Jude offers three simple steps for living with wide open hearts! Jude says, “Rest, everything’s coming together….”  Jude 1:2b (MSG)  We can rest when we affirm God’s goodness.  Resting in His goodness enables us to live with a wide-open heart.

There’s a wonderful simplicity for opening our heart.  It’s not about achieving God’s acceptance.  It’s simply a matter of receiving God’s unconditional love!  Achieving God’s acceptance is a performance-based love.  Receiving God’s unconditional love is a gift!

Jude urges us to open our hearts wide to God.  It’s the wide-open heart that experiences the fullness of the life and love God offers.  To open our hearts, we must affirm the goodness of God’s heart. When we do that, we are free to take the next step and reveal the wound in our hearts to God.

If we are to experience life in all its fullness as Jesus promised, we must open our hearts to God. Jude offers practical counsel for how we do that, especially when our hearts have been wounded.  Jude must have spoken from experience.  He was the half brother of Jesus, and the Scriptures tell us that his own brothers questioned Jesus’ Messianic claim.

Have you noticed how obsessed our culture is with love?  The Beatles sang, “All You Need is Love” and, then, they broke up!  If we’re honest, we’re more obsessed with the image of love than real love.  Real love is messy.  Real love takes hard work.

One of the biggest changes I’ve experienced when I became a Christ follower was a new understanding of the church.  When you begin to understand that you are the message as a believer, you will come to see the church in a whole new way.

Church.  What does it mean to you?  Is it just a place you go? Or is it something much more personal? The Bible uses many metaphors to describe it – the family of God, an edifice, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ and a royal priesthood of believers.

You can’t help but be amazed when you read the book of Acts with the impact that a small group of about 120 Christ followers had on their world and ours today!  Somebody said a mighty oak tree is nothing more than a little nut that wouldn’t give up its ground.  These men and women knew, without question, that Jesus Christ had changed their lives!

We’ve been talking about Abraham’s “friendship” with God.  His relationship with God shows us what it takes to please God and to be accepted by God.  While religion bases acceptance on performance, Abraham’s relationship pleased God not because of what he did, but what he believed.  He believed God.

Three times in Scripture, Abraham was called “the Friend of God.” One verse refers to Abraham’s relationship with God as “Your friend forever” in 2 Chronicles 20:7 (NIV), while in yet another verse, God calls “Abraham, My friend” Isaiah 41:8 (NIV)  Imagine that for a moment – friendship with God!