Love & Beauty Sermon, Pt. 1- “Jesus Loves You”: The Key to Freedom

By Abigail Barrett

“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” -Romans 8:15

“Jesus loves you” is the deepest theological truth. It is the most profound philosophical statement . And though this truth is so easily articulated with just three words, there are many people who do not believe it. There are many people who do not understand its depth. “Jesus loves you” is the most liberating thing you can say to someone and yet still there are unbelievers who are bound in sin. There are still believers who are bound by self-condemnation. There are many of us who claim to know that Jesus loves us, but in our hearts we are bound by unbelief.

If we are being honest with ourselves, many of us have a bottom-up perspective. Many of us have been using the circumstances of our lives as building blocks to reach an understanding of God’s love. We secretly ask ourselves, “If God loves me, why would He allow bad things to happen to me?” And we secretly bargain, “If I pray more like this person and read my Bible more like that person, God will love me more.” And, rather than correcting our skewed perspective, the Prosperity Gospel of this day and age tells us that we are able to buy God’s affection and favor. Unfortunately, the bottom-up perspective is too crowded with the cares of life and the things of this world for us to see the fullness of God’s love.

To truly see the fullness of God’s love and be set free from the bondage of this world, we need revelation… we need experience… we need a change in our perspective. We need the top-down perspective—for God to lift us up out of the messiness of our lowly lives and to show us ourselves from our point of view.

This is what God did for me…

✨Stay tuned for Part 2✨