Does God Love me?

Rhema reloaded is a youth based Bible Study spin off from the Rhema Bible Study collection by L.A Williams. 

Brought to you by his son Shean, the aim and hope is to equip, strengthen, and encourage young people to grow in their faith and to study with intention, passion and conviction. Shean has a burning desire to see young people exercise their faith in the practical application of their everyday, and develop a spiritual relationship that becomes the anchor for their lives. 

This lively Bible Study is here to start the conversation publicly so you can carry it on personally and privately. So sit back, relax and enjoy Rhema Reloaded.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:07

Good morning, and welcome to Rumor Reloading with me Shu and I can't wait to jump into today's Bible study with you and break open the word of God. Firstly, we just want to say a massive thank you to everybody that interacted with our first piece of Bible study content last week with my father, Rumour Bible study. The comments, um, the interactions, and just some of the conversations we've had, it's been absolutely overwhelming. This is why we wanted to bring you Rima Reloaded. We're hoping to aim it as a youth-based Bible study. Or it will be a snapshot review of the Bible studies gone before and just broken down in a different way with me, your boy. Um, so this morning we're going to get into it. Last week we spoke about loving God, God's love for us, and also our love for ourselves. I wanted to open that up a little bit and go over a couple of the concepts that we spoke about. I want to look at the four loves that my father touched on, and then I also want to look into some other conceptual questions and for us to have a bit of a discussion, whilst I also give you some scripture for background and basis, and also for your own personal study. That's the biggest thing about this. I want us to be able to start the conversation so that you can carry on the conversation with the Holy Spirit. I'm gonna say that one more time because you know I liked it. I'm hoping that we start the conversation so that in your own private study time you can carry on the conversation with the Holy Spirit. So, just very quickly to go back over some of the stuff we were talking about last week. We said that there are four types of love. We have one, the agape love. That should be on the screen right now. You have two, philia, three, eros, four, sturge. I'm gonna go through those one more time. You have one, agape, two, philia, three, eros, and four, sturge. Now I'm gonna give you the definitions and the meanings of these from back to front. Sturge is the love that we have for our family. It's empathetic, it's warm, it's affectionate, it's the love that you share amongst siblings. You might have it for your auntie, your uncle, your cousins, it's the love that we have for our family. Eros is a more sensual love. It is a physical love, it's a love that is driven by the senses. Have you ever been in a situation where you've been absolutely starving and you come into your house and your nose smells whatever it is that your mum or your auntie or your grandma or your dad or your sister or your brother could be cooking, and all of a sudden your senses are absolutely taking over, and you're like, I need some of that now. In the same sense, especially for us as young people, and I'm not talking our business. Sometimes we may be out shopping, we could be out in a public space, sometimes we could be in church, sometimes we could be having some social time, and we see something or someone that we like, and all of a sudden our senses are sending all of this information to our brain, and all of a sudden we think we like this person, even though we don't know this person, and oh my gosh, we call this Eros. It's central, it's physical, it's fleeting, it's momentary, it's driven by us. Then we have filia. Filial is love of friend. I think this is the closest thing to agape than the other three. Filia is it's warm, it's it's the camaraderie, it's the it's the deep emotional connection and feeling that you have to someone that is not driven by a romantic or a sexual lust. Filial is a very beautiful love. Then we have the most important and the most powerful of them all: agape love. Agape love is seen right from the book of Genesis all the way to the book of Revelation. Yeah, that's scary book at the end that most of us are like, I ain't going there. That's like got fire and brimstone and angels and death and pale riders and red riders. Yes, I know, but agape starts all the way in the beginning of Genesis, and we see it all the way through to the end of Revelation. Agape love is also seen when we look in John 3.16, it's a scripture that my father touched on last week, and we also see it in some of the other scriptures that we're going to look at. Now, the basis of these four loves, I believe, is that if we can master and understand what I call how they move through our creative being and our dimensions, let me give that even more context. We touched on last week, or I should say, my father touched on last week, about the tripartiteness of man. We understand that the tripartiteness of man means that we have three creative dimensions within our being. Man is a spirit, he lives in a body, and he has a soul. Let me say that one more time. Man is a spirit, he lives in a body, and he has, and he has a soul. Our body gives us world consciousness through our five senses, our ability to see, taste, touch, smell, hear. It connects us to the world around us. Our soul gives us self-consciousness. What is our soul? Someone may ask. Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. It's how you figure out how you feel about you, it's where the emotional kaleidoscope of your palate lies in your soul. It's also where you make decisions, how you process and take in information. By and large, that comes in naturally through our body, through the five senses. It gives us self-consciousness in our soul. And then our spirit gives us God consciousness. It is the core part of you, it is the most important part of you. I also think a great way to understand your spirit is that your spirit is linked to your conscience. Your conscience never tells you to do anything wrong. And when we find people that are engaging in perpetual wicked acts, then we say that they have no conscience. Doesn't mean that they don't have a conscience. We all have a conscience because we all have a spirit. But the reason why their conscience doesn't have the bearing on them it should is because through repetitious acts, they've now become habitual, they have desensitized themselves to that God consciousness that we find in our