Jesus Loves Me - God's Love for Me, Part 2

If you've ever watched a Hallmark movie, what I can tell you for sure is here's the advice, just follow your heart. And today we'll learn why that's the worst advice you'll ever receive. You're not going to want to miss today. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this daily discipleship program focused on helping Christians live like Christians. Over the past handful of programs, Chip's passed the mic to his good friend John Dickerson to share his series, Jesus Loves Me. We realize as society drifts further from the truth of God's Word, it's vital that we turn to biblically grounded voices like John for a different viewpoint on what's going on in our world. Today John's going to pick up where he left off in his message, God's Love for Me. So let me encourage you to get your Bible ready. And if you haven't already, download our message notes. They include all the scripture John's going to reference, some key fill ins and much more.

Get this helpful tool at livingontheedge.org under the broadcasts tab, app listeners tap fill in notes. Well, here now is the second half of John's message. One of the most deadly errors I think of my generation as a millennial and many of our kids being raised right now is that we're often told and we hear this saying, just follow your heart. We see individuals and nations who followed their hearts into genocide and into war and into the enslaving of other people and into racism and into all sorts of evils. The human heart has the capacity for great good, but it also has the capacity for great evil.

So what can we do if our own hearts can't be trusted? Well, we can look to the one who has the power to restore our hearts and to change our hearts. And that's why every one of us, though glorious, are ruined and need to be restored.

So let's look at this idea of being restored. Here's what God says happens the moment that you place your faith in Jesus. When you place your faith in Jesus, you actually get adopted into the family of God. And that's why this verse says that you belong to Christ. This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. And so now you have a new heart and a new nature.

And this verse says the old life is gone. So those old mistakes, the shame and guilt that used to follow you around, that's in your past. Now it doesn't define you anymore. The things that other people have done to you or how they've labeled you, that's all in the past now.

That doesn't define you anymore. Who God says is you're a new person and a new life has begun, has begun, has this idea of a process that is started. And so just like the restoration of one of those classic cars doesn't happen in a day.

Go into a high-end shop where they restore these classic cars and sometimes it takes them months or even years to restore it because they're gonna restore every single part. They're gonna start with the heart, which is the engine, and they're gonna work their way out. And when you place your faith in Jesus, your identity has changed. Your eternity has changed.

Your heart has changed. And one piece at a time in your life, God is in the process of restoring you. And what's beautiful is now with the Word of God as our guide, when our heart says, here's what to do, we can measure it by the Word of God and say, is that impulse from my heart a good impulse or a bad impulse according to God?

Is that one that leads to life or to death? Is this from my new nature or is that an impulse from my old nature? And one day at a time, one choice at a time, we start to walk in this new way of life, all possible because of what Christ has done for us. You see number three on your outline is this, that Christ begins restoring me the moment I trust in him.

Notice who's doing the action here. Christ is the one changing you. If you feel like there's an area of your life where you know there needs to be change or improvement and you just think, I can't do it, then you're in a really good place. Because an old car cannot restore itself. And I can't change myself, but Jesus can change me.

My job is one day at a time to show up surrendered and to say, God, where you've pulled a part of my life off and it's on the workbench and you are sanding it down and it hurts and there's sparks, I will stay surrendered to you because you're in the process of restoring me and I believe in your capability as a master craftsman. You know when one of those cars, actually I grew up in Michigan, many of you know it's probably why I'm such a car freak. And in our neighborhood there were a couple old guys who had like a separate garage back behind their house and they would have these old cars in there that they were restoring.

So in the summer I'd be riding around on my BMX bike and I would stop in at these guys' garages and they'd let me come in and hang out and take these old cars apart. Here's a picture of the kind of car that some of these guys would have in their garage. This looks like junk, right?

Most people would look at that and say that's junk. This is a Jaguar E-Type and under this tarp behind it are the engine and a number of other parts that are missing. In its current condition, this rotted ruin of a car is worth $80,000. It's a glorious ruin because of who made it and because of its place in history, this car worth $80,000 just like that. But someone loved it enough to spend the $80,000 on it and then to spend a couple hundred more thousand doing this to it. This is the exact same car, believe it or not.

Exact same car. As you can see the wheels, every single part has gone through a sand blaster where all the corrosion and all the rust gets blasted off of it and that metal is like raw new metal and then if it needs to be chromed again, it's chromed again. If it needs to be painted again, it's painted again. Whole engine obviously rebuilt and one component at a time that car is completely rebuilt and it's the same way as we surrender our life to Jesus. We experience joy and peace that we never had before but there's also some pain at times because God's like, I'm gonna work on this pride in your life. And he keeps working on your pride and you're finally like I don't think I can take it anymore and then he takes a little break and he comes over here and he works on your lust and he works on your greed and he works on those deep wounds from your past that you didn't choose but someone else did to you but they still define you and he's got to rub those wrinkles out of your fenders. He's got to straighten you out and it hurts but it's worth it because you're being restored and you have these moments, these glimpses where you see the progress that's happening and this is called the Christian life. This is why we stay faithful when it's hard to keep going to church. Maybe there's times you don't feel like going to your small group or you don't feel like serving but you keep doing those basic things because you know that's what keeps you in the repair shop.

It's what keeps you in God's hands so he can keep working on you. Well one of my buddies back in Arizona is a high-end Porsche restorer. His name is Victor and Victor actually attended in Germany a university called Porsche University run by the automaker Porsche and so Victor specializes in a few years of air-cooled Porsches and that's all he does and Victor has this really neat shop and he's got these customers who will buy a barn find car like the kinds we looked at and they'll you know pay a bunch of money for it and they'll ship it to him and then he will spend a year or two restoring just one or two cars at a time.

He's very surgeon precision like in the way he does this and so this is a picture actually from Victor's engine room where he works on the engines it's kind of a sealed off room and I remember this time in particular when I lived in Arizona this is from a Porsche 911 and the Porsche 911 for about a year was sitting there in his shop and he had pulled the engine out and for about a year it didn't look like any progress was happening because the car was still rusty the interior was still rotted out there were dents all over it different colors of paint on it but in the engine room Victor was doing this. He was taking apart the top end and he took apart every single component in that engine every screw every valve every camshaft every single part got completely reconditioned back to the original specifications and this is exactly what God does with us. God starts with us in the heart the engine and he works his way out and he keeps changing us and whether you've been a Christian for three days or 30 years maybe you're 95 years old and you got saved when you were four there's still parts of us that can be refurbished and restored and then that day's gonna come when we breathe our last breath on earth and we wake up and we look down and we're like yes finally finally we're gonna have glorified bodies that's the final finishing touch and depending on your age you know some of us who've had health conditions or are further along that glorified body gets us really excited if you're young and healthy you know in 30 years it'll make sense okay but the point is this God's gonna keep working on us and so I want to ask you this where do you need God's restoring power in your life right now? Well if you're listening to this today and you want to be sure that your life is in God's hands you want to be sure that the broken parts of your life are being repaired by God you want to know with confidence that God is working all the pain and difficulty in your life for good then I'd encourage you right now to make a decision whether it's your first time decision or a recommitment of saying God I submit to you God I want to live life your way Jesus I do admit that I've sinned and I need your forgiveness Jesus I do believe you rose from the dead be my Savior forgive my sins give me eternal life adopt me into the family of God I cannot encourage you enough from a heart of love make this choice today don't put it off decide today that you'll make Jesus your Lord and your Savior just as we've heard and if you are deciding that today we'd love to celebrate that with you and we'd love to get some tools in your hands to help you live the new way of life. If you prayed with John we do have a free resource we'd like to put in your hands that was explicitly created for new believers it's a tool that'll help you gain a clear biblical understanding of what it means to put your faith in Jesus request this free resource by calling us at 888-333-6003 or by visiting livingontheedge.org then clicking on the new believers button that's livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003 let us help you get started in your faith journey. Well I'm joined now by our Bible teacher Chip Ingram and Chip John's message today was called God's love for me you know unfortunately there are some people who haven't experienced that personal love of God or worse yet they may feel downright unlovable so to wrap up this program what would you say to them? Well Dave I don't know about other people but in my own personal life I have intellectually I know God loves me but I have struggled at times to experience that and part of that I thought was going to come from some big emotional moment or or maybe there's something I could experience that would change all that and what I've learned over the years is that God's love is far more than an emotion and there's certainly a deep emotional component but his love is expressed in loyalty in faithfulness in forgiveness in who Jesus is and what Jesus did in preparing a place for me and it wasn't until I learned the basics of the Christian life I mean I'll just use the word doctrine if you will the great truths that all of a sudden the intellectual knowledge begin to flow down into my heart in a way that I experience the faithfulness of God and the power of God and the acceptance of God and my identity in Christ and we have a brand new resource that my friend John Dickerson wrote a book called Jesus loves me and it's Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so and he took that little song and in phrase by phrase he pours in this is the theology behind that song and then he walks you through how do you experience the love of God how is it that God has already loved us what has he done and who is he and what I've learned is that if you want to experience the love of someone else you need to know who they really are and what they've actually done for you and this book Jesus loves me by John Dickerson my good young friend is a resource that I highly recommend that you grab it you read it and then you share it with someone else. Thanks Chip. To order your copy of John's book go to livingontheedge.org this resource will deepen your understanding of the Christian faith and give you the tools to encourage others to follow Jesus so order yours today and during the series we've bundled John's book and his new online small group study together at a special discounted price. To take advantage visit livingontheedge.org. Just before we close I want to quickly thank those who regularly give to Living on the Edge you're making a big difference in helping Christians live like Christians but if you're benefiting from our ministry in some way let me encourage you to join the Living on the Edge team you can do that by setting up a recurring donation at livingontheedge.org or by texting donate to 74141 it's that easy text the word donate to 74141 or visit livingontheedge.org app listeners tap donate and thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well for all of us here this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.