a wonderful song, hiding in thee, not hiding from thee. I'm afraid that that's a situation, a case in a lot of people's lives. They're not hiding in him, but they are hiding from him. Well, we came from the Ephesians chapter three and the same verses last week, and a little bit of a different topic, but it's in the same area. I asked the Adelson school class, what is the one thing that God craves from us more than anything else? Love, so you know that there are certain people here in Sunday school. He craves our love. Now, he's going to continue to be God, regardless of whether we love him or not. But the whole purpose of creating man to begin with, Adam and Eve, so you can have fellowship and a relationship that's based on love. And so the key verse is verse 17. It was not verse 17 last week, but it is this week, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that she being rooted and grounded in what? Love. How many of you are married or were married, but you were not married because you loved? You say, well, that's silly, preacher. Yes, it is. Well, anyway, in last week's message, we beat all around verse 17. And this week, we're going to expand that verse. Happy birthday, TJ. Delayed a birthday. But Brother Steve said, if we know you're going to get here, we're going to say happy birthday to you. We already embarrassed Chloe, so we might as well embarrass you too. But in last week's message, we beat all around verse 17, and this week we're going to expand that verse this week. The word fixated, and I kind of subtitled this, fixated on God. It's in your bulletin. Fixated on God. Now the word fixated means in its simplest terms to turn one's attention towards. Its strongest meaning is to cause someone to acquire an obsessive attachment to someone or something. Now the word obsession in part means something or someone that you think about all the time. Now The Bible says that you and I were on the mind of Jesus. From eternity past, we were on the mind of the Lord. From eternity past, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son had plotted and planned to exercise that love on a mission to the cross so that we ascend. He knew the decision that Adam and Eve were going to make. And you ask yourself, why in the world did he create them that way then? Because love is supposed to be a volitional. You do not love someone because you're forced to love them. You love them because you get to know them. You get to appreciate them. And they become an integral part of your mind. Now, when you think of fixation and obsession, it can either be a good thing, or detrimental thing. If we become fixated on the things that are good, the things that are noble, the things that are higher, such as the Lord Jesus Christ, that's a good thing. Become obsessed with the Savior, but to become fixated upon other than, or things, is not a good thing. So detrimental if one allows the flesh to be the source of one's obsession and fixation. A good thing if one's obsession and fixation is directed by the Holy Spirit of God and the Word of God towards our spirit. Now Jesus stated it this way in Matthew chapter 22 verse 37. If you were to turn here later on, in Matthew chapter 22, Jesus is approached by a smart aleck lawyer. And I think that's where most lawyers fit, they become smart alecks. Endeavoring to outsmart Jesus, and he asked Jesus this, Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Because he felt he had the answer. He had it all down pat. And who's this Jesus? And so, Jesus outwits him because he outwits everybody. He said thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Now I don't know anywhere in that verse if you were to parse the verbs or to follow it in the Greek would say that all means a fraction of or a bit here or a bit there. All, as Brother Tom Cleveland said that one of his teachers, when he was going, I guess to the doctor, I forget what his name is. Dr. Strauss. He would say that he believes in allology. All means all, and all means all. All right? So thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy mind. verse 37, Matthew chapter 22. Now this is not the first time within Scripture that we find this statement. In Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 5, the Bible says, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Now, Israel isn't that old in its relationship after having come out of Egypt. And in the book of Deuteronomy, they're about to cross over. They've had 40 years of wandering with the Lord. You would have thought they learned something during that 40 years that would help them or lead them to fall more in love with God than they did when they were in Egypt. He said that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. Now I don't know about you this morning, but I gather that it is going to take a whole lot more than a casual love to get to the place where the desire of God's heart is fulfilled by us. That being that we love Him with all our heart, that means of the understanding, the faculty, the seat of our intelligence, expresses and finds a passion and a love in the person of Jesus Christ. It goes on and it says that it's all our soul that is the seed of the feelings and the desires and the affections and the aversions that we have is always toward the