1.1.6 Love God and Obey His Commands

1.1.6 愛神與明白神的旨意

First, let’s bow our heads and pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Lord, the children are all in front of you, you bring us to the throne of God the father. Your eyes are on us, please talk to our heart and make every one of our hearts opened and touched by you. in your cover your eyes, we come to our heart to talk, to make every one of us, you open the heart touched by you, so much so that we would have the love and the spirit of enthusiasm, able to beg you to the front of your anointed the child's mouth, and thus make us from the inside out are completely belongs to you, Lord, we request you again blood to apply thick by cover us, all completely commit today, like this prayer, pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

Today I want to share a Topic of loving God and understanding his will. First, I want to share how I receive this topic. Actually I have one of our coworker to contact a speaker this month, but something happened I have been told the speaker had gone for Africa, then the coworker threw this issue back to me, I was little bit distressed, what was I worried about? I was worried about there wasn’t enough time to prepare a speech or look for a speaker within three days. Because I expected to see a miracle, suddenly a speaker appears in the last day, it happened before. I expected it happens again. Then that night it was 11:15pm, I remembered clearly. One of my coworker called in, then we prayed for this together. We prayed until next morning 3:30, it is a Friday, I need to work on that day. The beginning one and a half hour prayer time, I received nothing, but my coworker said to me he heard a English word called “yourself”, but I did not believe it because I still expected God will do a miracle to have a speaker come out.

I could not accepted what he said, so I said to him:" let’s do this I will pray for this tomorrow again and seek the result,” but during the last half hour prayer time, suddenly a vision came to my mind, it’s a long vision. I saw I sat in my room of my house. I had turned on my computer and TV, then put some food in front of me, when I was ready to enjoy it, my mom had prepared a piece of paper and a pen in the living room, said to me:" come out of the room and write down the words, please.” In the vision, I saw I was not willing to do this. I said:" I am taking a break and want to enjoy my food.” My mom said:” You come out of the room and write this down. You are already full and you are eating snacks right now.” What does this vision talk about? I started to repent when I got up, because I understand this vision very well. Mom represents God or heavenly father. What did she see us? She saw we are full. If we want to keep eating, actually we are eating snacks. I was really enjoying sitting with you together and waiting for a speaker to share, but this vision told us very clearly that I need to share. So next day when I prayed for this topic, soon a topic came "Love God and obey his commands”.

Today we are going to talk about the concept of loving God. This scripture is very familiar to everyone. ”Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, ’Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40 NET)We know in the last days, God will restore his greatest commandment is this one. For making it as the first commandment in our lives, so that you can adjust the priorities in your life. Here it says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and then with all your strength. So what is loving God? How does God love us? We know in the bible it says that God is love. 1 John, the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. OK. God is love and the love is a noun. So it means God is a love and who is love? God. Meanwhile love of God is also a verb. If not we will not have the famous bible verses. What is love? Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious, it is not puffed up and love does not behave itself unseemly. ( 1 Corinthians 13:4-8)What is the love of God for us? In 1 John chapter 3, it says God died for us, this is the love of God for us. What kind of love? It is love of laying his life down. What kind o f love do we have for God? In 1 John chapter 3:16, it says we ought to lay down our lives for our fellow Christians. It is in the same bible verse. God created man in his own image, so the greatest purpose of creating man is to make him the object of his love, to receive his love, and to love him in return with his love.Love has to have a response, it has to have an action that goes along with it, if not it can not called love, right?

For example, if you say i love xiao hua, but when he is ill i do not go to see him; when he is thirsty, i do not provide water for him; when he has no food, i also do not care, so how is he going to respond me? What will he talk about me? He will say you are fake or hypocritical.How do we love our children? The same, right? When we love our children we do not only say i love, right? What else do we do? We will have a response, right? I say i love this person, i need to have an action come along with it. So because we love God, we will have a response to him. We see these two scriptures it mentions the actions of love. So when we see someone among us has no food to eat, no clothes to wear,no water to drink, we have an action of love that is a response of love to our God.

