Reading from Ephesians 3 verses 14 through 21. For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the depth and length and the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who was able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Father, we thank you for your Word, and I pray that as we look into various passages, that your Holy Spirit would accompany the Word and sanctify us and strengthen us and help us to be drawn closer and closer to your heart. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, Os Guinness told the story of Pyotr Petrovich, who was a Russian union worker at the Leningrad timber works. And the story occurred when Khrushchev was the dictator still over the Soviet Union. And there were so many people who were engaged in petty theft that the government established guards at each of the places and searched people as they would exit. And one of the guards spotted Piotr Petrovich wheeling a wheelbarrow full of sawdust, and he was suspicious, checked him out, and let me read this part of the story. "'Come on, Petrovich,' said the guard. "'What have you got there?' "'Just sawdust and shavings,' Petrovich replied. "'Come on,' the guard said. "'I wasn't born yesterday. "'Tip it out.' "'Out it came, nothing but sawdust and shavings. "'So he allowed it to be put back in again, "'and he went home. "'Same thing happened every night, all week, "'and the guard was getting extremely frustrated. "'Finally, his curiosity overcame his frustration. "'Petrovich,' he said, "'I know you. "'Tell me what you're smuggling out of here, "'and I'll let you go.' Wheelbarrows, said Petrovich. As Reformed people, we're pretty good at making sure that no false doctrines get smuggled past us, and so we examine people. You know, even on this doctrine of love, we want to make sure that it's not You know, a false doctrine of love that the universalists have that's not based on grace, or that the situational ethic people have that's constantly a moving target, or the on and off, again, kind of a love that the five-point Arminians have. And we believe in doctrine, and yet the biggest error of all slips by us in the form of a wheelbarrow, and that is the error of thinking that God's love is only a good doctrine. Now, doctrine's important. But we fail to distinguish the importance of having that doctrine lead us to the God who enables us to experience His love in a powerful, transformational way. And that's the main point of this miniseries, which will probably be ending up next week, is how do you enter more and more into the experience of God and what He is working in us? Now I'll admit it probably wasn't a good idea to compare the doctrine of love or a dead doctrine to sawdust, but let me read to you what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13 concerning the doctrine of love. Paul says, though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And then in verse 3, he describes something that many people would say, well, that has to be love. Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, isn't that a kind of love? But he says, though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. And the point is that Paul was talking about a love that is not possible unless you're regenerate and receiving it from heaven. This is God's love. This is agape love, supernatural love. And it's not enough to have a doctrine about this love. He wants us to actually experience that love. And what does he mean by that? Turn with me again to the passage we just read from Ephesians chapter 3. In verse 17, Paul wants us to be rooted and grounded in love. It's a very interesting thought. What does it mean to be rooted and grounded in God's love? Well, obviously, it at least means we've got to have right doctrine. Doctrine is important, and that doctrine gives us security. And in verse 18, he says we need to keep growing in that knowledge. of God's love beyond salvation. He wants us to keep studying, and now we're still talking about the intellectual side of that. He says that we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height I would take a lot of study to be able to comprehend that, but we're supposed to study the Scriptures. That's what we're doing today. We're giving you some doctrine in the next couple of weeks, the application of that doctrine. We're going to be making some applications today as well. And so the doctrine is really, really important. But in verse 19, he prays that we may have an experiential knowledge that actually exceeds what our rational brains can take in. He says, to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So to know the experience of God's love, you need to be filled with God himself. See, the doctrine of God without God is empty. And so some of us, I think, have allowed wheelbarrows to be smuggled past us, the error of dividing doctrine from the experience of that doctrine. And so today we're going to be, as I said, focusing on the doctrinal side, and next week, Lord willing, we're going to be focusing on the applications. Now you can tell from the outline that I've given here, there's a huge number of dimensions to the love of God. First, God's love is always a declared love. This is an important concept to get. In Isaiah 43, 1 through 4, God gives the following phrases. You are mine. You are precious and honored in my sight. I love you. So He tells us that He loves us. And He told the Son the same thing from before the foundation of the world. He says to the Son that He loves the Son. And even when the son was on earth, he says, you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Over and over again, God tells the son, he tells us, I love you. And then in case we've forgotten, he tells us again, I love