THE KING OF PASSIONATE LOVERS

THE KING OF PASSIONATE LOVERS

No one knows more about romance, intimacy and love. No one has ever loved as passionately like the one deservedly called the King of lovers. His methods are smooth, deliberate, and intentional. His wooing is calculated and done without ever rushing, pushing, or force. As with the best of lovers, the heart of the Lover-King belongs only to the one – the betrothed. For her part, it’s all a mystery why someone so rich, so charming, so good, would want her. This is all the more mysterious considering what her predicament was: kidnapped, held as a captive, guarded by vicious thugs. On hearing of her plight, the Lover-King risked life and limb to stage a daring rescue. There was much blood shed in the rescue, more than the damsel would ever know. When delivered out of harm’s way, the King of Lovers showed her great kindness. Initially the gifts were nice new clothes, then accompanying jewellery, then flowers, meals, strolls together. Her abused and weary heart began to trust again to increasing degrees of vulnerability when her Lover-King was there. As she opened her heart to this King of lovers the more she was seen as deeply beautiful. 

¶ My beloved is mine, and I am his;
Song of Songs 2:16

 

THE ULTIMATE DISCOVERY

The greatest lover who has ever graced this planet was a man who never married and was celibate for life. Yet, this man was the most fulfilled person of all time and enjoyed the greatest riches of human flourishing. Women loved to be in His presence, and never felt safer than when they were. Men respected Him and wanted to be like Him. Children followed Him and shared laughs with Him when they did. He was a man who knew He was loved and knew better than anybody how to really love. 

Yet the world had never seen such love. Neither did it know how to respond. Such love was foreign to all who met Him. Compared to what they had been calling ‘love’ His love was sweet, pure, selfless, gentle, and generous. All this made the following fact all the more remarkable: He never once said, ‘I love you.’ He never needed to. People who encountered it knew it! 

His love was not unbridled passion – not every lust or whim or desire would be met with a ‘yes’, for, as those who watched Him closely knew, His love was was truer than these imposters. Love’s “yes” must be protected by a battalion  of “no’s”! Only by saying “no” to the masquerading imposters of lust, whim, and desire, can love’s ‘yes’ be protected.

¶ The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed Him.
Luke 16:14

The ultimate discovery for many was that what they thought was love was merely instant gratification masquerading as love which then came at a price they later found out to be unimaginably high. 

A REVOLUTION

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:34-35

Love can only be when there is a deep respect for its sacredness. Jesus, the King of passionate lovers, has shown us that there is more to life that is sacred than perhaps we realise. We human beings are endowed with the unique ability to express the image of God to the world in a way that animals cannot, nature cannot, and those who do not know Him cannot. Thus, the King of lovers taught that love only has meaning when it is treated as being sacred (something dedicated to God for His glory). This is why the highest expression of physical love, sexual intimacy, demands the highest commitment first – a covenant of marriage made before the Holy God (Hebrews 13:4).

The rescued girl in the opening paragraph is an apt metaphor for all those who have been rescued from the devilish kidnapping forces of the Enemy who has bewitched many into thinking the heinous lie that love is grounded in fulfilling their basest desires. Jesus Christ, the Lover-King literally risked life and limb to rescue us. Once rescued, He has showered us with lavish acts of kindness and generous bounty. In return He wants nothing but deserve everything. And for those whose hearts have been revolutionised by His wondrous love, loving Him in return is the most beautiful privilege we could ever receive.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?  ¶ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
Romans 8:35, 37

 He still woos hearts. He still rescues the kidnapped. He still lavishes His generosity upon the underserving. Oh what love! “So amazing – so divine! Demands my soul – demands my all!”

Your pastor,

Andrew Corbett

You Need Motivation

Would you like to get more done? Would you like to be able look back over a twenty year period and recognise that you had achieved 125 of your 150 Life Goals? Could you do with a boost in your overall energy levels? If you answer "Yes" to these questions then I know just what we need.

Imagine you have just walked through a forest on a hot day and sat down against a tree to rest your weary legs. You say to yourself, "I can't walk another step!" Just then you notice a deadly black snake slithering its way toward your bare calves only a handbreadth away! Instantly you leap to your feet and run for your life. But what has just happened? How did you go from having "no energy" to being "full of energy"? The answer is known to all super-acheivers. It's: motivation. With motivation you can achieve your wildest dreams. With motivation you can see your big dreams fulfilled. With motivation you can turn goals into achievements.

We only do what we are motivated in some way to do. The more we are motivated, the more we do. Of course, without being motivated, nothing in our world would be done and eventually even our society would grind to a halt without it. The difference between a person succeeding and not succeeding often comes down to the amount of their motivation levels. Motivation has become such a precious commodity that the successful will pay dearly for it, since they know that the price of success is miniscule compared to the prize of success. So how is it that some people always seem to be motivated and others struggle with it?

The Apostle Paul could say that he pressed on toward the prize (Phil. 3:12). He was motivated. In fact, despite his many setbacks, he seems to have been motivated all the time. In another place he urged his readers to follow his example. If as Christians we were to become more motivated, what would we have to do? And, how could we maintain our new levels of motivation? What lessons can we learn from the Apostle Paul about becoming and maintaining motivation?

From the life of the Apostle Paul, we observe the following ingredients to his consistently high levels of motivation-

1. He had a deep sense that he was contributing to history.
2. He felt commissioned by God.
3. He felt free to set goals.
4. He fellowshiped with others of a like mind.
5. He renewed his commitment to Christ continually.

We can be more motivated to live for God by asking God to keep us motivated for His service. Pray that God gives you the desire and strength you need to do what He wants you to do (Phil. 2:13-14). We too should indeed feel that God has sovereignly called us into our station in life and live in it contently but confidently. Not enough of us realise the integral role our participation is in the overall will of God to bring redeeming grace to the world. When you sit down at your family dinner table for an evening meal with a guest who does not yet know Christ, your seemingly trivial banter among your family is making a huge impression on your guest. Your table-talk is real, wholesome, uplifting, and edifying. It can make a huge impression on your guest. You do your job with care and diligence. You start a little early and continue a little longer. Your fellow employees who do not yet know Christ certainly notice the difference that Christ has made to your life. But you do what you do with such effort because you know that God has called you to do what are doing at this time. This knowledge motivates you.

While our work is an important God-ordained purpose for lives which is designed to give us a sense of meaning, we are also divinely designed to play. We are created to laugh, sing, muse, exercise, compete, cooperate, train, explore, rest, and investigate. I recently heard of a young man who had scrape with death in his youth in the 1800s. He realised that he must be alive for a purpose and counted his life as a privilege to explore this wonderful God-given gift. As a teenager he wrote down 150 Life Goals. This included getting married, having children, climbing the world's five highest mountains, travelling to every continent, building his dream house, reading each book in a list of 100 classic books, starting a business, amassing a certain fortune to leave to his children and much more. By the age of 44 he had achieved 100 of his 150 Life Goals! Without exception, all highly motivated people set goals.

The Book of Proverbs provides some healthy universal ways to be motivated.

If you want to be (more/continually) motivated, then revisit your written goals (often)!

Motivated people pick their friends very carefully. While they build acquaintanceships with a diverse range of people who may add little to their lives, look for those like-minded people who are also motivated. This is why for the believer, Sunday Church and Mid-Week House Church become vital. All motivated believers, that is those motivated to be Christ-like and stronger followers of Christ, are without exception committed to fellowshiping with their church family. Similarly, if you want to be a more motivated salesman you should hang out with, listen to, read up on, other motivated salesmen. If you want to be one of the world's leading button collectors, apart from getting a life, you should hang out with other passionate button collectors. Increased motivation in any field of endeavour comes from deliberate fellowshiping with those who already motivated in that arena.

2Corinthians 9:2 for I know your readiness, of which I boast about you to the people of Macedonia, saying that Achaia has been ready since last year. And your zeal has stirred up most of them.

We have a wood heater. Many times when I go to it early in morning to see if I can salvage its heat and rekindle it back into a warming blaze, I have to take the rapidly cooling embers and push them together. I often think this is what a church service does. It takes lightly glowing spiritual embers, connects them with other lightly glowing spiritual embers and resets them ablaze. When we worship together we are heaping more wood onto the flames. When we pray together we fan our flames even brighter (see 2Tim. 1:6). When we give attention to the preached Word it builds up the amount of fresh wood on our fire (see Jeremiah 5:14). To be a motivated Christian you need to be a part of a motivated church. I think Legana is such a church.

Psalm 69:9 ¶ Passion for your house burns within me,
so those who insult you are also insulting me.

