VISION AND VALUES – ‘LOVING GOD’ Mark 12:38-44

Making Jesus known by – loving God becoming like Jesus being led by the Spirit.

Mark 12:30 – The greatest commandment ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’

From the heaven switchboard Angel: ‘The trick is to make sure you love God fully first, and then love for the people that God has created sort of falls into place.’

We love God because… He made us and gave us life He sent Jesus to die for us He sends the Holy Spirit to live in us ‘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….We love because he first loved us.’ 1 John 4:9, 19

Do I love God … with all my mind? I believe everything in the Creed I have a daily time for praying and reading the Bible I memorise bits of the Bible I read lots of Christian books I can argue convincingly for the resurrection of Christ I’m sometimes asked to give talks in church I stand up for Christ to my non-Christian friends

‘Do I love God?’ Test yourself Psalm 84:2, ‘my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.’ Ps 116:1, ‘I love the Lord, because he has heard my supplication and my cry.’ Jer 15:16, ‘I ate your words and they became my delight.’ Ps 27:4, ‘One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.’ John 8:42, ‘If you loved God, you would love me.’ Am I hungry for God with an almost physical longing? Am I truly grateful to him for answering my prayers when I’m in trouble or need forgiveness? Do I look forward to hearing and reading and studying his word? Do I long to be in God’s house and to gaze on his beauty? Does Jesus mean everything to me? Do I love being in his presence?

Losing your first love ‘You have lost your first love.’ Jesus to the church at Ephesus, Rev 2:4 ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown…. My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.’ Jeremiah 2:2, 13. ‘They return, but not to the Most High.’ Hosea 7:16.

Psalm 73:2, 23-26. ‘As for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold…. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.’

Coming to Jesus ‘You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.’ John 5:39-40. From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. ‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ John 6:66-68.

‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ John 6:35