We welcome you to the VI Zion Sermon Podcast.
We are a church based out of Chennai, India.
We are thrilled that you tuned in today and hope that you will
be refreshed, revived and energized by what you hear.
Our desire is that you will live life with a renewed sense of
purpose that stems from a vibrant faith in Jesus.
The year 2025 is 1 where we will be positioned by God to possess
our promise. We start a new sermon series
called Rekindled where we look closer at our own lives and ask
the Holy Spirit to revive and restore things that have gone
dormant in the dry seasons of our souls.
We pray that this series will help you dive deeper into
yourself and see where you need more of God.
We looked over the past couple of weeks on how God wants to
rekindle our faith, right? We looked at how He's calling us
to have a fiery faith, a fertile faith, and a fragrant faith.
We looked at hope, how we need to be re established in our
hope. We saw how the hope needs to be
honest, healed and hearty. And this week we begin on love.
And both of us were laughing to ourselves, Oh my gosh, God is
going to test us in this, right? And when you say God, I want to
love more, He brings harder situations for us in which we
have to demonstrate love. But I got the easy part today.
I got limitless love and I was just thinking of, oh gosh,
limitless love. How do I preach on that?
And I just realized how limited love is that I have to offer.
And so I checked myself out of that bracket and found the only
one that we can talk about when it comes to limitless love is
our God. Amen.
None of us, the ones who love our spouses the most, love our
parents. We have the best parents.
We love them so much. It is limited.
There is a point, you know, parents tell us, tell us when
we're growing up, don't cross the limit with me.
That just demonstrates how limited our love is.
But God thanks be to God for his unlimited love towards us.
And for the next few weeks, we're going to be looking at how
God wants to rekindle this love. Today we're going to be looking
at the love that he has for us. Have you noticed how sometimes
we're trying to love people from a place where we have not fully
actually accepted how much God loves us?
And so today we're going to be looking at what this limitless
love looks like, what it means for each of us.
How do we actually accept this? How does it translate into a
being? And we're going to be looking at
our theme was for the year. The theme was for the year.
If you were not here at the beginning of the year, the theme
was positioned to possess the promise.
It was based out of Hebrews chapter 6 verses 11:50.
It says God is not unjust. He will not forget your work and
the love you have shown him as you have helped His people and
continue to help them. We want each of you to show the
same diligence to the very end so that what you hope for may be
fully realized. We do not want you to become
lazy, but to imitate those who, through faith and patience,
inherit what has been promised. This was the baseline for what
we chose as the theme, and we've already looked at faith and
hope. Today we're going to look at
love and we're believing. It's not coincidence that Abby
would have picked this song. Fresh Wind.
We are believing that the next five months we'll all have a
second win for the year. Amen.
How many of you are tired after six months?
Well, I got so many things didn't happen.
I thought it would happen the first six months.
It hasn't. It's OK, we have a fresh wind
and this we're going to be calling on God to help us
actually root ourselves today in his love.
If you're trying to root ourselves in man's love, we will
be sorely disappointed. God is calling us to position
ourselves in his love. And so the passage for today is
Ephesians chapter 3, verse 17. I'm reading from the Amplified
Ephesians 317. It says may Christ through your
faith dwell in your hearts. May you be rooted deep in love
and found it securely on love. It's so interesting that our
Christian war, our lives, our salvation started off in love,
correct? We accepted God's love for us.
We said yes to Jesus, and it will ultimately culminate in
meeting the God of love face to face.
Everything in our life is held by this thread of love.
We cannot distance ourself and say, well, I felt God's love
back in 1983 when I was born, but after that, I don't know.
His love is what sustains us. It holds us.
It's so unconditional. He pursued us when we were still
sinners. He didn't need to love us.
We had nothing to offer Him. And yet His love has been, has
been what pulled us to Him and keeps us there.
And when you look at this Ephesians 317, the word for love
is agape. And we all know what agape.
It isn't filio, which is brotherly love.
It isn't Eros, which is romantic.
Agape is a heavenly love. But interestingly, the word for
agape actually means love feast. In VBS, we do this one day where
everybody brings food. We all sit together and eat.
