A LOVE WORTH EVERYTHING | Erwin McManus - MOSAIC

what is the one thing in your life that is worth everything else in your life you know that that one thing that has more value than everything else you have everything else you've ever had combined because that's exactly what paul is talking about when he describes what he's found in jesus that that love worth everything that one thing that is more than everything in philippians chapter 3 he begins to describe this this relationship this experience this reality he's found in jesus and in verse 10 he says in this declaration that i may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings to somehow obtain to the resurrection of the dead he makes this this confession as he's describing his experience and coming to to know the reality of who jesus is in verse 7 he tells us i consider everything a loss for the all surpassing value of knowing christ jesus my lord for whose sake i have lost all things i consider them rubbish garbage trash for the sake of knowing christ and what's fascinating to me is that that paul begins to describe the contrast between all the things he thought that mattered and now this one thing that actually mattered and i wonder how many of us go through that throughout our lives in fact i think we've spent so much of our lives filtering through what actually matters and and and of course we go through phases in that process when when we're little life is all about things so i want this and i want that and and we understand that when we're children but it becomes a little disheartening when a person becomes an adult and they're still all about wanting things and and then when we get a little bit older we mature a little bit more realize life isn't just about things and and then life becomes about experiences and we want this experience and that experience our first date our first kiss our our first prom our our first whatever may be and we move from from things to experiences and life becomes about experiences and and hopefully we grow a little past that because when a child is about things we understand that when a teenager is about experiences we we get that but but when an adult is still about things and about experiences we we can actually see the gap between their age and their maturity eventually life moves past things and it moves past experiences and it it moves to relationships you eventually realize wow things come and go and experiences are had and then remembered but relationships are the things that are the true commodity of life they're the highest value and and and paul describes how he spent his life pursuing things and pursuing experiences and pursuing credentials and and and even in in his own spiritual journey he became a religious elites he became the as he described the hebrew of hebrews he was a teacher of the law he he had attained the highest level of religious accomplishment and yet his life was empty now i wonder how many of us have have spent our lives pursuing certain aspects of success certain definitions of success whether it's it's wealth or power or fame or maybe it's it's what people say about us or what people think about us or feel about us or or all the toys and all the things that we've accumulated or or or it's just just downright um the the cash and the bling that makes us feel like we matter and that makes us feel as if we're important and then one day we find ourselves feeling so empty and alone and i think one of the great tragedies in life is to have everything the world has to offer and to know that you are empty and really when it comes down to it you have nothing that really matters at all so paul is giving us this contrast it's not just that they pursued all these things in life and had attained them you know it's one thing to to want success and never have it so then you go well who needs success or to want wealth and never get it so you can well you know the wealthy they're just corrupt or or to want fame and never quite step into the light and say oh those people are just so shallow isn't it funny how we're always critiquing and condemning the people who accomplish and achieved and attained the things that we wanted so badly and then we didn't get them so then we just um you know throw shade on them saying well they're just really not that that um that unique or that special or and and paul isn't really diminishing all the things he had in and of themselves he's diminishing them in the contrast to what he found in jesus you know i'm here in this beautiful space in mexico city and and one things i love when i come here is that there's all these little nicks and crannies throughout the uh the city and in juarez and condesa and polanco and roma and and and usually i i have emerson who's kind of guiding my way he's usually walking ahead of me or walking with me but he's he's still sort of directing the way and i realized that no matter how many times i come here if i'm always following emerson i actually never learned where to go and yesterday i was talking to my son aaron i said you know we need to just walk without anyone who knows where they are so we can actually learn where we can come to know this city it's strange that you can actually walk a path and and walk to uh a certain place over and over and over and over again and never actually know where you're going until you're willing to risk getting lost so that you can know how to find it i think this is what happens so oftentimes even when it comes to faith we we live out someone else's faith we we are christians because our parents were christians so we're buddhists because our family are buddhists where we're muslim because all of our relatives are muslim or or we're atheists because well you know our parents were atheists and and we just walk the track that someone else has guided us on we we don't really know how to get there ourselves we just got there because someone else guided us there and i i think this is the tragedy even of faith in jesus that it's a beautiful thing when you get to grow up in a home where your mom and dad love god where they love jesus where they have this beautiful intimate relationship with jesus but but eventually you have to learn how to walk the streets of the city alone you have to learn how to find your way by yourself you have to discover whether you know how to get there without someone else showing you the path and what paul is actually telling us is that that he tried everything he was ever told to do to connect to god he he tells us look i i had people guiding me along the way and i walked with them but when i finally stood alone i realized i was alone and i was lost and i didn't know where to go at all so then he stops in this moment and makes this incredible declaration i consider everything a loss for the all surpassing value of knowing christ jesus my lord for whose sake i have lost all things and count them a loss i count them garbage rubbish trash paul uses the word no two different times in verse 8 and then in verse 10 but he uses him a little differently and verse 8 he actually says that i may know christ but that word actually means a cognitive knowledge it's an intellectual knowledge it's it's knowing something like you know two plus two equals four and what paul is saying is that just to know the reality to know the facts to know the truth that jesus is actually god that he stepped into human history took on flesh and blood walked among us died on the cross roads are dead paul saying just to know this as truth is worth everything in my life i cannot think of any knowledge that's worth everything i have i i i never learned any math it was worth everything i ever had there's no formula whether it's e equals m c squared that is worth everything i have and yet paul is saying just to know that jesus is actually who he claimed to be just to know that jesus is the messiah just to know that jesus is the christ just to know that jesus is who he claimed to be is worth everything but then in verse 10 he uses a different form of knowing in verse 8 the knowing is is an intellectual knowledge it's a cognitive ascent it's a knowing like math but in verse 10 he uses a different word this is a knowing of intimacy this is the kind of knowing that the bible uses when it says that adam knew eve and then they conceived a child this is the most intimate level this is the depth of knowing and so in verse 10 when paul says what i want above all things to is to know him he's saying i want to press through this intellectual cognitive knowledge and when i press into this intimacy of relationship with the god who created me and what paul is actually helping us discover is that we will never know a love worth everything until we move from knowledge to knowing until we get past knowing god as data information as until we get past knowing god as a belief or a doctrine but knowing god in this intimacy in this love that cannot be explained by reason or logic it can only be understood when you've known that kind of love it's it's hard to explain to someone when you're in love what it feels like to be in love if they've never been in love i mean i think there are a lot of people who have relationships and a lot of people who are infatuated and there are people who are in lust but being in love is a very different thing because being lost is about what you get out of the relationship being in love is what you can give to the relationship you just find incredibly rewarding it's a gift and a privilege to love someone and and paul is telling us here that there is this beautiful opportunity that he could have never imagined that was available i think for a lot of people god is all about rules that god is all about beliefs that that that your faith is all about getting the information right but that's not why jesus died jesus did not die so that you could be right he did not die on the cross so you could fill in the blanks and get all the answers correct jesus died on a cross so that we could have intimacy with him so that we could live in communion with god this love worth everything it can only be known and experienced when you fall mad crazy insane in love with god isn't that crazy yeah i gotta tell you see i know what that's like i i can tell you that i know what it's it's like to love kim with a crazy love you know because my wife's a little crazy and our marriage it's lasted almost 40 years it's it's it's one of the most beautiful experiences i've ever been given as a gift to love someone so deeply and so profoundly and and it's and listen to what i just said it's not about even being loved so deeply and profoundly because i i'm i realize that that's not within my control this is crazy i've lived in a relationship with someone and i cannot control whether they love me or not i in some ways i i live powerless in relationship to that reality and that's the wonder of love it's that you don't love someone because you have a guarantee that they love you you love them because you just in your own soul guaranteed you will love them and and and so love makes us most vulnerable it leaves us in the most tender of places because when you love you leave your heart exposed and here's the beautiful thing about god god is the one who has left his heart exposed see god is the one who has chosen to love you without condition the guarantee is from him to you not from you to him so paul says i just want to know him i want to know him in the deepest most intimate most beautiful most unexplainable most irrational way i want to know his love and the depth of that love and i consider that knowing to be worth everything in my life but he goes on to say that i may know him and the power of his resurrection so if you want to step and experience this this love worth everything it begins with intimacy it begins with this this connection but it goes even broader and deeper than that because one of the things you discover is is the relentless power of love and he says i i want to know him and the power of his resurrection this love worth everything is experienced when you begin to realize that that when you connect to the creator of the universe he actually places not only his presence in you but his power in you because his power and his presence are inseparable i think a lot of people want god's power without his presence you know they want god's power to change their lives their power to change the world and their power to make their dreams come true and the power to be successful but they want the power without the presence and the problem is that god doesn't separate his power from his presence he doesn't say oh i'm going to give you my power even though you don't really want my presence and if you don't want god's presence then you should not expect his power and when paul says i want to know him and the power of his resurrection he gives us the proper sequence the power of god comes out of the presence of god and the presence of god is experienced in intimacy with him but i don't want you to miss what he's actually saying to us we can live this life right here right now in the power of his resurrection i think sometimes because we're sequential creatures we get the sequence wrong see we we go oh i get the power of his resurrection and so that's a power i will experience after i'm dead not really that helpful i i mean i'm all for having power after i die but but i don't know about you but my motivation for searching for god was all about all the struggles i was dealing with in this life all the pain i was having to experience in this life all the questions i had about this life and and so i don't want to sound ungrateful but um what the afterlife has just never been my motivation and if if if god never had a conversation with us about life before death i don't know if i'd be interested in a conversation about life after death and what he's actually telling us is that you might miss the sequence when he says that i may know him and the power of his resurrection what he's actually telling us is that the power of his resurrection is knowable in this life see the power of the resurrection isn't what happens after we leave this world the power of the resurrection is what we experience when we let go of this world and the wonder of it is that we experience that power right now in time and space in real life in fact one time someone uh it was talked to me about about jesus and about the relationship we have with god and saying well you know we we don't really have the same kind of power that jesus had because jesus is god so so we can't be expected to live the kind of life that that that jesus emulates for us and and you know what the scriptures tell us it says that the same power that raised christ from the dead dwells in us now just break that down just for a minute the power that raised jesus from the dead whatever that power is i'm see i'm not really sure what the frequency or degree is or or how do you measure that kind of power but all i know is that jesus the son of god is dead he's been crucified it tells us that the weight of of hell and death was on him and then it says the power of the resurrection raised him out of the grave raised him from death to life and that the power that raised jesus from the dead actually dwells in you and in me in us how much power do you need if you have inuit the power that raised jesus from the dead let me tell you have all the power you need to live the life god has called you to love and you experience a love worth everything when you step into the intimacy that comes in knowing him and then out of that intimacy comes the power of the resurrection see the power of god erupts out of intimacy with god the power of god is not an energy it's not a commodity it's not some kind of tool or or instrument or weapon you grab the power of the resurrection is what emerges out of a deep knowing of god out of an intimate communion and relationship with god and the more intimately you walk with jesus the more power you have in this life so that i may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings this is the phrase that really caught me off guard because that word fellowship comes from that word koinonia it's it's this word that that means community it it that word fellowships reminds me of all good things it's like laughter and joy and friendship and hugging remember when we used to hug remember when we were not six feet of separation remember when we would just enjoy each other and and fellowship is about eating together and eating together and eating together well maybe i overstated that and and doing life together and so when you think of the word fellowship it's supposed to provoke joy and he says and the fellowship of his suffering so wait wait a minute why would you connect fellowship with sufferings and yet that word sufferings comes from this greek word pathos which can also be translated passions you see the word sufferings and the word passion are inseparable in the scriptures and so what he's actually telling us is that we can have fellowship with his passions so then why would it be translated fellowship with his sufferings we can become partakers in his sufferings it's because you see if you want to know what god is passionate about look at the cross see if you understand what what fires god up look at the cross see what it what the cross tells us is that god so passionately hated the destructive power sin that he was willing to die to destroy that power and god so passionately loves you that he was unwilling to leave you under the weight of guilt and shame and god so passionately loves you that he was willing to die to set you free if you want to know what god cares about if you want to know what god is passionate about then look at the cross and so it shouldn't surprise us that the last days and hours around the life of jesus is literally called the passion we have plays called the passion play we we you know we we we have a film called the passion of christ because we understand that the suffering of jesus reveals the passions of jesus or the passion of god and what he's saying is i want to be joined in fellowship in communion with the sufferings of jesus with the passions of jesus because here and and this is where maybe we have to take a moment and step back and count the cost of this if you want to love worth everything you will be joined in communion with the passions of jesus his passions will become your passions his desires become your desires his heart becomes your heart his fire becomes your fire see if you want to experience a love worth everything then he will consume you and his love will consume you and before you know it you will live your life to bring him pleasure and to to love god and to experience his love but when you are joined in communion with his passions then you will also be joined with his sufferings because you will be willing to pay whatever price that love demands and that's the reality of what jesus calls us to he calls us to live a life of love he calls us to be the flesh and blood reflections of a love worth everything and the only way you can truly express and live out and prove to the world that you've found a love worth everything is to love is to love without condition and to love without restraint and to love where it even costs you it's the love that has passion and is willing to sacrifice and and you know when i walk and look around me and i see the beauty of the world that god has created i realize that god is is a romantic that god cannot create without creating beauty god simply cannot create without being inspiring that that words like wonder and awe and beauty and worship are synonymous with everything god touches because you see what love does is love changes the entire construct of your reality what love does is love makes all the colors brighter and the aromas richers and the the flavors more powerful what love does is love makes life beautiful and when we experience this kind of love it changes everything when paul describes what happened to him when he encountered jesus he doesn't talk about how his beliefs changed or his doctrines changed he doesn't talk about suddenly how he was right and before he was wrong all paul tries to help us understand is he fell in love and that love changed everything i wonder if if you've come to know that love worth everything that love that makes everything else pale in comparison that that love that becomes the one thing that is worth more than the everything that's who jesus is and that's who he longs to be for you and i i can't explain it but in the most extraordinary ways god looks at you with all your brokenness with all your shortcomings with all your failings and all your flaws and he looks at you and he decided that you were his love worth everything he's just waiting for you to step into that love and experience the life he died so that you could have so if you're listening right now and you know that you need that kind of love and and you get it that jesus becomes that all-consuming overwhelming love and i want to invite you right now just to cross the line of faith and you know when you cross that line of faith you're also stepping across a line into the universe of love into a kingdom of love and if you're ready to trust jesus with your life right now if you're ready to receive his forgiveness and his freedom i just want to lead you in a simple prayer just a one sentence prayer where you can give your life to jesus and allow him to put his life in you would you pray with me right now jesus i give you my life right now just tell them just tell them right now jesus i give you my life just tell them right now jesus i give you my life this is where it all begins this is where love begins the story of you

Channel: Mosaic

Views: 5,884

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Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC

Id: Sd4DdWP0uuU

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021