SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Life Family Church Sermon Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: If this is your first time listening, you can check us out on our website at lifefamily.church or on Facebook at LFT.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's get right to the message.
SPEAKER_01: Today I'm going to talk just for a moment because I know we're have a lot of things going on.
SPEAKER_01: So don't get me wrong.
SPEAKER_01: I I do have something on my heart, but I do practice the four S's of ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Short, simple, sweet, and substant.
SPEAKER_01: So, so I promise you, I'm not going to keep you too long, but I do have something on my heart that I do believe will bless you and help you to see God in a different way.
SPEAKER_01: Today I'm going to talk just a moment on through the lens of God's love.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk just a moment about the lens of God's love.
SPEAKER_01: Every decision we make should flow from an unshakable truth that God loves me.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody say that.
SPEAKER_01: Say, God loves me.
SPEAKER_01: The foundation of our life should be hinged upon the revelation of God's love and his mercy for my life.
SPEAKER_01: The foundation.
SPEAKER_01: God's love, it never changes.
SPEAKER_01: It never changes.
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to change.
SPEAKER_01: John 3.16 says this for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: God loved us, he loved us.
SPEAKER_01: He loved us when we were nasty.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't wait on us to get right before he loved us.
SPEAKER_01: God's love was his starting point, not his reward.
SPEAKER_01: Come on, I'm gonna say that again.
SPEAKER_01: God's love for us is a starting point, not our reward.
SPEAKER_01: His love doesn't just start and then end when we come to know him.
SPEAKER_01: It gets brighter and brighter and brighter and greater and greater, and I've always said gooder and gooder.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: So God will not stop loving you.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 5.8 says this, but God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were sinners, Christ died.
SPEAKER_01: While we were sinners, he died.
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times, for some reason, I don't know what it is, but when we're Christians sometimes believe that God loves me, God loves me, I get born again, and then all of a sudden the first time I make a mistake, God's mad at me, God's mad at me, God's mad at me.
SPEAKER_01: And we leave the we live the rest of our life thinking God's mad at me.
SPEAKER_01: No, let me correct that.
SPEAKER_01: God loves me, God loves me, God loves me.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all remember the old day, or is it the uh daisy or whatever we'd say he loves me, he loves me not.
SPEAKER_01: He loves me, he loves me more, he loves me, he loves me more.
SPEAKER_01: It's love, it's love, it's love.
SPEAKER_01: It never stops, it never ends eternally, forever.
SPEAKER_01: That love will not stop because of your attitude, that love will continue because of God's attitude.
SPEAKER_01: His character will not change based on our attitudes towards him.
SPEAKER_01: If God loved us at our worst, he doesn't love us less at our best or in our failures.
SPEAKER_01: His love is not emotional, his love is covenant-based.
SPEAKER_01: He shed his blood to ratify his love, to prove his love for you and I.
SPEAKER_01: That will never stop.
SPEAKER_01: His love is rooted in his character, not our behavior.
SPEAKER_01: One thing that I was thinking as I was preparing for this message, I believe the Lord dropped this on my heart, is a new nature that requires new lenses.
SPEAKER_01: Now, just as an example, I have these sunglasses here and I was wearing these yesterday, and that's why I have a big white area around my eyes, and everything else looks like I saw Jesus last night.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody told me that I needed suntan lotion yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: Where was my wife at?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where she was at.
SPEAKER_01: Normally she tells everybody they need suntan lotion, but not yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: She was, she was.
SPEAKER_01: That's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_01: Yep, it was the Easter bunny.
SPEAKER_01: I know it was.
SPEAKER_01: Um, when we were born again, we receive new lenses.
SPEAKER_01: New lenses.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna call these new lenses right here.
SPEAKER_01: I hate these things, but new lenses, all right?
SPEAKER_01: So these are the new lenses, these are the old.
SPEAKER_01: Um you receive a new identity, you grab these, new nature, new position.
SPEAKER_01: But when you before you were born again, this is how you saw.
SPEAKER_01: You saw things darkly, you saw things dimly, you didn't see clear, everything was dark, everything didn't make sense, and a lot of bad things happened in your life during that season of your of your life.
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of us take these glasses and we carry it in to the new nature.
SPEAKER_01: And instead of wearing these glasses and staying with the new nature, sometimes we put these over top of them.
SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to see, and they're very uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: And everything I'm looking at right now looks hilarious.
SPEAKER_01: But some people they come to the Lord, but still they're seeing through the shame of their past.
