Is it just me, or is everybody sitting here going, "I'm gonna go have
a bread bowl with a side of pasta"?
Oh my goodness, I'm excited about what God is going to do. And
I also had a moment— guys, listen, I have a little bit of a sarcastic
thing that happens sometimes, and I know you've never noticed,
and— but I'm thinking, You know what? All the introverts in the room just
went, "He didn't say it had to be 40 different names."
So I'm gonna be calling a lot.
Like I said, he'll be back and I'll be in trouble. It'll be fine. Anyway,
we're gonna talk about love this morning, which seems very
appropriate on Valentine's weekend, you know? I love the way
the Lord works that out. And we are going to— for some
of you who who come on Thursday nights, are able to be in here on
Thursday nights, we will call this an encore
because Pastor Kevin, a few weeks ago, asked me if I would share
this, this morning. Now, we do have some handouts if you
feel like you want to take notes, and if you didn't get one coming in,
you'll let us know. If you'll just raise your hand, we'll bring one to you.
If you don't want to write things down, I would encourage you,
if there's something in the path And there's gonna be
a couple for, a couple of things I'm gonna ask everybody to take out your
phone. I know it's a crazy thing to ask in the middle of a service,
but there's gonna be a point in time, if you have a phone, then I'm
gonna say, would you take a picture of the screen? Because I want it to
be your screensaver for a week or two, if at all possible. So
we're just gonna see what the Lord does with that. But if you need a
handout, would you raise your hand for just a second? And we will
have them run them down to you.
God is so good. He is so
faithful all the time. He is so faithful, and
we are going to get into his Word. We are going to do what Pastor
Kevin just asked us to do. We are going to get into the Word and
abide. I'll never forget, for a lot of
years here, Ash Wednesday, we would have
we had a priest that would come and they would do the application of
the ashes to enter into the Lenten season. And I
just remember it was a very solemn
occurrence. It was a very solemn assembly. But I just remember
it really marked that season heading into
what the Lord would have for us in this time. Okay, we got everybody?
Okay, we are gonna jump into the Word in just a second. We are going
to be reading from Matthew 22. If you have your
Bibles, I encourage you, pull out your Bible.
Don't take it for granted that I'm going to be telling you the truth.
However, I am. I'm gonna do my best to. But you know what?
Get in the Word for yourself and see it. And we're gonna begin with
Matthew 22.
And we're gonna talk about, "As I have loved you."
As I have loved you. In
Matthew 22, let me set it up for you just a second. We see
the Pharisees and the Sadducees, it's like, you know, the Republicans and the
Democrats, and they're trying to prove— it's the political parties
and social hierarchy. One is richer than the other. One
is supposed to be grassroots. Anyway, they're trying to trip Jesus
up. And so they're having this conversation with Jesus and they're
asking him questions. And they throw out the question of,
well, you know, this man is married to this woman, and then this woman— the
man dies, and then the woman marries her brother, and
then the brother dies. And then they're throwing out all of this stuff about,
well, whose wife is she gonna be
when they reach eternity? And I love that Jesus
doesn't buy into their stuff, doesn't buy into it.
He basically tells them, One thing
he says, the very first thing on your paper,
"You are in error because you do not know the scriptures
or the power of God." In other words,
he's looking at these power brokers in the room, and they're
asking these questions trying to make him seem like he doesn't—
isn't who he says he is. And he basically says, "You have no
idea what you're talking about." Because you don't know the Scriptures.
And so, they couldn't trip him up, and then the other
sect comes in and tries to trip him up, and they do this.
And if you would stand, we're gonna read one passage, just a very short
Scripture. And let's read
it so that Pastor Kevin hears this, okay? He's in East Tennessee, so I'm just
gonna have to really do a good job. All right, ready?
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the
law?" Jesus replied, 'Love the Lord your
God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and
with all of your mind. This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it:
Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law
and the prophets hang on these two commandments.'
Father God, I thank you that you draw bottom lines for us.
