A quick note and prayer request regarding this and future messages. I believe this is one of the most important sections of Romans we will cover. I believe wholeheartedly that God desires to have this message proclaimed and that the enemy really wanted to block it. I preached a similar message as is found here on Wednesday, June 22, and the program used to record the sermons crashed. We lost the message. About 80% of the normal Unshackled Life audience is online, and it seemed that they would miss out. Sunday, Pastor David Woodard approached me during worship and asked me if I would like to preach over these three verses again. That is this message, and I felt grateful for the opportunity. But once again, there were issues with the recording. The computer recording is unusable, and the backup recording made on the phone is sub par at best. Much of it can be heard, but there are parts that are nearly impossible to hear, and there is far too much noise interference. For those who would like to try to listen, it is here. But with the conviction that this message needed to be delivered I spent hours transcribing it. I preach much differently than I write, but I left the poor sentence structure and grammar in the transcription. This is a word for word text version of the sermon, not a written message. The text can be found below the video.
The prayer request is simple. We are asking for prayer support of this ministry. Please pray for the equipment and recordings. We need God's grace to insure that those who listen online have access to the messages. I need grace to be able to preach without worry or thinking about whether or not the sermon is recording well. I also ask for prayer that God will continue to give me the messages that He wants me to deliver and that I will give them as He is giving them. Thank you for your faithful and continued prayers for Unshackled Life Ministries.
Oh hallelujah. Father, we thank You. Thank You for being with us today. I ask that You give every person here and others that hear an awareness of Your love and an awareness of Your presence, a heart that is receptive to Your word and truth. I thank You Father that You answer prayer. that when we ask Your anointing, You give it. So in addition to the prayer that has already been prayed over this, I ask that You block anything in me, nervousness, attempt at memory, anything that would get in the way of me delivering what You would have me deliver. That You would not allow one kernel of truth that was in the original message from going back forth, that those who listen later online will get what You intended for them to get on Wednesday night. The enemy can not steal that, in the name of Jesus. But at the same time, for those who have heard it, that there will also be something new and fresh that will help them grow closer to You, and enrich their lives and their spirit, pull them deeper and deeper into relationship with You so that it's not just an exercise in..."Oh, I've heard all of this before." Oh, Father, many a many a person has read Your entire scripture over and over and over again, and yet with each reading, we can get something new, something true, something fresh. I ask for something true and fresh today for those of us who have heard this and who have looked at this...Let Your word go forth and bear fruit, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Yes, I found out early this morning, "Hey, you wanna do this?" My initial reaction was, "No. I really don't." I didn't take any notes last week when I was preparing to give this original message on Wednesday, because while I can enlarge the font on the computer well enough to type up my notes when I study, I have discovered that when I get up here in this particular lighting that I can't read them. It doesn't do a lot of good to have notes if you can't read them. So, I have been just, rather than preparing sermons, absorbing the material and studying the material the best that I can and then just giving it, which, according to my wife, is usually better than when I have notes anyway. So I trust her.
But what that meant was that when the recording crashed, I knew that there was absolutely no way I could duplicate, come up here to an empty sanctuary, look at my notes and give the message again, and just put it online and say. "This is basically what I said." So, I was not prepared. This will be an example of stepping out in faith that the anointing is there to be instant in season and out of season. When you're not prepared and can still move in what God would have you move in. And I don't say that to try to get any glory for me. "Oh, look he wasn't ready, and look how good he did." I hope he does good. I hope I do good, because I want y'all to receive. But not for me. So that you can go, "Hey, if on a spur of a moment's notice, with week old preparation, he can step up and be used of God, what can God do in my life? The answer is anything He wants to do that you'll let Him do.
There will be some things that will be repeated, for those who have heard, because I can not do this without it. The first thing is, what the rest of you, those of you who don't listen online, you're getting one message in the middle of a series on Romans. I don't say that to make everybody rush out, go to the website and listen to the rest of the series, it would be a blessing if you did. But if you're not familiar with it, read this book. Study this book. Study them all. They're all good. But there is a lot in this. This is the second section on Romans chapter 13. That's where our text is going to come from when I finally get there.
