Be my everything

From Helen

This morning is one of those mornings for a preacher when you wish that you weren’t preaching. It is a morning when you could easily confuse people, a morning when basically you could end up being a heretic as you try and explain how God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit but is still one God.

Yes this morning is an important day. It isn’t Christmas, it isn’t Easter it isn’t even my birthday !! Today is the day when we celebrate that God amazing wants to be in a relationship with us. A day when we give thanks that God has shown Himself to us in so many ways because He is all around us and He loves us.

Today is confusing, as we try to work out how God can be three in one and one in three. There are lots of  different ways that we can view the Trinity. The first is that in the same way that H2O can be running water, steam and ice so God can show Himself to us as Creator, Redeemer and Comforter. In the same way that a transformer toy is one toy but can be a robot, a car, a plane so God can be Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the same way that you can get a three leaved clover with three distinct leaves yet all the same plant so you can get the love of God in many ways.

My favourite way involves desert. I know no surprises there. I once made a jelly, which I called Trinitarian jelly. Now I have no idea why I called it a Trinitarian jelly, I was in my late teens which could either excuse the name or give you some idea of my lack of coolness at this stage !  Trinitarian jelly is three distinct colours but all the same jelly. God the Father was green jelly for the earth which He created, God the Son was yellow jelly as He brought hope and salvation  to people’s lives and God the Holy Spirit was red jelly because of the flames of fire on the disciples heads at Pentecost.

It tasted very nice but I still had a headache when I tried to work out how God worked. So I decided that the Trinity is a mystery. This should make a short sermon. But … its me, so I always have more to say. When I was a child I used to laugh when my Dad described talking as one of his hobbies. Now, I can see how it is a hobby that I do tend to practice occasionally  !!

Back to the Trinity. It is a mystery, but that’s ok because God is above us, God knows everything and if we could understand everything we would be God and then we wouldn’t need God.

God is love and that is all we need to know. God created us, God redeemed us, God is with us now.  In our gospel reading (John 3:1-17)  this morning we heard what is perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible. God so loved the world, that He gave His only son, so that everyone who believes in Him shall not die but have everlasting life.

In that reading we also heard about poor baffled Nicodemus. Nicodemus the very learned man was confused by Jesus as He invited Nicodemus into a relationship with God by being born again. This doesn’t make much sense, after all it is physically impossible to be born again but we are born again because we have said yes to God and we are seeking to follow Him in our lives.

This relationship of being born again is the one that we enjoy. The relationship which as we heard in the epistle reading (Romans 8:12-17)  helps us to call God Father, using the term abba which is more like Daddy.

God invites us into a relationship with Him, any relationship is built on trust and we need to trust that whilst there are things about God that we can’t understand He loves us.  The love God has for each one of us is so amazing that He became like us and died. God gave everything for us. God in His love for us is always there to show us the way to know Him more.

God loves us and all He wants from us is for us to love Him too and to make Him our everything. This doesn’t mean that we don’t love others, it doesn’t mean that we don’t care for those around us it means that we give God our love and our time. Our time in praying, reading the Bible, trying to be more like God by loving others.

There is a modern worship hymn which has the most amazing words about making God our everything. I will not sing, but I would like to read some of the words to you…

God in my living, there in my breathing
God in my waking, God in my sleeping
God in my resting, there in my working
God in my thinking, God in my speaking

Be my everything.

God in my hoping, there in my dreaming
God in my watching, God in my waiting
God in my laughing, there in my weeping
God in my hurting, God in my healing

Be my everything.

Christ in me, the hope of glory
You are everything

We are called into relationship with God and with other people. How amazing it would be if we could look at the problems in the world, see people in need and pray that they would know that God loved them so much that He sent His son to die for them. God is love, that’s all we need to know and we must show others God’s amazing love by the ways that we reach out in love to others as we make friends with them, as we seek to make life better for them

God so loved the world that He gave His only son so that everyone who believes in Him will not die but will have everlasting life. That life is yours it is for the taking and we need to share that life and that love as we show people that God loves them and that love is beyond all of our imaginations and all that we could hope for. AMEN