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God is part 6. God is greater than our hearts
1 jn 3:16-20
16This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And
we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17If anyone has material
possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Feelings, o-o-o feelingsFeelings, nothing more than feelings,trying to forget my feelings of love.Teardrops rolling down on my face,
trying to forget my feelings of love. Feelings, woooo feelings
In the scripture today, God says, hello, I am here
I am bigger than your heart
Feelings. This is how we set our hearts at rest……
1. we do what we know we must do
2. we remember that God is bigger than our hearts
Feelings are powerful things.
The sad ones seem to be more powerful.
Anyone here felt sad this week?
Maybe You hurt someone’s feelings.
Maybe You disappointed your mother.
Maybe You remember something that you did a long time ago.
Maybe You don’t like yourself.
Maybe You just feel bad.
If I didn’t feel sad, I might feel better about my relationship with God.
But I don’t, I have done a very human thing
I have transferred my feelings about myself and the world onto him.
Transference
Your wife leaves to go somewhere without saying goodbye.
Ohhh, she must be mad at me.
You call her on her cell phone. Why are you mad at me?
What are you talking about?
You didn’t say goodbye to me……
I am trying to check out….lets talk when I get home…
She comes home. You go thru the same thing again…….
What really happened?
I imposed my world view onto her. My feelings were imposed on her.
We do the same thing to God.
I am sad: God must be mad at me.
I have sinned: God must be angry with me.
I am afraid: God has forgotten about me.
Not only is this not true, this is not fair.
It is not right to impose my opinion of someone else on them.
They are not defined by my opinion of them.
Its not fair and its not true.
My feelings about someone does not say who they are.
Ray P is Ray P., regardless of how I feel about him.
God is God not matter how I feel about him.
We do not worship a heart-sized God. Our God is greater than our hearts.
We cannot conform God to our image
If God is a square but you think that God is a triangle, he does not become a triangle to accommodate your way of thinking.
God is bigger than our hearts.
Is 55: 8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
He is steady. He is sure. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
There is only one reliable standard of reality, and that is the God who is greater than our hearts.
So when you feel bad, God still loves you.
He waits for you to finish the pity party. Hello, I am here
· Are you fearful, filled with anxiety? – God is greater than our hearts.
· Are you in grief over the loss of a loved one? –
God is greater than our hearts
· Is your heart sick because of a broken relationship,–
God is greater than our hearts. Are you in despair over kidnappings, war and illness – God is greater than our hearts.Our hearts worry. But they are not the whole story, they are not the last word.
The last word is this: God is greater than our hearts. God is the ground of all reality and all possibility.
Conclusion
Prayer
God we are sorry that we tried to force you into your human box. We are glad that you are greater than us. God we trust you.
Martin Luther once wrote, “Conscience is one drop; the reconciling God is an ocean of comfort.” There is so much more to reality than what our hearts can know. We are this one little drop, and God is so much greater. Everything else – our self-condemnation, our anger, our anxiety, our despair, our grief – everything else is small too, in the face of so much greatness and love.I think Luther might’ve liked this story. There was this wave way out in the ocean. He was just gliding along being a wave, splashing and spraying in the sunlight, until one day he saw wave after wave in front of him crashing on the beach and he got scared. He was sad, and he was anxious, as he watched all those waves exploding on the shore. But then this older wave in front of him said, “I know exactly what your problem is. You’ve been so fixated on being a wave that you forgot - you’re really just a part of the ocean.
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