There were a church before, i do not know if you have heard this story or not. There was a young man who was very enthusiastic about serving. After church, He asked a question to that preacher,” how can i become as spiritual as you? Then the preacher asked him,” I just ask you one thing, do you really love God?” But what did he say? He answered,”i have many services at church.” Then the pastor said, “ There is not my question, my question is do you really love God?” He said,” i did not feel i love God.”So the preacher said to him,”You have committed the greatest sin,because in Matthew chapter 22:37 Jesus said to him,”Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.” But Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. what is this? This is the greatest commandment, but you have committed the greatest commandment. This example i just mentioned what is this action? Because I have lots of work and lots of services, this is serving God and loving God. Actually it is a misunderstanding. What is a real service? We serve God because of love.Your response to love is a natural outpouring from your heart.What kind of action does that young man have? It is an action of a hired servant. What is a hired servant? That is to say that a family has a hired servant watch their a flock of sheep and a wolf came, how was the hired servant? He ran away. But a master will do differently, the master will try to protect his sheep.It is very different. We can tell the completely different actions between a hired servant and a master from the examples in the bible.

If we serve not because of loving God, we will serve because we are afraid of God. I am afraid of God, so i try to love him. What else? We serve because of the reputation, position or title. I am a pastor. We serve may also because of face,isn’t correct? We are good friends, so i try to love God. The love is not from your heart. What kind of action is it? It is an action of a hired servant or a worker. Not with eye service, as men pleaser; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart(Ephesians 6:6). Where does the service come from? Obey his will from our hearts. This is service and loving God.

Do you know what is the most popular wrong order today? Many people teach this order. First, God; Second,husband and wife;Third,children; Fourth, service, right? If you see serving God as an action of a hired servant, you will separate it from loving God and you did not respond to God’s love from inside. What is God’s order in the bible? He has one order and the only one order is called the greatest commandment. What is it? Love God. What else? Love people as yourself.What is loving God? Love God is obey his will and serve him. Love people as yourself who does it include? It includes your children, your wife, your husband, you neighbors, your friends and everything all around you. This is the greatest commandment that God will restore in the last days.

Let’s talk about serving God, what does serving God have to do with doing his will? We have already known we need to love God. Loving God is such a natural response and when we respond to him naturally, we know we are serving him.What does it have to do with doing God’s will？We’ve already talked about Ephesians 6:6, which says, as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.Who is the example of doing God’s will? Jesus sets up the example for us.What is the example of Jesus?To do the will of his Heavenly Father, then to bring the will down to the earth from heaven. How did he bring that? Jesus gave them this answer:” Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself”; whom does he see doing that? He can do only what he sees his Father doing. So Ephesians5:17 tells us, therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. So we understand when we love God and be fulfilled with God’s love, we will do God’s will happily.Do you know that he said not everyone can enter the kingdom of heaven? Who can go in? Only who? The one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. So when the day of judgment comes, God doesn't want us to tell the Father what I have done for you today. No, what does he want us to tell him? Whether you do his will, whether you serve him according to his will.

I heard a story shared by a missionary himself. He has served God over 30 years totally. When he served God close to 20 years,one night he had arrived at heaven. At that time, he was very successful already and his church has thousands of people. So he brought his work before God, just then an angel came with a piece of burning coal in his hand. What is the Angel doing? The angel set his work on fire and then burst into flames. What left? Two pieces of gold. Not bad, two pieces of gold left, but he was very depressed because he felt he did many things, two pieces of gold left only.Then a woman came, he looked,“ Isn’t she from our church? ” He remembered her seems an elder woman sitting somewhere. He knows she is an intercessor, then the woman also held a pile of work before God’s mercy throne. Of course, it is much smaller than his. That Angel came again with a piece of burning coal and the work burst into flames. After it burned, what left? He saw that there were more than 10 diamonds and also little pieces of gold left. He was very upset, so he asked God on the throne. He said,”Lord, Why? What did i do wrong?” The Lord told him exactly what happened, so he can understand. The Lord told him what things he did according to the will of God and what things he did in his own flesh. The service of that missionary was very different the next ten years. He is now doing the ministry of the kingdom. I know him. His entire service is completely different because he knows to seek the Father’s will.

