This Sunday we’ll be exploring the Advent theme of love. The word advent simply means “arrival.” So in the Christian tradition the celebration of Advent is about the arrival of the promised Messiah, Jesus, God’s Son. The Advent season also hints at the second arrival of Christ that will happen in the future (maybe in our lifetime!).
The Advent themes of hope, peace, love, and joy are, essentially, what Christ’s arrival brought into the world in greater fullness. It’s not that they didn’t exist before Christ. They did. But the arrival of Jesus broke open rivers of hope, peace, love, and joy as never before. The second arrival of Christ—whenever that happens—will include the complete eradication of sin, sorrow, sickness and death. It will be the completion of the renewal of all things. Oh what a day that will be! You can catch a glimpse of what it’ll be like in Revelation 21-22. We will see His face!
Back to this Sunday’s theme on love, I want to prepare you in advance to receive the blessing God is going to bring. In the last 30+ years of doing ministry, I have preached on God’s love countless times. Love is at the center of all things. It’s the very nature of our God. An awakening to God’s love will transform our lives more than anything will.
Here’s the challenge, though.
Many of us have heard about God’s love a million times. Some of you have sung “Jesus loves me this I know …” since you were two or three years old. We’ve seen John 3:16 banners at football games reminding us that “God so loved the world.” The Jesus Movement of the early 70s splattered the statement “Jesus loves you” all over America with stickers and posters, artwork and songs. It became an opening line of evangelism—“Hey, man, Jesus loves you.” My point is that the idea of God’s love has become so familiar that it barely affects us.
I am cognizant of this problem as I prepare to speak about God’s love this Sunday. Part of me feels that I have to articulate the love of God in some clever or new way that has never been done in order to break through. But divine love is not made real to us merely by words, even the most eloquent or persuasive words. The love of Christ is opened up to us by the Holy Spirit. This is what the Apostle Paul was telling us in his prayer found in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).
There’s a lot packed into this beautiful prayer, but what I want to highlight is the way that the expanse of God’s love is known (experienced). It is a work of the Spirit in our inner being. It’s a mystery how this exactly works, but I’ll try to explain it a little. When we read or hear a message about God’s love, the words are opened up to the heart by the Spirit. The ideas are not merely intellectually understood but spiritually grasped. In other words, the Spirit awakens us to the gravity, the weightiness, the sublime nature of this love. We see it with spiritual eyes and feel it with spiritual feelers. It’s the difference between hearing a lecture about flying to the moon and actually flying to the moon. The Spirit causes us to experience in our hearts what is being spoken about concerning God’s love.
Are you following this? Stay with me. Many of you will attend this Sunday to hear the simple message I have prepared about God’s love. I can promise you it won’t be some new angle on God’s love that will blow you away. No. It’s the same message you’ve probably heard since childhood. I might be able to spice it up with some humor or evoke some awe by saying something deep. But the effect will be fleeting. You’ll forget what I said before you take your first bite at lunch on Sunday afternoon. At this point, I may have convinced you that you shouldn’t even bother coming this Sunday, ha! But stay with me.
I know my limitations. I cannot make the love of God real to you by intellectual force, creative oratory, or by animation. I’ve been praying, and will continue to pray, that the Spirit will open the eyes of your hearts while the message is preached. Pause, and think about that for a moment. When a sentence rolls from the tongue of an ordinary preacher, let’s say, “God demonstrated his love for us by giving his life as a sacrifice for our sins when we were undeserving sinful creatures,” the Spirit moves upon the heart and makes the idea real. We might feel the tangible presence of God upon us. We might suddenly see eternal realities. We might experience a sort of fire within (like the disciples on the road to Emmaus).
When the Spirit does this work in us of revealing the breadth and length, height and depth of the love of Christ, then it will surpass knowledge (mere intellectual understanding). It will affect us by flooding our hearts with divine love. Paul’s prayer tells us that we will be “filled with all the fullness of God.” Wow! It means we’ll walk away Sunday overflowing with the love of Christ!
Now, what I’m saying will happen this Sunday is pretty spectacular. People often think—perhaps based on real experiences—that church is boring. Or they might value church because of the coffee, the social interaction, the interesting talk, the moving music. But church is so much more than this. The coming together of God’s people is for the purpose of being a dwelling place for God. It’s a house of prayer. It’s an opportunity for God to reveal Himself. God and His people experience communion. God imparts something of himself into us. Think about that.
I have confidence that this is exactly what will happen this Sunday as I speak my simple and unimpressive message about God’s love. I believe that many of you will have a fresh experience and awakening of the love of God. My hope is grounded in my conviction that the Lord answers my prayers—and I’m praying for divine love to crash upon us like mighty waves! I’m praying that the love of God would be grasped in the mind and would flood the heart.
Just because the Spirit is willing to reveal the love of Christ, and Pastor Scott is praying hard, doesn’t mean that everyone will automatically experience God’s tangible love. This is really why I’m writing this letter to you. I’m asking you to come this Sunday prepared and postured to receive. Scripture says, “God gives grace to the humble, but He resists the proud.” Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear let him listen to what the Spirit is saying.” If we come Sunday and our hearts are far from God and we are daydreaming about food or Christmas shopping in our head or scrolling social media for info about the World Cup—we will experience nothing. If our hearts are caught up in desiring the things of the world all week and then we try to shift gears abruptly on Sunday morning to get a blessing from God—we likely won’t experience anything (James 1:7).
So my pastoral encouragement to each of us for this Sunday (and really every Sunday!) is to come prepared and postured to receive. Be praying throughout the week for God to reveal himself to you. Search your heart in your private time and make things right. Don’t wait till Sunday service to repent. Do it at home. Don’t come to church in a state of holding onto sin. Don’t come double-minded. Make those things straight in your secret closet of prayer. Don’t wait till the closing song or prayer on Sunday to surrender your life to God. Surrender now. Come into the house of God ready to receive.
To come to church expecting a blessing from God when we are not willing to surrender is a strange and unbiblical behavior. We may be tired, we may be under the weather, we may have pain in our body, we may have doubts and fears, we may be swimming in struggles and sorrows. That’s all fine. But let us come in humility and with open hearts. The love of Christ will be manifested to us if we are hungry and open to receive it.
I’m excited to see what the Lord is going to do on this last Sunday before Christmas. Pray with me that God would make his love real to every one of us.
Scott A