For those who aren't unfamiliar and don't know, the first 11 chapters of Romans are all about God, His grace, His love for us, and how we find salvation. How to be saved. What it means to be saved. What it means to be a follower of Christ. How we become a follower of Christ. How we don't become a follower of Christ. It's all about what God did for us; what we can't do for ourselves. All that basic, I can't, He can, if you'll let Him you'll find it. We are justified by faith, not by works. You can't earn it. There is no aspect of God's love that we earn. We just can't. We fall short.
But all that basic building block and foundation kinda ends at the end of chapter 11. And a lot of people feel like that's basically where the significance of Romans ends. And it's not. That's what he was doing to build up to get ready to, "OK, now that we know that, let me tell you what this letter is really about. "
Romans 12 is really where it starts. He just wants to make sure that you have the information. Because Romans 12 is where we get to see the blueprint begin. This is the foundation we're building, a life of worship to God.
We had an awesome worship service today. But worship is a lot more than getting together on Sunday or Wednesday and singing some songs. It's more than flags. It's more than what we typically call worship. It's how we live our life. It is our response to God. If we understand God's great love for us, what He has done, what He has freely given us, how much He has accepted us just the way we are, called us to Him, our logical response - that's what the Greek says (Romans 12:1) - our natural response is to give ourselves back to Him. It's easy to love somebody who's loving you, right? If you feel loved and accepted by somebody, you usually like them, even if they're not the kind of person you normally hang out with. Because we have a natural, logical tendency to respond that way, out of selfishness. But not spiritually.
If you get a grasp of who God is and how much He loves you, the natural response, the logical response, the only possible response is to give yourself in return. We give ourselves as a living sacrifice. That means everything that we that have, everything that we are, everything, everything that we hope, everything that we did, everything that we regret, everything that we wish for, goes on the altar. The good. The bad. Everything. It's all His. We don't hold anything back. We don't say, "This isn't good enough, so God doesn't want this. Oh this is horrible, dirty, nasty. God doesn't want this." No, He doesn't. He wants to take it and get rid of it so you don't have it either. And we definitely don't want to come with, "Oh, this is pretty good. I'll give this to Him." Because compared to Him, your pretty good's pretty bad. It's very bad. We give ourselves totally anc completely. The good and the bad. Everything. The good and the bad. Yes, I said that over and over again because we can't seem to grasp it. All of us, a living sacrifice on the altar.
Lord,do with me what You will. Take the good and make it better. Take the bad and get rid of it. Change what You want to change. Add what You want to add. Take away anything You want to take away. Use me for Your plan and Your purpose and Your glory. When we do that He gives us the faith to exercise the gifts that He has given us. And each of us has been given a unique combination of spiritual gifts that give us an ability to uniquely reflect an aspect of the Father. All of this is a back up review of Romans 12 for those who have not heard it.
When we put ourselves into using those gifts for His glory, we begin to show graces and virtues of the kind of people we are. We love without hypocrisy. What's that mean? That means we love without ulterior motive. We don't love somebody to make ourselves look good. "See how loving that person is?" We don't love somebody to see what we can get back from them, to hope that they treat us right. We love somebody the way Jesus loved, whether they accept it or not. Whether they hate us for it or not. Whether they nail us to a tree. OK, we're not likely to get nailed to a tree, but we can get raked over the coals. No matter what their response is we love them. And if they respond horribly we continue to love them.
Then he shows us how we are to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ. He goes on and finishes up Romans 12 with how we are to treat our very enemies, the people outside of The Body. Not just non-saved people, though he includes those, but even those who are actively pursuing us to do us harm. That's what persecution means, to pursue with the intent to harm. He goes straight from there into Romans 13. The first seven verses, after we find out how we are to respond individually to God, to ourself, to our family of believers, to God and unbelievers, we find out how we are to respond to God and civil authority to government. He wraps that up with a...by saying that we are indeed to pay our taxes as a sign of submission and obedience to God and to support the government. Even when the government is not Godly. He wrote that to the church in Rome at a time when there was one ruler, no vote, nobody got to say what happened with taxes. The tax collectors were putting the majority of the money in their pocket. It was corrupt. It was not going where it was supposed to be, and none of it was being used for Godly purposes. He said pay it.