Let’s think about anther metaphor. Luke 12 says like this, and the Lord replied, Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his household servants, to give them their allowance of food at the proper time? But there is a servant in this story who says,’ my master is delayed in returning; and shall begin to beat the menservants and the maidservants, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken. And when he should not expect it, then cometh the master of that servant, and doeth him evil, and condemneth him with the unfaithful.This text says that both kinds of people will be beaten. The first is that you know God's will, but you don't do it, and the second is very wrong, I don't know, but you'll still be beaten, but I don't know, I won't do it, and yet you'll be beaten, but with fewer stripes.This is a parable in the Bible that tells us God wants us to know and do his will.If we want to know God's will, we must learn to rely on God's Spirit and learn to listen to God's word.What we said in that parable is that Jesus warned about the consequences of doing things contrary to God's will, and that failure to do God's will would result in a beating that no one who serves God can ignore.I know that sermon today might hit some people, but I've been hit myself, because when I just Shared how I received this, when I received this message, what was my first reaction? It's not fair, Lord, but it's from the Bible.So Zechariah makes it clear, not by might, not by talent, but by what? It depends on the spirit of God. And it is by his spirit that God worketh. As we have just said, to do his will and to know his will, we must rely on the Spirit of God and learn to listen to His word.

Okay, so what is God's will after all? What is the difference between the will of God and the will of man? OK, to give you an example that a lot of people have heard, but I'm going to tell you a story that I really like.It says, there was a missionary who came to a place, and there was a Godly woman, but she had a hard time, because she had a husband and three children, and she had to spend a lot of time taking care of them, and what's more, she did one thing, she brought her ninety year old father to her home to take care of him. The father, unable to sit or walk, is like a baby. He needs a lot of time to be taken care of, and even USES diapers. The woman faces a near physical and mental breakdown due to lack of sleep and rest.Then she asked what she should do. The bible says in Deuteronomy 5:16, "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that it may be well with you, and that you may live long before the Lord."But the current situation, caring father made her face almost self-destruction, the result was that the missionary prayed for the woman and the holy spirit reveled to this missionary say,” An angel had come to her father's house to take the father home.When he died, she knelt at his father's bed, she did one thing, what was it? Rebuke death. In prayer she bade his father live. So the Lord said to the missionary, "Because she accepted the responsibility of taking care of her father, I respect her to take care of his life." So when she rebuked death and told his father to live again, I had to go back and let him live.In order to verify this, the missionary shared with the woman what he had heard from God to see if it was real from God, and the woman proved to him that her father had faced death, and that she had indeed prayed just as he had said.Then the missionary sent her back to consult with her children and her husband to decide whether she should release her father to the Lord. Because God had told them that the father was leaving his dying body, but he will be happier in heaven. Because God will take care of him by himself and herself was not need to face mental breakdown, the sister said a release prayer later. A few days later Jesus did take the old man home to heaven, and her problem was solved.

So what can we see? There is a great difference between the will of God and the will of man. Both were good, and the lady had done well to bring her father home according to the law, but she had not come to seek God's will. So we ask, ”Is there an example of that in the Bible? There is. Where is it? 2 Kings 20:1-7.” Does the story sound familiar? I will not repeat the story of Hezekiah, which is about to die; you may read it. God decreed that Hezekiah should die. He was thirty-nine years old. Do you know what Hezekiah did?He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and Israel was then in a state of war, they have been tossed to and from all