Correct. That's called, we call that a
love feast. What does this love feast look
like, Caleb? If you can, Alan, if you can
just put that picture of the feast that I you have it.
Yeah. Look at this, a love feast and
what is the implications of this for God and me or God and us?
Imagine you, each of you sitting at this table with God and all
these delicacies laid out and you decide to just eat 1 grape
or you decide just the skin of the chicken like one of my
children. They don't like the chicken,
they only like the skin of the chicken.
You just opt for that one bit, but he's saying the banquet is
yours. And many times when we come to
God. So the interesting thing about
this imagery is when we come to God, we're so content to just
get that snippet of His love and go back.
I experienced your love, Lord, when you help me pass that exam.
I experienced your love when I didn't get beat up for doing
something stupid. But when you sit at that table
long enough, you just realise the varied expressions of God's
love for us. And it's amazing because as I
was reading this, as I was reading this passage and trying
to understand Agape as a love feast, I realised why we as
humans are so suspicious of love.
So this past week our hospitality team discovered
there was a rat in the church, an unwelcome guest.
And so yesterday, Joyce and Shweta, they got some rat
poison. They made a feast for this rat.
They put peanut butter on the bread and in the middle of it
they put the poison right. So during worship is when the
Lord reminded me. He said This is why so many of
you are so suspicious of my love because the enemy packages love
very differently to us. He says, oh, you know what, I so
love you. You should try this particular
lifestyle habit. It'll keep you hooked.
It'll keep you numb also. And he lures us in with this
artificial feast, which is why when we have access to the real
thing, we're like no way. There must be a string attached.
If Jesus says he loves me, there must be hidden, hidden agenda.
Like all these insurance thing says offer document has hidden
things. Read the offer document
carefully. So we think God's love comes
with hidden agenda, but the Bible says there is no agenda.
Everything. He's the alpha, the Omega, He's
everything in between, no agendas.
Can you believe it? There is no hidden cake of
poison in the love that God offers you and me.
It's as is. Now, what is the implications of
this? If it is a love feast, it means
some theologians call His love multidimensional.
It means how I experience love and how Geshom experience love.
Completely different. Gary Chapman came up with five
love languages. It is nothing in comparison to
the love languages of our God. You just have multiple children
at home. Those of you who have more than
one, you will know how each child's love language is
different. You cannot communicate to the
next one as you do the first. Imagine God, the millions that
are image bearers. He's communicating his love
differently to us, and we are receiving it differently.
Multidimensional. And so today we're going to be
looking at one person in the Bible who God used as a living
parable to describe his love for his people, and that's the
prophet Hosea. His job was not easy.
Imagine God calls him and says, go marry a prostitute, marry
someone who's wayward so that I can tell my people just how much
I love them because they are wayward like her.
And he obeyed. And it's beautiful.
If you read Hozier, we're not going to read all the chapters.
I'm just going to pick a few chapters here and there.
But one to 14 is this explanation of God's immense
love. Just like Hosea keeps calling
this girl back home. He has a child with her.
She goes wayward. He calls her back.
Theologians say her second child may not have even been his, but
he still takes her back. They have this child and then a
third child is born. And each child is named to
indicate God's love towards his people, God's desire to be
reconciled. And God was using Hosea as an
example of saying, I am like that.
I will keep saying yes to you even if you say no to me.
And so we're going to be looking at Hosier today.
And as we get into the book of Hosier, you will notice
something. Our love is likened to that
woman's love. Let's not get too judgy and say,
oh, well, I'm glad I'm not like Hosier's wife.
We are like Hosier's wife. We're like that, you know,
distracted person who goes, oh, something shiny.
God's here. I go for the shiny thing.
Oh, something with a lot of money.
I go behind that. That's how I am.
And yet God never shifts. He stays, he stays.
Someone said this. God's love is the medium and
measure of a Christian's maturity and what we hope to
achieve over the next 3-4 weeks is this, that as I become more
aware of God's love towards me, the fruit of love which is born
in me, others will enjoy. What happens is if I'm not
rooted in the love of God, the the love that I'm producing will
be corrupt. The love that I'm producing will
be carnal. It will be decaying.
