When Will I Be Loved? [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Oh, Christian, it is forever and forever. Oh, the love of God, that you might know how long and wide and high and deep is this love of God, that He would give to you the revelation that He gave to Paul, that He wants you to be sure, that you're sure, that you're sure, that you're convinced down to the very fiber of your being, that you're convinced that nothing but nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 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. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Just contact us at pastoralan.org. That's pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860.

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. I need to take the van to some car shop and do some basic maintenance. We were putting a lot of miles on it, needed to change the oil. So I left Ann and the kids back at the hotel and I said, I'm going to go find a place.

They're working on the van. And there was a big grocery store that was nearby. It was like a superstore. You know, I can't remember what it was, but it was kind of like you ever seen a Walmart and it's also got a coffee shop right at the front door kind of thing. It was one of those kind of places. So there was a little coffee shop there. So I wandered over there a couple of blocks from the mechanic and sat down in the coffee shop. I had forgotten to even take anything to read.

I don't know what I was thinking. I just gone, showed up, you know, and by this time I'm just been so relaxed. I don't even remember what day of the week it is or anything. We're just traveling. And I'm in the middle of, I don't know, Arizona or New Mexico or something.

I don't know where it was sitting in a coffee shop. I got a cup of coffee, sat down and I didn't have anything to do. And it's such a weird feeling, you know, for me because I'm, my life's kind of in a fish bowl, right?

And most of the time in places around here, we see people that we, we know, and sometimes people will have recognized me or there's always something to do, you know, there's always something to do. But on this moment there wasn't anything to do. And not a soul in the world around me knew me. I didn't know anybody. I didn't even have a phone I could tinker with.

I didn't even have a book to read. I'm just sitting there drinking a cup of coffee, watching the people going to the grocery store. And I just watched them go in and I would be thinking about them. I was thinking about these people walking into the grocery store. And I just said, I wonder what their story is, you know? And then I said, well, I might as well pray for them as they're walking in.

So people are walking in and I'm praying for people as they're walking in the grocery store. And then I saw a little old couple come in and she was more able-bodied than he. And so she got the grocery cart and she started pushing it. He had a cane and he came and sat down in the coffee shop.

And I was wondering about their story and watched her wander off with her grocery cart. And I'm just sitting there. I smiled at the man and he nodded and we just sat there silently and I'm just looking around.

There's nothing to do. And so I said, well, God bless this man. And I just started praying for him. And in the middle of praying for him, like some warm blanket, that prophetic word came back up in my spirit and I remembered it. I remember this man laying hands on me saying, I just believe I see an image of you praying for some little old man and you're just so free that you've got time to do it and you're not thinking about it.

And it all just came back up on me. And I felt the love of God. I didn't have a sermon to preach. I didn't have a parishioner to visit. I didn't have a thing in the world to do. And nobody knew anything that I'd ever done or not done. Nobody there to witness or say anything to me.

Everything was still. And I had an encounter with God who loves me, not because I preach, not because I write, not because I visit the sick, not because I counsel, not because I lead a church, but because I'm his child. And I just sat there feeling loved. And that's why I was given that prophetic word. Paul said, I've got many accomplishments in my life, but what he wanted us to know is that they're all rubbish.

They don't count for anything. What counts is I'm convinced of the love of God. So I think you get more convinced of the love of God when all of your self-righteousness is quieted and put to the side. As long as you think that your righteousness and your performance is somehow meriting the love of God, you're not experiencing the love of God. And the other way I think we become convinced of the love of God is when we're at our worst and we experience his mercy.

And I think that's when we experience the love of God. God, of course, is infinitely rich in every good thing. But I didn't know until this week that there's only one place in the Bible where God is described as being rich. It's in Ephesians two. Paul writes at verse four, God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he's loved us. Even when we were dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ. There's no way to appreciate a door and revel in the vastness of mercy, except to experience it.

And the experience of mercy is only possible when we have great need of his mercy. That we knowing ourselves apart from Christ to be wicked and selfish and idolatrous, discover that his mercy is nonetheless flowing towards us while in our sin. And remember, Paul does not gloss over sin. We have seen in our study of Romans that he doesn't say that sin is, oh, we slipped up. Oh, I stumbled a bit.

Mistakes were made. This is not the way that Paul speaks of sin. Of course not. Romans three, nine. We've already charged that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin. As it's written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they've become worthless. No one does good.

Not even one. This is the condition of human sin. This is what it is to be separated from God.

James says that we're not just distant from God. He says we're enemies of God in our sin. And you can sin through rebellion. You can sin through religion. We've been learning about that. Christ's joy in loving us is a joy in loving us in our sin.

Oh, I want you to know this, because most Christians pull themselves away from God when they're in their sin, and it's when you most need God. Dane Ortman in this beautiful book, Gentle and Lowly, he draws this analogy. He said, imagine a wealthy doctor who funds his own missionary journey to a faraway place with a primitive people who have no modern medical care, but only their superstitions and their witch doctors. And the doctor goes, and he carries the implements of his trade, and he carries a supply of medicines with him, and he moves in amongst this people, and they are suspicious of him, and no one comes to him for medical care. And many days and weeks and months go by, and they prefer their superstitions and their witch doctors and their idols instead of coming and receiving real medicine that he has. And then one day, imagine it, a tribal leader comes to the doctor with a bad infection and asks if perhaps the doctor could help. And indeed, the doctor has the proper antibiotic for the bacterial infection and is able to administer the cure.

When that man in his infection comes to the doctor, what does the doctor feel? Joy. Joy that the reason for my coming is now being fulfilled. Joy that someone is letting me cure them. Joy that someone who's sick is letting me administer medication to them. Joy in the heart of the one who was rich in mercy, who finally is able to administer what he came to give. When you come to God in your lowest times, in your sin, in the sickness of your soul, and you come to Jesus, you know what he feels? Joy. Down to the depths of his being, he feels joy. Oh, beloved, let us come to the throne of grace, boldly in our time of need, knowing that the doctor has come for the sick, and that he loves you infinitely.

You cannot detract from the love of God by any of your own ugliness or the diseases of your own soul. Instead, he has come for this very express reason to heal you. Oh, come to Christ, you who are heavy laden, you who are burdened.

Come, he says, I'll give you rest. 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. He is more drawn to you when you're at your worst, and this is where you feel love. And sometimes we say, well, but we should only come in a measured and reasonable way, knowing our weaknesses, we should. Again, Orlin, I love what he said here. He said, would a father with a suffocating child want his child to draw on the oxygen tank in a measured and reasonable way?

No. Come gasping if you need to, panting like a deer at the water brook. Come to the physician. 17th century English theologian Thomas Goodwin has these beautiful words, there's comfort, in that your very sins move him to pity more than to anger. Christ takes part with you and is far from being provoked against you, as all his anger is turned upon your sin to ruin it. Yea, his pity is increased the more towards you, even as the heart of a father is to a child that has some loathsome disease, or as one to a member of his body that has leprosy. He hates not the member, for it is his flesh, but the disease. And that provokes him to pity the part affected the more. What shall not make for us when our sins that are both against Christ and us shall be turned as motives to him to pity us all the more? He's rich in mercy.

He is love. We tend to think of our sufferings and our sin in different ways. All their sufferings and our life, pain that comes that was not of my own doing, and I have an easier time thinking of the compassion of God, but when it's sin of my own doing and some pain that's been brought by my own miserable sin, that's harder to think.

But that's human thinking. That's not God's perspective. It's not his way. His love is drawn to show compassion to us and our misery, and we are most miserable when we're in our own sin. Listen to these beautiful words from Dane Ortlund. Perhaps you have difficulty receiving the rich mercy of God in Christ, not because of what others have done to you, but because of what you've done to torpedo your life.

Maybe one big stupid decision or maybe 10,000 little ones. You've squandered his mercy and you know it. To you I say, do you know what Jesus does with those who squander his mercy? Do you know what Jesus does with those who squander his mercy? He pours out more mercy. God is rich in mercy.

That's the whole point. Whether we've been sinned against or have sinned against ourselves into misery, the Bible says God is not tight-fisted with mercy but open-handed, not frugal but lavish, not poor but rich. That God is rich in mercy means that your regions of deepest shame and regret are not hotels through which divine mercy passes but homes in which divine mercy abides. It means the things about you that make you cringe most make him hug hardest. It means his mercy is not calculating and cautious like ours.

It is unrestrained, flood-like, sweeping, magnanimous. It means our haunting shame is not a problem for him but the very thing he loves most to work with. It means our sins do not cause his love to take a hit. Our sins cause his love to surge forward all the more. Oh, when will I be loved? When I'm at the end of my performance and when I experience his mercy when I'm at my worst. Oh, the love of God. Paul experienced both. It's the question not just of history, it's the question of Scripture.

When will I be loved? You know Adam and Eve knew the love of God and then suddenly in sin they didn't. They hid from each other for fear, hid from God for fear.

What's the fear? Maybe I'm not loved anymore because I sinned. And so it continued. Cain felt like God must love Abel, not him. So he killed Abel. Joseph's brothers thought our father loved Joseph, not us. So they wanted to kill Joseph.

And the people were in their slavery in Egypt and you begin to wonder when life's like that. Does God love us? When will there be love? So God sent a mediator, Moses, who met with God and said, show me your glory. And God said, I am the Lord, the Lord, a bounding and steadfast love. And he sent prophets to reassure them that no matter what suffering or exile or discipline they experienced, that the truth of God's heart was love and they would never leave them unloved. Jeremiah 31 3, I've loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I've continued my faithfulness to you. Isaiah 55 3, come to me with your ears wide open.

Listen, and you'll find life. I'll make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love that I promised to David. And he sent a prophet named Hosea, who he told to marry a prostitute. And even after he'd married her and she was unfaithful again, the Lord said in Hosea 3, go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover.

And this will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods. He was prophesying. He was saying that love is here and love will always remain in my heart.

And I'm going to show you, and it's going to be fulfilled one day. And there came a long period of silence until suddenly a baby was born in Bethlehem and love came in a person. And we discovered in his ministry that it was an invincible love, a love that could not be contained and a love that could not be stopped, a love that compelled him to heal the sick, a love that compelled him to care for the poor, a love that compelled him to forgive those who had sinned against God. His love, Jonathan Edwards said, is an ocean without shores or bottom. God can't stop loving any more than Jesus could stop loving because God is love. And his proof of love is that he's loving still. And if you want to know what took Jesus to the cross, John makes it clear. John 13 one says, before the feast of Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the father, having loved his own who were in the world, here it is.

He loved them to the end. There's no way to describe the cup of suffering that he drank. It defies description. It defies our ability to comprehend what Jesus experienced as he hung there, dying not for the nails in his wrists or the crown of thorns on his brow, or even for the suffocation of those who are crucified. He was there hanging, dying by a broken heart as he felt the whole weight of the sin of the world and all the penalty that was due it along with all the curse and every demon in hell having a field day of mocking the son of God as he hung there.

That's what he was dying under. And how can you explain it? And how can you think of it?

How could you even comprehend it? Except to hear John say it's because he loved to the very end. It is the nature of God. It is his love and it's monumental.

It is to say that it's God's heart. And it is absolutely transformational for us who are Christians because what it means is that we will, Ortland says, be less sinful in the next life than we are now, but we will not be any more secure in the next life than we are now. If you are united to Christ, you're as good as in heaven already.

There is nothing that's going to be added to the love of God for the children of God. And if you've never tasted of this love, if you've never said yes to the saving love of God in Jesus Christ, should this not make you want to run into his arms and say along with all of humanity, when will I be loved? Could it be now?

And the answer is yes. When will I be loved now today? When will I be loved? Oh, Christian, it is forever and forever. Oh, the love of God that you might know how long and wide and high and deep is this love of God that he would give to you the revelation that he gave to Paul, that he wants you to be sure that you're sure that you're sure that you're convinced down to the very fiber of your being, that you are convinced that nothing but nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing, nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright, today's good news message titled When Will I Be Loved?

In our series, More Than Conquerors. Stay with us. Pastor Alan is back in the studio here, sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. 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 in rich 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. Right here now with Pastor Alan and we've come to the conclusion of this teaching, When Will I Be Loved? But also we've come to the end of Romans 8 in our series, More Than Conquerors. Pastor Alan, what's our parting good news thought for the day here? I feel like I could spend my life in Romans 8.

I feel like I waited my whole life. They all have history waited for Romans 8 to come to start with the words that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who Christ and that could lead us to the assurance that we would have absolute certainty that we are loved perfectly and that nothing could ever separate us from the love of God. In the end, every single person in one way or another is asking, When will I be loved?

But when could I be loved in the way that I need to be loved? And the news is monumental. It is absolutely extraordinary that love has come in a person named Jesus who loves and accepts not on the basis of your righteousness, but on the basis of his. God loves you.

What greater news is there than that? 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.