EChurch@Wartburg – 6.10.18

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God is Love

Here is our Order of Worship

Prayer To Be Kept in God’s Love In Difficult Times

Lord, how we wonder at Your love for us, in that while we were yet sinners You sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for our sins – so that in Him we might become Your children and be made the righteous of God, in Him.

Father it staggers the thoughts of our hearts to realise.. that while we were cold and rebellious towards You and and at enmity with God.. that You purposed the glorious plan of redemption in Your heart of love.. that guilty sinners could be declared righteous, through believing on the Lord Jesus Christ – Who died to pay the price for our sins.. with His own life-blood.

Thank You that in Your grace and mercy, Your strong arm of love reached down to me, long before my rebellious heart of stone, turned towards You for healing.

Lord my chief complaint is that my love for You is faint and fragile – a love which seems to be so far removed from the depth of love I desire to have for You. Help me I pray to develop a godly love for You, that is commensurate with the love that You deserve from a sinner such as I – Whom You lifted from the cesspit of sin and chose to save by grace through faith.

Thank You for Your unchanging and unconditional love towards me – and help me more and more to come to a new and deeper understanding of What the Love of God towards me truly means. This I ask in the name of Jesus my Saviour,

Amen

Prayer For Greater Confidence in God’s Love

Dear heavenly Father, for most of my life I have tried to earn Your love and gain Your approval.. and whatever I tried to do, never made me feel that I had done enough – in fact the more I tried to get You to love me.. the more I found that I failed You miserably.

And as I look back on the mission trips, ministry activities, times of prayer and the many bible studies I attended.. the more I believed that I must be disappointing to You, because I was not doing as much as I ought to do. Father as I look back at this period of my life, is saddens me to realise what an incorrect perception I had of You.. and Your unconditional love to all Who are saved by grace, through faith in Christ Jesus.

Father forgive me for misrepresenting Your Father-heart of love and thank You for showing me that Your love for me is not dependent on what I can do for You but rests entirely on what the Lord Jesus did for me, on the cross. Thank You that Your approval does not rely on me at all but simply rests on the fact that I believed on the Lord Jesus as my Saviour – and that I am accepted by YOU because of HIM.. accepted in the Beloved because I am a new creation in Christ – clothed in His righteousness and without condemnation.. and all because of Jesus.

Father thank You for this liberating truth, May I never again be drawn into wrong thinking about Your Father-heart of love and may I gain greater confidence and understanding of what my position in Christ truly means – this I ask in the precious name of my Lord Jesus Christ – Who died for me that I might be free from any condemnation.. and receive Your unconditional and everlasting love – Praise His holy name,

Amen

Scripture Reading: 1 John 4:19 (NASB Bible Gateway)

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Michael Juliano, the Worship Arts and Media Pastor at Emmanuel Enid, filled in for Wade Burleson last Sunday, delivering an important message reminding us of God’s incredible love for us.

Michael was born and raised in Enid and has attended Emmanuel Enid for his entire life. He and his wife Christin were married in the summer of 2015, and he has been on staff since March 2015. They both wish to serve this community and this church in a way that impacts people for the gospel of Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer link

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
Amen

Benediction

Jude 1:24-25 (NASB Bible Gateway)

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Comments

EChurch@Wartburg – 6.10.18 — 7 Comments

  1. There was much I appreciated in this presentation on God’s love. I am not so comfortable with its obvious Reformed Theology, which, after entertaining for over a decade, I now view as far from the mark.

    I would agree that God has sought to show us that we can never ‘earn’ his approval – we can never ‘do enough’, nor be fully righteous in our current, fleshly state of being. Keeping the law will not bring us salvation – not even Jesus’ keeping of the law. Although we are not to be judged on our ability to keep the law, I would disagree that there no longer a condition set forth by God in order to be declared righteous.

    Scripture assures us that God has one condition, and that Abraham did meet the condition – which was faith, or trust in the goodness, truthfulness and trustworthiness of God.

    What all of scripture seeks to explain, and IMO most of church history has distorted, is that this ‘faith’ is and was the only condition required to receive God’s forgiveness of sin and promise of everlasting life.

    This ‘faith’ of Abraham, described by Paul, was all that God was looking for, and his willingness to sacrifice the promised son demonstrated that this faith was genuine. This story, it seems to me, negates the claim of Reformed Theology that faith is actually a gift given by God to only some men, who have been uniquely and irresistibly chosen to receive it.

    Rather, this faith is what God desires in and from each man, and it is possible for any man to have it or he would be unjust to require it.

    Romans tells us that even though it is from man, it is not a ‘work’ that earns merit, but a response, both desired and demanded by God. Other scriptures, particularly James, address the reality that genuine faith produces genuine works, however small they might be in the eyes of man.

    Abraham’s faith led to his willingness to sacrifice his son. It was not his willingness that ‘earned’ him God’s favor, but the heart of faith that it demonstrated. This is what, IMO, Reformed Theology misinterprets, and I just wanted to share that with those who may be seeking to study the varying interpretations of such things. For truly, God loves all men, and desires that all have genuine faith in him. That is his only condition.

  2. “Prayer For Greater Confidence in God’s Love” touched me today and was exactly what I needed. Thank you.

  3. I’m sorry Michael that loving God is difficult for you. I am not sure that you really “get” God. I pray that God will really reveal the love that God is to you. And God did use our own feelings for our children as one way to think about Love. Maybe I need to finish listening to your talk, but it was difficult hearing all the same doctrine on love that doesn’t feel like love and how dare we question it. I’m sorry to be negative, and I don’t mean to bash you. But as truth seeker wrote, there are other understandings. Thank you for allowing your message to be publicly critiqued.