Do You Know How to Love God? - Rural Reset 1/21 [3]

Episode Description:
In this episode, Pastor TJ Freeman addresses common struggles Christians face in their relationship with God, such as finding Bible reading unengaging, experiencing a stagnant prayer life, and feeling disconnected during church services. He offers practical advice on rekindling a love for God, drawing from personal experiences and scriptural insights. Join us as we simplify and refocus our spiritual walk to foster a deeper, more meaningful connection with the Lord.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Admitting Struggles in Faith:
   • Common frustrations in a Christian's walk with the Lord.
   • Feeling disconnected from the Bible and prayer.
2. Challenges in Bible Reading:
   • The Bible feeling outdated or irrelevant.
   • Overwhelmed by complex passages and long lists.
   • Time constraints and lack of excitement.
3. Difficulties in Prayer Life:
   • Feeling like prayers are unheard or ineffective.
   • Comparing oneself to others' seemingly eloquent prayers.
   • Forgetting to pray or lacking meaningful prayer time.
4. Engagement in Church:
   • Struggling to stay focused during sermons.
   • Not feeling emotionally connected to worship music.
   • Kids' reluctance to attend church.
5. Simplifying and Refocusing:
   • Clearing the clutter to start fresh in your spiritual walk.
   • Emphasizing the basics of Christian faith in rural settings.
6. Loving God:
   • Jesus' greatest commandment: Loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:34-38).
   • Understanding love as a choice and an active effort.
   • Learning to love God despite struggles, trials, and past experiences.
7. Transformation through Renewal:
   • The role of renewing your mind in spiritual transformation (Romans 12:1-2).
   • Loving what God loves and hating what He hates.
   • Actively engaging in transforming thoughts and behaviors to align with God's will.
8. Practical Steps:
   • Addressing negative thoughts and cultivating positive ones.
   • Embracing difficult circumstances and people with Christ-like love.
   • Memorizing and meditating on key scriptures to renew your mind.

Conclusion:

• Encouragement to embrace the basics of loving God and renewing your mind.
• Emphasizing that transformation is a collaborative process between God's power and our active participation.

Scripture References:

• Matthew 22:34-38: Jesus' teaching on the greatest commandment.
• Romans 12:1-2: The call to be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

Call to Action:

• Reflect on your current relationship with God.
• Take practical steps to renew your mind and rekindle your love for God.
• Engage actively in your spiritual growth for the benefit of your soul, community, and the glory of God.

Subscribe and Follow:

• Stay updated with new episodes by subscribing to our podcast.
• Follow us on social media for more encouragement and resources.

Transcript

 Have you ever been frustrated in your walk with the Lord?  That can be a little hard to admit,  but as you think about it, deep down, is there a time where you've just felt like,  just not where I want to be in my relationship with the Lord?  Maybe when you think about reading the Bible, you just  don't get excited about it.

It feels like an old, boring book that's sort of disconnected from your life today. You're not sure how things apply. Sometimes you just read things like long lists of names. You're going, I don't even know what to do with this.  Or you read these commands that just sound almost too hard for any real person to live by. 

Maybe you just don't have time to read your Bible. You want to, you mean to, but to take the time to really do it is just tough. And those times that you do make the time. Find yourself sort of drifting or dozing off.  Maybe your prayer life has been the issue.  Sometimes you just feel like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling.

And it's frustrating because it seems like everyone else is able to pray. Some people pray publicly and it's just like, man, did the angels just descend out of these people pray so eloquently  and you pray,  you just get all  gunked up in your mind. Maybe sometimes you forget to pray you want to, but you go through the whole day, maybe a few days, maybe longer.

You're going, man, I just, I really haven't had any meaningful time prayer.  You might have those feelings like your prayers just bounce off the ceiling.  You feel like you're just thinking thoughts or just talking to the wall.  And you wonder, does God really hear me?  Does he really care?  Maybe you look at the fruit of that and go, yeah, as I think about it, I just don't see a lot of ways that the Lord has answered my prayers. 

