Share the Love - How to Tell His Story, Part 1

I have a confession to make. I'm not in the but even I can read directions knowing the directions makes all the difference in the world and you know the same thing is true about sharing God's love with others. If you know the directions if you learn some simple steps you can tell his story with confidence in such a way lost the can experience the saving grace of Christ.

Don't miss simple directions about sharing the store. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with your finger Living on the Edges of international discipleship ministry between the Bible teaching early. This program should continue serious sure the love talk to anyone about God getting back to the basics basics of Christian learn how to take the entire message of the gospel and distill it down to it, easy to remember. Outline bring clarity and confidence. The next time you have the opportunity to talk with someone about God select storage. Belfour's message how to tell his story from Romans chapter 6. From the moment that you're born and take your first breath to the moment you take your last breath. Every person on this planet is in a passionate pursuit to be loved. You took a little breath and you begin to cry when you were born and you were placed on your mother's chest and all of a sudden things got better as a two-year-old.

All of us had that moment when we got afraid in the night we ran and climbed in bed searching for comfort to be belonging to care for your firm to know it's safe.

Then we got a little bit older I went to school when we were preteen and we just long for that one friend or that one group that would just accept this and then the magic of 15 years happened then the search intensified the hormones kick in and we wanted a boyfriend or girlfriend and felt crazy. We found one and then in the young adult years. What happens a search even more intensifies and you're looking for that life partner who are they by midlife. We have been there and done that for a while and were desperately searching for love and finding people that won't look just on the outside won't love us for what we've done or what we have willing to just care about us. No strings attached. The flip side of midlife you're looking for people who love you in spite of what you've done and just will care and then the day comes, the search continues all the way to the very very last years and we get old and were longing for people that will put a stop. The pasture longing for people to remember. We have something to offer. Even though our bodies don't work so well in our minds are in a sharp I want you to know every person in this room is desperately pursuing to be loved every day you develop your own story and you've taken a light like I have, and you take your little light with your background and you say this is how I'm going to get loved that.

Here's the question do you have enough light in your little torch in your little view to solve that issue and if you look around at most marriages and most families in our journeys. The fact is we don't imagine if you will, instead of me and you with one little light I came from a certain family from a certain part of the country with a certain worldview like everyone here and everyone here is passionately who will love me who works at me. Do I have value. How much education do I need to have will I do this will I do that all of us have this one little light but here's what what you get until you understand the big picture story of God's love for you. You will searching day and you will have one disappointment after the next disappointment when the one person doesn't come through in the job doesn't come through and what you thought you would do or even if you do it and find its empty is the last part of our series on sharing the love Ella take you on a journey to explain to you the story of God's love the big picture it's contained many of you I watched you on planes you read a paperback like this.

A fiction usually or romance novel. I've watched some of you knock it out in two or three days. Will this is the greatest romance novel paperback I have in my hands ever written.

It's God's love letter to us, but the differences is that hunger about you.

There's a lot of hard names in here and it covers a lot of space and a lot of years at least the first time open the Bible, I did have a clue what it really said or what it really meant that my experiences most authentic Christ followers don't know too much about the Bible these days either. So what I want to do is I want to give you the entire Bible already entire Bible and want to give you the overview and what you see that God has a story and there's four acts in his story like in a great play Act I Act II Act III Act IV Act I opens up, and one is how it all began in the Bible it opens in Genesis chapter 1 it talks about creation, God wants you to know, and his love story.

He made you for himself. Think of that you go out at night or early in the morning as I do sometimes and you look up and you see the stars are really bright and then you realize that this one little planet and this one little solar system is in a galaxy in our galaxy supposedly has about 100 billion stars and some project that there's 100 to 200 billion galaxies, and the God spoke and all that came into existence. The pinnacle of his creation was you man and he didn't just make you and then go off and let you run your life.

He made you for himself. He cares about you he loves you. God created originally a perfect relationship in a perfect world, giving, receiving, perfect love.

It started in the garden. Our first parents intimacy. No shame, no guilt, absolute connection, love, affirmation, authenticity that both went vertical and horizontal love gives life that leads to relationship at the heart of everything. The God of the Bible talks about. He loves us. He created us, so he gives life, he breathed into us and there was life in a created relationship and so God walk in the garden. What that means and how it looked.

