We are going to have four sessions today
and I'd like to speak on the subject
of God's dwelling place.
In all the four sessions, I want to
turn first of all to Exodus chapter 25.
We know that God raised up
the nation of Israel in order to prepare
a people to understand His ways before
Christ came to earth.
Nobody would have understood Jesus dying on the
cross as a sacrifice for our sins if
the Jews had not, the people of Israel
had not for 1500 years practiced blood sacrifice
as the atonement for their sins.
But it was not only sacrifice, the slain
lamb or the slain bullock that the Lord
taught Israel.
Another very important lesson that He taught Israel
was that He wanted a dwelling place in
the midst of people.
He wanted to make a people to be
His own out of all the people in
the world, those who would respond.
And in their midst, He wanted to dwell.
That's what we read in Exodus 25 concerning
the construction of the tabernacle.
It says here, let them construct, verse 8,
a sanctuary for me that I may dwell
among them.
Now, you know, it's very easy to read
scripture like a theological book and it was
never meant to be that.
I believe that Bible schools and seminaries have
completely confused people concerning the Bible.
I thank God I never went to a
Bible school one day of my life.
The apostles never went either.
They studied at the feet of Jesus.
The Bible was meant to speak to our
hearts, not to our heads.
We must remember that.
So, when you read the scriptures, if you
try to analyze it and understand it, you
may get a lot of head knowledge.
But it will be pretty useless to you
and pretty useless when you pass it on
to others.
But, if we try to understand the heart
of God, that's what we need to understand
when we read the Bible.
Here is a revelation of the heart of
God, what God is thinking, what God is
feeling, what God desires in us.
And if we can understand the heart of
God, say in a verse like this, the
desire God has to dwell in the midst
of His people.
He doesn't want gifts primarily from them, but
their hearts.
We who are parents understand that.
What do you want from your children?
Do you want their money?
I hope not.
What you want is their heart.
What you want is fellowship.
You want to be friends with them as
they grow up.
That's what God wants.
He wants fellowship with us.
He wants to dwell in our midst.
And you know how disappointed parents are when
children don't give them that friendship and fellowship,
and instead just give them gifts on their
birthdays or things like that.
And that's how God is disappointed too.
We go for meetings, we give Him money,
we do a few things for Him.
And He is not interested in that first
of all.
He is interested in us, in fellowship with
us.
He says, let them make Me a sanctuary
that I may dwell among them.
And that word dwell is talking about permanent
residence.
Not an occasional visit.
A lot of people have God as an
occasional visitor.
He doesn't want that.
He wants to dwell.
Dwell means permanently reside with us.
He wants to reside in our hearts.
He wants to reside in our homes.
And He wants to reside in our church.
And our churches.
These are the dwelling places of God.
First of all our heart.
Then our home.
And then our church.
And it must be in that order.
We can't change that order.
We can think of God's dwelling place like
a three story house.
The first story is our heart.
And the second story is our home.
And the third story is the church.
Now the mistake that people have made through
many centuries has been to try and build
a third story before building the first or
second.
And you can't do it.
Have you ever tried to build a third
story without building the first and the second
story?
You'll be building on air.
A lot of churches are built on air.
They collapse.
It's not the church at all.
It's not God's dwelling place.
It's imagination.
It's not built on a personal walk with
God.
That's the ground floor of the first story.
And then some people who understand the need
for that, having built the first story, switch
straight over to the third story neglecting the
second.
You know one of the qualifications for an
elder is that if a man does not
know how to run his own home, how
can he ever run the church?
That's what it says in 1 Timothy 3.
If he can't control his own children at
home, how in the world is he going
to control so many children in the church?
Spiritual children I mean.
So it's the heart and the home and
the church.
It's always that order.
And that's why in every church, if we
want to progress, there must always be progress
in our spiritual development, in our personal walk
with God in our heart, in our home,
then the church.
If our personal walk with God is strong,
our home will be strong.
If the home is strong, the church will
be strong.
This must be the order.
The first dwelling place of God that's mentioned
in the Bible is Exodus chapter 3.
In Exodus chapter 3 we read about the
Lord appearing to Moses, Exodus 3.2, in
a blazing fire, in a bush.
That's when Moses was 80 years old and
he never forgot it.
He never forgot that encounter with God.
That, by the way, is the first dwelling
place of God mentioned in the Bible.
In the bush.
