Louie Giglio - The Power of an Adverb
God really loves us, Trilith Cumberland and all the folks in this gathering. God really loves us. To put it more personally, God really loves you. He’s not against you; he’s for you, and God really loves you. The message today is all about grammar: one English teacher and a lot of poor students. No, I’m probably the only one who’s terrible at grammar, but I do understand the power of an adverb.
Today, I want to talk about the most powerful adverb of all. Does anybody know what an adverb is, by the way? Show of hands. Wow, okay, this is the group that needs a little extra time to get going this morning. Finally, can I see a show of hands from the three who really know what an adverb is? Thank you! I’ll pick two or three people, so just keep your hands up high. Oh, okay, that was just kidding, just kidding. An adverb, say it with me, modifies—no, what’s the rest of it? It modifies a verb! It can modify other things too, but mostly, an adverb adds to a verb. If I were an English teacher, I’d be teaching it that way anyway.
The reindeer quickly flew off the roof. The adverb? Quickly. Now, I don’t really need an adverb if I’ve got livestock on my roof that can fly; that’s good for me. The reindeer flew off the roof, and I don’t need to know they quickly flew off the roof. That’s the way it is with most adverbs, honestly. A good author tries to go through and get rid of all the adverbs, but in language, we like to add them. Like, «It really made me sad,» «really» being the most used adverb of all. And thus, Crowder gives us this song to the Church: God loves us. Wouldn’t that be enough? That the creator of the universe, the God of the heavens, the Alpha and the Omega with no beginning and no end, that God loves us? That God loves you? Wouldn’t that be enough? God loves you! But no, Crowder gives us, «God really loves us,» lots of «really» in that song. To which you say, «Really?» But where did Crowder get inspired?
He got inspired from the most well-known verse in all of Scripture: an eyewitness account of the life and teachings of Jesus by one of his followers named John. John was recording for us a conversation that Jesus had with another person in which Jesus says the greatest thing that you and I can ever hear, and John records it this way in John 3:16. Watch for the adverb: «For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.» God so loved the world.
I think sometimes we just blaze right past that powerful little word «so.» Why do we need it? Wouldn’t that verse stand on its own, be powerful, miraculous, and transformational if it just simply said, «God loved the world»? We say, «Amen!» You mean that’s crazy? People — us foolish people — us people who said we could do it better our way, as people who said, «Hey, thanks for the advice, but we have some other ideas.» Those people? He loved! That would be powerful in and of itself: «God loved the world.» But God, inspiring John by the Holy Spirit, said, «No, I want an adverb in there. I want that little word 'so' in there. I want people to understand how I love the world.» So put it in there this way: God, say it with me, «so loved the world!» He really loved the world, and he so loves you.
I think if you strip everything away today, all of humanity simply wants to know, «Does anybody truly think I’m worth loving?» And God is saying, «I want you to leave this gathering, and I want you to say Merry Christmas to people on the way out, but I want you to go out of this place saying, 'I am so loved.'»
When Shelly and I were dating, she was living in Waco, Texas, a student at Baylor University. Sick 'em Bears! That’s a zero, War Eagle! Okay, yeah, great, awesome! You guys follow us at our bowl games—it’s going to be spectacular, but we’ll be back. I was a grad student in Fort Worth, Texas, and I had this crazy thought one night. I’m in the library studying church history, but I’m thinking about Shelly. I know exactly how far it is from where I’m sitting in the library to her dorm, to the tenth of a mile. And I’m like wow, looking at the time; it’s getting close to nine o’clock. I’m thinking, «If I hustle right now, I can be there in about an hour and a half.» And, wow! I have to finish this assignment to turn it in in the morning! I know she has a big test in the morning, so this isn’t really the proper time for a sprint to Waco. It’s a Tuesday night, um, unplanned, pre-digital age, so I can’t even text to say, «Are you around?» It’s a total shot in the dark. Talk about taking your shot—this is me taking my shot.
