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@ Eph 5:1 Therefore be followers of God, as dear children. Eph 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given Himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. What a great privilege to stand here this morning a little scary, new church, new people checking me out This is a scary church to preach in because there are so many academics here! At least I have had some interaction with the teens and since this is teens Sabbath it is all about them. The rest of you can now go to sleep today we are dealing with the most important members of our church. But we pray and hope that this morning you will listen to the Holy Spirit and not me. My sermon this morning is entitled @ Finding the father And I hope it will become clear later on why.. Lets pray @Picture of change Its very good when one's mind can be challenged to such an extent that it causes a paradigm shift in ones thinking. Its also truly amazing that God doesnt give up with me. I imagine Him sitting up there going cmon Visser, study more, spend more time, Ive got stuff to show you! And isnt it cool that what we read in the Bible @Tip of the iceberg Is just the tip of the iceberg? And then sometimes, not often, (depends how open minded you are) He shows you something that is truly mind-blowing. Recently, I have come across such an event, and it is my privilege so share it with you this morning. Ok, so I will venture a guess and say that 80% of sermons you hear @Change or else! are telling you to change you behavior in some way. Now listen, dont report me to the conference yet, I didnt that figure out scientifically. But think about it would you agree that by far the bulk of sermons you hear are telling to alter you thinking, alter your behavior, change the way you worship, do more Bible study, pray more, get rid of those bad habits, stop eating meat, care for the poor. Brothers and sisters, at the next sermon, not this one, the next one, listen carefully, and I think youll find that a big percentage of preachers are telling you to change some aspect of your behavior. I should know, Ive preached those sermons as well Now lets just think about that for a whilehow many times have you walked out of sermon feeling guilty, wanting to do better, promising to change some aspect that you feel the preacher touched on. Oh brother, he was preaching right at me! Now, think about it if you are constantly implored to alter you behavior, what does that say about God? Doesnt that paint a wrong picture about God? Lets analyze that @Herb Montgomery Illustration. Herb Montgomery, in his book Finding the Father tells the story of how he grew up in a fatherless home. His mother constantly told him how his father left

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them to fend for themselves and went on his way to have a good time. Daily he was told what a deadbeat father he had. Daily he was reminded how his father left them and didnt want anything to do with his mother or with him. He was told he wasnt wanted. Then one day he met a young lady and fell in love and he decided to ask her to marry him. This lady who is his wife today said yes on one condition: He had to have a relationship with his father! She was not marrying a man who didnt have a relationship with his father. Now men would do many thing for a woman even this. I remember vividly the day I asked My father-in-laws for his daughters hand talk about scary. Anyway, Herb agreed to go and confront his father. The day arrived and Herb knocked on the door, ready to face up to the man who abandoned him when he was just a boy, but instead he was met by a man who showed him all the alimony cheques, all the birthday presents that were sent back, even the court documentation proving how he desperately tried to regain custody of little Herb. Suddenly Herb was confronted with a man totally at odds with the picture painted by his mother. All his life he believed one thing, and suddenly he had to have a paradigm shift when confronted with the truth @Picture of change I believe that perhaps we need a paradigm shift, because I think we have been taught lies about our heavenly Father. Think about it if you have change your behavior in order to find favor with God, by definition it means that whilst you are behaving badly, you are out of favor with God. This is a physical impossibility and Ill prove it to you. @ Rom_5:8 But God commends His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Ok, so thats great Eugene, weve heard this all before. Perhaps, but think about it I put to you that we have an image @Image of God of God that is based on lies. Deep down we have an image of God that is one of at best a distant, hard of hearing supervisor, and at worst, a vengeful, punisher and enforcer. We go on our knees and plead our cases in the hope that this distant landlord will somehow, perhaps, if He feels like it, if it suits Him, answer us. Or else we wonder what punishment awaits us for our latest transgression. I challenge you to ask an atheist why he doesnt believe in God, and Ill bet that if you listen to his description of the God that he doesnt believe in, youll find that you dont believe in that God either! Beloved, we all yearn for a meaningful experience with God. We all want a dynamic and vibrant relationship with God I put it you that the reason we dont is because we have a distorted view of Him. So what does the Bible say? @ 1Jn_4:8 The one who does not love has not known God. For God is love. 1Jn_4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has in us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

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Now come on - We have all heard this ad nausea. From childhood we sing Jesus loves me this I know But what is this love and how do I get it? Do we have true idea what love is? You have ask the teens and you might get a very different answer as to what love is So lets go right to the beginning @ (Gen 1:26) And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. Try and think back to when you first fell in love with your better half. Do you remember that feeling? Was it a mathematical calculation or was it a head over heels, crazy joyride of a feeling? Did you feel it in your head or in your heart? Now picture this you find the most beautiful woman in the world. You fall madly in love with her, and best of all, she loves you back! The more you love her, the more she loves you. Eventually, you reach a point where you just lover her so much you have to tell someone. And thats what you do you publically proclaim your love. You get married. @Belltower During the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, sentenced a soldier to be shot for his crimes. The execution was to take place at the ringing of the evening curfew bell. However, the bell did not sound. The soldier's fianc had climbed into the belfry and clung to the great clapper of the bell to prevent it from striking. When she was summoned by Cromwell to account for her actions, she wept as she showed him her bruised and bleeding hands. Cromwell's heart was touched and he said, "Your lover shall live because of your sacrifice. Curfew shall not ring tonight!" This kind of loves is what we are talking about. @Trinity hug I believe that is what happened in heaven. The Triune God. I believe God the Father loves God the Son, who loves God the Holy Spirit, who loves God the Father, who loves. Get the picture? I believe that they are in a fulfilling, meaningful and dynamic relationship with each other. They love each other more each day! And so they loved so much that they wanted to express their love in new and vibrant ways. And so man was born Let US make man in OUR image. Lets extend our family to include 7 billion other people, over and above the trillions of angelic beings already created. Why? Because he knew me before I was born, and still he couldnt help himself he loved me so much already that He couldnt wait for 1969 to come around so that He could knit me together in the womb. So God is love, and God has always been, which means love has always been. There has been no beginning for love. This means that love is not something God has created, but rather love is what God is. As inexplicable as God is, so love is inexplicable. However, all along satan has been whispering lies into our ears regarding the Father. In fact, Ill go as far as to say that the reason Jesus came to earth the first time was to introduce a true picture of the Father. The problem was that satan had painted a picture of God whereby you needed to keep a set of laws in order to appease this mighty scary God.

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We have this image of an old testament God thats all fire and thunder, plagues and earthquakes, this mighty scary God who will strike you down if you dont do as he says. And today we have this same satanic principle at work ask any so-called Christian out there what you need to do in order to make it heaven and he will tell you live a good life. Brothers and sisters, at the heart of that statement is a satanic principle, and accusation against God. If we had to be good in order to make it to heaven, nobody would be going to heaven because @(Rom 3:23) for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, So what is love? Since weve seen that God is love, and love existed always, doesnt it then make sense that if we can find out what true love is, we can find out what God really is. And if we can experience true love, we can experience God? Exciting? So make some points about love @ 1) Love is other centred. By definition, true love requires the presence of more than one for its existence. Its not love if theres no-one else. Love without someone to love is not love its narcissism or some other nasty word. @Leatherman I loved my leatherman before it was stolen in Lesotho on a mission trip to Maluti Hospital. I never went anywhere without it! I absolutely loved it, it was my best thing. It was practical, it was durable, it was real quality, it had a lifetime guarantee, it was simply the best thing since sliced bread. But did it love me back? Did my love for it grow as my leatherman responded to my love? The truth is, I loved it more because it was gift from my wife, who actually does respond to my love. Love cannot exist and come to fulfilment in a solitary environment. Love is other centred. True love find its expression in the object of ones love. (Joh 17:21) that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. (Joh 17:22) And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one, Let US make man in OUR image. I believe that God simply HAD to create man because God is love and he needed to fulfil His great love in us. After all, didnt He create Paradise prior to created man? Surely it would have been fun to create man first and let him see how mighty and powerful God is be letting him watch the rest of creation? No, God first made paradise, a perfect environment for his beloved. He built the house to put His bride in Are you beginning to see the love? @ 2) Love is all or nothing. If I said to my wife listen babe, I love you and all that, but tonight Im going home with @ Sandra Bullock. Ill be back tomorrow, dont worry, I love you. Or if I said to my kids look kids, you are really annoying me, so go away and come back when youre 18, but dont worry, I love you. Is that true love?

(Joh 3:16) For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, Gave His only Son? For what? For who? Was that all or nothing? Beloved, I dont have to go thru the experience of the cross @Cross with you in order to make you understand that it was an all or nothing deal. Jesus gave up everything for us, but this is where I think we have failed to see the whole picture. Yes, Jesus died for our sins, yes, the typology of the slain lamb is awesome, yes he fulfilled the prophecies we know all that, but @ Joh_14:9 Jesus said to him, Have I been with you such a long time and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. And how do you say, Show us the Father? Jesus died to show us the real picture of God. He gave His life unselfishly to give us a graphic illustration of what all or nothing love is all about. Jesus showed us the Father, not only in his life, but on the cross. He died going Look sinners, look earthlings, look all you crying hurting aching human beings, look how much the Father loves you! 3) True love responds and grows.

Richard Selzer, M.D., Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, 1978, pp I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks. "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says, "It is kind of cute." All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

Bro and sis, if we have an image of God as one where we have to toe the line daily in order to stay in His good book, or where we see Him as this distant landlord who might answer prayer or two here and there as He sees fit, how can we develop a relationship with Him? Surely he cannot respond to our love, and we can certainly not respond to His! If my wife buys me a slab of dark chocolate and sticks it under my pillow, tomorrow Ill make her a fire. Then she might buy me a leatherman, and tomorrow Ill take her to Switzerland. True love responds and grows. Now we have already seen that God is love and therefore loves us with a love that we cannot even begin to understand. So all that is left for us is to respond to that love. Beloved, I believe that if we can start to understand that God is crazy mad head over heals in love with us, and he wants only the best for us, if we can truly start believing that about God, we can change our attitude towards God, and we can respond to Him. How? Start by looking around and acknowledging God. Look at these spectacular mountain ranges around us and see what God has done. @ Isa_40:26 Lift up your eyes on high, and behold, who has created these, who brings out their host by number? @ He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might, for He is strong in power; not one is lacking. And then, go on your knees and pray a real prayer! Not a clichs prayer full of rhymes and catch-phrases, but a prayer as to a friend. How do you talk to your wife, your boyfriend, your mom? Talk to God like that! Tell Him your innermost secrets which sounds a bit stupid because He already knows them! But try, try to open your hearts to Jesus and see what happens! As soon as you start responding to Gods love, I guarantee that God will respond to your love! And your relationship will grow exponentially. Go on your knees and praise God, praise him for his neverending love for this miserable disgusting little planet. Praise Him for loving a stinking manure covered sinner like me. @Knocking He is not out there checking how many times you sin, going AHA gotcha! He is out there knocking on you hearts door with a gift of eternal life going, son, daughter, I love you. Let me in and lets talk. Ive got so much to tell you. Ive got so much to show you, I just wanna be with you, near you, in your heart. Let me in (Joh 3:16) For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God so loved Our scripture this morning said: @ Eph 5:1 Therefore be followers of God, as dear children.

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Dear children? How does a child love? How does a child follow? Be followers of God, not because He is mighty and scary and powerful, but because He loves us so desperately. @Baby hand and sis, I believe that if we can get over this idea that we need to change our behaviour in order to come into line with Gods will, and rather change our attitude towards God, then all else will fall in to place. If we can truly see God for what he is and what He wants for us. Our behavior will automatically change. Our outlook on life will be exceedingly positive. Our love for fellow man will be ruling our decision making. Imagine a church filled with the love of God!