Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship · March 11, 2007
Third Sunday in Lent
Living God, we worship you today with joy in our hearts and thanksgiving on our lips. We come gladly to offer you our praise and adoration. In this hour of worship, help us to come closer to you than perhaps we have ever been! Amen.
Scripture
Matthew 22:34-38
Rick Frost
If someone were to ask you, “What does God want from you more than anything else?” all kinds of answers may come to your mind. Some people might say, “Well, to be a good person, to treat others as you would like to be treated, to do the right thing, to work for social justice and peace, to serve other people who may be in need, to attend worship, to read the Scriptures, to pray daily.”
And guess what? As good as those sound, and as good as they are, you would be wrong.
Proposition: The essence of the Christian life can be summed up in two words. Those two words are “love affair.” God wants to have a love affair with you. The Bible says God made you to love you. God wants – does not force – but God wants a love relationship with each and every one of us. That is something we mainliners may have forgotten along the way, maybe set aside. I’m not sure.
Point? The point is this. The most important thing you can know in life is that the Creator of all that is loves you and wants your love in return. Jesus put it this way. “You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul. There is no other higher. This is the first and greatest commandment. Do this. Love God and let God love you. Do this and all else will follow. All else will fall into place.”
If you do that, the Scripture says, you will fulfill your life’s purpose and your life’s meaning. Miss that, and regardless of what else you do with your life, your life is a failure. And it is a failure for one single reason, because you have missed the very reason God created you in the first place – to love you and to be loved by you. Wow!
I did a brief survey of some of the music that has been passed down from generation to generation. I have been a student of the Word for nearly 40 years. I am pretty clear from the songs and from the messages that God loves me, but what they don’t tell me is how I am to love God in return. How do you love God? That is what I want us to talk about today.
There is a term in the Bible for that. Do you know what that term is? The term in the Bible for what we are talking about today is the term “worship.” Most of us maybe think of worship as something we do here – as something we do in church. It can be, but not necessarily. Even when we do worship at a high and beautiful level, it is only a sign or symbol of something much deeper. To worship, in the Bible, means to express love to God. That is what worship is. It means giving yourself to God. It means giving yourself without reservation to the Creator of all that is. That is what the biblical word “worship” means. You can worship God, therefore, any place, any time, in a huge variety of ways. When we express our love to God, whatever and wherever that might be, we, by definition, biblically, are worshiping. Did you know that?
Now, I have noticed something, and you may have as well. Some of us, particularly those of the male gender, sometime find it hard to say three very little words, very powerful words, very important words. Those three words are, “I love you.” Have you noticed that? There are lots of reasons for that, and I don’t have time to talk about those today. I’m a male. The point is, some of us just don’t know how to express something as deep, and as real, and as wonderful as love to other people, not to mention, to God.
Now, if that is the case for you today, this is your lucky day. Today we are going to talk about that. Just how do we biblically love God? How do we express that love to God? There are six ways I am going to look at.
I’m going to ask you to do a little self-quiz today. My hope is that by the end of this service, you will feel God’s love for you more than you ever have, and even more importantly, you might learn some ways to express your love to God intentionally.
Let’s start.
Number 1: The easiest way to express love to God, folks, biblically, is to sing. Did you know that? To sing to God. Quite frankly, we have some room to grow in that area here at Broadway.
Have you noticed that in every culture, in every time, especially in our time and place, music and love go together? It is an amazing thing. If you don’t think so, just attend a concert some time. Watch thousands and thousands of people not sit for two or three hours at time, but sing along, and clap their hands, and move their bodies. Music and love go together. It is an emotion. It is something that comes from the heart. You know that. It is something you feel. It is something that comes out of our souls.
Christianity is a singing religion, folks. That is because Christianity is about a love affair. In way too many cases, we mainliners may have lost somewhere along the way this whole notion of expressing ourselves. We are not singing, and we do not have musicians and singers here, or choirs to perform for you. That is not why they are here. They are here to help you express your love to God through the wonderful act of singing. It’s just about that simple.
It has to come from the heart, and not from our heads. It is an amazing thing. We need principles in our heads, but we need feelings, and we need music in our hearts, in our faith. Let the preachers, whoever that might be, provide the principles for the day, but let the musicians, let the singers provide the music.
Are you among those, like I am, who are tired of singing theology? I am tired of singing theology. I am tired of music being something that is something like, “Let’s visit yet another thought” through music. We’re not unintelligent people. We can understand principles. We can read about principles. What we really need to grow, in my sense, is the degree to which we could feel the music. We need to be able to better sing a love song to God. If there are sounds and songs that you think help you sing to the top of your lungs, I want to encourage you to visit with our music leaders, with other leaders of the church. Tell us what those things might be. I think they are incredibly important, because we need to move from our head to our heart in relationship to God.
The first, the easiest way to express our love to God is to sing. Test yourself. Where are you? Do you sing to God rarely, occasionally, regularly? Where are you now, and where would you like to be?
Number 2: Talk to God. I am admittedly a very slow learner, but I think I have finally realized the key to this marriage thing. For lack of a better word, it is called “communication.” Now, I am, admittedly, not very good at that. I have noticed when Jan and I really talk about the real stuff, when we really talk about the deep things, our relationship grows. At least I think it does. She will be here later, and you can ask her. On those days when we have really not much to say to each other, we have very little to talk about, I notice the relationship sort of takes a dip. It never stands still. It is either rising and growing, or it is decaying and sliding and dipping.
I think the same thing is true in terms of our expressing ourselves to God. When you really love somebody, you don’t just want to spend time with that person or entity. You want to talk with them.
Remember the first time you fell in love. Remember the hours and hours you spent on the phone. Any of you who have teenagers at your house know what I’m talking about. The phone sort of grows in their ear. You talk, and you talk, and you talk. That is how you get to know another person. Isn’t it? It is not just being with them. It is talking.
If you are trying to express your love to God, some people say, “What am I supposed to talk about?”
Well, how would you talk to your best friend about things? Anything! Talk to God about anything.
Folks, I know some of you have been believers for a long, long time, but quite frankly, isn’t it true that your spiritual life has become rather routine, rather dull, rather joyless, even lifeless? Where is the spark? Where is the laughter? Where are the energy and enthusiasm? If that is the case for you, I have some good news today. There is an amazingly simple remedy for that. Start talking to God. Get rid of the “Thee” and “Thou” language and the trite clichés, and the biblical phrases. Just talk.
One of the eight Keys of Discipleship in this place is prayer. It is amazing what goes through people’s minds when they think we are asking them to pray daily, as if they were going to a monastery or something. That is not what prayer is. It is not a duty. It is not a responsibility. There is not a particular form. It is a privilege. It is a joy. It is a delight. You have the privilege of actually talking to the Creator of all that is. According to Scripture, that Creator wants to hear what you have to say. Isn’t that interesting?
Do your little self-quiz right now. Do you talk to God regularly, occasionally, rarely? Decide where you are and where you would like to be.
Number 3: You can express your love to God, not only by singing and talking, but also by listening. Listening is one of the greatest gifts you can give anybody. That is because we all want to be listened to. We all want to be understood. We all want to be heard.
The number one thing we train our Stephens Ministers to do is something called “active listening.” Not just listening listening, but active listening. There is a great skill and talent to doing that, because when you listen to somebody, when you really, really hear what they are trying to say, you are saying, “You really matter to me. I really care about you. You are important to me.”
I think the very same thing is true in terms of God. God has something God wants to say just to you. Fifty per cent of prayer, folks, is listening. So, shut up. Get quiet.
Do you have a time in your life during the day just being quiet, listening? People say, “You know, I have prayed for 50 years, and I have never heard God say a word to me. The truth is, God is speaking to you and me and all humanity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You’re just too busy. You have too much noise going on. There is always something turned on. We have I-pods, TVs, radios, and computers, and cell phones, and meetings we go to, and work, and play, and yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. God can’t get through. The line is busy.
The spiritual giants of all times, every single one of them, have learned how to be quiet in the presence of God. That is not just not speaking; it is really listening. God has something God wants to say to every single one of us. That is one of the ways we can love.
Rate yourself again.
