It has been said that love is elusive, watered down…. people
talk about love in the way that they love a restaurant, love pizza, love ginger
snap cookies and I love you like a love song…well that is how she felt until last
weekend…
And then there are the songs that we have been made popular
in our part of the world, like
“All We Need is Love”, “What the World Needs Now is Love”,
“Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”
From a human perspective, love can make you crazy. It can bring lightness to your step and it
can also crush your spirit. The words of
love can also be a mask for selfish hunger.
I came across some stats recently as it was discovered that
92% of the people said they loved children, animals were at 66% and only 33%
would acknowledge loving themselves. We
have a perfect opportunity to show love and while people are looking for love
in all the wrong places…
We are praying for us now that this will be a time and a
place where love abounds!
Turn to
1 John 4:7-21
God is love. v7-12
"God is love." As John R.
W. Stott says, "This is the most comprehensive and sublime of all the
biblical affirmations of God's being." It means that at the root of all
God does is love. No matter how difficult it may appear to us, the fountain
from which all God's activity stems is this kind of self-giving love.
In my own words love is simple yet
profound!
·
He is the initiator
of this love v7-9
John spoke of this last week when He said
Christ’s love was uncaused. It had
nothing to do with us. It was initiated
by God. We love him because He first
loved us is how the NKJV puts it in v19.
Nothing outside of Himself draws us to Him. This is not a try harder kind of love. It is a deliberate choice on his part to love
us.
One of the biggest traps in the Christian
life is that “ I must do this or that to gain God’s approval.”
It is an undeserved love. Our own righteous acts are like filthy
rags. Isaiah 64:6
And
yet, often I think people are out there feeling that they are not worthy of
that kind of love as we saw in the stats I just shared.
God is
love is as John Stott said “is the most comprehensive and sublime of all the
biblical affirmations of God’s being.”
It means that at the root of everything that God does is love. The place from where the river flows is His
self-giving love.
Last week in our staff meeting, Esther
shared a really great insight in this story of us and our heavenly Father who
adopted us. In most cases an adopted
family seeks out a child that has chosen to be left or abandoned by their real
parents. However, it was us as children
who did the abandoning and God sacrificed His real Son in order to adopt us,
the ones who did the abandoning!
We need to really soak in receiving this
love. Many of us have lived the
Christian life on an achieving system and we need to move to a place of
receiving where we allow His love to penetrate our hearts and minds
·
His love is
sacrificial v10
In the
Greek language there are three types of love and many of you may be familiar
with these three words as related in the Greek.
There is eros, philo, and agape
love. Briefly, eros love is a strong craving, abnormal appetite, not only
for physical things but it can also be for spiritual satisfaction. Eros
love can be both good and bad. We often see this as the world seeking
satisfaction wherever it can. Phileo love is more of an attachment and a
peculiar personal affection for another person. We often see this as a
natural human affection for one another.
Finally,
there is agape love. This is the only love that our Scripture passage
speaks about to us today. Agape love is Christian love, the love that God
has for us. This love requires a judgment and a deliberate choice on
one’s part.
We need
to pray and say Holy Spirit make me desperate for this kind of love to be made
real in my life.
It is
the love that covers a multitude of sins, a love that turns the other cheek,
it’s a love that always
protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13
1 John
4:9 ESV In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his
only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
·
His love is made
visible through us v11,12
We are
called to live in that kind of love. Often when I hear the words, “you always or
you never” it is used in a negative sense and when working with people, the
counsel is to stay away from the absolutes, but here it is pure positive!
Agape
LOVE…. This is the most difficult love for us to have for one another and
here’s a secret, you can’t truly love like this apart from the love of God
becoming real in your own heart.
It’s IN
YOU to love! How do I know this?
You
ought to love one another
God is
telling us we ought to love one another.
Based on what He has done for us, we are commanded to love each
other.
"Oh,
I just can't love that person. You don't know what they are like. However, if
you have been to the cross and you have experienced His unfailing love, it
changes you.
Oh, I
just can’t love that person…exactly! We
love through His love for us.
The nature of real love is that it
gives…ought means that it will happen.
It is a cause and effect truth.
Yes, it is a process, but at some point
the tap will open up. God loves us and
by faith we accept it. We then love
ourselves in a balanced way, love our Father and learn to love other people.
I once had a t-shirt that always brought
a smile.
It said
Jesus Loves You
and below it…. I’m trying.
I really thought that way about love;
however the real truth that if it my love, it will always
come up short.
At some point, if God’s love is really
taking hold in my heart, I will choose to love others lavishly and deeply.
There is a story of a woman with a reputation in Luke 7. She was a woman caught in the grip of sexual sin. She shows up at the home of a prominent religious man where Jesus had been invited over. She creates an uncomfortable scene as she begins to wipe Jesus’ feet with her tears and then her hair. She then proceeds to kiss them and poured very expensive perfume on them.
The religious people are all thinking to themselves, does He not know who this woman is and how inappropriate this is? Jesus interrupts their thoughts and tells them a story of a money lender who cancels the debt of two men, one who owed $500- and one who owed $50-. He then asks the question, who loves the money lender more and of course the reply, the one who had been forgiven the greater debt…
So, then Jesus continues to speak,
“Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven–for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
It is to the extent that we realize the depths of God’s love for us that we will finally get it…because we all have been forgiven so much!
No one
has ever seen God. God is invisible, but
He is calling us to make the invisible visible by our loving acts, deliberate
acts of kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration of one another. Some people may never hear the gospel
according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but they can see the gospel
according to you!
It has
been said that the most effective people at showing love are those who don’t
give from a distance, but those who are actively engaged in community. Incarnation is love in action
The
difficult question is: To what extent do
I give up my own level of comfort to love others? Am I willing to spend myself for the life of
another?
Christian
love is found in what we sacrificially give to others. It has been simply said that in this world,
there are givers and there are takers.
We have been called to be givers.
His love is made complete in us v13
We saw in v11 that His love is
made complete in us. People see God when
we love one another well!
This is
not an individualistic exercise. Our
love is made complete in the practical outworking of its quality in our
interaction with others and it really does go against the grain.
·
Through the presence of the Holy Spirit
·
Through our reliance on what Jesus has done
Everyone longs to be loved and
accepted. The unfortunate thing is that
most people approach it the wrong way.
They keep looking to receive from everywhere else first before the
Father. The love of God is really the
most wonderful gift we’ve been given.
Once it flows to us, it needs to flow
from us to others or else it becomes stagnant.
It can’t help but flow.
His love makes us confident v16b-18
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in
him. In this way, love is made complete among
us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 1 John 4:16b17
His love displayed through us isn’t optional! V19-21
One word…. must! It must flow, but it has to start with understanding His love for us!
For some of you, you need to walk across
the room to the person that you may have been holding a grudge against for
possibly years…
The
enemy wants to limit us. He wants us to
believe a vision “for a time and a place where love abounds” will not amount to
anything.
Grace
living in this love is impossible to achieve, that is why we have to receive
it. Live in this love and let the
transformation continue to take hold!
Listen
for the Spirit’s prompting as you look around and look for someone who is here
and who maybe isn’t here that you would be active in sharing into their
life. It could be sharing their burden,
it could be sharing their joy.
