2023-06-06 Are you in love with Jesus? (full sermon)

The speaker discusses the concept of being in love with Jesus and how it differs from simply loving him. They explain that being in love with Jesus entails a deep dedication and obsession, similar to a romantic relationship. The speaker shares their personal journey of falling in love with Jesus and how it transformed their life. They emphasize the importance of prioritizing Jesus over other lesser loves and seeking acceptance and love from Him above all else. The speaker encourages listeners to experience the overwhelming acceptance of God's love and live a life centered around Him. Are you in love with Jesus? And that might sound like a funny question if you've never heard it phrased quite that way before. You might think, you know, I might love Jesus, but in love with Jesus, that doesn't sound quite right. You know, and when someone says that they're in love, we know they're talking about much more than a general affection, right? But a deep obsession, right? Hannah and I were just talking about this this morning. English is a very lacking language in many ways, right? If anybody, how many here speak any other language? Just, I don't care if it's a slang, just one other language, right? And English lacks certain words, like for example, the word love. If I told you I love my wife, I told you that, oh man, I really love this iPad. It's so useful kind of thing. Or man, I had this amazing burger the other day. I love it. I'm using the same word each time, but I'm clearly mean something different in each case. Like I'm not talking about the same thing. So English lacks kind of that, you know? But, and a lot of other languages have multiple words with that. But in English, we kind of lack that. And so that's when I say in love, we know we're talking about something slightly different. And if you can embrace the idea of being in love with Jesus, you'll have a deep dedication that I think is the closest human experience to the kind of relationship that I believe that you can have with Christ. When you're in love with someone, you start making decisions in your life that revolve around that person, right? You know, being in love with Jesus, though, when we say that, it's not about having a candlelit dinner or giving Jesus a Valentine card. That's not really what I'm talking about here. But get comfortable and listen, because I want to share with you the beautiful adventure of how I personally fell in love with Jesus. So I grew up in a Christian home, and my parents talked about the deep things of the Lord from a young age. And I understood a lot of these things, not because I was especially smart, but because, and I'm not calling myself dumb, but I mean, it wasn't anything special about me in that sense. It was just that the Holy Spirit was able to get certain things across. But I'd say that I understood them up here, in my head, at best, not in my heart, right? It was just a head knowledge. You know, it's kind of like, if anybody here is married or has been married, before you were married and you had ideas about what being married might be like, you had a head knowledge. It's a completely different thing once you did get married, right? And so it's a different experience. So when I was about 15, we're just gonna jump a few years here, we started attending a new church and they had these sort of outdoor services that they called tent meetings because they were in a great big, like circus tent kind of thing. Like not a circus tent, but like that size, like really, really, really big. And they had these outdoor meetings like all along. And I couldn't tell you what song was sung, I don't remember. I couldn't tell you what the speaker was speaking about, probably God, I guess. I don't really remember though what he said, but I can tell you that I do remember a very real sense in my spirit of God's presence. And if you've never experienced that, that might sound strange, but have you ever been in a room by yourself and somebody enters the room and without you hearing them or seeing them, you just know somebody walked in the room? Has anybody? Yeah, okay, I'm seeing a few of you. The rest of you think I'm crazy, but that's fine. It's kind of like that. That is what I sensed. It was more than a feeling, it was a deep sense. Someone had entered the room and I knew that Jesus was real and he changed me. And it was more than an emotion or a thought, right? It wasn't just a feeling or an idea now. It was a deeper sense. And so at that moment, I moved from a head knowledge to an experience of Jesus. But what I need you to understand is that this new familiarity was more of an acquaintance than it was the person whom I was giving my total affection to. Because I struggled for years giving that affection to lesser loves. And what I mean by lesser loves is every one of us has had or has lesser loves that compete for our attention in our life right now. I'm not talking about the fact that you love your family. That's a good thing. Keep doing that, please. That's a good thing. We need more loving families and stuff like that. I'm not talking about that, but what I'm saying that there's these lesser loves that can