I thank you, Father God, that you give us clarity through your Word,
Father, a starting point. And Father, this morning, I'm asking, Lord,
that you would awaken our hearts to be taught of you, Lord. That's the prayer
that David prayed, and that's the prayer that we pray, Lord, that we would be
taught this morning. And Lord, I just ask that your Holy Spirit would
deliver the Word, not me, Father God. I thank you. Let my stuff fall
and you stand, in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen. And the very first thing on your list is exactly what I just shared
with you. When he spoke to them, "You are in error because you
do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." And see,
a lot of times, guys, we make mistakes or we head
down pathways that aren't consistent with what the Lord would have because
we don't know what the Lord really wants in that moment,
right? Have you ever walked into a mall and seen
a sign that says, "You are here"? And so you can kind of acclimate
yourself to, okay, this is what This is where I am right now, and so
I need to go this way, or I need to go this way to get
where I'm going. Well, the Word does that for us. The
Word tells us, this is where you are. This is your starting
point. This is the baseline that I want to
begin with you. And I believe that that is something that the
Lord wants to do with today's message.
Sometimes the most clarifying things we can do is to
scripturally define the bottom line so that this can become
our let's start here. Here, okay? Let's start
here. We're not starting with doctrine. We're not starting with
opinions. We're not starting with, you know, which religion is right,
which person is right, which is— and what. We are starting with
a bottom line. Why am I calling it that? Because Jesus
was the teacher. He was
the teacher. There were— you know,
Scripture says, "Never a man spake like this man."
Nobody talked like him. Nobody taught like him. So
if we are going to listen to the words of someone who
is the ultimate teacher, wouldn't you think if they
said, "This is the most important thing," that we
would want to know what the most important thing is?
Well, that's where he's getting ready to take us. So this is where we're
gonna start today. We are going to start Everybody,
just in your mind right now, just erase that whole chalkboard that's going
on in your mind of all the dos and the don'ts and the rules and
the regulations and what it looks like to serve God and being
a good Christian and all this. And we're going to erase all of that right
now. And we're just going to go, we're going to start right here.
We're going to start right here with when the— he says, which is
the greatest command? He says, love the Lord your God with all
of your heart, with all of your soul, with all your mind, with all of
your strength. And the second is like it, love one another
as you love yourself. Now,
that's a high standard, right up to the point that you don't
love yourself, right up to the point that you really
aren't respecting who you are and don't really have such a high
opinion of yourself. And then sometimes you just treat everybody else like
that. And God is going, you know, I just, I want
you to understand that there's a different way.
When it comes to loving God and loving our neighbors, it is love for our
neighbor that tends to suffer the greatest. You know, it's so easy to go,
God is so good! God is so faithful! I love
him so much! I love him so much!
And that neighbor thing comes in there.
You know, there's something that's kind of heartbreaking for me
that has become a little bit trite and trivial
in the church. You know, you hear things like,
"Man, I so love God, it's his people I have a problem with."
Or, "That church would be great if it just wasn't for the people."
And, you know, we laugh it off, and we, you know, push
it aside, and we make our jokes. And I believe that there's something
in it that, that that God and the Holy Spirit are
grieved by. Because see, I can look at
Justin and Jessica, and I can go, "I love you guys,
and I mean it. I mean that I love you."
And then you follow it up with, "Oh, but that Lily and Noah."
You know? Seriously. And you're going,
"Wait a minute. Lily and Noah are their
heart." And so, how can I tell them
that I love them and totally disregard
or have a disdain for the thing that has totally
captivated their hearts? God
checks our love language to see whether it's true and
authentic. And see, that same love that captivates them with all
of their babies now— all— let me say that again, all
of their babies now, That
is the love that God has for you. So
much greater. And not just you, but the person
who's sitting next to you. He feels that way about
them. He feels that way about the person that made you
the maddest this week. He feels that way
about the person who cut you off in traffic this week.
