Created for a Love Relationship

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Created for a Love Relationship

Personalized: A love relationship with God is more important than any other single factor in my life.

Personalized: I’ve made a determination: no matter what my circumstances, I will never look at my situation except against the backdrop of the cross.  In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God forever convinced me that He loved me.  “Father, don’t ever let me look at my life and question Your love for me.  Your love for me was settled on the cross.  That has never changed and will never change.”  Our love relationship with the Heavenly Father sustains us through extremely difficult times.

Reality 2:

God pursues a continuing love relationship with me 

that is real and personal!

Can you describe your relationship with God by sincerely saying, “I love You with all my heart”?  YES!

Personalized:  Everything in my Christian life, everything about knowing Him and experiencing Him, everything about knowing His will depends on the quality of my love relationship with God.

If I tried to summarize the entire Old Testament, it would be expressed in this verse, Deuteronomy 6:4-5: 4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Mark 12:30: 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.   

Also known as the Shema (sha-ma)

 

Personalized:   What is the one thing God wants from me?  He wants me to love Him with all my being.  My experiencing God depends on my having this relationship of love.

Read the following Scriptures, which describe a love relationship with God.  As you read, highlight the word love (or any form of it, such as loves) each time it appears.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20: 19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

John 3:16: 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 14:21: 21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."

Romans 8:35,37,39:  35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 John 3:16: 16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

1 John 4:9-10,19: 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  19 We love because he first loved us.

What was the most meaningful statement or Scripture I read today?:

Personalized: I’ve made a determination: no matter what my circumstances, I will never look at my situation except against the backdrop of the cross.  In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God forever convinced me that He loved me.  “Father, don’t ever let me look at my life and question Your love for me.  Your love for me was settled on the cross.  That has never changed and will never change.”  Our love relationship with the Heavenly Father sustains us through extremely difficult times.

My Prayer is:

Daddy, I pray that the determination I have made today will permeate my whole life that I may never again judge my circumstances in any other way then through the backdrop of the Cross and please may I never again question your love for me.  In Jesus name, I pray, amen.

What does God want me to do in response to today’s study?

I believe God wants me to see the big picture and to remember that He has a plan for my life and that He loves me dearly!

The Memory verse for this unit is:

“Jesus replied:’ “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  This is the first and greatest commandment.” Matthew 22:37-38