you. His love is a love which can never tire of communicating that with us. And yet, how often is our love hidden? You may have heard the story of the Yiddish farmer who never declared his love to his wife. And finally, his wife was very frustrated and said to him, why is it you never tell me that I love you? And he said, well, I don't know. I told you that I love you when I married you, and if I ever change my mind, I'll let you know. No, that's not enough. Real love is always declared. And we ought to be creative in expressing our love to each other and expressing our love to God. God is very creative in the different ways in which He expresses His love to His people. He does it through prose. He does it through poetry. He protects his people and says, I love you. He provides food and other sustenance to us. And he says, the reason I'm doing this is because I love you. So don't get stuck in a rut. Say it in many different ways. Say it with expression and meaning. Agape love is hamstrung if it is not communicated. If our love is agape love for God, And it's His love, right? It's always going to be a declared love, an expressed love. But second, God's love is a personal love. Now, if your idea of God's love is, yeah, He loves the church in general, but I maybe get lost in the crowd, then these are verses I think that should be encouraging to you. They're just samples of the graphic descriptions of not only God's emotional side of love, but the personal love that He has. In Luke 15.10, we're told, there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents. Not just over the millions, but over one sinner. That's personal, right? Listen to Zephaniah 3.17. By the way, Zephaniah is the fourth to last book in the Old Testament, and some people call this the John 3.16 of the Old Testament. It's actually Zephaniah 3.17, but you get the point. It's close enough that maybe it will help you to remember it. But it's a wonderful verse that says, the Lord your God in your midst, the mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. That's not just a general love. This is a very personal love. In Galatians 2.20, Paul could personalize John 3.16 as God loves me. He says, the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And each one of you should be able to say, yes, God loves me. I know that. Not just the song, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so, but because you've experienced it. But I want to go further and say that God's love is intimate. This goes a little bit further than just being personal. In fact, why don't you turn there with me, John 14.21. I want you to see this for yourself, because this is mind-blowing. At least for me it was mind-blowing when I first began to experience the intimacy of God's love in twelfth grade. I was always convinced of God's love for me, even as an individual, but I never dared to think that God had time for me, that He cared for me in this kind of a personal way. And I suspect a lot of my insecurities flowed from the fact that I spent so many years in boarding school. I never doubted that my parents loved me and provided for me, but I longed, terribly missed, you know, the parental love. And perhaps some of you have missed this dimension of God's love for you. You know God loves you, but you want to get out of boarding school, so to speak, and into God's arms. Well, this passage says that can be your experience always. John 14, verse 21. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. This is what I longed for for years, to know God in an intimate way, to have Him manifest Himself to me, but I was not willing to pay the price. The Lord had been convicting me of sin for quite some time, and I was unwilling to let go of that sin. And it was sin that turned God off, and it bothered Him, right? Just as relations can be destroyed and can destroy intimacy in marriage, That can happen with our God as well when we grieve Him, when we ignore His wishes by ignoring His laws. And so metaphorically, yeah, we're still married to God, but He doesn't force Himself on us. He wants a reciprocal relationship. And when you love Him and you avoid the things that irritate Him and you pursue the wishes of His law, God says His love will move from a doctrine to an experience in your hearts. I will love Him and manifest myself to Him. And when I finally gave up in 12th grade and gave myself to the Lord without reservation, God manifested Himself to me so powerfully. It was like wave after wave of His loving personal presence going over me, and I couldn't sleep. I was so in love with the Lord myself. It was an incredible thing, and this was the beginning of my Song of Solomon experience with God. Once you have experienced the reality of a Song of Solomon intimacy experience. And it's just an image, right? Marriage is just an image. But you will never be content just reading about God's love. You want to press into that more and more. Now later I had times where I lost that. I was too tired for the Lord and I experienced His love waning. and drying up. In the words of Solomon, I basically said, I've taken off my robe, how can I put it on again? I've washed my feet, how can I defile them? And so the woman in that book is basically saying, I'm too tired, I don't want to get up for you. But the bride soon realized that his absence was painful and she sought him and could not find him. And what that book is trying to engender in us is a picture that once you have tasted of God's love, you want to go back to it over and over again. You pursue God, just as the bride in the Song of Solomon did. And God will manifest his self to you when you pursue him with all your heart. It's guaranteed. God delights in sharing his love in the most intimate