What you experience of me won't be the real thing, but God is
asking me to be rooted in him so that the fruit that I produce,
it's the medium and the measure. No one's going to see where your
roots are. They're only going to taste your
fruit. God knows where the roots are.
And God is calling us to root ourselves deeply in Him.
The problem with the people of Israel at Hozier's time was
their rooting was not in God's love.
Any person came. The Assyrians, the Egyptians,
they ran behind them. They worshipped the sun and moon
gods. They, they whatever tickled
their fancy, they went behind it.
And here was a God was waiting saying, I'm here for you.
Will you come back? And so today as we look at
Hosea, Hosea Chapter 11 verses one to four, God is describing
to the people his great love for them.
OK, when Israel was a child I loved him, and out of Egypt I
called my son. But the more they were called,
the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the balls,
and they burnt incense to images.
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms.
But they did not realize it was I who healed them.
I LED them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love to
them. I was like 1 who lifts a little
cheek child to the cheek and I bent down to feed them.
As we I re read this I want each of you to put yourself in Israel
shoes. How many of you can say that God
called you from darkness to light?
Amen that was an act of love. How many of you can say that He
called you out of an Egypt of your soul into freedom?
Amen. That was an act of love.
It says I taught Ephraim to walk.
We didn't know how to do the new life in Christ.
Did he teach you to do the new life in Christ?
That was an act of love. It says I let them by the arms.
They did not realise it was IO healed them.
How many of you experienced emotional healing, physical
healing, Yes, spiritual healing. That was God's love towards you.
I let them with cords of human kindness.
When you've experienced the smile of a stranger, the act of
goodness in the supermarket from some random person, that was
God's love. And it says over there to them,
I was like one who lives a little child to the cheek and
bent down to feed them. Have your needs been met?
Amen. Has he fed you with His word?
Has his spirit fallen on you like a drought stricken land on
which rain falls? He has loved you and he
continues to love you. This is the evidence of that.
God is telling them you can't see it, but I've been so loving
and I wonder if we need that reminder.
Maybe you're feeling like like Andrea rightly said, so many of
us feeling like God. You've forgotten me God.
You're answering others prayers. What about me God?
What about my healing God? When will mine come?
But he's saying, lift your head up, look around you, Amen.
And so today I want us to look when you think of that table, if
we can have that picture of that feast up.
Because for anyone who's not listening too much to me, if you
can just visualise yourself at that table with Jesus, I think
we're good, right? If you can picture you and
Jesus, I don't want you to picture others at the table with
you. It's you and him alone.
Because I believe when we sit with a multi dimensional God, we
don't just see God my saviour, we are seeing different aspects
of him at this table. What does that look like?
Hosea? When we look at the book of
Hosea, we cup see a couple of things which feel like
contradictions in the physical world.
The first thing is you see God as father and friend.
Both father and friend when we were growing up my father was
our father for the better part of our 18 years but he is now a
good friend of us. But growing up I remember my
brother and I would joke around with him but suddenly we'll
cross this line with him and he'll say don't pull me down to
your friends level. He'll say not happen to anyone
else just my dad. OK and my granddad used to
advise him saying ma play meaning son-in-law.
Don't get too close to the kids. They'll cross a line with you
and make you their level. And so multiple times my brother
and I have got jacked with my dad.
We'll we'll say something stupid and he'll say, whoa, you crossed
the line, buddy. And the beautiful thing with our
God is he's both father and friend.
Both these roles require our obedience.
Look at this verse from Hosea 110.
He says, Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like
the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.
And in the place where it was said to them, You are not my
people, it shall be said to them, children of the living
God. No longer was he this God
looking down from on high. He was saying, I'm your father,
I'm your friend. And these two are not mutually
exclusive. You don't have to look at Jesus
as your father and forget that he's your friend.
He's beckoning you into deeper friendship.
