Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck
Jeff: Thank you. It's fun to be here. We've never done this before. These guys are so good at it. Hopefully, we won't be real awkward at it, but we like each other so it should work out. It helps to like each other. It would be really hard to do this if you were faking it, wouldn't it? I've got a feeling there is a lot of pastors and wives who fake it. Yeah, unfortunately.
Cheryl: I think I'm not on. Am I on?
Jeff: You are on. You are good. You are not quite as loud as me.
Cheryl: I'll talk louder.
Jeff: There you go. Actually, we are going to talk about father's love, which is interesting because I feel a little bit overwhelmed by it because it's something we talk about a lot. We probably don't have a Sunday go by that Pastor Brian and Jacque don't talk about how much God loves us. So how do we keep talking about this and it not become just like, oh yeah, tell me something else I don't know? But I'm here to tell you, you don't know; you really don't know and I don't know. We don't know yet. We really don't get it. What this love is really all about. Each of us has some level of understanding. We know conceptually that God had to love us to send his only begotten son to die on the cross. We know that because he did that, our sins are forgiven and we get to go to heaven. At least most of us understand that conceptually, but you know, the 18 inches from the head to the heart, that's a long ways.
It takes a lifetime sometimes to get that little concept from here into reality. Besides that, our understanding of what love really is and how big it is and how overwhelming it is, it's just beyond us. We are just not infinite, but what can happen is that it can increase— the reality of a of father's love in our lives can increase more and more and more over time. We are going to take another stab at it today, and hopefully we won't all walk away and go "Oh, I heard about father's love again today." Yep, heard it all before. The truth is that his love is so complete, it is so large that it can't help transform our lives. The love of our heavenly father is transformational. All of us have experienced it to some degree. Every one of us, when we met Jesus for the first time we met transformational love and some of us in this room, our lives went from hell to heaven in two seconds. Is anybody like that?
Drug addicts went from drug addicts to straight in two seconds. Marriages were healed in two seconds. Broken lives were restored in two seconds because of that transformational love. Others of us have had moments where even— I've heard testimonies of some of you in the middle of a worship service here at Hope when the Holy Spirit met you in the middle of worship and your whole picture of yourself was immediately transformed because he revealed how much he loved you right in that one moment in the middle of worship.
I had one of my very best friends in life, in his testimony about when he got saved, he told me, he said, "When I met Jesus, he said, I thought I must be the only Christian in the entire world, because if anyone else had experienced the love that I felt I would have heard about him." It's totally transformational. All of us have experienced it at some point, but what's really interesting about this transformational love is it impacts us very powerfully. What we are going to talk about in a moment is all the things we've learned up to that point, that need to be changed over time. The renewing of our mind, our thought life, the way we see ourselves, the way we see the world, the way we see life. All of those things transform over time. So oftentimes what happens at some of these transformational moments, they get lost along the way.
And so then we hear stories about these amazing believers who no longer believe or people who were transformed in a moment with Jesus and then it's lost. I had a really good friend for many years who had a lifelong struggle with his sense of self-worth and then would accompany that horrible image that he had of himself were life besetting sins that he couldn't break free from. Back in the revival years, he, he would go to one of the revival centers back in the nineties when we had the Toronto Blessing and we had the Smithton revival and the Pensacola. He would go to the Smithton and he would get knocked down on the floor and the Holy Spirit would just brew over him with love. He would come back a transformed person. He would be free. He would be at peace. He would be different. And then over the months that old thinking would find its way back and pretty soon he would be back where he was. The only way he could get free, he would have to go back down to Smithton and get knocked on the floor and have the Holy Spirit brew over him with his love again.
That was just a pattern of life for him during those revival years because every time in that moment there would be a transformation, but his mind didn't get renewed. Some of these changes that needed to take place, some of you know it takes a long time, but the father never gets tired of loving us. He never says, well, that I've tried to do I give up. That's just not how he is.
