3rd Sunday in March

This morning I’d just like to say a few words about God’s love. I want to look briefly at how this manifests itself in our everyday lives – and then look at why perhaps we don’t always experience God’s love and what we can do about it.

Of course this is a huge subject and I can’t begin to cover it in any detail, but I’d just like to offer a few thoughts and observations.

So firstly, to try and explain God’s love briefly in human terms – think of someone you really love and picture them in your mind for a few moments.

You are pleased when they come to see you. You always want the best for them. You want them to be happy and fulfilled.

You want them to be blessed and protected. You treat them with kindness. You are patient with them and you forgive them.

You delight in giving them gifts which will mean something to them. You are happy to do things for them even if it is inconvenient or costly.

Do you see – this is how God feels about you. I could probably find a bible verse to cover each of these statements but here are just a couple.

Psalm 35 verse 27; "The Lord ... delights in the well-being of his servant."

Jeremiah 31 verse 3; "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”

And God’s love is very practical. As we put our faith in Him He takes care of the everyday necessities of our lives – the things we need to live.

Things like food and clothing and shelter – a roof over our head. Clean water to drink.

Of course most of us in this country are very lucky – so we perhaps don’t appreciate God’s provision as much as those in poorer countries.

But God’s provision is a sign of his love for us.

As well as being practical, God’s love is also spiritual. It is a love that touches our spirits and souls and our bodies.

God strengthens us when we feel spiritually weak. He encourages us when we feel down-hearted or afraid.

He inspires us and gives us the love and power and determination to follow him. As we turn to him and rely on him - He keeps us from falling.

Sometimes he heals us when we are sick or he gives us the grace to endure sickness. He gives us insight and understanding and guides us when we don’t know which way to go.

Sometimes he does these things directly himself and sometimes he works through fellow believers.

And he protects us much more than we realise or appreciate. There are at least three occasions in my life when I could quite easily have died – but by the grace of God I’m still here. I suspect the same may be true for some of you.

Again, I could quote numerous bible verses to illustrate these aspects of God’s loving care for us, but our reading this morning from Isaiah expresses it very well.

God’s love is also always wise. In other words, God always acts wisely on our behalf. He always seeks to direct us in the way which is best for us.

And God’s word as revealed in the bible is wise. Everything God’s tells us to do is for the good of both ourselves and others. And every way God touches our life is wise. He never makes mistakes.

Above all of course we can see God’s love for us demonstrated as he willingly went to the cross for each one of us.

Now at this point some of you may say – Joe you’ve been talking about God’s love - but why then is my life so hard – why doesn’t God help me - why am I sick – why doesn’t God seem to answer my prayers - why do I pray for guidance or healing and nothing happens?

I realise as I say this that I am standing on difficult ground because the short answer is that I don’t know.

I don’t have the answer to your ‘why?’ All I can do is to try and share my own limited understanding of how as Christians we can seek to walk through life in such a way as to experience God’s love – to abide in his love as our gospel reading puts it - and to receive the blessings outlined in the bible that God ideally would like us to receive.

You see the trouble is that although God would like every Christian to walk in holiness and obedience to him –- the fact is we don’t.

I know that my own walk with God isn’t as committed or as holy as it could be and that I find it easy to be spiritually lazy. Frankly I could do a lot better.

We can be disobedient and we find it easy to sin. We don’t always put God at the centre of our lives. In fact, when life is going smoothly we can forget about him.

Then when trouble comes we tend to come running back to him. In short we can treat him a bit like a spiritual headache tablet.

This is what happened with the Jewish nation in the Old Testament. When things went pear shaped and other nations started attacking and defeating them – they called out to God and said sorry – and he’d restore their fortunes.

But as soon as things started to go well again, they’d forget him – and this cycle of drifting away and then saying sorry was repeated again and again.

Life is full of troubles because we live in a fallen world – a world that is imperfect – a world where evil exists and a world where as Christians we are opposed by Satan and his demonic host.

As Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians – “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Unlike God – these spiritual forces of evil hate us and want the worst for us. They revel in death and destruction. They seek to mislead and blind us to God’s love. They seek to lure us away from following Christ – to make us spiritually weak and unfruitful.

And a lot of time especially with Christians in the West they succeed. Because by and large we are comfortable in life - God is easily pushed to the side and left on the back burner.

