- LOVE IN PSALMS
- We are created in the image of a God that feels emotions
- PSALMS 6:4 — Return, O Lord, and rescue me. Save me because of your unfailing love.
- PSALMS 26:3 — For I am always aware of your unfailing love, and I have lived according to your truth.
- PSALMS 33:22 — Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone.
- PSALMS 136:1 — Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His steadfast love endures forever.
- Unfailing love = “hesed” = love, generosity, faithfulness, goodness, enduring commitment
- Love = the genuine inner readiness and longing to secure the good of others
- 1 JOHN 4:19 — We love because he first loved us.
- ACTS 13:22 — But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart.’
- Love for Christ is of 1st importance, 2nd importance, and 3rd importance
- Charles Spurgeon — “It shows what weight our Saviour attached to the matter of his (Peter’s) love, that he asked him about that, about that only, and about that three times over.”
- MATTHEW 7:21-23 — “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. On judgement day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and case out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me,’”
- PSALMS 63:1-8 — O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory. Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you! I will praise you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer. You satisfy me more than the richest feast. I will praise you with songs of joy. I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night. Because you are my helper, I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings. I cling to you; your strong right hand holds me securely.
- (MATT PIC) ??
- When you realize the greatness of God’s love for you, then your relationship with Him becomes a consuming addiction, not a convenient addition
- Some addictions will kill you; but the presence of God is the addiction that’s going to heal you and fulfill you
- Charles Spurgeon — “He who truly longs for God longs for him now.”
- PSALMS 27:4 — The one thing I ask of the Lord - the thing I seek most - is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, delighting in the Lord’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.
- LUKE 14:26 — “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else - your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister - yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.
- MATTHEW 10:37 — “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.
- When you realize the greatness of God’s love for you, then your worship is not just obligation, it is immeasurable delight
- (SIGN PIC)
- PSALMS 16:11 — In his presence is the fullness of joy
- When you realize the greatness of God’s love for you, you want God more thank you want even His greatest gifts
- A.J. Stuemky — “The process of prayer will change you in ways that an answered prayer never will.”
- God gives us gifts and satisfaction; but our satisfaction is ultimately not found in the gifts, but in the Giver
- When you realize the greatness of God’s love your, your experience in the wilderness become experiences in worship
- PSALMS 88 — ”O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left. They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave. I am forgotten, cut off from your care. You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into the darkest depths. Your anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me. Interlude You have driven my friends away by making me repulsive to them. I am in a trap with no way of escape. My eyes are blinded by my tears. Each day I beg for your help, O Lord; I lift my hands to you for mercy. Are your wonderful deeds of any use to the dead? Do the dead rise up and praise you? Interlude Can those in the grave declare your unfailing love? Can they proclaim your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds? Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness? O Lord, I cry out to you. I will keep on pleading day by day. O Lord, why do you reject me? Why do you turn your face from me? I have been sick and close to death since my youth. I stand helpless and desperate before your terrors. Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me. Your terrors have paralyzed me. They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long. They have engulfed me completely. You have taken away my companions and loved ones. Darkness is my closest friend.“
- (SURVIVOR CLIP)
- (LILY CLIP)
- Carrie Ten Boom — “There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.”
- Elizabeth Elliot — “This hard place in which you, perhaps, find yourself, is hte very place in which God is giving you the opportunity to look only to Him.”
- EXODUS 15:27 — After leaving Marah, the Israelites traveled on to the oasis of Elim, where they found twelve springs and seventy palm trees. they camped there beside the water.
- David Guzik — “Elim was wonderful - a place of provision, with twelve wells and seventy palm trees. Yet there was no new revelation of God at Elim as there was at Marah, where God revealed Himself as Jehovah-Rapha.”
- Charles Spurgeon — “Israel had no miracles at Elim. Wells and palm trees they had; but they had no miracle there…no promise, and no new revelation of God, and no new name of Jehovah there.”
