What does it really mean to “Love God?” Everyone is happy to say that they love Him, but few can or will actually define what that means. It is hard enough to define what it means to love your family or your spouse… So how do we know if we actually “love God?”
If you missed Sunday’s message, you can always listen and watch on our website, theorchard.life. I’ll also include a link to the video below.
SUPER SUNDAY
One Super Service
10AM February 4
Gilmer High School Gym
$100,000 For The Property!
We’re making great progress in raising fast money to buy new property!
This Sunday, I tried to make the case that loving God is trusting Him, and stepping into the light... Especially when darkness seems to make more sense.
All of us want to think of ourselves as people of the light, right? We are, after all, followers of Jesus, “the Light of the World.” Would it shock you to know that Jesus understood that we would have difficulty seeing his light?
Matthew 13:13 NLT
For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.
What do you think he means by this?
Sometimes, I don’t understand the light, so I choose darkness.
Why does the darkness make more sense to us sometimes? (maybe it is logical sense, maybe emotional sense.)
What did you think of that article I read from on Sunday?
In that article, Rachel Gilson walks us through the process she had to go through in making constant decisions to walk in light, rather than in darkness. Here are a few of the key sentences from her article. Read them and talk about them together.
Thus I had to learn my first lesson of the Christian life: how to obey before I understood.
The obedience of faith only works when it’s rooted in a person, not a rule.
When his teachings went against my instincts, denying my desires became a profound way of saying “I trust you.”
In her article, Rachel Gilson says that she trusts Jesus because he had made the “greater sacrifice.” In other words, she HAS SEEN what he has done for her.
But what about what we haven’t seen yet? Can we trust God, not just because of what he HAS DONE, but because what we WILL SEE him do?
Hebrews 11:1 (NLT)
Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.
Romans 5:1–2 (NLT)
Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.
Romans 8:18–24 (NLT)
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.
For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it.
What are these verses telling us?
How can I live my life as a response to the light this week?