The fact is that God frequently has to settle for second best in many of our lives. He doesn’t love us any less – but we then miss out on the benefits of a close and committed relationship with him.

And most importantly as we drift away from God – we open our lives to the powers of darkness.

The symptoms of darkness may be obvious like depression or addiction or ill health – or they may be more subtle – like initially not going to church, not praying, not walking with God – and then starting to feel negatively about God as Satan seeks to persuade us that God doesn’t listen to our prayers or love us and that it’s all a big waste of time.

This is why Paul – also in his letter to the Ephesians - urges us not to allow the devil a foothold in our lives. He urges us to live holy lives – which keep our relationship with God strong and effective.

Jesus of course lived a perfect life and never allowed darkness into his life – until he willingly embraced it when he was crucified. As John tells us in his first letter, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

Because Jesus never sinned, darkness couldn’t touch him, until he allowed it to. This why he was able to be transfigured in an instant – and Peter, James and John were able to see him in his absolute holiness and perfection.

And this is why Jesus wasn’t afraid to touch lepers. He wasn’t afraid of disease – because it couldn’t touch him. It had no foothold in his life.

God urges us to live holy lives because it’s good for us – and the less darkness we allow into our lives, the better we will be for it.

Satan of course encourages us to embrace darkness. Fortunately, he can’t steal our salvation but he can rob us of peace and joy and heath and blessings – and then of course encourage us to blame God for not caring.

John Wimber – a well-known American evangelist compared Christians to sailing boats on a lake. Some of the sailing boats were making good progress with the wind in their sails while others had capsized or got washed up on the shore.

The wind – the Holy Spirit was available to all the boats but only those who took the time and effort to trim their sails and take advantage of the wind, made good progress.

Now I don’t want to leave you with the idea that everything we suffer in life is directly related to how closely we walk with God - because the bible clearly teaches us that this is not the case.

Job walked extremely closely and uprightly with God – but sickness and suffering still came his way.

The fact is that sometimes in this world bad things happen to good people – and this side of heaven we will never understand why.

However, if we are seeking to put God first in our lives – as the parable of the house built on rock illustrates, we will be much better able to stand and to cope when bad times do come.

To use the analogy of sailing boats again – we are much less likely to be capsized or drowned by the storms of life.

Of course, because God is loving and kind and patient – as he did with the Jewish nation – he is always there ready with open arms to pick up the pieces when things go wrong – to dust us off, restore us, heal us and to bless us.

We see this in the Parable of the prodigal son. A repentant child is always welcome home as far a God is concerned.

Another reason we may not be experiencing God’s love and the blessings he promises may be because we’re not giving out. We’re not producing fruit.

Jesus cursed a fig tree because its leaves were green but it had no fruit on it. It appeared healthy but was fruitless.

We may appear spiritually healthy – and go to church and read our bibles and pray a bit – but still not be bearing much fruit because we are pre-occupied with our busy lives and we are not really surrendering ourselves to God in service.

God won’t curse us for this – but we will miss out on the blessings he wants to shower on us – because as the bible makes abundantly clear – we reap what we sow and with the measure we use it will be measured back to us.

As we seek to give out to others so we create a vacuum into which blessing comes back to us. As we seek to encourage the faith of others so our own faith is encouraged. As we pray for others to be healed – so we receive healing.

I remember going to a Christian camp where the speaker invited missionaries and their families onto the stage and asked everyone in the audience to pray for them.

When we’d finished praying he paused and said God is telling me that whatever you have prayed for these missionaries and their families – you have also prayed for yourself and your own family.

So, to tie up what I want to say this morning – the truth is that God does love each one of us very much. The truth is that he cares deeply about us and wants the best for us.

As todays gospel reading says he longs for us to live in a close relationship with him and to obey his commandments – as this is the best for us. He wants us to be fruitful so he can return blessing to us.

Many of us though, fail to live as God desires. We do give the devil a foothold. We allow darkness into our lives and then we can end up in various messes. Fortunately, because God loves us he is always willing to help us get back on track and to restore and repair our lives and relationships.

And although living and walking closely with God won’t guarantee a trouble-free life, when trouble or sickness does come we will be much better able to cope with it – and to navigate it successfully.

There will be the opportunity a little later to ask me questions - but I’d like to close with a time of quiet prayer and reflection where we can each share with God anything that my talk may have raised.

So, let’s just close our eyes and talk in our hearts to our loving creator.