Keep Yourself in His Love

Mike Connell

Page 2 of 7
He said we've been working with the drug rehabilitation ever since, and I've been able to speak to people in schools. I've got a purpose for my life, and it started when I connected to the love of Jesus Christ. His life was transformed by that experience, and I want to talk to you, because that same Jesus who loved him, is here to love you as well.

I want to share with you a verse that'll just help you, and I want to just speak to you about just a couple of things out of this verse, and I want to give you a couple of practical keys, very, very simple practical keys and I want us to read if you've got a Bible with you, and read in Jude which is a one page book, just before the Book of Revelations, so it's not very hard to find, you know. Let's see if you can find it there and it says - this is what it says. It says in Verse 20, but you beloved - so it's talking then about people who are mocking, walking in ungodly lust, sensual people having divisions and whatever, He says but you, He said you - notice what it tells us here - He said building yourself up in your most Holy Faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking expectantly for the mercy of Jesus Christ. Keep yourself in the love of God.

One of the things that's one of the most painful experiences in life, is to go through experiences where you're unloved, or where people react against you, where they speak against you, or where you're in a home which is hostile, where there's violence, verbal violence, physical violence, emotional violence, and you actually experience over a period of time, a deep sense of lack of value, that I don't belong, or I'm not valuable to anyone. This is one of the most painful experiences.

You come to the conclusion in your heart that I'm unlovable. It becomes a very, very deep pain that people live with in life, and one of the ways people try and cope with the pain, is to find relationships that will minister to the emptiness in their heart. We see it today, a generation where families are broken down, there's no fathers, and there's a struggle among young men and young women to feel loved and of value. It's hard for a young person to feel of great value when their father has abandoned them or abused them. It's hard to feel of great value when you've been through painful experiences in life.

Now most people come to the conclusion I'm not much value, and so they go looking for something to fix it, looking for something. The most common place is in relationships. Let me tell you this young people; if you go into a relationship looking for someone to meet the need in your life to be loved, the relationship will fail. It can never succeed, because you're trying to draw something out of someone else to meet a need in your heart, that can never be met just through that relationship.

The Bible tells us God is love. We're made for a dynamic relationship and connection with Him. If you don't discover the love of God personally, and learn how to take hold of it day by day in your life, you will look for a substitute. The substitute could be a relationship. I've seen so many young girls ruin their lives, some boy drew them in telling them he loved them, and all he wanted to do was lust after them. This is not going to work, and what happens is the person's left even more sensing and believing they're unloved, unlovable, because of the shame they carry in their life.

Listen and we've prayed for - Lyn's prayed for many, I've prayed for many. Heaps and heaps of people that have just gone through these terrible experiences, and really the issue is something that only God can sort out in your life, only God can meet that need in your life. So people turn to drugs. Why are they looking for drugs? They're looking for a hit to feel good. Why do they want to feel good? Because something is missing in their heart. People turn to all kinds of things. Some of them turn into competitive sport, some turn into different kinds of work, some just get busy to try and bury the pain.