Anyways, part of what we are talking about is the fathers we've had. Some of us have good fathers. Pastor Brian talks about what a great father he had. I had a really good home. I grew up in a very healthy home with the mom and dad that loved me. Some of us had bad fathers. Some of us had fathers who were drug addicts or alcoholics, or they were abusive in all kinds of different ways. Some of us had no father. Either they weren't there physically, or they weren't there emotionally. I began to understand a long time ago that the number one job of our parents when we are children is to build an emotional infrastructure inside of us that supports us and helps us be healthy adults. When our parents fail to do that, we become very unhealthy adults. We grew up and were very unhealthy adults. The absence of a father, the absence of a good mother, the unhealthy dynamic in our home between the two can cause us to grow up with all kinds of brokenness in our heart that follows us through all of our adult lives.
We all understand if you grew up without a father, how can you possibly have learned how to be a father? Once in a while in a rare circumstance, and especially if Jesus gets involved, you can actually grow up with no father or grew up in a horrible home and actually create a reasonably good home for your children. That's pretty miraculous, actually. But otherwise, without that hope, without those rare occurrences, what we actually have is we have from generation to generation to generation to generation, just more and more and more and more broken people being born. The only hope for that is Jesus. That's the only hope we have. That's the intervention.
As I put in my notes, I said, all is not lost. All is not lost because Jesus has revealed to us, the father that we all want. In fact, I was kind of curious about this. I had never counted before, but I looked it up, I said, how many times does Jesus talk about our father in the gospel as well? In the book of John Jesus references the heavenly father more than 100 times. It was his main theme. It was his main theme. If there was any, I mean, other than come to redeem us, if there is anything he can to do is to help us meet the father we always wanted and we always needed. Of course, I think we understand that even if we had good fathers, they were human and they failed. And even if we had good fathers, most of us came into adulthood with some type of wounding, some type of misunderstanding, some type of self-worth issues, some type of baggage that followed us and made it difficult for us succeed as healthy adults, almost all of us carry something like that.
The place that we find that restores that, that heals that is when we meet the father that we actually really needed and always wanted. And that is the heavenly father. And Jesus revealed a father when he would, when he revealed to us his heavenly father, he revealed to us a father that was perfect in every way. That's what he did. The first thing—Not the first thing, but I think one of the most coolest things that he revealed is that wasn't just his heavenly father. He was our heavenly father. I love this. We are going to read this out of the Passion, but we are going to look at John 20 verse 17. This is actually after Jesus has been raised from the dead. He is in the garden and Mary is with him. Cheryl, do you want to just read that scripture about that?
Cheryl: Jesus cautioned her: Mary, don't cling to me, for I haven't yet ascended to God, my father. And he is not only my father and God, but now he is your father and your God. Now go to my brothers and tell them what I've told you, that I am ascending to my father and your father to my God and your God.
Jeff: That has always been such a powerful verse to me. One thing I noticed for the very first time is that in all of the gospel of John, this was the first time that he refers to his disciples as his brothers. Go and tell my brothers. I'm going to see my father and your father. He is your father too. That has always been really important to me. He's not just our father; he is a good father. He's patient. He's kind. He is understanding. He is loving. He is nurturing. He is everything that we all need. He will never tell you to suck it up. He will never tell you to man up. That's just not what a good father does. There are times we have to man up, but you see, he understands that if you’ve got man up, he needs to be there to help you man up. See that's the difference. He's so generous. He's so generous. One of my favorite scriptures has always been Luke 12:32. This is out of the, I think the New Living translation.
Cheryl: So don't be afraid, little flock, for it gives your father great happiness to give you the kingdom, the kingdom.
Jeff: Dads, don't you like to give to your kids? Doesn't it make you happy to see the delight on their face when you give them something? That's our heavenly father. He just can't give us enough. He loves to see joy on his children's faces. He loves to see the look on our faces when he gives us what we want.
Cheryl: That reminds me of my dad. He was away for a week at a time working in construction in Minneapolis, and he would come home on Friday night and leave on Sunday night. He would come home and he had a black lunch pail. Whenever he came, we knew he had something in the lunch pail for us, three kids. One time it was a kitty. We lived on a farm, so that was pretty easy to do, to bring a cat in and a good thing. I'll just never forget how much he liked to give.
Jeff: That's awesome. Here is another one about how much he likes to give us: Matthew 7, 9 to 11 also in the New Living.
Cheryl: You parents, if your children asked for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they asked for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course, not. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?
Jeff: Did you all ask him for a good gift this morning? He loves to give his children good gifts.
Cheryl: Maybe we will hear testimonies.
Jeff: Yes, maybe we will. That would be awesome. This isn't name it claim it. This isn't anything like that. This is about a good and generous father who loves his children. There is nothing he likes more than for you to have a meaningful and joyful and full life. That's why Jesus came. I came that you might have life and you might have it more abundantly. That's the point. A part of the real cool part of it is that we learn that abundance isn't necessarily an abundance of things. The abundance is much more real than abundance and circumstance. That's something we learned over time too, but no better lesson to learn.
Now, I just want to tweak this a little bit. We are going to actually explore this even a little bit more. Let's add to the fact, not only has Jesus purposely revealed to us the God of creation, he revealed to us that he is our heavenly father, but I think we all understand that we are all made an image of God. So every father, a father has been made in the image of God. Every man has been made in the image of God. Every woman has been made in the image of God. Every mother has been made in the image of God. Embodied in the person of our creator is the complete fullness of every man and every woman, every father and every mother. So not only is God our father, not only does he carry all the attributes of a good father, he carries all the attributes of a good mother. He has got them both. And so whatever a father lacks at a mother has you get that too. Isaiah 49:15-18.
Cheryl: Never can a mother forget her nursing child. Can she feel no love for the child she has born? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you.
Jeff: So even God uses a mother's love to define his love for us. You see? This is not a feminist message. This is true. This is our God. His love is so expansive. It's beyond definition. That's what's so hard about trying to teach this; you can't find words, but that's okay because it's not about this. I've come to understand that there are five really core things that a father does in that the heavenly father does perfectly. He provides for us. He protects us. He trains us or teaches us. He nurtures us and he believes in us. Those are the five things that I believe a good father will do. Nurturing, actually, oftentimes we give that one to the mom, but what would you say about a mother's love?
Cheryl: I was thinking about how a mom like gives up her life for her child. I think she gives up her body to give birth, to carry and give birth. She learns about the word sacrifice because you give up. You are always thinking about your child; no matter how many you have, you are always thinking about them. You give up so much of your life for them and you are watching them. You are hoping that you give them what they need at a certain time. According to what they're going through. A lot of what helped me is to think about what I had experienced when I was going through what they were going through. I remember I could remember what I needed, so I tried to give that to them. I had to be fierce with myself to make sure that as my children were growing that I was really taking them in and loving them, but I was also always letting them go because I knew that they were going to be going and I would be ready for that. And I did little by little, let them go. It turned out really well when it comes time to leave the nest, how hard that can be.
Jeff: I remember Cheryl, there was hardly a day went by, I would be hopping in the car to go to work and she would say, “I've got to play with the kids today. They grow up way too fast.” That was her focus. We were blessed because she got to be a stay at home mom for the most part. That doesn't happen for everybody, but she got to do that. We got to do that. It was a wonderful way to live. That was her focus from morning tonight. I do have to say that God is not possessive. God is open handed in his love. That's one of the most amazing things about our father is he gives his love without any strings. There is no requirement back.
So many times in our families of origin, the love has strings. There is something that's required back. How much better to be able to say, “Hey, we would love to have you for dinner, but no obligation”? Hey, father's day, you are welcome to come over, but no obligation. That type of love is I think rare on planet earth, but it's not rare in heaven. It's real. God gives us so much and he doesn't require anything in return. Think about it, Jesus died on the cross with no guarantee that anybody would love him back. You will never see him saying, "I died for you, and you talk about me like that!" Zap! That will never happen.
Cheryl: He does not do that.
Jeff: He does not do that. He never will. His death was free. It was freely given with no strings attached. That's a love that's hard for us to comprehend. In a book Brian and I are reading, the guy points out that when Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment, all along the law had taught, love your neighbor as yourself, but Jesus said, I'm giving you a new commandment, love one another as I have loved you. Loving someone the way Jesus is loves us is completely different than loving somebody the way you want to be loved. Think about that. It is totally different.
