I am currently preaching a series titled: Embracing the Love of God

First two sermons preached:

     1. God is Love (Exodus 34:1-8; 1 John 4:8)

             Christians don't know the true nature of God's love.  We thought that God loves the way like we do, only more intense, more consistent, more persistent...  In fact God loves covenantally, whereas human loves contractually.  God's love is also tough.  Not knowing the nature of God's love hinders us from truly embracing the love of God.

     2.  Be Real (Luke 18: 9-14)

              Here I talk about the unconditional acceptance of God.  Very few Christians fully experience the unconditional acceptance of God, even though we know this doctrine well, because deep down we still struggle to maintain a vestige of self-righteous goodness about ourselves.  We are very innocent about the harm this would do to our spirituality, because it actually prevents us from experiencing God's unconditional acceptance in its fullness, which in turn hinders us to love others like the way God loves us.

              One of the key steps to help us fully experiencing God's unconditional acceptance we can learn from the tax collector of Luke 18 is to be real before God and man.  "Be real" is a step of self-acceptance, a step of facing the dark side of the self honestly, a step that gets rid of all the pretense of goodness.  The tax collector somehow in his life was driven to this point and he had an experience of Jesus' total acceptance.

              This is the first step to the path of truly embracing the love of God, because God's loves flows in authenticity.       

The third sermon is in the making.  The idea is for us to take the next step: accepting others as they are.  This is a step to allow God's love to flow through us, which will have amazing results...  May God help me with this sermon.