When Moses was about to die, he gave
a blessing to Joseph, the tribe of Joseph.
And you read about it in Deuteronomy 33
and verse 16.
And when he wanted, when he prayed that
the blessing of God would come upon the
tribe of Joseph, the way he expressed it
was, in Deuteronomy 33.16, May the Lord
bless you with the choice, things of the
earth and its fullness, and the favor or
the blessing of him who dwelt in the
bush.
Him who dwelt in the bush.
He thought of God as the God who
dwelt in the bush.
So there we read of the first dwelling
place of God in the Bible.
And it's very interesting for us to see
what was significant about that first dwelling place
of God in the Bible.
It wasn't the size of the bush.
It wasn't the color of the bush.
It wasn't what type of bush it was.
The most important thing was the fire of
God was there.
The fire of God throughout the Bible is
a picture of the Holy Spirit.
Throughout.
The baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire.
Or the fire coming down on Elijah's sacrifice.
Or the fire in the bush.
The second dwelling place is the tabernacle.
The distinctive thing about the tabernacle was the
fire that dwelt upon the tabernacle.
Again, what was called the Shekinah glory.
Again, a picture of the Holy Spirit.
The distinctive thing, the distinctive feature of our
walk with God and our life must be
the presence of the Holy Spirit in our
lives.
Filling us.
Guiding us.
Leading us.
Speaking to us day by day.
Correcting us.
Instructing us.
Transforming us into the likeness of Christ.
If you don't have that, whatever else you
may have in your walk with God, you've
missed the main thing.
You missed the main thing.
It's like having the fans and the lights
and the refrigerator and the washing machine and
not having electricity.
That's exactly how a lot of Christians are.
The same thing in a home.
The most important feature of our home life
must be the leading of the Holy Spirit
in our home.
The Holy Spirit tells us what's right to
have in a home and what's not right
to have in our home.
What sort of books we can have.
What sort of magazines we can have.
What sort of things we can have.
What sort of things we shouldn't have.
If you don't have that, the influence of
the Holy Spirit, you can have family prayer.
You can read the Bible.
You can have verses hung on the wall.
You can have 101 things.
Electricity is not there.
The same thing in a church.
The most important feature of a church is
the presence of the Holy Spirit leading, guiding,
directing, convicting the moving of the Holy Spirit
in our meetings.
The moving of the Holy Spirit in the
ministry of the Word.
Most important.
If that is not there, we can have
everything else.
Like I said, it will be like having
all the electrical fittings without electricity.
And a lot of churches seem to be
content to come Sunday mornings and look at
the fan and the light and the refrigerator
and the washing machine and everything else and
go home.
Nothing works.
Because there's no electricity.
The power of the Holy Spirit is missing
in most Christian churches today.
The power of the Holy Spirit is missing
in most of the ministries from the pulpits
today.
And you can sense it.
You can sense it because it's so boring.
It's so heavy.
Young people turn away from Christianity because they
say it's so boring.
That movie on television they say is more
interesting and they are right.
That movie on television for three hours is
far more interesting than the one hour church
service.
They are absolutely right, but it was never
meant to be so.
God is the most interesting personality in the
whole world.
And Christian preachers have made Him into a
boring person and turned a lot of people
away.
I haven't found Jesus to be a boring
person.
Through the years, I find Him to be
more and more interesting.
I find the Christian life to be very,
very exciting.
And if other people haven't found that, then
I say there's something they've missed and that's
why they haven't found it to be like
that.
And it's important that in our churches, we
lead people to genuine Christianity.
And you cannot have that without the operation
of the Holy Spirit.
Honor the ministry of the Holy Spirit in
your personal life, in your home, and in
your church.
Be sensitive to His voice.
Be willing to be radical, to change things
which He says need to be changed.
Don't stick with old customs and traditions in
your life, or your home, or your church,
if the Holy Spirit says that you need
to change them.
You must be willing to be unique, different.
Light is unique compared to darkness.
It's totally different from darkness.
And when a church is what it is
meant to be, it'll be totally different from
the world.
Unfortunately, we have a Christendom today which is
trying to look like the world to try
and attract them.
To try and use the music of the
world to attract the young people of the
world.
What type of Christianity are you going to
draw them to?
I cannot imagine Peter trying all that on
the day of Pentecost.
No.
What they had on that day and those
days was the power of the Holy Spirit.
