Family interactive message and how God reveals His heart of love through an amazing amount of “heart” shaped nature objects.

National Family Retreat 2019: A Heart of Love

<p>Family interactive message and how God reveals His heart of love through an amazing amount of “heart” shaped nature objects.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Restoration International

Alane Waters

Messengers of Love

This morning we want to look at what ways God looks to communicate his love to us.

And we know there are many ways that God communicates with us.

We're told in Steps to Christ that he communicates through us through his word, which is the most important, right?

Because that is always dependable, never misleading.

He communicates through us through nature, he communicates through us through providence and through the still small voice, the impressions of the Holy Spirit upon our hearts.

So God is always looking for ways to communicate His love to us, isn't He?

That heart of love, because He does love us with an everlasting love, and He wants us to enter in through the gates of that holy city.

Now I can only imagine, you know, how he longs to make it sooner than later.

But we're gonna take a little bit different approach to this topic this morning, messengers of love, and we're gonna look at other ways that God sends messengers of love to us as His children.

And the first we want to talk about again is the Scriptures.

Here the Word of God, 1 John 4 verse 8 says, God is love.

That's only part of that verse, but that little 3 word partial sentence sums up the entire Word of God from Genesis to Revelation.

And so if we want to respond to that love and you know when we sense God's love when we sent somebody's love for us it makes it easy for us to want to reciprocate right you know if you smile you get smiles back right And just a simple smile is the communication.

What would it be like if we were up here and we were always frowning, you know, and talking like this?

And when he smiles on us, we can respond back to him, thank you, in that response of love.

And I don't know about you, but when we read the word of God, we see his love imprinted in all kinds of stories, promises, trials, hardships.

In every way, God is putting his love in his word for us to read and to absorb.

And so many times as we implant his word in our hearts, when we need that word to come back at a moment of great need, it is there.

Those promises, those verses, those words the Holy Spirit brings back to our thoughts to encourage us to move forward.

So that's 1 way that we receive a message of love from God is through his word.

Another way we receive messages of love from God is through angels.

Now angels have, and in the Word of God we can look at different stories that have angels appearing for different purposes, but each angel who was sent with a message of love from the heart of love, the heart of God, came with different a different twist on how that love look.

So can anyone think of an angel who was sent to give a message of love by giving a warning?

This is going to be a little bit more interactive this morning.

Anybody, can you think of anybody, any situation, a person in the Bible who an angel from heaven was sent to them to give them a message of love because he was giving a message of warning.

I hear Abraham, I've heard a lot, those are the ones I put on, there's many, there's several I should say.

But here because of God's great love, he sent this angel to Abraham, wanted to talk to him about this city over here called Sodom, right?

And in that discourse, as we read through the angel's communication and Abraham's response, this angel gave a warning message.

Revelation, Daniel has got lots of angels bringing warning messages right?

We need to pay attention and Abraham dialogued with that angel and they negotiated a bit.

I thought that was interesting but that negotiation really again emphasizes God's heart of love even for 5 people, 5 righteous he would spare the city.

Sometimes angels came to bring special Messages, special messages about births.

Can anybody think of who received an angel that got a message?

Wouldn't that be incredible if you had an angel come to you and say, I've got some news for you.

You know, in each 1 of those situations, it seemed impossible because for at least a couple of the couples, they had already tried for many years and the womb was closed.

So I can only imagine the rejoicing and the faith it took to believe, not just for the mom but for the dad about that gift of love going to be placed into their home and of course Mary who wasn't married can you imagine getting that message right that wouldn't have been necessarily so easy to receive but by faith because she had a connection with the Father in heaven, she knew he was a God of love who was personal to her, and he was a God who fulfilled his promises that he would use her as a humble vessel to bring, to birth, to deliver the Savior of the world.

So, angels are sent to bring special messages.

Can you think of anybody in the Bible who had an angel come to them who brought them comfort?

Jesus did very good in the Garden of Gethsemane, right?

Our most difficult trial, our greatest heartache, will pale in comparison to what Christ did for us.

And as he was there in that garden suffering, recognizing just within moments of time he would be crucified, a humiliating death for us and he, the weight of our sins was upon him but also the realization that he could be eternally separated from his father if he failed his mission.

And as the devil was there hammering on him, God the Father in love sent that angel to comfort him, to strengthen him for what was soon to take place.

Elijah got an angel of comfort too, didn't he?

He got the angel of comfort even though he was running away from God.

I mean can you imagine he'd been hunted for 3 and a half years now he's did this great incredible visible presence on the Mount Carmel and there were no friends with him right?

Nobody was standing right by Elijah's side at this point and there was at least 450 prophets of Baal and who knows how many other people there we've actually been on that Mount in Israel and it's amazing to think that those were the same area where he stood.

And as you look down the mountain, down below in the valley below, you could probably see the children of Israel there watching, listening, anticipating what's going to happen on that mount.

I mean, just the fact that he showed up after being hunted, you know The most wanted on the most wanted list for 3 and a half years God was with him the God of love gave him the power to do his mission the end of that mission.

He was exhausted and he lost his sight of the Heavenly Father, the God of love.

And he started focusing on a woman called Jezebel, and he was afraid, and he ran.

And God sent an angel to comfort him, to strengthen him for the journey and eventually, you know, turn him around and bring him back to God's intended purpose.

And angels are also sent to give instructions for duty.

Gideon is an example we have in the Bible who had an angel appear to him that gave him clear instruction for duty.

Mary at the tomb, an angel appeared to her and gave her clear instructions.

And we're told that there are angels who come into the lives of human people in certain circumstances, shall we say, as clothed or in the form of a human.

They don't come in the bright angelic being as we would think of that, but they come in the form of humans to do all of those things.

Maybe some of you have encountered what you may have called an angel story.

It'll be exciting when we're in heaven and we can see, wow, you know that experience we had, that was really God sending an angel in the form of a person, so to speak, and he ministered or he helped me and he gave the warning or whatever it is, whatever our needs are, God is there to give us those messengers of love.

And then we want to look at messengers of love through nature.

And I'm not a very techie person at all so I'm not doing PowerPoint or nothing But I have asked Mike Teal and the staff back there I sent them some pictures and they have organized them for me and they are putting up some of those pictures of nature.

So I want to read to you from the book, Steps to Christ, page 10.

Because here we see in nature that God truly is a God of love, and he's constantly trying to communicate that love message to us.

And it says, God is love, is written on every opening bud.

I love it here, this time of year we come here and you have, I just drew a blank on the tree, the flowers, the pink ones?

We have watched them just explode in color during this week.

On every opening bud is the message of God's love.

Upon every spire, springing grass, the lovely birds making the air vocal with their happy songs, the delicately tainted, or tinted flowers in their perfection perfuming the air, The lofty trees of the forest with the rich foliage of living green all testify to the tender fatherly care of our God and to His desire to make His children, that's us, right?

God's heart of love is constantly communicating through us, to us through nature to communicate that love and to make us happy.

Are you happy when you wake up and hear the birds sing?

I mean, it already makes your day start off good, right?

Are you happy when you see those red buds popping with color?

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Messengers of Love

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