Peninsula Vineyard Christian Fellowship Sunday, June 22, 2008

This God Who Loves Us

or

He’s not the irascible One we’ve feared

“There’s nothing worse than someone else’s good time.” So goes the quote from Mark Twain. It’s a sneaking suspicion in social cliques of Jesus followers, that everyone both deserves, and is having, a good time - everyone, that is, but us. We often seem to just scrape by, constantly struggling to hold on, pleading for a break in the wearying and frustrating cycle of our lives, or we just beg for some recognizable sign that God isn’t totally and permanently mad at us. And this is only a fragment of the Kingdom-alien thinking that we have loaded into the Kingdom-alien backpacks that we’ve opted to shoulder..

Jesus gave so much of his time speaking of, and modeling, God’s love and love of relationship. Is it too much to take in that maybe, just maybe, the bottom line is that, oozing from the very love core of God the Father is a longing, deeper than any other longing, for an intimate, loving, mutually-satisfying affair of the heart with his adopted children? With us?

1. Jeremiah 31 : 3, 4, 9, 14, 20 - The yearning of the Father’s love announced

2. John 3 : 16,17 - Love, as the Father’s motivation

3. I John 3 : 1 — The Father’s lavish love

4. 1 John 3 : 16-24 - The Father’s love proven

5. 1 John 4 : 7-21 - Love = God

“God, it seems you’ve been our home forever; long before the mountains were born, long before you brought earth itself to birth, from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come” - you are God. “ Psalm 90:2, The MESSAGE

“God is impervious to evil. . . There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle.”

James 1:17, The MESSAGE

The Master declares, “I’m A TO Z. I’M THE GOD WHO IS, THE GOD WHO WAS, AND THE GOD ABOUT TO ARRIVE. I’M THE SOVEREIGN-STRONG.” Revelation 1:8, The MESSAGE