I'm not even going to tell you. Somebody was so ugly to me this—
it doesn't matter. Okay, I'll
tell you. They were so ugly to me, and I had a heart
check. They were coming down the wrong lane, and they did
things I should— I'm not even gonna tell you about. And— but they were
upset with me, and old Barbie, last Tuesday,
would have— old Barbie would have
gotten upset. But you know what my response was? God, it's okay,
don't hurt them. Don't hurt them, Lord. I know
you're upset for me in this moment,
but Lord, I'm gonna let it go. So Lord, you go ahead and let it
go, okay? That
$150 speeding fine that they're gonna get down there is
not our fault, Lord. Anyway,
God checks those places in us because he loves
his people. And so he's not gonna let us get by with not loving
his people. His people are not a footnote
in the journey. They're not a footnote in the story.
So when it comes to loving God, we need to be able to—
"If anyone boasts, 'I love God,' and goes right on hating his brother
or sister, thinking nothing of it," what does that say?
He's using a word I wasn't allowed to use in my house.
He is a liar. If he won't love the person he can
see, how can he love the God he can't see?
The command we have from Christ is blunt. Loving
God includes loving people. You have got to do
both. What? It's not an option? We don't get to pick and
choose. Well, I like them, but them I'm not so
sure about. It's not an option. It doesn't say, you know, if
you feel like it, because most of us don't need to be doing the things
we feel like doing.
I'm just— I'm just putting that out there. Anyway,
then he goes and does this. You know, we were
doing pretty good. We could do okay when we could love somebody as we
love ourselves, you know, 'cause we're pretty limited in that. But then he goes and
does this. He says, "A new command I give you:
Love one another as I have loved
you." Can you say that with me? "As I have
loved you." What? '"So must you love one another.
By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love
one another.'"
Okay, Jesus raised the bar from "love your neighbor
as yourself" to "as I have loved you." And in doing
this, our blueprint became his love rather than
our own. Wow!
His blueprint. Became—
his love became our blueprint. That's
a higher standard. It's a deeper call.
There's more to it than that. And when I look at that, I'm like, okay,
how do we do that, Lord? Because, you know, your love— I mean,
you know what? The disciples probably could have told you what Jesus loved to like,
what he, you know, what he enjoyed. And, you know, I'm sure John
could have told you all about his love and how much Jesus loved him more
than everybody else. But John would have known about the love
of Jesus. He experienced it on a daily basis.
Peter experienced it in a completely different way. But if
you put their voices together, these are the people who walked with him daily,
in and out, good days, bad days, horrible days,
blessed days. They could have told you about the love of Jesus, right?
I can look at people in my life and I can tell you, I can
tell you that my husband's love, the way that he loves is
faithful, and he is a protector, and he is
witty, and he is gentle-spirited. And
I can tell you what he is like. He is as faithful in
his love as the day is long.
But that's because I have walked with him for almost
43 years, and he has been consistent,
consistent in it. Now, if I try to tell you about the
love of Jesus, I can tell you what it looked like in my life and
what that redemptive price that was paid and who he is He has
been in my life. But according to scripture, you know, it would
be really dismissive of us to go,
"Well, yeah, but Jesus died for everybody, and so his love
was that sacrificial love that just died," you know, "and did that." And it seems
so far beyond our ability to do anything like
Jesus did. And yet we wear these shirts like,
"Love like Jesus."
And we don't even know what that means, nor
do we move toward trying to do that.
So, I'm looking at this, and I'm going, "Okay. Okay, God, then I don't really
know how to love like Jesus. I don't really know. If you said,
'As I have loved you, so you must love one another.'"
