Come on, can we just give God 10 more seconds of praise real quick? Come on. If you know he's been good to you, if you know him, not just in name, but in your experience, let everything that has breath, praise the Lord.

It's good to be together. I'm going to let you sit down in just a minute, but lemme just say this first. This is only my second time in Dallas, and everything in Texas is different because it's a different country and I'm unfamiliar with the roads and I'm unfamiliar with a lot of things. And then I walk in here and how many of you know that the presence of God has a way of taking a place that's unfamiliar and making it feel like home? The presence of God is in this place, and it's a joy to be with you today. And I want to say part of the reason that I'm here is, and I'll share some of my story. I grew up as a pastor's son and ran as far away, not just from pastoring, but from Jesus as I possibly could. The Lord has a way of pursuing you and grabbing you. But let me just say this. I'm thankful that my mother and my father have lived a life, not just of ministry, but of integrity. And I'm thankful for that. But I will also say, because I grew up as a PK and as a church kid, I've seen some shady things.

Yep, yep.

And I just need you to know that you cannot tell much about a person by what they do on stage. In my younger years, I was very impressed by pastors who had large churches, who had great communication gifts. I've learned the hard way. You cannot tell much about a person by what you see on stage or by even what you see on social media. What you can tell about a person's character and integrity is what their life is like when nobody else is watching. Yeah. Amen. And so let me tell you why I'm here. I don't often go preach at places where I don't really have a longstanding personal relationship with the leaders of that church. So I do my homework

And I send out the group text to say, Hey, you know this dude, is this dude solid, not dizzy, good preacher? Does he have a large church? Does he love Jesus? Does he love his wife? Does he love his family? And then I listen to a couple of sermons, is this dude locked in to the word of God or is he just out here just talking crazy? And so can we just take a moment and thank God for the leaders that God has given you? And come on y'all. If you're thankful to have leaders of integrity who love God, love their family and love this church, thank you so much for having me. I want to quickly, I know what it's like when there's a guest preacher and you're like, I don't know this dude. I really just want to hear from my own pastor. I got you. All right, I got you. So we just going to be in one verse. Is that all right? I just want us to spend some time in one verse, and it's John chapter 15, verse nine. You can meet me in John 15 if you have your own copy of the Bible. If you don't, we'll have the verse on the screen. John chapter 15, verse nine.

These are the words of Jesus. And I'll be reading from the English standard version, John chapter 15, verse nine. Here's where Jesus

Says,

I want you to hear this as if Jesus is speaking to you because he is. Jesus says, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you, abide in my love as the Father has loved me. So have I loved you, abide in my

Love.

You just do me a favor in turn to the person next to you and just say, you were made for love.

You were made for

Love, you were made for love. Now, come on. I don't know if they believe you. So say with your chest, you were made, you were made for love, you were made for love. Let me pray before I have you take your seat. Father, we pause and as we prepare to give you our attention, God, to sit under the authority of your word. Father, we are reminded that you said let there be light. And there was light. You spoke everything into existence. What that tells us, father, is that you not only speak through your word, but you work through your word. And so Father, as you speak to us today, father, would you work in our hearts by the power of your Holy

Spirit?

We pray this in Jesus' name. Everybody say amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. You can be seated.

I don't know if you've had this experience before. If you fly, get a chance to travel every once in a while. And I traveled like a regular person. Here's what I mean by that. I went on a trip international, it was a ministry trip several years ago with some folks. And we show up to the airport, we do the normal thing. You kind of go through security. Praise God for TSA precheck. If you are not doing TSA precheck, I don't know what you're doing. If you don't get nothing else from my sermon and that's it. It's worth it. It is worth it all. We make our way through security and we get in and I do what normal people do. You try to make your way close to the gate to find a seat. But the people I'm traveling with is like, nah, doc, we don't travel like that. We about to go to this lounge. I'm like, lounge who? Lounge where They're like, just come with me. So we get to this lounge, I can't get in the lounge. I get in the lounge with them. How many of y'all ever been in these lounges? Some of y'all are like, what are you talking about, dog? I know. I'm just saying a lot of us don't know. So I get into this lounge. Let me tell y'all, these lounges are crazy.

They got these amazing plus chairs. It's quiet in there. It is peaceful in there. I'm used to just trying to hurry up and get in the Panda Express line or a good airport with a Chick-fil-A right to get food. They got a buffet with prime rib and all these different desserts and all this stuff for you to enjoy. And so you feel refreshed when you come out of the lounge and then you make your way to the gate because it's time for you to board. And so we get there and they are getting on before me. They just travel different. So they kind of get on, no problem. I'll see y'all. You know what I'm saying? When I get in there. And so sometimes y'all been through this before. Sometimes when you fly these international fights, they make you walk through first class just to spite you.

You know what I'm saying? And so I walk through first class and I see my people sitting in first class and they're giving me the royalty waves. You know what I'm saying? As I make my way back to the hood, you know what I mean? C 25 E, you know what I mean? In the back of the plan, I'm sitting back there, y'all salty for all these hours of this international flight because here's the thing, we are going in the same direction we're even going to land in the same destination, but it's about to be a very different experience on the way there.

Here's why I share that because I think the same thing is often true in our spiritual experience. That there are some of us here, some of us that are watching online and we have settled in our life and in our spiritual life for a second class experience when what we'll see in God's word today is that God has made a first class experience available to you in Jesus. And here's what I know that there are some of us who, like me, you grew up in church. There are some of y'all that did not grow up in church and you're just kind of exploring Christianity and you look around at other people, at your grandmother, at a pastor, at a person that you respect and you look at their spiritual life and you think that they are some kind of elite Christian that just has this exclusive access to this level of spiritual experience with God that you don't have access to. Well, here's the thing, in Christ, all of us have the same access

And all of us have the same invitation to experience all that God has for us to experience. And this is what we see happening in John 15, nine. Let me give you context. The first eight verses of John 15 are basically about the fact that God bears fruit in our lives as we abide in Jesus, as we remain connected to the vine, as we stay connected to Jesus. And so Jesus on that basis says to his disciples, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you, abide in my love. Now, here's the thing. Normally when I preach, I come from a little bit of a bicostal background. I try to have very clear, neat sermon points. Here's what I want us to do today. I don't want you to walk away necessarily with my words. I want you to walk away with Jesus's words.

I want this verse to be echoing in your mind and in your heart all day, all week. And so here's what we're going to do together. We're going to memorize some scripture together. Is that all right? That was very tentative. If you want to memorize some scripture today, can you say that's all right? That's alright. And even if you don't, we're going to do it anyway. You know what I'm saying? We're going to memorize John 15 and I'm going to make it very easy for you here watching online. I just want you to repeat after me. Can we do this? Yes. Alright. John 15, nine. John 15, nine. As the father has loved me, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. So have I loved you. Abide in my love, abide in my love. Let's do it again. John 15, nine.

John 15, nine. As the father has loved me, has the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. So have I loved you. Abide in my love, abide in my love. Come on, turn that person next to you and say, good job. Good job. You are killing it out here. All right? Alright, here's what we're going to do. Here's what we're going to do. I want us to slow down and we're going to unpack this one verse. And part of the reason is because we talk about the love of God in church, but so many of us, our idea of the love of God is not rooted and grounded in anything substantial. We have no firm foundation. And the word of God is the only firm foundation for the love of God. It's not your feelings. It's not what your grandmother told you, your experiences.

The only foundation of the love for the love of God is the word of God. And so we're going to take this one verse and we're going to break it down. Peace by peace. Jesus says, as the Father has loved me, that's good. You may not be able to see it yet, but let me show you why this is good. Jesus here is talking about his relationship with God the Father. And I want you to listen to what Jesus says later in the same conversation with the disciples. And if you're exploring Christianity, you're not sure what you believe about all this, don't let anybody tell you, I don't care who they are, black Hebrew, Israelites, whoever they are, don't let nobody tell you that Jesus did not see himself as God. God in the flesh, the son of God because Jesus in his own words. John chapter 17, verse five, listen to what he says. He says, and now Father, glorify me in your presence with the same glory. Listen, the same glory that I had with you when before the world existed. So Jesus says, I'm not like y'all. I was not created. I have existed with God, the Father, the creator for all of eternity. I was with him in glory before anything was created. Here's what this shows us, that there is something profound about reality and it is this, that before anything was created in the physical or spiritual realm, there has existed always an eternal community of divine love.

It's what we as Christians call the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. Three in one distinct persons equally God who have existed together forever in perfect harmony, in perfect divine love. And we get a window into what that love looks like in the life of Jesus. You think about how Jesus's relationship with God the father is described as you read through the gospels, Matthew, mark, Luke, and John. Some of you, if you're familiar with the Bible, you remember at Jesus' baptism when the Father cracks the sky, he affirms his son and he says what? He says, this is my son with whom I am well pleased. He says, I don't want none of y'all to get it confused about who this is and what our relationship is like. No matter what the crowd say, no matter what Rome says, I want you to know that this is my son with whom I am well pleased. And there are so many of us that would give anything to hear that from our father. It's my son whom I'm well pleased. And you see Jesus reflect that same kind of love to God the Father. You see that in John chapter eight, verse 29. Listen to what he says. He says, the one talking about God the Father who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone. For I always do what pleases him. And so when Jesus says, as the Father has loved me, he's talking about a divine eternal love that's difficult for us to understand, but that all of us long for,

Here's my point, you say you up here, here's my point. You were made from that love and you were made for that love. You were created from divine love and you were created for divine love. Now, I understand what it's like sometimes to hear that because we hear about the love of God all the time. And particularly for us men, when we hear a preacher talking about love, we have a tendency to let it go in one ear and out the other because we like, this is why I don't really do church like that because church is for women and y'all be talking about all this emotional stuff and it's because you equate love with just emotional stuff. But I want to show you that you were made for love. So lemme give you an example. I was reading an article, an interview with an Esquire magazine with Will Smith and this Pres Slapp, okay, pres Slapp, will Smith. And so he was talking about another low moment in his life, right? One of the lowest moments in his life, in his career was after the movie after Earth. It was a terrible movie in his own words,

And it did not do well at all. And listen to what Will Smith said, he said, I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number one movies. He said, I was a guy who when I was 15, my girlfriend cheated on me and I decided that if I was number one, no one would ever cheat on me that did not age well just stay focused. Let's just keep going with his quote here. Listen to what he said. He said, all I have to do is make sure that no one's ever better than me. And listen, he says, and I'll have the love that my heart yearns for. And so he's devastated. He gets the box off his numbers, he's devastated. The movie doesn't do well. And then that same day he finds out his father has cancer. And he said this, he said, that day started the new phase of my life, a new concept. Here was the new. This is the realization that he had. He said, only love is going to fill that hole. Listen to what he says. He says, you can't win enough. You can't have enough money, you can't succeed enough. He says, the only thing that will ever satisfy that existential thirst is love. Here's what Will Smith is saying. He's saying, I grew up thinking that what I really wanted and what I really needed was success.

That if I was on my grind, if I was hustling, if I was able to let everybody know how good I am, then I'll have the sense of satisfaction that I need. Well, my heart is yearning for, I'm going to get that in success. And he realized, no, I will never get that from success because that hole was designed to be filled by love. And listen, all of us live this way, every single one of us, in fact, psychiatrist, Dr. Kurt Thompson puts it this way. He says, we are all born into the world looking for someone, looking for us. We were born for love. And the problem is we have that longing in our hearts and like Will Smith, we don't even realize it. We can't even articulate it, especially for many of us fellas we don't know. We haven't learned the language of love. We just think it's emotional stuff. And so we spend our whole life trying to chase things that we think are going to bring us satisfaction. We chase success. We chase a sense of security in our life through our money and our resources. We chase pleasure. You think if I can just knock them down one by one, from one woman to the next one man to the next, then I'll have the satisfaction in my heart longs for we think if I can just every single night take the edge off a little bit and that becomes an addiction.

So now we look to the bottle. Now we look to the pill. Now we look to the weed. Now we look to all these other things to try to give us the peace and the satisfaction and the rest that our soul longs for when all the while we are made for love and it's not just any old kind of love because even our best relationships will let us down whether we realize it or not, we are longing for the eternal love of God. And here's the problem. The problem is that you and I cannot get into that divine love that we've been talking about, that Jesus has enjoyed with God the Father for all of eternity. You cannot get into that love on your own.

You cannot earn that love. I don't care. It is a wave right now. You can't manifest that love. Come on, can we talk? You can't just manifest the love of God because you'll be manifesting a figment of your own imagination that is not rooted and grounded in truth. You cannot manifest the love of God. You have to be invited into it. You were made for it, but you have to be invited into it and this is exactly what Jesus is doing here. He says, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you, so have I loved

You.

Now, can we do a pop quiz quick and see how much you've memorized? Is that all right? Yes, sir. It's nervous in here. I got it. I get it. I think you can do it. John 15, nine is, the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. We're just going to do that one part. Can we do that? Alright, we're going to take it off the screen. We're going to take it off the screen. I know some of y'all cheating, right? Let's say it out loud. I'll get you started. I'm going to say John 15, nine, I'll be going to go into it. Let's do it, John 15, nine. As the father has loved me, so have I loved you, he says, so have I loved you.

I want you to think about how crazy this is. Everything we've been talking about to this point, the eternal love expressed and enjoyed in the Trinity, Jesus is saying to his disciples, I have invited you into that love,

Right?

He's saying, that's the reason I came in person. It's the reason I've been spending so much time with you. I didn't just come to teach you how to conform to a bunch of religious rules and go through a bunch of religious motions. I came to invite you in and give you direct personal access to the eternal love of God and the disciples that experienced this love in so many profound ways. You think about the fact that Jesus spent three years with his disciples weeping with them, teaching them, eating with them, they were together all the time. What that tells us is that Jesus, he knew very intimately how sinful and flawed they were. Can we just be honest real quick? The disciples were not first round draft picks. It's not like God was just sitting up in heaven and you looked out over humanity and he was like, who's killing it right now? You, that's not what happened. You study your Bible,

Right?

The disciples were jacked up. You remember that There were disciples that were prejudiced right against the other side of town, right? You remember they said, can anything good come from Nazareth, which was the hood back then? Can anything good come from that part of town? The disciples are people who tried to use Jesus in order to advance their own agenda. They say, Jesus, can we get the best seats in your kingdom? They wanted to be able to flex because they were in a relationship with Jesus. These are disciples who eventually would deny that they even knew Jesus when the pressure was on, when it was time to really put their money where their mouth was. They say, I don't know that dude. And yet, look at how Jesus' love for them is described. I love this John chapter 13 verse one at the end of Jesus' life, it says Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father having loved his own who were in the world, I love this phrase. It says, he loved them for how long he loved them to the end

He loved them to the end, he continued to persevere in his love for them. Why? Because God don't start stuff. He don't finish. If God says I love you, then that will be the same today and it'll be the same tomorrow. And so these disciples who had been invited into this divine love, even though their faithfulness to God was up and down, Jesus' love was not up and down. Here's why this should be encouraging to us because God's love does not depend on our consistency. See, some of you, some of you, you've been doing the church game and I know what this is like, right? You feel like God loves you when you are doing amazing, right?

So January one, when you're killing the Bible reading plan, you're like God, love as the Father has, you feel like you're killing it. You off the Bible reading plan by January 2nd, and now I just feel so distant because you think the consistency of God's love is based on your consistency, but if you did not earn God's love, then you cannot maintain God's love. It is given to you as a gift of his divine grace. Come on. I don't want you to take my word for it, your confidence in the love of God. It has to be rooted in the word of God. Let me show you this for yourself. I want you to see this in your own Bible. Listen, Deuteronomy chapter seven, this is true in the Old Testament. Listen. Listen to what God says to his people. He says, it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you for you were the fewest of all people. He says, y'all weren't first round draft picks. So then the question is, so then why did God love them? Verse eight gives us the answer. It says it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers. Listen, when you're reading the Bible, you got to ask the Bible some questions because if we honest this don't make no sense. Did you just see what God said? God said,

I chose to love you because I love you. Make it make sense. God, what are we talking about? What do you mean I chose to love you? Why? Because I love you. That doesn't make sense. Covenant love doesn't make because it's based on grace.

God says, I chose to love you because I love you. In other words, what that means is God did not see something in you that would compel him to love you. See, we laughed when I said the disciples weren't first round draft picks. Can I tell you something real quick? Even if I don't get invited back, you ain't a first round draft pick either and everybody knows it but you, God did not just look at your life and see something in you that would compel him to love you. No, he is compelled by his own goodness. God is compelled by his own mercy. God is compelled by his own grace and the good news is when he looks at you, he decides even though you don't deserve it, I love you even though you have disqualified yourself, I have chosen to love you even though you're not sure you can follow through on this God thing. I love you. This is what the love of God is based on, and it's not just true in the Old Testament. This is true in the New Testament. Look at this. First John chapter four verse nine says this, this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love here. It is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

That's what the love of God is. It is not that you do everything you possibly can to be a good person to earn God's love. No, it is that Jesus has done everything necessary for you to be accepted by God and to receive his love. What did Jesus do? He looked out on our sin and our rebellion and he knew the punishment that you and I deserve for our sin, that we have done everything we can to disqualify ourselves from the goodness and the love of God.

And God said, I won't settle for that. God said, because of my great love, I'm going to send my one and only son Jesus and he came and he lived a perfectly righteous life in our place and he died on the cross for our sins. He took the punishment that you and I deserve, and then he rose from the grave with all authority so that you and I could believe that when he makes this invitation, it's solid. When Jesus says, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, how do we know it's not because we deserve it? We know that He's giving us access to that love. Why? Because of what he did for us on the cross, what he did for us on the cross and how he got up out of that grave to make that love possible for us. Jesus says to his disciples and to us as the Father has me, so have I loved you, and he says, now your job is to abide in my love. Come on. Can we do a pop quiz real quick? Oh yeah. Y'all remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can we do it? Yeah. We're going to take verse off the screen. We're going to say this whole verse cold. Are we ready? Come on now. Look to the person next to you and say, you can do it. You can do, you can do it. I'm going to kick us off John 15, nine and we going through the whole verse. Let's do this, John 15, nine, as the father has loved me, so

Love you, abide

My love. Some of y'all got a little bit nervous when I got quiet, you were depending on me. You was trying to mumble and just move your lips right. Let's do it again together out loud, John 15, nine. As the father has loved me, so have I loved you, abide in my love. This is the invitation. This is the invitation. Jesus says, your job, this is the description of the Christian life. It is not to just go through the motions of religion. The Christian life boils down to that phrase, abide in Jesus's love. Now, here's the reality and this is where I want us to land because we can talk about that and moves our hearts. For some of us, it raises some questions like, oh man, is this really possible for me? But the reality of the matter is the same, that even though we talk about the love of God, there are so many of us who even if we understand it here, we live a second class life here. We come to church one and a half Sundays a month. We give an equivalent one and a half percent in tithes and rings.

We might get into God's word every once in a while, but his love just feels distant from us. It's not something that we constantly have confidence and it's not something that we could say satisfies our souls. It's not the dominant way we experience God. What is it that hinders us from this? Listen, when Jesus says, abide in my love, what he's saying is, I want my love to be your continual experience. He's saying, I want you to make your home in my love, and the problem is that for so many of us, the love of God is more like a hotel than a home. That we have these temporary experiences of the love of God maybe in a worship service or down at a altar or at a conference or something like that, and then we go back home to our normal everyday life where God kind of feels distant. We're just going through the motion of religion and can I be honest with you if that's all Christianity is, I don't want it. I grew up in church. I don't have time to play games. If the gospel is not true, why would I fake it?

Why would I just go through the motions? It's Sunday football on it's brunch. People be brunching out here. Why would I be giving a brunch every single Sunday if the gospel ain't true? I don't want to live this second class experience. I want everything that God has for me in his word, and so here's what I want you to think about. What hinders you from experiencing the fullness of this love that God has for you? Listen, for some of us, for some of us, it's our sin. Come on. We was feeling good when we was talking about the love of God, but reality of the matter is for some of us was keeping us from experiencing the fullness of the love of God is our sin. Now, hear me. We've already established that we can't do anything to earn God's love. Obedience to God does not earn God's love. However, it is how we learn to enjoy God's love because you can have it and not fully experience it. You can have it and not know how to really enjoy it and be satisfied by the love of God, and you cannot experience the fullness of his love without obeying him. Listen to what Jesus says right after verse nine, verse nine, as the father has loved me, so have I loved you, abide in my love. Well listen to what he says in verse 10. He says, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love

Just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love and listen to what Jesus says. This will change your whole view of the Christian life. Verse 11, he says, the reason I'm telling you this is so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. Let me help you understand what this means. Here's how a lot of us tend to think of religion. My joy is over here. What brings me satisfaction, delight, happiness. That's here. Obedience to God is over here and so the way we think about Christianity is in order to obey God, I have to give up joy. That's not biblical Christianity. That's the version of Christianity that you've heard and that unfortunately we've in the church often that to obey God means you got to give up joy. Why? Because God don't care about your happiness. God doesn't care about your joy. Listen, God is more committed to your joy than you are, so hear me, biblical Christianity is not that obedience to God requires me to give up joy. Biblical Christianity is obedience to God, requires me to give up the things that are keeping me from deeper joy.

Kasal 1611 says, in the fullness, in the presence of God is the fullness of joy and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. If you want to experience true joy, it comes in the will of God. He loves you so much and has this life of divine joy prepared for you, but he's inviting you to say you have to surrender your sin if you want to walk in the fullness of my love and joy,

So for some of us, it's our sin Today. If we could just be honest and you know exactly what God is saying to you, you know the specific areas in your life where you are clinging to your own sin, sinful desires and fantasies, sinful ways of talking, simple ways of living. You are clinging to that sin because you have believed the lie that that sin can satisfy your soul better than God, and I'm not just talking about what I don't know. I ran as far away from church and Jesus as I possibly could as a college student. My goal in life, I'm not exaggerating at all. This was my not just goal, this was my life plan. I wanted to be a party promoter. I wanted to build that into owning a club in dc. Had a mentor from a distance that I just appreciated so much and admired so much.

Mark Barnes, he had the biggest nightclub in the country. That's what I wanted to do. And then from there I wanted to build an entertainment company. I literally wanted to turn partying into a career. That's what I wanted to do. That's how much I left to party and everything that came with it until I had a fresh revelation of the love of God. You could hear about the love of God your whole life in church, but it takes a revelation of the spirit of God to show you that this is the love that your soul has been longing for and the love of God begin to draw me away, Lord, from the lifestyle that I thought was going to bring me satisfaction and it wasn't immediate, but he began to show me, no, no, no, my joy is better than any of the joys that you could pursue in this world.

For some of us, we need to lay down our sin. For some of us, it's not our sin that's keeping us from experiencing the fullness of God's love. It's our shame. It's not even sin that we're currently in. It's sin that we've committed in the past or sin that has been committed against us, and so we just live our lives with the same covering us at all times and it is like a cloud that keeps the light of God's love from shining through. We are constantly struggling to believe that God loves us because of the same of what we've done or what's been done to us. Can I help you with that for a minute? Let me help you with that because the way you fight shamer with truth, the reality of the matter is if you are in Christ and you can be just by putting your faith in Jesus, if you are in Christ, you have been united with Jesus, you've been connected with, Jesus is what we call union with Christ. Lemme help you understand quickly what this means. When I grew up, I'm Michael Kelsey Jr. My father is Michael Kelsey Senior. I hated that we had the same name. I wanted to be my own man Everywhere I went, my dad is a pastor. Everywhere I went, they were like, are you Bishop Kelsey son? I'm like, no, dog. I'm me. You know what I'm saying? So I just wanted to be me until I had a revelation

That the name on his credit card is my name. Listen to me, life, salmon, a morgue, giving it up dog.

I didn't earn anything he had, but I had access to everything he had simply because he put his name on me, he put his name on me and we have been connected. We were connected. Listen to me. When you begin a relationship with Jesus, he puts his name on you, he puts his name on you and you've earned nothing, but you have access to everything. Everything that Jesus has earned. You have access to everything that Jesus has secured. You have access to why? Because you've been united with Jesus and so listen to me. When you are feeling shame, you are hearing a lie.

In fact, here's the deal. You're hearing a half truth. That is a whole lie. Here's the half truth. The half truth is because of what you've done or what has been done to you, you're disqualified and there's a sense in which that's true because sin that we've committed and sin against us, it wreaks havoc in our life. It's a have true, but it's a whole lie. Why? Because of the gospel and what Jesus has done, hear me. If you are carrying that shame, you are now united with Jesus and here's what that means. It means that your status before God, the Father, is now based on Jesus's status before God the Father. You have been given a name in Jesus and your status is not dependent on how well you do or what somebody else has done your status before. Your heavenly Father is now based on everything that Jesus has done and that never changes, so your sin doesn't change your status with God and sin against you does not changed your status with God. If you are wrestling with same and is keeping you from the fullness of God's love, I want you to hear me.

More importantly, I want you to hear God, and if your faith and trust is in Jesus, everything has changed, and what God says about you is more true than what you say about you or what other people have said about you, what your past says about you, what that trauma says about you, what that abuse says about you. You are united with Jesus and you can experience the fullness of His love no matter what you've done or no matter what you've been through. For some of us as sin, for some of us it's shame. For some of us, it's our schedules that's keeping us from the love of God.

Come on. Can we be honest? I know DFW is like the DMV area. Everybody's hustling, everybody's moving, and sometimes you can be moving so fast and everybody's voices can be so loud. Even the voices in your own head can be so loud and you're not slowing down. See, we hear about a quiet time or a devotional time and we think it's just, let me check the box. It's just a religious thing that we say, no, it is a lifeline. It is what you need in order to have the dust clear and for you to be able to hear the voice of Jesus say to you as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love, you got to slow down and spend some time with your heavenly Father. For some of us, it's our schedules, but for some of us I know in a crowd this size watching online, for some of us, it's our suffering. That's what's keeping you from having confidence in the love of God. I'm not just talking about light. There's a people in here right now who are going through who type of suffering that takes the wind out of you, the type of suffering where you don't know when it's going to end.

