John Murphy:

This is the Rockhouse Center podcast and I'm John Murphy. Today I'm going to be going it alone. Beth is not able to make it to this round of podcasting because of other obligations. So for us to be able to get this out to you on Tuesday, which is our plan, Beth is not able to join us. So I'm just going to dig into the question. of loving God, how to love God. It's not an uncommon thing to talk to clients and discover that there is a disconnect or a difficulty, some kind of barrier or resistance around being able to love God, trying to feel how it is that you love this invisible God. So I thought it'd be really helpful to dig into this question and I'm going to share with you what it is that I share with my clients and hopefully this will help you connect with how it is that God has this all set up that we can actually love Him. of course, first we know that He loved us first. That's always the great thing to understand is that there isn't going to be any love returned to God before He loves us first. And He's also made us so that we can love Him. There's a way in which I believe He has built the way we respond to certain things which are enablers, which allow us to actually love Him. And there's a great example of this, and this is what I share with folks commonly, is an experience I had which revealed that there was something about the way God made us that causes us to have love and gratitude for someone who has done something for us. And of course, the magnitude of whatever that is, the greater in which we feel a sense of appreciation and affection. When I'm getting into this with people, I start off with talking about my personal experience of having this feeling of affection well up within me, and it had to do with our experience moving into a house 26 years ago, the house we're still in, we moved into this house that had an above-ground swimming pool in it. And we had done a number of things trying to make sure that our children, one which is a baby, and then our oldest child, which is a few years old, made sure they didn't get in that pool. We'd gone to a great effort to try to get people to show up and build fences around it before the moving day. And that didn't happen, fell through at the last minute. So we basically talked to everybody who was involved. We had an extra person there, a sitter there, to help us stay on track with keeping our eyes on my oldest child, Rob, to make sure that he doesn't find himself in the pool and doesn't get near the pool, because we knew there was a threat there. So we're going along in the process of moving. Things are picking up. Two movers show up that we've hired to come help us. They've collected all the stuff from the old house and they've pulled in and made it up this driveway and gotten them, and they're unpacking the truck. And so we're just right into the moving experience. Well, about an hour into the moving experience, we're all head down, working hard, trying to accomplish things to get all this stuff into this house and get it set up to where we can live. The movers are bringing things in. And then I hear crying and screaming and noise coming from the back of the house and we turn and I look that direction. As I'm looking that direction, one of the movers brings me Rob, who is soaking wet, crying and upset and dealing with the fact that he was really, had a tremendous amount of fear. And so I just grabbed him and hugged him and sat down and his wet, you know, he was just all over me. We were soaking, just sitting there. He was crying and I was just, grateful to have him. And then the movers told me that what happened was, is they were walking by and he was in the pool. And one mover said, hey, look at the kid. He's already enjoying his time in this pool. This will be fun for him. The other movie set mover said, I'm not so sure. I think he may be drowning. So they ran over there and they got a close look and saw that he really was drowning. And the mover pulled him out and just brought him straight to us, brought him straight to me. And what I began to feel of holding my son and being so grateful that he was saved from something that was really horrible and a horrible, potentially a horrible death, saved his life, my affections began to grow for the movers. And particularly the one that said, I think he's drowning and pulled him out of the water. As I began to think about why it is later, why it is that I was having that feeling, and why I wanted to bless these guys and why I wanted to give them the biggest tip they'd ever had in their life and why I wanted to send them and five generations of their family through college, all of those things came around something that was going on inside of me and a reaction that I really recognized was not something that necessarily was built into me by my culture or by my family or others or any teachings. But there was a natural sense of reacting with gratitude, appreciation, and affection for these two people who were complete strangers. And I think that's the way God has built us. You had two people who owed me nothing, who just came into my life out of nowhere. They show up and they basically rescued my son and saved us both. from a catastrophic failure. They didn't owe us anything. We didn't know them. It was something that they did, which was a huge blessing to me. Out of that, my heart just turned into a place of really feeling for these guys, wanting to help them, loving them, wanting to hug them. And I realized later on, much later on, when I thought about it, that really has a lot of similarity to how it is that we are built to react to what Jesus did for us. God, through Jesus, saved us from an eternal train wreck, right? Saved us from a life apart from God, a life, an eternity of suffering, saved us from the misery of not being able to live the rest of our lives with God in heaven forever. When Jesus did what He did, there was a catastrophic rescuing of all mankind that was made available for those who believe in Him as the risen Son of the Lord. And I recognized that there was another level here that not only did, I didn't know him, you know, when I became a believer, I didn't know Jesus. He rescued me from an eternal train wreck of life. He gave me something that I had absolutely no ability to deal with whatsoever. I was completely helpless in dealing with the issue of my unrighteousness and the fact that I'm not going to be able to get into heaven without him. And he paid the ultimate price. That's another piece of it. He suffered hugely and paid an ultimate price. And on top of all of those things, he doesn't make people believe in him. He leaves that it's available as an option. There's no forcing us to ever believe in Jesus. He wouldn't have it that way. That wouldn't be true love. But if you go back to what's going on here, Jesus is my hero when it comes to salvation, when it comes to eternity, when it comes to being saved. If you think about the first responders in our country and how grateful we are to them and how our heart just goes out to them and how we go out to people in the military, particularly people who have paid the ultimate price and our level of gratitude that wells up in us. I've even heard of certain cultures where if someone saves your life that There is a dedication that the person who is saved has towards that person as the person that saved them, almost as if to say, I wouldn't have a life without you, so my life is now yours. Wasn't that interesting? We wouldn't have a life without the life that was worth living, a life where there can be peace now and peace for eternity, if it wasn't for Jesus. So the thing that I'm trying to sort of get at here is the how does it feel when you think about a hero? Just imagine yourself in a situation where a policeman comes along and he saves you from some situation in your life where there was going to be a real loss, maybe a personal physical loss, maybe even the potential of death. Some of you have actually had people save your life, or people have done things that you were pretty sure if they hadn't done whatever it is that they did, we understand that our life was at risk and that they probably saved us from a catastrophic loss. How does your heart feel towards them? Well, that is, I believe, the way God built us to react to Him. I think this is the way God has wired us so that our heart can reach out to Him, can find Him, can connect with Him. And so the whole idea of having affection for Jesus, which is some people have a hard time connecting with, there is a reason why in 1 Corinthians 11, 25, Paul reported that Jesus said, when it had to do with taking the cup, the cup is the new covenant established in his blood. He goes on to say, Jesus says, do this often as you drink it, to call me affectionately to remembrance. Isn't that interesting, the word affection is there? I can remember being in, visiting churches and looking up at the communion table up front and seeing the word communion, but also seeing the word remembrance and seeing the word affection. And it just really struck me that this is appropriate. This is how we love and we begin to connect with God as we are able to really kind of get our heads around what it is that he's done for us. And so if you can just get a little brain stamp or a little heart stamp or however you want to say it, it's just kind of think about what that feels like when you think of a situation, either the one that I just told you about when my son Rob was rescued, or maybe you've got one, or maybe you can imagine one, or maybe you've seen a movie in which you had this feeling, but there is a sense of affection that wells up in love and appreciation and gratitude. And I even had first responders as clients. And they've told me how people get into responding to them and what they have done for them in really significant hero worship kinds of ways because they're hugely grateful for what's been done. So it's about gratitude. It's about thanksgiving. And it's about really connecting with what God has done for you. And there's another interesting example of the whole issue of thanksgiving and remembrance that comes together for us in Samuel, 1 Samuel 7, 12. There was a a time in which it was important that the Jews were encouraged. And so they were instructed to build stones, to pile up stones, and they would call those stones Ebenezers. And the Ebenezers were stones of remembrance to remember that God showed up with what you needed when you needed it. And so they were asked to constantly put those stones in place and reminded to do this on a regular basis. And so if you think about that, if someone actually built a pile of six or eight or ten stones every time they recognized that God had showed up and done what He said He would do and given them what they need and given them just what they needed in the moment. If we really appreciated that and we started building all those stacks of stones all over the place and had all these Ebenezers, you'd be able to sort of look across the horizon of your life and see all these stones piled up. You know, as you're looking across all these stones throughout your life, then it would be natural to respond, this is God acting here and here and here and here and giving me all the things that I need. Wow, God really loves me. And then what would be a natural response to that? It would be how much you are grateful. You see the evidence of what He's done for you. And what would be a natural welling up within us, which I believe is the way God made us, would be to respond to that with a sense of gratification and love and appreciation. And so foundationally, so if you had all these stones and you keep building up stones, what do you end up with? Well, you end up with a wall that you can lean on, and then you end up with a foundation that you can live the rest of your life on. So God is here to be leaned on and to be loved and to be appreciated for what He is doing for us. When we start connecting with what He's done for us, particularly as we relate to the story of Christ's life and the gospel and what He did for us, We had absolutely no ability in our strength to pull off the righteousness required for us to live in heaven, to be with God forever. That was not possible for us. So we were saved from a catastrophic loss for which we were powerless to do anything with. And from out of that, we are asked to remember affectionately who saved us from that place. Again, this is the brain stamp, the heart stamp, whatever, is get in your mind what this feels like and then take that feeling and apply it to God. and to appreciate how much He loves you and all that He has done for you. The way that really helps advance this is to be thinking about what He has done and having thanksgiving and allowing the thanksgiving to build and to build and to see what He has really done for us so that we are able to manifest a place in our hearts of great gratitude based on the evidence of all that He has done for us. So when we're trying to figure out how to connect with God's love, the first thing is to remember that He loved us first, and because He loved us first, He did this amazing saving our life, sacrificial on His part to put His Son through all He put Him through for us. That is an expression of how much He loved us. And then as we appreciate what He has done for us, then He has built us to affectionately respond in love to Him and love to Jesus for what was done for us. That's the foundational way in which we connect with God's love and we connect with the feeling, the actual feeling of affection towards God. So there are a lot of folks who are wrestling with this question of how it is, how to love God. There could be reasons why we believe false things about God. We can have bad training about God. We can have things that are happening in our life. It's not uncommon that we have things that happen in our life that we attribute to God. And all