GYCSE 2018: Given to God

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GYC Southeast

Michael Dant

How Can I Enjoy God

Heavenly Father God, it is so good to be here tonight.

And we pray that you will be in our hearts.

We pray that you will work powerfully to help us to understand your will for our lives, to help us to recognize what the Christian life means, and to help us to enjoy you to the fullest.

We pray for these blessings, we know that they can only come from you, and we thank you for them, in Jesus' name, amen.

On October 14, 1989, Dick Hoyt ran 26.2 miles, swam 2.4 miles, and bicycled for 112 miles to complete the Hawaiian Ironman competition.

Now, I don't know about you, you're probably in a lot better shape than I am, but that would be quite amazing.

But What really made this incredible was that Dick Hoyt did it with his 125-pound quadriplegic son in tow.

His son Rick had been born with spastic quadriplegia and cerebral palsy.

For the first 11 years of his life, he could not communicate with his parents, with his friends, with his brothers and sisters, with anybody in the world for the first 11 years of his life.

Until they took him to Tufts University in Boston and They made a special computer program for him.

That's my favorite part of the story, by the way.

They made a computer program for him where he would see letters on the screen and he could build a sentence by banging his head against the sensor whenever the next letter came up.

And for the first time in his life, he could communicate.

Anyway, at the age of 15 in 1977, this was the first time that Rick asked his dad for a run.

And his dad said, you know, I would like to help out.

This was a charity run for an injured lacrosse player.

And his dad said, you know, he was describing himself as portly at that particular time in his life, he says, I'd love to do this for you, but I'm not sure I can, but I'll try.

But anyway, they finished the race together.

And afterwards, Rick spelled out laboriously to his dad the sentence, Dad, when I'm running, I don't feel handicapped anymore.

And you can imagine what that statement did for his dad.

Can you Imagine how that statement transformed his life.

He says, I want to give my son that feeling as much as possible.

And so they have run in over 1, 000 races together of all sizes and shapes.

Why did he go through all this time, all this training, all this effort, all this pain?

He did it because he wanted to see the smile on his son's face.

My friends, such love as that is 1 of the most powerful forces in all the world.

It was love that led Jacob to work 7 long hard years for Rachel and yet they seemed to him but a few days because of her love for her.

And it's the same way in the Christian life.

Love transforms the Christian life from a should-do, must-do experience into a get-to love relationship with Jesus.

And that's the relationship that Jesus wants to have with us.

No wonder then that God wants us to love him.

In fact what is the first and great commandment?

All your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength.

No wonder that the first fruit of the spirit is what?

No wonder, friends, that this may be 1 of the most important questions that you and I as Christians need to learn the answer to.

This is foundational to the whole Christian experience.

1 of my favorite writers puts it this way.

If Christ be in us the hope of glory, we shall discover such matchless charms in him that the soul will be enamored.

But a profession without that deep love is mere talk, dry formality, and heavy drudgery.

The devil would have you and I believe that the Christian life is 1 of self-denying, self-sacrificing drudgery.

But that's not what the Christian life is about.

The Christian life is actually about self-denying, self-sacrificing joy.

But love transforms it from a drudgery into a joy.

If we love Jesus, we shall love to live for him, to present our thank offerings to him, to labor for him, the very labor will be light.

For his sake we shall covet pain and toil and sacrifice.

We shall sympathize with his longing for the salvation of men.

We shall feel the same tender craving for souls that he has felt.

And this love that we're talking about here tonight is not a common love.

It is a soul-pervading, self-sacrificing, all-or-nothing love in which Jesus is the center around which Our whole life revolves.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about a constant ecstasy of feeling.

In fact, I'm not talking about feeling at all.

Feelings are not good indicators of your love relationship with anybody, by the way.

In fact, my favorite definition of joy is a calm delight.

Wouldn't you just love to have a calm delight in God, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what time of day, no matter what time of week, a calm delight in the Almighty God.

But you know what's something interesting about this command to love him with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength?

What's interesting about that command is it is a command that we cannot obey by ourselves.

I can't stand here right now and say, okay, right now I'm going to start loving God with all my heart and mind and soul and strength.

We do not have a knob in our life like a burner on a stove that turns up our love for God.

So where does that love for God come from?

The Bible tells us that love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

But now we have a problem because God commands us to love Him with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength, that's his command, and he is the answer to that command.

If that's true, then why would my love for God be lukewarm?

How can I not love God with all of my heart and mind and soul and strength if he commands it and he provides it?

But you know, most of my sincere Christian experience, my love for God was tepid at best.

Even though I grew up in a good Christian home, went to good Christian schools, had wonderful church families all my life, my love for God just was not there, it didn't grow.

For most of my Christian experience, I did not enjoy prayer.

Prayer is the breath of the soul, it is the communion with the 1 we love.

You know, I spent a lot of my Christian experience looking for excuses to shorten my prayer time, looking for excuses to shorten my prayer time, looking for excuses to shorten my devotional time, or even skip it completely.

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How Can I Enjoy God

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