I finally look at the clock and I’m like, okay, church history, chili—okay, I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m in my car, my Toyota Corolla. I’m flying down the freeway. I’ve got my plan. I exit in Waco. I stop at a convenience store—some of you have heard me tell this story. I pick up two cans of Hawaiian Punch because that was our thing. I go to her dorm, Memorial Dorm, and I walk in, and the lady’s sitting there at the reception desk at the dorm. I say, «Could you call up to Shelly Graves' room and tell her someone left something for her at the desk?» I set the two cans there, go around the corner, hide behind a plant, and I see the lady through the glass. She’s talking on the phone, and a few minutes later, here comes Shelly down the stairs! Yes! I was so glad she wasn’t out with another boy on campus somewhere—that was a real risk I took.
She sees the cans and she’s like, «Oh!» I come out from behind the plant, and it’s an amazing true story. She’s right here. It’s a Baptist school, so we shook hands, and we went out and sat on the steps at the front of the dorm, drank the Hawaiian Punch, talked for 15 minutes maybe, and I said, «I’ve got to get back; I’ve got this church history thing I need to finish for the morning, and I know you have a big test you’re studying for.» So I said, «I love you, good night,» maybe a little kiss good night. She goes back in the dorm, and I get in my car and start driving back to Fort Worth. It’s starting to mist outside, and I go to the stoplight just down the road from campus, and I think, «I need something else.» I mean, that was good, but I need something else.
Guys, ever been there? Ladies, ever been there? Ever done anything crazy like that, by the way, where it wasn’t advised, you couldn’t afford it, you didn’t have time for it, it wasn’t budgeted in? Maybe your parents didn’t fully support it, but you thought, «I want to make my mark.» And I thought, «I’ve gotta do something else.» I pulled into the grocery store right here, and I checked my pockets. I had maybe eleven dollars, no debit cards—so we’re talking prehistoric age.
I waited until a car drove past the other side of the parking lot and dashed into the store really fast. I got my supplies: a piece of poster board—back in the day, you could get that for 39 cents! I got a red marker and a black marker, some plastic wrap, and a little package of nails. I thought, «I’ve got my plan.» I took all my supplies back, and across the street from her dorm was this quadrangle. The classrooms were kind of open air, but it was covered, so I could get out of the rain. I got my supplies down on the sidewalk and started working on my poster.
I thought, «Okay, take my shot one more time.» I was thinking about all the guys at Baylor who wanted to date Shelly, all the cute Sigma Chi guys. I’m like, «I may be a seminary student studying church history, but I’ve got something started.» I started working on my poster. My poster was my adverb. I’m here; I want you to know that I love you, but I want to add something to the equation so that you know how I love you. And that’s what God did! He said, «I want you to know how I love you—not just that I love you; I want you to know how I love you.»
That’s what the «so» word means in Greek, in the original language. This is how God loved you. A few quick things I want you to know about how God loves you. Number one: God loved you before. He didn’t size you up and then decide whether he was going to love you or not. He didn’t give you five years and see how you turned out to see if he wanted to love you. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter 1 that he chose us, God did, in Christ before the foundation of the world and predetermined in that moment that he was going to love us. In other words, I want you to think with me: before there was a world for you to be born on, before you even knew there was a God in heaven who created you—before you even had one thought about whether or not you wanted to love God—God had already decided to love you.
That’s part of a «so loved» that you were loved before. The beauty of that is it leads into the second way that it tells us that he loves us: He loves us even knowing that we could never earn that love and that we don’t deserve that love. What you and I deserve from God is what everybody on Earth is going to get, and that is the just reward for a heart that says, «I’m going to do it my own way.» The scripture calls that sin—it’s you and I, in our actions and our thoughts, saying to God, «I appreciate that you’ve laid out a plan, but I’m going to go this way.»
We do that because we were born into sinful humanity. We were born with a tendency to tilt away from God, not toward him. We were born with a tendency to tear things apart, not put them together. We were born with a tendency to do it our own way. But yet, there is this holy God, this righteous God, this beautiful, perfect, glorious God. So what do we do? Well, religion says, «Here’s what you do; you have to work your way up to the throne of God.» But the beauty of Christmas is that Christmas is showing us how God in heaven worked his way down to a manger in Bethlehem. Religion is saying, «Here’s what you’ve got to do,» and Christmas says, «Here’s what God has already done.» He knew you couldn’t earn it, and He obviously knew we didn’t deserve it, but that didn’t slow down the love of God. He said, «No, I so love you that even though you couldn’t stack up enough good deeds to be confident that you’re going to go to heaven at the end of the story, I’m going to do one powerful deed to assure you that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.»
