Bibles to the wonderful book of Psalms and turn to Psalm 116. This is the Psalm of our personal Savior. the psalm of a personal savior. And we want to read the psalm, and when we get to verse six, that's our memory verse that we've been trying to memorize. I want to ask everyone to read it together with me. The title of our message this morning is How to Love the Lord. How to Love the Lord. Psalm 116, hear the word of the Lord. I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications, because he hath inclined his ear unto me. Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell got hold upon me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord. O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yea, our God is merciful. Together, the Lord preserveth the simple. I was brought low, and he helped me. Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed, therefore have I spoken. I was greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, all men are liars. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. Listen to this, beloved. What a statement. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, truly I am thy servant, I am thy servant and the son of thy handmaid. What a statement here, thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving and I will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord. Amen and amen. Pretty wonderful expression there, such a personal expression of the sweet psalmist of Israel. Look at that again in verse 1 from which we are going to take most of our remarks and our title. Can you say this with the psalmist tonight? I love the Lord. Oh, I pray that we can all say that and mean that from a saving experience, a saving knowledge of who God is and what He has done for us. We know that the Apostle John said, we can only love Him because why? He has first loved us. And this is so personal with King David. You know, David was called the sweet psalmist of Israel, but what was the other moniker that David was called by the Lord Himself? Does anyone remember? Raise your hand if you know what he was called. Oh, Brother Kevin. Oh, yes. So you see, God knew that David's love for him was true. He said, I've looked upon him and he is a man after my own heart. You know, I remember in the life of the Apostle Peter, during Jesus' earthly ministry before he was crucified and resurrected. He asked Peter the question, who do you say that I am? Do you know who I am, Peter? Peter answered correctly, didn't he? He said, the Father Christ, the Son of the living God. And another time, Jesus looked at his apostles. I might look at that way to y'all tonight and say, well, you go away also. But Peter said, Lord, where can we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. But oh, what a question he asked him after his resurrection. Do you remember three times? Do you love me, Peter? Do you love me? Not do you know who I am, but do you love me? And oh, I love the Holy Spirit's answer that he gave into Peter's heart. And maybe we could say it tonight, too, even though our love is so much weaker than we wish it would be. Though that we have loved Him so imperfectly and shall until we are glorified according to His promise and the fulfillment of the great work of salvation, Lord, Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love Thee. Loving the Lord is personal, beloved. Amen. It's something that's personal, it's practical, and it's a purposeful response to who God is and to what He has done. Do you know it's actually a condescension of God for Him to allow us to love Him? God doesn't even have to allow us to love him. It's a condescension on God's part to even allow us sinful beings as we are to love him. But hallelujah, he loves those that love him, the scripture says. But I want you to know that this is the only place in the whole Bible where you will find this personal expression, I. Love the Lord in that powerful. What a unique place that it has in the Bible now There are many expressions of how different people love the Lord and express love to God in different ways but this is the only place that you'll find an old Bible where a person actually said under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, ah Me, myself and I, I love the Lord. Well, hallelujah. All of us can echo that tonight by the grace of God. And we love him because he first loved us. But how did David love the Lord? And he shows us in this Psalm how that we also should love the Lord. Paul said to the believers of his day, be followers of me. As I'm a follower of Christ. And so if David was the man after God's own heart, don't you think he's a good one to teach us how to love the Lord tonight? So the first thing, if you're taking notes and kind of the first thought that we see, uh, in the Psalm here in this Psalm of a personal savior is that we love the Lord by calling on him. We love the Lord by calling on him. Just turn back just a little bit to Psalm 116. Can you just, uh, go there? Uh, just, uh, he says, uh, verse two, I think is really beautiful. It says, because he had inclined his ear unto me. Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live." So in a good marriage, one of the things that is key to a great marriage is communication. Our love languages that we are able to express. one to another. And so part of the way that the Lord says that he knows and he sees the fervor of our love is by how often we want to spend time talking with him, communicating with him through prayer. And this is one of the reasons that David says that he loved the Lord so much is because he knew when he talked to him that the Lord heard him. Isn't that wonderful? to know that God's ear, that God's heart is always open to us. You know, sometimes I wonder why all of us even have cell phones because it's rare, it's rare that you can actually call somebody these days and the first time you call them they pick up. I mean, it's getting rarer and rarer. I mean, you're either going to get, uh, sorry, Uh, this person has a answering voice box that hadn't been set up yet. Right. Or, you know, you'll get the quick test message. Can't talk right now. Call you later. But do you know that God has never answered any of us that way? Hallelujah. He's never put any of us on hold. He never said, uh, can I get back to you? Isn't that wonderful that God is that way? He's somebody that always picks up our call, no matter the time, no matter how often. That's how God responds to his children. And so the Psalmist here, he's saying he, he heard me. And so his love becomes active. in calling upon God. And one of the greatest ways, beloved, that we can express our love to God is through ongoing communication with Him. Pray. Pray to Him, beloved. David prayed to the Lord, didn't he? All throughout the Psalms. When David was in trouble, Luke, did he pray to the Lord? Oh, he cried out to Him, didn't he? In those caves in En Gedi, in the wilderness, he cried out unto the Lord and just poured out his soul to Him. He prayed to Him when he was in trouble. He prayed to Him when he was grateful. He prayed to Him even when he was uncertain. And this is how we really love the Lord, is we love the Lord by depending on Him and not ourselves. It's really been a unique week for me this week. Yesterday, October 21st, was my 30th year, the day, the anniversary of my 30th year as an ordained minister of the gospel. And it just made me really take account of my years serving the Lord and just how faithful that I can look that God has been to me in my life, giving me godly parents, giving me a godly wife, giving me believing children. allowing me to be in churches where there were pastors that really preached the Bible and lived what they preached and preached the truth no matter what the cost or what the crowds or what they were receiving or not receiving for their ministries. And just on and on as you look in your life just how faithful and how good God has been, no wonder the Apostle Paul would encourage us in 1 Timothy 5, 17, talking about this ongoing communication. He would even challenge us to pray without ceasing, just to be in a continual mode of communication of prayer with God. Go with me to Jeremiah 33. We have a great promise here from the Word of God. Do you are you having those talks with Jesus every day? I pray that you are that that love is flowing. He is speaking to you and you are speaking to him. I'll never forget when I was, you know, Mary Reese, you'll never know what dating used to be like before FaceTime and cell phones. You had to write letters. I remember I got to call Regina one night a week. It would cost me $20, Luke, to talk to her one hour, but it was worth every dime. And I remember just like how excited I was just to make that call, to knew that she would be waiting, to know that she would pick up. I would hear her voice on the other line and to treasure every minute that we got to talk and to know how she was doing and to tell her that I loved her and, you know, Maybe that wasn't all so bad, right? Maybe we appreciated it a little bit more, even than we do now. But here in Jeremiah 33, listen to what the Lord says to you and to me tonight. Jeremiah 33 verse three, call unto me. and I will answer thee, not just that, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. Now, beloved, you can call me whenever that you want to. I might be able to answer, I might not, but I'm not gonna be able to show you great and mighty things which you don't know, but the Lord Jesus can. And I just want to encourage all of you, encourage myself, if we really love the Lord, if we say that we love the Lord, one of the greatest ways that we can show and stay in love with the Lord is by calling upon Him. Because when we call upon Him, it shows Him that we love Him, that we depend upon Him and not ourselves. You don't call or Talk to somebody that you don't need, and we know how much we need the Lord. The second thing in here that I think is very precious is how the psalmist talks about how he loves the Lord, and he loves the Lord so much, he talks about how he rests in his goodness. So number one, love the Lord by calling on him, yes. but also love the Lord by resting in His goodness. He talks about in the Psalm here, Psalm 116, these terrible things that he had felt, these terrible things that he had gone through, but he just called unto the Lord. He found the Lord's help. He was low. He said, but I found the help of the Lord, right? It wasn't just um a one-way street but in calling upon the lord and and speaking with the lord he found himself helped and so in verse 7 he says return unto thy rest oh my soul think about it this way think about a child resting in their parents' arms after a storm. They stop fighting, they stop crying, and just rest because they trust in the Lord. And that's how our soul should feel in God's care. Loving the Lord includes trusting His character even when the circumstances are hard. Amen? It's not always easy to love the Lord. Sometimes, you know, we have to really count the cost. But beloved, it's worth it all. We rest in His goodness and we show our love for the Lord when we rest in His goodness, when we truly lay down our anxiety and our fear. We show love through surrender, not through constantly striving for those things that we feel that we want or need. I love what the psalmist said in Psalm 46.10. He said, be still and know that I am God. First Peter 5.7 says, cast all your cares upon him because he cares for you. I remember one of our trips to Africa, I think it was Probably about our fifth trip. And it was one of the busiest days that we had ever had. We had gotten up like at four o'clock in the morning. We didn't have time to eat anything. And then we preached like three or four different churches. And then we had to take a bus trip all through the night. from Western Kenya back to Nairobi, and we got back to where we were staying. It was like 2 a.m. in the morning, covered head to toe with the dust of Africa, horse throats, hungry. You know, Brother Jeff, I think I remember him saying, he said, what did he say? He said, my stomach thinks my throat is slit, he said, because he said he was so hungry. But I remember going into the room where we were staying and they had just a little single bed and I just sat down on the bed. You know how you are maybe at the end of the day sometimes just I just don't think I might have ever felt that exhausted my entire life. And I looked to the right and up above my bed in a little frame, they had framed this verse when the disciples came back from their first missionary journey and Jesus said to them, come ye and rest a while. Come ye and rest a while. And I can't even tell you what that did to me, body, soul, and mind. But it was like everything just went away. And I went and took a shower, had one of the best nights of rest that I ever had, and woke up completely renewed. Isn't