Encounter Love // Leah Wenger

[Music] [Music] well i don't know if you've heard this yet or not but i've got big news school is back in session can i get an amen school's back school's back hey okay where are our teachers administrators where are you wave at me big waves we want to honor you we love you yes if you're online drop it in the chat i'm a teacher teachers make this world go round and after the last year and a half parents everywhere are rejoicing because the kids they back they're back in school five days a week they have amazing teachers friends schedules routines i love it and sports are back middle school sports high school sports illini sports well they they're kind of back they're not really back yet they had a little rough day yesterday but that's fine they're gonna be back real soon strong start strong start i'm so glad we're back into the routine but let me be totally honest it can be a little difficult with the three kids i've got three amazing kids but this year they're in three different school buildings so when i say there was like a lot of administration happening on my end there's a lot i'm talking like three different you know sets of teachers three sets of administration three bus times bus routes three different lunch menus just to make it really fun it's a lot but i'm not complaining because i love school i love school i've always loved school actually even as a kid i was a solid like ab student i loved going to class and i loved being involved in different activities uh pretty much if there was something i could participate in i did so musicals cheerleading class officer a student council volleyball track like you name it i was there now part of that is because i'm an extrovert so just give me all the people right i love it but part of it when i was looking back and reflecting like why did i do everything because as a parent now ain't no way i'm letting my kids do all that stuff why why did i do so much honestly i hated to be at home i hated being there home was a place for me that was a place of pain place of chaos and i would rather be anywhere but there you know my parents divorced when i was nine and after that my mom was diagnosed with a chronic illness and it really kept her from doing a lot of those motherly duties things like you know washing the dishes cooking the meals grocery shopping laundry all of that really fell on us the kids and we weren't very good at it let's be honest so it really created a home that was not filled with peace it was filled with pain and so i actually spent a lot of time not at my house and i all but lived actually at my friend's houses so middle school high school i i would stay hours weekends every time i could be at my friend's house as i was there but i actually did it with a purpose you know i had this point where i recognized that you know what my family is different than other families they don't actually walk through the pain that i've walked through and and i was really good at keeping it hidden like i was so embarrassed in my home life that i never told my friends but i certainly never had anyone over so when i would go over to my friends houses i was really strategic and i every time would pull myself right up to the kitchen counter and i would sit down and i would talk to the parents for hours i wanted to learn everything i possibly could from these people i wanted their wisdom how do you have i have a normal family right how do you raise healthy kids how do you interact with each other how do you pay your bills and do life how do you have healthy relationships i wanted to learn how to do this because i wanted a healthy family one day and what i didn't realize at the time that these desires that i had to build a healthy family these were god-given desires he wanted to show me the way because he loves building healthy families but i didn't learn until much much later that healthy families aren't built because people know how to do all the right things all the time perfect families they don't exist they're not built on a place that where people are always doing right things healthy families are built on a person and his name is jesus and what i didn't know then that i discovered is that i actually didn't have to go searching for him it wasn't like looking for a needle in a haystack jesus has been running after me since the day when i was in my mother's womb like before i was born he's been pursuing me and he's always been saying good things about me and he's crazy in love with me and you know what the same is true for you he loves you so much he's passionately pursuing you you don't have to go find him he wants you to encounter his incredible love today he loves you and so we're going to talk today what it means to talk about what it means to encounter love as we pursue all the good things that he has for us but let's just pray we're going to invite holy spirit to be our teacher so father we love you we love being in your church we love being a part of your church family and we love that you long to spend time with us so you are welcome here you're welcome here do whatever you want to do this is your morning that this is your word and we just invite you to be our teacher in jesus name amen well so i mentioned i have three kids my oldest his name is cohen and he has officially entered the wonderful world of middle school yeah sixth grade baby okay it's exciting and petrifying we have been already like introduced the world of middle school sports we have had no less than 1 500 conversations about why he needs a cell phone which we have not yet given in but give a time i know that's going to happen but cohen is a great kid okay literally like type a really responsible smart all of this and one of his teachers from the middle school sent home one of those get to know you forms right they all do this they want to know what are your favorite foods what do you like to do for fun who are your friends and again he's studious i never check in on his work because he's always on it and he was filling it out at home and he comes to me he's like mom i'm done but i just got this one question i can't answer i'm like buddy like you're pretty smart like figure it out he brings it over i'm looking at it and it says this what difficulties or challenges have you faced and he just looks at me he goes i don't know had a pretty great life and you guys in my heart of hearts thank you jesus because at 11 years old i couldn't have said that at 11 years old i'd already walked through a lot of pain i've had a lot of loss at 11 years old i could have written a few things on the line and so i said thank you jesus but i also took that moment i looked him square in the eyes and i said don't you ever forget how lucky you are kid okay i'm a good mom but also i think manny's just 11. i got a lot of time to really screw this up so stay tuned my friend stay tuned no but really i wanted to pause and just thank god because god is a god who redeems families god is in the business of building healthy kingdom families and what has been does not have to be what will be god changes the game and an encounter with his love is everything we're gonna need to do it okay our heavenly father is in the business of building healthy families and he does it in the natural but he does it in the spiritual too and this is what i love about this place this is not a church building you go to this is a family you become part of here at the vineyard you are a part of a family you're not alone and so what i love is that god has given this family a unique purpose and a unique dna doesn't make us better than any other church hear me say it it doesn't it just makes us us and so when we talk about the vineyard i love that god's mission for this place is that we would encounter love and experience transformation and extend the miraculous those are three things we're really passionate about here so encounter love everyone say encounter love encounter love if you're online you just drop that right in the chat and count our love what does this mean because this word love we hear it in a lot of different contexts and in in the english we get kind of it's like it's boring it's like one word to mean a thousand different things so i say i love coffee and i do and i say i love fall and i really do because i love fall you guys literally my mood exponentially increases as the temperatures go down i love it i love fall i got my shack it i'm gonna lure it out love fall but love is a word that when we say oh encounter love i'm not saying encounter fall like the way you love fall i'm not saying encounter like the way you love coffee i'm saying encounter love and this love biblically speaking is not it's not a friendship love it's not a romantic love it is agape love when we say encounter love what we mean in the greek it means the unconditional god love unconditional god love it means our human minds we can barely actually understand what that even means it's so big it's so good it's unbelievably too good to be true agape love encounter unconditional god love and when we encounter this love do you know that we are encountering god himself we read about that here in 1st john 4 16 we have come into an intimate experience with god's love and we trust in the love he has for us let's read this last line altogether if you're online drop it in the chat ready god is love when we encounter love we encounter god because love is who he is how do we know this how do we have tangible evidence of the love of god we're going to read this in john 3. you might have heard this one before john 3 16. maybe this is a different translation for you says it this way for here is the way god loved the world he gave his only unique son as a gift so now everyone who believes in him will never perish but experience everlasting life and this is my favorite part we love to stop right here it gets better for god did not send his son into the world to judge and condemn the world listen up and you know if he didn't send a son he didn't send you or me but to be its savior and rescue it this is the gospel my friends this is very very very very good news god showed for us his unconditional love when he sent his only son into the world to live a sinless life to die on the cross to be raised to life again to pay for all sin for all time and you know what he did this knowing that some wouldn't even care about it he did knowing that some would never receive the love that he wanted to give some would turn their nose up at the sacrifice and yet he did it anyway unconditional god love he loves you before you ever love him he's for you before you ever know who he is he's crazy about you even if you never call him by name he loves you he wants you to encounter his love today he wants you to encounter it do you know what encounter means there's a lot of different definitions and i know you can say oh yeah i encounter encounter my favorite definition of encounter is to come upon face to face when we say we want you to encounter love we want you to encounter face to face unconditional god love you know how uncomfortable it can be to be face to face with someone i really wanted you to try it but they told me like kova you probably shouldn't do that it's fine face to face it's so intimate it's so personal it's such a close intimate knowing you know when my kids have to apologize because we make them do that sometimes it's harder for others some than others my youngest especially hates to apologize it's fun when we when we have them apologize what we're saying is our relationship we're a little off something's wrong here it's a miss we have to restore a relationship so do you know what i make them do face to face baby and i bring them in forehead to forehead every time when you when you do this you guys they just melt you you just like i want you to try this this week with permission with people don't just do it face to face and be known by someone it's so intimate it's so personal it's so deep be known by the lord that's the way he wants to encounter you today he wants to be face to face with you it's a beautiful thing and do you know why he loves you and he loves to be with you and he's not bringing you in just to tell you all the ways you're missing it he's not bringing you in just to shut you down he's not rejecting you he's saying i want to be with you and i want to be not just like yeah you can sit over there he says right here face to face and he calls you by name and he tells you all the things that he loves about you and you know what happens we've become so fulfilled in the love of god because we've rested in relationship that's what it means to encounter love encounter love and as i was talking with the lord about this message he's like leah i want you to tell the people something great help me he says i want you to tell them come home come home but listen i argued first things first that's what i do i say oh no lord home that's a horrible thing for some people home that's anywhere i wanted to be i didn't want to be there think for a moment about what home means to you maybe home was a place where like all the good memories come flooding back maybe you went to disney world maybe your parents loved you and you created a home of peace that was filled with the presence of the spirit and i hope that that is true but for some of you home was not like that and when i say come home that's like come to pain come to rejection come to the place that made me feel like i was never good enough like always striving to please my parents and they were just never that's never good enough come home can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people you know i used to think that like my family was the only one with problems right we do that i was embarrassed i was ashamed i never told anybody about my crazy family because i knew all the other families were normal then i grew up and you know what i realized everybody got problems everybody has problems there's no normal families out there and as good as your experience might have been and i pray it was incredible it still wasn't perfect you know why you were raised by humans everyone say humans humans oh my goodness now for parents this gives us a really big deep breath oh good we don't have to be perfect you don't have to be perfect but you can't invite holy spirit into that to build a healthy strong family he wants to partner with you in parenting not perfection not performance resting in a relationship with him he wants to show you how to do it and for some of us this means we actually need to go back and we need to forgive where there were places of pain forgive if we're walking in unforgiveness we're actually not walking in god's freedom parents aren't perfect they're people people aren't perfect but we do invite holy spirit and to teach us how to do our very very best he wants to build healthy families because he's in the business of building healthy families and so many times what happens when we talk about this love thing like encountering love and i think yeah come home come home that's what it means encounter love come home and we think home wasn't so great that's because what we're doing is we're projecting our earthly experience of family and fathering onto our heavenly father and it just doesn't work that way again this is agape love unconditional god love it's hard to have agape love this way right agape love is this way it's a different kind of love it's a different kind of experience and only the father can love you that way but he wants to he wants you to receive that kind of love from him today sometimes when we're invited into that kind of intimacy with the lord it feels like too much right it feels like and you when you try it this week you'll know what i mean it feels like too close too intimate i don't want to be that vulnerable and so what happens is we start pushing it away like oh not good now we call it fancy things we label our ways that we push this away and it's usually one of two things we begin to walk in religion or we walk in rebellion instead of resting in relationship what do i mean when we start walking in religion we believe if only i do all the right things if only i obey all of god's rules if only i am perfect if i perform right then it's okay for me to receive this love i've earned it danger danger danger on the flip side we say that love it's too intimate it's too much and so i start pushing it away and i rebel i start walking in rebellion i don't need your rules i don't need your love i do this on my own i don't need anybody so what does it mean to walk fully in religion or even a spirit of religion which happens sometimes when we believe we have to obey all of the rules to be accepted to be right that is religion and people when we're struggling with with religion we become obsessed with the rules why we want to know the truth so that we can follow the truth so we can obey the truth so we can be pleasing to the lord and it's a lie from the pit of hell what does the word tell us before you were formed in your mother's womb you were already right jesus has made you already right you already belong to the family there's nothing you can do to earn your way into right standing with the father and what happens when the enemy starts speaking this lie over us is we begin to perform and really dangerous we think that we we have earned it we're like but i but i i mean i did follow his rules my life's pretty great i mean look at me i did it please don't negate the powerful work of the cross don't do that the holy spirit has gifted you with his undeniable grace and has allowed you to partner with him to make really great choices and that's incredible but please don't negate the work of the cross and then the flip side we head over to rebellionville people think this is the fun side right oh rebellion freedom i do what i want right over here in religion let me just say this ultimately we perform because we are afraid we're going to be rejected right if i don't do it right you're going to you're going to push me out you get over here to religion they say i don't want no yeah rebellion because there's a lot of ours just go with me rebellion over here and we think i don't want your love i can do this on my own i don't need anybody you guys like self-reliance that's like a celebrated cultural value right oh you're strong you're independent you don't need anybody it's not a kingdom value it's not a kingdom value and i feel this deeply you know why i am misindependent right this is like my story all i want to do is i can do it on my own i don't need anybody don't negate the work of the cross you can't do it on your own you never could but we can't we go over here and we say i don't need your rules i don't even like your rules so i do what i want ha ha i'm living in freedom and it's not actually freedom it's bondage we think that we're creating our this free little life and it's not it's just not the father wants to set you free from the thing you think is bringing you freedom today you think that you're in charge you do what you want i do me i wa guys you do need someone his name is jesus and he sits in this radical middle place of relationship and he's saying come home come home don't walk in independence assuming you got this rest in interdependence with the one who wants to partner with you encounter his love his love is the only thing that can set you free from the trap of religion or the trap of rebellion his incredible love and there's this great example of this found in a passage in luke 15 where jesus is telling his disciples a parable which is a little like it's like an easy story that he tells to get a really deep spiritual concept across i love stories i love parables and so jesus is telling his disciples he's like hey there was this guy and he has two sons and one day the younger son comes to the dad and he says i want my inheritance early give me cool basically in the middle eastern culture that jesus was telling this story it would be like the young son coming to the father and saying pops i wish you were dead give me my money i'm gone we would call this rebellion everyone say rebellion rebellion yeah so the crazy thing to me is the father actually gives the son what he asks for and he takes his inheritance and he slices it in two and he gives some to the older brother and some to the younger brother and actually the translation in the greeks is that he literally gave them his life he gave them everything he had what does it sound like by the way gospel everyone say gospel you know this is the gospel story great so he gives him everything he has the younger son takes up his riches and he heads out and he's like i'm going on the adventure of a lifetime freedom so you can imagine what he might be doing with all of his money you can fill in the little blanks but he's out and he runs and he actually spends every last dime that he has and there ends up being this famine in the land and this young son is like i've blown through all my money i guess i guess i'm gonna have to get a job like okay every teenager everywhere right like oh it's more expensive to live than you think he's like i'm gonna okay there's a farmer he's hiring great i'm gonna see if i can work for this farmer oh it's working with pigs okay let me say this my in-laws are farmers and they have had hog buildings you like i mean i don't like from far far away ooh i mean bacon so we're happy but oh my gosh like i could never i just can't so here's the young son and he's sitting in with the pigs and he's broke and he's so starving that he actually considers eating the slop that the pigs are eating this is like rock bottom right at the very very very bottom he's desperate and he has this aha moment and he thinks gosh you know what my dad treats his guys better than this i bet i'm gonna see if i maybe he'll let me work for him i'm going to go home and i'm going to see if i can work for him and he starts practicing his apology speech right god i'm so sorry all right dad i'm so sorry you know i i i've sinned against you i'll never be worthy to be called your son but please just hire me on as one of your employees so he's practiced up and he's ready and he starts heading for home and then feel this for a moment you're the sun you've blown it your ego was up here your character was right here right you really messed it up you're coming back with your tail between your legs it takes a lot of humility to come home but do you know that that's a beautiful kingdom value humility you can't do it on your own so he comes home and then feel what the father feels he's sitting home his son is gone he's devastated he wish it would have gone any other way but it didn't and from a long ways away he's looking and he sees his son coming dressed as a baker i guess that's your kid you spend your whole life clothing them dressing them trying to give them everything they need here he is in rags but great compassion swells in his heart for his son who was returning home great compassion and he runs out and he races to meet him and he sweeps him up in his arms and he hugs him dearly and he's kissing him all over and over with tender love and the sun he starts his little speech right i've been working on this dad i'm so sorry look please forgive me i know i can never be worthy to be called your son and the father stops him and he interrupts him and i think he's been working so hard just let him finish but he doesn't he's a son you're home now doesn't matter you're home he loves his kid when jesus is telling the disciples the story this is your story this is my story he's saying there's nothing you can do there's nothing you can do that will separate you from the love that your father has for you it doesn't matter where you've been what you've done how stupid you were how messed up it's been things you've thought about things you even acted on it doesn't matter the father says i love you come on just come home he's longing to embrace you today with that love that he has for you that agape love doesn't matter come home and it takes humility to say i was wrong i'm home dad come home the doors are open this is grace amazing grace open doors scripture tells us that the older brother had a very different experience right the older brother he's already home right he never left he sowed no oat like he didn't he didn't do all those things he stayed home and he worked and when all this was taking place when the brother was rushing home and the father was celebrating him and even when the father says hey we're gonna throw you a party brother misses all that you know where brother was he's working out in the fields like a good son he's working so he's tired he's sweaty he's gross farm life right he comes in from the field and he sees what's happening and you know what happens he is mad it says it this way the older son became angry and refused to go in and celebrate so his father came out and pleaded with him come enjoy the feast with us and the son said father listen this is very brave by the way how many years have i been working like a slave for you performing every duty you've asked is a faithful son and i've never once disobeyed you what does this sound like religion everybody say religion yeah never once have you thrown a party for me for my faithfulness never once have you given me a goat that i could feast on and celebrate with my friends like he's doing now but look at this son of yours he comes back after wasting your wealth on prostitutes and reckless living and here you are throwing a great feast to celebrate for him the father said my son you've always you are always with me by my side what is he doing he's inviting him back to relationship relationship it's not about religion it's about relationship he said everything i have is yours to enjoy it's only right to celebrate this and be overjoyed because this brother of yours was once dead and gone but now he is alive and back with us again he was lost but now he is found some of us we've been the younger brother we've been out we've been partying we've been doing it up thinking we're walking in freedom but we've actually been eating slop with pigs father says come home that's not the life you want i promise you that's not the life you want it's not about the rules it's god's very loving parameters do you know when we talk about sin and people think like oh it's about me obeying i gotta do it right the father is so loving he puts these little parameters these little guard rails up that says oh if you do that that's not going to be best for you it's going to create a lot of pain you're going to end up eating pig slop you can do that you can think it's freedom but it's not going to be best they're loving little parameters i tell my kids we you know you can't have 14 treats a day i know i'm the worst mom on the planet right why do i say that because i love making rules it's so much fun no because i care about your health it's not best for your life the same thing is true we think that we're walking in freedom but we're actually walking and bonded come home would you just come home it's not best for you and some of us have actually felt like the older brother we've we've again we've sowed no oat we have not been out to doing the crazy things we've been home we've been following all the good church rules we've done it right and yet we say this how many years have i been working like a slave for you god you can put his name in there i've been doing it god i've been doing it all right and the problem with this mindset is exactly what he said he has operated as a slave and not a son slaves believe they have to work hard and obey to be cared for but sons know they belong to the family regardless of your work doesn't matter what you do you belong let me ask you this when did my son cohen have the right to call himself my son when did he earn that right was it when he aced that test which he did because it's gone is it when he took out the garbage without asking which sure makes my mama heart happy no it was the moment after 52 hours of excruciating labor i should get a medal it was the moment that i held him in my arms he did not earn the right to be called my son he's my son because he's my son because he's my son because he's my son and i love him and do you know that you belong not based on anything you've ever done or will do you are loved because you belong you are a son you are a daughter there's nothing you could do or not do that would keep you from that status you don't earn it you simply are born into it so the father says today be born into it forget the religion forget the rebellion be born come home encounter love i love that this is what we're going after vineyard i love that god is building this in this vineyard family i love that we are people who encounter his agape unconditional crazy too good to be true kind of love and i love that we extend that kind of love to the world he's building a beautiful thing in this family and this is for everyone this is you don't have to earn it you don't have to have some special pedigree you just belong because god loves you and i love that we come together every weekend to celebrate this goodness we come together to be reminded of the goodness of god the love that he has for us because we can forget it out there right sometimes we forget we start acting like the younger son we start rebelling why you know people don't rebel against rules they actually rebel against lack of relationship teenagers like parents of teenagers take note it's not the rules they want relationship and the father is inviting you into relationship today i'm going to end by sharing a story with you from some vineyard members here that i love dearly this is james and debra lenard and i want to share a little story of how they have encountered love here at the vineyard so we started attending veneer church in 2017 after years of standing and believing god's promises for our children's salvation we saw a miraculous transformation in our daughter when she started attending the vineyard after years of being asked by a friend we saw god melt a hardened heart those feelings of condemnation and discouragement that had been left behind by religion after our doors our church doors closed we had to come and see what was going on at the vineyard what we saw was the unconditional love of god at the agape love she encountered love we saw the unconditional love of god and an acceptance of all regardless of what a person looks or dressed like background or title behind a name this love was also conveyed in worship by providing an atmosphere for reckless abandonment of self and a focus solely on the one who loves and truly deserves it jesus it was transpired through the messages weekly how god loves us and does not condemn us and is inviting us to partner with holy spirit daily to help further his kingdom would you stand with me the father wants you to encounter this kind of love today and it is a supernatural thing that happens right we feel it in our bones i hear sometimes like a lot of times when people come to the vineyard they're like something was just different during worship it's not the songs it's not the guitars it's not the lights it's the presence of holy spirit who longs to meet with you today and we say holy spirit do whatever you want in this worship that holy spirit you are welcome here you are the teacher you are the encourager you are the giver of love you are the one who makes wrong things right and we release your love into this room right now in jesus name father do what you want to do restore what broken hearts would you would you heal what's been broken in our lives we say father we're home we're coming home we run to you and we want to be so face to face with you as we encounter your love it's in your name we pray jesus amen [Applause]

Channel: thevineyardchurch

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Length: 34min 13sec (2053 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021