Number 4: Another way you can express your love to God is by publicly identifying with God. Picture this. How do you think my wife, Jan, would feel, not to mention how she would respond, if years ago when we were dating, I said to her, “Sweetheart, I really, really love you, and you are the love of my life. Why don’t we get married? I think that would be great. We will be committed to each other. It will be wonderful, but let’s just keep it our little secret. Let’s don’t tell anybody. Would that be OK? I love you and all that, but when we’re in public, let’s pretend that we don’t even know each other. Would you be good with that, Sweetheart?”
I’ll let her tell you that response, too, later today.
That is not love. When you love somebody, you are not ashamed of that person. It is the same way with Jesus. You can’t say that you love Jesus and be ashamed of Jesus at the same time.
Yet again, we mainliners still go around committing to sort of not letting anybody really know that we might be his follower. We are not going to tell our neighbors. We are not going to tell the people where we work. We are not going to tell the people we hang out with.
Jesus said, “If you are ashamed of me and my teachings in this adulterous and sinful generation, then I will be ashamed of that very person when they come into God’s glory, which means, come knocking on heaven’s door.”
Publicly identifying with God. Think of the ways. We saw that in many ways this past weekend. There are times when we need to publicly stand against hate. There are times when we need to publicly stand against violence and war. There are times when we need to publicly identify ourselves with Christ and his teachings, regardless of how anybody else is going to like it or lump it.
Rate yourself on that one, if you would.
Number 5: A fifth way to express your love to God is simply by being committed to God. You know and I know that nothing significant ever happens in this life without commitments. The Christian Life Center that is opening today for those wonderful kids is a sign of commitment. That didn’t happen just because a few people got committed. It happened because all of us got together and got committed.
Our commitments determine who we are. Our commitments talk about our future. God says, “God is looking for, calling for, searching for persons whose hearts can be fully committed to God.”
God wants to do that biblically for two reasons. Number 1: he wants to bless that person. Number 2: that blessing is to be used as a blessing to other people. Isn’t that interesting?
At Broadway Christian Church we are trying to build on those kinds of commitments. So I ask you to rate yourself again. Where are you and where would you like to be?
Singing, talking, listening, publicly identifying, commitment.
Number 6: Hang with me. One more minute. A sixth way you can tell God that you love God is by giving to God. At its core, giving is the essence of love. We spell love around here, “G-I-V-E.” That is what we mean, because that is what love is all about. It is all about giving.
You and I know that you can give without loving. There are people who give all kinds of times and ways to manipulate and get what they want in return. I am not talking about that. You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. You know that, too. It can’t be done.
You say you love God? You want to show God? You want to express your love to God? Let me tell you a truth. It is going to show up in your generous lifestyle. That is how God will know. It’s just about that simple.
God doesn’t need your time. God doesn’t need your talents. God does not need your money. All of that belongs to God already. But God does want you. God is very clear about that. God wants your heart. It’s a love affair. God wants that from you.
You heard the stewardship committee guys talk about this today. All of you got commitment cards in the mail. I did, too, and so did Jan. I know some of you have already turned them in, and that is good. Jan and I have not yet. We’re still talking about this. We are going to think about this. We are going to pray about this. We are going to make a decision about this. We will turn it in. I invite you to do the same.
I am delighted that what we give together does wonderful things, but that is not really what its all about. I want you to connect this with your expressing of your love to God. That, to me, is the most important thing. That is why it does not matter how much you put on this card. I don’t care whether it is a dime, a dollar, a hundred thousand, a million. Whatever you put, just allow it to be an expression of your love for God, because it is just between you and God, and our bookkeeper. That’s the big three. OK? There you are. We are going to do that, and I invite you to do the same. I ask you to place your bow on the tail of that kite this week, next week, in the weeks to come.
Jesus made it very clear, “Wherever your money is, wherever my money is, that is where your heart is going to be also.” That is a spiritual truth. It never changes. Hopefully what we have learned from the Scriptures today is that what God wants more than anything else is your heart. It is a love affair.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind. For that is the first, the greatest commandment. There is none greater.”
And all the people say… “Amen.”
Dearly Beloved, we gather here today to unite our hearts with yours. Here we vow to love and honor you all the days of our life. Then in the halls of eternity, we will dine at your table and dance. Forever and ever. Amen.