Then, after starting with government, after finishing with government I should say, he goes on in verses 8-10 to talk about how all of this comes together to make us, as followers of Christ, those who fulfill the law.
"Oh, fulfill the law? Wait a minute. You always preach grace. I'm not under the law any more." I'll get to that.
Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
We are called to fulfill the law. Jesus said, "If you love Me, you'll obey Me." I'm paraphrasing. We are no longer under the authority and the power of the law. We are no longer bound to the consequences of the law. Hallelujah. Because the consequences for failure, for anything short of 100% is death. And we have all failed. Only one ever didn't. Jesus is the only one who fulfilled the law.
He fulfilled it two ways. First, He came and fulfilled it in a way that none of us ever can. He did it. Perfectly. In spirit and in manifestation physically. He didn't just obey the rules. He obeyed the heart behind the rules. He did it perfect. So He fulfilled the law. We can never do it. He loved perfectly. And He fulfilled the law by giving Himself in our place to fulfill the consequence. The law demanded that a price be paid for the sin of the world, and He fulfilled that debt, that obligation, in our place. So, He fulfilled the law in two ways, and He did it out of love. He did it in the power of love. He did it for love. And that justification was poured out on us, but that love was also poured out on us, in us, through us.
I've heard many times that we are to be His hands and feet. There's some truth in that, but I don't like it, because it's not enough. I don't think we are to be His hands and feet. I think that we are to be the manifestations of His heart. To love like He loves. We are called to obey. We are called to be loving. And it's not possible. It's just not possible. We can't do it. Even when we don't mean to mess up, we do.
I do it. I do it all the time. I did it this morning. This morning. Here I am, up here preaching and on my way to church I thought it would be kinda funny to pull the end of my straw, give it a little pull to make sure it was loose, turned sideways a [pffft sound], shot it at my wife. I meant to pop her in the side of her hair, but I hit her in the side of her face from about two foot away. That's not nice. It's not loving. I didn't intend harm. I didn't mean anything disrespectful. I didn't mean to make her feel devalued or untreasured in any way. I definitely didn't mean to scare her or to hurt her or upset her. But I did. Because even at my best, even when I don't have any ill will, I fall short when I don't stop before I act and make sure this is the step that God wants me to take, where the Holy Spirit is leading me. Even in those little things. Now, she forgave me. She's wonderful like that. And God forgave me, because He might as well. He forgave the big ones. C'mon/ That doesn't even make the top 50 list of reasons why I'd be going to hell without Jesus.
We fall short. We can not do this. We can not love as Jesus loved any more than we can obey the old law without failing. You see, the new law is actually harder. We love to go around and say, "We're not under the law anymore." Well, you're not under the Old Testament law anymore. You're under a new law. "This is my commandment, that you love one another." This is the new law. It's not a new law. It's the old law. It's the same law. The heart of the Father has always been about love. Love has always fulfilled the law. It's just we can't do it. That's why we need grace.
Grace is not - I've said it before, and I'll say it again, and I'll say it again the next and the time after that, and every time I preach grace- grace is not the freedom to sin. Grace is not the freedom to do whatever we want. Grace does not give us the right, and the freedom, and the liberty and the ability to live any old way we want to. Grace doesn't mean, "Oh good. I can do this, and the slate will be clean tomorrow." Get the slate clean so we can dirty it again. That's not grace.
Grace gives us the power to walk with God. Grace is the ability not to sin. Grace is freedom from sin. Because we could never walk right without it. We could never do it right, on our own. But with grace we can. Grace gives us the ability to stop before we react. Grace gives us the ability to check with the Holy Spirit to see which direction to go. Grace gives us the ability to react as God would react, rather than react in our natural old way. To react differently. To act differently. To think differently. To love differently than our carnal cursed flesh demands. And it demands that we do it a certain way.