of manner. And I've given some other scriptures you can look at on your own. Point D says that this is a generous love. Now I've stacked a bunch more scriptures in that point because there's a lot of people that doubt this point. They're always fearful that God will fall out of love with them, or His love will grow dim toward us. But over and over, Scripture describes God's love as a generous love, a great love, an abundant love, a rich love, and similar other Scriptures. Now, there's a whole bunch of scriptures that talk about this, but I like Romans 5, verse 5. It says, now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. And John Murray and many other Reformed scholars say, this is not our love for God. This is talking about God's love actually residing in our hearts, being poured out into our hearts. And the Greek word for shed abroad means There is an incredible abundance. It's a large quantity. One commentator says it means an inundation. Here's how one Bible version renders it. God's love has flooded our inmost heart. So he's not talking about faint impressions, but he's talking about an overwhelming experience of God's love within us. And so these are scriptures I'm hoping will stir up your hearts to want more of the Lord, to never be satisfied with less, to always be pressing after the Lord. And by the way, don't call me a pietist. Some people think, oh, this is so scary, this kind of stuff. No, this is John Murray. This is the Puritans. This is standard Reform fare that I'm giving to you, this sense of God's intimacy. Now let's move on. Each of these points that describe God's character melts my heart because it's unlike anything that we experience down here below. While human love can be broken and can give up, God's love is an eternal and an unbreakable love. Why don't you turn with me to Jeremiah 31 and verse 3. If you've ever been tempted to wonder if God loves you any longer, then this could be a Scripture to hang on to. It's a Scripture I memorized many, many years ago, and I memorized it in the King James, but I'll read it from the New King James. It says, Jeremiah 31.3, the Lord has appeared of old to me saying, yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you. It's a beautiful scripture to meditate upon. Ephesians 1, 4 through 5 says that God's love began toward us in eternity past. It words it this way, in love, having predestined us to adoption. Wow. Even before there was a world that was created, God predestined us to be adopted as sons and daughters, and he did it out of love for us. You've no doubt memorized Romans 8, 25 through 39. It's a passage that assures us that absolutely nothing in creation can separate us from God's love. When I was a five-point Arminian, I many times wondered if I would lose my salvation In fact, I remember very vividly thinking, okay, what if I'm in heaven a thousand years from now, and I sin against God, and can I lose my salvation in heaven? I never was founded on this, but this passage says, nothing in creation, and you're a part of creation, so that includes you, nothing in creation can separate us from the love of God. Does that mean there won't be any rough spots in our marriage, metaphorically speaking, with God? No, there could be rough spots. Obviously, there can be. If you look at the Scriptures in point F, you will see that there is pain in God's love, and we'll get to that in a bit. And you'll experience pain as well. But because God's love is an unconditional love, He loves us even when it is painful to love us, and He expects us to have the same kind of love. Because Christ paid the price, you're perfect, you're secure in Him. But Romans 8 says nothing can separate you from His love. Once you turn to one more verse, Hosea 11. and verses 8 through 9. I want to spend some time on this because a lot of people are suspicious that there really can be any pain in God's love. But there are many scriptures that indicate that when we ignore His Sabbaths, when we disobey His laws, it brings pain to Him. We saw last week, two weeks ago I guess it was, that there wasn't anything in creation that God needs. He doesn't need us. He doesn't need creation, right? In fact, it says, he endures with much longsuffering, there's pain, he endures with much longsuffering, the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. So even unbelievers bring him pain. But this is a passage that indicates believers can bring him pain as well. Hosea 11, 8 through 9. How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I set you like Zeboim? And I should mention that Adma and Zeboim were cities that were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah, and Israel deserved to be destroyed, just like we deserve to be destroyed. But he says, how can I do that? Continuing in the last clause in verse 8, my heart churns within me. My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come with terror. And that's the whole theme of the book of Hosea, that they have committed spiritual adultery against God, and it has pained him greatly. He wants us back. And to me, this is the most mystifying aspect of God's love, that He would allow Himself to be in a position where He experiences pain. Now, it's a metaphor. God is perfect, you know, but He's trying to get across to us how distasteful this can be. And by way of application, I would say that agape love deliberately makes itself vulnerable to those whom we love. Why would the Holy Spirit put himself into a position of being grieved? Being grieved, that's a painful thing. He's made himself vulnerable in a sense. Paul says, grieve not the Spirit of God by whom you were sealed to the day of redemption. So we're secure, we're secure until the final day of history, and