And no, you don’t deserve it—that’s why it’s called Good News. And that’s why it’s called Grace.
Another part of that: How did he love?
You guys are looking good—that is powerful. You know when you’ve ever made a poster and you start out, and everything looks really solid, like the yellow is really strong, and then by the time you kind of get to the end, it’s like, «I think it’s yellow.» Man, these guys are killing it, though. Beautiful! Thank you guys so much! Let’s give these guys a hand—beautiful, amazing! Merry Christmas! Great job! Thank you so much!
Another way that we know how God loved us is that God loved us even knowing that some of us would reject his love. There was a story of this rich young ruler; that’s all we know about him in the Bible. He wanted the kingdom and he had a face-to-face meeting with Jesus. Think about this: the same Jesus who is the love of God in human flesh, the same Jesus who is the God who so loved the world, has a face-to-face meeting with him, and he says, «I want the kingdom. I want heaven.» Jesus says, «Absolutely, um, here’s the way you need to do it—you’re still linked to earth and so tied up in all the things of earth. You need to get rid of all that and give all that to people who really need it, and you come follow me.» The guy was like, «Ooh, that was tough because I’ve got a lot of stuff.»
At the end of the day, this guy walks away from Jesus—the same Jesus who so loved him that he was willing to give his life for him watched him walk away. And I wonder if, in his heart or maybe even out loud, he said, «I still love you.» That’s how he loves you. You may be walking away from the Almighty right this moment, and he’s telling you, «I really love you.» You walk away, that’s your choice, but every step you walk, you’ve gotta know that I really love you—that’s how he loved us.
And he loved us the last way, knowing that his love for us was going to cost him, and it was going to cost him everything. This will show a force on my part, keeping me up a little late at night. It might not have done as great on my church history project, and it wasn’t less than eleven dollars worth of stuff and an hour worth of effort, but it was the heart that counted. The rain was starting to get a little more intense, and so I got the plastic wrap out. I don’t know if I can do this or not. I’m going to give it a shot. This stuff makes me get in the flesh real fast! I think whoever invented this, you know, really just sits around in our kitchens and says, «Good luck with that!»
So what I did—I’ll just show you what I did, and you’ll get the idea. I thought, «I’ve got to keep this thing from getting wet.» So I wrapped it completely this way with the plastic wrap, and then I wrapped it completely this way with the plastic wrap. I got all the stuff stuck to each other so it’s going to stay on there. I took the poster and went across the street. Shelly’s dorm had a courtyard in the center, so it wrapped around. On one side, you could drive under the second story and get into the back, which is kind of where the back of the cafeteria was. I’m sure it’s where the trash came out, and that road went around the little courtyard on the inside, and in the middle of it was grass and a giant tree.
I’d been in Shelly’s room in that dorm one time, I think on a Saturday on game day. They would let family and guys come into the girls' dorm and see the rooms, so I’d been in there one time, took a lot of snapshots of everything in there, and I knew there were two twin beds, one over there, hers was by the window. I thought, here’s my plan! So I took my poster, I went into that little courtyard, all wrapped up to protect it from the rain, stood up on somebody’s moped seat—thank you for that whoever that was—and held it up as high as I could. I took one of my nails that I had in my little packet. I couldn’t afford a hammer, so I just looked around for a rock. I know it sounds like we’re in the prehistoric ages, but I nailed my poster on, and it looked like it was going to hold. I said, «Lord, please! Got in my car, drove home, finished my project, set my alarm, woke up really early in the morning, reached over, grabbed the phone, called Shelly super early, and I said, 'Babe, this is Dustin—knock on chilly.' It was just super early!»
And she’s like, «I don’t normally call early either because I’m not early!» And she’s like, «Oh, what?» I said, «Babe, babe, babe! Are you awake? Look out your window!» Hung up. And I’m like, «Please, phone ring!» Oh, you’re so sweet. I was like, «Thank you, Lord!» The poster survived! All she had to do—this was my plan. I knew right where her window was, and so I positioned my poster so she didn’t have to get out of bed, didn’t have to take a shower, didn’t have to get her best day started. All she had to do was look, and hanging on that tree, it was my «I love you.» My adverb for the night: «I really love you!»