I believe that the Word will give us instruction on everything that he
asks us to do. And I don't think he ever asks us to do anything
that's impossible, right? So, I believe he gave us a
plan and an idea. Scripture tells us, All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the
servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good
work. Would you say that learning to love your neighbor as yourself
would be a good work? Would you say that learning to love
like Jesus, that, that He could teach us how to do that,
that He could correct us when we're not getting it right, and that He could
train us so that we can love like Jesus? I believe
He can. Well, if all Scripture is God-breathed,
then it would be a natural progression for me to go, "Okay, Lord, where
in Scripture do you talk to us about how to love?" Because
if you are going to teach me how to love, and I'm not talking
about Cupid love, I'm not talking about box of chocolates
love, though those are nice. I'm not talking about
Valentine love. I'm not talking about that, and neither
is he. Neither is he. So, we're gonna see,
I believe that when Jesus— when the Holy Spirit
breathed 1 Corinthians 13, I believe he was
breathing a teaching to tell us this is how
Jesus loves. And this is the instruction that I'm gonna
leave for you in my last will and testament. I'm going to
leave this instruction for you so that when you read somewhere
down the road in 2026 that I'm asking you to
love like I love, I wanna show you what that looks like. And so, that's
what we're gonna do this morning. All Scripture
is God-breathed. I also believe this. I grew
up out in the country. I know it shocks you with this accent,
you know. You're thinking London, Britain, whatever, but
I grew up out in the country, and I had a cousin, and
he was a snake handler before snake handling was, you know,
exciting. And he was— he knew exactly
what he was gonna grab hold of. And I remember one
particular day— now, his mama wasn't very fast,
but she was that day. Anyway,
his mama wasn't very fast, and I just remember him coming in
the room, and he had this snake by the head,
and his mama's backing out of the room, and he's going, "Momma,
it ain't poison. And look at here at its head,
it's diamond-shaped. It ain't poison. And it's skinny, it's
skinny. It ain't this." Because see, he knew that his mother's
peace relied on what it wasn't rather than what it was.
And so, he was going really quickly to describe everything
that it wasn't. And that makes total sense when you begin to look
at 1 Corinthians 13. Because what we
find in this passage of Scripture is that the Lord gives us
2 descriptors of what
it is and 8 of what it isn't. You
know what that tells me? It tells me that the Holy Spirit
knew that we would have a problem trying to call something
love that wasn't. And so, sometimes
we're better served by knowing what something isn't rather than what it
is. Because those are clarifiers, guys. If I can
give you some things from the Word that go, "This is what it
is, and this is what it isn't," you might just be able
to grab hold of it and go, "Oh, okay. Okay,
Lord." And that becomes your starting point.
Because guys, some of the things that we call love, it
ain't. It ain't love. It's got other words
for it, but it ain't love. And I hope, and my prayer would be,
that we would begin to define some of this. According to the
Scripture, true love has two
initial authenticators. If you want
to know if it's love, the two things that it will be
is it will be patient, and it will be kind.
Love is patient, and it is kind. And if
you are in a relationship, or you're seeking a relationship, or you're looking
for that person, and boy, they're pretty, or boy, they're
handsome, are they patient? And are they
kind? Because that's gonna matter in
your life. That is gonna matter in your life.
Looks fade. Popularity wanes. Kindness,
patience, that's what you want.
Kindness, and patience. Let me
give you this first one. Patience is the
level of endurance one exemplifies in difficult
circumstances before moving into negativity.
How patient are you? How patient
are you? When things start to go south, do you jump in the deep end
with them? Or do you try to point them toward the shallow end,
a way out? Do you go negative? Patience.
You know what? Patience destroys
the— I'm sorry, impatience
will destroy kindness. It will just destroy it.
Patience, the level of endurance.
When people talk about you, or your name gets brought
up, do they say that about you?
Do they like, "Oh man, they are just so
positive. They are so positive. They live in this land
of positivity." It's a
marker of His love. And then there's this,
kindness, marked by good and charitable behavior,
having a pleasant disposition, and showing genuine
concern for others. Is that you?
When people talk about you, do they say, "They have the most
pleasant disposition"? Or
when you start down the hallway at church, do you see people starting to pretend
they're on their phones? Because that could be an indicator.
When all of a sudden they have a phone call and step into a side
room until right after you pass.