I don't know he wanted connection he made us for himself and the result of that is purpose. Ephesians 210 says we are his workmanship or his work of art were his master piece and he says were created unto good works with before the foundations of the earth.

We should walk in it. God has a plan, there is a purpose. History is linear, it started one place it's going somewhere you're a part of it. You were made for him and what most people don't know what you really matter, and there's a plan for you. After he said let us make man in our likeness. When the tri-unity of God created all that there is the next thing he said and let them rule over the earth and fish of the sea your made like God you can think and feel and choose and create an there's a plan. A lot of people never never never know that, the most dramatic moment I had in experiencing how God must feel about me was in the birth of our first child, and it was a very complicated birthing is a 27 hour labor and there's complications of the put a fetal monitor on my little boy and it would go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. You know kids heartbeat when the real small like that is for a fast and then trees would have a contraction and beep beep beep beep beep beep and then the nurse would be there. The doctor there in the make it right it in every beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep people for 27 hours. We did that believe it was a lot harder on her than was omitted, but I mean together. We thought we you know his heart almost stopped for more than just a few seconds. I just I give that boy back to God. Eight times probably took them back nine and finally, oh God, please.

Giving back the 10th time after 27 hours. He was born in that they clean them up and they placed him on Teresa's chest and she was exhausted and that little boy just hug next to her and then I took him and put them in my arms and gave me about a half-hour with him and here's all I can tell you I can even explain it is I didn't have a dad that ever said he loved me. My dad was an alcoholic and he did but he never verbalized a need to know how to get that across. And so I had that big heart. Father wound to and now I got a part of me in a part of trees not holding it at all. I can tell you emotions came out of me that I didn't know existed just tears of joy and a member literally getting down on the linoleum floor, holding my boy and just thanking God for life and then just wondering. It was just instinctive. What's the purpose wonder what this boy and I are going to do what about your plan is for him. Can I tell you something, I mean on just one puny man.

I can't tell you how much I love that little boy and I have for the last 31 years. That's how God feels about you. You believe that that's how God feels about you except infinitely more. He's a good guy with a good plan that's Act I.

It goes from Genesis chapter 1 Genesis chapter 2, but to us it is a bad part of the story is ugly is terrible.

Act II is how it all went wrong. The theologians call it the fall see God's love isn't some sort of plastic superficial love. It's a love it's real and the love that's real has to give people the opportunity to accepted or rejected. So God allowed us to choose reject his love in this perfect environment where we had all that we needed is mankind. God gave the option to turn away to reject him. If we so chose.

In the choice of Adam and our first parents leave to reject God's love ushered in sin and death and selfishness in every relationship, separating us from God, ourselves and others see. Love gives life, but love also gives freedom. Freedom that leads to consequences and you can put a bird in a cage inside the bird. Love you, but you know when you open the cage.

It's when you have the freedom to go where ever and fly back. There's relationship God didn't create little robots are little machines are little people that I love you God I love you God. I do whatever you want he gave you he gave our first parents. He gave all of us the freedom to accept or reject because he wanted legitimate from our heart. Moral beings the opportunity to love him and our first parents rejected his love and as a result we get to inherit some good things and some bad things. Romans 512 says therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned and the result is separation. No, the way the story goes there was deception and there's evil and there's an enemy called Satan and he fooled and tricked our parents and yet they made a willful choice and as the separation occurred. God said in the day that you sin or eat from that tree you will surely die. But if you read the story you read the paperback version. What you can find is the moment they said they didn't fall over dead physically, but they were separated and spiritually they were taken out of the perfect environment the perfect relationship was broken and they were separated members.

A young pastor getting a call from God to become a good buddy and just was a great guy and from all outward circumstances think that the beautiful wife that he had in the couple little kids that he had and things were going great and he gave me a call on the phone and by the way some of you think us pastors know a lot were were learning. But I'll tell you the first time things happen. There's times where when you get off the phone and someone says so-and-so committed suicide or they lost the baby were you get a call like this you just pray like crazy. Oh God, I don't know what to do and this is one of those calls I was a very young pastor said man I gotta talk to you. We found ourselves sitting across from one another, and they pulled out a sheet of paper. So what's that says that's what was stuck on the refrigerator when I got home today. I don't love you anymore, I'm gone. I'm never coming back said I got home and that was on the refrigerator.

I know we had a problem winning have any big arguments she's gone and all her stuff is gone and most of mine and I don't know where the separated can I tell you something else, just as the God who created you major for himself and loves you and feels infinitely more about you. Like I felt with my son when you sin when you walk away from God.

When you do your own thing. When you do things that hurt other people. You have got feels God feels he's accusing being he's a person.

He feels like that man with his wife walked out on him. The separation God's heart gets broken. The Bible says that he grieves. So Act I is creation and love brings life and life leads to relationship Act II is a sad one Act II is that love gives freedom, but leaves the consequences and death and separation and then Act III is really it's the it's the big act. If you get the novel and by the way if you've never read it, you really should. I was 18, forever open the Bible, but at Act III starts from Genesis end of Genesis chapter 3 and goes all the way to almost the end to Revelation chapter 20 and Act III is the exciting part. This is how God's love rescued us.

You've heard it before you seen it, but greater love has no one than this one. Lay down his life for his friend.

That's the test of love you willing to give your all, God the son took on human flesh. He came to earth, fully man and fully God. He lived a perfect life to reveal that's heart's Jesus and then he offered his life as a sacrifice and a payment for the sins of all people of all time that whoever would choose to receive new life may have love gives forgiveness that leads to peace.

The whole point. God knew he would give us freedom. God knew that with that freedom, all-knowing, all-powerful, even outside of time gives us that freedom, but from the foundations of the earth, said the high price tag of our freedom would mean evil and suffering in a fallen world. Of course, but would mean for him, that God the son would come and lay down his life to rescue us to redeem us that word redeem his somethings bad and broken and torn. It gets bought back it gets repaired. You want to know what gods really like is not some invisible force. It's not some invisible list of rules or morality.

That's not at all what Jesus taught is not about religion is not about trying to be good.

It's about reestablishing the connection and the heart and the relationship between your creator and you that was always God's purpose, but when sin entered the world, everyone of us in this room right we lie we pretend we love people more than we do. When people don't come through for us. We try and act better than we are. We sin, how many people here from parents who divorced and you thought things would never be that way. How many of you have had someone walk out on you, you had a business partner lie to you, you had a boyfriend or girlfriend that cheated on you.

It's a fallen world.

Jesus came and lived the perfect life. The site this is the father's heart. He wants to repair if you want to know what God is really like. It's Jesus talking with a prostitute.

How does he respond to her.

It's Jesus helping a poor person. It's Jesus here with religious people who try and put burdens on people Kenny cuts him off at the knees is looking for what's happening in people's heart in their life and so he gives forgiveness.

It's a gift that leads to peace. Notice the result is reconciliation that just simply means that you become friends again with God.

When you reconciled some of you have been through a very difficult time in your marriage you were separated for a season and what's it called when you know you probably go to some counseling. You probably realize like most of us have a lot of baggage and then you begin to learn to communicate and then you forgive one another and then your reconciled.

If you've ever been separated and the wounds were really pretty deep and there were some anger and there were some hurt and there were times we were just enemies and when the love gets restored.

Your friends again, and that's what Act III is. Notice what the Scripture says. Second Corinthians 517 and 18 says therefore if anyone is in Christ, if anyone would understand it to doesn't have to be your life story but you can turn from your sin and ask him to forgive you. Based on what he did on the cross. If you're in Christ is what he promises, he's a new creation the old is gone, the new has come in all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ that I love this. And then he gave us the ministry of reconciliation that there is this amazing thing.

I never heard of. I grew up in a church that was out to lunch.

Didn't believe it, or teach God.

God's word and people said one thing and lived another way, so I rejected Christianity I rejected God. But then I met a group of people that understood about the love of God, and they lived out with their life and with their lips, and they introduced me to his word and they were the conduit of that love in my heart that change my life. That's the ministry of reconciliation that your neighbors and your coworkers and your kids and your friends and your schoolmates would understand they would have a living Jesus inside of you living out imperfectly, but with progress to let them know that their loved everyone's looking for love right. There's not a lot of competition when you start loving people in there something amazing that happens when you become a conduit of the love of God and you see people's lives transformed is when you are forgiven and you have peace you actually can give away something that you never could choose good to be back with his application. Just a quick reminder this message how to tell his story is from his series, share the love, how to talk to anyone about God for lots of reasons we can be hesitant to talk about her faith. That's why Chip taught this four-part series to boost your confidence and hope you have spontaneous conversations about your relationship with Jesus. If you'd like to hear this message again the chipping remap is perfect for free access or one tab sharing of these powerful messages. If you prefer CDs take advantage of our honor discounts. Remember, the MP3s are always free.

Just visit us online at http://livingontheedge.org or give us a call at triple late. 333-6003 will ship before you come back with some final thoughts. You know were living in a day were evils called good goods called evil one we are Living on the Edge doing the bad old a radical shift of values in America and around the world will day we are living in a day where things that we would all call evil are being called good the values in America have been flipped upside down and whether that's in sexual morality, whether that's in the life of an unborn child, or whether that's in things like what's it mean to be married. We are Living on the Edge take a strong stand to teach what the Bible says. Not in a harsh way, not in a way that puts people down. But in a way that gives life seek God designed life to work in a certain way. He has a design for marriage for sexuality for family and what we've done in the last year is create very specific courses and teachings that help God's people first practice that and then communicate that in a winsome way to a world that is very very confused. The world is not the enemy. Jesus didn't come to condemn the world, he came to save the world but we as God's children have to model what that looks like, and we are Living on the Edge of creating resources in this coming year.

That's going to address the most controversial and difficult issues of our day. When you give to Living on the Edge you're taking a stand for biblical morality for marriage and helping our young people understand what biblical sexuality is all about. We long to help God's people grow and then in a winsome and loving way share that love with the people around them. Will you please help us Dave why don't you tell them what their gift will mean this month because it's going to mean a lot when you give to Living on the Edge you become part of a great team of Christians who are committed to sharing the truth of God's word and working to keep doing that as long as were able you'd like to help us do that December is the perfect time because every gift we received is doubled, dollar for dollar to send a donation.

Just go to LivingontheEdge.org Donate all the app or give us a call at triple late. 333-6003 that's AAA 333-6003. Your generosity is much appreciated as we wrap up today's message. The major point was pretty simple today and the teaching the importance of getting clear on exactly what the gospel is so that you can articulated clearly and and even in a brief amount of time and I have to tell you story that is so vivid in my mind it's one of those things that is just like a movie and I can push a button and relive it in my mind almost in a moments notice of many many many years ago. My kids were fairly small. We went down to visit my parents in Florida and were driving up from Florida back to Texas and we are on the freeway and as we were going one direction on the freeway. Cars were coming the opposite direction and literally it was like in slow motion, but I saw a car hit another car hit the embankment and then the car went up in the air and rotated in the air and then landed in the median and I'm you know like about Otto maybe eight 900 yards away.

I'm coming 65 miles an hour, but no one's there. I see the car land and crash and then I see a body literally thrown from the car and I mean what am I supposed to do and so it all happened right in front of me. I pulled off to the left side. I was the very first person there. Within a minute or two, someone from the other lane pulled and someone called 911 I got there and it was like a movie except the bad part.

It was not a movie and there was a man laying on the grass and was obvious he was deeply injured and I put my my hand under his head and I began to talk with him a little bit, and I've never been in the presence of someone that I thought was maybe minutes away from dying and I remember clearly prompted by God saying is okay can I pray for you and he is eyes.

He nodded, and yes it was coherent and and I prayed for him and then immediately I thought and some two other people came I was little self-conscious and I thought this is not a time to be self-conscious. I said excuse me sir, I have no idea where you're coming from but things do not look good right now.

I want to share with you that God loves you and II literally in about two and half minutes clearly share the gospel and I said do you understand, and his eyes were kind of nodding that he understood. By that time, police and fire trucks.

I mean, I don't know where they came from, and people rushed in and told us to clear away and I remember shaken going back literally. My hands were shaking. Getting back in my car with my family, my kids and thanking God that I had taken the time to learn the story and could articulated clearly and briefly. It's the power of God to salvation is the gospel. Let me encourage you back let me challenge you make sure you understand and can communicate the gospel clearly someone's eternity may depend on it will just before we close.

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333-6003 help me. Thank you in advance for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. Until next time for everyone here is saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge