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Searching for "loved" in the Quiet Time Archive
Displaying results from "0" to "25". (81 found)

2008-04-01 - Falling in Love with God - How Bad It Can Get

A mission of Satan is undermine my relationship with our Father

Must ask all the time: How are God and I doing?

Typical doing questions:

  • Am I productive?
  • Have a recently had a victory?
  • How do people around me feel about me?
  • How long has it been since I committed a particular sin?

Relationship questions:

  • Do they feel loved?
  • Are we connected?
  • Have I been sensitive?
  • Am I listening?
  • Will this activity help our relationship?

 When we drift

1. Combative - Psalms 55:20-21
2. Uncaring / Apathy (Harding of our hearts) - Psalms 36:1-4; Esphesians

Presedes sin / sensual gratification

  • "I deserve this"
  • "I am tired"
  • "I am missing out"
  • "I know what I need"

3. Hopeless - Job 3:11-13

Hopelessness is godlessness
If deeply in love with God, whispering to me promise after promise
If walking with him closely, he is meeting my needs for strength and faith



2008-05-11 - Power of Spiritual Thinking - Escaping the Performance Trap

Performance trap - termed as perfectionism (not measuring up = sin)

Guilt and imagined guilt come from performance based - must learn to understand God's grace
Guilt-ridden people are not joyful people, poor advertisements for God's kingdom

Good thing to do our best but when mixed with pride is a wrong turn
Ex. Parental pride = making children reach a goal that unattainable

Rejection (or fear of) - is the root of most of our insecurities
We either pull back or prove ourselves through performance
Much of our competitiveness come from this source

Performance-oriented tries to conceal insecurities with a superimage of self
Deep-down we want love and acceptance
Real love is unconditional

Unless we are open about our negative points we will never reallty feel loved

Paul opened up his life:

2 Corinthians 6:11-13

  • Spoke freely
  • Open wide his heart
  • Not withholding affection


2008-06-10 - Purpose Driven Life - A Place to Belong
You are called to belong
Relationship with Christ is personal but not private
Your organs are connected to other organs to fulfill a purpose
Organ severed from the body will shrivel and die
 
Christ loved the church and gave his life for it - Ephesians 5:25
 
Church is Christ's bride
Can't say to Christ "I love you but I do not love your wife
 
Why you need a Church Family?
 
1. Identifies you as a genuine believer
 
2. Move you out of self-centered isolation
 
Lab for practicing unselfishness
Learn to care about others
If one part suffers, all suffer - 1 Corinthians 12:16
We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers - 1 John 3:16
 
3. Helps develop spiritual muscle
Isolation breeds deceitfulness
 
4. Body Needs you
 
5. Share in Christ's mission - He works through us
 
6. Church family will help you from backsliding
 
"Mind your own business" - not a Christian phrase
It is your responsibility to help those who need help
 
Difference between a church attender and a church member is commitment

2008-07-04 - Purpose Driven Life - Thinking Like a Servant (part 2)

Servants think about their work, not what others are doing

They do not compare, criticize, or compete with other servants; same goal and same team
When you are busy serving, you don't have time to be critical
Our job is not to evaluate - Lord will determine the sucessfulness  of his servant - Romans 14:4

If you serve like Jesus, expect to be criticized
The service of the sinful (pouring perfume on Jesus) was though to be a waste but just though of it as significant - Matthew 26:10

Servants base their identity in Christ

They are loved and accepted by grace, servants don't have to prove their worth
Jesus washing feet - Jesus understood his worth and the task did not threathen his self-image - John 13:3-4

Insecure people are always worrying about how they appear; want others to serve them instead
Only God's approval counts - 2 Corinthians 10:18

Servants think of ministry as an opportunity, not an obligation

Serve the Lord with gladness - Psalms 100:2
The Father rewards anyone who serves him - John 12:26
He will not forget how hard you have worked - Hebrews 6:10

The only really happy people are those who have learned to serve



2008-07-16 - Purpose Driven Life - Becoming a World-Class Christian (part 2)
Shift from self-centered thinking to other-centered thinking