yet it says we can grieve him. But if we enter into the joy of knowing God, of experiencing His love, we're not going to want that to happen. Of course, we ought to imitate God in our relations with others. You've perhaps been hurt by certain people, and you may not have close fellowship and relationship with them, but if you've got the kind of love that God has, you're not going to give up on those whom God does not give up on. Right? Continue to give, and to talk to, and to minister to, and to work with, and to love upon. Scripture says, don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So it cannot be a conditional love. Why is it that God is willing to put up with pain? Well, point G says it's of His very nature to have a sacrificial love. Central to the definition of agape love is its self-giving nature. Now, we saw before that the attribute of aseity means that it's absolutely impossible for God to be self-centered or selfish. And it also indicates it's always self-giving. He's always giving in a sacrificial way. 1 John 3.16 says, by this we know love, because he laid down his life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Christ says that there's no greater love than this. Well, that means that you've fooled yourself if you think, oh yeah, I'd lay down my life for my wife. But you don't have the love to help her out, you know, with some of the chores, and you don't have the love to bless her because, well, I'm just too tired to do that kind of thing. If you can't love in the lesser ways, how do you know you're going to love in the greater ways? Okay? Ask God, and people say, well, that's pretty discouraging because that's me. But that's the point. This is not a love you can concoct in yourself. This is something is for the asking. God says, ask of me and I'll give you. It's agape love, and He can enable you to have that kind of a sacrificial love. Now, of course, God's love is a holy love. There is no way God could love us without His holiness being satisfied, and that's the whole doctrine of justification. So much of what goes for love in the modern church can be exposed as counterfeit by this point alone. But let me read you some of the scriptures in your outline. John 14, 15 and 21. If you love Me, keep My commandments. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." Notice that Jesus denies that you have a true God-given love if you refuse to keep His commandments. And you might have your excuses as to why you don't tithe, and why you violate the Sabbath, and why you watch pornography, or other ways that you violate His laws, but it exposes the shallowness of the love that you're experiencing, maybe even the non-existence of that love. True love is a holy love. And again, don't get discouraged if you don't have it. You go to the Lord in grace daily and ask Him for this God-given love. It's a product of grace. Anyway, back to the main point. Let me read a few more of those scriptures. If you keep my commandments, You will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. 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. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Nevertheless, she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control. But showing mercy to thousands and to those who love me and keep my commandments." So again, ask God to shed abroad His holy love so that your love will be a holy love. Moving on, point I says that God's love is also a sovereign love. Ephesians 1.4 says, in love, having chosen us. Over and over again in the Scripture, God's love is tied to a choice, and love is a choice. It's not just a feeling, it's a choice. When people say they want a divorce because they no longer have any feelings for each other, they're forgetting that love is not dependent upon our feelings. It's a choice. Actually, Jay Adams related a story of one of his counseling. situations where a couple came to him, and they had a really troubled marriage, and they described in great detail how horrible their marriage was, trying to convince their pastor that they deserved to be able to get a divorce. And he said, nope, you cannot get a divorce. You have to stay married to each other. And by the way, he pointed out, you're commanded to love each other, and feelings follow that command. And they said, well, we just cannot do that. And so J. Adams said, well, let's back up a step. If you can't love each other as husband and wife, at least, Scripture says, love your neighbor as yourself, and he's the closest neighbor you have. And she says, I don't want to be his neighbor. And he says, well, let's back up a step even further. The Bible commands us to love our enemies. And his point was, you can't get out of this. Love is a choice. It has nothing to do with feelings. The feelings will come later, but we have to imitate God by choosing to love. Were we lovable when God put his love upon us? No. And if we've got his agape love, we're going to not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. It's a choice. It's a choice. Okay, point J says that God's love is a free love, not free in the hippie sense, you know, of promiscuous, you know, they talked about free love. That was promiscuous love. Well, that's an oxymoron. It's not love. But free love in the sense that it doesn't need to be earned. Have you ever been in relationships where you never felt like you could do enough to be secure in a person's love? Well, that's because it wasn't a free love. God's love is not looking for payment. Listen to Hosea 14 verse 4. It says, I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely. Get that phrase. I will love them freely. Now, that was in the context of Israel having committed spiritual adultery, and God forgave and