Intimacy

Jesus desires to have a very meaningful loving relationship with you. He loves you more than you will ever know. As Paul was praying for the Ephesian church, he prayed that they might know the length, the breadth, depth, the height of the love of Christ which he said, “passes knowledge”. The love of Christ is so great, so intense, so deep and so rich you’ll never know the full depth of His love. Jesus said to his disciples, “Greater love has no man than this that a man will lay down his life for his friends.”

Jesus loves you more than you will ever know and He desires that His love for you will spark a responsive love in your own heart as it did with His disciples. John wrote, “we love him because he first loved us”. As we come to understand His love for us, it strikes within our hearts a responsive cord. I find my heart responding to His tremendous love for me. As my heart responds to His love, I’m drawn unto Him in this deep loving relationship. As the Lord said to the Nation of Israel through the Old Testament prophet, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn you with loving-kindness”.

You remember His message to the church of Ephesus? It was a church that had all kinds of commendation. They were a working church, they were a discerning church. Yes, they even have their theology right. And yet the Lord said, “I have this against you in that you have left your first love. Repent and go back and do the things you did at first”. The Lord is calling the church to come back to that first love, to come back to that deep, intimate loving relationship.

There are many people who have not yet experienced this loving relationship with God. They go to church as sort of a performance kind of an activity or sometimes out of obligation. They have a sense of obligation to be moral and to be community pillars and to live a proper life and it’s proper to go to church, it’s accepted culturally. Church to them is an obligation, a duty. They don’t really know the intimacy of a relationship with Jesus - that glorious loving relationship where you are just caught up in rapture with His glory, with His beauty, with the wonder of His love for you. Where you just sit at times just letting your cup overflow with the consciousness of His love and of His presence and of His goodness, where you pour out your heart and soul to Him and your expressions of love. So when you come into this loving relationship with the Lord, you know the joy. You know the glory, you know the excitement of His presence, the excitement of your heart being so filled with love and the one that you love is there, He’s with you.

This is the theme of our Night of Psalms tonight. Come out and let’s express our love and devotion to the Lord together. But don’t wait for tonight. Let’s do it this morning as we come to worship Him!