God’s love for us precedes our love for Him. This truth is central to understanding spiritual awakening and growth in the Christian life. Many believers struggle to live out their faith fully, but there is a deeper work of the Holy Spirit available—an awakening that leads to spiritual vitality. This awakening often begins with prayer and a renewed awareness of Christ’s constraining love. His love holds us fast, like a safety cord for mountain climbers, allowing us to persevere in our spiritual journey despite our weaknesses and failures. The Western Church is in great need of such an awakening to rekindle its love for Christ and experience His transformative power.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] It seems that the Olympics are still going and all of us, I’m sure, have had some joy in hearing the results, especially the Australia is getting at this time. When I watch Olympics I think I angle in or I listen in to those events that maybe I have some experience with. I noticed that Michelle is just the opposite of me because she in her youth was a shot put person and what’s the Alabama discus thrower and javelin, those sorts of things. In my case I think high jump and a bit of running was about the limit. But when you go and listen in to the Olympics there’s one other skill that was exemplified on the screen that I didn’t even know they had, and it was something that from my youth I had a lot to do with. In my youth I was often busy climbing trees, and there’s a part of the Olympics which is

[00:01:10] called bolder climbing. Put your hand up if you knew there was bolder climbing, fair few of you. I didn’t until I watched. I caught my attention because one of the things about climbing trees and I expected any bolder climbing would be the same, is that it’s easy to go up but the higher you go the harder it’s getting. What you discover when you can climb a tree is that it’s difficult to get down again. I have many childhood memories of being stuck up a tree and not being able to get down again. But in this competition there’s one little extra thing they have and that is that they carry along with them a cord, and they keep attaching the cord to little mechanisms as

[00:02:00] they go up higher, so eventually when they overdo themselves and trying to get up and they slip, the cord is attached to somewhere where it will dangle them down nicely. And that never was present in the trees I climbed. I do remember falling out of a tall tree and landing on my back on the roof of a big double decker building, crashing down and wishing there hadn’t been some safety net. The Christian life is often like that, that it calls us to come and know the forgiveness of sins. But, not only is the call to come and be in right relationship with God and to get at peace with him, that’s the centre of it. The call also is that we might deal with our sins, and we might get over our sins. How many a Christian has there been, whose founds that

[00:02:59] they’ve responded to the gospel call to make peace with God through Jesus, because He died for your sins, He’s done it all, and you’re forgiven, but they have find you’ve landed yourself in a Christian life from which you’re not being that successful. Now I’m not going to ask you to put your hand up. But I would guess that the majority of us this morning would do so if we actually challenged you to admit that you have had trouble living out the Christian life that your conversion experience brought you into. There is such a thing as going deeper. There is such a thing as knowing the power of God, as well as the forgiveness of God.

[00:03:53] And a lot of people doctrinally in different denominations unfold this differently. Some with ways that may not be totally correct, but they’re trying hard. Nonetheless, we need to find out how we can grow in spiritual strength. In preparing for sermons, one of the things I do is go and read Spurgeon. Spurgeon once told people who were listening to him to go and listen to another speaker, the Scottish one. And the Scottish speaker was a young man who died in his twenties. He only had a short ministry but his ministry was revivalistic, rather than evangelistic.

[00:04:45] Probably a mixture of both, but revivals was what happened through his ministry and he only had a very short one but it was the trigger of there being a mass turnings of people to Christ. But a part of what he emphasized, and that Spurgeon wanted his generation to understand, that there is, listen to me, a work of the Holy Spirit, which they called, that generation called, an awakening. The term awakening applies also to our coming to Christ in the first place, because the truth of the matter is, we don’t actually have within us naturally any deep desires to become holy, just the opposite. We’re very much people who find sin,

[00:05:44] that’s what the apostle Paul in the book of Romans is writing about, more the way our human nature, the full and human nature that we have, comes out with. And being holy, isn’t what is natural to the flesh as Paul would call it, it’s you without God is the flesh. and we need an awakening to even be interested in being spiritual. That’s why this young minister who had revivals come from his ministry became known for preaching on the need of and the happenings of awakenings. It’s an interesting term. I’ve been puzzling over that idea in recent days because of Spurgeon’s advice to listen to this other writer and trying to work out how it fits in to understand Christianity

[00:06:54] and to understand just that need where the Chamberlain was reported about in Japan the need for there to be a greater spirituality, not just people who take the surface appearance thereof. There needs to be something to awaken us to the deeper need, and there is a scriptural passage, that’s a recent home group that I’ve been in going along to, got to in John 15 and verses 16 and 17. Now this particular passage is where Jesus is talking to his disciples, but he’s also talking to all the people who’ve got on board with him. And he makes a big point, is often picked up in theological discussions, in churches, and what causes there to be some differences in the outlooks and practices of some churches. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit

[00:08:03] and that your fruit should abide. That abiding nature of the fruit of Christianity. You know the list of the fruit of the Spirit in the book of Galatians, love, joy, peace, etc. The problems that exist in churches are just the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit because of the works of the flesh. Those of us who have any history in churches know that is true. The biggest problems of the church is often the church. Not that we are like the world tries to accuse us, I think the world is stupid because they They don’t think hospitals are bad for having sick people. Nor should churches be looked at as being bad at having spiritually sick people. Or wording it another way,

[00:08:54] Spiritually needy people, need of an awakening. To wherein lies true spirituality. Also the way it says that your fruit should abide. There’s nothing worse than when you discover a church that’s been there for a while and the only fruit that it has, is the fact that it’s getting sued for all the bad things that happened. Why is it? Because, at certain junctures in the history of that church, they were mindless and awakening. But Jesus spoke about the fact that the Father is willing to give whatever we need. He linked together this need for fruit that will abide, to being able to ask the Father in Jesus name and he’ll give it to you.

[00:09:52] Hence the predecessor of an awakening has pretty well always, prayer. Prayer is often the first fruit that comes from people who pray for revival. Revival is something that I’d read about in books and had interest in, but didn’t ever think of it as something that could happen unless God stepped in and went out of the blue. So, as I’ve told you before, when I went to Wheaton College to study and they had a chapel, which was for the purpose of praying for revival, it was open all the time. They’d always picked some student who’d be in charge of it to just keep it open. People would go and pray for revival. And they’d picked on me to be the student. I thought to myself, I didn’t tell them, I said I don’t really believe in revivals happening

[00:10:49] Except God just steps in sovereignly and does it That wasn’t their persuasion. They had a history of praying for revival and could tell me the years when God’s Spirit moved even in that college. Wheaton Greeton College. They have a chapel of 2000 or so students coming to listen, and they’d have the best of speakers, but just because they had these great famous speakers come didn’t necessarily mean that they would be without problems. They knew what they really needed was a spiritual awakening. We are in a time in Australia when what we really need nationally is a spiritual awakening

[00:11:37] and such only comes in history when there are people who understand their need to be awakened corporately just as it’s true that one of the predecessors of someone really going on with Christ and becoming strong in him is some moment when God has to do something sometimes a puncture I don’t mean in your car but I mean in your hopes and in your plans and where God does something that makes people go and pray whether it is a person like Billy Graham who ended up such a a mess because of a broken engagement that he’d go and pray every morning in the basement of the college where he was. They had a stove, they called it—it meant a heating device. So it was warm to go and pray. But that prayer was what God engineered for him to have an awakening, and that was the beginning of what would become his ministry. And it’s true,

[00:12:37] it doesn’t matter who you read when you read those books and those biographies by people that God has put his hand on that what needed to happen first was an awakening! We are people who need, we are a Church who need, we are a denomination who are in the need of an awakening! And according to the Scriptures in the Old Testament, in the old covenant times, the predecessor of that awakening was with the words, if my people shall humble themselves, humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, get the then.’ Then well I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” We are in need in Australia of an awakening, and we individually are people who often go

[00:13:35] with a type of spirituality that shouldn’t have the name. We’re not very spiritual, but that’s because we are an expression of the lack of the awakening that’s yet to come, to make us long for something more. You did not choose me, but I chose you. The way that that is interpreted by some people and this causes divisions of understanding in theological circles and in church practice. Is that people take that to mean God’s election means there is no choice that really you make. That’s actually just not true. I’ve told you before on the occasion that my Dad used to get to come to all of my churches and have a series to speak.

[00:14:29] And he came to our ride church in Sydney. But I had a troop of old ladies who were spiritual prayer partners. They were- we call them the Merry Widows, but they were happy types, but they really were spiritual. And when my dad spoke on the first- it was this verse, where God said, you didn’t choose me but I chose you, To illustrate, he turned their attention to the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau. There, the wording of it in Hebrews says,

[00:15:11] Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. When my dad quoted that, these old ladies got angry at him. Not nastily angrily, but they didn’t agree with what he was trying to say. they expressed such and he explained that in the Hebrew, the words for love and hate have far greater connection than our English would understand, where the word love also carries the idea of choosing, and the word hate carries the idea of the non-choice. And what is actually being said about Jacob and Esau was not that God was unloving towards Esau, but that He had not chosen him. God does have his choices.

[00:16:11] But it is not to fail to love anybody. How do you know that? You ask, because of the multitude of other verses that speak and say, For God so love the world, And it’s the entire world. And the elaboration of that as you go through the scriptures, some people think, oh, you can say it’s just the world of the elect. That’s a way to get out of what it’s actually saying.

[00:16:41] Because the Bible tells us that it’s not only the elect for whom Jesus died, but it says not for our sins only, not for the sins of the whole world. The teaching of the scriptures about those people who the Bible says are going to be lost, some of the ones who have got false doctrines. And it says that they have made themselves enemies even though they were doing it against the one who shed his blood to buy them and that Jesus’ blood paid the price for these ones who are going to end up in hell. It’s not the case that when Jesus said I chose you as though you don’t have any choice, at any theology that seems to run that God chooses the elect and the rest are just going

[00:17:40] to end in hell, that’s it. They’re just not chosen. Or to put it another way that when God has chosen someone that they get eventually become the elects, that their coming happens as a zap. They’re walking down the street and suddenly they’re regenerated without anything to do with them. When Jesus’ clear teaching with Nicodemus is they’d have to be born again to see the kingdom. And that the call of the Gospel as repeated by Jesus,

[00:18:12] again and again and again is the necessity of faith The idea of here, of you. You didn’t choose me but I chose you, is the idea that Jesus chose first, and you’re not in the door because of your choice immediately.” That triggered it all. Let me elaborate that in a minute. But his choice is the one that anti-seeded That’s what it’s saying. But it does not mean that in the delivery of the Gospel it doesn’t call for people to choose Christ and Saviour. The very word repent that Peter gave in the Day of Pentecost means to reverse your verdict. You understand, they had had was not to choose Jesus but to choose Barabbas. was a murderer, and they turn their backs on the Christ. But Peter called on them

[00:19:19] to reverse their verdict. The word repent means that. It means stop unchoosing me! And, choose me! And the fact that he chose first is what he’s saying. There’s an enormous spiritual truth in the priority of the work of God. But it is not a priority that rules out there being the place for him having chosen us! That he works on us! That we will choose him! There is something about the awakening that is the doing of that very thing of the Holy Spirit coming on a person, or coming on a people, or coming on a church, where previously if he had not so awakened us, we would continue on with all of our shallowness, with all of our unspirituality and in offers all of our fallen sin, causing it to be what the Church is known for.

[00:20:27] No. He has to work first. an awakening but when he awakens it is that we do want to choose him. And the greatest need of the Christian Church in the West is the fact that it seems to exemplify their lack of love for Christ and this word girl chews when understood in the mind of the scriptures which brings together the the idea of love. Choose that, Christ was saying, I loved you, I gave myself for you and because of what I’ve done for you He wants to move you to choose to love Him. Love for Christ is what the Gospel is all about, is what Christianity is all about. It is not just an automatic thing or a fated thing that you can’t help.

[00:21:32] It is the very fostering of what God wants in us and what becomes important. If you do a study on the term Love for Christ or Love of Christ, both his Love for us and ours for him, then you’ll discover the heart of Christianity. that what church life is like when Jesus went to the synagogue, I’ll turn us to Mark 3 in verses 1-6. In Mark 3 verses 1-6, He enter the synagogue, a man was there with a withered hand. Now, what it is to have a spiritual withered hand is to be unable to do anything. I’m only guessing now, but they watch Jesus to see when he did with the fellow, I reckon when that man came into the synagogue, he didn’t sit down in the front where everybody could stare at him, especially as they all knew his arm, his hand was withered,

[00:22:34] I guess that he sat himself over by the wall with a withered arm out of sight, and he could at least wave the good one. And one of the features of churches you discover, you know, something you discover about churches, is usually a set of people who get themselves over by the wall. Now, I’m not talking of you particular people. But they get themselves away from it being visible, that they can’t actually make it. I’ll give you an example, in Perth, West Australia, really a respected businessman, a family man,

[00:23:19] came to me to tell quietly his problem. I thought some enormous problem was going to be aired and he told me that he had never been able to pray. I pulled out an envelope and wrote out a prayer in an old used envelope and said, got him to read it and I said, Well you read this out loud and we’ll make it a prayer. I guess I put my foot on him metaphorically and got him to pray. And he did.

[00:23:54] We had an all-night prayer meeting in that church. There were people in there who were of well-meaning. Some of them were capable because of that district where there were lots of capable up-and-coming business types. and they became leaders in the Church. But they needed an awakening, not just to be there because they had natural abilities, but people in whose hearts had come an awakening to know the deeper things of God! That is the problem of the western church, in another of our Home Group – So I keep talking about the home groups because we have got some pretty good ones.

[00:24:42] They’re doing some good things, and another home group is going through those letters of Jesus to the seven churches in Asia, beginning of the first three chapters of Revelation. Chapter 2 and 3, I think it is. Jesus speaking to the churches and although it’s not the only way to interpret those seven letters to the churches, one way that puts itself forward is quite likely is that that Jesus talking to the church in each of the ages down through history. You couldn’t have said that when it was first written because they were just seven geographical churches. Looking back in time you can match the quality and problems of those seven churches

[00:25:32] to what happened down through the seven ages. The final one to the Laodicean church is our age, but the picture that has this problem in the church is the missingness of the love of Christ! Jesus pictures himself, or you will hear this from me again and again waves of my heart. He pictures himself—the church is his— and he pictures himself as outside the door. He says, Behold, I stand at the door, knock— sing to any individual—and hear my voice and will open the door. I will come on in—and up to that one, if you read it

[00:26:13] exactly. I’ll come on in up to that one and fellowship with him. From fellowship to that one. Awakenings are available—we use that evangelistically to tell people you really know Christ personally and you need to invite him to be your Saviour. It is also true for us as Christians that if there is a key that you are wanting to have that will turn you into being the spiritual it is to give Jesus an invitation to come onto you personally and say, I want you to know me, I want to know you, give him an entrance, his call to an awakening. What it’s actually about, I’ve been chewing on this all weekend, probably I’ll have to go into the Sunday night service to really get to the point I want to get to. But the point is that this is talking about

[00:27:17] love. We read it as about election. But Jesus is speaking it about love. You didn’t choose me, I chose you. For God so loved the world, he gave his only son. Let’s turn to a final passage and I’ll bring to conclusion what I’m on about today. We’ve already seen that the meaning of these words is that we have had nothing to do with deserving our relationship with Christ. It’s been his prior love choice. And when you understand that it’s all about love, you’ll see it in 2 Corinthians 5 and 14. This is my final passage. 2 Corinthians 5 and 14.

[00:28:17] For the love of Christ controls us. That’s the ESV, his controls. I had to chase down because other versions use another word. The original word was the love of Christ constrains us. But do you know what that word means? I was there watching the wall climbing in the Olympics. The word suneko in the Greek is the idea of hold fast. The love of Christ constrains us or holds fast us. Now that fear that sometimes people have of attempting to be spiritual because you’ve already found out you’ve had a lot of falls.

[00:29:20] But when I watched that Olympic thing and saw how they carried this cord with them chipped on hooking it up, that it would control or they’d constrain any fall. Bravery actually can come from some mechanism within the human mind to constrain you from running coward or for quitting in failure, but can constrain you, hold you fast from falling too far. I like that movie that’s about, is it The Endeavorship anyway, one of the captains who came out and then there’s cannon fire to the enemy and there’s cannonballs coming and killing people and a little boy who’s on the ship, he has deckhand jobs, he’s dead scared, he’s having to do a job that big sailors were in risk of having to do and here he is, one of the maturer sailors, write something on his wrists, you might remember the film.

[00:30:36] He wrote H-O-L-D, hold, F-A-S-T, and when this boy is lying there I think he’s semi-wounded, but he’s deadly afraid and can’t make it, keeping it all together, the other sailor holds up, hold fast. Now what I think he meant was for the little boy to hang on to his composure but the hold fast is deeper than just you holding on and in this passage when it says, The love of Christ constrains us, it’s not just talking about you loving Christ enough to hold fast. If you go and do an exegesis of it when it says the luck of Christ it’s talking about Christ’s love. It is true that when you love him it helps you, but what’s been told to you is not your ability to climb and have finger grips that won’t slip.

[00:31:43] But what’s been talked about here is the Saviour that he loves you and you have got safety chord on you, it is called the love of Christ. And He constrains you, the word constrain. I’ll be chasing this word and I told you about words in the Bible I like to unwrap the verses to get used to the words. This means exactly to be held fast. and when things are going wrong and you need someone there who’s going to hold you fast it’s Christ and it’s the love of Christ who at first and when it constrains you when it controls you wanteness as helps you to love him helps to blast the distance, to keep the climbing, to have another try. Some of those climbers, they slipped but they caught it before they fell all the way. I love, that’s my best part of the Olympics watching, is some of them go up so high with little fingertip holds.

[00:33:09] I think they’re willing to do that because they’ve got this safety holdfast. And I must bring to you this morning, from this verse, the love of Christ constrains us. His love is the ultimate security in which you rest. Let’s get another little theological point. When you rest yourself in the love of Christ, not in your obedience. It may affect your obedience, obedience is good, I’m not decrying obedience. But I am saying, if you put your rest in your obedience and then your fingers slip. None of those Olympians I saw did they hit the ground on those occasions because of this chord, and it’s the love of Christ by which He holds you fast. And faith in that is what makes a spiritual person. And that’s what Jesus is trying to say, and it’s why and there is an awakening, it doesn’t make a whole lot of proud people saying,

[00:34:31] look what we’ve gotten into. It makes a lot of people who say Lord we thank you for how You’ve lifted us up, for how You’ve kept us, and one of the things we’re going to say if we get to glory, and it comes time to go to be with Jesus, we’re going to be saying, Jesus, thank you, you kept me all the way. Amen.