“Love God, Love Family, Love Others”
Loving God – (Matt. 22:37-38) And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
Our mission is to love God with a loyal love. I want to remind you that God calls us to make Him the supreme object of what we value. He alone is worthy of our complete allegiance and devotion. Christ has brought us into a covenant relationship with the Father where He has forgiven us all our sins, removed us from judgement, given us a right standing before Him (because of Christ) and, adopted us into His family. We have been bought with a price, so we are to glorify God with our lives (1 Cor. 6:19-20). If we allow His love to be the controlling motivation of our life, then we will value the things that God values and learn to push back on the distractions that would lead us from Christ. We need to keep on learning that our relationship with Him is what ought to define our everyday life. In our Picture of a Disciple here at Oak Grove Church, this component is first and foremost the foundation of our journey with God in Christ. Our picture is sculpted out of Ephesians 3:14-20 stated below:
Identity: Our newfound identity is being children of God in Christ.
“that you, being rooted and grounded in love…” (17).
These statements are in the perfect tense meaning that when we heard the gospel and responded to the love of Christ at some point in the past, the love of Christ was poured out in our hearts which continues to deeply impact our identity in Christ. We are children of God who are greatly loved.
Intimacy: We now live life out of a deep, abiding intimacy with Christ as an ongoing experience of daily life –
“…that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith …” (16-17).
Immersion: We are in a constant process of growing appreciation for the overwhelming depth of God’s love.
“… may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (18-19).
Impact: the first evidence of God’s love is that it changes us first. The Spirit of God is working in us to transform us into the image of Christ so that we develop the character, values, priorities, and commitments of Christ to the glory of God.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (20-21).
God demonstrated His love that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But the evidence that we have received His love are these elements from Ephesians 3:14-21. He changes our identity, provides intimacy with Him, immerses us in His love so it is the core motivation for us in everything, and finally His love is the context of personal life change, impact!
In His grace, Pastor Brad
