2-8-09 Going Where Love Takes You

Love causes us to do things and go places we would otherwise never choose.

 Think about it.  We will do almost anything to impress the ones we love.  Guys who are in love will don a suit and a tie and go to a play, eat food they normally wouldn’t consider, go to a mall and pretend they like to shop, see a chick flick, spend money they don’t have, and buy gifts they can’t afford.  Many will even go to church when secretly they’re scared to death!

 

Women in love might go to a football game, learn to play golf, or go hunting or fishing.

 

Nothing causes us to move beyond ourselves more than authentic love.  Why do we do these things?  Because we want so much to please the ones we love.

 

Loving God is similar in many ways.  When we love God, we want more than anything to please him.  We are more committed to his interests than our own.  And in time, God’s interests become ours.

 

Love is the crucial motivator for all of life and ministry.  It is the fuel that feeds the soul.  Without it, all our efforts are meaningless.

 

If I could speak all the languages of the earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.  If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-4,

 

What is love really?  What does love look like in action?  The best and truest definition of love comes from the Bible.  Here’s probably the best-known description of love.

 

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV)  

If you ask me, it seems that love looks a lot like Jesus.  He fits every characteristic of love described here.  Replace the word “Love” with his name, and it fits perfectly: Jesus is patient and kind.  Jesus is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.  Jesus does not demand his own way.  He is not easily angered, and he keeps no record of being wronged.  Jesus does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up. Jesus never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and always perseveres in every circumstance.

 

Now replace the word love in this passage with your own name and see how it fits: Adam is patient and kind.  Adam is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.  Adam does not demand his own way.  He is not easily angered, and he keeps no record of being wronged.  Adam does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Adam never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and perseveres through every circumstance.  We have some work to do, don’t we?

 

What else does the Bible tell us about the true nature of love?  First, it makes it clear that God is the source of love:

 

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.  Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  1 John 4:7-8

 

And here’s a remarkable statement:

 

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. 1 John 4:18a

 

Wow!  People who truly understand and experience God’s perfect love our fearless!  That might explain this passage:
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 1 John 3:16

Only people with an understanding of God’s love that penetrates to the very core of their being would be willing to sacrifice their lives for others.  These are the ones who grasp the nature of God sacrifice in his coming down in the person of Jesus to give up his life so that we could have ours. This is a picture of a Father who is willing to give up his life to save the life of his son or daughter. That’s sacrificial love; love that knows know end; love that will do anything so that another might live.

 

But, who are we to love?

 

The Bible, not only describes the nature of love, it also tells us who we are to love.

 

God – first and foremost, we are called to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).  If we don’t begin by loving God, we won’t be able to love anyone else.

 

Our Neighbors -second, and equally important commandment that Jesus give us is: to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31) and goes on to say that

 

“there is no commandment greater than these.”

 

So out of all the commands and stories in the Bible, these are the most important to God: that we love him.  And that we love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. 

 

For a few of you in this room, you understand that you are called to love God and others, but you don’t even love yourself and the scriptures are very clear that you must begin to love God and others in order to restore your love for yourself. When you love God first, you find forgiveness and his love, and his love enables you to love others.

 

Other believers – Jesus asked the members of his body, the church, to do more than just get along; he asks us to love one another with the same kind of sacrificial love, he demonstrated while he was on earth.

 

John 13:34-35.  So now I am giving you a new commandment: love each other.  Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.  Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

 

When we fail to love others we are indistinguishable from the rest of the world.

 

Our enemies -this is the big one.  This is the one that seems to defy logic and is the hardest for us to even contemplate, let alone do. But Jesus is clear:

 

I say, love your enemies!  Pray for those who persecute you!  In that way, you will be acting as true children of your father in heaven.  For he gives the sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.  If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?  Even corrupt tax collectors do that much.  If show love only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else!  Even pagans do that. Matthew 5:44-47

 

Jesus Christ is the only path to reconciliation and restoration.  When we say we are Christians, we accept that, as hard as it can be to love our neighbors, our brothers and sisters in Christ, and our enemies, this is what we choose to do.  We do this first and foremost because we love God and he loves them.

 

Movie clip: The Four Feathers, starts 55:46; and 58:10.

 

Jesus said, “if you love me, you will obey my commandments”  John 14:15.

 

Jesus knew that we would have trouble loving most people. We may find it easy to love our parents and our children, but to love people outside our nuclear families often doesn’t come easily to us.  Jesus also knew that our love for him would propel us to obey him. 

 

Like when I fell head over heels for Shannon, I would do anything to make her happy. I wanted to show her how much she meant to me. So it is with God. We will go where it is uncomfortable for us to go. We will try and do everything that he calls us to do, and when we fail, we stop and we just tell him our heart. “God, I want to follow you. I want to do what you call me to do, but God I can’t do that without your help. I need you, Father to help me love as you call me to love. Amen.”

 

 

When we are doing outreach or just being generous to someone and people question why you’re being so nice to them, our answer is simple: Because you are special to God and I see something special about you too.”  God is continually creating Divine appointments with people he wants to love and care for through us.

 

If we are motivated by a “I’m supposed to love, so I am” attitude, then our love will never be truly be genuine and our commitment will surely dissipate over time.  Our loving response to others must be nothing less than the overflow of God’s love inside of us.  God is the source of the love and the one who continually replenishes it.  We certainly can’t summon it up on our own.  God’s love is the fuel that sustains us.  Love makes us stick with those God has placed in our path. 

 

The kingdom of God is not served when Christians believe that the Christian life will always result in physical, spiritual, and emotional blessings and then, when life gets hard, become devastated, believing that God has lied to them and failed them in their time of need.

 

Make no mistake, this kind of love will move us out of our comfort zone and may even move us to very unsafe places.  The safest place to be is not always at the center of God’s will.

 

For most of my Christian life, Christians have told me that the safest place to be is in the center of God’s will.  Yet, this claim has never lined up with the Bible or the history of the Christian Church.

 

It’s true that God miraculously delivers his people from harms way again and again, but not always.  Jesus told us to count the cost of following him, and he said that the cost could be our very lives.  Of course, God’s will is the safest place to be in the long run (eternity), but during our time on earth, that may not always be true.

 

Because we live in America and we have received so many material blessings for so long, many of us have come to believe that the path of least resistance must be the way of God.  When we face hardship and roadblocks, we assume we must be going in the wrong direction, but I’m wondering where we got that view, certainly not from the Bible.

 

Here’s an example.  The first part of Hebrews 11 is thrilling; it’s all about the heroes of the faith, and the great things they did because of that faith.  We love to quote the first part of Hebrews 11, but we tend to completely ignore the last part of the chapter.  I’ve certainly never seen Hebrews 11:35-39 stuck to somebody’s refrigerator!

 

Hebrews 11:35-39 (NRSV)
People were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented- of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised

This passage is vital to a complete understanding of where love might take us.  Many Christians who had great faith and were motivated by love did not receive what was promised and were not delivered by God.  In fact, God seem to abandon them in their hour of need.  Hey, wait a minute!  You protest, I thought if I had faith and put my trust in God, everything would work out okay for me! But what exactly did God promised?

Jesus himself promised that in this world, we will experience trouble, but he also reminds us that, in the end, he is victorious.

I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Jesus came to bring peace on the inside of us, but there will never be peace in the world. The reason we have peace on the inside of us, is because God’s love lives there. We know who we are. We know what our purpose is. We know how valuable we are in God’s eyes. We know that there is great hope.

The Bible tells us that: “nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.” (Romans 8:38a)

When you look at all of Scripture, God does usually protect us and deliver us from our adversaries.  But sometimes he doesn’t.  And it’s not necessarily because we’ve done anything wrong.  Sometimes he has other plans, and unfortunately, our earthly rescue is not always a part of the bigger plan.

 

God tells us that he will either deliver us from our trials, or he gives us grace and power to stand firm in the midst of them. 

 

Obligations can make a lot of people do a lot of things, but only love can cause people to things that ordinary people see as crazy.

 

How deep is your love for God? Where is that love taking you? What is God calling you to do that seems crazy?

 

We must remember that there is a battle going on!  You have an adversary, the devil, who crawling around like a roaring lion seeking to devour you.  He will put every obstacle possible in your path as you share God’s love with those around you.

 

But when you know, the goal of your adversary, it’s much easier to stand against him.  Remember, the only way Satan wins is when we give up.  So this love, God’s love, must be patient, recognize that, over time, love always wins.  In the battle between the water and granite, water will eventually win.  Look at the Grand Canyon!  Just so, love will win against the longest of odds and the hardest of hearts.  And God will relentlessly work in you, until his love has the first and last word in everything you do.

 

Christ’s love has moved me to such extremes.  His love is the first and last word in everything we do. 2 Corinthians 5:14.

 

Does God love have the first and last word in everything you do?  What about your life would change if it did?

 

Movie clip end of the spear start 1:37:52; end 1:44:10

 

At the end of our lives, we will all stand before God and give an account of what we have done or not done with the gifts he has given us.  Where will you be able to say love took you?  The kind of love that God calls us to share is revolutionary, but you it can be shared in very small ways.  And that’s where I suggest you start: with small things.  In our culture, we tend to be on the lookout for the big play, the Big Bang, whatever will allow us to “get it done.”  In one fell swoop.  But God’s love doesn’t work that way, it never has.  Not really.

 

People who change the world do it one deed and one person at a time.

 

Steve Sjogren has devoted his ministry to servant evangelism: showing God’s love in practical ways with no strings attached.  If you are getting our announcements via e-mail, we have begun to weekly put practical ways of sharing love with other people.  These can be as simple as writing a thank you note to your mail person or buying a pop or a cup of coffee for someone who’s having a rough day.

 

Jesus himself, was willing to wash people’s feet, as a way of showing his love for them.  What will you do?  People attempted to give Jesus a crown, but he refused it on every occasion.  The only crown he ever wore was a crown of thorns.  If Jesus Christ, the Son of God was willing to take up the towel, we his followers, should be honored to do the same.

 

Prop: hold an elaborate crown in one hand and a towel and the other during this part of the message.

 

Satan knows God’s weak spot.  God’s weak spot is us.  The way to hurt you or I is to hurt our children. The way to hurt God the most is to go after his children – you and I and that is exactly what Satan does.

 

As a community, we must oppose Satan’s efforts to destroy people’s lives.  Beginning with the most vulnerable, our children, we must take a stand against the evil.  We must be willing to fight evil with love, because love always wins. 

 

Today, I encourage you to find a way to help the children of the world.  If every adult Christian in our country was to sponsor or mentor an impoverished or at risk child somewhere in the world, what hope would be born!  Imagine it!  Imagine giving the gift of hope and life to another human being!

 

Never have so many men and women been in a position to help so many others.  Never has there been a greater need.  Never have life-giving resources been so abundantly available to some and so utterly lacking for others.  You and I, we were born for such a time as this and it all starts with the power of one heart changed giving love away and affecting the heart of another. That’s revolutionary!