Can a Bosniac love a Serb? Can an Auburn fan love a Bama fan? Can a cat person love a dog person? These are difficult questions? The real test of love is whether or not we can sincerely love people who are not naturally lovable.
We tackled this issue at a recent student meeting on the Georgia Tech campus. Here are my notes from the message. They are somewhat raw and unedited but they contain the main Biblical references that we looked and the main application that I recommended.
De2. Deuteronomy 6:4, 5 (General, central place of love)
We tackled this issue at a recent student meeting on the Georgia Tech campus. Here are my notes from the message. They are somewhat raw and unedited but they contain the main Biblical references that we looked and the main application that I recommended.
“Love reign o’er me” - Trusting in Christ’s Supernatural Love
Intro - Have you ever noticed how love makes you do crazy things?
I remember how Emily, now my wife, made me crazy when we dated.
I wrote 50 letters in about 40 days.
I wrote a song for her in the voice of Scottish Highlander confessing his love for his lassie.
Have you also noticed that you have certain people in your life that you have a difficult time loving? A couple stories from my life: 1) my freshman year roommate 2)Me to my Bulgarian mission trip roommate (I smelled up the room, used his camera to take embarrassing photos, and used his deodorant stick without asking)
The main idea we are going to look at tonight is how Christ changes the way we love others.
Another way you could think about this issue is How you can love by faith - How faith in Christ changes how you love others - romantic, sexually, or platonically - friendship…
Why you need to know this?
Not really because if you don’t have God’s love you can’t experience true or quality love (Common grace - natural love - people naturally love their friends, their spouses, their children, for mutual benefit…)
But you probably already have people in your life that are not natural for you to love - and the natural force of life will be to exclude the other who is not loveable. Pretty soon, you have excluded yourself from people who are different than you. So, you will never embrace others who are significantly different than you (for example:Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia)
If our understanding and experience of love never transcends “natural” love we miss something incredible in our lives and our relationship with God.
This is central to God's character, if you don’t get this, you don’t get what it means to know God and you waste your life!
Selected Bible Passage on love:
Old Testament
1. Song of Songs 1:1-4, 2:1-13 (Romantic love, God's love for his people?)
Song of Solomon 1:1-4 (NIV)
Solomon’s Song of Songs.
Beloved
2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
for your love is more delightful than wine.
3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.
No wonder the maidens love you!
4 Take me away with you—let us hurry!
Let the king bring me into his chambers.
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all 2. your soul and with all your strength.
New Testament
1. Matthew 5:43-48
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
2. I John 4:7-19
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (God’s supernatural love - His life working in and through you Gives 1) you assurance and 2) a living testimony to others)
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 17 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. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
3. Revelation 1:4-6
Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power forever and ever! Amen.
God’s ultimate goal is a world of love. Where people who were once his enemies and each other’s enemies have been transformed by His love and are now forever free to love!
Summary
1. 1. Love is the rule and the goal.
2. 2. We break that rule shoot for lower goals
a. Apathy, Antipathy, or any combination thereof is a violation of our obligation to love
b. Ezekiel 16:30-34 _ We are spiritual prostitutes -except we pay our lovers
3. 3. God’s love for us is not just unconditional, it is contra-conditional
a. Romans 5:8 God loves His enemies
b. Jesus was excluded by the Father so that we could embraced
c. Jesus suffered the wrath we deserved and gave us the inclusion that only a perfect Son or Daughter or Citizen deserves…
4. 4. By faith in Christ you can love the unlovable (Our love is not just a duty, it is not just a feeling, it is not just a wise or good idea - It is the life of God within us - a new power, a new personality enabling us to love supernaturally Gal 5:22 The fruit of the Spirit is love…)
What I want you to do - think about who you don’t love
a. List them (not on Facebook…privately, use code or nick names (not derogatory please)
b. Pray for them by faith…1 John 5:14-15
c. Seek God’s forgiveness if necessary; forgive them by faith if necessary…
d. Serve them by faith…(Emily’s incredible understanding of the love of a parent or a Mother…love that comes from investing, sacrificing, giving, suffering for the other…)
e. Enjoy them by faith…
What can you do as an act of love this week?
Why do you need to do this?
Right now there are people all over this world from here at Tech to Sarajevo to East Asia who are dying to experience the real embrace of God’s love. What we need a men and women like you who will step out in faith and say, Lord I will trust you to love them, to include them and embrace them with your supernatural love. Can you imagine what this campus would look like if every day we were taking leaps of faith to love people who are not easy to love?
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