The Father Heart of God

This week at YWAM is labeled “The Father Heart of God.” That concept in itself is hard for me to understand. Anyways its all about God’s loving and relentless pursuit of us, and our response to that love. Our speaker, Jeff Pratt, is explosive and cuts straight to the core. It was like a spiritual dagger this morning that left everyone in our class in confession, repentance, and tears. Here are some excerpts of the notes I took in our morning sessions:

There has been a war for the affections of our heart. Whatever you give your heart completely to (that is not God) will eventually devour you. God desires your whole heart, but so often we give pieces of it to other people and things leaving our hearts broken and shattered. God is wanting to gather up the pieces, put them back together, and bring them to Himself.

God is about your hearts, he is looking for a heart that is completely His. He is looking for whole-hearted passionate devotion, a people that will be wholly His. Passion is the essential energy of the soul.

Passion is not just a feeling. It is a collision of the mind and the heart. The mind is where we reason, and the heart is where we have revelation. When reason and revelation collide it produces passion.

The greatest commandment is love the Lord your god with all your heart, soul, mind, strength (with an all consuming passion). If loving God this way is the greatest commandment, then it must follow that NOT loving Him in this way is the greatest sin.

Our greatest need is to be loved, therefore our greatest fear is to be rejected.

Jesus knew to make it in this life that the pinnacle is to be passionate about God. God has already answered this prayer. You don’t need to pray for a greater passion for God, because you already possess it.

How come I don’t feel it? We often live lives that are spiritually asleep. Our prayer for this week is that God may give us hearts that are awake, alive, and free. Which is why God says “Awake oh sleeper..”

Jesus prayed that we would love him more than anything because he knew that there would be a war for our affections. Secondly because Jesus knew that passion for Him would awaken in others their need for God more than anything else.

MAIN POINT: WE CAN ONLY HAVE AS MUCH AFFECTION AND PASSION FOR GOD AS WE REALIZE HE HAS FOR US. (1 John 4:19)

He went on to talk about the different ways that God loves us; Gods many faces of passion. Footnotes:

Ephesians 3:17-19 “I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, long, deep, and high is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Paul is basically saying: “I am praying that you will be ceased by the power of his obsession with you and will be transformed.”

God is love. Every way to love was his idea. If we are hurt in one of the love types, it can affect how we do or don’t receive love. Romance and passion was God’s idea.

WAYS GOD LOVES US:
Lover and Bridegroom: John 3:29; Matthew 25:1
John 3:29 “The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.”
Philippeans 3:4 “He took on the clothing of humanity…” (The king and the poor maiden girl story) What he couldn’t win by power, he won by suffering.

Have you experienced his passionate love in your HEART, not just your mind? We need to see God’s gaze and have it penetrate our hearts.

This week is about bride preparation. We need to prepare our hearts for Jesus, so that we can give him what he died for on the cross.

Husband: Isaiah 54:5
Isaiah 54:5 “For your Maker is your husband—the Lord Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.”

Until we learn to experience his love for us, our love for others will be subtle manipulation because we will try to get them to fulfill these needs that only God can satisfy.

Sometimes he lessens our attachment to people in order to attach us to HIM. Sometimes we associate God with the intimacy of friends, but it is not the same.

Friend: Proverbs 18:24
Proverbs 18:24 “There is one who sticks closer than a brother.” The deep need that we have for companionship, that is intimacy that God can provide for us.

Mother: Isaiah 49:14-16
Isaiah 49:14-16
Even the love of a mother is displayed in God.

Father: 2 Corinthians 1:3-4; Matthew 6:9
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

We comfort others with the same comfort we ourselves receive from God. You cant comfort others with comfort you have not received from God. We cannot give what we do not have.

This will free us from a life of performance and trying to prove that we are worth something to others by what we do. We need to stop trying so hard and understand that:
WE NEED TO BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH A LIFESTYLE OF BROKENNESS IN ORDER FOR US TO BE ALIVE TO THE LOVE OF GOD.

Brokenness: knowing what our sins still do to the heart of God, (bring him pain and break his heart) and knowing my need for God and others. God lives in honest relationships too. We need God and we need each other.

At the end of the session he showed THIS VIDEO that represents our brokenness, and Gods loving pursuit of our ultimate happiness. Just as this father longs to see his son smile, so our Father in heaven longs to see us joyful in Him. He is in relentless pursuit of our hearts. What will your response be?