And we have substituted the power of the
Holy Spirit today with music, and money, and
electronic gadgets, and none of these things are
a substitute.
For the fire of God.
God dwelt in the bush and there was
a fire there.
God dwelt in the tabernacle and there was
a fire there.
I want you to notice another thing in
Exodus in chapter 39.
It tells us how the fire came.
How the glory of God descended on that
tabernacle.
In Exodus chapter 39 and 40, about 18
times, I think it's 16 or 18 times
in those two chapters, a little expression comes.
I don't know whether you've noticed it.
It is this expression, which you find first
of all in the last part of verse
5.
Exodus 39 verse 5.
Just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
He did all this just as the Lord
commanded him.
The end of verse 7, just as the
Lord had commanded him.
And further down in the end of verse
21, just as the Lord commanded him.
In the end of verse 26, end of
verse 29, end of verse 31, and verse
43 and a number of times in chapter
40, verse 16 and 19, 21, 23, 25,
27, 29, 32.
Repeated again and again and again and again.
Just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
And then it says in the last part
of verse 33, Thus Moses finished the work,
and then the glory of the Lord filled
the tabernacle.
That happens even today.
When we do everything in our personal life,
and in our home, and in our church,
just as the Lord has commanded, the glory
of the Lord will still fill our life,
our home, our church.
And if it doesn't fill our life, our
home, and our church, we have to go
back and check whether there is something we
have not done, just as the Lord commanded.
God takes His word very seriously.
Way back in the first chapter of the
Bible, we read a number of times it
says God said.
God said something on the first day, and
the second day, and the third day, and
the fourth day.
He kept on speaking.
And every time He spoke, because the earth
responded immediately, and the heavens responded immediately, something
happened.
The sun appeared.
Light appeared.
Trees appeared.
Fish appeared.
Birds appeared.
It all came through God's speaking.
And that chaotic earth, which was dark and
empty, that you read in Genesis 1-2,
became such a beautiful earth, just because it
responded to the word of God.
That's all.
And the Holy Spirit moved there.
I don't know whether you noticed that.
I want you to turn to Genesis chapter
1 for a moment.
There are two things you read right in
the beginning of the Bible.
One is the operation of the Holy Spirit
in verse 2, and the other is the
word of God in verse 3.
It's the combined working of the Holy Spirit
and the word of God that changed that
chaotic earth into something beautiful.
And that chaotic earth, dark, empty, earth full
of chaos, mentioned in verse 2, is a
picture of our life after sin has done
its work.
There's chaos, darkness, shapelessness, ugliness in our life.
And the message of Genesis chapter 1 is
that if you allow the Holy Spirit to
move upon you, like it says in verse
2, and you submit to the word of
God that comes repeatedly every day, by the
end of the chapter, the earth has become
so beautiful that God himself looks over the
whole thing and says, it's very good.
You know, it's amazing.
God says, it's very good, verse 31.
And that, the message of that first chapter
is that if your life is such a
mess, as it is mentioned in verse 2,
full of chaos and darkness and ugliness and
shapelessness, if you submit to the Holy Spirit,
no matter how chaotic and messy your life
is, submit to the Holy Spirit and allow
the word of God, submit to the word
of God every day, your life can become
so beautiful that God himself can look at
it and say, excellent.
It can't be made better.
That is the work that God seeks to
do.
In fact, Genesis chapter 1 is a sort
of a synopsis or a little outline of
the whole Bible.
Man starts in a chaotic state, the Spirit
of God moves upon him, God speaks every
day, and finally God ends up with a
beautiful heaven and earth in Revelation.
That's in Genesis 1.31. So, Genesis is
actually, Genesis chapter 1 is a preview of
the whole message of the Bible.
Every day, God said something.
The first day he said something, the second
day he said something, the third day he
said something, every day.
And every day, the earth and the heavens
responded to God's word and that's why something
happened.
And I believe that ever since that time,
God's been speaking every day.
I mean, you may not have heard it,
that's another thing.
A lot of people don't hear because
there's rock music in this room right now.
There's Christian music, there are messages.
Why can't you hear them?
Because you don't have a radio set tuned
to that frequency.
It's here, right in this room.
You say, I can't hear it.
I know you can't hear it.
You're not tuned to that frequency.
And you can choose what you want.
The devil is speaking, God is speaking.
You choose the frequency.
You say, I can't hear God.
You've got to be tuned to his frequency
to hear him.
You can't be listening to two, three stations
at the same time, you know that?
And you have your choice which you want
to listen to.
And if you're always listening to what the
devil is putting out, well, I'm not surprised
that you don't hear God at all.
You can go years on end without listening
to God.
And you can go years on end without
being transformed.
It's when God spoke that something got transformed
in chapter one.
And it's when God speaks that we get
transformed.
And we're supposed to be transformed every day.
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4 that
our outward man decays but the inward man
is being renewed every single day.
That was Paul's experience.
Every single day was getting a little more
Christ-like.
But I know lots of believers, even years
go by and they don't seem to change.
They're defeated by the same old sins.
They don't know God even after ten years
of being a believer.
They don't know the word any better.
The Christian life is not more exciting.
Their life is not more useful to God.
They're in the same old rut, in a
deeper rut than they were years ago because
they don't take time to listen to God.
The devil's got all his entertainment out there
to distract them.
How in the world can Christians who are
taken up with the devil's entertainment ever listen
to God?
They can go to church to ease their
conscience once in a week and say, I'm
a good Christian.
Well, you're not a good Christian just because
you go to church once a week.
You're a good Christian if you're listening to
God every day.
Not otherwise.
And that's why our lives are so shallow.
A little trial is enough to knock us
down.
And we're certainly not the dwelling place of
God.
And our homes are a mess.
Our children are wayward.
And we don't have any church worthy of
being called the dwelling place of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, but it can all be rectified if
we take heed to what God's Word says.
I want to turn, first of all, to
1 John now.
You know, when building this three-story house,
which is God's dwelling place that I spoke
about, the three-story house, our heart, our
home, and our church, we want to look
at that one by one.
But in this first session, we want to
look at the foundation.
It's important.
It is the most important thing in any
house, in any building.
The stronger the foundation, the stronger the building.
If you get a crack in the third
floor, the problem is not in the third
floor, the problem is in the foundation.
If the door doesn't close in the second
floor, well, the problem is in the foundation.
So remember that.
We think, hey, why this problem in our
home?
Foundation.
Why are we having this problem in our
church?
Foundation.
That's where the problem is.
The problem is not on the third story.
It's in the foundation.
So what is the foundation?
The foundation is God's perfect love for us.
We must be founded on that rooted and
grounded in the fact that God loves me
perfectly.
If you're a bit shaky on that, doubtful,
you say, well, I'm not so worthy of
being loved.
Oh, loved.
I'm not so worthy of being loved.
I've made such a mess of my life.
I wonder whether God will love me.
Well, brother, sister, you'll be shaky all your
life.
Your home will be shaky, your church will
be shaky, you can't believe that God loves
you.
Even though he says it repeatedly in Scripture.
You'd rather believe the lie of the devil
that says God doesn't love you.
He can't possibly love such a wretch like
you.
Even though Jesus kept on saying that he
came for sinners and not for righteous people.
You know the number of times Jesus said,
I did not come for righteous people, I
came for sinners.
Do you qualify?
I qualify.
I qualify because I don't have any righteousness
of my own to be accepted by God.
I'm a sinner and Jesus came for me.
If you're a sinner, Jesus came for you,
brother, sister.
That should bring joy into your heart.
It certainly brings joy into my heart.
Everybody on earth qualifies provided he's willing to
acknowledge that he's a sinner.
Sometimes that's a bit difficult to acknowledge that
we're no better than anybody else.
I want to tell you something.
You know who will have the greatest understanding
of the love of God for him?
The one who is most conscious that he's
perhaps the worst sinner on the face of
the earth.
So if you're pretty close to that, you
should be having a very good understanding of
God's love.
And if you don't have that understanding of
God's love, it's probably because you think you're
not so bad.
Well, I feel sorry for you.
Paul had a tremendous security in the love
of God because he said, well, I'm the
chief of sinners.
I'm way down at the bottom.
You fellows are all better than me.
I'm way down at the bottom.
And he was so secure in the love
of God because Jesus came for sinners.
1 John 4 says in verse 19, we
love, 1 John 4, 19, we love because,
because means the foundation is he first loved
us.
That's the foundation on which we love.
We love God.
We love Jesus because he first loved us.
Why is the, why is the love that
many believers have for Jesus so weak?