Do you have a pleasant countenance? Has God done enough in
your life for you to be grateful and walk around like you're grateful?
I mean, seriously, come on. We're not all
born happy, you know? But the goodness of God and
what he has done should provoke a smile from time to time.
I mean, we should be the most peace-carrying people on
the planet, and yet we look so miserable sometimes.
Speaking of driving in cars, as we were talking about earlier,
Have you ever looked at people's faces as they drive past you?
Oh my goodness, did they have a bad day?
Or a bad year? We don't know. But it's like,
when the Lord started pointing that out to me, I have the fakest
smile when I drive because I'm like, "What if somebody passes?"
But I'm honest about it. Anyway,
patience and kindness. Guys, those are the only
two things he says that love is.
Love is patient. It is kind.
That's what you want. That's what you want to be, and that's who
you want to be involved with, right? Now, let's talk about the
nots. Let's talk about what it isn't. Because
a lot of times, the enemy tries to tell you that what you are
experiencing is love, and it's
not. Patient kindness. And let me tell you what else it
isn't. "Love is not envious or jealous,
boastful or proud. It is not
dishonoring or self-seeking. It is not easily angered or unforgiving."
Now, let's break that down for just a second. Okay,
envy. Everybody's like, "Oh, envious and jealous, they're the same things." No,
they're not. Envy is rooted in
fear.
No, I'm switching those. Jealousy is rooted in fear. Jealousy is
rooted in fear because you are afraid someone is going to
take something that you have. And so, you are
jealous and you're not at peace with it because
you don't want anybody messing with what's yours. Well, it ain't yours.
It ain't yours. Anything we have, God gave into our hands, and either He can
keep it in our hands or He won't. And if He doesn't, we didn't need
it in the first place. Jealousy,
envious. Envious is to be rooted— it's rooted in
lust. Envy is rooted in this place, "Well, why did they
get that? They've got this, and I want that, and
I deserve that, and I want that." And that is jealousy and
envious. If you are in a relationship where the person you are with
does not celebrate your victories and wants to hold you back and keep
you from moving forward in the Lord, this is an area of
prayer. Because we're not supposed to be jealous or
envious with our mates. We're just not supposed
to. Boastful or proud. Guys, listen here. If the person
that you are trying to do life with wants to tell you how good they
are all of the time, it's probably not a good, good reason to be with
them. If somebody gives you their resume, You know,
can I just tell you, there's no reason for
one single person in this room, myself
included, to boast.
I don't have anything to brag about except the goodness of God,
and that's on Him. He did that, not me. I don't need
to tell you what I've done. And if somebody else— now, if somebody else
wants to talk to people about how good you are, yay! Yay!
God has done something with your reputation, and that needed to be done anyway.
But if somebody else wants to do that, that's fine, that's good, but don't sing
your own praises. And if you're with somebody who wants to tell you how
lucky you are to be with them, don't be.
Proud, proud.
Do you receive correction? Are you
able to go, "Yeah, I was probably wrong there. Yeah, I'm sorry about
that." Love means never having to
say you're sorry. Who made that
up? I say it multiple times
every single day, and it's necessary.
Seriously, apologize. You know what? I
don't need to be prideful. I missed it. I miss it all
the time, and I'm so sorry.
Be quick. That's called repentance.
Turn and go the opposite direction. If you've got to say— tell
the Lord you're sorry. Now listen, there is a sorrow that
leads to death, according to Scripture, and it is a worldly sorrow.
And you can be sorry all day long and never change a thing.
But there is a godly sorrow According to Scripture, that
leads to repentance, and that leads to life.
Don't just be sorry, repent and don't do it again.
Rowan and Nora were playing this past week, and I
think Nora took something from Rowan, and they started
bickering, and I said, "Okay guys, okay, all
right, stop." They're 4 and they're 5, but I've heard 40 and 50-year-olds
do it too, anyway. But I said, "Okay guys, stop.
Now, let's fix this." And Nora says,
"Okay, Rowan, I apologize."