of those things stand in the way of being able to connect with the reality of how much He loved us because of all these barriers and experiences and wrong beliefs. So I think probably the most important thing to do now is that if you are connecting with this proposition, this thing that I'm laying out here about how we are made to love God out of thanksgiving and appreciation for what He did, and you want to break through, then let's pray a prayer that allows you to break through, let's find a way Let's engage God to bring His strength and His power into our heart, into our situation, so that there can be a crack in this barrier, the crack in this uncertainty, whatever is standing in the way of you being able to feel how anyone would feel if they had someone who was a hero rescue them. And to be able to take the beginning of that feeling and then as we use it to connect with God and further appreciate and see the things in our life that he's doing for us and have greater and greater thanksgiving, then allow that relationship and that love to grow in us. Which of course is a very important thing because the degree to which we love God is the degree to which we're gonna want to please him for what he's done. Not cut a deal with him for getting him to do something in the future. and that we try to please Him so that He will give us something. But the real relationship with the Lord is about loving Him and appreciating what He has done and a desire to please Him in our lives. And that's a very empowering thing. That gives us the energy to make the right decision. That gives us the energy to talk to God when we have something before us. And that gives us the energy to want to do what pleases Him and what advances His purposes in our life, in each situation of our life. For instance, if I'm struggling with unforgiveness, And my flesh doesn't want to forgive, but there's a part of me that says, I want to please God. That power that is exerted within us, that wells up within us, to please Him because we love Him. is the power we need to overcome the temptations of the flesh and the old ways and resisting the unforgiveness and all the other things which pull us away from God and don't advance the kingdom but cause us ultimate suffering. So the real power that He has for us also is love, as we desire to please Him. Again, not talk Him into something, not to control Him, but we want to please Him for what He has done for us. That love is what causes us, energizes us, takes us to a place where we can actually choose God over what it is the world of the flesh is trying to get us to do. Loving the Lord is a very empowering and powerful thing. So the next thing I think we ought to do is just follow along with me in a prayer. We're going to just kind of make this thing up as we go. First I'm going to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show you whatever you think is standing in the way of being able to love the Lord. It's not uncommon that it's a false belief, a false teaching. These beliefs can be attributing something that some suffering in your life to God. A lot of people feel like God does things to them. The scripture says, God is not evil and contempt no man with evil. If you feel like that you're suffering because of God, no, God came so that you would have an abundant life now and forever. That's His motivation, purely out of love. If there's any suffering, it's coming from the brokenness of the world. It's coming from hell. It's coming from potentially Satan's influences on our world. It's not coming from God. So, first off, let's open up with a prayer to the Holy Spirit and just ask Him to show us whatever it might be. Holy Spirit, please reveal to us if there is anything within our heart that keeps us from being able to connect with reality, of how much God loves us. And if there's anything that stands in the way of our being able to respond to that love and respond to the gifts of the Lord with affection and thanksgiving and love back to Him, Lord, I just ask that you would reveal that to us right now. So whatever that is that's bubbling up inside of you is what we want to pray off or we want to ask for the Lord to show you something else or ask for the Lord to allow you a breakthrough in that thing. So here's the prayer. If you feel like you want to break through to this place of being able to connect with the Lord in a different way, to be able to connect with more love and get the junk out of the relationship, then follow me in this prayer. So Heavenly Father, please forgive me for any way in which I have attributed the work of Satan to you. Please forgive me for any lies that I've believed about you. We know that all lies come from the father of lies. And we reject him and we reject all lies about who you are. Heavenly Father, please forgive me for any way in which I have judged you, for any way in which I have come against you in my heart, in my spirit, or any part of my life. Lord, I ask that you would tear down any barriers that stand in the way of my heart, being able to connect with the way you've made me, which is to know you and to love you. Heavenly Father, please give me the heart of your Son, the way I want to love you, the way Jesus loves you. Heavenly Father, please heal me of any ways in which I've been tormented by wrong beliefs about you, or I've been tormented because I've been cut off from you. Please heal me of any way in which I have not been able to love you because of something that's wrong in my heart. Lord, please give me the strength to resist the temptation of my flesh to not love you, or to pull back from you, or in any way believe anything that's untrue about you. Lord, I ask that you would open my heart up. I ask that I would be able to connect with the reality of what you've done for me. I ask that you would stir within me that gratitude. I'd ask, Lord, that you would reveal to me all of the things that I have in my life where I could be thankful. Lord, I ask that you would stir that thanksgiving in me. Lord, please invade my heart with the truth of your love and stir me to see all the things that you've done for me and stir me to be thankful. Heavenly Father, please allow me to sense the reality of your love and for me to be able to rest on you above all things in life. I pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen. So that's me taking a shot at how to get at the issue of loving the Lord. We're certainly Miss Beth in the conversation, and hopefully she'll be back around next Tuesday. Sorry again, she wasn't able to be with us, but our deadlines and things just weren't working out for her to show up in time. And I know she's eager to be back next week. Please share this with others, of course. We know we cannot get to everybody here in our offices. We really need your help. So I hope this has really been helpful. Please pass this on to anyone you think would benefit from this message. God bless you and we will be back next week. Bye.