When Will I Be Loved? [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. God's love. It's ever abounding. It is unstoppable, and it is not tainted by any strings.

No performance parameters whatsoever. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series More Than Conquerors, a study of Romans 8, as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

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That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? Christian, nothing, nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing. I heard about a man who went to a priest, and he said to the priest, Father, I'd like you to say mass for my dog. The priest said, Our liturgy and the sacrament are holy.

I most certainly am not going to say mass for your dog. The man started walking away. He said, I'm really sorry to hear it. He said, because I really love my dog. And he said, I had planned to give a million dollar donation in appreciation for it. The priest called out to him and said, Wait a minute, you didn't say your dog was Catholic. So much of the kindness and love that we experience in this world has got some strings attached, doesn't it?

Condition, you give me this, I'll give you that. And that's what makes it difficult for us to comprehend or understand the love of God. J. I. Packer in his classic Knowing God writes, God loves creatures who have become unlovely and one would have thought unlovable. There's nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it forth.

Nothing in man could attract or prompt it. Love among people is awakened by something in the blood, but the love of God's free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused. God loves people because he's chosen to love people. No reason for his love can be given, save his own sovereign good pleasure. The Greek and Roman world of New Testament times had never dreamed of such love. Its gods were often credited with lusting after women, but never with loving sinners.

And the New Testament writers had to introduce what was virtually a new Greek word, agape, to express the love of God as they knew it. Martin Luther said succinctly and powerfully, The love of God does not find, but creates that which is pleasing to it. Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good.

Listen to this. Therefore, sinners are attractive because they are loved. They are not loved because they are attractive. Such is the love of God that Paul heralds in Romans chapter 8. This self-generating love that is without bounds, that cannot be thwarted, cannot be interrupted, cannot be stolen. This is therefore a small section of scripture that is announcing the great theme of all scripture. And what it means is for Christians that we have the deepest assurance that causes great joy and is not only that which brings us peace and security, but then undergirds everything that we are and all of the gifts and all of the power of God at work through our lives. So it is our great joy and our strength.

And for those that don't know Christ yet, these words are such that they should make you want to run into his arms because this is what we want more than anything. Down deep within us is to be loved in this way. In fact, everything within us is asking the question where and how and when will I be loved?

It may be this week, think about the famous song that the Everlys wrote and Linda Ronstadt made famous. I've been cheated. I've been mistreated. When will I be loved? I've been put down. I've been pushed around. When will I be loved?

So that's what I gave the title of this message. When will I be loved? Because I think it's the question and every human heart that's come down through the corridors of time.

When will I be loved? Have you ever noticed that almost every story, every novel, every movie in one way or another is about love? It might be about looking for love and not finding it. It might be about looking for love in all the wrong places. It might be about finally finding true love against all odds. It might be about having love and then losing it through misunderstanding or tragedy or sin or betrayal. Or it could be about how love makes someone do something heroic or crazy. Or it could be about how love makes someone seek revenge for the sake of the one that was loved. But love is at the heart of it because it is our story.

And whether people know it or not, it is the very thing that people are looking for. They're looking for, they're needing God's kind of love. That's why all our stories are about love. Dane Ortlund in his beautiful book, Gentle and Lowly, writes, the world is starving for a yearning love. A love that remembers instead of forsakes. A love that isn't tied to our loveliness. A love that gets down underneath our messiness. A love that is bigger than the enveloping darkness we might be walking through even today. A love of which even the very best human romance is the faintest of whispers. God's love. It's ever abounding. It is unstoppable and it is not tainted by any strings.

No performance parameters whatsoever. And it's hard for us as human beings in this world where we experience imperfect love. And sometimes we experience the opposite of love.

And it's hard for us to conceive of God's love because of the way that we have been hurt for the lack of love. I was remembering a story I think I've shared sometime in the past that nonetheless has haunted me in the narrative of a grown man recounting the childhood day that his dad gave him his first fishing rod. Actually, a beautiful article that someone sent me years ago. It was a day in that man's childhood of joy and fear, grace and law mixed, peace and angst, that mixed with it. His story started with the all too familiar tale of a distant dad. He wrote, I now have no doubt that for most of my earliest days, the only times I was in any real contact with my father were when we fished together. As a child, the author secretly followed his father, he said, into the woods where he'd watch him set traps.

It's amazing what we'll do just to try to find some scraps of love. He wrote, as often as not, my father would ignore my being there and go on about his business of checking a set or running it again if it had been sprung. Other times, though, he'd yank me to my feet and bring the switch across my legs.

The switch would raise red welts that lasted for days, and I would make my way home and wonder why. You know, the problem with unconditional love is that it is hellish because of its lack of definition. And I think so often in my own life and in ministry with others, how too often we're like that boy left wondering, why am I sometimes loved and sometimes not? Why is it sometimes that she won't talk to me? Why is it that I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong in this house? Or why is it that someone won't tell me what I need to do so that I won't be rejected? Maybe I could fix it.

Maybe if I just figured it all out, maybe that's why I'm so confused. And children are growing up like that in this broken world. And one day his dad drove him down to the hardware store where, as usual, the boy had always looked at a fishing rod and reel in the glass window and dreamt of it. And he said his father went in to buy that new fishing rod.

It's an over-excited youngster. He couldn't believe it's for him, but it was. And the father gave it to him, gave it to his son on the boy's birthday. And remembering it, the man wrote, I remember that day, though, when I saw him go into the shed where he kept his fishing tackle and come back with a new rod and reel in line. He just handed me the packages and said that he didn't expect me to, didn't expect to see any weeds in the garden that summer.

They expected to have the lawn mowed without having to remind me a dozen times and that anything that comes easily could be taken away just as easily. And listen to this profound line. He said, I was almost afraid to accept the gifts because I never wanted them taken away.

Sometimes a gift with strings attached is worse than no gift at all. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. It has been called the most influential letter ever written. Every word written by the apostle Paul and his epistle to the Romans is dripping with the astounding news of what God has done for you in Jesus, answering the two biggest questions of life, what went wrong and how has God made it right? Discover the richness of those answers and enhance your Bible journey today. Make a donation to Alan Wright Ministries this month and unlock our Romans reading guide paired with the ESV scripture journal. Immerse yourself in the word and capture personal insights, prayers and reflections directly alongside the powerful text.

These sleek portable journals amplify your study, enrich group sessions and deepen personal reflections. Elevate your spiritual odyssey and forge a stronger connection with the scriptures. Help Alan Wright Ministries reach the world with the good news of the gospel with your gift today and receive these essential tools that will elevate your study, enrich your prayer life and deepen your understanding of the book of Romans. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Sometimes the threat of someone abandoning you or leaving you or dangling their love in front of you is worse than if you hadn't been loved. And the problem is that of course it's good to set goals. It's good to put incentives out in front of ourselves and others, right?

It is. Nothing wrong with saying that. Hey, you study every day and you make straight A's this semester and you're going to get a such and such. Or as soon as I lose 10 pounds, I'm going to get that new outfit.

Or excuse me, if the coach says go into training and if you can run a mile under six minutes, you can make the team. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that when people use love as the incentive, it turns to shame. In other words, authorities, people that might even want the best for you in their confusion would take love, dangle it like the carrot.

And if you perform better, then you'll get the love. The problem with that is that that's not love. God's love is altogether different than that. In order for love to be love, to be God's kind of love, it must be self-generating.

It must be unconditional. It must be invincible. There's faith, there's hope, and there's love. The greatest of these is love because it's love because it never fails.

It never ends. And Paul had become convinced of this. That's what the joy of this crescendo is. Verse 38 says, For I am sure. And that little word for, little Greek word gar, is saying that this, that I'm getting ready to say is tied into what I just said. And what he just said was where we reveled last week at verse 37. And all these things were more than conquerors through him who loved us. So he's saying for, because of that fact, this is the reason that you can know you're a conqueror. This is that the invincibility of God's love. This is what God wants for us.

He wants us to know for sure. I love that. I know. I'm convinced.

I know it for sure. I'm down to the very fiber of my being. I'm sure of that's just saying when, and probably the most important moment of self revelation in the old Testament, God appeared to Moses and Moses has said, show me your glory. We think of glory as brilliance and holiness and the heavy weighted power of God. And it is all of that, but it's fascinating that when Moses said, would you show me your glory? And the Lord put Moses into the cleft of Iraq and the Lord came. And in a moment of self revelation, self declaration, self definition, he came to say, this is who I am.

And this is what my glory looks like. This is what he said in Exodus 34, six, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord that's God's covenantal name, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious. This is his glory, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. The word for steadfast love is my favorite old Testament word, chesed. It is covenantal love. It is God's kind of love. It's a no strings attached love. It's a self generating love. It is a permanent love. It is steadfast love, chesed.

This is who I am, the Lord, the Lord abounding and chesed, keeping chesed for thousands. And this doesn't mean that for a thousand generations God has love and then after that he quits loving. What he's saying is this an expression to say forever and forever, but evil will have its limits and the power of curse will have a limitation on it. It will run out as time is limited, but the boundless love of God is without limits. It's covenantal love. It's unconditional love.

He's absolutely just and he doesn't sweep sin under the rug. His love is not such that it displaces his holiness, but it is an expression of his holiness. There is a way that God loves that is so permanent and so full and so free and so glorious that he says, if you want to see my glory, see my love. God is love.

And Paul has become convinced of it, for I'm sure I'm totally convinced of this. He's saying, if you couldn't hear anything else I'm saying, hear this, I am sure that nothing can separate a child of God from the love of God in Christ. He began in Romans with what one commentator called logic on fire, showing us logically, theologically, how if God is for us, if you believe he died for you, how then would he not also give us all these other good things? And if God loved us while we are still in our sin, then you could become intellectually aware that for sure he would continue to love you. He has proven to us throughout Romans, like in chapter five, verse six, while we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Scarcely will one die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare to die, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So here's the logic of it, is that he must love you now because he loved you so much that he died for you while you were still in your sin.

What you were, James says, is an enemy of God, whether you were feeling like you were rebellious or whether you were a religious person, you still were running away from God and then God came to you and he loved you in Jesus Christ. So that's the theology of it, that's the logic of it, but what Paul's talking about here at the end of Romans is something that transcends the mere logic. He's gone beyond the intellect and now we're into the heart. He's saying, I, down deep in my being, I'm sure of this. And he's saying, I want you to be sure of it. I want you to be sure of this, the love of God. I'm convinced of the love of God and my best days are when I'm most convinced and my worst days are when I'm least convinced. And the love of God will change everything in your life. Spiritual maturity is not you trying to mimic Christ. It is you knowing Christ.

He's talking now about the heart of God. It's very hard to talk about someone's heart. I could tell you about my wife. I could tell you about attributes. I could tell you about the spirit of celebration that lives in her. I could tell you about the amazing wife and parent that I've observed her to be. But what I can't very well describe to you is what I've just come to know through 38 years of marriage, the way that she smiles or giggles with her grandbaby, the way that she gets excited about giving someone a gift.

What's hard to describe is what's actually her heart. That's something you experience, you know by experience. You know the heart of God, not just through the theology or the logic of all that Paul has taught us, but you know him. And Paul has experienced the heart of God.

And that's why he just uses the most expansive language imaginable to describe how there can be no threat in the end to God's love because it's the nature of God. Neither death nor life. That's to say nothing in all of the human realm. Neither death nor life. Not death. Death is a separation from God. Death is an entry into a greater revelation of God's love.

Death isn't an exit, isn't an entrance. With the astounding news of what God has done for you in Jesus, answering the two biggest questions of life, what went wrong and how has God made it right? Discover the richness of those answers and enhance your Bible journey today. Make a donation to Alan Wright Ministries this month and unlock our Romans Reading Guide paired with the ESV Scripture Journal. Immerse yourself in the word and capture personal insights, prayers and reflections directly alongside the powerful text.

These sleek, portable journals amplify your study, enrich group sessions and deepen personal reflections. Elevate your spiritual odyssey and forge a stronger connection with the scriptures. Help Alan Wright Ministries reach the world with the good news of the gospel with your gift today and receive these essential tools that will elevate your study, enrich your prayer life and deepen your understanding of the Book of Romans. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries.

Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here now with Pastor Alan and his parting good news thought for the day.

Somebody's listening right now and boy they can't wait to get the next installment. What's your closing thought, Pastor Alan? Well, to be convinced, to become convinced that nothing can separate you from the love of God and Christ is what God wants for you. This is not for some spiritually elite.

This isn't for those that have in some way lived a more holy or righteous life. This is for every single believer. God wants you to know the kind of love that has no strings attached. He wants you to know a love of which you can be sure of. Paul said, I am sure neither death nor life, angels or rulers, nothing could separate. And I believe God wants you to be sure.

I'm praying that God makes your heart sure of His love. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.