a sense of affection for another person, a kindred connection with them. It's something that we translate with words in our English language like philanthropic. When you do something to benefit humanity, there's the idea of being brotherly or in some way having a kindred care about other people. Just north of us here is the city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. So Phileo is a key word, but it's not as deep as the word Agape. In the New Testament, you also find another word, and the word is Storge. It seems a little different in terms of the way it's spelled, S-T-O-R-G-E, but it's actually pronounced Storge. The word Storge really is about your family. It's the love you have that's just a natural kind of instinctual love you have primarily in family relationships. So Agape, Phileo, and Storge are the Greek words often translated as the same English word love in our New Testament. The Greeks also had one other word for love from the root called Eros, and that's where we get erotic love from. Erotic is a word that speaks of something of the body, something of the passions of the body that people experience as we often think of in the romantic dimension of life. That word is not actually found in the Bible. It's not a bad thing. In fact, erotic love is something that needs to be properly demonstrated between a man and a woman in the holy bonds of matrimony. That's certainly appropriate in that regard and God gives boundaries for erotic love. Erotic or Eros love is different from Agape, Phileo, and Storge love, but these are the different kinds of love expressed by the Greeks. Our primary focus today is on the very first of these because the first defines for us the love of God. It is the Agape of God. We're not talking today about Phileo, though it's a good thing. We're not talking about Storge or family fondness today, as valuable as that is. Our focus is on Agape. We're called to receive the Agape of God and to also Agape God. To receive the love of God, but to also love God at the highest level in return. So the questions we want to answer today are: Do you really love God? How do you know that you love God? How do you show God that you Agape Him? Just as God has shown to us that He Agapes us, how do we love God in return? What are the benefits and what are the blessings when you and I learn to increase our love for God? Let's look at four lessons together that will help us to learn how to love God. Lesson number one is to understand that loving God starts with God loving us. It's important to realize that love doesn't start with us. Love always starts with God. God is the source, God is the initiator, and God is the sustainer of love. If it were not for the Agape love of God, there would be no love in our world. The love that exists in our world emanates from the love that comes from God Himself. Love is what God is by nature. 1 John chapter 4, verse 16 says, "We know how much God loves us, Agapes us, and we have put our trust in His Agape. God is love." That's the Greek word that's used there. "And all who live in Agape, live in love, live in God, and God lives in them." Here this scripture tells us that yes, God Agapes us. He loves us because of who He is. It's not just something God does, God cannot not love because by His very nature, the essence of who God is is that God indeed is love. Love doesn't just abide in Him, love is the nature, the very nature of God. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5 describes it for us this way: "But God is so rich in mercy and He Agaped us, He loved us so much that even though we were dead because of our sins, He gave His life when He raised Christ from the dead. It is only by God's grace that you've been saved." So Paul defines for us this love that was demonstrated from God to us by sending His very own son. As he tells us in Romans 5, verse 8, "But God showed His great Agape, His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners." Love would not be in our world if it were not for God. God is the source of love. God is the initiator of love. God is the sustainer of love. Love does not start with us, love starts with God. It is found in God. It is sustained in us by God. You can't really know love apart from God. A lot of people will think that they understand what love is, but they don't know God. You don't really understand love until you know God because God is perfection when it comes to love. He is the perfect love of our lives. He emanates love from His very being. Lesson number two: to understand that loving God is the right response to God's love for us. Any love that we have for God is always a response of God's love to us. So love starts with God and it comes to us, but then God says, "Now I want that love to be reciprocated." In any relationship, if love is unilateral, if it's only coming from one side, it is never complete. There's never the completion of love when it's only one-sided. The only way love really works is when there's a reciprocation of love. God loved us, loves us, and by nature loves us. He proved it by sending His own son into our world. Love is directed toward us, but then God says, "Now I want to see if you'll respond back and reciprocate that love to me." 1 John 4, verse 19 says, "We love Him because He first loved us." What God wants from us is a return of the love that He's extended to us. Although love starts with God, His love for us should prompt us to love Him in return. Jesus taught us the importance of this Himself. Jesus was asked a question one day about the most important commandment. Matthew chapter 22, verses 