Stop thinking like children (thinking like only of self), and like like mature people (grown ups) - 1 Corinthians 14:20
Most advertising encourages selfish thinking

To make the paradigm switch to mature thinking - need to dependence of God
God has given us his Spirit so we don't think like the world thinks - 1 Corinthians 2:12


Shift from local thinking to global thinking

God so loved the world... - John 3:16
God made all the nations and where they would be, so we would look for him - Acts 17:26-27

The world already thinks globally: business, competition, and news
If you ask me, I will give you the nations - Psalms 2:8

What should we pray for?
  1. Opportunities to witness - Colossians 4:3
  2. Courage to speak up - Ephesians 6:19
  3. Rapid spread of the gospel - John 17:20
  4. More workers - 2 Thessalonians 3:1


2008-07-20 - Purpose Driven Life - Lifes 5 Greatest Questions
  1. What will be the center of my life? - Center our lives should be God - 2 Chronicles 14:4
  2. What will be the character of my life? - Keep a firm grasp of your character; keep at it - 1 Timothy 4:16
  3. What will be the contribution of my life? - Meet the needs of God's people produces gratitude - 2 Corinthians 9:12
  4. What will be the communication of my life? - Bring honor to the good news - Philippians 1:27
  5. What will be the community of my life? - Christ loved the church and gave his life for it - Ephesians 5:25


2008-07-21 - 30 Days at the Cross - Unconditional Love

Feels good to feel loved - insecurities come from not being sure or for some reason other than unconditional love

In our worst shape, God demonstrated his love for us - Romans 5:8
Love that surpasses knowledge - Ephesians 3:19
The is not of higher value than unconditional love
Not a testimony to God's softness on sin
We will be changed if we understand God's love

Love you enough to have his son killed for you - while you (and me) were enemies of God
How much is his love toward you now that you his child?
Be imitators of God, as dearly loved children and live a life of love - Ephesians 5:1-2

If God loves us this much, we should as love this way - 1 John 4:11
Do you only love God when perform as you think he should? He doesn't!

Paul - Christ came to save sinners and I am the worst - 1 Timothy 1:15

 



2008-07-22 - 30 Days at the Cross - Hating Sin

We can feel pain because God feels pain
By his wounds you have been healed - 1 Peter 2:24

Questions:

  • Have you loved someone wholeheartedly and they stopped loving you?
  • Has someone take advantage of you?
  • Have you ever been neglected, forgotten, or rejected?

Amazing grace cost amazing pain

Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? - James 4:4-5

How does God feel about:

  • Lack of trust?
  • Sexual sin?
  • Lack of care?
  • Being pushed aside because of school or business?
The greater capacity to love, the greater the capacity to feel pain

Imagine that you can home from work and you found a dog that just kill your child
We killed Jesus with our sin, how should we be treated?
  • How do you feel about sin? Do you hate it?
  • Do you allow sin to stay around?
Your hatred toward sin is in proportion to your love for the one who died for you
Resist the devil and he will flee; Come near to God and he will near to you - James 4:7-10

2008-07-25 - 30 Days at the Cross - Always Remembering

Passover - it meant freedom for the Jews (from Egypt)
Jesus choose Passover to bring freedom to all through his death

It was a new relationship with God and man
God loved mankind but man hurt God with his sin

Jesus: with my life and death, you have a new relationship, now remember this
It will be forgotten in our lives if we don't make plans to remember

In the midst of our activities and pressure of life, we forget:

  • How much he went through for us
  • That we can be forgiven and start over again and again
  • Why we are doing things we are doing

He took bread and gave thanks for this very reason - Luke 22:19

Give thanks and examine yourself - 1 Corinthians 11:28
Don't forget that in Christ there is no condemnation - Romans 8:1



2008-08-17 - 30 Days at the Cross - Do not Come Down!
Jesus was tempted with the words, "save yourself, come down from the cross
If they understood the eternal significance of the moment, they would have cried "No, Jesus! Do not come down!"