And he says, "Well, I forgive you.
I forgive you, but we're not gonna do that again."
And sometimes that's okay, right? You
know, I forgive you, And he said, "But that wasn't okay."
And sometimes, it's okay to let people, "You know what? That
wasn't okay. I forgive you, but that wasn't okay."
You know? Anyway, it's not
dishonoring or self-seeking. It's not easily angered or unforgiving.
Okay, this is the one, if you are willing, I would like you to
get a
Screenshot. If you've got your phones, would you pull them out? Because
I feel like this is where we're supposed to live for just a little while.
And if it's on your phone, I know people look at
their phone at least once a day, you know, once a second
anyway. This right here.
Love will not bring dishonor.
It will not cause you to feel shame or disgrace.
It will not remove your honor, diminish your worth,
affect your honesty, or compromise the integrity
of your personal values.
Love will not remove your honor,
diminish your worth, Affect your
honesty or compromise the integrity
of your personal values. Lay
that against the blueprint, guys. When the
enemy comes and tries to tell you, "Oh, but it's love, but
it's love, but it's love," is it that? Are you
compromising? Is it affecting the way you're walking in the earth? Are you
having to lie to your parents? Are you having to make up excuses?
What is it? Love does not dishonor you.
It just doesn't. Jesus' love,
His love will not bring dishonor. So
we, to love like Jesus loved, cannot put
ourselves or anybody else in a situation where
we're calling something love and it's bringing dishonor.
Okay? Shouldn't affect
your honesty. Shouldn't have to lie about it.
Shouldn't have to hide it. Love is pure. Love is
pure, and it's kind, and it is patient.
Anything that isn't that, you need to really
examine it. It
isn't self-seeking, guys. Contrary to
popular belief, love doesn't put itself
first. You don't get everything
your way. It's not all going to always work out
to where you win.
Love will take a back seat
and allow other people to shine and prosper and grow in
Him.
It isn't easily angered. This takes us back
to the very beginning, guys. One of the initial
markers was that it was patient and it was kind.
It isn't easily angered. Now listen, I get— I
run into this from time to time, more often than I would like to,
people who have issues with anger. People who just blow off
steam at the people that they say they love the most. And they
just, they're just easily angered in this a hair trigger and you can go off
with anything. And what I hear the most is, "Well, I'm just like
that," or, "Well, he did," or, "She did."
Listen, you are not like that.
God did not create you with a short fuse. The world
did that to you. And if you are struggling, and if you are
anger-driven, and you're causing everybody in your household to have to walk on
eggshells, That is
not a— that is not part of your personality. That is a lack of the
fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit of self-control. And
if you will begin to pray, the Holy Spirit can bring about
self-control in your life. Guys,
as long as we make excuses, as long as we make
excuses, the enemy will let us make excuses, and
we will continue down with patterns and things in our life that God
never intended for us. You know what? God created
you whole, not broken. God created you with a
propensity toward the eternal. He created you to
love, and to be kind, and to display all
of the attributes of the fruit of the Spirit. So when you find yourself
deviating from those things that He says, then it's a
spirit issue. It's not a flesh issue. We try
to fight it with our flesh, and we can't. And that's
why we say, "I'm just like that." No, your flesh is just like that.
But if you will flip the triangle, and if you will allow your spirit
to lead you, you'll find that you have more strength, more
integrity, more honor, more patience, more peace
than you ever dreamed imaginable.
Because that's what God does, and that's what the Holy Spirit does when
he takes control. Love is
not easily angered and it isn't unforgiving.
I'm going to ask the worship team to come out here in just a second,
if they'd come on out. Can I tell you something?
Love doesn't throw your past up in your face.
