‘Experiencing the love of God’ by David Jennings, 29 September 2024
Do we view God as distant, or close and loving? David Jennings shares his experience of encountering God for himself and in the lives of people he has worked with. Descriptions in the Bible about the movement and power of the Holy Spirit can tell us what believers can expect from God and why. Do we need to do anything special to be loved by God? How do we get to meet with God, feel and know what his love for us is like?
Transcript
Intro
Hey guys, if you don’t know me I’m David – I’ve been part of this church for quite a while now – since I came as a fresher in 2017. I went to Hong Kong for a bit when I graduated and then came back!
If I look tired, it’s because I am a bit tired – I agreed to preaching this weekend because I was free this weekend, without really thinking too much about the fact 29th September is the end of one of the most manic months of my life. I work for a charity called Fusion – we work to equip local churches to do student mission and student ministry with university students. This month we’ve been trying to cover as many freshers fairs as we could – working with local churches – including this one! – to invite freshers to try church – whether they’ve been to church before or not.
I wasn’t here last week as my cousin got married in the Lake District so – in the last 2 weeks – travelling for work and for the wedding – I’ve been to Loughborough, Leicester, Birmingham, Walsall, York, the Lakes, and Liverpool. Hopefully I’m very eloquent this morning, but if I’m a little incoherent, that’s why, I apologise.
A little story from the Bristol Freshers Fair a few weeks ago. Caleb and I were there at the stand, chatting to one girl who came up to us. She said she’d been to church a few times growing up, with her family at Easter/Christmas – but that in the last year she’d had a powerful encounter where she felt Jesus calling her – and now she just really wanted to Try Church! We showed her the app with all the churches on it and she was so excited, wanted to try them all. We also invited her to Severn – haven’t seen her yet – but she’s got a lot of churches to get through haha!
My story:
I actually used that student link up to find this church, back in 2017. The first Sunday I came was my first full Sunday in Bristol. But I remember the second time I came – it really marked me. It was in the worship that they played the song So Will I – does anybody know it? The lyrics are so beautiful – it was the first time I’d heard it led in worship – and it hit me so hard. I started crying, and then whenever I looked up to the next verse to sing it, I couldn’t because it set me off again and I just couldn’t stop crying. Then they played I Love Your Presence and that finished me off. I was just weeping, to the point that snot was dripping from my nose onto my outstretched worshipping hands. It was kind of embarrassing. There was actually a dedication happening that Sunday and the grandparents of the baby were visiting for the dedication, and they were sat next to me – and they turned to me and said – ‘are you a regular then?’ I said ‘yes’ – and thought ‘I guess I am now!’
What was actually happening in that moment? Have you ever had a moment like that – maybe not quite like that? In that moment I really felt not only moved by the words of the songs, but I felt that God had led me to this place intentionally – that he was with me and had gone before me. In the midst of all the uncertainty and the change – the first time I’d ever lived away from home – I knew that God was with me and he loved me – that he knew the plans he had for me. I felt the love of God for me, tangibly. I felt something I already knew in my head – in a real, tangible, emotional way. It wasn’t just the emotion of the moment, or even just the beauty of the moment. I believe God met me in that moment – the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God – allowed me to feel the love of the Father for me. The Spirit ministered to me, I was ‘filled with the Spirit’ in that moment – filled with the love of God in a tangible way – that manifested in emotion.
As we sung I Love Your Presence, I was experiencing, that manifest, tangible presence of God. I wonder if you’ve ever experienced anything like that? God is of course omnipresent – he’s everywhere. But sometimes in some places in some moments he becomes somehow more present – we experience the manifest presence of God – meaning we can feel him, we can experience him, and know him a tangible way that we don’t just feel all the time.
It’s biblical – we see loads of examples throughout the Bible of the manifest presence of God. You look in the OT – the pillar of cloud, the tabernacle, the temple – then in the NT in Acts 2 – a wind, tongues of fire, they start speaking in other languages – they were behaving in a way that made people think they were drunk. They were probably so full of the joy of the Lord they came across quite merry.
I want to look at one instance in particular in Mark 1:9-11, right at the start of the gospel, the story of Jesus’ life – I think it’s a crucial story and example of this. The archetypal example of what we experience.
Read Mark 1:9-11
We see here Jesus himself experiencing the love of the Father – ministered to him by the power of the Spirit. The Spirit in this case is manifest, is made present, in the form of a dove – and Jesus hears the audible voice of the Father saying – ‘you’re my son, I love you, I delight in you’. The crazy thing is, this is what the Father says to us as well. We may not hear an audible voice (though it’s not impossible), and the Spirit might not rest on us quite like a physical dove – but that is what the Father says to us, and he wants us to hear it. He doesn’t just want you to know in your head, in theory, that he loves you – he wants you to know it in your heart, to feel it, and know it deeply, to experience his love in a tangible way. He wants to minister to us by the power of his Spirit, so that we may know and experience his love for us. Often when we experience the depth of his love – we’re overwhelmed and react in emotional, sometimes even physical ways – a bit like me weeping uncontrollably, or even if you’ve seen someone doing something weird – laughing or shaking, falling over – it’s a response to the power of the Spirit – but the power of the Spirit is there to convey the depth of God’s love for us.
I would go so far as to say that almost all manifestations of the Spirit’s power are really manifestations of the love of God.