SPEAKER_01: They come to the Lord and they're still reacting to the rejection that they faced when they were a child.
SPEAKER_01: They're carrying the past with them everywhere they go.
SPEAKER_01: And they don't know what to do because their eyesight is dimmed, because they haven't come to the revelation that God loves me.
SPEAKER_01: Because when you finally come to the revelation that God loves me, you can take these glasses off and you can see clear.
SPEAKER_01: You can make decisions based on reality, not based on your past hurt.
SPEAKER_01: Many people in the church today are carrying past hurts.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord is wanting and he's doing everything he can to tell you he loves you.
SPEAKER_01: Let it go.
SPEAKER_01: Let it go and grab on to me, the only one that can take you through that hurt and that pain that you faced.
SPEAKER_01: Don't grab on to rejection anymore because it just clouds your thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Don't hold on to that past fear any longer.
SPEAKER_01: Let fear go because fear it has torment, it has pain, it has suffering, and it always causes us to make decisions that are not true.
SPEAKER_01: Fear will cloud your judgment.
SPEAKER_01: We should never make decisions out of fear.
SPEAKER_01: We should never make decisions out of the feeling of insecurity.
SPEAKER_01: We should be bold.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says the righteous of the Lord are as bold as lions.
SPEAKER_01: We're supposed to be confident in our thoughts, confident in our words, confident when we walk, confident when we talk, when we go into a business deal.
SPEAKER_01: We walk confident.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you're called.
SPEAKER_01: You're not to walk around like you're defeated.
SPEAKER_01: Defeat is gone.
SPEAKER_01: Defeat has been defeated.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We are forever more victorious in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We are bold as lines and we are more than conquerors in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: We're to let go of these old lenses, the old nature, the old ways, the old hurt.
SPEAKER_01: Take off the grave clothes, put on the new.
SPEAKER_01: There was an old song years ago that used to go like this.
SPEAKER_01: There was one thing.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm not going to sing it to you, but I'm going to explain it to you.
SPEAKER_01: It was to take off the old coat and put on the new.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, put on righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Put on righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Start seeing yourself the way that Jesus sees you.
SPEAKER_01: Complete in Him.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing left for God to do to make you any more holy, pure, righteous than what He's already done through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You see, you don't make a decision in your emotions, in your flesh, and expect your emotions and your flesh to continue to rule and guide you.
SPEAKER_01: What we do when we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we put our faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Put our hope in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We put our confidence in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And because of that trust and because of that faith, we can walk boldly.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says we can walk boldly into the throne of grace, meaning we can go into the very presence of Almighty God without the sense of fear, shame, or inferiority.
SPEAKER_01: We can walk right up to God, our Father, and make our request known.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to walk in shame anymore.
SPEAKER_01: So we can take those lenses of shame and we can throw them away.
SPEAKER_01: Get rid of them.
SPEAKER_01: Take it and cast it off like an old nasty coat.
SPEAKER_01: It does not belong on you anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Your voice should be filled with victory, your mind should be filled with hope.
SPEAKER_01: And nothing shall by any means harm you.
SPEAKER_01: The enemy wants to keep you in a place where you feel like you're not worthy.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm going to tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: When he says you're not worthy, you say, That's right.
SPEAKER_01: You got me.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus is worthy, and I'm in him, and we are one, and you can't separate us.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, nothing shall be able to separate you from the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing can separate you.
SPEAKER_01: So don't walk around anymore like I'm just a mess.
SPEAKER_01: You're not a mess.
SPEAKER_01: You're a blessing.
SPEAKER_01: You're a blessing waiting to happen in someone's life.
SPEAKER_01: Everywhere you go, you should be thanking God.
SPEAKER_01: I'm favored.
SPEAKER_01: I'm blessed.
SPEAKER_01: And everywhere I go, there's increase.
SPEAKER_01: And the devil hates when I wake up.
SPEAKER_01: Because I'll rehearse this over and over to him all day long if I have to.
SPEAKER_01: That he can't defeat me any longer.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a child of God.
SPEAKER_01: I've got a new nature in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: We are new creatures in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So we've got to cast off the old, put on the new.
SPEAKER_01: Rise up, church.
SPEAKER_01: Get in your position.
SPEAKER_01: Your position is your place in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: Get in that position.
SPEAKER_01: What is that?
SPEAKER_01: I'm loved by God.
SPEAKER_01: I am loved by God.
SPEAKER_01: Wake up every day.
SPEAKER_01: I know you you you you strong men don't like to think this way.