that wonderful that we have a shepherd like that, that makes us to lie down in what? Green pastures. And he leadeth us beside still waters. He restores our soul. And so that's one of the, maybe you hadn't really thought about that, but that's one of the ways that you can really show that you love the Lord is really by resting in Him and in His goodness. Like, Lord, I know I can trust you to help me with my finances. Lord, I know I can help. uh, with this birth with, with, uh, this house I'm trying to build, or if I'm going overseas, Lord, you're with me through the air. You're with me in every country where I go. Oh, the saints of old, how sweet it has been for them when they have been able to rest in the Lord. What does it say about a good wife that the heart of her husband trusts in her? You can rest and trust in that good love. Thirdly, not only do we call upon Him to show that love and to love the Lord that way and trust Him, But here the psalmist, it's not just thinking about how much that he loves the Lord or feeling how much that he loves the Lord, but this love results in action, right? Love the Lord by living thankfully and obediently before him. Love the Lord by living thankfully. and obediently. Don't you hear that in the psalm that we read? The gratefulness, the thankfulness. He says, Lord, I'm your servant. I'm your servant. Lord, I want to pay my vows to you in the presence of your people and in your church. I want to serve you, Lord. You know, if someone saved your life in days of old, you would owe them a life debt. You would put yourself into their service. Well, isn't that exactly what we hear from the apostles as they write, I'm the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm the dulios, the slave of Christ. We love God by living lives of gratitude and follow-through, right? We say thank you to God, yes, but mostly we say thank you to God by doing what he asks. Not just feeling our love for God, but acting on it through obedience, through worship, through commitment to him. That's one of the things that I love so much about the story that we talked about Sunday, about the healings of the leprosy, about the 10 lepers. Maybe all of them would say that they loved Jesus because Jesus healed them. But the one that went back and said, Lord, I thank you and I worship you. That's the one that Christ said, you've brought glory to God. He showed his love through thankfulness, through obedience, you know, David says here, how, what shall I render, verse 12, maybe we could ask ourselves that tonight too. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? Well, no sacrifice would be too great. No service would be too small with a heart that's aflame with passion for the glory and love of Jesus Christ. Jesus said in John 14, 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. Amen. And we are called to give thanks in all circumstances. Well, lastly, as we close tonight, oh beloved, we love the Lord. Fourthly, by serving him publicly and personally. I'm glad you're here tonight. You have presented your body, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your what? It's a reasonable service. It's reciprocating that love that has been given to us back to God. David said, truly I am your servant, Lord. I'll sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the Lord. Fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all of his people. So what this means is we just don't, we don't keep our love for God private. It is a personal thing. There's a secret life that we should all have with God, but it doesn't just stay there. Christ called those, those that he called, he called them to mission. He called them to, to service. So share your testimony. Amen. Share your testimony. Serve in your church. Worship publicly. Let others see who you belong to. You know, when a girl gets an engagement ring, Does she receive it and say, Oh, this is so nice. And then put it in a box and put it away somewhere. No, man, she wears that thing. Right. And everywhere she goes, you know, it's all, uh, you want to see my ring, right? Because she is a love has been promised, uh, to her. Uh, love has been shown to her in extravagance that she is loved beloved. Let's go out this week and show our wedding ring. We have been loved by Christ and we love him. Let others see who you belong to. Write this down in your notes. Personal love must become public witness. Personal love must become public witness. I remember Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. I call them my closet Christians, right? Nicodemus, he came to Jesus by night and he says, Oh man, you know, we know you're coming from God and, and you do, cause you do these miracles and he has this, but he said, we, we, we can't, We have to be careful because of the people and his position and his power. You know, he didn't want to lose all that. I've always thought Joseph of Arimathea was probably the rich young ruler. I can't prove that biblically, but it just kind of really fits. Oh, but do y'all remember after the crucifixion? What two men took the body of Jesus? It was Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. And don't you know, as they dealt with that crucified, torn, battered body, how much they wished they could have told him, I love you. I believe in you. But then he was gone. I bet they were two of the happiest people in all of Jerusalem when they heard, he's risen again. And I bet the first time they saw him, they said, we want you to know we love you and we believe in you. It needs to be a public witness. Oh, I love that what Jesus said in Matthew 5, 16. He said, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, which is in heaven. In Psalm 102, the Psalm will say, serve the Lord with gladness. So beloved to conclude here in loving the Lord. Call on him in all seasons of life. Amen. Good times, bad times, times of distress, times of thankfulness, always calling upon him, staying in communication with him, resting, rest in him, trust his goodness, trust his heart in your life, and then live for him. Live for Him. He died for us. He showed His love for us by dying for us. Let us show our love for Him by living for Him in gratitude and in obedience to Him and then serve Him. Love Him by serving Him with public devotion, personal loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord bless you and keep you and use you. May you fall in love with Christ more with every breath.