- ATTRACTION THAT IS DISTINCTIVE
- ATTRACTED BY HIS BEAUTY PSALM 27:4
- DRAWN BY HIS GOODNESS PSALM 23:6
- He Is Good in Himself
- His Heart is Good --He cannot deny Himself and His heart cannot include anything but what is good.
- His Purposes are Good --What He purposes and plans to do is always good since He always does what pleases Him; good pleases Him while evil does not.
- His Works are Good -- His purposes reflect His heart and His works accomplish His purposes so that all that He does is good.
- He is Good for Us
- DESIROUS OF HIS PLEASURES
- SATISFIED WITH HIS SUFFICIENCY
- COMPELLED BY HIS LOVE
- 2 Corinthians 5:14
- SECURE IN HIS FAITHFULNESS
- Romans 8:38-39
--When we begin to think rightly about Him, our eyes will open to all that is wonderful about our Savior and we will once again be so attracted to Him that we will wonder why we ever left our first love.
--That which is attractive about Jesus Christ distinguishes Him from all others making our love for Him unique.
--Beauty attracts us, regardless of our age or gender, and draws us toward it with a magnetic power that captivates us.
--However, we must beware not to become more taken with the beauty of the creation than we are with the beauty of the Creator Himself!
--Of particular concern for men is the question of how we are to be attracted to the beauty of the Lord, especially to Jesus; but the issue is not one of outward beauty, rather it is His beauty of the heart that captivates us.
--It cannot be the physical beauty that would attract anyway, since we are called to love one whom we have not seen. --His attractiveness to all of us comes from the beauty of His holiness and the splendor of His glory.
--As we see through the eyes of faith who He is, we cannot miss the astounding beauty of our Savior.
--When we understand and appreciate the fact that God is good, and that Jesus Christ is His good Son, we are drawn to love Him in response to that goodness.
--Jesus is so good to us that we are caught in the magnetism of His goodness and drawn to Him so that we might taste the goodness of the Lord. Psalm 34:8
Psalm 84:11
James 1:17
--The promises of inexpressible joy and complete, guilt-free enjoyment belong to all who know Christ as their first love.
--What other pleasure do we know which cannot be abused and misused by over-indulgence but this everlasting enjoyment of all that can be found in Jesus Christ?
--Give me Jesus Christ and I need nothing else, ever again.
--One true love perfectly realized surpasses all others and makes their appeals foolish and empty, offering us what we already have in full with no power to keep their promises while in Christ we already have the fulfillment of the promises in the Person.
--The myth of the greener grass explodes before the overwhelming satisfaction and contentment of resting in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
--When Christ is my first love, I need no other love; all other loves of my life take on meaning only when I am first satisfied with His love alone.
--Intense, outspoken, unqualified love is hard to ignore.
--You may want to resist it, reject it, or run from it, but you cannot pretend it does not affect you to know that someone has made known to you in no uncertain terms that they love you.
--With everything else we know about the love of Christ and the attractiveness of both the subject and object of perfect love, we are compelled to respond.
--Whereas I cannot force you to love Jesus Christ, I can make it clear to you that He loves you and then allow the force of that message to sink in with all of its powerful significance.
--We love Him because He first loved us, a love that grips our hearts and when rightly understood makes it impossible to live without His love...in all its fullness as our first love.
--Insecure as we are, the fact that Jesus Christ loves us faithfully when all around us people let us down and prove to be inevitably unfaithful at some point, the security of His love attracts in a particularly powerful way.
--He loves us faithfully, never shifting or withholding His love, never making it conditional upon our merit, never offering it and then withdrawing it, but assuring us that nothing can separate us from it.
--His love is ever faithful and hearts that have been so wounded by the fickle, faithless expressions of other loves will always find His love undeniably attractive!
His beauty, goodness, enjoyment, sufficiency, love and faithfulness offer us love at its highest possible level and offer an attractiveness that is truly distinctive among the diverse loves of our lives!
--With that in mind, then, hear the voice of the Master calling you to return to your first love, the love left behind for lesser things, and then do the things you did at the first, namely...
- ADORATION THAT IS DEMONSTRATED
- DISCIPLINED WITH TIME
- DEVOTED TO SERVICE
- DILIGENT IN PURITY
- Ephesians 5:25-27
--Attraction to Christ is not the same as devotion to Him and adoration of Him.
--What do we need to do to demonstrate the adoration we have for such a beautiful Savior?
--He deserves the best of our time and sufficient blocks of it each day in which He can receive our love directly and show us His love personally.
--One of the first causes of lost love is the gradual neglect of time with the one you love; so it must never be with Christ if He is to be our first love.
--Once we have heard His voice of love, we will count it our greatest joy to serve our Savior devotedly by doing any and all things that we discover bring Him pleasure and accomplish His will.
--Love always expresses itself in action and so must our love for Christ be demonstrated in active service and faithful obedience to all that He gives us to do.
--Last of all, our love must be demonstrated with purity as we maintain diligence in living for Him alone as holy men and women.
--The bride of Christ is to be presented to her greatest love in all purity and persist in holiness out of devoted love for Him.
--What loving bride does not want to be pure for the love of her life, the first love of her heart?