Lord. How is this going to impact the Lord? What I'm about to say, how is that going to impact the Lord? The decision I'm about ready to make, how is that going to have an impact on my testimony for the Lord Jesus Christ? So somehow it all pairs back to the person of Jesus Christ. The impact of what I'm about to do, what I'm about to say, where I'm about to go, how it's going to have an impact on the person of Jesus Christ. And so he says there in Deuteronomy, and all our might, which is to bring all the forces of our being to the place of resisting anything and everything that might attempt to keep our hearts from protecting that number one place in our lives that belongs to God. Now the Apostle Paul, speaking to the redeemed in the city of Ephesus, said this in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 13. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. That's with our might, having done all. We capitulate too easily. We roll over all too easily, rather than standing firm. In the book of Acts it says, you have not yet resisted. No, Hebrews. Hebrews. Hebrews before. You have not yet resisted unto blood. We give in so easily. We're not as strong of heart and strong of faith as we could be or as we should be. And I believe that's because we really don't love the Lord with all our heart. And so the question before us today is to what degree can we say that we love the Lord our God? All? Are we all in? I hope we are. It's beneficial if we are. Amen. Well, Father, won't you guide and direct today as we look to the message fixated on God. Lord, it's a simple message, but I believe it's a very straightforward message. And Lord, from this pulpit to the pew, to those gathered at home, and to those who may download this sermon at some point in time, that Lord, your spirit and your word will so challenge us, that we'll look into our hearts and truly ask ourselves the question, do I truly, sincerely, really love the Lord with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind? And Lord, allow Your Spirit to speak to us, to guide us, and to direct us, so that Lord, if we cannot honestly say that we love You with all our heart, then Lord, that would begin to change and begin to take a precedence as we walk throughout this world. Lord, whether it's to salvation or to rededication, won't you have your will in your way, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. So Ephesians chapter three and verse 17 is our key verse, once again. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love. As I was listening to a preacher the other day, He made a statement that both struck me and stuck with me. He said the typical Christian exercises a conditional love towards God. Think about that. I've known people who outright admittedly displayed that their love for God was only conditional. When things are going well and we are riding high on the mountaintop, oh my God is good, amen. Oh my God, it's so good to us. When things are not going so well, and we find ourselves in a dark valley place, and our thoughts, our thoughts of disappointment, and are not so favorable towards God. We begin to get down on God. We begin to question God's right. to act any way he deems he desires within our hearts and our lives. Now we have this idea that God's always gonna work for our good, and let me tell you, he does always work for our good. But it may not be in the ways that we always expect him to do so. Now if it's negative, then God expects good things to happen as a result of that, amen? The process as well as the end result. Now, when you disciplined your children, they didn't say, Mommy and Daddy, I really need this so I can be more obedient to you. But you did it anyway because you know that it would work righteousness or it would serve to help them to realize that there are consequences to our choices, but there's also a lesson to be learned in the process. And so this is evidence of spiritual immaturity. Or at its worst, a real lack of understanding and so it is with every relationship. If love is not the basis of a relationship, then it's going to be a very fickle relationship. It's not going to have the strength that is necessary to be able to endure the storms. I don't know of a married couple who doesn't have problems. Who hasn't gone through one storm or another. Amen? But what keeps you together is love. And you realize that we're gonna weather this storm. And we're gonna come out on the other side the way we ought to come out the other side. So when our love is based on how things are going in our day-to-day lives, then it is a conditional love. And I don't know about you, but I'm ever so glad that God's love isn't conditional based on how I am living my life as one of his children, amen? He loved me when I was backslidden. I don't know why, but He loved me when I was backslidden. You say, well how did you know that He loved you? Because I was convicted when I was backslidden. I just didn't have the strength of character to be able to stand up against my flesh at that point in time. But I always knew that God loved me. And I am so thankful that God gave me a second chance. Now we live in a fallen world. And there are going to be those not so great moments in our lives. Days or weeks in our lives as well. There's going to