You start out with faith, singing all the songs, but then after a certain period of time, your faith begins to get worn down and you begin to wonder because of your suffering. God, if you really loved me, then why are you allowing this situation? Why aren't you intervening in my life and I know what that's like. Remember when my wife was struggling with postpartum depression after our third child? I'm in seminary full-time pastoring full-time. She's a worship leader in our church and we're overwhelmed, and I didn't know how deep and how dark that pit of depression was. Us, and she'll tell the story herself that one day she's on the floor of the bathroom crying out to God and saying to God, God, if you don't intervene, I don't know if I can or if I want to continue anymore, is pastor's wife, come on. Can we be real? Yes, it's worship leader. Can we lift our hands and give God praise? God is good churchy people. Yeah, God is good all the time, right? We know these things and listen, you can be on a stage like this fighting to believe what you know to be true, and yet suffering can be so deep and so dark that it causes the love of God not to just feel distant, but sometimes it can feel non-existent.

Listen, here's the thing. Listen to me. Listen to me. We struggle because we are tempted to believe that our suffering means God does not love us. Let's think this through. Did Jesus's suffering mean God? The Father didn't love him.

We've been talking about this. God the Father loved his son. This is my son with whom I'm well pleased, and yet he allowed Jesus to experience suffering that is unimaginable. It is the worst suffering that has ever been experienced in all of human history, not just physically, but spiritually. He allowed his son Jesus to be strung up on a cross and out of pain and agony, not just physically but spiritually, to cry out to God and say, why have you forsaken me? He understands what it means to go through that kind of suffering. It's a suffering that you don't just feel. It's a suffering that begins to totally overwhelm you and it begins to crowd out the love of God in your life, but it didn't mean that God didn't love him. In fact, here's what we know. God's love does not exempt us from suffering. It doesn't any more than it exempted Jesus from suffering, but what the love of God does is it says this to you and to me

That any suffering you ever go through, that suffering will become a servant to almighty God in your life, that God will never allow any suffering to come into your life, that he cannot turn for your good and for his glory. What that suffering means is that he's with you. Listen, if Jesus suffered, what that means is that suffering cannot possibly mean God doesn't love you because he allowed his son to suffer, but what it means is that he's intimately acquainted with your suffering and that he's with you in the midst of it and he's working out something in your life that you cannot see, but you will see one day God loves you even in the midst of your suffering.

Listen to me. God wants you to abide in his love. He wants you to have the fullness, the full experience and expression and enjoyment of the love that he's made available to you in Jesus. I'm not just talking to ladies in the room, I'm talking to us men. We were made for love, for divine love, and God invites us to say, would you please stop trying to satisfy that with cheap substitutes and would you finally rest and surrender to the love that I have for you that can change not just your life, but the life of every single person I bring you in contact with. This is the love that God wants you to experience, and I want to give us some space. I want to give us some space before Pastor Tim comes to lead us. As we prepare to close. I want to give us some space to respond to God because he's saying to you, as the Father has loved me, this is what Jesus is saying, I have loved you, and he's saying, so here's the invitation, abide in my love. What's hindering you from abiding in that love? Is it sin in your life?

Is it shame? Is it your schedule? Do you need to just commit to God and ask for his help to slow down to figure out how to create a rhythm where you spend time with him in his presence? Is it suffering that's confusing to you and overwhelming to you and it causes you to believe that God is distant and has abandoned you? What is it? I want to give you a moment. Whether you need to get on your knees or your face before God, whatever, maybe it is for you. It is you need to make a decision for the first time or the first time in a long time to say, God, I want that love, and the only way I can receive that love is through what Jesus has done for me. However you need to respond. I want to give you some space between you and the God that loves you. You have direct access. You don't need a priest, you have a high priest. Hallelujah. You have direct access to the love of God through what Jesus has done for you, and I want to give you a moment to take advantage of that right now before your Heavenly Father.

Why don't you take a moment? The band is getting ready to come out. They're going to lead us in a time and we want to give you space. Would you just take time to respond to God? Maybe you need to confess. Maybe you need to ask for his help. Maybe you need to pray for somebody around you. If you're with somebody, take a moment between you and God before Pastor Tim comes to lead us.