35 through 38: "One of them, a religious leader and an expert in religious law, tried to trap Him with this question, 'Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?' Jesus replied, 'You must love, you must Agape,'—that's the Greek word that's used there—'the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.'" Jesus said if you want to know what's most important to God, the thing that is most important to God is that you love Him in return. He's extended love to you and now what God is looking for from you and from me is for us to actually Agape Him. Loving God should be our response to God's love for us. If you want to know how to please God, I will simply tell you this morning from the Bible: the way to please God is to love Him. That's how you please God. You please God by loving Him. Love for God will cure all kinds of things in your life. What God is looking for from me and from you is: Do you love me? I have Agaped you, do you Agape me? Do you love me with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength? This is exactly where Adam and Eve went wrong. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in this beautiful environment, this paradise called the Garden of Eden. God says, "I've placed you here. I love you. I've created you in my image. I've given you this beautiful, perfect environment. Everything's beautiful here. You just rule over everything here. You're in charge of the Garden of Eden." There's one rule that I'm going to give you, one requirement that you have in this garden. It's a requirement to see if you love me or not. The requirement is there's one tree that you're not to eat of. Just one tree. All these other trees, eat what you want, but one tree just to see if you love me, just to see if you can do what I'm asking you to do. I want to know if my love is reciprocated. Of course, we know the story of how the serpent comes along and beguiles Adam and Eve, and they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God had told them not to eat from. In that moment, they fell from their relationship with God. They became aware of their own spiritual and physical nakedness and they began to run from God and hide from God. The relationship was broken because they had broken the love relationship. This is where they went wrong. What God wants from you and me is very, very simple because God has poured out an incredibly great love on us. John the Apostle, who's known as the Apostle of Love, writes in 1 John 3, verse 1 and describes this incredibly great love. He says, "See what great love, what great Agape, what amazing incredible Agape the Father has lavished." I love that word, don't you like that word? He lavished it on us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are. The essence there is that God lavished us with His great love. He called us His children, and now as His children, all the Father wants from His children is to be loved by His kids. The one thing that God wants from you is He wants you to love Him. He wants you as His child to actually love Him in return, recognizing the great love that is directed toward you. Number three, the third lesson for us today: how do we love God? To understand that loving God is very practical. How do you show God that you love Him? Showing God that you love Him is not mystical, it's not weird, it's not strange, it's not hard. It's challenging at times to do the right thing, as I'll talk about here in just a moment, but it's not something that is hard to figure out. Real love is practical. Real love is not mystical. It's not something you just sort of feel inside, it's something that translates into doing. A lot of people are confused by this because a lot of people think to love God means that they feel certain things. "I know that I love God because I feel warm and fuzzy when I think about God." Or there are times I get into God's presence and I get the goosebumps on my goosebumps. Sometimes it's just because you're cold. But sometimes there are those moments when the Holy Spirit will touch you in such a way that you feel something. You have the goosebumps on your goosebumps and everything's just like, "I feel God." A lot of people measure their love for God in something that they feel, and this is very dangerous. This is why I try to encourage us as a church to certainly express our emotion to God—and emotion to God should be expressed—but you shouldn't live God on the basis of your emotion. You should live God on something that's much deeper than your emotions because your emotions are going to be extremely fickle along the line. If you only praise God when you feel like it, or you only think that you're loving God when something's happening in your emotions, you're missing the mark because real love, any real love, not just with God, but any real love is never based on warm fuzzy feelings. There's not a single married couple in this room that has a great marriage but always feels warm and fuzzy toward each other. Sometimes you feel cold and prickly. True? But you're married and you know that you love the person. You know that there's something deeper there called a commitment that's a part of it. You have to step out of this world of thinking something about a feeling relationship with God. Nothing is wrong with feeling certain things—emotions are certainly a part of what God created us with—but don't build your relationship with God on the basis of this. This is why it's important to understand that we have something deeper than this. Real love is not a feeling, real love is something you demonstrate through your actions, through