I'm very sorry to say that, but I've
seen in every country and in every denomination,
they are very fervent in praise and worship
and very fervent sometimes in evangelism and doing
things for the Lord and sometimes even giving
money for the Lord's work and missionary work
and missionary activity.
Very fervent in all these things, but very
weak in personal devotion to Jesus Christ.
Their devotion to Jesus Christ is a little
string.
It's like a little string.
You don't know when it'll snap.
And yet that should be the strongest rope
in our life.
Everything else, praise and worship, evangelism, missionary activity
must all be secondary.
This must be the strongest thing in our
life.
In fact, when we have moved away from
devotion to Christ, brother, you've lost the most
important thing in Christianity.
The Lord told the church in Ephesus and
the leader in Ephesus, you do all these
good things, but you've left your first love.
Remember from where you've fallen.
What did he do wrong?
He still had a lot of activity there.
You read in Revelation 2.
He was still very active, still caring for
purity of doctrine and everything.
What he lost was his love for Jesus.
And when he lost that, he lost everything.
But why is it so many people's love
for Jesus is weak?
Because their understanding of God's love for them
is weak.
We love, it says, because He first loved
us.
If you think His love for you is
very little, you love Him very little.
The greater your understanding of God's love for
you, the more you'll be able to love
Him.
It's directly proportional.
We love because He first loved us.
He loved me little, then you love Him
little.
He loved me to a fantastic, unimaginable extent,
I will love Him to a fantastic, unimaginable
extent.
He gave everything in His love for me,
I will love Him.
It all depends on your understanding of the
love of God.
Why is it Christians are so stingy and
miserly when it comes to God's work?
Shall I tell you?
They haven't understood the love of God.
I've seen this.
So many Christians who think they are so
spiritual, who think they are so holy, when
it comes to giving of their time or
their money for the work of God.
They are so cold and calculating and miserly.
You know why?
They have no understanding of the love of
God.
How would you give to a beggar?
Money to a beggar.
I don't know whether you have many beggars
here.
We have many in India.
How do you give money to a total
stranger who's a beggar, comes begging at your
gate?
You're not going to lavish a fortune on
that beggar.
But to ease your conscience, maybe you'll give
him some old clothes or give him some
food, give him a little bit of money.
Compare your giving to a beggar with your
giving to God and see if there's not
a similarity.
Be honest.
Don't you give to God just like you
give to a beggar?
Cold, calculating way.
Is that the way you'd give an inheritance
to a son?
Is that a way you would pass on
to your son or daughter?
No.
Why?
Because you love your son and daughter so
much.
You don't love God so much.
When it comes to God's house, why is
it we're stingy and miserly?
We're not stingy and miserly when we are
building our own house, are we?
Oh no, that's my house.
One of the things that many, many years
ago God had to reveal to me was
that God's house was my house.
And that changed my whole way of thinking.
God's house was my house.
Have you seen it?
It all has to begin with a revelation
of the love of God.
My dear brothers and sisters, I'm sorry to
disappoint you, but you are not as spiritual
as you think you are.
I'm sorry to say that, but it's true.
You are not as spiritual as you thought
all these years you were.
Today you're getting revelation.
All the preachers who spoke to you were
tickling your ears.
They wanted to keep you happy.
I want to heal you, not keep you
happy and sick.
It's sickness not to love God with all
our hearts.
Sure, any part of your heart that doesn't
love God, that part is sick.
And I want to heal you.
I don't want to pat you on your
back and say you're wonderful people when you're
not.
If you love God with all your heart,
you're a wonderful brother or sister.
If you don't, there's some part in you
that's sick, cancerous, that needs to be healed.
It's for your good that I say that.
It's like giving you a scan of the
inner part of your life and there's no
use getting upset with the scan.
There's healing.
And so, the foundation, how much God loves
me, is so very important.
I've discovered through the years that people, Christians,
believers, in different situations, in different churches, in
different countries, different denominations, I've discovered that the
root cause of almost every problem is a
failure to understand God's immense love for us.
I know it is true in my life.
I became a Christian when I was 19
years old and my temperament was introverted, shy,
reserved.
If I went to a hall, I would
always like to take the back seat somewhere
in the corner, merge in the crowd and
not be known or seen.
I never wanted to stand up in front.
I never took part in public speaking or
debating or anything in school.
I wasn't that type.
I was insecure, feeling inferior to others.
And you know how we are when we
feel inferior to others.
We always want to do things to impress
others.
We want to say things to impress others.
Have you noticed that in yourself?
When you speak to other believers, you want
to say something that will be impressive and
you go away and afterwards you wonder, did
I say something impressive enough?
It's all insecurity.
Where does all this insecurity come from?
It comes from the fact that I don't
know God.
I'm not secure in the love of God.
Well, I was like that.
And God changed me.
Changed me completely.
I used to be scared to stand before
people.
If I got up to stand before people,
I always wanted to say something impressive.
Even when I became a preacher.
God asked me, do you want to impress
people or do you want to help them?
I said, Lord, I want to help them.
Then the Lord just stopped trying to impress
them, just helped them.
But it wasn't easy.
Every time I stood up, I wanted to
impress people.
Because I myself was insecure.
The more insecure you are, the more you
want to impress people.
You don't want to help them.
You want to say things to impress people.
You want to do things to impress people.
You want to act in a way that
impresses people.
I see a lot of people in India
who were good, God-fearing Christians.
And then they saw some American preacher on
television who would hold the mic and walk
up and down and up and down and
pump the table and do all types of
things.
And they began to start doing that.
I saw this change coming over a lot
of preachers.
I said, this is like a joke.
They were perfectly alright till now.
What happened to them?
They were watching television, Christian television.
And they felt, this is more impressive than
the old way of doing it.
They were people.
I feel sorry for them.
I'm not impressed.
I mean, you may be impressed.
I'm not.
Because I can't imagine Jesus walking up and
down like that when he was preaching.
I don't see that picture in the Gospels.
Jesus was secure in the love of his
Father.
The more secure you are in the love
of your Father, you don't want to impress
any Tom, Dick or Harry or anybody else.
You're happy.
God's happy with you.
You're happy with God.
My brother, sister, this is the root cause
of your problem.
Jealousy.
Do you know that all jealousy comes because
you're insecure.
You feel God's not given you a good
lot in life.
He's given a better lot to the other
person.
He's made that other person more good looking.
He's made that other person richer.
He's given that other person more gifts.
He's done so many things for the other
person and he's not done for you.
You are too short or you're too tall
or you're too fat or you're too thin.
Something's always wrong with you and something's right
with the other person.
This is all because of insecurity in the
love of God.
When you understand the love of God, you
realize that God didn't make any mistake in
your height or your size or your personality
or your face or your intelligence or anything.
You are perfectly happy to be what you
are.
And you realize that God had a purpose
in everything.
I started losing my hair when I was
about 21 years old.
It's not exactly exciting for a young man
when he starts losing his hair and his
hairline starts receding.
Because, you know, all young men begin to
think, what do the girls think about me
when my hairline's receding?
And they begin to worry about it.
Well, quite frankly, I didn't worry about it
at all because by the time I'd come
to a little security in the fact that
God loved me and He knew everything about
me.
And if that was in my genes, that
which made my hairline recede, okay.
And I discovered later there was a purpose
in it.
You know, I was preaching, I started preaching
when I was 21, 22, and by the
time I was 23 or so, I was
preaching in large conventions with many thousands of
people.
And because I had this receding hairline, they
thought I was 33 and I was only
23.
And they would listen to me.
Otherwise they may not have listened.
They'd say, what does this young fellow got
up there to teach us?
So I saw there was a reason.
And I praised the Lord for it.
There's a reason in everything God does.
You may not understand it fully, but in
everything there's a reason.
God's love for us is perfect.
The verse that transformed my life is John
17, 23.
John 17 and verse 23, it says here,
one of the things that Jesus wants the
world to know.
There are two things he says here.
I want the world to know through my
disciples.
This is a prayer for his disciples.
I in them, thou in me.
You've got to apply this to yourself.
Jesus in you, the Father in Jesus, so
that together we may become perfectly one.
As believers, so that the world may know
two things.
One, that the Father sent Jesus to be
the Savior of the world.
The world really needs to know that.
And the second thing, that the world must
look at me the way I live and
realize that I am loved by the Father
exactly as he loved Jesus.
Now there are many verses in the Bible
that teaches that God loves us.
But as far as I know, this is
the only one that teaches us how much
he loves us.
As much as he loved Jesus.
You know, that's the verse that changed my
life.
That's the verse that helped an insecure, introverted,
shy, retiring young person to flower and bloom,
to serve God, to find security.
The fact that unbelievable as it may sound,
God loves me as he loved Jesus.
It's got nothing to do with our deserving
him.
The moment you begin to think of deserving,
you'll never understand God's love.
It's got nothing to do with deserving.
None of us deserve it.
God has just decided to love me as
he loved Jesus.
I'll never forget the story of a mother,
of a man, of a young man, who
was a very violent criminal, a serial killer.
And the police finally caught him after he
had killed many people and raped many women
and done a lot of harm in a
certain locality.
And the whole town was just waiting for
the fellow to be hanged.
And he was brought to court and the
verdict was given that he has to be
put to death.
And after the judge gave the verdict and
the whole courtroom applauded the verdict and rejoiced,
the entire jury was in favor of the
death penalty.
There was an old woman who walked up
to this young man and embraced him and
said to all the people in the court,
whatever you people may say, I still love
my little boy.
I'm his mother.
See, that's a mother's love, to stand up
with her criminal son against the whole town.
God's love is like that.
The love of God is inexplainable.
It's way beyond our imagination.
He loves us just as we are.
He doesn't want us to change.
You know, many of us may have had
parents who gave us what we could call
performance love.
Performance love means if you behave, I love
you.
If you don't behave, well, I'm not going
to love you.
We've had teachers like that in school who
give us performance love.
Many husbands are like that.
Performance love.
If you behave well, I love you.
If you don't behave well, I'll chuck you
and choose somebody else.
We live in a world like that.
We can feel that in the church.
And we can feel that in the church
also.
We are surrounded by people who are offering
us performance love.
If I conduct myself properly, I'm accepted.
If I make a mistake, oh, they frown
upon me.
If I conform to everything this particular church
believes and teaches, the code of conduct, the
code of dress, the code of everything, I
dress exactly like them, behave exactly like them,
they look at me in a funny way.
That's not the love of God.
That's a cult.
I never in my life want to build
a cult.
A lot of churches are like that.
God's not like that.
If God plants ten trees down a road,
every tree will be different.
If man builds ten apartments down the road,
they'll all be the same, down to the
last nut and bolt.
That's the difference between man's work and God's
work.
When man builds a church, everybody's exactly the
same.
They talk the same, they pray the same,
they preach the same, they dress the same,
they behave the same.
That's man's work.
When God builds a church, ten people in
a church, all ten will be different.
They may dress differently, they may talk differently,
they pray differently, they preach differently.
They're all themselves.
I have only four children, God is a
God of variety.
He didn't make the world in black and
white.
Thank God He didn't.
He's got so many colors.
Millions of colors, actually.
Look at a sunset.
No artist can ever paint anything like that.
You don't have so many paints on earth.
That's how God is.
But this wonderful God has been taken by
Christians and made into a black and white
God who makes everything like this or that.
He isn't like that.
He doesn't want you to be different before
He loves you.
He loves you just as you are.
He sent Jesus to die not for those
who live up to a certain level.
He sent Jesus to die for everybody.
And to believe that God loves you exactly
as He loved Jesus can transform your life.
It can change you completely.
It's God's Word.
I mean, if it was not written in
God's Word I wouldn't believe it.
Every problem in your life comes because this
foundation is not right.
What about competition among believers?
I've seen so much of it in Christian
circles.
One fellow wants to preach and show he's
a better preacher than the other fellow who
came to preach before him.
What is this?
Is this business or is it the house
of God?
It's terrible.
Why does this fellow want to show that
he's a better preacher than the other person?
Because he's not happy with God accepting him.
He wants the people to accept him too.
All the problems come and we want people
to accept us.
We're not happy with God having accepted us.
Do you know that God has accepted me
whether I can preach or not?
Do you know that God accepts you even
if you can't preach at all?
We have some brothers in our church back
in Bangalore who can't sing one line of
a hymn properly.
Not one line.
They go wrong.
But you know what they do sometimes in
our public times of worship?
They start a hymn completely off-tune, off
-key, and nobody knows how to follow them
because the whole thing is off.
But some gracious brother who's got the ability
to sing will start that again and we'll
all sing it together.
That's the body of Christ.
And we don't make that person feel unwanted
just because he can't sing properly.
God loves him, so what if he can't
sing properly?
He's got a good heart.
That's what God sees.
If you had a retarded child in your
home, would you always make him feel unwanted?
Then you're not a good father or mother.
A good church is one where everybody's accepted
just as they are.
You know, we've grown up in insecurity in
the world around us, in our place of
work, in our society.
People will accept us only if we perform.
The world is like that.
And so we're always trying to perform, to
come up to the mark.
And then we become Christians and come to
the church and we know we've got to
perform here.
You don't have to, brother and sister.
This is God's house.
You don't have to perform.
You don't have to reach a standard.
You may be retarded.
God loves you just as you are.
Please remember that.
You don't have to compete with anybody.
You don't have to show that you can
pray better than anyone, or sing better than
anyone, or preach better than anyone, or bring
up your family better than anyone.
No!
Do you see a brother with a wonderful
family?
Praise God!
Is your family not so good?
Never mind!
Don't bring up your children so that some
of them will waver.
Don't worry!
God will bring them back.
But don't feel inferior in the church.
If there's one place on earth people should
not feel inferior.
This is the church.
And unfortunately people do.
Because churches are not preaching the love of
God enough.
That God's accepted you as you are.
That you were chosen before the foundation of
the world.
Have you read that verse?
That God chose us in Christ?
Ephesians 1, 2 and 3.
Before the foundation of the world He chose
us in Him.
You know what that means?
Before there was an Adam and Eve.
And go back still further.
Before there was a Lucifer.
Before he fell and became the devil.
Go back still further.
Before God created the heaven and earth.
You go back.
Before there were any angels.
Before there was anything.
What was there?
This is the way I read it.
There was Father.
Son.
And Holy Spirit.
And me.
In God's mind.
You think that's arrogance?
It's not arrogance.
It's just faith in God's word.
And you.
If you are a child of God.
It says you were chosen in Him before
the foundation of the world.
I just believe it.
That's all.
That there was Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And I was going to be born millions
of years later.
Imagine that.
I tell you.
That brings so much security to me.
When you realize that.
You just got to believe what it says
in Ephesians 1 verse 3 and 4.
Your name was there.
You may have accepted Christ in the 20th
century.
But God knew about it way back.
And He had your name in mind.
That's how God is.
And I thank God for the security of
my life.
It transformed me completely.
It delivered me from all competition.
I'm not competing with anybody in the world
to preach better.
To build a better church or a better
home or anything like that.
I'm not here to compare my children with
anybody's children in the whole wide world.
I'm not here to compare my life with
anybody else's life.
My life has become secure.
Because of one reason.
I know that God loves me as much
as I can give all of you this
morning.
To be secure in the love of God.
I want to invite you to this life
brother, sister.
Let's get the foundation absolutely solid.
You cannot be jealous of anyone.
Because God determined how you should be.
God determined the color of my skin.
God determined where I should be born.
God determined when I should be born.
God determined my parents.
He determined my circumstances.
He determined my temperament.
He determined my temperament because He needed such
a person with such a temperament in the
body of Christ.
And He determined your temperament and it's different
from mine.
Thank God it's different.
Thank God you and I are not the
same because we're meant to be different.
Are all the fingers the same?
No.
How terrible it would be if all the
fingers were the same.
Thank God the thumb is very different.
Why do you want to be like my
body?
Why do you want to be like somebody
else?
If God's made you to be an eye
why do you want to be a ear?
I don't want to be something different from
what God's made me.
I tell people repeatedly in our church I
say, please don't try to preach like me.
Please don't try to be like me.
God wants only one Zakpoon in the body
of Christ.
He wants you to be yourself.
Be yourself and don't think when you're yourself
you're inferior.
It was not meant to see.
It was meant for some other function.
Don't compare yourself with the eye.
Some other member of the body.
You are yourself.
God's prepared you to be a unique member
in the body of Christ and He loves
you just as you are.
You know inside us we all have a
little person who is afraid of what other
people think of us.
We're always trying to impress that old man
must be crucified put him to death.
God loves us just as we are.
Will you pray a little prayer?
A prayer of thanksgiving.
Say, Lord Jesus I want to thank you
that I'm loved.
Father I thank you God for being my
father and that you love me just as
I am.
Even if nobody in the world loves me
you love me just as I am.
And I thank you that you've accepted me
just as I am.
Heavenly Father we thank you for the wonderful
message of the gospel meant to change our
lives especially the fact of your acceptance.
We thank you for it.
In Jesus name.
Amen.