And what we’re celebrating is the birth of Jesus—God in human flesh, born in Bethlehem. But 33 years later, that same God in human flesh was nailed to a Roman cross. Why? Because he was an insurrectionist? No! Because it was God’s plan to put all the sin of the world on the innocent life of his Son and to offer him as a sacrifice for all the sin and all the wrong of humanity. «For God so loved the world,» he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him and Jesus would not perish but have everlasting life.
I’m telling you, that decision today is so critical, because right now we are perishing. If you want to perish eternally, you don’t have to do one thing or make one decision, because we are all already on that road. Jesus said in the next sentence, we are all already condemned because of our sin. So for you today, for any person today, to walk away from the love of God forever, you don’t have to do a thing. But the option today is that you could hear the words of Jesus and believe in him, and in a moment be changed. Sin forgiven, debt gone, heart alive, new future with him—not only in this life but forever. Heaven is on the table today; brand-new life is on the table today; forgiveness is on the table. And how do you get it? You get it by believing—not believing like, «This is plastic wrap,» not believing like, «These are markers,» not believing like, «This is a poster,» but believing like, «If I put all my weight on this wooden table, I am not going to collapse on the floor.» No, I have not done this backstage, so I don’t know this table! I have never met this table!
But believing in Him is me putting all my weight on the table—believing that if I fully put my weight on the table, it will hold me—believing today that if I put all my weight on the worth and work of Jesus, He will hold me for eternity. If I trust in who he is and what he’s done, this God-man, this perfect Son of God, this one and only begotten Son born into humanity so that he could give his life for me, raised from the dead, seated on a throne: I believe in Jesus!
And here’s the beauty of it—everyone in this gathering, everyone at Trilith right now, everyone at Cumberland right now, everyone in this building right now, if you look from where you’re sitting, you can see the Cross of Christ! It is standing in history; it is not a church story. It is a history story that a few miles from where he was born, Christ stretched out his arms for you and me. If you look, you can see hanging on that tree, God’s great «I love you"—his adverb for the world: «I really love you!»
You’re like, «Louie, I don’t even really love me. That’s somebody’s story today. I don’t even like me, Louie. It’s amazing! I can’t even get along with me. Other people have told me repeatedly and recently that they don’t really love me. I’ve fallen so far off of what I hope to be for my life. My standards one time were here, but I don’t even know where they are anymore!»
Don’t you worry, Louie! There’s no God in heaven who’s interested in me—or maybe you’re just so preoccupied with all your stuff you haven’t realized that that’s not working at the level of your heart. I want you to know today, you can’t fall too far or have too much to talk God out of how much he already loves you. And if you need forgiveness, a new start, and a new life, it’s hanging on the tree. All she had to do was look! It wasn’t Monet from where she was. If you don’t get it, they’re the Baylor Bears, so the little bear went into the heart, and he came out tracking love. God’s «I love you» is in view right now. Can you see it? Can you see Jesus saying, «God really loves you!»
I’d love to give anyone in this gathering an opportunity today to say yes to that love. Nothing would make Heaven happier than for someone in this gathering to say, «I get it! I don’t deserve it! I know I couldn’t earn it, but I want it. I thought maybe I’d lost my chance, but if there’s still a chance for me, I want it! Yes! I’ve got a pile of stuff in this world, but I already figured out that doesn’t work; I want a relationship with God! And if you can be forgiven and have a brand-new start, I want that today! If you can answer Jesus' words and say, 'I want to believe in you, and I want to not perish, and I want to have eternal life, ' I want to make a choice today to get off the road to destruction and onto a relationship with you!»
If you want that today, you can have that today—Christmas Eve! Come on! What better day than for the rest of your life to say, «Christmas Eve 2022 was my moment, and I said yes to the grace and love of God for me!» Old school, it’s called getting saved—being born again is the word Jesus used in that same conversation he was having that night. Having a brand new start by putting faith in Jesus—is anybody in this gathering feeling that’s your time? This is your moment; this is your day to say yes to the «so loved» of God!