Maybe it's church.  You know, you're supposed to go to church.  Maybe you go pretty regularly, or maybe you just go when you're able,  but when you're there, it's hard to stay engaged.  You want to, you want to learn, you want to grow. But as you sit there during the sermon, you realize, man, my eyes are kind of glazed over right now.

And I'm not really sure what that guy up there is talking about.  Maybe you don't like the singing. You wish you did. You see the people around you who  close their eyes. They seem so engaged,  but it's just not touching your heart in that way.  You're worried about your voice more than you are worrying about.

Why you're singing.  Maybe your kids don't like going to church and you go because it's something you've always done It's important to you.  But now you're at a point where your kids just really don't want to be there You're wrestling with how to think about that  There's a lot of other ways in which your relationship with the Lord  Might not be quite what you wish it would be  and what I want to do today on this Episode is to help cut through some of that clutter  We can just get so complicated in our lives and in our minds and spiritual things woven into a big complicated mess are just really hard to sort out. 

I just want to take off the weight,  help you start over. 

Well, this is back to reality. This is a podcast that exists to encourage rural Christians. To be really healthy, really growing, really active Christians in your community. And especially in the church in the middle of nowhere.  Hey, I'm TJ Freeman and I am the lead pastor of Christ Church in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania.

We're a rural church in a rural community. I call myself reluctantly rural because I'm one of the people that grew up and wanted to leave the rural community and did, but somehow like a black hole, I got sucked right back in and, uh, now I'm glad that I'm back here.  And, uh, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be faithful to the Lord in the middle of nowhere.

Why does he care about rural places? Especially in a world that seems to have forgotten about them.  If you want to go back and listen to the first two episodes, you can hear kind of a theology of rural, which doesn't sound that exciting, but it's really  huge. It gives us a sense of why God has us out here in the middle of nowhere and what he wants to do with us and his people who live in places that the rest of the world would call the boondocks.

Or like, you know, that forgotten little country town backwards place. I don't think anybody ever says it quite like that, but I just did.  You get the sentiment places that are seemingly less significant because no one's ever heard of them. There's no reason for people to get people to go there. In fact, a lot of people are leaving there kind of like I did.

And we want to know, what does God want to do with us out here in the middle of nowhere? And to begin with, we're going through this series called Rural Reset. It's 21 days, and we're just going to get back to the basics about what it means to be a follower of Christ. And today what we're going to learn is the importance of loving God and how to cultivate a love for God when you don't feel like you love Him like you know you should. 

By the end of this episode, I'm hoping that you'll have enough of a framework to be able to walk away and re engage with God in a way that's good for your own soul, good for other Christians around you, and good for the lost people that the Lord's placed you around, all for the glory of God. So, to begin with, why is this topic of loving God so important?

Well, Jesus talked about it in the book of Matthew, Matthew 22 verses 34 through 38, says, But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. So, this is a group of Religious leaders who are testing Jesus are trying to trip him up.

And here's what they say. They say, Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Which is a tricky question because all of the law is really important. What could God possibly have said that's somehow less important than something else God said?  But the law is a big, complicated thing.  I mean, you read through the Old Testament books on the law.

Those are some of the places where as Christians, we read that we get a little confused. We don't understand what all God meant by some of those things, why some of those laws existed. There's some really strange sounding things in the old Testament law.  And we also, as new Testament Christians, we kind of wonder like, how does the law apply to us today?

I get that I'm not supposed to murder, but am I also not supposed to cut my hair, uh, trim my beard, you know, some of these other things we see in the law. And how do we wrestle with these?  Well, the law was viewed as a little complicated in Jesus's day as well. So these Pharisees trying to trip him up, ask him, well, what's the most important thing?

Well, Jesus answers. This is verse 37 of Matthew 22  says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. With all your soul, with all your mind, this is the great and first commandment.  Well, that sounds like something important. If this is the first and great commandment, if Jesus says, this is the most important thing, like we're going to boil the whole law down to this one principle, it must be a big deal.

And it has everything to do with love. And so we have to ask, what in the world does it mean to love something? And speaking of that, the world has said that love is something that just happens to you. It's in you. It's something that you feel it's something that you don't have a lot of control over, but you should respond to because.