Jesus was tempted:
  • Simply save himself and let everyone fend for themselves
  • Come down in hope that they would believe
  • Settle on improving their lives but not saving them
What kept him up there?
  • Jesus also loved the world that he gave his only life - Love
  • He cared deeply for others
  • He knew he could bring salvation to many

Our mission is the same (Luke 9:23) - must deny self and lose our life for others
We must quit looking for some new,easy approach and decide to love

The world is screaming out: "Save yourself! Come down from the cross!"
Jesus cries: "Do not come down!"

2008-11-19 - Raising Awesome Kids - Husband and Father
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her - Ephesians 5:25-6:4

Our relationship with our father is, in many ways, the defining relationship in all of our lives
Our response to authority and our self-confidence comes from our father

Responsibility of training children squarely upon the father
Fathers...bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord - Ephesians 6:4



2008-11-30 - Raising Awesome Kids - Have Fun, Be Hip
What is wrong with having fun? Nothing!

Jesus was a fun person:
  • He went to parties
  • He told jokes
  • He nicknamed his guys
  • He loved children and they loved him
  • Pharisees even rebuked Jesus for letting his disciples get too happy
Children love fun people
If we are fun people, our kids will have fun
If we let them have fun they will love our leadership

You need to be hip to what is happening
We show love when we are interested in someone else's world
Be coming all things to all men - 1 Corinthians 9:22
Take a look at the current youth scene and not ridicule it
Confront the sin but accept the style

2008-12-01 - Raising Awesome Kids - Love
Love is of first importance. All else is secondary.
Above all we should have love - 1 Peter 4:8

Lack of love, we are nothing - 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
We may lavish upon our children the finest things but if we do not make them feel loved, it is all to no avail

If there is closeness and love between us and our kids, we have a place to stand and start for the battle of their hearts
Build our families on love and our kids will be strong

Kids are born with the capacity to love, but not all learn how

2008-12-03 - Raising Awesome Kids - Love Your Children
For some, children are a burden
Some, kill the unborn
Withholding your love is killing them from the inside

Many children their parents problems simply because they do not feel loved

To those who are failing to love their children - now is the time to repent
Otherwise you will ruin your children, wreck your life, and lose your chance of going to heaven

Whoever welcomes a little child welcome me (Jesus)
Whoever causes one of them to them to sin - better to a large millstone around your neck and drown in the sea - Matthew 18:5-6

2008-12-24 - Raising Awesome Kids - Gods Training Plan (part 2)

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

These Commandment (v. 6)

Bible is the underlaying basis for all training
It is the very word of God:

  • To be revered
  • To be loved
  • To be believed

Paul said of Timothy  - from infancy you have know the holy scriptures - 2 Timothy 3:!5

Love the Lord your God (v. 5)

Training flows from a relationshop of love with the personal God
Not  "do-it-ot-else" mentality - missed the point
Bible should be used continually, not just for some "extra" authority is needed



2009-01-22 - Jesus with People - Finding Faith

Jesus was in ahuge crowd and suddenly a Roman centurion walks up to Jesus - Matthew 8:5-10

NT centurions are often mentioned with honor:

  • Cornelius was the first Gentile to become a Christian - Acts 10:22
  • A centurion rescued Paul from the Mob - Acts 23:27
  • A centurion saved Paul's life in the shipwreck - Acts 27:43

Lord, my servant lays paralyzed and in terrible suffering - Matthew 8:5-6
To many Romans, a slave was defined as nothing more than a tool

Jesus was moved by the man's heart - I will go and heal him
When Jesus saw a need, he met it
He lived to serve and meet needs directly and continuously
He loved a man many hated

Lord, I don't deserve to have you under my roof - Matthew 8:8
He was a Gentile, Jewish law - a Jew could not enter the house of a Gentile - Acts 10:28
In spite of his desperate need, he respected Jewish law

Say the word and he will be healed - Matthew 8:8
His authority produced results, how much more would the authority of Jesus do?

