“Letting God Love You” – Highlights and Sermon Notes From Gainesville

(Facebook Graphic shared by Victory Church of Gainesville)

This past weekend my wife and I had the opportunity to minster at the church I was “raised” in. God did great things! I spoke at the morning service, then we helped with the evening Deeper Service, Christina hoping on the keys and me praying for people. We saw God move in powerful ways.

We also got to enjoy some time with my wonderful in-laws, Bill and Rebekah, who pastor the church.

For this week’s post, I thought I’d share my message notes with you, including my honoring remarks about my faithful in-laws. God bless!

Honor Pastor Bill and Rebekah:

Bill DeConna has been a mentor to me, not just in preaching, but in modeling STABILITY. I did not grow up around a lot of stability and didn’t know you could choose to be stable instead of freaking out. I always assumed if things go bad, you just flip out. Watching Bill was incredible, and set a pattern of stability for me. To me, Bill is the definition of STEADFAST FAITH. He embodies the faith and steadfastness of Abraham.

Rebekah is awesome and kind. Her devotion to God is fierce, yet there is a child-likeness and wonder about her. Rebekah is the absolute opposite of the whole “terrible mother-in-law” thing. If anything, I’ve been the one with issues in the past! LOL!

Prayer

Thank you, Lord, that you have given us an overcoming faith. We are not victims with you, we are Victors. No matter where you find us. No matter how broken and cowardly our upbringing. You can turn us into victors. You can teach us how to have COURAGE. You can teach us to be overcomers. All because you love us! We are conquerors through Him who loved us!

“Letting God Love You” 

The truth is, you are loved.

And I believe,  down on the inside of everyone of us is this need to be loved. I believe it’s a basic, human need. The need to be accepted. The need to be seen as valuable. And what I’ve found is that it’s a lot like the old country song says, “We’re looking for love in all the wrong places.”

We can run to money, success, food, drugs, alcohol, or social media. We can also run to religion, which is really sad because religion is where we are striving for something that God has already given us.

Romans 5:8 AMPLIFIED

We must have a personal revelation of His love for ourselves

Receive.

John 1:12

We must receive Him. We must receive His love.

Keep receiving.

As Christians, we must continually have an ever-increasing revelation of the love of God. And we need to learn to let God love us.

John 13:5-8

Peter is a believer. He has “received” Jesus and has boldly declared Him as Messiah. But yet he still has an attitude that says, “I am gonna do it. I am gonna strive for it. You won’t wash my feet. I won’t let you wash the parts of me that I think are too dirty.”

We give Him every part of us. We give Him the parts we think are good. We give Him the parts we don’t like.

We accept His acceptance of us.

Take off the mask.

God can only have a relationship with the real us.

We have to be real with God.

God cannot bless an ideal version of us.

God cannot pour his love into a fabricated, perfect version of us.

We gotta take off the mask with God.

Why do we wear masks?

I think we wear them to SURVIVE. The world is hard. There is so much pain. We get hurt. We smile. We suck it up. We push on. We just try to keep going.

We survive. This is an orphan’s mentality.

But God says, I don’t want you to SURVIVE, I want you to THRIVE.

How do we thrive?

By allowing Him to love us.

We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.