He sums up verse 8 with "Owe no man anything." This is not, as has been preached by some, a condemnation of credit cards. This does not mean you can not get a loan. This means if you have a debt, pay it. Don't give somebody your word that if you borrow from them you will pay them back and then laugh as you walk away with your money in your pocket because they will never see it again. This means if you know that you're not ever ever ever going to be able to pay it back, don't borrow it. If you have borrowed it, pay it as you can in your ability by the grace of God. Sometimes the grace of God covers us financially too. He does for us what we can not do for ourselves. That's what grace is, unearned, undeserved. Assistance. Power. Grace is power. We say it like it's a weak thing. "Ah, they're gracious." No. Grace is power.
There's another way not to owe anybody anything. I used this example Wednesday night. I'm going to use it again here, because it fits perfectly. Has anybody here ever said or heard or believed or felt, or can identify with the idea of "I don't get mad. I get even. I don't get mad. I get even." We love to twist things "Vengeance is MINE, says the Lord." As though God gave you permission to take revenge out on that person.
First off, you're lying. Because you're mad when you say it, you're mad when you're trying to get even, and you're mad afterwards, whether you got even or not. You're still mad. Second off, the reason why you say get even, that word even comes from balancing the scales. What you're really saying is, "They owe me. They owe me. They hurt me. They did me wrong. They disrespected me, whatever. They owe me compensation, pain for pain, hurt for hurt, respect for respect, money for money, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They owe me!" Because when we hurt somebody, when we walk in an unloving way, we create a debt. We owe the people we hurt. We owe the people that we've done damage in their lives, intentional or not, accidental or not, maliciously or not. We owe. And those debts we could never pay either. By the way, those debts are also, on an eternal scale, covered by the blood of Jesus, paid for by the death of Jesus and put on that cross. If you are His, you are not going to be punished for the damage you did to anybody else any more than you will be for breaking any other law, but that doesn't take away the damage that you've done to somebody's life. That's why grace is not permission to live as you want to live and to be selfish. Because whenever you're selfish, you hurt somebody else.
You can't do it. You can't put yourself first and love somebody else at the same time. It's not possible. When you treat somebody like they have less value you do damage to them. And you owe them. And Paul says here, don't. He uses that as a transition from how we respond to the government, paying our debts, to the transition of what we are to be, look like, and how we are to live as followers of Jesus Christ. We are to be those who fulfill the law.
"A grace preacher talking about fulfilling the law." Absolutely. Every preacher who preaches about law is missing it if he does not say that you're only hope to even think about doing it is grace. And every preacher who preaches grace and doesn't say that you're still supposed to obey is missing it, because he's missing the point of grace. Don't owe somebody damages because of the way you treat them.
Owe nobody, except love. "Hey? Owe love?" Absolutely. That's the one debt that you are called to pay on every day and will never ever be able to pay back. As you have freely received, freely give. All, for one, He gave it to us. He poured out His love upon us. For the love that the Father had for me and for you, and for everybody's who's ever breathed, and everybody who is breathing and everybody who will ever breathe, He poured out His disgust, disappointment and anger on His perfect Son. So that the love that was due that perfect Son could be poured out on us. We caused the damage to Jesus. He never deserved it. We owe.
We don't have to pay it back before we get His love. he loved us when He went to the cross. We don't have to pay it back to get Christianity, salvation, religion, whatever. You can't. But if we're gonna pour out ourselves on the altar, the good and the bad, all of us, as living sacrifices, it can not be because we are trying to be good enough. And it can not be because we are trying to follow the rules. It has to be out of worship. It has to be out of love, or it's meaningless. Excessive love and extravagant affection. That's what worship means.
It's awesome. The heart of the Father was always that we love. Love Him. Love people. That's it. Couldn't do it.
"All right, short of that perfection, what would You have us do?"
"Oh goodness. Would you just love Me and love people?"
"Uhm, even him?"
"Yes, even him."
"What about her?"
"Yeah, her too."
"Can't do it."
"All right. Fine. Here's some rules, OK? Until Messiah comes, pours Himself out for you, returns so that the Holy Spirit can come, so that you can receive My grace to walk in this, here's some things that will make you come close to thinking about what you can't do."