Jesus did not find anyone in Israel with such faith



2009-01-27 - Jesus with People - Rich Young Ruler

Luke 18:22-24
Wouldn't all Christians love to meet someone who comes across as this man does initially?

Most of us would say, "can we study the Bible?"
Jesus had a very different responce because he knew his heart

Sell everything and follow him = It's not what you do but who you are
For him to have a heart set fully on following Jesus - it meant a willingness to seel all
Following the exchange, it became clear - the man was out of touch with himself and God

Jesus did challenge him but he also loved him
He pointed the man to the narrow way
At the same time he drew him close want to give him strength, faith, and hope

Jesus does not get into a lengthy theological debate
He saw weaknesses the man had to deal with if he was going to enter the kingdom of God

Each of us lacks that "one thing" deep down that we must give up and following Jesus
Something we don't know what it is but God will reveal it - Hebrews 4:12-13



2009-02-05 - Jesus with People - Realness

When it comes to friendship, Jesus again sets the standard

Jesus knew John:

  • Jesus saw his weaknesses - yet accepted him - Mark 3:17
  • Jesus did not hesitate to call him to be a follower - spite of his temperament - Mark 1:19-20
  • He expect John to change - Luke 9:51-56
  • Jesus questioned his commitment when John sought power - Mark 10:35-37

Incredible thing about John is that it would seem that he never doubted Jesus' love

He refered to himself 5 times as the "disciple that Jesus loved"



2009-03-10 - Promises of God - God is Merciful
God is merciful - Deuteronomy 4:29-31

Even when you have sinned greatly and even when you think - This time I have really blown it
God promises if from there you seek him, even from a deep dark hole of shame, disappointment and failure - you will find him
Must be with all of your heart

We are not the best judge for our own repentance
Our loved should know and should be asked

It is from the deepest darkest hole that that God promises are the most truest

For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you - Deuteronomy 4:31

2009-08-26 - Wild at Heart - God loves wilderness (part 2)
God’s relationship with us is risky
We are unpredictable; there is the likelihood to get hurt (ultimate risk anyone ever takes is to love)
God give love all the time (and gets hurt all the time)

Music, wine, poetry, sunset – all his inventions
God is romantic at heart
Heart of man is drawn from God – strong and courageous love
Have you noticed the most often word used with boys is 'don’t' –God’s design 'Yes'
Sexes show different sides of God’s heart
Heart of a woman – deep hearted, seductive more than fierce
Wants to be loved
Why don’t you choose Me?
'Seek and you will find me…with all of your heart' – Jeremiah 29:13
God wants to be wanted
Why does God does not answer prayer right away? – he wants us to talk to him
God has beauty to be unveiled
Each stage of creation is better than before
All Adam can say is “WOW”

Women wants he beauty unveiled
Do you delight in me?
God wants to be worshiped

2009-09-17 - Wild at Heart - Healing the wound (part 3)
Wound unfelt is wound unhealed
Door may be your anger – perhaps from a girl, failure
The way to God is stopping the false self
It may a simple prayer – Jesus, take me into my wound

Jesus never seems to heal the same way twice
There are no formulas with God
Insists on working personally
Masculinity is bestowed by masculinity
Healing never happens outside of intimacy with Christ

It begins with surrender; until you have given yourself to him you will not have a real self
…to set you free – What? Your heart
So take him at his word – ask him in to heal all the broken places within you
But you can’t do this at a distance

I simply allow myself to say that the loss of my father mattered
Important for us to grieve our wound
Grieving we admit the truth, we hurt by someone we loved
Few men are ever so vulnerable as to simply let themselves be loved by God
Why don’t you just let God love you?
The imitate union with Jesus and with his Father is the source of all healing and all our strength
Unforgiveness and bitterness can wreck our lives and the lives of others – Ephesians 4:31, Hebrews 12:15
Forgiveness is setting a prisoner free and then discovering the prisoner was you.