Cheryl and I re-watched the movie last night. I couldn't get out of my mind once I started working on this message. If you haven't seen it, there is a 1985 movie called Eleni. Has anybody seen it? John Malkovich is the actor in it. It's about a mother's love. It's about a mother who sacrifices her life for her children and the Greek civil war. It's 1985, but it was still very powerful. I cried through the whole end of it. You've got to pay a couple bucks for it to watch it on prime, but, it's well worth it. Then you will get a sense of what a mother's love is really like.
We've talked about the fathers we had, and we talked about the father we always wanted. I want to talk about the roadblocks for just for a second, and then we are going to go to our closing scripture. I don't know if you understand this. I'm going to say something that you might think is a little controversial, but I believe it's true. Not only are we made in the image of God, we all understand that to be true, what I want to suggest to you is that you have made God in your image. Just think about that for a minute. You have made God in your image. What I mean by that is that your understanding of God has been formed inside of you by your life experiences, your family of origin, the family grew up in, your experiences as a child, the church you grew up in, the faith you grew up in, your experiences as a teenager, the rejection you felt, the failures you experienced, the successes, what you've been taught doctrinally, what you've been taught theologically; what you've experienced in your life, as far as tragedies, misfortunes, things like that or the opposite. All of your life experiences, all of the things that you've been taught beginning with your family of origin, all the way into adulthood: those things have all influenced how you now think about God. They have all affected how you see the God that you see.
It happens with all of us; most of us watching by livestream, probably all of us sitting in this room believe in a Christian God and most of us because of the messages we've heard from Pastor Brian, especially over the last 18 months, probably believe he is good. Not all Christians believe he is good. Not all Christians believe he is generous. As Pastor Brian said, there is 35,000 Protestant denominations. Every single one of those groups of people see God a little differently, and every person in every group sees God at a little differently. We all have different images of God they're formed by our life experiences. It is God's goal to change your understanding of who he is to begin to understand who he really is. That is a lifelong journey. He is working on you day in and day out in every circumstance he can find to help you understand who he really is, what he is really like and what his relationship with you can really be.
Cheryl: That sounds exciting to me.
Jeff: It is exciting. It's a little bit tweak or tilt to realize that for the first time, that the way you see God might actually be wrong, but it's liberating once you accept that and you let him start changing you. You know what is really cool then? You get off your pedestal and you stop really stop thinking like you are the only one who really knows God and everybody else has to be wrong. How many of you have been there? I have said this to God: "I'm so glad I'm in the church I’m in, that I know the truth and all those poor people out there who don't." Has anybody ever said that? This isn’t the case. God is constantly working in our lives to help us understand who he is, but in the meantime, what has been formed in us can block us from receiving the father's love. It hinders us from accepting this reality. And so what we need, we need to hear these messages over and over and over and over and over again. We need these trues to be spoken to us. In many and varied ways, we need to receive the scriptures.
Brian started— how many years ago did you start reading the Message Bible in church? Yeah, 5, 6, 15, a long time ago. We had people leave the church because Pastor Brian started using the Message Bible. Do you know what the Message Bible does for me? It helps me to see the scriptures without going down the same old rabbit trail of thought that I've always gone down. I need to see him different if I'm going to see God the way I need to see him. We need to let Jesus change the way we think about our father. He is so much bigger, so much more generous, so much more loving, so good, so far beyond where we are today. He is so much more powerful. You are so much more powerful. You have so much more of a future, so much more of a destiny, so much more of a hope in your life than you ever dreamed or imagined, and you will never see it. If you don't allow yourself to be wrong about what you are thinking now, and let him take you further. You are not all wrong. You are not at all wrong, but you need some adjustments.
Cheryl: Life is a journey and his mercies are new every morning. He brings newness every day to us if we will be aware of it and just say, Lord, I take your newness today. Enlighten me. I'll read his scripture and I'll learn about more things. The Holy Spirit helps us and we learn about the father. We learn about who he is. You can even be reading a scripture that's not about a father and learn about a father. It's amazing.
