I Love Jesus For Who He Is — Michael Durham

Loving Jesus With Wholehearted Devotion

Beloved, if you're a Christian, you love Jesus for who He is. Gloriously worthy, as we heard last night, of all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, because that's exactly how the Father loves the Son.

Loves Him with all of His might, all of His being, infinite. We're not infinite, so thankfully we don't have to love Him infinitely, not capable, but I can love Him with all of my person. Why? Because I've discovered that there's nothing in all of my travels and all of my experiences and all of my pleasures, anything more pleasurable than Him, and there's nothing more valuable and worthy of all of my devotion and adoration than Him.

That is in the heart of every true believer because Jesus prayed for it, and He gets what He prays for. He's asking that the Father give to you and me this kind of love for the Son. And so I want to ask you some questions.

I want you to be honest for your own soul's sake. Do you love Jesus as much as you do your husband or your wife? Mamas, I want to ask you a question. Do you love Jesus more than you love your babies? Do you really love Him more than success or pleasure or fame or possessions or good health or entertainment or sex or food, homes, cars, iPods and computers and iPhones?

Examining Whether Jesus Is Your Greatest Treasure

The only way you can know for sure that you love Him more than these things is if you see Jesus more valuable than these things. And listen now, watch this, and the only way to know if you see Jesus more valuable than these things is if Jesus makes you happier and more joyful than these things.

Joy as the Test of Treasuring Christ

Do you delight and enjoy in Him more than these things? That's the test. That's it. You can lie. You can answer in the affirmative, but your pleasures will betray you or justify you. What is it that you enjoy most?

If the Father's love for the Son is in you, it will be the Son. It'll be the Son because God the Father loves His Son more than anything else. Some of you are saying, but I don't do that all the time.

Grieving Our Failure to Love Jesus Fully

In fact, I don't feel that most of the time. Yes, you do. If you're really a Christian, you do, and here's how I know you do, because you grieve that you don't. You grieve that you don't. Why would you grieve?

Because you see Him as more valuable than anything else. You see Him as the treasure that exceeds all of your other possessions and treasures, and you know that your heart's so fickle and feeble that it does chase after these other things from time to time, and it grieves you because you feel in your heart the heart of a betrayer.

I know what it's like to betray the love of somebody special and unique to you. I know what it's like to betray that love in the most dastardly way, and when the reality of that betrayal comes to you, I can tell you there's not a pain like it, not a pain like it.

The Christian Life's Paradox of Joy and Sorrow

The Christian life is a remarkable life. It's a paradoxical kind of life, rejoicing yet sorrowing. These two are always in tension with the other. There's joy in Him, but there's also this sorrow that I do not love Him with all my heart and soul and mind and strength, and that very grief is love in the nostrils of your Father because there's something about your heart that hates it because the Father's love for the Son's been invested in you.