2009-09-30 - One Another - Greet One Another
Greeting seems to be pretty important aspect of relationships in the NT:
  • 27x as a command
  • 68x greetings of different forms in the NT
Four examples:
  1. Greet one another with a holy kiss - Romans 16:16
  2. I send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss - 1 Corinthians 16:20
  3. Greet one another with a holy kiss - 2 Corinthians 13:12
  4. Greet one another with a kiss of love - 1 Peter 5:14
Although somewhat strange to kiss in the US (prefer a hand shake or hug), the emphasis is the heart behind it
Need to show each other they are welcomed, loved and accepted - not just saying "I accept you" roboticly

Challenge for all of us is to really communicate the heart of love and acceptance

Identify 2 or 3 people that you have a hard time "accepting"
Will you be comfortable saying "God judge me just as I judge them"?


2009-10-14 - Wild at Heart - Eve's Wound
Question for her is: Am I lovely?
She needs to know that she is exquisite and exotic and chosen.
This is core to her identity, the way she bears the image of God
Will you purse me? Do you delight in me? Will you fight for me?
Wound says - No, you are not beautiful and no one will really fight for you
Wound usually always comes from the hand of her father

He has the power to cripple or to bless is just as powerful to her as to the son
Her heart is violated and the message is driven father in – you are not desired, you will not be protected, no one will fight for you.

If the father is passive, a little girl will suffer a silent abandonment – not noticed or pursued
Like so many unloved young women, they will to turn to boys to hear what she never heard from her father
When a woman never hears she’s worth fighting for, she comes to believe that is the sort of treatment she deserves

A hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs.
She needs a lover and a warrior, not a nice guy

Number one problem between men and women is that we men, when asked to truly fight for her, hesitate
We are still seeking to save ourselves, we have forgotten the deep pleasure of spilling our life for another

2009-11-21 - Repentance - Its Time To Go Home (part 3)
There is no perfect repentance, but wholehearted repentance
David – search me (Psalms 139)

Spirit’s conviction
Good – overcome blinding pride
Bad – Satan will try to stop you

Sometimes easier to see our sin than think about loved ones salvation (passed away)
What would they want you to do?

Questions
  1. How can you make the same journey as David – from repulsive to repentant?
  2. How does repentance differ between the lost turning to God and the saved re-turning to Him? How is it the same?
  3. How do qualify for God’s love and grace (see page 201)?
  4. If you have not yet repented, why are you without excuse before God?
  5. What will specifically change in your life when you proclaim, “Jesus is Lord!”?
  6. If you have repented, have you also been forgiven of your sins – if not, what are you waiting for (see Acts 22:16)?
  7. What can make post-baptismal repentance more difficult than your initial repentance?
  8. What role does shame play in obstructing your repentance?
  9. What is fellowship in the light vs. fellowship in the darkness? Which have you most often experienced in your church?
  10. Finally, to the “confused”: take time to consider and answer the questions on pages 207 and 208. How can you thwart Satan’s attempts to undermine your path to true repentance?
  11. Who can you encourage today with the good news of your repentance?
  12. Who can you reach for Jesus by “telling how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5: 19)?


2009-12-05 - Master Plan - Jesus gave himself away (part 1)
  • Disciples realized that they were responding to Jesus who was willing to give of Himself for them
  • Examples of Jesus giving himself away
    • Gave away what the Father gave to Him - John 15:15
    • He gave them peace - John 16:33
    • He gave them despite pain and suffering - John 15:11
  • Love is not love until it is given away
  • Jesus – God gave away His most precious possession
  • No greater love than to lay down our live for others
  • Jesus impressed the deep compulsion of His eternal purpose
  • It was clear that the Master considered no service too small or sacrifice too great.
  • Jesus denied Himself many of the comforts and pleasure of the world and became a servant
  • He continually gave His life “for their sakes”
  • Disciples learned not in theory but in practice (painful and hard to accept)
  • Jesus life was the measure by which they were to regard their own service.
    • To give freely as they had received – Matthew 10:8
    • Love one another as He loved them - John 13:34
    • Calvary love was the standard


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