And yet he's a father who's so embracing of you, who's so
loving, so forgiving. More so than earthly fathers, a
father disciplines, he embraces. Many times the earthly fathers
will only discipline and then go to work.
We don't enjoy the embrace, but this God disciplines and
embraces you. A friend confides in you.
He loves you at all times. He's an unconditional friend.
Second thing that we see in the book of Hosea is that he is both
punisher and restorer. Couple of months back I preached
about how God never causes harm to us.
He doesn't cause suffering. I've had to eat those words up
because he's sovereign even over destruction.
He is sovereign even over suffering and he says I bring
destruction. I will harm you.
It says in Hosea and that was a shocker for me.
Look at this verse Hosea 2 verse 13.
I will punish her for the feast days of the bars when she burnt
offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and
jewellery and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares
the Lord. He is the punisher, but he's
also the restorer. Look at Hosea, chapter 2, verse
15, just two verses down. He says, And there I will give
her her vineyards, and make the valley of Achor a door of hope,
and there she shall answer, as in the days of her youth, as at
the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
His punishment is always for restoration.
He always draws us back even through discipline.
So he's punisher and restorer. The next thing about him.
He's both husband and master this for feminists in the room.
You might get so offended when we say master in the context of
a marriage, but this is not what is taught, not even talking in
human terms. Let's look at Hosea chapter 2
verses 16 to 17. It says in that day, declares
the Lord, you will call me my husband and no longer will you
call me my Baal, for I will remove the names of the balls
from her mouth and they shall be remembered by name no more.
And I will betroth you to me forever.
I will betroth you to me in righteousness and injustice and
steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in
faithfulness and you shall know the Lord the truth is this for
Israel, for all of us, the chosen ones.
He is our master. You look at the when Jesus is
talking in the New Testament, he's very clearly saying the
person who's a servant is working there.
He doesn't know when the master will return.
Who is he talking about? Us and our returning Jesus.
So there's a clear demarcation. We serve at his pleasure, but
he's calling us into this intimate relationship of being a
spouse. I was listening to this podcast
recently where this person was talking about how she lost her
husband just as they had set up a business.
They were doing so well. She was bringing up three kids
alone. She had told her husband many
times he was sick. So she kept saying, teach me how
to run the business. I don't know how to do it after
you're gone. He didn't have time to teach
her. He passed away.
After his death, she was left with this business not knowing
what to do. And so the person was
interviewing said, what did you do?
She said, I started calling on him as my husband.
Jesus, you said, you're my husband, man.
Will you help me run this business?
She said the lack that she had had completely got covered up
and God would wake her up with instructions on how to do
things, how to run the business, how to manage home.
He is both husband and master. Master servant has a kind of
formality to it. But husband, spouse is such an
intimacy. It's an intimacy by knowledge.
You know the person, you know them inside out.
You know what they love you, what they don't love before you
do it. You know this is going to
probably displease the person and God is calling us so Master
holds to account. But her husband is intimately
close and knowledgeable and God is calling us to experience him
at this feast like this. He's then the judge and
Redeemer. The judges of the world don't
redeem a situation. You go to court, they give you a
verdict and they send you off. You're either in jail or you're
out free with, you know, your acquittal or whatever.
But when our God sits at the judges table, he judges us
correctly, righteously, but he redeems us henceforth.
Hosea Chapter 7 verses 12 to 14. It says, as they go, I will
spread over them my net. I will bring them down like
birds of the heavens. I will discipline them according
to the report made to their congregation.
Woe to them, for they have strayed from me, destruction to
them, for they have rebelled against me.
I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me.
They do not cry to me from the heart.
They wail upon their beds for grain and wine.
They gash themselves. They rebel against me.
As you see the story evolve. Hosea's wife, Goma goes back to
one of her lovers and God says go redeem her back.
Go and redeem her. And that's the picture of what
our God does for us. You may have strayed, you may
have wandered off. He has redeemed you with his
blood. You are bought back at a high
price. He is a judge.
You know, many times we talk about God as this loving father.
We forget to say he's a righteous judge and we can call
on him. We can experience him at the
table to be both the judge and the Redeemer.
I was reading about the prison fellowships founder Chuck Olson.
Chuck Olson was part of the Watergate scandal, right?
With President Nixon. Yeah.
And this man was he was accused of something.
He went into jail. And in jail he met Jesus and
eventually he turned it around to actually start the prison
fellowship where he has made encountered Jesus in so many
people's lives. He goes into prisons, prisoners
meet Jesus and they're turned around.
Many of them continue to stay in prison, but their lives are
radically different. And the interesting thing that
he said is my eyes and mind and heart were opened as I began.
This is written by Chuck's closest friend and confidant.
He said he watched Chuck closely, and this is what he
said. My eyes and mind and heart were
opened as I began to understand the significance of Chuck's
story and message, which was all about God's love embracing a
broken world in the person of Jesus Christ.
This man would go with Chuck into prisons and watch Chuck hug
sweaty inmates. He would watch them speak life
over them. He would watch them pray over
them. In the worst, they would have
come into the worst crimes, but Chuck had been there, so he knew
what it was like. Initially this man said it just
felt like a lot of humbug. But as I worked with him and he
wrote this after Chuck Colson's time when he died, he wrote
this, he said there was nothing except the evidence of God's
love. So Chuck experienced the
righteousness of God. He was convicted, he was in
jail, but he also experienced redemption.
We will experience the boats. If you're feeling you're under
the hand of God, I want to encourage you.
It is not a dead end. He never leaves us in a pit.
He redeems our story, and finally He is the Lion and the
Lamb. Hosea chapter 5, verses 14 to
15. For I will be like a lion to
Ephraim, and like a young lion to the House of Judah.
I even I, will tear and go away. I will carry off, and no one
shall rescue. I will return again to my place
until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in
their distress earnestly seek me.
Coming down to Hosea. 6 verses one to three.
Come, let us return to the Lord, for He has told us that He may
heal us. He has struck us down.
He will bind us up after 2 days. He will revive us on the third
day. He will raise us up that we may
live before Him. Let us know, Let us press on to
know the Lord. He's going out to sure as the
dawn. He will come to us as the
showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.
God is the lion and the Lamb. I don't know if you've ever read
the books by CS Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, but
there's this one line that always impacts me.
It's about the Beaver talking about Aslan, the Lion.
Aslan is Jesus, and he says Aslan is not safe, but he's
good. The lion is ferocious.
The Lion of Judah. He rolls over those who are
trapped in the clutches of the enemy.
He will rescue everyone of us who are caught in the mouths of
the enemy and bring us back. But when he brings us back like
a lamb, he tends to our wounds. Isn't that amazing?
The Lion and the Lamb, He's both.
Now, why am I saying this to you?
Why did I tell you? He's father and friend.
Master Husband, because when I sit at this table of the feast,
not this fake feast, but the real feast, the agape feast that
He has laid out before me, I am experiencing all these elements
of who Goddess. I cannot be content with just
one element of Jesus. I want him to be my Master.
I want him to be my husband. I want him to be my friend.
I want him to be my Redeemer. I want him to be my judge.
I want Him to judge things that need judging.
I need all of this. And so I want to go back to the
first verse that we looked at, Ephesians chapter 3, verses 17
to 19. I want you to highlight it if
possible in your Bible. So we keep going back to it over
the next month. Ephesians 317 to 19.
I'm reading it from NIV now. It said so that Christ may dwell
in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you being rooted
and established in love may have power together with all the
Lord's people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is
the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses
knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the
fullness of God. I want to just go back to that
quickly. Three things that I want to
leave with you before you go. OK, you've sat at this feast.
But the problem is many times we aren't rooted in the right
things. I was just I, I do quick
evaluations of my life every month or so.
So I just kind of see where I'm at.
And I was just looking at 7 years of a church plant.
And I can honestly say sometimes my roots have gone into the
wrong things. The root of bitterness sometimes
creeps up. The root of exhaustion sometimes
creeps up. You're not rooted in love.
And I speak this for my my own life.
