Living In The Overflow of God's Love

Living In The Love of God

Psalm 36.5 Your love, O LORD reaches to the heavens,

    Your faithfulness to the skies.

6 Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,

    Your justice like the great deep.

    You, O LORD, preserve both people and animals.

7 How priceless is Your unfailing love, O God!

    People take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.

8 They feast on the abundance of Your house;

    You give them drink from Your river of delights.

9 For with You is the fountain of life;

    in Your light we see light.

God is love. He has told that in a number of places in His Word. 

God loves you. The Apostle John, also called the Apostle whom Jesus loved and the Apostle of Love wrote, "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them."

I John 4.16

We can live in the love of God.  It is the only place to live!

1. His Love is Greater Than We Can Imagine- v.5

Paul prayed that we may know the unknowable.

Ephesians 3.17a And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

We can experience this love that is beyond our ability to comprehend.  

I believe that is to be a significant portion of our experience/ relationship with God: experiencing things we cannot comprehend. We are to grow  in the knowledge of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ but there are also things many things we will not understand until we see Him Face to face.

This is in difficult things and in blessings. 

We have talked much about trials and how we seldom understand why.

How about His blessings? There are many which we don't understand.

Grace- we can define it but as we experience it we really don't understand.

Numerous blessings- the extent to which God blesses us is often beyond our ability to understand.

When it comes to Him loving us Andre Crouch's song says it well, "I don't know why Jesus loved me, I don't know why He cared..." I really don't!

God's love for us is huge.

It reaches to the heavens.

Psalm 57.10 For Your lovingkindness is great to the heavens And Your truth to the clouds.

Psalm 89:2

For I have said, "Lovingkindness will be built up forever; In the heavens You will establish Your faithfulness."

Psalm 103:11

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.

Psalm 108:4

For Your lovingkindness is great above the heavens, And Your truth reaches to the skies.

Living in His Love means many things happening in our lives we do not understand! It is beyond measure.

2. He Cares About People And Animals

He feeds the birds. Matthew 6.26

"Your Heavenly Father feeds them."

He was concerned about the animals in Ninevah.

Jonah 4.11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

Proverbs 12.10 A righteous care for the needs of their animals

God's Love For Us:

He gave up His life for us.

He is with us.

Luke 12.22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 

3. His Love is Priceless.

Beyond ability to measure monetarily. 

Some versions have excellent. The Hebrew word literally means valuable, prized, weighty, precious, rare, splendid, costly,  highly valued, precious stones or jewels. It is a term used for appraising precious stones.

Impossible to measure, none like it.

4. Love Never Fails

People take refuge in the shadow of Your wings

I Corinthians 13.8

Put Jesus' Name in

Put your name in place of love, how far can you get?

5. Refuge, Feasting, Drinking, Living in Light are all gifts of His Love.

We experience life. Living In the love of God.

He is our refuge.

We feast on His goodness, and drink from the rivers of life.

We live in His light.

Live in the Love of God always. Remain in His love.

Living In The Overflow Of God's Blessings

Living In The Overflow Of God's Blessings

Psalm 31.19 How abundant are the good things

    that You have stored up for those who fear You,

that You bestow in the sight of all,

    on those who take refuge in You.

God has stored up an abundance of wonderful things for those who respect and worship Him from their hearts. Those who are under His protection are the recipients of these good things. If we worship Him privately He will reward us publicly. (Matthew 6) He takes care of His children.

God is wanting to do more than you can imagine in your life. I believe many live a lot less fruitful lives than He desires for us.

We can live in the overflow of His blessings. Life can be a crescendo of glory, The way can keep on getting brighter if we fix our eyes upon Him.

1. The Abundance of God.

Abundance 

to be or become many, be or become much, be or become great

10 Thousands

 

Good things= property, prosperity, goodness (of taste, discernment)

The wildflowers of New Hampshire

The wildflowers no one gets to see all over the world.

Water gushing over rocks continually. We turn power off. God keeps it flowing freely.

Sitting under those falls for 15 minutes... I am still loose. Aerated pure water.

The sea, the waters, the land, good land

Sun, moon and stars in their courses above!

Open a cucumber or pepper. See the abundance of seeds. Understand the miracle of seeds and you will understand more about God's work in you. In each pepper there are enough seeds to have a very large garden.

Mark 6.13 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? 14 The farmer sows the word.

The seed is the Word of God.

With His Word hidden in your heart you have seeds to share, to spread. Sow seeds, the good seed of the Gospel.

"Oh the joy of knowing the living God, of seeing the living God, of resting on the living God in our very special and particular circumstances! I am but His agent. He will look after His own honor, provide for His own servants and supply our need according to His own riches... " - J Hudson Taylor

God is a God of Abundance.

Abundant Grace

Abundant Seeds

Abundant Power

How abundant...

Large Amount

Question that is answered only as we live by faith.

It is a beautiful thing

2. The Good Things

Good=to be good, be pleasing, be joyful, be beneficial, be pleasant, be favorable, be happy, be right

He knows exactly what I need

Stored up

to hide, treasure, treasure or store up, treasure up

to lie hidden, lurk

to  hide from discovery- only those who trust Him/ fear Him find out

If you want to know step out in faith and watch God work.

Psalm 146.6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth,

    the sea, and everything in them—

    He remains faithful forever.