A Hong Kong story:
There was a guy in Hong Kong. (I worked for a few years in HK with a Christian charity, helping guys to be set free from drug addiction). We were praying for this guy and we were praying about his earthly father. He’d only known his father until he was about 6 yrs old, and his only memories were of his father beating him up. Jackie said she’s not sure if she’s met an addict who wasn’t beaten by his father. As we were praying – we prayed that the Holy Spirit would come, and show this guy what he wanted to show him. He heard the voice of the Father (not audibly) saying ‘I am your father, I love you, I’ll protect you’, and he saw a picture of Jesus coming to hug him. I was watching as he prayed with his eyes closed but he was crying. A few weeks later he was listening to another guy tell his story, and this other guy had seen a picture of Jesus coming toward him and hugging him. He’d turn to my friend and said – ‘does everyone see that?’
This was a picture of the way that God wants to meet with all of us, just like with Jesus, as with this guy. The Father wants us to know that he loves us as a good Father does, and he wants us to feel and experience that love – so he ministers to us by the power of his Spirit – who allows us to experience that love.
Romans 8: 14-16
It is by the Spirit we cry Abba, Father. The Spirit is the spirit of adoption – we are his children by the spirit. And it is the Spirit who ‘bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God’.
In other words the Holy Spirit ‘bears witness’, lets us know, helps us to feel, experience and understand that we are God’s beloved children.
Zephaniah 3:17
This is the God we have. This is how he feels about us. He rejoices over us! He exalts over us. He sings over us – I think that’s a beautiful picture of the way God feels about us, and how he wants us to know. Can you imagine as we’re worshipping, singing out our love to God, he’s singing over us as well?
He quiets us with his love. I love that phrase. The Spirit of God ministers the love of God to us. Sometimes it’s loud and dramatic, sometimes it’s quiet and gentle – you can sometimes just see the peace of God resting on people. But no matter how it manifests – it’s people having an experience of the love of God by the power of the Spirit.
Some points to round up: How do we see God?
· Do we think we have to earn the love of God?
o God loves us like a father loves us. There’s nothing we can do to earn his love – for him to love us anymore or any less. (Like the song we were singing – unplanned coincidence). It was before Jesus had done anything – before his ministry had begun that Jesus affirms him. Jesus ministers from that place, lives from that place of knowing how loved he is, unconditionally.
§ This is the gospel, the good news, that we’re loved by God unconditionally – like a Father – we don’t earn his love, we don’t get blessed, or get into heaven when we die because we were good enough. He pours out his love on us – he calls us into relationship with him
§ The Hong Kong guy hadn’t done anything to earn the love of God (he became such a sweet guy, but when I met him he was the laziest guy I’ve met, and also a bit of a jerk – he’d also become an addict and kind of messed up his life – but God loved him unconditionally and wanted to restore him)
· Do we view God as distant, or is he close?
o Perhaps a better way of framing that this morning: Do we view God’s love as a true concept, or a truth we can feel and experience?
§ If God is close, if he wants relationship us (as we often say). Then surely he wants us to feel and experience that love – just as an earthly father would?
§ Surely it wouldn’t be a one time thing. He would want us to experience his love again and again, just as an earthly father. A great Dad wouldn’t say ‘I love you’ once ten years ago and hope that that would be enough – nor would he just hug his child when they were born and never again. It’s a deep, consistent relationship – and God wants us to have ongoing encounters with him, with his love. He also wants to keep talking to us – about different things – but mostly coming back to how much he loves us.
· Are we distant? Are we going to him?
o Jesus got in the river. The Hong Kong guy (with some heavy prompting) got in a chair being prayed for.
o Do we really trust him? It can be difficult but that’s what he invites us into. I think it was difficult for guy from Hong Kong– he’d never known a good father.
o Sometimes we just need to ask and receive
§ Like I talked about a few months ago, in Matt 7: 8 he who asks receives
§ My story of surrender at Soul Survivor – same again – trusting God and experiencing his love in a joyful and physical way
Myself aged 10 or 11:
I remember just going to bed at night – thinking about how loved I was by God and just being overwhelmed with joy. Looking back now, I realise I was being filled with the Spirit, sometimes just laughing to myself. In a quiet but profound way, God was meeting me.
Charles Finney: (puts it better than anyone I’ve found – he was a church leader in America in the 19th Century involved in the 2nd Great Awakening)
“But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love, for I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God. I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings. No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out,”
Response
I want to leave some space for the Holy Spirit to come and do what he wants to do – to minister the love of the Father to us. You could always go home and ask God to show you how much he loves you – to allow you to experience his love – but I feel it’s right to leave some time here to respond. It could be quiet, it could be loud – it doesn’t matter – we’ll just allow God to have his way.
I feel God wants to give us fresh revelation and a tangible experience.
In particular I want to pray for a few groups of people: If you feel that you’ve never really tangibly experienced the love of the Father in the way I’ve been talking about, or if you have but it was a perhaps a long time ago and you feel like you haven’t been living from a place of knowing deeply how loved you are – you’ve been striving trying to please people and please God, and live well – you just need an encounter with the love of God again – I think God wants to minister to you this morning.
Perhaps as Kyle comes to play, we can all wait for a moment and then if that’s you – either of those groups of people – or you just really want to be filled with the Spirit again – then put your hands out in front of you (or come find me or someone to pray with you) and the rest of us, if we just gather round and pray for those people.