Jeff: I can't tell you how many times alert has spoken to me in a movie or in a book, in a fictional novel. I can't tell you how many times the Lord has spoken to me through my children.
Cheryl: Or your wife.
Jeff: And my wife. Isn't that true? I never want to acknowledge it at the time. Yes. You may have experienced just one too many tragedies in your life to believe that a loving God could actually even experience. I think there are a lot of people in that place in our world. What would it have been like to have been an Israelite living through the Holocaust and come out of the other side of that and believe that God is good. Do you think God gets irritated with Jews who don't believe in him anymore after that? Or do you think he grieves over their broken hearts and wants to heal them and restore them to understand how much he loves them? You may have been offended by a Christian, just one too many times and decided that it has got to be just a bunch of hooey. You might even agree with Mark Twain who said, "If Christ were here there, one thing he would not be: it's a Christian." That's a Mark Twain quote. Mahatma Gandhi said "I would be a Christian, except for all the Christians that I meet.”
There are all kinds of people who call themselves agnostics. Their image of God has been affected by their life experiences. Do you think God is angry at them because they don't believe in him or is he working in them the same way he is working in you to change their understanding, to show them that he loves them more than anything else in the world. We get to be part of that, but the only way we can be part of that is we understand that he loves us more than anything in the world. That's where it starts. It needs to get from here, down to here and become real, and then we start living like it's real.
We are going to go to the closing scripture. It's a familiar one. We are going to read it three times in three different translations and then we will end. Hopefully, I'm not going too long here. We'll start in the NIV. This is Ephesians 3:17-20.
Cheryl: And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love, that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now, to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask. And imagine, according to his power that is at work in us.
Jeff: How many of you read that a million times. Kind of just passes you by now. Out of the NIV there are just a couple of things that popped out at me when I was reading it this time around. He wants us to grasp it and he wants us to know it. Okay. So to grasp it is to have an understanding, to understand that what is love is really like; that's up here. To know it, is to experience it. He wants us to understand it because our minds need to be renewed, but then he wants us to experience it because then our life is transformed. That's where he wants to take us. And I said this love goes so far past our heads. And then what he said, it surpasses knowledge. What will happen when we experience it is far beyond what we can imagine, far beyond what you can ask or imagine. When you experience his love, it will be far beyond what you can even imagine. The next one gets better. Now we'll read it out of the Message.
Cheryl: And I ask him that both feet planted firmly on love, you will be able to take in,
Jeff: Excuse me. That's to grasp, take it in.
Cheryl: With all the followers of Jesus, the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breath. Test its length. Plumb the depths. Rise to the heights. Live full lives.
Jeff: Me. Excuse me. That's to know, live full lives.
Cheryl: Full in the fullness of God. God can do anything, you know, far more than you could ever imagine, or guess, or request in your wildest dreams.
Jeff: Read that again.
Cheryl: Its kingdom. Its heavenly. Far more than you could ever imagine, or guess, or request in your wildest dreams.
Jeff: That's what his love will do for you: far more than you could ever request in your wildest dreams. How wild can you dream? Whatever you asked for today, it was peanuts compared to what he's going to give you. Do you understand? It was small pickings because he's going to do beyond your wildest dreams. You don't even know what they are.
Cheryl: He does it by not pushing us around, but by working within us. His spirit deeply and gently in us.
Jeff: As Jacque often says, “He doesn't change this from the outside in; he changes us from the inside out.” That's very, very true. Okay, isn't that great? That's better, right? Helps open it up a little bit. Makes me a little more excited about that passage, not the same words I've read all the time. Now we are going to read it out of the Passion translation.
Cheryl: Then by constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you and the resting place of his love will become the very source and root of your life.
Jeff: Let me just stop you for a second there. You know, we have the mind, we have the heart. Typically when we think of the soul, this is where we think of the heart. Physically, where do we think of the spirit? It's in the bowels, down here. It's in the deepest part of you. If someone finds out their spouse is cheating on them, where do they feel it? They feel it deep, deep. This is where the deepest things are. This is what he is talking about when he's talking about: this love this place God's spear being released. This is the deep place where God is doing his work. And I love that word: the resting place of his love. It’s not a place you have to work for; you don't have to qualify for, not something you have to accomplish. It's just there for you.
Cheryl: Let's camp there for a moment. This is not something we have to do, accomplish or qualify for. Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences, the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions, how deeply intimate and far reaching is his love; how enduring and inclusive it is.
Jeff: We'll just stop there. It's limitless. It's limited. It's limitless for you. It's limitless for the nations of the world. It's limitless for every person that he has ever created. That's how big his love is. It's limitless. We tend to put limits all over God and all over what he will do for people. And we need to understand his love is limitless. It's so much bigger.
Cheryl: Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding. This extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God. Never doubt. God's mighty power to work in you and accomplished all this.
Jeff: Amazing. Let's do that last section then.
Cheryl: He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream and exceed your wildest imagination. He will outdo them all for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.
Jeff: These are concepts that are almost beyond me to get hold of, but they are real. They are real.
Cheryl: Remember we were talking this morning about how God gives all of us faith and I'm telling you, we've got it in us to believe what this says because God gave us the faith to read his word and take it in and believe it. So I just want to say, you all have that power in you to take this and walk it out in your life to glorify the father and to have a good life, have an immeasurably wonderful, wonderful life.
Jeff: When you think about it, it kind of blows you away; by grace, you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is a gift from God. The faith that saves you was a gift from God. You didn't generate that faith by yourself. You can't even take credit for your faith. It all came through his grace, which is because of his love. Everything is because of him. Everything we have is because of his love and he gave it freely. He didn't wait until we qualified. In fact, Paul says while we were yet sinners at our very worst.
In the end, of course, these are just words, but Jesus said the very words that I speak their spirit in their life. These were inspired by the Holy Spirit, through the pen of the apostle Paul, but I actually want to believe that this morning they are the very words of Jesus to us. Jesus is speaking to us. He wants us to know that these things, these concepts, these things are true. And so what he wants to do is he wants them to help us change how we think, but even more powerfully than that, these words become seeds and he wants to put them in the good soil of our heart. He wants to plant them inside of us because these changes are not changes we can affect. We can't just say, okay, I'm going to believe God loves me and that everything is going to be different. But the word of God gets planted in good soil of an accepting and willing heart and it begins to bring forth fruit. So let's pray that God will plant these words. I've done that so many times with prophetic words. I say, Lord, I can't make this come to pass, but I receive it; plant it and make it come through. So let's just receive it today.
Father, we trust that these words that Paul gave us and that the writers of these English scriptures, the translators have given us, these concepts, that they are true, that you gave them to us and that this morning you breathe them to us. We ask you to plant them in our hearts, for we are willing to hear them. Give us ears to hear that they can be planted in our hearts. And Lord, we ask that you will bring forth a harvest in our lives of love. Not something we can effect, but something that you can grow. We thank you that we can be confident, and trust you to do that. We trust you to do that. We trust you to make us whole. We trust you to heal the wounds in our hearts, to change the way we see ourselves and the way we see you in the way we see those around us, understand the deepest part of ourselves that we are loved by you completely. And from that place, to be able to begin to love others, the way you love us. That's where we want to go, Lord, can we trust you to take us here? We thank you for it in Jesus name. Amen.
Well, okay, great. Thanks for hanging in there with me through the whole thing. If you would like prayer this morning, we'll pray for you. Go ahead.
Brian: Hallelujah. Wasn't that great? Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Pastor Jeff, Cheryl. God bless you. Let's just raise our hands together and let's just really receive this into our hearts. I want to just pray a blessing over you.
Now may the Lord bless you. May the Lord keep you and may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you and may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace and may you know his love greater than you've ever known before. This we pray in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. If somebody would like communion, we will serve communion after the service today. If you would like to just take a moment to come up and thank Pastor Jeff and Cheryl, I'm sure they would appreciate that as well. All right, God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Happy Father's Day to all you fathers and don't forget he is a good, good father. God bless you.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 6-20-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.