But if all we did was to simply attend church we would not be as spiritually motivated as we would be if we attended church AND continually renewed our commitment to Christ. Do you let Christ do a spiritual stocktake on your life? Have you got the Lord's approval on your choices, attitude, relationships, stewardship, dreams and things? In Psalm 32 David expresses the insurpassable joy of knowing sins forgiven and coming into a restored relationship with God through confession, repentance, and renewal. This is what I want for my life. As Paul the Apostle continually renewed his relationship with Christ through prayerful surrender he remained highly motivated to serve and live for the Lord.

1Corinthians 15:58 ¶ Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

I love being around motivated people. They are usually big dreamers. Sure, they fail a lot, but they are usually the types who attempt a lot - learn from their mistakes - and therefore end up still getting a lot done. Motivation doesn't just happen. It must be actively created and maintained through reading history and getting a perspective on how our actions can affect generations to come; having a sense of serving the Lord in whatever we do; set plenty of diverse goals; keep in fellowship with like-minded people; and continually renew our devotion to Christ. This is the recipe for staying passionate about life and the things of God.

Dear God, help me to be on fire and passionate for You and Your Cause.
Help me not to be deterred by setbacks, offences, or obstrepolous people.
Bring me into fellowship with people more passionate, excited, determined and committed than I am.
Fill me with Your joy and strength. Renew in me a love for Your Word, Your People, and Your presence.
Lead me. Grow me. Fill me. Use me.
I need You.
Amen.

WIth All Our Heart

What do you do from your heart? What you do you do with all your heart? These are strange times. Young people today are bored with traditional sport and recreation. Instead, they are into "extreme" sports. So, you would be forgiven for thinking that these same young people would be extreme and passionate about everything else in life. Not so. Rather, their catch cry is a seemingly apathetic: "Whatever". And the casual observer would be lulled into thinking that these same young people didn't really care. But this is definitely not the case.

Apathy is sometimes the disguise this generation wears to hide the almost continual sense of rejection they have either experienced or fear. But this approach to life can't successfully be Christinised. God's Word reveals that the victorious Christian life is lived out of the heart of the believer. And just to add emphasis, the Word of Life reveals that we should seek God, love God, and obey God, with all our heart.

Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul..”

Deut. 6:5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Deut. 10:12 ¶ “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

One of the defining characteristics of a Christian is that they have been given a new a heart from which they now seek, love and obey God. Ezekiel, the Old Testament prophet, predicted the outstanding result of the New Covenant when he prophesied-

Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

While the emerging generation appears to apathetic toward so much of life and its future, appearances can be misleading. Nearly everyday the Media presents this generation passionately protesting what they consider to be environmental vandalism. There's definitely no "whatever" apathy here! All this confirms that even the whatever-generation can approach those things in life they feel are important with great passion- or, with all their heart.

But the things that these young people get passionate about (like, "Global Warming" and carbon emission levels) are less than insignificant compared to the things that God wants us to be passionate about: our right standing with God, our eternal destiny, loving our neighbour, caring for the less fortunate, building families that love God, the fate of those who have not yet heard the Gospel, and the fellowship of believers.

The Bible student who studies the way the Bible uses words like, mind, think, believe, will soon discover that these words are directly associated with our hearts, not our "brains". The heart is not only the source of our feelings, but our thoughts, according to the Word of Life. Indeed, Scripture says that our life flows out of our hearts (Proverbs 4:23; John 7:38).

Let us not attempt to Christianise a 'whatever' approach to life. Instead, let's worship God with all our heart-

Eph. 5:19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart,

Over the coming months, the world is going to try and win even believers to become more passionate about its causes (Global Warming, Sexual Preferences, Disarmament, Carbon Emission Trading, Two Thirds World Debt, Environmentalism). While we can feel strongly about these things with a Christian mind, there are probably over 100 things more important and urgent according to the Bible. But this won't stop secular humanists hijacking Christian language to hoodwink believers into becoming half-hearted Christians and whole-hearted secularists.

There has never been a more urgent time for believers to be whole hearted God adorers who live out our devotion to Christ the Lord with all our heart.

Father, help us to be most passionate about You and Your Cause. Lord, as the world seeks to squeeze us into a different way of thinking and force us to accept their values about what is important, may we keep our devotion to You, our love for our family, our charity toward our neighbours, our care for the poor, our burden for the lost and the ignorant, our compassion for the oppressed, and our care for the unborn. Continue to renew our hearts so that they are completely Godward. Help us to give You our heartfelt best.

Amen.