loved Israel after they repented, just as Hosea loved his wife unconditionally after she repented and came back to him. There needed to be repentance, because it's a holy love, right? It doesn't just ignore sin. But when there was repentance, Hosea did not hold her former sins against her and over her head. He loved her freely, and God says, that's now an image of the way in which I will love you freely, too. Some of you might think, yes, I've asked God to forgive me of my past, and I'm no longer doing those things. But you keep feeling dragged down by the past. Park on this verse. God will love you freely after you have come to Him in repentance. It's not that we deserve it. It's not a merit relationship, it's a love relationship. And we need to love others in the same way. By the way, because we are to imitate God, we are to love Him with all of our strength. It's not sufficient to love God with our mind and emotions. Scripture says we need to love Him with our actions. Point K demonstrates this concept when it says God's love is a powerful love. Song of Solomon 8.6 says, love is as strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love. Now, if His love was weak, then the evil of this world would be able to overwhelm it, overcome it. But because God is a unity and He's an omnipotent God, His love is an omnipotent love. We need to keep that in mind when God calls us to love our enemies. He's not calling us to love in our own strength. He's calling us to use His love by His strength and by His grace. The passage we started with in Ephesians 3, it's not in your outline, but it does tie God's power together with our ability to love. prays that we would be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and then he gives so that, he says, and then he gives the results of this strengthening power, and that's experiencing his love. A love that passes knowledge. Love has produced powerful changes in men's lives. God's love shining through individuals has won them to Christ. It's melted hardened hearts. It has broken enmity. Kathy and I just finished reading through Virginia Provan's book, Saving My Assassin. We highly recommended it. It's a great book. She was a Christian attorney, who became a Christian after she was an attorney, working to defend Christians and churches in communist Romania under Nicolae Susescu was his name. And it was at a time when Ronald Reagan, she had been persecuted, beat up, all kinds of things were happening. And Ronald Reagan had told his embassy there to make sure that they were at the court and they were monitoring. And Romania needed most favored nation status. And so they were trying to placate Ronald Reagan, but they hated her guts. And they were trying to throw her into traffic, do different things to get rid of her. And finally, the president or Whatever his office was the the dictator there Sent an assassin to kill her and Once everybody had left her office. He came in locked the door pulled out his gun and said I'm here to kill you and And she was initially very, very scared of what he was going to do. And she said, Lord, fear, cast out fear. She prayed that God would give her wisdom and courage to talk to this person. And she just said to him, well, I know you've got to do what you've got to do. This is your job. But aren't you curious why I'm doing what I'm doing and hear what I have to say before you kill me? And he was curious. He wondered, why in the world would anybody go through the things that she has gone through in order to save these Christians. And so she shared her testimony and the love of Christ, and God, as she's sharing, gave her an incredible love for him, and he converted on the spot and walked out. And just to double-check the thing, he came to the United States, and I heard his testimony. He says, oh yeah, everything she said is exactly true. I was the assassin. But anyway, What was I going into that story with? The power, yeah, the power of God's love. Hitler said, love is weak, hate is strong. But Hitler fell. Stalin has fallen. Hate did not keep the Soviet Union together. When Khrushchev visited the Ruin Cathedral, he said this. There is much in Christ that is in common with us communists. No, but anyway, that's what he said. But I cannot agree with him when he says, when you are hit on the right cheek, turn the left cheek. I believe in another principle. If I'm hit on the left cheek, I hit back on the right cheek so hard that the head might fall off. But James says, mercy triumphs over judgment. Even in the midst of persecution, Richard Wurmbrandt was given by God a supernatural love for his torturers. And he recounts stories of many, many countless Christians who have had the same power of God's love working through them. Forgive me if you've heard this. illustration, I've probably given it before, I don't remember, but it's such a moving story for me. Corrie ten Boom recounts the story of meeting one of the guards that had been in her prison camp, and this was a guard who had been particularly mean and humiliating her and her sister. And she had been talking at this conference, and he came up to her afterwards, and she immediately recognized him. And he had said that he was saved. He held out his hand, and he asked her, will you forgive me? And here's what she writes. I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart. I can totally understand that. I stood there with coldness clutching at my heart, but I know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I prayed, Jesus, help me. Woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into one stretched out to me, and there, by the way, is the sovereign dimension of love. we choose to love even though we don't feel like it, right? So she says, I thrust my hand into one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. The current started in my shoulder, raced down into my arms and sprang into our clutched hands. Then this warm reconciliation seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. I forgive you, brother, I cried with my whole heart. For a long moment, we grasped each other's hands, the former guard, the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did. at that moment. To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you. And I have seen So many people imprisoned by bitterness. Yes, they've been hurt. Yes, they've been persecuted and lied about. And yet, they continue in their suffering because they refuse to obey God's command to love with a supernatural love, to overcome evil with good. Love is powerful. God's love is. And if you doubt the power of saving love, I would encourage you to read that book, Saving My Assassin, by Virginia Provan, or read Richard Wurmbrank's book, Tortured for Christ, or read Corrie Ten Boom's book, The Hiding Place, or any number of other books. that highlight God's supernatural love enabling Christians to do the impossible. That's what Paul meant when he spoke of God's love being shed abroad, inundating our souls. Or what he meant in 2 Corinthians 5.14, the love of Christ compels us, compels us. There's a power in God's love. Agape love is God's love, and it's going to have all of the characteristics of this outline if we have it. But the verses in the next point show that God's love is not just heartfelt, it's also rational. Emotions and rationality do not have to be opposites. They don't have to be contradictory. Remember that Christ commanded us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, right? The rational aspect of God's love is that He has plans for our good. Long before the foundation of the world, He elected us in love. He made plans for our life. He made plans for eternity. He says, I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord. Plans for good and not for calamity. And we must have plans if we are to love as God calls us to love. If we just wait for love to spontaneously ignite our hearts when we go home, it's not always going to happen. Yeah, sometimes we do spontaneous things, but we need to plan. We need to choose. Our flesh can dominate. We can be too tired to love. So you need to plan fun times, plan educational times, plan fellowship. And yes, sometimes you're going to do things spontaneously, but never think that love cannot be planned. And if you're married, you need to keep lists of ways to express love and implement them. That's loving others with your mind, just as God loved you with his plans. You need to know what the likes and the dislikes of the other person are. But all of us can enter into that, whether we're children, parents, or single adults. Love God and each other with your minds. God's love is rational. Now, we've emphasized that love can be done as an action, even when the heart is not in gear. But the biblical balance is to love God even with our emotions. Our emotions are not enemies. They can be in the service of God. And certainly, God's heart goes out to us. In Hosea, he says that his heart churns within him when he sees us in sin. On the other hand, Isaiah 62.5 says, as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, That's a pretty strong rejoicing, right? As the bridegroom rejoices the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. Isn't that incredible? And yet that is the kind of heart that God has for you individually. Don't ever think that God has a so-so relationship with you. He is committed from the heart. Zephaniah 3.17 speaks of God's deep rejoicing love over each of us. And then finally, God's love is a reliable love. It's not on again, off again. After all, Paul says, love never fails. True love, agape love, can be counted on. And over and over in the Scriptures, you've got refrains like this, for His love endures forever, or His faithful love, or His steadfast love. And you can look up some of those references yourself. But let's end this service by thanking God for the love that He has promised to shed abroad in our hearts, and ask Him to help us to press more and more into that love relationship with Him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the incredible love that you have shown to us. We are unworthy, utterly unworthy. We are awed that You as a holy God could love us so much, and we praise You and we thank You. Praised be to Your name. Praised be to Your name, Lord God. I pray for this congregation, that they might be strengthened with might by Your Spirit in the inner man, that they might be rooted and grounded in love and might be able to comprehend with all the saints What is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that they might be filled with all of your fullness? Help us to love you with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind and help us to love our neighbors as ourselves. You have been a blessing to us, O God. Make us a blessing to others. By your power, enable us to effectively reach out to our communities and lead many to Christ. Upcoming evangelistic outreaches, Father, enable these things to break people's hearts as they see their sin and all of its awfulness confronted by Your Word, but as they also see the offers of forgiveness. We desire to see Omaha coming to know the gospel of Christ. We desire to see America not content with a pretend righteousness, but to be clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So, Father, would You shine upon our land and free us from our corruption? Grant us your grace and your love and we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen