How to Embrace Jesus’ Love for You: Dane Ortlund

Jesus is flipping tables in the temple. The religious PhDs are over here indignant, it says, shaking their fists at him, and the kids get it.

The kids are singing a worship song. So time and again, apparently there's something very open-hearted and able to hear what Jesus is like and the gospel that kids have. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most.

I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. So I've said here before about the picture that hung over my fireplace in my childhood home, my whole life growing up. There's a picture of Jesus, 60s Jesus, folding hands, halo a little bit above us.

I can still see it. It was every day, and his look was somewhat stern and disappointed. I know that in my teenage years I'm making bad decisions, and I know they're bad decisions. I've been raised better than this, and I'd walk through the family room. Now I smile because it was like his eyes just followed me.

You know, like I'm disappointed in you. That's what I felt, and so I'd sort of run through that room because I felt that's the heart of Jesus. Today we're going to talk about the heart of Jesus, because that was not how he was looking at me, even though I think I and many people have felt that. So we have the heart of Jesus man himself, Dane Ortlund. How's that for an intro? Interesting wording there, Dave. You wrote the book, I believe gentle and lowly, and now we're talking about sort of a condensed version for younger generation, the heart of Jesus, how he really feels about you. That really did capture for a whole generation of us a fresh biblical, it's always been there, it's all over the Bible, but somehow we sort of missed it, view of who the heart of God really is. Isn't it fun to have Dane back on? Oh yeah.

Dane Ortlund, pastor, author, father, husband. How many years have you guys been married now? 23. 23 years. And you're about to launch your first son off to college.

Yes. How's that feel? Well, we love him with all our heart, and the home is going to feel very different without 20% of the offspring around. But we're proud of him, and he's going to do great in life.

That's cool. Okay, Dave, I'm gonna ask you, if you had to say right now, how do you picture Jesus and his view of you? Because you just shared what you used to think he thought of you.

What would you say now? It's been a journey over 40 years, and the image that comes to me is prodigal. Father, he's running. He's running to me in my sin, running to me in my weakness.

He loves me. He picked up his robe, and he's running. I think that was the purpose Jesus told the story. He's sitting with tax collectors saying, I can't believe you're sitting with these tax collectors.

And I think he was thinking, am I right, Dane? I've preached this. I'm sure you have. I mean, it's like, I don't think you guys understand who I am and who my father is.

Let me tell you three stories. Boom, boom, boom. Yeah. And they all sort of nailed the same thing, is this is the heart of God. Right.

And you missed that. I think that's what your book has helped us do. We've missed how he described himself as gentle and tender and accessible, lowly. Well, you talk about Jesus' heart in action, and you go through some scripture. Let's talk about that, because I feel it'd be a great question to ask at your dinner table, too. How do you think Jesus sees you? It really is a good question. I love your answer, Dave. I'm not there yet, because tomorrow morning I will slide into consciousness, and what I will believe, at least instinctually, is the picture hanging over your mantle growing up.

Really? Instinctually. This is why I've got to have devotions each morning and not do it at the end of the day, but start my day by becoming a Christian all over again. I gotta figure out, oh, hang on, Luke 15? Oh, God is like that. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Bible. Because it takes me a good night's sleep and nothing more, kind of functionally, to become a pretty good atheist, or not atheist, but like a gospel stiff armor.

And I need to know, oh, Luke 15 is in the Bible after all, which is the message of the whole scripture, really, that he's a non-reluctant rescuer. Because I deeply believe that he's like me, namely, seeing someone in need, I might rescue, I might help, annoyingly. Reluctantly. Irritatingly. I got my day to deal with here.

I have my schedule and agenda. And you just reminded us, Dave, Jesus ain't like that. So I've got to get up with some strong coffee and the Bible, reverse order, in terms of importance, and in a sense, become a Christian all over again. I say the same thing.

The reason I go through the Bible every year isn't because I'm so spiritual and holy, it's because I'm so desperate. Right. In need of him. To remind myself, oh, this is who he is. Oh, this is what he thinks of me.

Yes. So if you're not in your word, if you're not reading, he's wooing you. It gives you a better indication of how much he loves you. Amen. I was on the plane coming up this morning reading Matthew's Gospel where he raises Jairus' daughter. Did you ever notice the text says that Jesus, he doesn't go in and from across the room says what he at times says to others, rise and walk. The text says he goes over and he took her by the hand. Jairus' daughter woke up out of death to the experience of Jesus Christ holding her hand and picking her up out of her bed. He was a carpenter, so he was probably pretty, as my eight-year-old Ben would say, jacked.

So he ruggedly and strongly and firmly tenderly helped her up. Well, I'm 45 and I've been walking with Christ reading the Bible for some decades now. I don't know if I ever really noticed that. The tenderness of the touch of lifting her up by the hand. And one reason I'm excited about younger people hearing this message is they need it just as much as adults. We often articulate, and it's right and healthy to do so, the difference between kids and adults and what they need in differently than adults and so on. This is in common, the view that he loves me disappointingly. That is so way down deep in all of us. I believe that one manifestation of our fallen nature is believing that, resisting what Jesus is actually like in his heart.

So why would we wait till our kids are like 17 and they're leaving the house in a year? Oh, let me tell you what Jesus is really like before you leave. Why not help them in what we say and how we embrace them physically? And God helping us, making lots of mistakes and apologizing for them along the way, help them see what Jesus is really like. That very fact of them learning this at a young age as a dad and a mom, that's our job.

And I think so often we fail because we don't understand and we misrepresent. You know, as I think about my mom and dad, I thought God was sort of like my dad. He's disappointed.

He's walking out. And again, I'm not saying every time your father image becomes your holy father image, but there's a deep correlation, right? For sure, yeah. Our parents deeply shape. And now we're the parents.

Yes. Well, I was thinking, I was just with two of our grandkids last week, a five and a three-year-old, and we were at Walmart. And they're watching us, you know, they're watching how we interact with people. And so the cashier who's checking us out, super talkative, really nice. And we were talking about, let's go get some pizza.

And she was awesome. She's like, I'd like to get some pizza right now. I'd like to get some fried chicken right now. And I'd like to get some ice cream all day long.

And these grandkids are like, this lady's amazing. And we're all like, yes, us too. We want to do that.

So we get done with our shopping. And then I kind of got down to talk to them. I'm like, what if we blessed her today? And we went and we get her some fried chicken. So these guys were so excited because I think as parents, we allow our kids and our grandkids to see people the way we do.

We can either be irritated with them or we can put our, as our one son says, our God goggles on and see people the way Jesus does. And so I'm telling you, these kids were geeked out of their minds as we handed this lady her wings. And they kept saying, what do you think she's going to say? What do you think she's going to say? You know, she said, thank you.

Thank you. I can't believe you went and got me to thank you. And I asked them, I said, Bryce, how many times did she say thank you?

He goes, she said it four times. And so we, and later we prayed for that woman on the way home, like, Oh Lord, we pray that she would just know how much you love her. And so I think to give our kids, and it's not out of, let me just say this.

It's not out of, I'm going to conjure this up today. This comes out of sitting with Jesus and asking him, Lord, I'm so self-centered that I'm only seeing what's going on in my life. Help me, Jesus, to have your eyes and your ears and your mouth, to love people the way you would.

Yeah. And the tension is, you know, Dana, as I hear that story in the same moment, I'm thinking, yeah, a week earlier, we were doing a marriage conference in Indianapolis and we go out to dinner and we're walking back and there's a homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk and Ann pulls a 20 out of her wallet, hands him 20. And I'd love to tell you, I had the heart of God in that moment, like, let's help this guy out. I looked at her like, you couldn't give him a one or a five?

You gave him a 20? Like, Dave, you shared this story three times. I just like, you know, I think you understand. It's like, that's the tension in our soul. We have both sides of us. Guys, it's messy. It's messy. We're up and down.

I mean, we don't want to communicate to anyone listening in that this is a neat and tidy formula that you download. And then there you have, read Matthew 11. There you go. Goodbye. You're now going to, it's up and down.

It's up and down. Take us back into the scriptures because like, even you talking about Jesus healing Jairus' daughter, when you talk about Jesus' heart and his action, what other things come to your mind? Well, I was, as I mentioned, I was in the plane in Matthew's gospel.

I just did a very quick fly through of Matthew's gospel. And what I was wondering about was where do the kids show up? And that was where I noticed Jairus' daughter.

I noticed a few other things. The feeding of the 5,000 and then the 4,000, you know, he does both. The text says not that Jesus multiplied the fish and the loaves and told his disciples, make sure that you only make enough for the adults. It says the women and the children in both accounts, the women and the children also ate and were satisfied.

This is a profuse feast. And it wasn't like, as long as you're at least 18, the three-year-olds were included with the fried fish and however they prepared it, the fish and the loaves, they were included. You know, he says, turn and become like a little child.

