What is Love?

I don’t believe love is just doing the right thing. I don’t believe love is just keeping commandments. I don’t believe love is just being patient and kind…

That’s what love looks like when it walks and talks.

But that’s not love!

Love is passion!

Let me ask you a question, do you have a passion for God?!

Do you desire him? Do you long for Him?

Yes we all go through times in which our hearts are dull. Yes we go through times when we need to be encouraged. Yes we go through times when our eyes are mesmerized by things they should not be. Yes we all struggle in that.

But if someone were to look at your life would they say: “This person has a passion, not for ministry, not for missions, not for evangelism, but for God!”

Do you really love God?

But the sign of a genuine work of God in the heart is that you begin to hate the sin you once loved and to love the righteousness you once ignored.

The question is not do you agree with that or are you challenged, the question is is that a reality in your life? Is it?

Young lady, young man, elderly woman, elderly man, middle-aged man in the prime of life, is it a reality in your life? Are you continuing to grow in your hatred of sin and your love for righteousness? That’s the question.

Do You Have the Right Answer?

So it’s not a question of do you want to do the right thing or do you want to be moral or do you want to have a good life, it is this, do you desire Him!

I hate preaching that goes something like this, “You know you got a wonderful life there yuppie, you got a really nice house and a really nice job, you’ve got a really beautiful wife, and you’ve got 1.25 children, and you’ve got 3 cars and Suburus and suburbans! You got a great life! Everything fits perfectly in place! …you just lack one thing, you lack Jesus.”

That is the most disgusting thing you could ever say.

What would be more appropriate to say is: “Sir, your life is nothing. It has no value at all apart from Jesus Christ.”

He is not some little accessory that a yuppie puts at the top of his life as though it were cherry at the top of ice cream. You have Jesus and Jesus has you or you are barren and wasted and lost!

So it’s not a question of “Do you want a better life?”, “Do you want to go to Heaven?”, “Do you want to fix your marriage?”, “Do you want to fix all these things?”, no, “Do you want God? Do you desire Him?”

Do You Truly Desire God?

Everyone knows they’re a sinner. They just don’t realize how heinous and terrible that is.

Nor do they want to let go of the very thing that they choose to drink down as if it were water.

So the question is not, “Do you recognize that you’re a sinner.” The question, “Sir as I have been speaking to you, (or maybe it’s a long term discipleship over a period of time) has I have been sharing to you and discipling you, has God done a work in your heart?”

People come to me all the time and they say, “I have a new relationship with God.” And I say, “Well do you have a new relationship with sin? ‘Coz if you don’t have a new relationship with sin you don’t have a new relationship with God.”

Has God done such a supernatural work in your heart through the Holy Spirit that although prior to that you have lived a life of ignoring God, of hating God, you now see Him as esteemed above all things, and you desire Him above all things?

He Must be Everything or He is Nothing to You

God is infinite. Heaven will be an infinite chase, an infinite tracking down of the glories of God.

But most don’t want that. Even most who attend evangelical churches don’t really want that, and I can prove it. They don’t want it now. If you don’t want it now you won’t want it then.

Because eternal life does not begin with dying now and going to heaven. He says “This is eternal life that they may know You!” (John 17:3) “Know You.” And that begins the moment He regenerates your heart and reveals to you God.

This place ought to be a contradiction in every sense of the term!

Our theology should be high!

Even it should be called academic to some degree.

People should think that the only thing we ought to think about is theology and truth and yet when the worship leader gets up here this place ought to go wild!

Do you desire Him?

Do You Truly Desire God?

—Paul Washer