Love doesn't get into arguments and remember what you did 3 years
ago, and when you said this, or you did that. See, the love that I
see from God says that He casts our sins as far as
the east is from from the west into the sea of
forgetfulness. His love erases that
in our life, right? So, when you find
yourself wanting to throw someone else's past up,
understand that yours can be brought up too. And I
sure don't want the Lord bringing mine up. I sure don't want
to have to deal— I already dealt with my past once, or twice, or three,
or four, or five, many times, all right? I don't want to have to go
there again because he's not going there again. God
has cleansed my heart. God
has forgiven me. The Word tells me that if I
confess my sins, he is faithful
and just and will forgive me
and, and cleanse me
from all unrighteousness. You can't change
what happened yesterday. You can't change how you
behaved yesterday, but you can do a "let's start here."
You can do a "let's start today." Let's start to
redefine what relationships look like in my life. Let's
begin to redefine what I'm putting out
into the world. What kind of love am I portraying
in this world?
Now, if we know what it isn't,
that means we know what it is, right? Because that
would be the opposite, correct?
I'm going to share this, and then we are going to stand and sing,
and then I'm going to finish it because I want to
show you If it isn't this, then
it's this. And after I've read these to
you, we're going to take just a moment and
we're going to worship. We're going to just have a moment
where we allow the Holy Spirit to take these things and
to examine our heart. And then we'll come right back
into this because this is what it says. If knowing what
it isn't serves to clarify what it is, we can know this:
if it isn't envious, it is content.
It is content. I know that doesn't make sense to some of you, but
when you're not satisfied, when you're not
satisfied with what God has done, you
lose that contentment. If love isn't envious, it's content. If it
isn't boastful, it is modest.
Has a right estimation of who they are in Christ. It's
settled. If it isn't proud, it is what?
And if it isn't dishonoring, it is
honorable. Honorable. If it isn't self-seeking,
it is selfless. If it isn't
easily angered, it is— and if
it isn't unforgiving, it is
compassionate. How is that? How is that?
Because see, if I can't forgive you, then I'm not having compassion for where
you're standing. I'm not able to go, I,
I'm, I have so been there. We have a high
priest who is touched by the very feeling of our
infirmities. And when you
blow it, or I blow it, and they mess up, and everything
in you wants to get angry, my prayer would be that compassion would
rise and go, Lord, I've done that myself. Lord, except for the grace of
God, there I would be. Lord, birth
compassion as you are compassionate,
as you are compassionate, as I have loved
you. Guys, we're just going to dim the lights for a minute. I'm going
to get you guys to just ponder this a moment. Go
ahead, Jonathan.
I believe the Lord is sharing this with us
because there's a higher call in a world that
doesn't know what love looks like, that doesn't understand
this kind of compassion, this kind of calling. God is going,
I need you to be that. I need you
to be that. Love like I love.
Jesus' love was content, modest, humble,
honorable, selfless, patient,
and compassionate. And in the end, guys,
the stamp of love's authenticity is its willingness to surrender its own
will, and in doing so, serve a
greater good that we sometimes cannot see or understand.
We're not always going to see the end result. We're not always
going to see why the Lord has us apologize or
move this way or act in compassion or lay down our
rights or, or set things aside. We're not always going to know why,
but we can know that he is faithful and he is good,
and he sees the beginning from the end, and he
knows the outcome. Guys, there's a
better kind of love, a better kind of love.
Greater love has no one than this, to lay down
his life for his friends.
As I have loved you,
so must you love one another. He
wouldn't have asked us to do it if it wasn't possible. He
wouldn't have put that in front of them and it be unattainable.
So this is what's on my heart this morning. If you will allow, if you
would stand, I would like the honor of praying over you.
And if you feel led, if you just raise your hand.
Father God, I thank you so much for each of these, and I thank
you, Lord, that you set the standard, not
anybody else, Lord. You set the standard. And so,
Father, I thank you, Lord, that you are calling us, entrusting us
with a higher kind of love, a better kind of love, the only kind
of love that you offer that's selfless and kind and
compassionate and patient, Father God. And Lord, I
pray even at this moment, Lord, that you would do something in our
hearts, Lord, that we would move toward that kind of love.