His Grace, mercy and love

Forgiveness, pardon

None of these things and more do we deserve. He abundantly blesses us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. (Ephesians 1.3)

The LORD has reserves which are  infinitely beyond our imaginations and our dreams. He has ways of working we have not even thought about. He is a supernatural God!

I love to give my grandkids surprises. We are often surprised by Him as He blesses us.

Garden surprises- finding a new plant (periwinkle) that you did not plant

Finding fruit on something you were not expecting (Korean Eggplant this week)

The rewards of the righteous:

Now 

Forever

It makes us thankful

It builds our confidence

3. Fear the LORD

Psalm 147.11 the LORD delights in those who fear Him,

    who put their hope in His unfailing love.

Fear (reverence and awe and respect) that is life long.

Part of this is I believe trusting in Him and not in ourselves, not even looking to where the provisions may come from but continually looking to Him.

 Psalm 123.1 I lift up my eyes to you,

    to You Who sit enthroned in heaven.

2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,

    as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the LORD our God,

    till He shows us his mercy.

It is not easy to keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus because there are so many distractions.

People, even other Christians

If I want him to remain alive until I come back what is that to you?

World and National Problems

Bitterness and Unforgiveness

As long as I think I can figure out how to meet my needs out I am not looking to Him. Surrender to Him is being aware that He gave you the abilities to make money and do things. 

The proud in heart miss out on the blessings of God, the good things He has.

4. Take Refuge in Him

 flee for protection

to put trust in God

confide or hope in God

We cannot live in the overflow of God's blessings unless we are taking refuge in Him.

Let's live in the overflow, the waterfalls if you will, of God's good blessings!

Tragedy Into Triumph

John 9.1-3

John 9. 3 "Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in him."

John 11.1-6, 14-16

John 11.4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days

14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

A man born blind

A man who was sick and died.

John 11.37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

What do these accounts tell us about the LORD?

1. The LORD is desiring to reveal Himself to us and everyone.

He wants to work in you, in our church.

He wants to bring glory to Himself by making the things of Christ known unto us. 

I Peter 1.3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

One of the  purposes of His Word is for the LORD to reveal Himself to you.

One of the purposes of the Holy Spirit.

John 14.21

Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

John 16.14 He will glorify Me because it is from Me that He will receive what He will make known to you.

One of the purposes of suffering.

God makes Himself known.

Dear BrotherHazard,  "I came away from the surgery for amputation being closer to God."

One of the purposes of challenges and problems is for Him to reveal Himself to you.

II Chronicles 16.9 For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him. 

2. God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform

He sets His footsteps on the sea and rides upon the storm.

Through Blindness and death God has brought songs to hearts and to His Church.

Fanny Crosby wrote the equivalent of 17 books of hymns

"It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me."

If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind...for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Saviour."

Carolina Sandell Berg Day Day

   Lina Sandell, the name by which she was known in her country, was nicknamed the "Fanny Crosby of Sweden"; though she did not write near as many hymns as Miss Crosby did, she is said to have been as popular among her people as was the famous American hymnwriter. However she wrote anonymously, always signing her poems simply with "L.S."  It was Oskar Ahnfelt who brought her hymns to the public, arranging music to them and singing them (while accompanying himself on guitar) around Scandanavia.

   On a trip with her father when she was 26 years of age, as they were crossing a lake in a boat, her father was suddenly thrown overboard and drowned before her eyes. The accident impacted her greatly for the rest of her life. At age 33 she penned the words of "Day By Day", just one of the 650 hymns she wrote in her lifetime before and after the accident; hymns that "mightily influenced the revival that swept across Scandanavia after l850".

 The words of Lina Berg's hymns were all the more popular because of the simple, beautiful melodies written for them, especially those of Oscar Ahnfelt who played his guitar and sang her hymns throughout Scandanavia. Lina Berg once said that Ahnfeld sang her songs "into the hearts of the people." 

Do you want to see the wonders of God? Open yourself to pain and brokenness.

Look at your brokenness, not as a liability but an asset.  Jesus did! God looks at blindness and death and pain as conduits through which He accomplish His purposes and display His work.

Paul the Apostle understood this perspective:

Philippians 1. 12 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters,[b] that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard[c] and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 14 And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

3. God desires to use our points of pain and times of suffering for His Glory.

He can raise the dead and heal the blind but sometimes He has higher plans and purposes. 

If He choses not to do a miracle in a family's or person's life He has greater plans.

We must trust Him.

Total trust.

We must wait for Him.

Waiting  eagerly, looking, hoping, expecting

We must allow Him to work out His purposes through us.

Her next hymn after Day by Day:

Let Thy Word all divine be my lamp in whose light

I may constantly keep to Thy way;

And each day wouldst Thou cleanse me anew, make me white

In the blood shed for me on that day

The cross Thou didst suffer, Lord Jesus.

Sung at her father's funeral a hymn she wrote earlier:

Children of the heavenly Father

Safely in His bosom gather;

Nestling bird nor star in heaven

Such a refuge e’er was given.

What He takes or what He gives us

Shows the Father’s love so precious;

We may trust His purpose wholly–

‘Tis His children’s welfare solely.

God is always at work. He is always answering prayer. He has a plan for all of His children. His plan may appear to be thwarted, it may appear there is no reason to continue. How many times do we say like Martha and Mary, "LORD, if You had... then...!" But God is at work, He displays His glory through those very things!

He wants to do so in your life today. Get His perspective. Look at your life like He looks at it. Let Him work His Work through you.