>>Rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice. Just who do you focus on and rejoice in on this wondrous Lord's day morning? And I hope you are happy to be here, as we have gathered together to fully commit this time to worshiping our God and to serving Him according to His precious will. Thank you for joining us for "God's Living Word". And let me remind us that we have gathered to give this time of praise to God, and that we might accomplish all those things which are commanded according to His will through the Bible. I might ask you, are you willing to do your part this morning to make this time acceptable in his sight and according to His perfect will? As we begin our offering to God this morning, will you bow with me before His mighty throne in prayer? Our God and Father in heaven, we thank you so much for this day and the great blessing of life and the privilege that we have to be called your children and to be servants and workers in your kingdom. Help us this day and every day to shine as lights in this world, that others might know you, and, ultimately, that they might be able to find their way to truth and obedience and salvation. And, Father, help us this morning to give you all that is your due in spirit and truth, that we might always help others to know you and to live lives that are acceptable in your sight. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen. What better way to worship God than in song? So, at this time, let's join together with the congregation as we focus our minds on a song that talks about the precious blood of Jesus Christ. The name of the song, "There is Power in the Blood".

>>As we think about rejoicing in the Lord, we might consider one specific thing which gives us great reason to rejoice in this life. How about the avenue of prayer, that which God has given us? Prayer is our way as provided by God of approaching Him directly and His mighty throne, so that we may speak to our Creator and ask those things that we have need of. Think about what a privilege this is as we come before Him whenever we want, and no matter wherever we are and for whatever reason. Certainly, prayer is an important part of the life of a Christian. I might also ask us to consider the fact that prayer is a serious matter, and that it should be handled in a important and very specific way. We should never be carefree or flippant with prayer and the manner in which we pray. Read with me from Hebrews 4:16. "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." In this verse, we are again reminded of the great outcome of prayer and the opportunity that we have to know that it is heard and answered when done according to the will of God. However, we also are reminded of the seriousness of the situation, because we are coming before God's throne and approaching God Himself. Think about that for a moment. When we bow our heads and we call on the name of the Lord, we are actually coming before the awesome throne of God. Now, that puts things and greater perspective, doesn't it, to understand how humble we should be? Finally, let me encourage us to consider just who we are to pray for. In 1 Timothy 2:1, we read, "Therefore I exhort, first of all, that supplication, prayers, and intercession and giving of thanks be made for all men." You see, we learn here that we are to pray for all men on the earth, whether faithful to God or not. Everyone needs God's help, and everyone needs to be able to know God, and everyone needs to be able to turn to His will and obey, that they might accept it, and by obeying that word, find their way to salvation. So consider this day the great opportunity and privilege that we have to approach the wondrous throne of God in prayer. How blessed we are to have a God who cared enough to provide us this clear avenue and this clear way to speak to Him whenever we need Him. And furthermore, will we always remember that prayer is not only about our needs and wants, but also about all those around us as well, and not to mention our need to praise our God with all that we have to say and our mouths. Today, we'll be is starting a new series of study on the love of God. The title of our discussion this morning is God's Love, that same title as the series itself. So please stay with us this morning, and after our next song together, we will be led in our main thoughts of the day. As far as our guest speaker, we are happy to have brother Trey Sullins with us again. Brother Trey now has joined us in the work full time at the Global Schools of Biblical Studies here in Springfield. He is a great asset to the work, and we are very thankful that he has joined us, that we might accomplish taking God's word not only to this area, but throughout the world. We look forward to him leading our thoughts from God's word in just a few minutes, but as for now, let's return to our songs of praise. The name of the next hymn, "What Will Your Answer Be?"

