Stop Measuring Your Love For Christ

We’re here measuring our love, trying to gauge our love, comparing ourselves one with another. But God’s love, as far as we’re concerned, is settled. We know God loves us. It’s our love that’s vacillating, isn’t it? And so the focus shifts from God’s love for us to our love for God. And when this occurs, God’s love becomes more difficult to experience because His love becomes based upon merit. Now, the more I feel I love him, the more I feel loved by him. And if I feel I love him little then I feel I’m loved by him. Little Peter was determined to prove his love to Christ. Blinded by his own determination, he failed to see the love of God. It’s right here in the church. Look at Luke 2231 to 32. Here is love. Fast as an ocean, right? Staring him in the face and he can’t even see it. Simon. Indeed. Satan has asked for you that he may shift you as we. But I’ve prayed for you that your faith should not fail. And when you’ve returned to me, strength in your brethren. Jesus loved Peter so much that he would not have his disciple blindsided. He would not have him unprepared for the hour of temptation. Even in the garden he again exhorts. He and the others pray that you enter not into temptation. He loves Peter so that he warns him he would have him avert this if at all possible. Whatever it is, I’ve. I’ve prayed for you. It’s most interesting when you come to John 17 and you note who Jesus says he will pray for and whom he will not pray for. He clearly delineates. I pray for those whom you’ve given me and those who will believe on their testimony. But then he also just as clearly delineates who he will not pray for. I do not pray for the world. And in that category is one man named Judas Iscariot. He says, Father, I have kept those whom you’ve given to me in your name, except the son of perdition. Except the Greek grammar tells the statistics of another. This is another of a different kind. He’s not one of the chosen. He left. He’s not been loved before. The foundation of the world. Jesus does not pray for Judas. Judas. But he prays for Peter. Why? Because Peter has been the object of his love. Forever. Forever. And he loved him to the end. And so he warns him. He prays for him. He loves him. But Peter rejects in his own weakness. And therefore he rejects his need for the love of God. Please hear me. Please hear me. It always works this way. There are no exceptions here. When you reject your need, when you refuse to own it automatically, you have rejected your need of God’s love. And thereby you close your heart to the movement of a Holy Spirit within who would make you to know the Father’s love. I prayed for you that your faith should not fail. In this sense, Peter said. Thank you very much, Lord. But I. I don’t need your prayer in these matters. I’ve got this. You just wait and see. When the going gets tough for everyone else, all Peter will be right there, standing beside you. You just wait and see. Dear ones, the love of God must be received in weakness. The greatest thing that could happen in this conference is all of us to be humbled, to be brought low again. You’ve got to come to the plate place of complete desperate dependency upon God alone. No trust in your righteousness, no confidence in your obedience, nothing in you recommending you to the favor of God. Nothing but his amazing, unconditional love and spiritual transformation and reformation. Demand that you will be willing to be loved by God, undeservedly. There is none of this. Father, watch me and make me make you proud today. No doubt that you’ll never be willing until you see that there’s nothing else for you to do but to accept his love. Dear friend, this sinner, you are outside of the covenant of grace. You’re not among his people for this very reason. You will not accept his love as it is for you. Because you see yourself above it and not needing it. I’ve got this. I’m a good person. I’m as good as the next man. There are some people I’ve heard of even in the church who stand in pulpits who I feel like I’ve done better than them. Most of us are afraid to see ourselves as God, to see us naked and bare with all our flaws, frailties, and failures visible. To feel God’s searching gaze and feel his love requires this awkward sense of embracing worldly. What you are a person who will never, ever deserve grace and cannot please the Heavenly Father in your utter weakness and inability. You just can’t do it. You’ll never be changed until you face the truth about yourself and accept it and be okay with it. Some of you will be offended by this and I apologize beforehand, but really, I don’t think the problems with me or even how I see it, we have to be able to come to the place where we’re okay with being sinners saved by grace. [Note: Transcript not yet proofed.] Watch the full sermon here.