God's Pursuing Love: He Loves Before We Change

``And Gomer we're didn't stumble do here. She bolted off. She left. God still says to Hosea, go again. God doesn't wait for Israel to come crawling back. He goes after him. And this wrecks our ideas, doesn't it? Doesn't this wreck our ideas of what's going on here? We we think that distance pushes God away. If I can get away from God and create distance from him, he's just gonna leave me alone. Scripture says that distance activities, activates the pursuit of God. The further we go, the closer he gets. [00:57:54] (43 seconds)  #DistanceDrawsGodCloser

Human love. That's love that we have as humans is is that we get, we put these loves on some kind of an obligation that you have to do this or I have to do that to make this love work. And that's how human love works. But that's not how God's love is because God stop, if God stop loving us, every time we are unfaithful to him, think about that for a second. If god stopped loving us for every time that we were unfaithful to him, there would be nobody in this building today. [00:49:01] (35 seconds)  #GodLovesDespiteUs

And I remember that it hurts so bad watching my kids be sick and going through this miserable time. I told God, I said, God, if it's if if you could just give me their sickness and let them be free of it, I would I would I would take that from them. And I think that's when I realized that I I knew what real love was. [00:45:43] (21 seconds)  #LoveIsSacrifice

Second thing is I want, receive before you respond. Stop trying to earn god's love this week. You can't work for his love. There's nothing that you can do that's going to make him love you anymore than he already loves you. This morning, I got caught sweeping up cigarette butts. Somebody decided to smoke a pack of cigarettes in front of the church and and I I dumped them out, and somebody sent a message and said, hey. God saw you. Clean that up. It's like, yeah. He don't care. He don't care that I clean his cigarette butt up. He's because if if if I could earn god's love by working, I would be working really hard every day to earn that love. [01:05:00] (50 seconds)  #ReceiveBeforeYouRespond

Because once you know you are loved, then you never go back. And I think that's why we see marriages that fall apart all over the world, and we see it all over our country is because we're waiting to hear that I love you. And I told you guys earlier that Teresa and I, we went through our twenties and our thirties and almost through our forties together, and we've had three different personalities. And I'll tell you in my twenties, I loved her only when she loved me because I was selfish. [01:12:51] (32 seconds)  #KnownLoveChangesEverything

Hosea doesn't have questions do do right now, then Hosea is not a a a normal person. And so I think Hosea probably said, come again. And the Lord said, go and marry a prostitute. And not only marry a prostitute but he noticed that he says that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. That means that some of his children aren't going to be his children. They're going to be children of this prostitution relationship. So he's saying, go marry this woman. That's a prostitute and take her children too as your children, as your family. [00:52:36] (38 seconds)  #LoveBeyondBlood

Christ didn't wait for us to figure this stuff out on our own. Christ didn't say, you fix yourselves and then I'll for you. He died for us while we were still sinners. God doesn't wait for us to get better. He stepped in so we could get better. So god's love is not a response. It's a pursuit. [00:55:40] (22 seconds)  #LovePursuesNotWaits

God tells Hosea to go to go marry Gomer knowing exactly who she is. This wasn't a blind love. This was informed of and I want us to I want us to to to to look at this though as he's gonna tell her tell him to go to go love this woman. Go love her. God doesn't say love her if she proves herself. Love her if she's good to you. Love, he says, love her. He just says, go love her. No stipulation to that love. [00:54:29] (40 seconds)  #GoLoveNoConditions