If I could give you anything,
if I could pray one thing for you.
I mean above everything else,
if you're truly a child of God,
if I could give you one gift
it would be that you would comprehend something of His love for you.
It would be that.
Really.
I am tired of seeing you tired,
I'm tired of seeing me tired.
If you just grasp that one thing:
He loves me.
Immutably (unchangeable).
I will end with an illustration.
I promise I will end.
When I was in Peru, my first years as a single missionary.
Practically from the moment when I was converted.
This is going to sound all psychobabble, but I don't care, it's true.
But when I was in school, I was never like in the "inner circle".
Not the best athlete, not the best this, not the best that,
and I determined that when I became a Christian...
Yeah, it was fleshly.
You can do your diagnosis, but please do it at home, right now just listen.
I determined that would not happen to me in my Christian life.
I determined that there wouldn't be this idea of
there is Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones
and there all the inner circle, the guys that God really loves
and I'm outside somewhere.
I determined that would not happen
and I worked 18 hours a day for years.
And if I had a chance to go get martyred, I tried to do it,
until the point where,
I weigh like 225 right now I weighed about a 169 pounds.
I killed myself, I killed myself.
And one day on the third floor of this old building, where we took care of street kids
and we had our church, during the war in Peru,
it was all bombed-out and everything else
and I slept in a little room on the third floor,
I was going up the last little flight of stairs,
and I collapsed
and I said this
I cried out, I screamed it
“I don't want to go to hell because I, I'm afraid of hell.
I don't want to go to heaven because I'm ashamed.
Just put me somewhere,
just put me somewhere.”
It was at that moment,
it was just a work of the Lord,
Scripture started coming to mind, and different things.
Yes, I realized how fleshly everything had been, and how wrong I was.
But here's the thing,
I recognized God loved me,
loved me.
That I didn't have to move to the left or the right.
That was a thing I thought that day.
I was sitting on the steps as looking at myself and I realized,
I don't have to move a quarter of an inch to the left or quarter-inch to the right.
I don't have to be a great missionary.
I don't have to die as a martyr.
I don't have to be a great preacher.
I don't have to do anything
because it is all in... it's God.
It's in God, He did it all!
He made the decision!
He carries it through.
He brings it to it's end.
I am loved!
What a wonderful release,
that it's just Him.
It's Him.
For every once,
I'll take a Puritan statement and modernize it.
“For every one glance you take yourself in the mirror,
take 10 long looks at God
and His love.”
Your loved!
This is a terrible thing about being a preacher!
I'm trying to tell you something
I'm trying to get something through your thick head!
And it is this:
God, really, really, really, does love you immutably so,
perfectly so,
and it is all founded upon Him!
His person,
His decrees,
His work through Christ on your behalf.
All of it, it's done!
It's done.
You've got to walk in that.
You've got to keep yourselves in the love of God.
You've got to keep thinking it.
Believing it,
walking in it,
talking it.
Fighting to believe it if necessary.
Believe it, you're loved.
If you're here today and you're not a Christian
and all those things I said about the holiness of God being a wonderful joy to the believer.
It's a terror to you.
It's a terror.
The only way it changes is in Christ.
Come to Christ.
And some of you who are so storm tossed, believers,
you're so storm tossed,
and afflicted,
just...
Oh that God would use what's said here today
to prove to your heart and your mind
that you aren't deeply and dearly loved.