SPEAKER_01: Get up every day.
SPEAKER_01: And like John, one of the disciples of Jesus, you know what he called himself?
SPEAKER_01: I am the disciple whom Jesus loved.
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what you need to do.
SPEAKER_01: Every day you get up, you wake up and you look at your wife or your husband, you say, I'm the disciple Jesus loved.
SPEAKER_01: And they'll look back at you and say, I'm the disciple Jesus loved.
SPEAKER_01: And you just have an argument about how much God loves you.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to argue anyway, you might as well argue about the love of God, right?
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We've got to renew our minds and be transformed into a creature that He has already created, new in Him.
SPEAKER_01: A creature that is known by love, created by love, established in love.
SPEAKER_01: The foundation of every decision we make should be rooted in love.
SPEAKER_01: Everything is about love.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom of God is his love to you.
SPEAKER_01: Everything we do should be laced in love.
SPEAKER_01: Because when you're holding on to past hurt, what that does is it starts to affect relationships in your life.
SPEAKER_01: You see, if you lived early on rejected and you felt like you're rejected, that continues on through your teenage years, does it not?
SPEAKER_01: And then it moves on into your adult life.
SPEAKER_01: And you're looking for someone to fill that void that only God can fill.
SPEAKER_01: You're looking for someone to help you overcome rejection.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot overcome rejection by just having friends.
SPEAKER_01: Friends will not solve the issue.
SPEAKER_01: What will only solve this issue is a relationship with the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: Because when you know I'm loved by Him, if I'm loved by the best, who cares about the rest?
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Me and God, we are, we are one.
SPEAKER_01: And nothing can separate that.
SPEAKER_01: No friendship can ever bring the joy and the hope and the peace of knowing that you have a relationship with the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You get a new identity, a new nature, a new position in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We must replace these old lenses with the love of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: God loves you.
SPEAKER_01: And I've said this over and over.
SPEAKER_01: He is not mad at you.
SPEAKER_01: You say, Well, I've made a lot of mistakes in my life.
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
SPEAKER_01: And he chose to love you when you were a dirty, rotten sinner.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not going to stop because you're a dirty, rotten, Christian.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Or owe me.
SPEAKER_01: Whichever one it is.
SPEAKER_01: God does not run away from you.
SPEAKER_01: But we can run away from him.
SPEAKER_01: We can make a choice to run from God, to hide from God, to stay away from God, stay away from his presence, to keep him at a distance, so that we can rule and reign in our life.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that you rule and reign in your domain?
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that you rule your life?
SPEAKER_01: You're the one that rules your life?
SPEAKER_01: God will not rule your life unless you yield it over to Him.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're having horrible times in your life and you're rejecting God and you're continuing to push God away, maybe you're saying it's God's fault.
SPEAKER_01: All these bad things have happened to me.
SPEAKER_01: But let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lousy, dirty, rotten Satan who hates you, the Bible says wants to steal, kill, and destroy you.
SPEAKER_01: And if we don't pick up the new lens and hold on to a clear vision of who God is, then we'll miss out on all the blessings of knowing God.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're holding on to the past hurt, the past shame, the past mistakes that you made.
SPEAKER_01: And you won't let go.
SPEAKER_01: I want you today to feel free to just let go of your past.
SPEAKER_01: Let go of everything.
SPEAKER_01: The things that happened in your life in your life do not carry them into the future.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember the children of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: They moved on.
SPEAKER_01: They walked out of Egypt, free men, free women, free children.
SPEAKER_01: They walked out with gold and riches and blessing and favor, but yet something on them kept trying to pull them back to Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: You see, that's exactly what Satan wants us to do is turn back and keep our eyes on what used to be instead of looking ahead.
SPEAKER_01: Paul said, I don't look at the things of my past, but I let them go.
SPEAKER_01: And I look forward to the things that are ahead of me.
SPEAKER_01: And he said that Jesus, he is the author and the finisher of your faith.
SPEAKER_01: For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, he despised the shame, and then he sat down at the right hand of the Father, majesty on high.
SPEAKER_01: And he declared over you and I, they're mine.
SPEAKER_01: They belong to me.
SPEAKER_01: But we have to make that choice to receive Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He can't make you serve Him.
SPEAKER_01: We have to make the choice to let go of the past.
SPEAKER_01: He can't make you do it.
SPEAKER_01: We have to make the decision.
SPEAKER_01: Decisions are hard.
SPEAKER_01: Decisions, a lot of people, because of their clouded vision of God, have a hard time making decisions.