I had to re evaluate and I know my routing and establishing has
not been many times in God's love and so the first thing I
want you to do is keep a constant check on your routing.
Where are you rooted? What is the evidence of bad
routing? You're spouting poison.
You know the fruit you're bearing is not good.
The state of a root is seen in the fruit.
If the fruit is not good, you need to recheck where you're
rooted. It's very interesting when our
roots are not in his love, our identity gets shaky.
Because when I'm not rooted in how loved I am, I'm thinking how
hated I am, how God, you've probably forgotten about me.
You know, you don't even Remember Me.
I go down this road, my identity gets hit, my purpose gets hit,
my pursuits change. Everything stems out of where my
roots are. So while your, your seeds of
faith are in this fertile soil. If the roots are not love,
there's a problem. So keep constantly checking
where your roots are. Sometimes you know, another sign
of for me when I know my roots are off is when I'm trying to
earn God's favour or if I go to open heavens, God will check box
me. God has given me this enormous
grace of saying, I know how exhausted you are.
In fact, this Friday I had that moment.
I had this moment of God. If I just go, I've done what I
need to do, but the body was not willing at all, and I had to
give myself the grace of God. Even here, the Spirit of God can
meet me on this bed. And that night, Geshan came back
from prayer. He prayed over me as I slept.
And I just want to encourage you, if you're trying to earn
his favorite means, the roots are in the wrong place.
You are already loved. You are already cherished.
You were bought at a high price. You're redeemed.
Rest in that love. The second thing that you need
to do is keep a constant check of what you're grasping onto.
Go back to that verse. It says, I pray that you will be
rooted and established in love, that you may have power together
with all the Lord's whole people to grasp how wide and long and
high and deep. Many times my hands are busy
grasping other things that I am not, allowing the Holy Spirit's
power to help me grasp just how loved I am.
How many of you agree with that? If I'm grasping onto things, how
will I be able to grasp onto the love that God gives me and shows
me even in the absence of those things?
If I'm grasping onto relationships so tightly, how
will I grasp onto that one relationship that changes
everything? So it's so important that I come
to this place of checking. What am I grasping onto?
What am I holding onto so tightly when I look at the
multidimensional love of God, that feast that he has for me?
Am I grasping onto these elements of who God is or am I
grasping onto the things that I can physically see and touch?
This past week, one of our friends they're going through a
season of ill health and she was one of my friend was just
sharing with me how God met them at this hospital and see she
didn't know I was going through a bit of my own ill health.
She didn't know I was a bit discouraged myself, but she was
just sharing with me how they've gone to this Hindu hospital and
two nurses pray over her prophecy over her speak life
into her loudly Hindu hospital. These two women boldly declaring
of faith over her. All the things that they see God
is going to do into her life and you won't believe.
For me, what it was doing, it was stirring up faith in me,
saying see how I love my people, that I would meet them in this
place where they don't expect to meet me.
And I'm encouraging them from the mouths of people that I'm
blessing around the city. He has people around the world
for us just to bless us. But will you be that kind of
person to someone else? It is important what we grasp.
Had I missed that moment when that friend shared that with me,
I would have lost the ability to understand the depths of God's
love for His people. When she was sharing it with me,
I had goosebumps everywhere because she told me.
They did this for about 2025. They made one of the ward people
stand outside and keep God. They were going to pray over
her. Let no one come in.
This is our God. He's so mindful of you.
He will locate you in the midst of billion and tell you I love
you. I'm watching out for you.
You are not forgotten. That is our God.
Will you grasp the depths of His love, the depths there?
There's no measurement to how much He loves us.
Finally, will you keep a constant check at which feast
you are sitting at? Many of you are sitting at this
fast food with a bit of poison added when He has a feast
waiting for you. He's saying if you would just
throw this in the dustbin where it belongs.
And if you come to me and sit at this feast, you will experience
the magnificence of my presence and what I have to offer you.
But you need to keep checking whose feast you are at.
Pastor Louis Giglio talks about have you got the enemy at your
table? Many times when I'm sitting and
wallowing in self pity and and constant feelings of just oh I'm
not enough, I can't do this. The one at your table is not
God. You're hosting someone else.