distract us. And I don't like telling this part of my story because I sound like a total dork, but I'm just gonna tell you more about it anyways. But so from the time that I was about 11 years old to the time that I was 18, I had a crush on this girl where I lived, the same girl, okay? For like seven years, which from my vantage point might sound like, oh, from her vantage point, that might sound creepy. This is the same guy, but anyhow. Our families were friends, but I was incredibly, I know it might be hard to believe, but I was incredibly shy growing up. I did not talk to people. I didn't, this, what I'm doing right now would have sounded crazy to Chris back then. Like that's not something that I would have done. And so yeah, I had this crush on her. We didn't really talk though. But the summer before I went to college, we started to get to know each other. And we were really getting to know each other. You know, before I went, well, she went, she ended up going to this sort of like missionary kind of like training camp kind of thing, if you will, right? Like this camp that's training people for missionary work. And when she went away, she left me this little, you know those calendars that you, you take like one day off at a time, right? She left me one of those. And on every day she had written a fact about herself so that I could get to know her better while she was gone. And the last fact was something like, oh, you know, I love your smile or something, something, you know, sappy like that, basically. And so, you know, I was, of course, I was on cloud nine, right? But while she was there, she met an up and coming young man, like up and coming pastor, young man, same age kind of thing. And by the time that she came home, they were quite serious about each other. You know how quickly these things move when you're young, you know, but. And so I was heartbroken. Have you ever been heartbroken? Yeah, so, you know, even though we weren't dating, we hadn't really been even really friends for that long when you actually think about it, I had invested my heart and affection into someone, from my vantage point anyways, for quite a while, you know? And so I was devastated. It really, it may sound small in retrospect, but I was devastated, right? And so I want you to put yourself in my shoes for a minute. I was in a vulnerable place emotionally, and I grew up homeschooled too, okay? So I had a very, you might say sheltered kind of upbringing in many ways. You know, most of my social circles were in church and parachurch things, you know, like things outside of church. They were basically church things too, you know? So I had a very sheltered environment. And then I went to college, right? Very different, especially if you're homeschooled the whole way. This is a whole other planet, right? And I was also in this very emotionally vulnerable place. And it was a challenge to my belief in many ways, you know? And the question for me was not whether, at this point, whether or not God existed, because I remember I had that experience now where I'm like, okay, this isn't head knowledge, but it was more of an acquaintance, right? It wasn't a question of whether or not God existed, but whether or not I was devoted to him. Could something else take me away? And many of you may be like I was at this moment. I was looking around for someone or something to give my affection to, someone to replace the love that I felt that I lost. And that's when I met this girl in my class who was not a believer in Christ. Now, she had had some background in that kind of thing, but she was not a believer. And the more we talked about it, it was very evident that wasn't gonna change either, right? And at the same time, looking back, like at the time, it feels all scattered over the place, but looking back, it feels like there's a chess match going on for what my outcome was gonna be, who I was going to become. And there were players at this chess match, and they were moving strategic things around. And one of those strategic things that got moved around was I became friends with another guy in my class named Matt, and we developed a very brotherly kind of bond that remains to this day. We're still friends. We have this kind of friendship where we can tell each other just, hey, don't be stupid. Like you're being an idiot. Like in no uncertain terms, you're being an idiot, stop being an idiot kind of thing. And I needed that kind of frankness in my life in that season. And we had that kind of relationship. Anybody here have a friend like that? Somebody that can just tell them like, the kind of person when everybody else is kind of like, kind of trying to help you lick your wounds, and they're saying, get off your butt and be a man, like that kind of person. We all need somebody like that. Choose those people wisely, because some of us have people that we think are those people, and they're just jerks that are putting us down. That's not the same thing. There's a difference. They are trying to propel you forward in what they're saying, but they're cutting through the niceties, because sometimes we need somebody to just tell it to us straight. And so that's what we had. And I want to encourage you, if you don't have someone like that in your life, be that for someone else. I don't mean just walk up to somebody else and say, hey, don't be stupid. But like, that's probably not gonna be very helpful either, but try and develop the relationship where you can be honest with people. And we've both told each other, Matt and I both told each other, looking back, we're both not sure that we would be Christians today had we not met each other at that exact time and been willing to kind of like hold each other to account. You know what I mean? And yeah. So yeah, listen closely to this part, because this is where things start to change, because all the while I was trying to give this girl my heart who didn't even really believe in the existence of God, let alone the relevance, and it's funny because I had already claimed, and we use this kind of language in church, I'd already claimed that I gave my heart to Jesus, and here I am trying to give it to somebody else, right? And the more God challenged me in my faith, partly because of my friend Matt, the more I couldn't fathom having a romantic relationship with someone who I could never see in heaven, to put it plainly. Like, I couldn't fathom that. And so when that romantic hope inevitably, and quite frankly, by God's grace, fell apart, my heart would always be looking then for a new person, a new thing to fill that ache that I felt in my heart. And it was like time and again, I was failing by trying to dedicate my whole heart to lesser love that could never fill that breaking, leaking heart of mine. Aren't our hearts like so fragile sometimes? Like, they're so fragile. It's amazing the lengths that we will go to if we think we can repair them with something. And it's amazing the amount of times that we will go to the very thing that's going to break them even further, you know? And maybe you've been through a moment like this, and I know that my story coming from, you know, a fairly sheltered church Christian kind of upbringing, isn't the kind of, you know, growing up in church, I would hear people tell their testimonies, and it's like, oh man, this guy was like, you know, he was a hit man for the mafia kind of thing, and like, you know, he assassinated this guy, and look how God turned the thing. I haven't done enough bad stuff for my story to be meaningful, you know what I mean? And that's how you kind of like think in that environment, you know what I mean? But I think it's important that we share our stories because there's other people that's story might've been like mine. But I think regardless of the aesthetics of the story, right, the aesthetics of where I was and what I went through, we're all having the same journey in many, many ways. We're looking for acceptance. We're looking to be loved. We're looking to feel okay about ourselves, and like we have meaning and purpose, and we go looking for that in the wrong places, and it ends up hurting us. And then we all come to a moment, and maybe you haven't come to this moment, and I'm praying you do, like this, because, you know, finally, in my frustration, I remember literally being down on my knees in the church that I was in at the time. There wasn't anybody else there. There was a time when I used to cut the lawn for our church, basically. So there was no one else there. I was literally like in a sanctuary like this, kneeling down here, yelling at God. I was just like, why do I keep messing everything up, you know? And even though, you know, it's like I hadn't gone out and killed anybody or robbed a bank, but I felt like I'm like, God, I just wanna be loved. I just want these things, and I just feel like I keep messing it up. I don't understand. I feel like, and this is literally what I said. I remember saying, I feel like there's somebody out there for me, and they're on the other side of a glass wall, and it's like I can see them on the other side of the glass wall, but nothing will break that wall down, and it's a torture to know, because every old grandma in the church will tell you, oh, you're such a sweet young man, and there's someone out there for you, and I'm like, don't tell me that, you're driving me insane, because you're telling me there's someone out there for me, and no matter how hard I look around and try, even people in the church who were believers, and then things went wrong, and it's just like, I don't even want hope at this point, because hope just feels like an opportunity for disappointment. Have you ever been there? And I felt like I'd messed up so much, and I felt like I was constantly running, just in an ever running to the next thing, to the next person, trying to figure out what was next, just running, running, running, running, don't you ever just feel like your life is spent running sometimes, to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, hoping that somebody will love me and accept me, and it was at this moment that I always say, it was like God arrested me, I don't mean that he threw me in jail, but he stopped me in my tracks, unable to go any further down the road that I was running, and he spoke to me, and listen closely, because this is what he told me, it's the one thing that I need you to hear today, if you hear nothing else, I believe what he told me was, Chris, you're looking for love, acceptance, and appreciation from everyone and everything except me, the one person who already loves, appreciates, and accepts you just as you are. Of course, God is going to change me and cleanse me as we went, but he didn't expect me to have already been cleaned up to be able to be loved by him. The Bible says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, right? It wasn't like, okay, now I've got, you know, like, when we go somewhere, and maybe you even thought about this before you came to a gathering like this, you probably might've thought about, you know, what I'm gonna wear tonight, or maybe I need to comb my hair, or something like that, and we know Les didn't, that's fine, but you might've thought those things, and you might've thought those things because you're, you know, you might've been thinking, well, you know, I gotta be presentable so that people won't think X, Y, and Z. I don't think I'm just, like, a slob or those kinds of things. We think, like, we've gotta have a certain presentation before people will accept us, you know? And I'm not saying just throw hygiene to the wind, doesn't matter anymore kind of thing, but what I'm saying is, like, here, we do that with God, too. We feel like we have to do ourselves up a certain way to be able to come to him, and he sees you already. He's seen you at your lowest point already. We're not fooling him or impressing him by what we do. He already accepts us anyway, right? And what he challenged me with is a challenge I want to invite you to take up, too. He said, Chris, you've lived your life watching a carousel of people go around that you want to impress, that you want to like you. You thought, what should I wear that this person would think makes me cool or attractive, or what decisions would I do to impress and please this person? How would I act to be accepted by them? And he said, how would you live if you had that same obsessive love for me? Not because you need to impress me or earn my love, but because you're so grateful and accepted, so dedicatedly in love with me, with Jesus, that you would live different. And this is where I say I started being in love with Jesus. And I don't, it doesn't matter if that particular phrase resonates with you. That phrase, in love with Jesus, is not in the Bible. So it doesn't matter. I know that some people, I've told this kind of story before, they're like, that sounds weird to me. That's okay, it worked for me. If that phrase doesn't work for you, it doesn't matter. But the concept is, how would you live if you lived with that same kind of dedication, but for Jesus? And this is where I started being in love with him. And he said, you can never be in love. And this is something, too, that he kind of got me on to. He says, you keep having these failed relationships because you can never be in love with another person until you're first in love with me. Because I am love. And so you can't understand what love actually is until you've loved me. And you can't give your heart to anyone else because you said when you became a Christian that you gave your heart to me. So you don't get to give your heart to someone else unless they go through me first, right? And that changed my mind on a lot of things at that moment. It's like, yeah, who am I? I'm like, here you go, I'll take that back, thank you. Let's give it to something else, right? No, it's gotta go through him. And from that moment on, I changed the way that I approach Christianity, not as a religious thing, not as something that I know or something I feel, but being in love with him to the point that my whole life revolves around him. And wouldn't you like to live something with that kind of purpose and meaning? In the words of two songwriters named Jason, coincidentally, Jason Ingram and Jason Gray said, it's gotta be more like falling in love than something to believe in. More like losing my heart than giving my allegiance. Caught up, called out, come take a look at me now. It's like falling in love. So I wanna challenge you. Are you in love with Jesus? Are you obsessed with him? Don't just love him like a distant relative or an acquaintance. And I'm not talking about making up an obsession or faking it till you make it kind of thing. If you get nothing else from this message tonight, understand this, he loves you and let yourself feel that overwhelming acceptance of that love. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I just wanna pray for everyone here that they encounter you in a way and in a moment where you arrest them, that you stop them in their tracks and you help them understand that you already love them, that you appreciate them, that you accept them as they are. But because you love them, you're going to change them and grow them. Lord, I pray that they won't try to live just a good, obedient life with the motivation to make you love them, but from a place of knowing that you already accept them and that you love them and help them to accept and appreciate and love you. Lord, I just pray that each person here will fall ever deeper in love with you. In Jesus' name, amen.