Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen and I am broadcasting from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. It’s hard to believe I’m home now.
We’ve had a wonderful tour, mostly out west. Obviously, with all the going on with the coronavirus. We had a few weeks cancel.
We actually flew back to the Midwest in October, had a couple great meetings back here, flew back out west for a couple of weeks in Arizona and now home. But it’s been a wonderful tour. We’ve seen God work.
We’ve seen what I would consider genuine revival in several Christian schools, and not just in one or two, but in several lives. And it was a great thrill. In fact, I hope some of you are listening that God touched with his reviving work and dealing with sin and starting to walk with God.
I hope you’ll continue to keep your eyes on the Lord. I want to deal with this podcast, something I believe is a central, very important issue when it comes to overcoming addictive behavior, besetting sins, strongholds, however you want to package it—those parts of our lives that we just cannot seem to get victory over.
It seems obvious what I’m about to say, but I’ve become convinced that many times the wrong thinking that produces addictive behavior, besetting sin, strongholds, etc.—the core issue of wrong thinking—is always this: not truly believing that God loves us. All of us out here, if you’re listening to me and you’re a Christian, you know, “For God so loved the world,” etc. You know that God loves you, at least theoretically—could I say theologically?
But many deep down do not really believe it. God loves you as much when you’re sinning as when you’re not. Now, don’t get me wrong.
He’s grieved by our sin. But whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. He chastens or corrects us.
The Bible says, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth there in Proverbs chapter three, so God deals with us. God deals with us because he’s crazy about us, because he delights in us. That’s why he chastens us, corrects us, because he loves us.
Everything God does is motivated by his love. But many Christians don’t believe deep down that God does love them. Sometimes they grew up in a home where they were constantly told, “You’re worth nothing, you can’t do anything right,” and they somehow lay God over that mess, even though God has nothing to do with those unkind statements.
Sometimes it’s past sin in their life. They’re ashamed. There’s shame in their life for some of the things they’ve done or have sometimes been done to them.
Sometimes they’re a victim of someone else’s sin, and Satan uses that to tell them that they’re soiled or worthless. But all of those are used of Satan to try to get us with those unbiblical thoughts, because the Bible tells us that God does love us. God is love.
One of the great passages is First John chapter four. Verse sixteen says, “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” Dwelling in love means you revel in it, you rejoice in it.
You just can’t get over the fact that God loves me. The Bible then says, “Herein is our love made perfect.” Your love is made perfect because you’re dwelling in God’s love, reveling in God’s love. Most of you listening here know God loves you, but you don’t believe it.
So the Bible says, “Here we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.” You have to believe it. And when you do, God perfects your love. Something else happens when you really do revel in the love of God.
The Bible says it: “If you love me, keep my commandments.” When we really revel in the love of God, you will love God back. We love him because he first loved us. When you begin to revel in the fact that God loves you, you can’t help but love God.
If you struggle with loving God, you really don’t believe he loves you. If you reveled in the fact that he loved you and experienced the love of God by believing what the Bible says about it, you couldn’t help but love God. I think of my own father.
He deeply loved me. He expressed it, not always with words, but in a lot of actions. As I grew, I grew to love him.
I couldn’t have not loved him. I had to love him because I wanted to, because he loved me. Love is powerful.
When somebody loves somebody, that love gets through when it’s expressed and seen. It’s hard not to love him back. God loves you, but you have to believe it.
When you believe it, you’ll begin to experience it. It becomes a spiritual reality to you. “He walks with me and talks with me and tells me I’m his own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” God loves us. We revel in it. We then find ourselves loving him.
When we love him, we keep his commandments and we want to keep his commandments. It’s not because we have to. It’s because we want to.
I think of my own father when he was older and I was in my thirties. If my dad asked me to do something, I delighted to do it. If he said, “Jim, could you give me a cup of coffee?” before he finished the sentence, I was up going to get a cup of coffee for him.
Because I wanted to. Because I loved him. If we’re in addictive behavior or besetting sin, or struggling with obedience to Jesus or struggling loving God, it always goes back to one thing: we really don’t revel or believe or dwell in the love of God that is unchanging, that will never change.
Find every verse you can on the love of God. Begin to memorize them, meditate, and believe them. Begin to rejoice in them.
Know the spiritual reality that God does love you. When that happens, you’ll want to love God. You will love God.
You can’t help yourself but love God, and you’ll want to do what he says to do. It’s core to victory in the Christian life. Do you believe God loves you?
Do you think you’re the exception? Is there something you’ve done in the past? You figure God couldn’t love you because of what you’ve done or something that happened to you?
It may be core to Christian victory: rejoicing, reveling, dwelling in the love of God. That’s how your love is made perfect. “There is no fear in love; perfect love casts out fear.” If you struggle with fear or insecurity or doubting—can I be used of God?
Can I make it in life?—it indicates that you are not reveling and living in the reality that God loves you. God loves us. We have to revel in it and believe it.
When we do that, we’ll love him. When we love him, we want to do what he wants us to do, which means the addictive, besetting-sin issues that we struggle with begin to see victory over them. Why?
Because we want to. When you turn off the podcast, would you spend a moment rejoicing that God loves you? You don’t have to feel it.
Just believe it. Rejoice in it. Revel in it.
Go to First John chapter four. Pick out some verses and memorize them. It will change your life.
God loves you. Remember that. It’s all a part of total surrender to the will of God and total dependence on his grace.