As they'll tell you, that's the most satisfying thing, to be able to really just freely love something.  Well, the Bible has a little bit different take on what love is. I think what we'll see as we keep going through this, love is a decision.  It's something you have to cultivate. Something that's rooted in the truth. 

And it is something, also, that does bubble up from you, and has an emotional component to it.  So what does it mean to love something?  Well, I love a lot of things.  You know what I really love?  I love sushi.  I do.  It's something I never even thought to try until well into adulthood, when I was far away from my little rural town, in a bigger place, and somebody took me to a sushi restaurant. 

And I was not thinking I was going to like it at all. I remember saying, all right,  I guess if I have to eat this, I'll try something that's cooked. I don't want any of that raw business up in here. And that's how I started out. But I got to tell you  the first time I clumsily grabbed a hold of those chopsticks  and stabbed down through the sushi roll,  dipped it in that glorious mixture of Wasabi and soy sauce,  popped it into my mouth.

It was. Love at first bite.  I really enjoyed it. And I found myself wanting sushi more. I was thinking about it  there. I was  sitting there at work. I used to be a school teacher sitting in my classroom behind my desk going,  what I wouldn't give for a little sushi right about now.  And so I kept trying more and more stuff.

I found that spicy tuna in all its raw gloriousness was really, really good.  And then I got to the point where, you know what I was eating  those big slabs of meat, I think it's called sashimi. And raw tuna, raw, whatever, just out there snapper. That's a really good one.  And I, I, I went from being afraid of sushi  to like, eh, I guess I'll humor you and try some sushi to craving it, to desiring it, to being able to say, I love that stuff.

Now that I live in rural Pennsylvania, again,  ain't no sushi up in here. I mean, sometimes at the gas station. They'll put some out there. I don't think anybody should ever touch that stuff.  So I learned to love sushi and it, it transformed from something I was hesitant about, something I was craving.  Think about the opposite though.

What's the opposite of loving something?  It's hating something.  And I got to tell you, there's something I really hate.  I hate ketchup.  It's the worst. I think they should rename it devil's blood. Because that stuff is just evil.  It smells terrible. I can't stand to be around the stuff because of the smell. 

It looks gross. It's got that shiny, unnatural redness to it. And people just  squirt it out of those containers. Acting like those sounds being applied to their food is just normal and good.  I hate ketchup. I've hated it since I was a kid. And I had an experience with it. That was not good.  My dad is a ketchup lover  and I think he puts ketchup on his ketchup.

That's how much he likes it.  And it was my job as a kid to take the leftover, the scraps. Out to the dog, the dog was in one of two places, either in the basement  or outside on this long run. We had  and dinner being in the evening in the winter months. If the dog was outside, I had to go out there in the dark with this plate of scraps and the whole experience was just awful. 

And our basement wasn't like one of those cozy basements where you wanted to hang out. It was also an intimidating place. I remember when Kevin went down into the basement in Home Alone and the furnace turned into a monster. I was pretty sure that was going to happen in my basement at any given moment. 

So I didn't like taking these scraps to the dog, no matter where the dog was. And  part of that experience was the visual  of ketchup being mixed in with everyone's scraped off, like mashed potatoes and all kinds of food that, you know, You just don't want mixed together with ketchup. And then there was the smell that would come off there.

You'd have the pleasant smells of some of the, the food, and then that overwhelming  vinegary nastiness of the ketchup. And in those days of carrying the scraps to the dog, I learned to hate ketchup. And to this day, it is a food that I do not like. Now, there were other foods on that list too. I didn't like mac and cheese.

I didn't like hot dogs. I didn't like onions and into my adult years. I avoided those kinds of food whenever possible.  Then I had a conversation with a school teacher that I worked alongside and he was telling me one night around the campfire  that he had made himself.  Love every food.  I thought, that is just so weird. 

But he explained to me, I don't like it when I go to somebody else's house. And I sit down to the table, and they serve me something, and deep down I'm thinking, oh no, I don't want to eat that. Or, saying, no thanks, or we don't eat these things.  And they said, the same thing happens at the restaurant. You don't want to be that guy who's ordering food.

And it's like, yeah, I want this, but I don't want that. And you're making it complicated for the server. And so he said, just to be a blessing, wherever I go,  I have. Learn to love  every food.  So I thought about that  and it wore on me and I decided, all right, I'm going to do it.  I'm going to eat a hot dog.  I don't care that it's a bunch of food that doesn't belong in any other setting.

It's like all the scraps put together into this gross thing in a tube that you heat up. And you can heat it up however you want to, boil it, grill it, fry it, microwave it, eat the thing raw. It really doesn't matter.  So I overcame that, started eating hot dogs. I gotta say,  they're actually pretty good.  Same thing with onions, same thing with mac and cheese.

Over time, you learn to love these things. What does this tell us about love?  Love is a decision.  It's a choice you make based on how you think about things.  Well that almost starts to sound like some bible stuff, doesn't it?  So what do you do if you're struggling with your love for God? If you're listening to this podcast, it's unlikely that you would say, I hate him. 

Uh, maybe deep down you feel like that, and that's something you need to deal with, but, but I doubt you're feeling like you hate him.  You're probably feeling like you want to love him more. And you're not sure why you don't.  Maybe you've been neglecting the Lord. You've made him a lesser priority in your life.

And that's why when you look back, you're like, man, I'm not really sure the last time I had a meaningful time of prayer. Or the last time I spent time delighting in his word.  Maybe you're struggling with your love for him because you've been walking through trials.  And as you think about the difficulty of life, it's just really hard to say, well, I love the God who's allowed this in my life deeply. 

Maybe you didn't have a dad or you didn't have a good dad. And because God is our heavenly father, you have this weird view of him and you're just not sure how to love someone who in the earthly sense, you felt unloved by and weren't sure how to love.  The connection you want just isn't there. There's like no issue, no problem,  but whatever other people are feeling, you're not really feeling that.

And you just don't know why.  So what do you do when you get into these kinds of situations?  Well, the reality is you need to be transformed,  you need to be transformed from wherever you're at right now, in this position of,  I want to love the Lord more than I think I actually do, or I want to feel that love more, I want to experience that love more, I want to know that love more, I want to be driven by that love more,  you need to be transformed so that you actually are.

And there's a scripture that I want you to think about, in fact, this would be a really good one to memorize, and you can do this.  Don't get all freaked out by the word memorize. It's, it's hard. It is memorizing stuff is objectively difficult,  but you can remember the concepts. And if you start there, just getting the concepts locked into your mind, maybe then you can get to the point where you're actually getting the words locked into your mind.

Um, we can memorize the stuff that we, we want to memorize stuff. That's important to us.  Um, I have memorized, like, lyrics of songs that I didn't even try to memorize, just in my head. I've memorized directions to places that I frequent. You know, things do get lodged in there as you think about them a lot.

So, that's how you can start with this. Romans 12, 1 and 2 is a really important verse to have in your mind. I'm just gonna read it to you.  It says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Peace. Holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you might discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome. He's making an appeal. He's making an appeal in light of salvation. 

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, to make an appeal in light of salvation to these Christians by the mercies of God. So with God's help, because of what God has done for you,  you have a responsibility to present your body as a living sacrifice. Think about a sacrifice in the old Testament. It goes on the altar.

It gives up its life. as an atonement for mankind's sin.  Now you're saying I'm giving up my life, but I'm doing it in a way in which I still live. So I'm a living sacrifice. I've given up the way that I was living, my right to live however I please, because God's done something for me. He's atoned for my sin, and I want my whole life to be an act of worship for him. 

Holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. In other words, like, This is like the reasonable thing for you to do,  that fully satisfies God's wrath against you for the things that you've done that are wrong, and at the same time, he took the righteousness of his son  and he applied that to you, so that when God looks at you, he doesn't see your sin, he sees the righteousness of Jesus  as if you were the one who lived perfectly righteously.

That's really amazing.  You deserved eternal condemnation, he's given you eternal life instead.  And he's with you. He's given you a seat at the table. I mean, it's just amazing. He's made you his family  and you did nothing to earn it. In fact, you couldn't.  God's blessed you with something  eternal and good when you deserve something so bad because the way you rebelled against him by choosing sin.

Was so bad. It's, it was a significant offense  and Paul's just saying, Hey, don't you think then it's reasonable that because he rescued you from those kinds of things that you'd now go and live as he wants you to live,  if you're going to do that though, you need to have a change in your affection. The things that you love need to look different from the things that you loved before, before you loved yourself.

And maybe you didn't feel like that. Maybe you had low self esteem, whatever.  But the point is you were choosing to do the things that you wanted to do, things that you thought would bring an outcome that you thought was good, um, things that oftentimes were not in line with what God has said in his word. 

Now, you need to love the things that God loves.  He made you in His image to care for His things, to fill the earth, to go to places that are uninhabited, make them inhabited.  He means for you to unite with God's people in the local church, to declare His glory in a way that nothing else in creation can do, in a way that goes way beyond this world to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 

He wants you to do everything, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for his glory.  You need to love those things,  and then hate the things that God hates, anything that opposes him and his word.  Um, those things that you once thought would bring you joy, but now realize are empty. You hate them in the sense that you walk away from them, they smell bad to you now.

They're gross. You don't want to live that way anymore. For that to happen, it's not like God goes, POOF! You now hate the things I hate and love the things I love. There is a sense in which His Spirit begins to work in you right away, to transform you, but, but a lot of the transformation is on you. In the sense that, you'll be transformed as you renew your mind.

God is the one who does the work. His spirit is the one who empowers you. He does the transforming. But you do have a role to play, and it's an active role. And you need to be engaged in that. And it means you're transformed as you renew your mind. In other words, As you think differently about things, there's an actual transformation that happens in your heart, and therefore, in your life.

You can go from, I hate hot dogs, and I hate onions, and I hate mac and cheese, to, you know what? It's probably a pain in the neck when people serve that stuff, and they can just read it on my face that I don't want to eat that, or I ask for something else, or I just go hungry. So I'm gonna learn to like those things,  so that I can be a blessing to other people. 

Maybe someday I'll get there with ketchup.  Ugh, I don't even want to think about that. But maybe,  such an optional thing. Anyway, um,  In our life as a Christian, we need to realize, okay, God's done something for me that's really significant.  He's called me to something really significant. And I need to think about this a little differently.

And as I think about it differently, I need to behave a little bit differently. So how does this happen?  Well, when thoughts come into your mind, you got to realize you're not like a victim of your thoughts. The thoughts will come in, but you got to choose what you're going to do with them. I like to think about,  I went to a rodeo one time in Cody, Wyoming.

It was awesome. Highly recommend it.  One of the events at the rodeo was calf roping. And there's these, I guess you call them cowboys that are there. They're all lined up. They got their ropes ready. They're chaps on,  um, they walk out in the arena,  the calf comes balding out of the gate.  That cowboy has one job.

You gotta rope the calf, tie it up,  put it where it belongs. The longer that takes you, the less likely you are to win. The faster you do that, the more successful you are.  Well, thoughts are kinda like that. There you are, minding your own business, and boom, in bursts this thought. And it's running all over the arena.

The longer it's out there, the more damage it does. It's kicking up the dust. It's making a mess and it's costing you time.  You got to rope that thought,  tie it up, put it where it belongs. You're the cowboy in the arena of your mind. So think about that. You're not a victim to your thoughts. They come in, you have a job to do.

You've got to put them where they go. And if it's a thought that does not honor the Lord, if it's a thought that's not good, if it's a thought that doesn't build up, if it's a negative thought, whatever. You got to rope that thing, get it out of there.  If it's a good thought,  if it pleases the Lord, if it honors him, if it builds people up, if it's lovely and true.

Some of the things we'll talk about in upcoming episodes from Philippians.  Paul's letter to the Philippians,  then you want to think about those things. You want to cultivate them. You want to put them where they belong in the, in the center of your mind.  So you're not a victim to your thoughts. They come in, you do something with them. 

And then as you  start cultivating the right thoughts and choosing to think about the right things and putting good thoughts in center stage, you're going to find that you are transforming.  Let's say there's a coworker who just annoys you,  just he's the opposite of you. He's got maybe some frustrating habits, perhaps poor hygiene,  and nobody likes this guy.

No one wants to be around them. And you don't either. And you think about those things. Find the person repulsive and annoying.  Well, that person is made in the image of God. There's a, an innate human dignity just in the fact that God made them. God knit that person together in his mother's womb.  And God brought you together into the same organization and plops your desk right down next to his. 

That's a tough reality, but it is reality. And God has saved you.  He's called you to be a blessing, to be loving,  to demonstrate the same kind of love as Christ would do.  And here's this guy.  So you know what you start to do? You start to cultivate good thoughts.  You start to think, alright, well he is made in God's image. 

God did put me next to him.  And you know what? He can do some things well.  And I, I see him, maybe he's got some social things that are awkward,  but they're not sinful, they're just annoying and maybe I shouldn't be so annoyed by those things. You start to accentuate the positive characteristics you see.

You know, he's really thoughtful.  On everybody's birthday, he makes sure he knows about it and wishes them a happy birthday, whatever. Think about those things.  Magnify those things. And when the bad thoughts come in,  you know, a stick of deodorant would go a long way with this guy. You just gotta shut those down.

We all know how to breathe with our mouth open. You know, you don't have to sniff that stuff in all the time.  And you don't have to think about those things all the time. What good does that do you, to dwell on the fact that this person has a hygiene issue, or that this person says things in an annoying way, or whatever?

You don't need to think about those things. They don't do anything good. There are things you do need to think about. Then you start to cultivate that, and you'll see a transformation. You'll see your body language changes toward that person. You'll see some compassion develop for that person.  And the Lord will use that to transform you.

It's true in a lot of areas of life. As we cultivate good thoughts. Um, the Lord transforms us through them. So thinking about our love for God, which is the topic of this episode,  you need to think about  the reality of what God has done for you, who you really are, not who you like tell yourself you are or who you broadcast yourself to be to the rest of the world,  but the secret thoughts you have. 

The things that you've done that are  repulsive to you, maybe now, but you really did them, and that was really you.  Things that you still are tempted by, that you give into.  Um, all the ways that you fall short of God's glory, as Paul says in Romans 3.  Think about those things, and then think about the goodness of the Lord, who loved you anyway. 

He made you knowing that you were going to do those things. He chose you and saved your soul, knowing exactly what you would be like. He poured out the punishment you deserve on his son.  Those are some really amazing things. And what's he doing now? He's keeping your heart beating.  He's filling your lungs with the air that he created. 

He's protecting you in ways that you probably don't even know about.  He's been with you, holding you fast all this time.  You think about these kinds of things and God becomes more and more lovely.  And you're transformed in the way you feel about him.  You start to take little nuggets of his word, like this verse that we've read and go, you know what, actually that is pretty practical. 

And I do see the logic there and I do want to do that. I'm going to memorize that thing  and it's going to help you love the Lord even more. His word  that you didn't deserve to hear, he's spoken and he's given to you. And he uses it in a way that's actually powerful and alive.  And when God,  when God is calling you to pray, He's not doing that so that your prayers bounce off the ceiling and He can point at you and say, what a silly exercise. 

He's called you to pray because He loves you and He wants to enjoy,  and He wants you to enjoy the relationship that He's extended through Jesus Christ.  Or you can turn to Him and cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you.  Or you can give Him glory through the way that you talk about Him.  When you praise him like the psalmist, when you declare true things about him, when you even read back his word and pray his word to him, the way you glorify him, that, that encourages you to,  you really can grow in your love for the Lord.

You can cultivate that in a way that's much more significant than cultivating  a willingness to eat Mac and cheese.  So  this week, think about what that means to cultivate a love for the Lord. As you  begin this rural reset, there you are in your little rural community  learning once again what it means to really love the Lord with all your heart. 

I'm praying for you, praying that the Lord will help you  to see and value this relationship with Him in a way that is genuine and deep, life giving,  and God glorifying.  Next week, we're going to talk some more about what it means to be in the Word of God. We're just going to go there because we love the Lord and we recognize that the Lord has spoken.

And we want to talk about some ways in which God's Word can become even more meaningful and powerful in our lives. So we'll see you next time on back to morality.