be some high times, there's going to be some low times. There's going to be some times where we're as fit as a fiddle. There's going to be some times that we wish someone else would give us a different fiddle. But the truth of the matter is that we need to deem those times as character building. trust building and a telltale time of revealing where we are spiritually. Oh you know what, in trials and tribulations I can learn something about me that I never knew before. How weak I really am. How indifferent I can really be. But I also learned during that process how great God is. How great God will be. And so how many of us can remember when we laid our eyes, laid eyes on our spouses for the first time? Was it one of those hot biggity dog moments, was it? Now, our spouse may not have had that same epiphany. But if you had that aha moment and you saw your spouse for the first time, and you were first smitten, something got your attention. And you knew you had to just know more. You had to get to know this person. You know, sometimes, have you ever, I just don't know what they see in them. And you ask yourself, what in the world do they see in that person? You know, sometimes it's just a smile. Maybe it's the color of the eyes. Maybe it's the way they carry themselves. You know, I would that our young unmarried would learn that the most beautiful attraction to any young lady or any young man is how they conduct themselves in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? Nothing can be more important than a potential mate's relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing. Because I'll tell you what, otherwise Satan has a field day and he is going to poke, pick, at until finally he destroys it, if he can. And if God is not the love of our life, then problems are going to destroy the relationship that we have one with another. But as you got to know them, they began to occupy. And I almost put down the, and live in your head. I thought, well, it might sound better if I just simply say live in your thoughts. Amen. Same difference. Amen. But you knew, you just knew you had to know more. and they began to occupy your thoughts, and they began to occupy your thoughts often. And so, you came to the place where you knew that you had to ask them to become an integral part of your life, and in time, the feelings would become mutual. Now, in a good way, you're becoming obsessed or fixated on them, and you couldn't imagine life without them. because they had become such an important. That's why, you know, when you've been married for any length of time, like with Brother Belasco, losing his wife, Leslie, or my son's father-in-law, Vic, they were married a long time, and now absent Lena and Rosa with Jim and so on. It is a very difficult time. Not that you can't love them as you have always loved them, But it's nice to be able to put your arms around once in a while, amen? Or have them put their arms around you as well. So there wasn't this idea of a conditional love. It was all or nothing forever as it should be. An all or nothing love. Now some may be questioning, and we'll get to it in a moment, how can I love God with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, all my mind, and love someone else? It's amazing. You can. And I'll tell you in a minute. Now I can safely say that in God's part, on God's part, He manifested the fact that He loved us. Romans chapter 5 and verse 8, for God I almost got it wrong there. But God commended his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners. That means that you weren't really in a place to really be loved. Maybe by someone else, but not by God. And yet God loved you anyway. In spite of the fact that you were a sinner. And that you did not first love God as much as God loved you. Or that you didn't care as much about God as God cared about you. But God commended his love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And the demonstration of the strength and the perseverance of that love is expressed in John chapter 15 and verse 13. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Now as a parent you might die for your children. Do whatever you had to do to save them if they were whenever the need was at the moment. But I believe that we should say more heart is that to express my love for my children is to live my life for the Lord. To show them the way. To be able to give them the guidance and the direction that they're also going to need to walk the same walk that you and I have walked. And so greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Now let's think about this for a moment. Our dads and our moms loved us. You loved your children and your children loved you. You had maybe perhaps a number of friends as well that you loved. The word of God is telling us that no one, no one loves you as great as God loved you. I mean, why? He says, greater love hath no man than this. And he demonstrated his love. He gave himself and he was innocent. He was pure. He was holy. He was just. Not a hair on his head was sinful. And yet he went to the cross for you and I. Greater love hath no man. And so our moms and our dads have loved us, but not as the Lord loved us. And so the first time you held your first child, and you could not have imagined how great a