spirit. So what I wanted to look at as we were moving through that discussion very quickly was a very interesting conversation that Jeremiah, who is a prophet in the Old Testament, that he ends up having with God. The reason why this story stood out to me is because as I was thinking about what the Bible study would be about today, I thought, what is a question that many of us would be asking ourselves? A lot of us have come out of the period and the time space of the pandemic. We've seen people lose loved ones. Some of us may have lost loved ones. Life has changed, people have got used to not working in the office, many of us don't maybe see our colleagues. Life can sometimes feel in terms of circumstances environmentally that it's dealing us a bad hand. And if we're supposed to be saved or we believe in God, then if why are we going through these things if God loves us? And sometimes we might ask ourselves the question, does God love me? Firstly, let me answer that. Absolutely, fundamentally, yes. More than anything else in creation, God loves you. Actually, take a minute and say that with me. God loves me. One more time, trust me, it's gonna make you feel good. Just let your spirit take it in, let it wash over you. God loves me. First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the book of Jeremiah chapter one. Now, the reason I want you to go to the book of Jeremiah chapter one is because sometimes the greatest thing that you can do when you're trying to convince convince yourself of something is give yourself great information. The Bible is great information. Why? Because it's consistent. Two, it teaches us not only about God's acts, but more importantly, his ways. To understand a person's ways is to understand their nature, to understand their nature is to understand their intention. The book of Galatians tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith, self-control, which is temperance. So if I've just described to you the manifest nature of God, have I just described a person to you that you don't think is loving or that loves you? That's the creator. I just described the manifest personality, nature, and character of the creator. That nature, that character is of a person that has nothing but love to give, that whose intention is nothing but love for you, whose purpose is nothing but to love you. So I want us to go into this conversation with Jeremiah. Where we're going to pick the story up from, Jeremiah is a young man and Israel is going through a very particular period in their time. Israel are about to go through some things that are going to make them question whether or not God loves them. It feels very similar in feeling and emotion to a lot of what maybe the last two to three years has felt like for a lot of us. To have our own personal prayer time and prayer lives, or to be connected to people that tell us about the greatness of God, but yet be finding ourselves going through a situation that doesn't look like it's showing the greatness, or to be feeling things that don't make us feel great, or to be having a moment that makes us question the fundamentals and the foundations of our belief system. Let's pick up this uh conversation in Jeremiah chapter 1, verse 4. And I'm going to read, and it says, Then the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Before I form thee in the belly, I knew thee. Take that in. Before I formed thee in the belly, this is God talking to Jeremiah, I knew thee, and before thou cameest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Now there's three really big things that I want to pull out of there. That God was saying to Jeremiah, before you were even known to your parents, before you were even a bump in your mummy's tummy for her to know that she was about to have a child, I knew you. Not knew what I was going to do, not knew what was going on, I knew you. Before thou cameest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. So not only is God saying to Jeremiah that he knew him, God was telling Jeremiah that he purposed him and he set him apart. Now, this is uh in terms of a conceptually, God is almost giving us a sneak behind the curtain of eternity past. None of us have the ability to go back to the space where we can say, I remember what it was like in my mother's belly. I can't. And I'm gonna ask my brothers, but I'm sure they'd sit there and be like, nah, I don't really remember that. Some of my earliest memories aren't until maybe three and four years after I've been born. And God is here talking to Jeremiah and he's saying, Listen, before anybody knew you were coming, I did, before anybody knew what you were going to be. Before anybody had taken you and set you aside to be anything special, I done all those things. Does that sound to you like a person that doesn't love you or doesn't know what their intention of love is for you? Verse number six, this is perfect because I feel like this shapes much of what our conversation to God is when we get into these little positions. Then said I, Ah, Lord God, behold, I can't speak, for I'm a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not I am a child, for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to throw down, to build, and to plant. I want to go back to verse six very quickly. Then said I, Ah, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak. The reason why this verse takes me so much is because I can understand how overwhelmed Jeremiah must have felt just from the verse before. You're talking to God, and all of a sudden God's telling you, Listen, before you could remember, I had this figured out. That feeling or that, and even though Jeremiah is a young child, for God to be giving him this type of task, I think that Jeremiah had a certain type of consciousness and a certain type of understanding. Before Jeremiah could even get to the place where he understood what was going on, his mind was just like, wait there, I'm gonna tap into my limitation right now. My limitation tells me, Lord, I'm a child, I can't even speak. And before God allows him to become overwhelmed and to oversubscribe to his anxiety, and we all know a little something about anxiety, right, young people, he says to him, but the Lord said unto me in verse 7, say not, I am a child. Now that's not God trying to say to Jeremiah, you're an adult or you're a grown person. That's God trying to say to Jeremiah, don't use what you think is going to stop you, or what you've experienced being a hindrance to you. Don't think that that's going to be a hindrance to me. I'm God. I've chosen you, I've separated you, I've purposed you, I love you. So, what is it that you're trying to figure out, Jeremiah, that you don't think I've worked out? Is that not love? Is love not a thing that covers us completely? Go with me very quickly to the book of 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 6. And I'll call and also I'll read for just for time. And it says, in 1 Peter chapter 4, verse 6, for this cause was the gospel preached and also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. But in the end of all things is at hand, be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer. Verse 8, the key verse. And above all things, have fervent charity. Charity in the New Testament, especially with the King James Version, is a great way of saying love. We see this in uh the book of Corinthians, with the very popular uh scripture reading that we hear at weddings and other lovely events, though I speak with the tongues of angels and not of men and have not charity, then I'm a sounding brass and tingling cymbal. It's really saying love. So here in verse 8, and above all things, have fervent love among yourselves, for love shall cover the multitude of sins. Love covers a multitude of wrongdoing. Do you think God was happy with what Jeremiah was saying to him at that point? Now I wouldn't go as far to say that it was sin, but I guess we maybe could lean into that because we understand that unbelief and doubt is sin, because Hebrews 11 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for. It's the evidence of things not seen. We understand that the elders by it obtained what? A good report. That their ability believed, their ability to believe God was counted unto them righteousness. So God here is having a conversation with Jeremiah where he's trying to let Jeremiah know that the things that he's thinking about is not important enough to derail the plan and the will of God in his life. Why? Because God has worked out the very thing that you have figured out. Also, why else is this important? Because God's love for us is not rooted in the temporal things that we understand love to be in ourselves. Okay? In uh St. John chapter 15, and I want you to go to verse 12. Jesus is talking to his disciples, and from verse 12 he says, This is my commandment that ye love one another as I have loved you. This is why I think Philia is the closest love to Agape, because here we see Jesus commanding his disciples, saying that don't just do what I'm saying, do what I do. Wow. Love isn't just a descriptive word, love is a verb, it's an action. Love should convict you and push you to do. Like it says here in verse 12, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. So Jesus is saying, Don't just do what I'm telling you to do, do as I've modelled to you to do. Greater love hath no man than this, than that a man laid down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command. Henceforth, he goes on to say, I call you not servants. He's sitting there and he's going, Listen, this isn't the case. Even though I'm God manifesting flesh, even though I'm gonna die for the sins of the world, even though I'm going to be resurrected again on the third day, even though I'm gonna do things that you didn't think was humanly possible, I'm not calling you servants. Because he says, For the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth, but I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard of my father, I have made known unto you. Is this not what God was doing to Jeremiah in chapter 1 and verse 4 to 8? Was he not telling him what his plans were for him, what he wanted him to do? Don't forget he said, I've caused you so that you're going to root up and you're also gonna plant, you're gonna throw down, you're gonna change how everything feels about you. You see, love is an insurance policy beyond all insurance policies. Why? Because its intention goes into places that you can't see. God had already given Jeremiah everything he needed to hear and know, so that when the anxiety of the purpose of his destiny was gonna become known to him, that he would realize that underpinning it wasn't a God that just needed him to complete a task, it was a God that loved him beyond his ability to see within himself. So here in the book of St. John, chapter 15, that we see Jesus telling his disciples that you've got to love one another. He commands it. Love one another as I have loved you. That's Jesus answering the very question that we asked at the beginning of this Bible study. Does God love me? Yeah, of course he does, and he would also see his love expressed and reflected not only through you to others, but to you by those he has around you. That's why I said that Philea, I believe, out of the four, is the second most powerful. Why? Because it's a love that goes on a predication of an intention, it's about what you feel in your heart and how you want to express that love and how that love then comes out. And agape love, the most powerful love that we see, we see it absolutely modeled perfectly in the book of John 3, St. John chapter 3 and verse 16. And it says, read it with me, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Wait there, I'm seeing some connections to what we read before. Let's read it one more time. St. John 3, verse 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So if God is telling us to love one another as he have loved us, and that we know greater love have no man than this than a man laid down his life for his friends, then we see that God is not asking us to do anything that he's not already doing himself. God is not asking us to do anything that he's not doing himself. And I heard a really beautiful quote from one of my favorite lecturers, and he said, If the kingdom of God is within you, then everywhere you go you should leave a little bit of heaven behind. If the love of God is within you, then everywhere you go there should be traces of the love of God left behind through you. Why? Because we understand that the love of God was shed abroad in our hearts. St. John 3:16 is the perfect example of Agatha love. It's a creator trying to reconnect to his creation and to his people, to his most prized possession. John 15 shows us how we're then to repatriate the love that God has given to us and how we're meant to show it to others. If you're my disciples, love one another. And in those moments where you're feeling uncertain, you ask yourself, Does God love me? Yes, he does. Why? Like he said to Jeremiah, before I form thee in the belly, I knew thee. I ordained thee, sanctify thee, accept thee as a prophet, I purpose you. Love covers every doubt. Every frailty, every hurt, it covers all sin. But more than anything, love connects us to God.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Have a great rest of your day. I can't wait to see you next time. But Rima Reload. Bye, guys.