Hi, I’m Pete Hughes and you’ve clicked on the Rich Australia podcast.We would love to see thousands of healthy evangelistic churches all over our country and we can’t do that unless we have healthy, evangelistically minded pastors.This is another talk from our national conference.

It was held in 2024.Ray Galea is taking us through what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.Enjoy.Let’s pray.

What a joy it is to be here, Lord, together.It is great conference.We’re just so thankful from the bottom of our heart.And and now, Father, we pray, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight.Oh, Lord, oh, our rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.Now, there was always something distressing about that very old, old, old joke that most of you probably don’t know.Good with a wife.Sister’s a husband.Darling, can you please tell me that you love me?And the husband says, you know that I love you.

I told you that when we got married.If anything changes, I’ll let you know.And that’s exactly it’s hard to laugh at it because there’s something tragic about the reticence of someone finding it hard to articulate their love to another.I love you darling.And the even greater reticence and tragedy when we struggle to tell God that we love him.

I was so encouraged by Peter Adams article on the Gospel Coalition a couple of years ago and he wrote this and then we’ll come back to it later.He said I was going out the door the other day to walk the dogs when the words of Psalm 18 verse one came into my mind.I love you, Lord, my strength.

I thought, I don’t think I ever say to God that I love him.Now isn’t that beautifully humble of that dear man who was principal of Ridley College, that lovely confession.Now we’ll get back to what he has to say after that at the end of this talk.

But the task before us is to reflect on how we can nurture our own love and the love of our leaders.So it’s not, it’s not quite an expositional talk in that sense.And whether those leaders are staff members or just high level volunteers that you’re working with, that’s the task before us now.

I crave clarity, partly because I’m really old now.But but when Jesus was tempted for the third time in this passage to prioritise the 600 plus commandments, he quotes one commandment, but interestingly with two parts to it in Mark 12, he says verse 29, the most important one.

And I love the way in which the Bible prioritises answer Jesus the the most important one answer Jesus is this hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one love the Lord sorry, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

And the 2nd is this love your neighbour as yourself.There is no commandment greater than these.Now he begins with the Shema from Deuteronomy 6 simply means here and and what they to hear is 4 words, Yahweh our God, Yahweh 1.

Our loving God is the one and only unique and unified and he deserves our exclusive loving loyalty to to misquote a popular song or misapply it in the right way, all of me is to love all of God all the time.

Now notice with me and I, I love this that God does not want to keep all the love for himself.He doesn’t say love me with all your heart and stuff.The rest I don’t care how you treat each other.See how it’s just backed up with that next command?Same one single command in two parts.

Love your neighbour as yourself, from family to frenemies and everything in between.And because we know you, God repeatedly says you cannot love God whom you cannot see, unless you love your neighbour whom you can see.There’s a tight logic now between the vertical and the horizontal.

That’s why without love we are nothing.It’s not like a halfway there.You’re nothing.You’re the nothing person.And Moses knew that Israel would fail.That’s why he kept that great plea for a circumcised heart, because without it, it wasn’t going to happen.

And that’s why Jesus, well, Jesus came because he knew he we did fail.And that’s why He’s on his way to the cross when he says it.This great commandment.It is such a burden, way too heavy for us to carry alone.It needs to fall on the shoulders of another, One who would fulfil it, matching God’s love with perfect love, and one who would pay the price for us failing it.

Because in the end, we love.Because why He first loved US1 John 4.The great pivotal verse, this is love.It’s not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Oh, how liberating is that?Just takes the pressure off and we want ourselves and our leaders to do life and ministry as an overflow out of that love.You know the the love of the Father, that who did not withhold his one and only Son, the love of the Son who demonstrated his love in that at the cross, when we were at our absolute worst enemies, He gave us his best, the love of God who poured out into our hearts His Holy Spirit that we may be able to rejoice in suffering.

This is the love that lifts service out of just duty, which is important to desire from compulsion to willing from have to to want to what a miracle is that we still have to deny ourselves, but it becomes a joyful willing denying of oneself our covenant keeping.

Lord has his arms stretched out on the cross and as he issues to you Father forgive them for they know not what they do.I always picture Jesus with tattoos on both arms and on one he says therefore love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself.

Why?Because I’ve issued Father forgive them for they know not what they do.And so our leadership culture has to constantly be shaped as a knot by that grace driven gratitude that leads to Christ like transformation where every leader has personally taken hold of the love of God in Christ Jesus.

I know it’s rare when the work of the cross is personally applied.It’s actually quite rare in the Bible.But in Galatians 220 B it’s there.The life I live in this body.I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

It’s why you’ve got to nurture your own love for God and love of God before you seek working with anyone else because you can’t take people to a place that you’ve not been.We’re all you know.It’s a cliche, but it’s true.We’re all sheep needed to be fed before we’re shepherds.

So seven very brief applications when we think about our leadership teams #1 pray every day the Ephesians 3, pray that they may grasp the height with depth and, and with high breath, you know, with high breath depth, you know what I mean?

The full dimensions of God’s love for you in Christ Jesus.That is the best prayer to pray that they may grasp and experience God’s love for them in Christ Jesus.And never assume that.

Never assume God’s the gospel of God’s gracious love.You know, always ask your leaders their faith story.Throw out that great diagnostic question, you know, because in the end, if they don’t know the gospel, then they can’t pass on the gospel of grace.

But when you listen, don’t just look for the right propositions.Listen carefully to see whether they’re personally gripped by grace.I’m always kind of thinking, is this personal?And then demonstrate God’s love by, hey, here’s an idea, meeting up with them.

Now I say that because when I left Australia, I talked to five people, children’s workers, MTSS, whatever, who basically weren’t being met by no one was meeting up with them.And so are they in your Diaries, are you consistent in meeting with them?

And then in when you do, checking to see whether the demands of ministry is starting to choke the joy of their adoption in Christ?I remember as a young plant, a young church planter in the second year, maybe third, I was just kind of so focused on everyone else’s salvation, I stopped enjoying my own salvation.

I needed to.I needed to come back to, hey, I’m a child of God.That’s right.How did this all start?Yeah, God is my dad.The judge of all the earth is my dad.I needed the art.Someone put it this way, to learn the art of wasting time with your Father in heaven and seeks to demonstrate God’s loving grace when they miss the mark.

Wow, that’s a discipleship moment.It’s not about not dropping about dropping expectations.It means that we don’t want a leadership culture that’s basically so afraid of getting in trouble.That’s not a motivation.We want a culture, leadership culture where people are motivated to do the best they can do because they love God and they love the people they’re serving.