Those are the Ten Commandments. Paul uses this set of verses and throws up four of them as examples. He's not excluding any. He's just using examples. He says if there's any other, the law is fulfilled by love. Because you can not love and break the law at the same time. It's not possible. Can you love God and be...I'm not saying that if you love somebody you can't step outside of that and act a fool sometimes. I'm not saying that if you're ever mean to that person or unloving to that person it means that you never loved them. What I'm saying is when you're disrespectful to your spouse at that moment you're not loving them. When you're cussing out the idiot at Walmart, you're not loving them. When you're throwing stones of judgement, you're not loving them.
"Well, God..." God said He was the judge. We're not called to judge. You can't love God and love something else at the same time, as in worship, as in be extravagantly enthused over another god, a false god. You can't love somebody and murder 'em. You see, if you really love, you don't need the rules. It answers all the questions. "Is this OK? Is this OK?" You don't bear false witness. You don't lie to get somebody in trouble if you love that person. You don't go after your buddy's wife if you love him. You don't commit adultery if you love your wife, if you love your husband, because that's not a loving thing to do. That's not love. It's selfish.
Love always fulfills the law. The Greek here in verse 10 that we fulfill the law, the different law. What does that mean, the different law? Jesus said there are two laws. Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, with all your might, with everything that you are, with everything you want to be, with everything you wish you were. Love Him with what you're not. Just everything. With every part of you, love God. Pretty easy, right? Grace.
And the other law, the different law, is to love your neighbor as yourself. "Well, I don't love myself." Yeah, you do. "No, I don't." Yeah, you do. "I'm OK. I love myself." No, you don't. No you're not. "Wait a minute you're confusing me." I'm not talking about self-esteem. I'm not talking about your image. I'm not talking about whether you think highly of yourself or lowly of yourself. I'm not even thinking about whether or not you're nice to yourself. Most of us aren't sometimes, and when we are, we're usually nice for the wrong reasons.
You take love out of the equation. You take God out of the equation. And I have been trying to think of this, in case I was slightly off Wednesday night, and I can't think of an example where a person's actions, whatever they may be, aren't somehow, whether they realize it or acknowledge it or not, in relation to their seeking of their own comfort, security or happiness. A parent will sometimes sacrifice one, or two, or three of those things for their child, but that's love. Putting your child before yourself is love. You might genuinely care about helping somebody else. I'm not saying you don't. I'm not saying that somebody who doesn't know God can't love on some level. Yes, we can. That's how we recognize love when we see it from Him, because we know what it is, because we feel it. But outside of God, outside of love, our motivations are seeking our joy, our comfort, our security, whether we hate ourselves or not.
That's what we're after. "I'm going to do this because it's gonna make me happy. I'm gonna hide up in this bed and pull my head up underneath the covers and lay here for three days because it'll make me feel better." Comfort. Joy. Security. Those are our motivations. When Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself," He wasn't saying pump your self esteem up. What He was saying was, "Make sure their joy, their comfort, their security is as important to you as yours is to you."
There's another aspect to that. Stop tearing yourself apart. See, God says you have value. God says, "You're worth something." God says, "You are fearfully and wonderfully made." God said, "You are worth dying for. I love you." If you are loved so much how can you be worthless? You can not, as a believer, treat yourself as though you have no value. That's part of loving yourself. Not excusing your sin. Not saying, "I'm OK because of my sin." Saying, "I'm loved by God and that makes me valuable. That makes me worthy of not living this way, of tapping into that grace so that I can walk free." Oh, and by the way, if He loves me that much, He loves you that much, and when I encounter you, I'm going to treat you as though you have value, as though you have worth. I'm going to treat you as though you were worth dying for.
We like to run around sometimes and act like there are people God wants to kill. That's not scriptural. "Well, the Old Testament..." Shut up. It was never about that. Scripture says it is not His heart that any should perish but that all would come to everlasting life. For God so loved the entirety of people that He gave Jesus, that whosoever, every soever, all who would say yes to the invitation to come might be saved and have eternal life. Life. He's not trying to kill. He came to restore and to set the captive free. His heart breaks every time a single person dies without having said yes.
This morning, at this moment, there are Christians in other countries on their knees about to get a bullet in the head or lose their heads because of their faith. There are enemies of God about to kill a child of God, and I'm telling you right now that God will welcome that child home with a loving heart and the two of them together will love that person who did it and pray that he or she comes to God before it's too late.
He loves us. What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to be a follower of Christ? It's that, right there. Love fulfills the law. Love God. Love people. Do whatever else you want. Yep, anything you want to do is OK as long as it comes after love God, love people. Don't do anything that creates distance between you and the Father. Treat Him with adoration, great love. Do things that bring you closer. Spend time. Do things that make Him smile. Don't do the things that don't make Him smile. Spiritually make your bed.
You know, I make my bed for Leah, because it makes her smile. I think it's an exercise is futility because I'm going to mess it up and climb back in it. Nobody's gonna see it anyway. But it's not an exercise in futility because it makes her happy. I like that, because I love her. That's how we're supposed to treat God.
"I don't get this one God. This doesn't make sense. What, really what is the point of me doing this?"
"It makes Me happy."
"OK."
You don't have to understand everything. Just love God, and let Him love you. Well, God loves people. All of us. So love those people that God loves. That means everybody you run into, every idiot on your Facebook page, every person that has a bumper sticker of whatever political party that opposes the one you stand for. Love 'em. Love 'em. Put their comfort, joy and security equal to or ahead of your own. Don't do anything that's gonna make them run from God. Don't do anything that's going to push them away from God.
We are the ambassadors of Christ. That means that we speak with His authority, and then we wonder why people take it like God's treating them bad when some Christian treats them bad. Because innately they understand we're supposed to be speaking and loving and touching for God. That's what we're called to do. When we interact with somebody, they're supposed to be seeing what the Father feels about them. So when we don't love 'em, how do they respond?
"God doesn't love me. The church hates me. God must hate me too. Well, fine. I'll just go over here without it."
And the Father weeps, while we sit self righteous and smug that we ran off the trash. Heaven weeps. Scripture says the angels rejoice when one returns to the Father. Well, they weep every time one doesn't. And they wail when it's a child of God that throws them out the door. You are called to love each other, to treat others as though they are loved of God, because they are.
I'm not saying...I'm not preaching tolerance. OK? This is not a accept everybody, tolerate everybody. Jesus loves you just the way you are, not as you should be, but He loves you enough not to leave you that way. He said, "What I've done, you go and do likewise." We always take that to mean miracles. Well, I tell you it is about a miracle. It's about the greatest miracle of all. You love that person that you would normally spit on, that you would normally push away, that you would normally run away from, that would normally turn your stomach, and you love them just the way they are, not as they should be. And then love them enough to tell them they're playing in the road blindfolded. Love them enough to tell them the truth. Love them enough to care.
"Well, I can't do that." No you can't. Neither can I. That's why we need grace. And we need to wait for the Holy Spirit to guide us into our actions and reactions, because our reactions, our default, is wrong. We need His grace to be able to walk through life the way Jesus did. Because here is the miracle of Jesus' life. The miracle of Jesus' life is not that He didn't sin. I don't think that was a miracle. A miracle is something outside the ordinary. A miracle is something outside the natural. It is not outside the ordinary or outside of the natural for God not to sin. So that wasn't a miracle. That's just God being God. What was outside of the norm, the ordinary, was God taking on the flesh of man, humbling Himself as one of us, and then walking through the midst of us loving everybody He encountered, so that people who were literally lepers to society, physically, spiritually, ethically, morally, the traitors, the prostitutes, the drug addicts, the drunks, the reprobates, the thieves, the worst of the worst felt loved when He was in their presence, felt comfortable with Jesus, and not one of them came out of that thinking they were OK. That is a miracle, to make somebody feel loved and at the same time, let them know, "You're not OK." That's a miracle.
Ain't nobody ever been able to successfully do it in my life. You tell me I'm not OK, I don't feel loved. You tell me you love me, I must be OK. 'Cause I'm messed up. Well, so were all those people that Jesus was with. So are you, and so are all the people you're gonna encounter. When we tell them that they're not OK, they don't feel loved. When we tell them that they're loved, they start thinking they're OK. There's a book, I'm OK You're OK. No I'm not, and no you're not. We're not OK. We are broken, messed up people in need of a Savior.
But we're better than OK, because the Savior came, and He loves us. And that's all we have to do to follow Jesus is love like He did. It's the only rule we have to keep. Think about it. It's the only law we have to keep. Just one. He replaced over 600 with one. Just love. You can do whatever else you want, as long as love comes first. It doesn't leave much. If you love God you're going to want to do what He wants you to do. It's just as simple as that.
Love. That's harder that just not killing somebody. I can keep from killing the sucker. Love him? I don't know about that. That's why we need grace. That's what grace is for. If we have felt His love, if we can get just a little tiny glimpse of who He is and how much He loves us, the only logical response is our whole life.
I don't know how or why. I don't get it. How could You possibly love me this way? But thank You. Oh God, I love You too! Let me come to You. Let me give You everything that I have. Oh my goodness, I don't deserve this kind of love. God loves me, and the way He loves me - the addict, the alcoholic, the felon - well, that's the way He loves you. That's the way He loves that poor tore up kid sneaking a gun into school, shooting 20 people. That's the way He loves those ISIS folks. That's the way He loves Obama. That's the way He loves Mother Theresa. That's the way He loved Peter, Paul and James. That's the way He loves us all. If I love Him and truly believe that He can love me despite who I am, how can I not act like you're worthy of that same love?
And that's what it means. When people run into us and encounter us - "That person's different. That person's weird." Yes, be a little strange. Let your freak flag fly. Be a Jesus freak. Let them know something's different about you. What's the difference? "He don't talk like those other folks. He loves people. He don't react like other folks. He loves people. She's not judgmental, bitter and mean. She loves people."
Oh God, I want to be like that. That's how I want to live my life, to honor You, to worship You. Oh God, and I can't do that. I just can't. But the spirit within us He is able. "Walk in the power of the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." We think of that as this, you know, certain sins. Lus , it conjures up certain things in our minds. Well, that guy cuts you off in traffic, you want to chase him down to the red light, get out of you car and yell at him through the window and let him know how much you love him? That's the lust of the flesh. That's the desire of that carnal heart.
I'm pretty good about that in my car. But somebody tailgates me when I'm on my motorcycle and I want to yank them out of their car and let them know exactly what I think of that, especially if Leah's with me. Because then I get all protective. I go down, no big deal, but if I go down with her. You see, knowing my luck I'd live though it, and then I'd have to explain to her mother. Uh uh. Nu uh. I'll yank you up out of that car. Don't be tailgating me. That's me. The Spirit says, "Love 'em. Pray for 'em. Bless those who hate you." Bless means wish God's best for them. Want God to do the best He can for them. Bless 'em. That's love.
Father, I thank You that You love us that much, that You made it real simple, so simple a child can get it. Love. That's all it is. But like music is simple and has only seven notes - A, B, C, D, E, F, and G- a child can learn those seven notes in no time, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, nobody else could ever exhaust the endless combinations of beauty those seven notes can do. Same way, Your one law is simple. Love. We can all get it. When we get it right, in certain ways and certain combinations as You would do it, it makes a beautiful music of our lives. There's no way we could ever exhaust it. There's also no way that we can play that music on our own. We're just too selfish. We're too concerned with out own security, our own comfort, our own joy. So Father, replace our self, as we lay it on Your altar, with Your self that loves, so that we can love as You love, so that we can be the manifestations of Your heart, so that we can fulfill that other law of loving people the way You love people, willing to lay down our lives in hopes that they see and hear the truth and find reunited relationship with You. Not necessarily talking about martyrdom. I'm talking about day to day living for others. Help us to walk in that, because we need Your grace. We sure can't do it. Let others when they see us see the heart of Daddy longing for the prodigal will come home. Help us to remember that when we do things that are harmful to us, harmful to our relationship with You, we are failing to love ourselves as You have called us to love ourselves. That when we act selfishly in a way that would cause somebody else any harm we are not loving them. And when we put anything in priority above our relationship with You we are falling short of loving You the way we should. Help us to quickly turn to You for grace to correct our path and return to the love that called us and that we were called to when we said yes. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.
If you would like to have notifications of new Unshackled Moments and messages sent to you via email, send an email to dalynwoodard@mail.com requesting to be added to the list. You can also follow Dalyn Woodard (@Dalynsmsings) on Twitter or Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment