Many times when asking God for something, we expect to see immediate results. There’s nothing wrong with that really – especially when dealing with an all powerful God who lives outside of time. However, when immediate results are not apparent, we as humans start covering and start coming up with all manner of reasons and explanations for why our request was not granted. There is something wrong with this. Because right from the start the assumption is that our requests were not granted, and then based on that faulty assumption we begin conceiving all-manner of anti-Biblical doctrine to try and make sense of our present experience – and the faith of many people has been shipwrecked as a result of such practices. What we will be studying today is what the Bible actually says about requesting things, faith and receiving. The true words spoken by Jesus may surprise you. Once we see the truth about what Jesus taught, it will broaden the horizon of our thinking and our expectations when it comes to believing and receiving.
If I were to ask you what God thinks of you, what kind of answer would you give? Most believers would probably say that “Oh, He loves me!” and that is certainly a true statement, but it has become almost cliché in our current culture to say “God loves you” or that “Jesus loves me”. We say the words, but do we really understand what they mean? The world today has a distorted, corrupted idea of what love is, and that is purely from a human standpoint, much more so then is the love of God misunderstood. In this study today, we will look deeply into how the scriptures show the love of God in all of its glory. So that you can truly know the way that God thinks of you with love, and have a real revelation of what that means. The love of God will no longer be an empty statement without meaning.
Last week in part one of this study, we saw how the heart of God is not for religion or even dutiful service, but for genuine intimate relationship. We also saw how this relationship with God is integral and necessary for good service, since without the foundation of receiving love from God, every work is a dead work. Today as we continue with part two of our study, we are going to see the contrast between the behaviors of different people as they encounter the truth of God. How the truth of Jesus can and should affect us, and we will see what the heart of Jesus for everyone is, even if they do not realize it.