the Assyrian, Aram, Edom and Philistine tribes, and they have been thoroughly dishonored. But Hezekiah did then, and destroyed the high places, as David had done, and made a new covenant with God: therefore the Lord made Hezekiah successful in all things: and his fame was magnified among all nations.To ascend the throne at the age of twenty-five to the age of thirty-nine is for us a prime of life, is it right? But what has God destine him? To leave this world. So we know who is in charge of human life? Who is in charge of how long people live? We know that man's life span is determined by God, right? He is the God who makes life and death, life men up to heaven and bring men down to hell. What did God say about Hezekiah at the age of thirty-nine, when the country was just beginning to take root? At the end of his life. It is hard to understand it from a human being’s perspective. But Hezekiah made a very Godly prayer, right? After he had prayed, God granted him an extra fifteen years of life. Because of Hezekiah's prayer, God even performed a miracle by turning back the shadow ten degrees. It is a supernatural miracle.And because of such a great sign, the king of Babylon will send messengers to Hezekiah, hoping to make a covenant with them. But during the fifteen years that Hezekiah lived, he became proud of this sign of God in his life and he opened the temple of God to let the messengers of Babylon come and see all the gold and silver that was in it. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the kingdom of David in the year 9,586. How did Zedekiah king of Judah die after the king of Babylon had taken the city and destroyed the temple? The escape failed and his eyes were torn out. During the fifteen years that Hezekiah lived, he gave birth to a man named Manasseh. At the age of twelve Manasseh became king, and he reigned fifty-five years. What did he do? He built high places like the Gentiles, and worshiped Baal, practiced divination, sought omens and he sacrificed his own son in the fire.Isaiah was sawed to death in the accident. It was God's destiny for Hezekiah to live thirty-nine years. As the example I just gave, the woman, out of God's mercy for her, kept this life alive.Hezekiah had been able to achieve greatness after the age of thirty-nine, and the Bible says he was a good king, and he came to the Lord in his good name. But he lived the extra fifteen years leading to the subjugation of Judah. So when he saw God, he would take this responsibility and come to God. We gave these two examples to show that there is a great difference between the will of God and the will of man. Both are good, but the outcome is different and will be completely different from what we think.

Our theme for today is to understand what are the principles of serving the kingdom of God？God will restore this greatest commandment at the end of time: to love God, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you mind and with all your strength; then love your neighbor as yourself. Second,that we may know how to do God's will, and be faithful to it.As I write this sermon, I have a feeling that what is God's foundation in us? Or what is God's foundation in a ministry? Whether you are personally, for a ministry, for a church or for all of God's work, what is that foundation? That is Jesus himself, that is his will. So our foundation is based on God's will. So that when Moses built the tent of meeting, God said to him, 'I want you to follow the pattern shown you on the mountain.' He said, 'You shall not follow any other pattern, but follow the pattern shown you.' What do you mean by instruction? It is God's will that he tells you, and you do it. So no one's destiny and calling are the same, so is a ministry. Let us therefore proceed according to his will at all times, so that God may renew our mind and thoughts, to discern what his will is and what his good, perfect and pleasing are.

Well, thank God, let's pray now to respond to God. I don't know if you've been touched by the information I've Shared today. For me, I know that love God is the first priority.That is the greatest commandment God will restore in the last days. To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and then to understand his will and what his purpose is for each of us in our lives. Because none of us have exactly the same call, So we invite you all to come and pray together today, we will be quiet before God, we will open our hearts, ask God to speak to our hearts, let us know what his will is in our life, what his calling is in our life today. Ok, we give you some time.

Lord, we come to you this evening in peace, we open our hearts, we beseech you to place your destiny and your will for our life in us. Today you reveal to us and let us know that you are in our life and that you have called us.Lord, you tell me exactly where I am at this stage.Lead me, O God, into the path you have set for me.Put in my thoughts the words that you will speak to me, and in my heart the picture that you will tell me, let me know my present status and please manifest your will in me. Because I want to love you and want to do your will, I do not want to do useless work anymore.Lord, do not turn my work to ashes at the end. I want to see that I am the one to do your will, so I can respond to your love.I put myself in front of you, I give up all my struggles, all my plans and my ideas, even good ideas and good plans. Lord, I'm willing to give it up, walk only in your will, as Jesus did. I can do nothing by myself, except what I have seen the Father do and i will do it. Because I don't want to be a fool anymore,I did not even know when I was beaten or disciplined. Lord, let me understand your will. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen!