I just wanted to share with all of you the "sermon" I did a few days ago. It was my first time ever doing something like this so it was a little rough around the edges, but it went pretty well. I hope you enjoy!
Here I am in Malaysia with the opportunity to talk to all today. This is my first time ever doing anything like this and so please offer me grace if I mess up. And I have to be honest with you say that I didn't recieve a special word from God to preach on nor am I even qualified to preach. But I have decided to talk to you about something that I know is true and that I have freely recieved. And that is that God loves me. He REALLY loves me and he REALLY loves you. I've known this since I was a little girl, but I can remember a few times in my life when I questioned this truth. One time was after my parents got divorced in 2006, but I want to clarify that I knew that they loved me and I never blamed God for their divorce. I was just struggling with the fact that it didn't turn out the way I thought it should. The next time was in 2008 when my first love after sixth months of being "engaged" (it's a long story ask me about it sometime :D) told me that he didn't want me in his life anymore. And the third time took place a month after that when I attended 10 funerals/memorials within 2 weeks. In those times I was so focused on "Why God am I suffering? I thought you loved me!" to even begin to think about what he did to show me his love. I was lacking in faith, I didn't really see any hope for my future, and I definitely did not think that he loved me. But Romans 5:3-8 reminds me of what our sufferings should do and how God showed us his love.
3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Eventually I began to re-realize that suffering produces perserverance and so on and so forth and those trials and questions I asked have made me into the woman you see standing in front of you today. I have hope.God's love has poured out into my heart through the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that intercedes for us. Take a look at verse six. Christ died for us and this is how God demonstrated his love for us. Can you imagine how much the two of them suffered? And they put themselves through that all because God loved us! Now I want to take a look at another verse.
1 You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands
[Psalm 63:1-4]
Can I just read verse 3 again? "Because you love is better than life, my lips will glorify you." Jesus knew this. He did die for us afterall so that God could show how much he loved us by taking away our sins. I know this to be true as well. Here I am in front of all of you glorifying God because I know that his love is better than my life. I could die tomorrow and that's okay because his love is better than life. If you think about God's love I am sure many words come to mind. Unending. No strings attached. True love. Take your choice of words. For me I love what chapter 8 verses 6-7 of Song of Songs says about God's love.
6 Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.
7 Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot sweep it away.
If one were to give
all the wealth of one’s house for love,
it would be utterly scorned.
[Song of Songs 8:6-7]
God is saying "place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm". Whether you like it or not once you accept Christ's love you join a war. Like armed forces wear their seals we need to place God like a seal on our arm.
"For love is as strong as death, it's jealousy unyeilding as the grave." Okay so we know Jesus Christ died on the cross and for three days that was it. To the world he was dead and in the grave, but what happened three days later? He rose again! Why? Because God loved his son and his love is as strong as death and as jealous as the grave. If God loves his son that way I have no doubt that he loves you and me, sons and daughters adopted into his royal family, with that love. So if I die tomorrow I believe that God loves me enough that if he wanted to he could raise me up from grave. Nothing, not one single thing can quench his love for us that burns like a fire. Nothing we do will ever make him love us less. Even if we turn away from him.
If God loves me that much and I recieved it freely I should freely give it out? If God's love raised Christ from the dead shouldn't we be loving people enough to try to raise them from the dead, both spiritually and physically speaking? If God loved me so much that he gave me the Holy Spirit should I not be seeking him out and using the gifts he has given me? If God's love is better than life shouldn't I be speaking about it everyday?
Honestly I hope you understand this. I hope that God makes it clear to you what I am trying to say. That's all I have to say about what I know. I would like to now pray for you to close us out. I am going to read from Ephesians 3:14-21 and I pray this over you.
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Now that you know that you have freely recieved God's love please go and freely give it out.
