Falling in Love with Jesus Again part 3
Col 1:21ff
The great historian Kenneth Scott Latourette said this—listen to this quote: “Jesus has had more effect on the history of mankind than any other of His race who ever existed.” That’s not a Baptist preacher speaking that. To explain Jesus Christ is impossible; to ignore Jesus Christ is disastrous; to reject Him is fatal. Understand who Jesus Christ is: To know Him is to love Him; to love Him is to trust Him; to trust Him is to be radically, dramatically, and eternally changed, to be transformed. I’m talking about who is Jesus. Human speech is too limited to describe Him. The human mind— too small to comprehend Him; and, the human heart can never really, completely, totally absorb who Jesus Christ is.
Peter Jennings had a special on TV sometime ago. It was called “In Search of Jesus.” Watching it I realized these guys had a better chance of finding the noonday Sun with a blindfold walking in a cave with a jar of lightning bugs. They were looking in all the wrong places with wrong conceived ideas. They had no clue who Jesus really is. To fall in love with Him we have to know who he is and what he did for us.
First we must realize we were alienated. That is we were separated from GOD because of sin in our lives.
1. We were enemies because our thinking was out of line with God’s thinking
a. When couples fight, there is a lack of communication
b. Lack of communication with God keeps us from knowing Him
c. Lack of communication brings about ill conceived ideas
2. We give into evil desires.
a. The sinful mind takes over
b. Everybody else is doing it
Because we were alienated from God, we became strangers to His way of thinking and were enemies in our own mind. Sin corrupted our way of thinking about God. Wrong thinking leads to further sin, which perverts and destroys our thoughts about GOD. When we are out of harmony with God our natural condition was to be totally hostile to his standards. When communication breaks down in a marriage so do many other things. The husband and wife are out of harmony, become distrusting, imagine evil things, and the relationship becomes hostile.
Second we realize what Jesus did for us.
1. He reconciled us.
a. HE opened communication between God and Us.
One rule of counseling is to open communication between parties. I have a mediation therapy which opens communication. It requires note taking, no name calling, one party speaks for 5 minutes, the other party is not allowed to interrupt. Then the second party has 3 minutes to restate what they heard. If it is correct, then they get 3 minutes to respond, if the first party agrees to response, then the second party gets 5 minutes to air their grievances. And the procedure starts over with the second party. Usually one session is all we need to open the dialogue and clear up misunderstanding, miscommunication and the process of reconciliation is on the way. This is what Jesus did for us, he reconciled us by opening the way for communication.
2. He also paid the price for our sins so we can be presented spotless
3. Simply put HE died in our place. He faced death so we can be assured that his sacrifice was complete and the he truly removed our sin.
After communication breaks down in a relationship, the next victim is TRUST. Jesus paid the price, his death was in our place and it satisfies the Law of God, to be free of sin we must TRUST that Jesus paid it all. This is the Gospel message. We can TRUST Jesus, put our confidence in Him that He alone paid that price. And because we do, we are without blemish and free of accusation.
Our Part is to Trust.
We put our faith in Jesus, our hope is in Jesus, and when we see we can trust HIM falling in love with Him again is easy as falling off a log.
What did Jesus do? He made us right with God again. Because of Him we are accusation free, we are declared by GOD as NOT GUILTY. When God forgives our sin our record is wiped clean. From His perspective it is as if we never sinned.
A woman was dying. They didn’t know who she was. She was in a hospital, apart from friends and family. They said, “Get a minister.” The minister came in, bent down, and whispered in her ear, “They say you’re dying. Have you made peace with God?” She shook her head. They huddled a while and came back. And the minister, wanting to press the point, said, “Dear lady, you’re dying. Don’t you think you need to make peace with God?” She shook her head again in the negative. The third time, they said, “You need to make peace with God.” She said, “No, I don’t. I am resting in the peace that Jesus has already made. I cannot make peace with God. Jesus made peace with the blood of His cross.” And, what we need to do is to enter into that peace by faith and trust the Lord Jesus.
That is what Jesus did for us. So by faith we believe, we have Hope, and we trust in the saving power of Jesus. Realizing he did all this for us helps the heart grow fonder and we fall in love all over again.