And so many times thank God for marriage.
When one of us is in the doldrums, the other one
immediately identifies and say, hey, we are so blessed.
We were not where we were back then.
Let's remember that. Pick each other up.
You're not married. Have friends that hold you to
account. Don't be friends with the other
ones who pull you in the pit and cry with you.
You need the friends who will say I'm here, I'm waiting to
pull you out. God's got this.
Check which table you are at. Check if you're at the love
feast or at the poison table. Check yourself out at the wrong
table. So even as we close, even as we
close, if I could just ask us all to close our eyes.
If you don't know Jesus, I first want to offer this to those of
you who have not said yes to Jesus.
God is love, simple. There's nothing to complicate
it. He is love.
He loves you deeply, unconditionally.
He does not bother about what your past looks like.
He beckons to you and says I know it all and yet I want you.
And if you are saying, I have not said yet yes to Jesus, He's
the God of others in my life, but not of me.
I just want you to slip up your hands.
Everyone close your eyes. I just want to know who you are
so I can pray for you. If you can say I want Jesus,
even if you're one who wants to recommit to him and say, God, I
turned my back on you, I'm coming back home, Amen.
I just want to say this prayer. I want you to softly say it.
It's between you and Jesus. Dear Jesus, thank you for loving
me. Thank you for accepting me as I
am. I accept that you are Lord and
Saviour. Forgive me for every sin.
Wash me clean. Thank you Lord, that I am now a
son or daughter of the Most High God.
I pledge to live my life to please you.
God, I'm yours. Can we just give a clap offering
for the people who put their hands up?
You are part of the family of God.
You are so loved. It says the heavens rejoice when
one person says yes. If you're someone who wants to
rededicate your life. He said, I've I've turned my
back on Jesus. I want to come back home to him.
He's waiting. You know what to do already.
He's waiting. If we can all just stand, I want
to just pronounce this blessing on you.
From Hosea 14 verses 4 to 8. He closes this book on this high
note where he says, I love you so much and I want to bless you
with something lasting. And I believe God wants to do
that for us. God wants to do that for us.
Hosea chapter 14, verses 4 to 8. It says, The Lord says, Then I
will heal you of your faithlessness.
My love will know no bounds, for my anger will be gone forever.
I will be to Israel like a refreshing dew from heaven.
Israel will blossom like the Lily.
It will send roots deep into the soil like the Cedars in Lebanon.
Its branches will spread out like beautiful olive trees, as
fragrant as the Cedars of Lebanon.
My people will again live under my shade.
They will flourish like green and blossom like grapevines.
They will be as fragrant as the wines of Lebanon.
O Israel, stay away from idols. I am the one who answers your
prayers and cares for you. I am like a tree that is always
green. All your fruit comes from me.
I want you to replace the word Israel with your name when you
go home today, highlighted Hosea 14, four to 8.
And I want you to believe it. He is a dew to your dryness
today. Feeling spiritually dry, feeling
financially dry, relationally dry.
He is the dew. You and your children are going
to be established in the land and under your shade.
Many will come and be refreshed. And God, we're believing this
for our church, that you will make us flourish like grain, You
will make us blossom like grapevines, and that what is
brought out of us through the crushing will bless many.
And God, we're believing that each of us here will start to
bear so much fruit, so much fruit that many will taste it
and many will know that we are yours.
By your fruit you will be known, Jesus said.
And if that is your desire, can you just say, Lord Jesus, I want
that. I want that.
Even as we close, we're just going to ask God to root us back
in love. God, we just pray that every
bitter root be removed from our lives.
Uproot everything that is not of you so that our roots are pure.
Roots are in love. God, I pray for anyone who has
been at the wrong feast table. The enemy has tricked them into
things, Forgive them. I pray that you would restore
them to you. Bring them back to your table.
Bring them back. Father, I pray for those of us
who have been grasping the wrong things that will relinquish that
hold and hold on to you. Jesus, we pray all of this in
your mighty name, Amen. Amen.
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