>>Good morning, and thank you again for joining with us. It is always a pleasure to be able to study God's word and a pleasure you to have you here tuning into the program. And as always on this Lord's day, we want to make sure that we offer our best praise and worship, bringing that glory and honor to God that He so deserves. Our study is going to be shifting over to a new theme at this time and carrying us out through the next few weeks, and that is that God is love. So a topic that has been talked about for years and years by those who look into the word and see what it talks about of our Heavenly Father. In 1 John 4 is where we're going to be beginning this morning as we look at this, and mainly beginning there in verse seven through the following verses, around verse 11, but we're gonna look there, 1 John 4:7. It says, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, let us also," or, "we also ought to love one another." Now, seeing what it says here about the fact that God is love is such a powerful concept to us as Christians, and all of these things you might notice that it says about the love of God have to do with the actionable part of His character. Now, it doesn't just say, God is love, but it says God is love because He does this and because He does that, and that's a really, really powerful pattern that we need to notice as we talk about love. Whenever you think about love, it's one of those concepts that is so hard to define, but it has to do with the ideas of goodwill, of kindness, of all of these things of positive nature towards our fellow people on this Earth and towards God. And so, when it's talking about the fact that God is love, it's not saying that God is some concept or some idea, but it's saying that God is this attribute, and this attribute is a part of God, and love is a part of God. God is one who shows love, in that He shows this kindness, this gentleness, this goodwill, shows these blessings to His people in so many different ways, as we see all throughout the scriptures. You might have noticed even there, as we were reading this segment, that it was telling us about some of those things which God does, and what a great example that is for us to think about. As we think about the fact that God is love, though, and really getting down to defining what that means for us, probably the one greatest example that we could think of to show that God is love would be John 3:16, a verse that has probably been quoted more so than any other passage throughout the scriptures. And there, it says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That passage tells us so much about the love of God, but it says that He showed His love to the world by sending His Son. Now, that's not our study at the time, to talk about Jesus coming to the world, but to talk about that God loving us is why He sent Jesus to the world. He sent His son to show that love to the world. And so, looking at it from God's perspective, it goes something like this. He created all these beings on this planet, and going all the way back in time, to even way back in the days of the patriarchs, and then even farther forward into the days of the law of Moses, and then even farther forward still into our day and time, there was this simple pattern where God loved His people, His creation, so much that He was continuously sending His will to His people, continuously sending His revelation, which basically just means the manifestation of His ideas and thoughts and will, that we might perform it on this Earth. And so, He was telling us what He wanted us to do is basically what the Bible shows us. All throughout time, that was His pattern, but in the days of Christ, it changed, and John 1:1 tells us that change. It was different this time. He wasn't just sending His will to us through somebody else that would tell people what they were to do, but John 1:1, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." Jumping forward to verse 14, it says, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory, as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." That's explaining that process. That difference in this new person who was going to be bringing the revelation of God is that this was now God in the flesh. This was now God Himself, God the Son, coming to this Earth to tell us about the will of the Father, but not just that, but as John 3:16 also says, He didn't just come to this Earth, Jesus the Christ, to tell us His will, but He also died for us, that that will might be fulfilled in our lives. One thing that is so powerful to understand about the love of God is from Ephesians 2. If you really wanna see a great description of God's love playing out in action, it's Ephesians 2, there beginning in verse one, and we have to really read several of these verses to get the full picture of it. But notice the first part here is describing us, all the people on this planet. Ephesians 2:1 says, "And you He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were, by nature, children of wrath just as the others." Now, all he's saying there is basically all of us were once those who were living in sin, and he describes that by using several different terms there, but that's what people are before verse four happens. Before verse four, everybody is just living as Romans 3:23 says, "For all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God." Verse four, then, "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Now we skipped out one parenthetical statement there to keep with the context that we're talking about, but you see, as verse four begins, it says that even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, which what he said in verse one and two, that description of our sin, even though that was the case, God sent His Son, that we might have that salvation through Him. Now, what a powerful thing to think about with that. We were talking about that pattern that goes all throughout history, and if you consider all throughout history, what did God constantly do? Like a parent looking over his children, which is how the Bible describes God and His creation, He constantly loved his creation enough to want to see them do right. In times, He would discipline them and He would punish them for the things that they had done, all the while telling them to return to Him and start doing what