Exhibit A in what it is to be a part of the kingdom of God. Give me a five-year-old. If any of you misleads or mistreats one of these little ones, it's better that someone wrap a rope around your neck with a huge 200-pound weight, take you to the bridge and drop you over into the water.

That's a better fate for you than if you mistreat the kids. Here was a new one. When in Matthew 21, here's something I never noticed.

I said, Stace, look at this. Jesus entered the temple, drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. This is Matthew 21, 12. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. The blind and the lame came to him in the temple. He healed them. Now look, but when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, isn't that a beautiful phrase? The wonderful things that he did. And the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David.

The chief priests and the scribes were indignant. Now hang on. Jesus is flipping tables in the temple. And apparently he's operating in such a way that the blind and the lame are like, I can't see, I can't walk. But he's flipping tables.

I want to go hang out with that guy. So they go up to him. The religious PhDs are over here upset, indignant, it says, you know, like just kind of shaking their fists at him. And the kids get it. The kids are singing a worship song to Jesus, while the guys with all the Bible degrees are not getting it. So time and again, apparently, there's something very open hearted and guileless and able to hear what Jesus is like and the gospel that kids have. That was one reason I'm fired up about trying to get this message of Christ's heart to a younger generation.

And in our parenting, let's not hold back. Let's just flood them, irrigate their ears with this message of what he's like, because that's what Jesus was like. Has that ever have you ever noticed that in that scripture?

No, I had not either until a few hours ago. Yeah. No, and I think, you know, what is the journey that happens from childhood to adulthood where we lose that? What do you think happens? That's a great question. You two probably could answer that better. But we get cynical. We suffer and therefore we put up various defense mechanisms because we don't want to hurt again. So we hold people at arm's length. We're trying to guard our heart from getting hurt. And so we might guard it from getting hurt again, but that also at the same time closes it off to receive healthy love.

And I think we lose a sense of feeling. I mean, I literally think feeling the love of God for us. I mean, you say in chapter two about his heart in action, a testimony of the four gospels is that when Jesus Christ sees the fallenness of the world around him, his deepest impulse, his most natural instinct is to move towards sin and suffering not away. That is not a thought I think of when I think of him moving toward, I think he's moving away. He's appalled by my sin. And you're saying that's not the Jesus that's revealed in scripture. He runs to me. We really resist that vision, that theology really of him, don't we Dave?

I do too. In Mark one, when the leper is crying out to be healed, he says, Hey, Jesus, if you will, my translation says, if you will, you can make me clean. And that might sound to our ears, the English word will, it might sound like, if this is part of your sovereign plan and determination or something. The Greek word used there is a very ordinary, everyday word for desire, or what you want. He's saying, Do you want to heal me? And Jesus responds, not just with an action, he says, I will.

In other words, he's saying, I would like to do that. I want to move, as you just said, Dave, move towards you. And I do think that as we go through life, I can only look at life through my own eyes, but I think I see this in other Christians too. We grow in many ways, we grow maturity and wisdom and knowledge. And I feel my sins more acutely now at 45 than I did at 25. But we're going through life.

And it's not like when you become a Christian, you get your act together. We need the gospel every day. And so yeah, I think too, what happens is we all, every single person on the planet goes through disappointment and heartache, every person. And I have found the times that I've been so heartbroken, I have that choice of drawing toward Jesus, because he's already drawing toward me.

Or I can turn and walk away or pull away. I love your picture of Jesus, as you just said, that he's coming toward me all the time, of the prodigal father. He's running toward me. And so we think and we feel like he's abandoned me. He's gone. He's not with us when in truth. And that's why we have to be in the word because the scripture tells us he's for us. He's running toward us.

He's fighting for us. That's why I need the word because it would be easy to think he's forgotten me. I talk to so many people that say, he's forgotten me. He doesn't answer my prayers. He never talks to me.

I see nothing. I'm like, he loves you, but they just aren't in it. Yeah, we think we have to work so hard to earn and get his help. Yeah.

But he is bursting to help us if we will allow him to. In Revelation 3, Jesus, the risen Christ describes a church and the words that he uses to describe them are the words that many of us, many weeks walk into church feeling, namely, wretched, pitiable person is pitiable, poor, blind, wretched, pitiable, poor, blind. Yep.

Four for four. That's how I tend to wake up on Sunday morning, go to church. And you're the pastor. And I'm the pastor. What is Jesus like to that kind of person?

We don't have to wonder. He says, behold, to the same people, two verses later, I'm standing at the door and I'm knocking on the door. As you just said, Ann, if you'll let me in, Jesus says to wretched, pitiable, poor, blind people, may I please come eat lunch with you? Behold, I stand at the door and knock. We spiritualize this. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

You know, we put it on plates and mugs. He said, I want to come have fellowship with you. I want to hang with you. I want to be with you.

Love one another. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me. He didn't say that to the a-minus or better Christians. He said it to wretched, pitiable, poor, blind. Yeah. And the beauty of that, as we all know, is he made the walk to our door.

Right. He said, I'm over here. I'm righteous.

You're pitiable. Come over. And when you're ready to clean it up here, I know he's coming down the street to our door. And I know what happens when he knocks. We hide.

Yes. You know, I'm like, I'm too dirty for you to even come in here. I'm not going to let you in. And I know you don't want to come in and have a meal with me. You want to come in and drag me out and clean me up and give me a pep talk, you know? But to think that he wants to have intimate fellowship in my place, where the wretched life I live is all around, is a picture of God we need. I mean, it's Zacchaeus.

It's the tax collectors. Matthew, like, I'm coming to your house tonight. It's exactly what you're saying. Like, I'm coming to your house.

That had to be the most mind-blowing thing, not only for Matthew or Zacchaeus, but for anyone around them. Like, what in the world? Yeah.

I don't know who this guy is. Yeah. It's like going to the crack house for dinner, you know?

Right. I'm coming to your house, crack dealer. I'd be like, what? I'm going through the drive-through mafia.

What do you want? We're going to get some lunch together. Hey, Dave, you just said dirty. We feel dirty.

Just to add a footnote to that. I am very fired up right now about the biblical truth that we are not only justified, you know, legally acquitted, righteous, but we are also clean. The word the Bible uses is saints.

We're preaching through Ephesians right now. I don't think I've ever grappled with this. To the saints, to the cleansed ones, the clean ones, one of the fun phenomena going on in our church right now is we're calling one another Saint Dave, Saint Anne, because we deeply do not believe that that is who I am. I am dirty. I'm defiled.

Yeah. Oh no. The whole church at Ephesus, the worst Christian at Ephesus was as much a saint as the Apostle Paul and as the best Christian objectively. Oh, we go up and down in our saintliness. We do not go up and down in our sainthood. We are saints. We may betray it by the way we act, or we might reflect it by the way we act, but we can never lose it. We're saints. Live out of that identity. That's good.

I mean, it's interesting. This could be one way to wrap this thought. There's a woman that we know in our church in Detroit. For years, she drives the streets of Detroit and she helps the prostitutes and the drug dealers and she brings supplies to them. She prays for them. When they see her van, they run to her van. They don't run away. They run to the prayer van and it's like, that's the heart of God. I know people think you, you go down there and love those people. She's like, yeah, I love them. And many of them come to Jesus because they feel seen for the first time.

Somebody that loves them. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like the Jesus van coming into the dirty parts of the town where a lot of the saints don't want to go. She knows what Jesus is really like. Yes. And sometimes that's easier than loving the person in the carpool line that's driving us crazy or their child is not being nice to our child. Right. And that love of Jesus permeates everything.

Wow. How does the love you have for Jesus spill over into your love for other people? You know, even the difficult people to love, not just the easy ones. This is super convicting and it makes me want to cry out to God for His power to help me love others in ways that I know are just simply impossible for me to do. With man, it might be impossible.

With God, however, all things are possible. I love that reminder. I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Dane Ortlund on Family Life Today. Dane has written a book called The Heart of Jesus, How He Really Feels About You. This book is super helpful to help you really encounter the heart of Jesus as described in Matthew 11. It really highlights God's deep love and longing for His people to find rest in Him. You can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com or click on the link in the show notes.

Or you can feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy. Again, that number is 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. You know, it might seem like it's really far away, but February is just around the corner. You're like, February?

That's what? We haven't even hit the holidays yet. Well, it will be here soon and the reason I'm mentioning it is because from February 8th to the 15th, we're setting sail on the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise. This is the unique cruise experience that you've probably always wanted but didn't even know about. It offers a full ship experience tailored for married couples seeking to rejuvenate their relationship. You can secure your spot right now by going online to familylifetoday.com and clicking on the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise banner. When you do, you're really going to treat yourself to a week dedicated of celebrating your love with your spouse and strengthening your relationship with God. Again, you can head over to familylifetoday.com and click on the Love Like You Mean It Marriage Cruise banner. Now tomorrow, Dane Orland is here with us once again to talk about how personal encounters with Jesus transform our leadership and our family lives. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.