your attitudes, and through your words. That's what real love is. You know that you love someone and you're expressing love to them not because you feel something—you may or may not feel something—but you know you love someone because you commit yourself to certain actions and certain attitudes and certain words in the relationship that will demonstrate love not just by a feeling, but by some action through your life. When it comes to God, you can't fake love for God because God knows when you're faking. Just like in any long-term relationship, you can't fake love, you have to demonstrate it over the long haul. God looks at us and says, "Let me see. Do you love me? I love you. Do you love me? Because all I want from you is your love. Do you love me?" How does God know if you love Him or not? How do you know if you love God or not? I'm going to give you seven checkpoints in your life. These seven things will help you to know whether you love God or not. This is not a feeling; these are seven objective, critical, important checkpoints in your journey with God to show whether you really love Him or not. Number one: you know that you love God if you obey His word. If you live in disobedience to God's word, are you loving Him? No, because if a child consistently rebels against a parent, they're not only just rebelling against the parent, they're rebelling against the relationship. They're saying to the parent, "I don't want to do what you're asking me to do. I don't really love you." The same is true when it comes to God. Obeying God is one way we say, "God, I love you, and I'm going to obey you, not because it's a rule in your book that tells me I have to do this, but I'm going to actually obey you because I love you. I love you so much that I want to do what you're asking me to do." Again, it's not a religious rule, but it comes out of a relationship of love for God. "I will do what you want me to do, God, because I love you." John 14, verse 15, Jesus' words: "If you love me, keep my commandments." Second of all, how do you know if you love God? By faith and trust in God's promises. When trouble comes and challenges come, where do you lean? Does God know that you trust Him? Are you able to superintend trust for God over the worries and cares of your life? When difficulties come your way, who's your first point of appeal? Where do you run to? Who's the rock of your life? Is God truly the rock of your life? In Mark chapter 4, Jesus was with His disciples on the Sea of Galilee and there's a storm that comes up. We talked about this recently, and Jesus is in the boat with them. The disciples awaken Him and ask Him to do something about the storm on the Sea of Galilee. The Bible says He, Jesus, got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet, be still." Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to His disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" As I read that recently—I've read it in the past as perhaps you have read it as well—it was like a rebuke. "Don't you have any faith? What's wrong with you?" But I read it differently recently, as though Jesus were saying something like, "Why are you so afraid? Don't you trust in me? Don't you know I love you and can't you love me in return by, in the middle of a storm, just trusting in me and knowing that I'm there with you?" You know that you love God when you obey His command. You know that you love God when you are able and willing and committed to trusting in Him. Lack of faith is a statement of not loving God. Lack of trust is a statement of not loving God because if you love God, you will trust God because love is based in trust. Where there is no trust, there is no love. You can't have love without trust. Those two things always go together. Number three, the third way that you know that you love God: by gratitude and praise for God's faithfulness and God's goodness in your life. Do you have a spirit of gratitude or are you a grumbler? Do you grumble your way and complain your way through life, or is there a genuine gratitude to God for the blessings He's brought to your life? Giving praise to Him for His faithfulness and His goodness. I will say it this way: lack of gratitude toward God really shows a lack of love for God. If you love God, you will be appreciative for all that God has done in your life. There is an interesting story in Luke chapter 7, verses 37 and 38 and verse 44. Jesus had gone to the house of a man by the name of Simon and He's there for a meal with Simon. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating in a Pharisee's house. This is Simon's house. Simon was a Pharisee. She, an unnamed lady, came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind Jesus at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. This was not some kind of seductive manner; this was an expression of praise and worship. This is this lady expressing gratitude and praise and worship to God, to Jesus for what He had done in her life. Picking up verse 44 of the very same chapter, after a conversation that Jesus has with those in the room, He turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house, Simon, and you did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, Simon, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little, loves little." Jesus says all that she's been doing here is a sign of her gratitude to me for the fact that her sins have been forgiven. It's an expression of the fact that she loves me in return for what I've done to her and for her in her life. I would ask you this morning, as I ask myself today: how grateful are you to God? How often do you stop and say, "Lord, I just want to thank you for being so very good to me"? I think we ought to stop for a moment right now and say thank you, Lord Jesus, for everything you've done in my life. Loving God is being grateful to God, appreciative, not entitled, not grumbling, not complaining, but accepting the blessing that God has given and remembering on a regular basis that God is good to you. God is gracious to you. God is kind to you, rich in mercy toward us. So, Lord, we again today say thank you. The fourth way that we know that we love God: by becoming more like Jesus. When you love someone, you emulate them, do you not? You want to be like them because you admire them because part of love is respect. Respect is a desire to emulate. There's nothing wrong with emulating another person. You're not called to be another person, but there's nothing wrong with emulating another person because you respect them, learning from them, letting their characteristics become a part of the characteristics of your life, using them as an example. Even Paul said, "Follow me as I follow Christ." So there's this power of love that causes a person to want to be like the person they love. The same should be true in your relationship with God. If you love God, there should be something in your heart and in your soul that says, "I really want to be more like Him. I really want the nature of Jesus to be formed and expressed in and through me. I want to be transformed from that old person I used to be before I came to know Christ. I want to change." There's a key word. "I want to be different. I want my life to be reflective of the nature of Jesus. I want the fruit of the spirit to be born in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control." Galatians 5, 22 and 23. These are the fruit of the spirit, the godly characteristics. If you love God, you should be becoming more like God, more like Jesus. 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18, Paul says, "And we all," talking to the Corinthian believers, "with unveiled faces, contemplate the Lord's glory." Do you ever stop and think about the glory of the Lord? He says, "We all with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory," and the result of that is as we're contemplating who He is, "we're being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." Paul says part of the characteristic of our life needs to be that we're always admiring, adoring the glory of God and allowing who He is to impact who we're becoming in our lives as well. Number five: how do you know that you love God? You know that you love God when you invest your resources in the Kingdom of God. Every person in this room, those at our Frederick campus, Clarksburg campus, watching online, we all have resources. God's blessed you with something. He's blessed you with time. You all have time. You have some dimension of material resources, treasure that He's given you. He's also given you talents in your life, abilities that you have to do something, skills that have been given to you. God gives you time and God gives you treasures and God gives you talents so that He can use those things in your life to advance His kingdom. There are other reasons—they take care of you and your family, they provide a future for your life and future generations—but first and foremost, please hear me today, the time you've been given and I've been given by God, and the material resources we've been given by God, and the gifts and abilities we've been given by God, first and foremost, should be used to the glory of God. "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything else will be added." Matthew 6:33. These things serve good purposes for other aspects of life, but first and foremost, the first portion of these areas need to go to God. God needs to be able to look at your life and see that you're giving Him time, treasure, and talent because that's one of the ways that He knows you love Him. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 6:19 through 21: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. If you're storing stuff up here, there's always the risk that moths and vermin will destroy and thieves will break in and steal what you've got." Then He makes this statement in verse 20: "But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal." Please read verse 21 together with me: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." How does God know where your heart is? God knows exactly where your heart is by what you treasure, by where you put your time and where you put your material resources and where you put your talents. Do you invest in the kingdom of God? One of the best ways to know what's important to someone, if you really want to know what they love and what's important to them, look at their calendar. Look at what they do with their time and then look at their checkbook. There are no checkbooks anymore, I understand that; that's an old-school statement. Translate that into whatever realm of your life that you keep an accounting of how you spend your money. Those two things will always tell you what's really important to someone. If God is not in your time, do you love Him? You're not telling Him that you love Him if God has no time on your calendar. If God's not in your checkbook, do you love Him? You're not using that. If God's not in your talents, the gifts of your talents that you've been given, you're using them at some level for the purpose of God by serving His purpose at some level in your life, then what you're saying to God is, "God, I don't