He said once again. And then, in our day and time, He sent the word Jesus Christ, who was going to bring His words, the words of God, to show us what He wanted us to do and tell us how to use that sacrifice of Christ in order to get back to heaven with Him someday. It really is this perfect pattern, this perfect description of the love of God. And as you see all of these different ideas and these different images of God's love presented in the Bible, it really shows us just how much God had loved us and still loves us, even to this day. If you were to imagine, and this isn't to make ourselves like God by any means, but if you were to imagine, just for a moment, being somehow in a place that God has, and you were to look upon the Earth that you had created and the people that you had created for all of these thousands of years, and you see all these people for thousands of years spitting against you and mocking you and turning to false Gods and false things that they have created for themselves, and deciding to reject you while you were telling them what to do, while you were sending them blessings, and they're still rejecting you. At some point, probably, because we're people and we're flawed and we have these problems in us, our love would probably stop being shown. We would probably retract it, though we would still love them. You might say we'd love them from a distance, as we say nowadays. We wouldn't want anything to do with them, but that's never what God has done. He's always continually been interacting with His people, even so much so that He sent His own Son, and wants us to come back to Him someday. It really just a picture of love that is so powerful. It's hard for us to really understand, hard for us to really describe it within ourselves. If you jump over there to Ephesians 5 and look at verse two, you might have noticed one of those patterns that we saw from 1 John 4 is what that love means to us, and that's really going to be the study for the next few weeks, coming from our other lessons, so we're not going to discuss it too much at this time, but you cannot notice God's love without noticing what it means to you. And that's why all these connections are there in the text. It says, "And walk in love," Ephesians 5:2, "And walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma." You might notice what that's saying. As we see God's love and we see all these things He's done for us, what ought we to do? Show that love back to Him. Because God is love, because God has shown us love, we know what love is, and we know what love is to the point that we can do it as well, that we can show it as well in our lives. Imagine for a moment, if God had said, "I love you, my Creation," and then He never did anything. History never showed one sign of God. The Bible never showed one sign of God interacting with His Creation. Would you really feel as if God loved His Creation? No, not so much, because, obviously, love is action, as we've talked about already. And it's the same thing. God knows if He says, "I love my people," that He's going to show that love to His people constantly throughout the years. And so, when we say we love God in the same exact kind of mindset, we have to show Him that we love Him. You remember what we read there in 1 John 4 earlier? It was talking of about how God is love, but as it was talking about God is love, it was wrapping it up into all this action that God does, but then also into what we must do as well because of the fact that God loves us. That verse 11 of 1 John 4 really hits it right on the head. It says, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." How much more plainly can you put it than that? Because God shows us that love and because we can even understand love because God has shown it to us, then we ought to reciprocate that love. We ought to show people that love, not just people in this world, but also God as well. And that's what this passage is talking about also. Verse 16, finally, then says, "And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him." And you notice that finality to that, the culmination of all this is that, because God is love and because we can feel and see that love of God upon us, that we, too, ought to do these things. And it really is leading us right back to the whole point of anything that we have as people on this Earth from God, all the blessings, all the will of God sent to us, the word, the sacrifice of Christ, all of these things are going back to paint a picture for us that will show us what we are supposed to do to be in line with our Heavenly Father. That'll show us what we're supposed to do to be one who is with the God of love. God is love, and we are His Creation. Because He is love, we must love Him, and we must love Him enough to serve Him. And so, as we think about what all this means to us and sort of the application to these ideas, as we're thinking about God as love, and you think about the fact of all the things God has done, it should cause us in our minds to reevaluate our lives, to consider what it is that we need to do, how we need to act and behave on a daily basis so that we can serve our God better every single day. God is love, let us also be love.

>>What a blessing it has been to join together in the thanks of God this morning, and we thank you for doing your part as we have done what God has asked according to His perfect will. As always, we invite you back every Lord's day morning at 7:30 as we commit ourselves to this offering for God. But for now, let me ask you if you have any questions or comments about today's lesson. Maybe you'd like a free transcript or free CD or DVD of the program, or possibly we could assist you with free Bible materials or free Bible correspondence courses. No matter what your need is, please feel free to contact us at the following address: The Living Word, 2540 North Kansas Expressway, Springfield, Missouri, 65803. Many of these items are also available on our website. That address, thelivingwordprogram.com, or if you prefer, you may call us at 417-869-2284. How blessed we are to have a God of love, especially in the fact that He has loved us and proven that love each and every day. May we therefore strive to respond to that perfect love by obeying God in all things. Truly it is a wonderful thing to bask in the love of our Creator.