SPEAKER_01: You see, living in condemnation will make decision making hard for you because your thought life says this.
SPEAKER_01: If I make a mistake, God's going to be mad at me.
SPEAKER_01: What if I make a mistake?
SPEAKER_01: What if I mess up and take a deal that I shouldn't have taken?
SPEAKER_01: I want you to say something with me.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says the redeemed of the Lord say, so.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to make a mistake.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to mess up.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says we will miss the mark.
SPEAKER_01: We will sin.
SPEAKER_01: But he also says we have an advocate, Jesus Christ, and we can go straight to him and we can confess our sins before him.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says he's faithful and just to forgive us of sin and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: So we can make that next right decision.
SPEAKER_01: Say this with me.
SPEAKER_01: Say, I'm not, I'm not responsible for a lot of decisions.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just responsible for the next one.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And our decision is this, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to do today, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to say to this person who's experiencing this.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to act today because my boss was a jerk, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus in the morning, Jesus in the afternoon, Jesus in the evening, Jesus all the time.
SPEAKER_01: When you don't know what to do, just begin to worship him.
SPEAKER_01: And thank him that he loves me.
SPEAKER_01: He loves me.
SPEAKER_01: We are to pursue Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Like we pursued our wife when we started dating.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to expect all you men to say amen.
SPEAKER_01: When we first started dating, we dressed ourselves up, we brushed our teeth, we put on deodorant, we sprayed the clone, we figured out a good plan where we're going to take them.
SPEAKER_01: We thought ahead of time, right?
SPEAKER_01: Love is on pursuit.
SPEAKER_01: It's on pursuit.
SPEAKER_01: We did all these things to prepare for our wife.
SPEAKER_01: We washed our car.
SPEAKER_01: We got our house clean.
SPEAKER_01: We did everything we could do to prepare for this woman because we were about to pursue her, right?
SPEAKER_01: Love goes first.
SPEAKER_01: We are to continue our relationship with Jesus the same way.
SPEAKER_01: We're not to stop.
SPEAKER_01: We're to be more passionate and in pursuit of him as we ever were.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm preaching to myself, but I will not feel shame because I've just preached on that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just messing.
SPEAKER_01: I love my wife.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not the best gift giver.
SPEAKER_01: Um she could say amen.
SPEAKER_01: She had a birthday and she reminded me, you didn't give me a gift.
SPEAKER_01: I gave her a hundred dollars.
SPEAKER_01: I thought that meant something.
SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.
SPEAKER_01: Anyways, moving right along.
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
SPEAKER_01: But God doesn't see us through our mistakes.
SPEAKER_01: God sees us through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He sees us through the blood.
SPEAKER_01: He sees us through his love for us.
SPEAKER_01: He put on those glasses for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: He decided forever I'm going to love them.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not going to put on, he will never put on those glasses.
SPEAKER_01: He'll always have these glasses on.
SPEAKER_01: I love you.
SPEAKER_01: You make decisions based on he loves you.
SPEAKER_01: He loves you.
SPEAKER_01: You let go of the past because he loves you, he loves you, he loves you.
SPEAKER_01: And then you start serving him, not based out of I have to serve him, but based on I get to serve him.
SPEAKER_01: I love him so much because he first loved me.
SPEAKER_01: Let's all stand up this morning.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in here today and you don't know that love, you've never experienced the love of God, you've never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in here today and you would like to make that commitment, I would like you to do something.
SPEAKER_01: Just slip out from where you are and come up here to the front.
SPEAKER_01: I want to lead you into a relationship with the God who loves you and will never stop loving you.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're here and you would like to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you've never made that decision before, don't run out of here without making that decision because this is the most important decision you will ever make in your life.
SPEAKER_01: To come to Jesus, to come to the one who loves you, and it will never reject you.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: If there's anyone, you're more than welcome to come up here.
SPEAKER_01: We'd love to pray with you and lead you to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to pray over each and every one of us that we will take off the old lens and we will forevermore put on these new lens, created in love, created in righteousness and true holiness.
SPEAKER_01: So, Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray over everyone under the under the sound of my voice.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I pray that they would throw off the old lenses and that they would put on the new lenses, created in Christ Jesus, as a new creature.
SPEAKER_01: We are walking in your love, your grace, and your goodness.
SPEAKER_01: And I thank you, Father, for this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: And if you agree with that, we say amen.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
SPEAKER_00: We hope that this message helps you draw closer to God as you walk out your faith.
SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next week.