really treasure you. I know you love me, but I'm not loving you in return." Number six, the sixth way that we know that we love God: by loving and forgiving other people. You can't say you love God and hate people. You can't say you love God and refuse to forgive other people. They don't go together. If you really love God, you're going to love people, and if you really love God, you're going to forgive people. Matthew 22, verse 37, we read it a moment ago: "Jesus replied, 'You must Agape the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Agape your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.'" Do you love people or do you carry offenses toward others? Are there people that you're unwilling to forgive? When you hold offense toward someone in your heart, what you're saying is that God, "I want your love, but I'm not willing to love in return." God says you're making a statement to me that you really don't love me if you're not willing to love other people and forgive them. The final one I'll mention here for us is this: how do you know that you love God? You know you love God when you share the love of God through the gospel with other people. I really wish I had a lot of time to talk about this one, but I don't have much time today. I have a couple of minutes. I'm going to cover it really, really quickly here. John 3:16, one of the greatest verses in all the Bible: "For God so loved..." Just you? No, it's not just you. It's not just me. "God so loved the world," everybody, "that He gave His only begotten Son." If God loved everybody enough to send His own Son into the world for redemption, should we not be concerned about the same thing that God is concerned about? If you really love God, you should have a love for people who are far from God. It might be people in your family that don't know the Lord. It might be people in your workplace that don't know Jesus. It might be your neighbors that don't know the Lord. If you've met Jesus and experienced the love of God for your life, then what God wants to produce in you is Agape for the world as well, to reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ. You know who reaches the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Not just preachers, but each one of us are called to go into all the world and share the gospel of Jesus. Jesus has a message that He wants to preach to the world around you, through you, and it's not a message of condemnation, it's a message of love. That love is demonstrated by reaching people, sharing the gospel with them, showing the good deeds of God, being the light of the world, the salt of the earth, all those things that Jesus taught us to be. But be concerned about the world around us that is on their way to an eternity without God. I want to say something very clearly this morning. There are only two places when life is over with. There are only two places of eternity if you believe the Bible—and I do. I believe this Bible is true and I believe that we all believe, we're here today believing the Bible is true. If we know and believe that the Bible indeed is true, it's very clear that there are only two places that people will go once they leave this life. Either people will go to an eternity with God through a relationship with Jesus Christ. They don't get to heaven by good works. You get to heaven not because you deserve it; you get to heaven because you don't deserve it, but Jesus did it for you. That's the only way you get to heaven. If you get to heaven and stand before God and say, "I think you ought to let me in," God's going to say, "Why should I let you in?" "Well, I was so good." God says, "No, you weren't. You weren't that good. You thought you were good, but you weren't that good because you weren't perfect." Jesus was, and so when we put our faith in Jesus, we are given the gift of salvation. When your life is over with and you breathe your last breath, if you know Jesus, you get to go to heaven. Not because of what you've done, but because your faith is in the one who did it all for you. John Newton wrote "Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me." A wretch like me. But there's another eternal destiny. That other eternal destiny is eternal separation from the God that created you. God says, "All of your life you rejected me. You said you did not want me in your life, so now I'm going to give you what you said you wanted, a life without me." So God, please understand this, God doesn't send people to hell. People make the choice to go to hell by saying they don't want God in their lives. This is why we're here today as the church, because there's a message that God wants us to bring to every person we have an opportunity to bring it to, to say Jesus loves you. He died on the cross for your sins and there's a free gift of salvation that you can have if you'll reach out and take it. Jesus offers it to you and He does that through people like you and me. Real love for God includes a love for the lost, a love for people that are on their way to being eternally separated from God. We love them enough to lead them to the best of our ability. We can't save anyone, but we can share the gospel with them in such a way that the Spirit can work in their lives and they can come to faith in Jesus. That's why I always tell our staff here at our church, there is always room in this church for one more person. Because we exist not just to have a nice party ourselves. This church doesn't exist, when we started it 40 years ago, we weren't starting a church where a bunch of Christians can have a party every week. No, we