love you would feel in that moment. You're excited. You're going to have this child. You're going to have this baby. And as you get closer, you're getting more and more excited. But then all of a sudden, the day of delivery comes, and there you are, you're holding that baby. And as you look at that baby, and you know how innocent it really is. You also know that how needful that child is and that you are given the responsibility to meet those needs and to love that child. Again, with all your heart. And so there it was. You were overwhelmed in that moment. They were perfect in every way. But like most parents, you count the toes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. He's got all the toes, all the fingers. You counted all those things at once. And to every parent that child is as perfect as perfect can be. Now the amazing bit of information for us is to realize is that God knew all about us before we were ever born. He knew all about us. Jeremiah chapter one. He knew us before the foundations of the world were even put in place. and he was still willing and ready to lay down his life. Why would he do that? Because he loved us. Not rocket science, he loved us. And so I revisit the question this morning. In that knowing how much God the Father loves you and me, with a love greater than we can fully comprehend this side of glory. To what degree do we love Him in return? Consider first His great love that has made it possible for you and I to be redeemed. If He didn't love us this much, He would not have gone to the cross. He would not have given His life. He would not have shed His blood. He would not have allowed Himself to be humiliated and to be rejected and to be despised. But for you and me, His love was great to be able to deal with all of that. Consider secondly, what He has saved us from in Revelation chapter 20 and verse 15. And whosoever's name was not found written in the land's book of life was what? Cast into the fire. That's the second death. Consider that he cares deeply how our lives turn out here as individuals. First Peter 5.7 he says, casting all your cares upon him for he cares for you. Not only did his love transcend any other love, the Lord loves me more than my wife does. And I know she loves me, I don't know why, but she does. But Not only does he love us, he cares about us more than anybody else cares about us. You think about that for a moment. He cares how you walk, he cares how you talk, he cares how you live. Because ultimately, why did you care for your children? Because you want what's best. You want what's best for them healthy, you want what's best for them academically, you just want what's best for them all the way around, don't you? And so it is that the Lord wants what is best. He knows how we can navigate through this world, this fallen world of darkness. To navigate through all the things that we will face in life and still come out on the other end. The man and the woman that God wants us to be and that we're going to be glad that we did become. And so consider the great debt that we owed. A debt that we could not pay. Yet Christ who had no debt paid ours in full. Folks, we were on our way to a Christless eternity with no hope. If Jesus doesn't willingly lay down his life, you and I, as Paul expressed it, is in this way, literally, greater, that's the one I wanted to go to, where am I going to go? Anyway, we'll move on. We are saved by God's grace, and so that we come to faith-saving in Christ, and Christ alone. That was the core of the Apostle Paul's message. All this other stuff, this prosperity preaching and stuff that you hear from these prosperity preachers and the charismatics who want to talk about being filled in the Spirit and sending us in all your seed money so that God can bless you with ten times as much, we're along the way. Listen, Paul didn't preach any of that. The riches that Paul preached on was the riches that we have in a developing relationship between ourselves and Christ, and Christ and us. Those were the treasures that Paul preached. Other than he told the Corinthians, he said, in 1 Corinthians, I believe it's chapter 50, he said, I preached nothing other than the death, the burial, and the resurrection. See, that's what he preached. So, we are saved by God's grace. Not because God owes us a debt. God owes us nothing. And yet, through His grace, He has made love and salvation possible. So, is it such a chore for us to become obsessed, to develop an attachment to Christ and give Him our all, all the time? To be fixated so that everything that I funnel through these eyes and these ears somehow gets run through the filter of my love for the Lord Jesus Christ so that I begin to think, I better watch what I'm about to say here because is it going to honor or dishonor the Lord? I better be careful about what I'm about to do. Is it going to honor or dishonor the Lord? It's kind of like if you've ever been involved in a martial arts, one of the things you learn in the martial arts is that you go through these seemingly endless practices. And it's the same thing with any sport, for the most part. But in the martial arts, you have these things called katas. I don't know the word, not dances, but they're maneuvers that you go through as if you're in a little actual fight. And each kata had a different routine embedded within it. So that eventually, you didn't even think about it. That if you were sparring with a partner, it would just automatically, boom, be there. because you have become so one with the physical activity and the immediate perception of what you're about to see and you respond accordingly. And so as we begin to ask ourselves that question, how is this going to honor God? How is this going to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ? How is this going to draw people to Him? And eventually we won't even have to ask that question because it becomes a natural, spontaneous response. in our everyday living. It's just natural. Well, perhaps we have this idea that if we give Christ our all, we won't have anything left to give to others, to our spouses, to our family, to our friends, and that just isn't so. The more love, and I think we sing that song, more love to thee, more love to thee, the more love I have to give to him, then the more he enables me to love others with that same kind of love. It doesn't diminish it, it increases it. It magnifies it. And so Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love. Note the word grounded in verse 17, it means to make stable as opposed to a wishy-washy unstable kind of love. Now there are people going to churches and they had no problem. With the idea that, listen, a gay person can come to Calvary if they want to come to Calvary. They won't be teaching, and they won't be preaching, and they won't be singing in the choir. They can come and listen to what the Word of God has to say. But they're not going to disrupt the assembly. And we're going to love their soul like we'd love anybody else's soul. But the truth of the matter is a lot of people out there who are wishy-washy. And their love is fickle because they think we've got to love everything and anything that comes down the pike. Well, you can love a person without loving what they do. Listen, I can love a skydiver, but I'm not going to do what a skydiver does. Alright? We can love the homosexual crowd without becoming homosexual. You can care and compassionately care for an alcoholic and not become an alcoholic. So we've got to come to that place where we stop making excuses for the existence of sin either in our own lives or someone else's life and still love the individual. So it means to make stable, and that love becomes stable when we're in the Word of God, and we learn how God loves us, and how we can love God, and how we can love others. So it is in the perfect tense. I want you to notice it's in the passive voice. Meaning that by virtue of our desire to love Christ with all our hearts, and with all our soul, and all our might, that we are capable of loving as He loves. And that's the beauty of it. We're capable of living as He lived, and we're capable of loving as He loved. Our ability to exercise a godly love does not diminish our capacity to love others. It increases our capacity to love as Jesus loved you and me. But in Ephesians chapter 3, did you note verses 18 and 19? And he says, actually begin verse 17, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height. He's talking about a limitless love, a limited ability to be compassionate, not only towards the Lord, but to the things that he is also compassionate about. And he said in verse 19, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that she might be filled with all the fullness of God. I challenged you last week, did you want to be, do you want to be full of the fullness of God? Sometimes I think we're full of bologna most of the time. But it would be that we were full of God, full of the knowledge and the love of God. Wouldn't that be great? How different we would be to our spouses, How different we would be, not weak, not wishy-washy, but we would be strong, and yet loving, and compassionate, and caring. So it is this length, this breadth, and this depth that will enable and motivate us to do great things for the Lord our God. We owe Him everything. The Apostle Paul urges the redeemed to do this. And if we only love him as he loved us, this will not be a problem, not even a battle of the will. He says in Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2, I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. And he says, which is your what? Reasonable service. He's not asking you to do more than. He just simply said, which is your reasonable service? But he will enable us to be able to do more than just that, if we're willing to give him that much of our life. And he says, and be not conformed to this world, But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. See, God wants to parade us around. I love the parade. I hate missing the Memorial Day parade. And we're not going to miss it this year. My oldest daughter's son is getting married. We're going out there, but it's going to be after the Memorial Day parade. And we're going to give out hot dogs. And we're going to give out flags. And we're going to give out potato chips. And we're going to give out Bibles. And we're going to give out tracts. And we're going to try to have conversations with the people there. But I love a parade. And when the flag comes by, I'm going to salute that flag. I love America. I don't always love what America has become. But I love the potential that this nation can become if it would just give itself over to God. And so, God wants to parade us around. Amen? He wants us to be on display before the world. With an attitude of, see, this is what happens. This is what life is like when you're sold out to me, the Lord Jesus Christ. And while they're not enjoying life like you are, and while they're not handling the miseries of life that can befall all of us at any given time, They look at us and they say, whoa, what is it that makes you who you are? And you give them one name, Jesus. Jesus and Jesus alone makes me who I am. But you see, you have to give as much love to him as he's given to you. He desires it. The Bible really commands it. That we love him with all our hearts, with all our soul, with all our mind. Do you love the Lord? How much? Father, thank You for this time that we can be together. Lord, gather around Your throne of grace. And Lord, we have experienced that great love. A love that we cannot begin to fathom until, Lord, we begin to walk in it. Until we begin to live in it. Until we have our whole being expressed in it. And then we can begin to understand the kind of love you have for us. Lord, I would that we would all, from this pulpit to the pew to the home, come to that place. And Lord, I realize it's a progressive thing. It's a part of the process of progressive sanctification, Father, we know that. But Lord, some of us are dragging our feet. Some of us are going kicking and screaming when Lord, we should just be all in. The full surrender of our hearts to your desire and to your will. so that that greater love can be expressed in us and through us to others around us. Lord won't you guide, won't you direct in this invitation time. Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. I'd ask you today as a child of God, there's no doubt that if you were to die right now that you'd be present with the Lord. But can you honestly, if you could put a gauge, somehow if we could put a some sort of a gauge on this thing called love. Where would that love fall? Would it be somewhere, as a neophyte might be, new, interesting, or would it fall in the category of mediocrity, for which I'm working on it. It's getting there. I can sense it and I can feel it. But we ought to be making progress, amen? We ought to all be making progress. I should certainly be more in love with God today than I was yesterday, this year more than last year. And I'm praying that if God tarries and doesn't send his son into rapture first, that I will be more in love with him at the end of this year than I did in the beginning. And next year as well. I should make it my goal to allow the Lord to develop that expression within my heart. His Word and the ministry and the work of the Holy Spirit. And would you say with me this morning, preacher, pray for me as we pray for you. Pray for me this morning that my heart would belong to God. And that I'm going to do all that I can to stand to make sure that God retains that first place in my heart. Preacher, would you pray for me today? Would you pray for me? Would you pray? Yes. Hands are here, hands are there. You know, I would rather face the Lord at the bimah seat, seeing the Lord with a Cheshire smile from ear to ear, and uttering the words, well done thou good and faithful servant. I don't want to appear there with him having tears in his eyes, meaning that, you know, you could have done more, and you should have done more, but you didn't. But I love you nonetheless. Folks, God wants an intimate relationship with you, and we need one with Him. And maybe this one you're seeing, whether at home or not, here in the sanctuary, and you say, Preacher, pray for me today, because I have no idea. I did not realize how great God's love for me was. Oh, I knew He cared. I knew He sent His Son, but I didn't know that He really loved me that much, more than you could possibly imagine. And he wants you to become a part of his family by inviting Jesus Christ to become your personal Lord and Savior. It's not rocket science. It's just simply say, Lord, I believe that you are the Son of God. And I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior. I'll preach it that easy. Yes, because Christ took all the hard work. He did all the hard work when he went to the cross. Despised, rejected, and beaten. Nailed to a cross. shedding His blood so that we could be cleansed. Accept Him. Accept what He did. Well, Father, we thank You for this time that we could be together, gathered around Your throne of grace, gathered around Your Word. Lord, I pray that it was not a man, but I pray that it was the Holy Spirit that was speaking to hearts of whoever had heard it today, that it was the Holy Spirit that spoke with the Word of God. and that we will all give ourselves in such a way that our Lord, our lives will never be the same. And we will just crave, hunger, and thirst for more. So Lord, meet the needs of each and who raised their hands, whether here or at home today. Lord, you saw it, you know the heart, you know the desire. And Father, we pray that you'll make it happen. We pray now these things as you dismiss us. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all God's people said, amen.