God Loves Us with All of His Heart

A) God is love; wholehearted love (1 John 4:16). 
The very essence of God is wholehearted love. Wholehearted love is of the most importance to God’s personality and in all of His relationships; to the Son, to us, and in what He desires from us. From eternity past, God loves with all of His heart and strength. This is how the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father.

B) The love in God’s heart has at least five distinct expressions that are deeply interrelated:
1) God’s love for Jesus: God intensely loves Jesus with all His heart.

2) God’s love for us: He loves us with all of His heart, mind, and strength. He loves the redeemed with the same intensity that He loves Jesus.

3) Our love for God: God’s very own love is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit.
    (Romans 5:5)

4) Our love for ourselves: We love ourselves in God’s love and for God’s sake.

5) Our love for others: We love others in the overflow of experiencing God’s love.
    (1 John 4:19)

C) God loves us with the same intensity that God loves Jesus, and we must abide in this truth all of our days (John 15:9; 17:23).

D) Abide in love:
To abide in love means to continually live in it. This requires that we focus on living in God’s love. We set our heart to understanding this (1 John 3:1). We must be students of God’s emotions; growing in our understanding of His multi-faceted love.

E) The union in the Godhead reveals the nature, quality, and intensity of God's love and relationships.
These relationships are a picture of what perfect love is, and of how God relates to God, how He relates to us, and how we relate to Him and others. Each person of the Trinity enjoys and fully engages in the relationship with the others. Jesus has joy and enthusiasm in His love for the Father. He is moved in loving the Father and in being loved by the Father. His love is never mechanical. He is not disinterested or bored in His relationship with the Father.

F) We best understand God’s love as we consider the glorious truth of the Trinity.
The way that God loves within the Trinity is the way He loves us, it is the very same love. He never suspends one attribute for even one moment. He always loves in fullness; He never loves us with just a part of His love, because that would be to deny His own character. He will never diminish or grow in love, because His love is infinite in measure and eternal in duration.

G) God’s greatness includes His intense love, infinite power, great wisdom, and majestic splendor.
Insight into God’s greatness includes seeing the quality of His love and the relationships within the Godhead. This gives us insight into Jesus’ beauty, supremacy, and worth.

Lesson on Psalm 34

If we fear the Lord (love, worship, honor and reverence Him; are in awe of Him) we are admonished to do the following:
     1) keep our tongue from speaking evil 
     2) stop telling lies
     3) turn away from evil and do good
     4) pursue and maintain peace
     5) seek the Lord by setting our mind and heart on Him

Those of us that worship God will have His best; worship opens doors to all His goodness. {Psalm 34:9}

If your heart is broken, God is right there with you, and He saves those whose spirits have been crushed. {Psalm 34:18}

The righteous (those in right standing with God) face many troubles, but the Lord comes to the rescue each time. {Psalm 34:19}

Our full surrender to God gives us the privilege to enter into His perfect plan and destiny for our lives. We can't have more of God without a full surrender to Him.

In Psalm 34, David tells us how to enjoy God and His blessings:
To enjoy God and His blessings, seek Him for salvation, fear (worship) Him, and walk in His ways. David is aware that deception and evil are not the way to the good life. Rather, seeking God for deliverance, fearing (worshipping) Him, and walking in His ways are the way to enjoy God and His blessings.

We can draw four practical lessons from this Psalm:
1) The life that God blesses is not free from extreme trials.
      a) Some trials are due to our own sins and shortcomings.
      b) Some trials are due to the sins of others against us.
      c) When we turn to the Lord in our trials, God can use even our past sins for His holy purpose.

2) Our trials should drive us to the end of ourselves so that we seek the Lord for salvation as we fear Him and learn to walk in His ways.

We can break this down into four components:
     a) To come to the end of ourselves, we must be brokenhearted and contrite over our sins.
     b) Our brokenness should drive us to seek the Lord for salvation and take refuge in Him.
     c) To experience God’s salvation, we must fear (worship) Him.
     d) To fear the Lord is to live in obedience to Him.

3) When we experience God’s blessings, He expects us to share it with others and to invite them to experience God’s blessings, too.

4) The ultimate experience of God’s blessing and salvation will not be in this life, but in the life to come.