started this church because we wanted to reach this community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, you talk about a party, we cannot have anything like the kind of party we're going to have in eternity. We're going to party for all eternity when it comes to glory and praise and worshiping God. But while we're down here, you know what our mission is? While we're still down here, it's not about us having fun. I hope you have fun being a Christian. You should enjoy the Lord with all your heart and soul and have a great time being a follower of Jesus. Don't ever walk around looking like you've been baptized in pickle juice, please. Joy should be a part of your life, but our main reason for being here is to share the good news of Jesus Christ with others. That's why we're here. That's why the church exists. That's why you and I exist. 2 Peter 3, verse 9, Peter writing to folks who were concerned about the fact that Jesus said He was coming back, but He hasn't come back yet. What's the deal? Peter writes and says, "The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise," that's His promise of His second coming, "as some understand slowness." God's not slow in this process. "Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." So to love God is to love the lost. Love for God is not a feeling. I hope you have great feelings. You should. It's wonderful to feel the presence of God, to feel warmth toward God. You should certainly value that feeling in your life. But that's not really how love is demonstrated. Love to God is demonstrated by obedience to Him and trust in Him and being grateful to Him for all He's done in your life, wanting to become more like Him. Loving God is demonstrated by what you do with your resources. Do you invest them in the kingdom of God? Love for God is shown in the way that you demonstrate love and grace toward others. Love for God is shown by the fact that you care about those that are lost. You want to reach them with the same love that has reached you. The last one I'll mention here very quickly is that loving God is always rewarded. When you love God, it comes back at you. Romans 8:38 and 39: "I am convinced," Paul says, "that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's Agape. No power in the sky above or in the earth below, indeed nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the Agape of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus." 1 Corinthians 8, verse 3: "But if anyone Agapes God, loves God with all filled reverence, obedience and gratitude, he, this person who loves God is known by Him as His very own and is greatly Agaped, is greatly loved." Love is a two-way street. God loves us. Do you love Him? Would you bow your heads with me as we pray? Lord, we thank you so much this morning for the love that you've demonstrated to each one of us. We cannot thank you enough for the expression of your love in Jesus. For the fact that day by day, Lord, that you care deeply for each one of us, you show us that by the provision of our lives, by the care that you show us, by the concern that you have for us, ongoing concern, day in and day out. Thank you for your love. Help us, Lord, by the grace and power of your spirit to fall in love with you. Lord, not just with a feeling—we certainly don't diminish or not desire a feeling of warmth toward you, we want that in our lives—but most importantly, we want to demonstrate our love for you by our actions, our attitudes and our words. Teach us, Lord, how to love you in return. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. I would like to close today by giving you an opportunity to ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me right now? Right where you are, just simply bow your head with me and I'm going to give you a prayer to pray. You can simply speak this prayer out, whisper this prayer out and from the sincerity of your heart, call upon God and I promise you that He will hear and answer you. So let's pray together. Start by simply whispering the name Jesus. Let there come from your heart just the declaration of His name. Say, "Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, that I have fallen short with you. I'm sorry for all of my sin. "Jesus, I believe in you. I believe that you are God's Son. I believe that you are the Savior of the world. I believe that you died on the cross for my sin, and I believe that you rose from the grave, that you are alive today. "Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Come into my life. Forgive me of my sin. Give me a new start in you. I commit my life to you in Jesus' name. Amen." If you prayed that prayer with me, I want to encourage you with a promise from God's word that says that when we call upon God's name, we call upon the Son of God, there is salvation that comes to our lives. He changes us from the inside out and you become a new creation. Old things pass away, all things become new, and that's exactly what has happened to you today. Your next step really is to make sure that you get into a good Bible-believing church and you begin to study God's word. Get God's word in you and make sure that you get a copy of the Bible if you don't have one and begin to read it. Spend some time every day in prayer. I would encourage you also to check out the resources on our website that will help you to get going in your relationship with Jesus. You can find them at church-redeemer.org. Get those into your hands, get started in your new life with Jesus Christ. Thanks again for joining us today. May God bless you and we look forward to seeing you next time.