Loving Father, we thank you so much for your invitation to us
today to draw near to You, to come to the fount of every
blessing, to drink from the waters of life freely, and to
bring glory and worship in unto you.
Lord, today we want to acknowledge how great you are,
how good you are to us, how merciful and loving.
Thank you for your grace. Thank you for the hope that you
give to those who believe in you.
Thank you for the gift of your beloved Son that kept him of our
salvation. So Father, we thank you for him
today. We thank you for the offering
that we've been able to give to you.
Lord in love. Today we bring that to you with
simplicity and dedicate it to your service and to your
Kingdom. We thank you for your precious
word, Lord, and as the senior school and teachers and the
children go out, we ask for your blessing and help for them.
We thank you for Billy and for the word that he has prepared
and the message from yourself. Lord, we pray for your blessing.
We pray for open hearts as we hear your word to us today.
We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
Thank you, Andrew. Good morning Church hey are open
with me in your Bibles to the book of Luke, the book of Luke
and this morning will be in Luke chapter 6.
Now if you're if you're visiting or you are new welcome special
welcomes you. We are on a journey as a church
through the gospel of Luke. One of the four accounts we have
of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and specifically we were
at and the gospel of Luke is we're looking at this sermon
that Jesus gave, which we'd call the the sermon on the plane
literally because he he came out on a plane space and and
delivered the sermon to his disciples and a bunch of other
people who were listening as well.
And so Dan took us through the first section and we're going to
be looking at the second section of this sermon this morning.
So let's read. We're going to be looking just
this morning at versus 27 through 36, Luke 6 versus 27
through 36. So let's let's read the word and
then we will jump in. This is the word of our Lord.
But I say to you, who here love your enemies, do good to those
who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who
abuse you. To the one who strikes you on
the cheek offered the other also, and from the one who takes
away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.
Give to everyone who begs from you, and from the one who takes
away your goods, do not demand them back.
And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you?
For even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is
that to you? For even sinners do the same.
And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what
credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to
get back the same amount. But love your enemies and do
good, and lend expecting nothing in return.
And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most
High. For He is kind to the ungrateful
and the evil. Be merciful even as your Father
is merciful. Amen.
Well, if you've seen the movie Forrest Gump, I'm sure you would
remember the scene where Forest turns to his love interest
Jeannie and he says I love you Jenny.
I'm not going to try his voice. He says I love you Jenny, and
Jenny replies to him. Forest, you don't know what love
is. Well, I, I think this word love
is, it's a word that's thrown around plenty in our culture and
in our society. In fact, merely looking around
the world, I think highlights the fact that we, I think we're
obsessed with love. We're obsessed with the word
love. In 2022, of the Billboard Top
100 songs of the year, they found that 80% of those songs
had love as a key theme of the song.
The year before, it was 90%. Almost every movie we watch find
some way to sneak a side plot about love into the movie.
Like if you go to watch Pearl Harbour and you want to learn
about Pearl Harbour, you're not going to learn a lot about Pearl
Harbour, but you might learn one or two things about love.
Most people in New Zealand, if you wanna watch something on TV
at night, you get to choose between Love Island.
Love Is blind love on the spectrum.
I think our society is obsessed with love.
I think Love Is All around us. And I use some of these pop
culture references because I think popular music and TV, it
gives us an insight into the world that we live in.
It gives us an insight into, you know, these are the things that
are feeding us, whether we're paying attention to it or
whether it's going on in the background, these are the things
that are feeding us. And I think that these songs and
these movies are successful for a reason, because the world is
searching for something. The world is passionate about
love and, and, and, and the world is feeding us some sort of
idea about love, a certain picture of love.
But as we come to these words this morning, the words of Jesus
as he speaks about love, I can't help but feel like Ginny when
he's speaking, like Jeannie when she says to Forest, you don't
know what love is. I wonder, have we completely
missed what true biblical love is?
Have we missed what true biblical love is?
And that's what we're going to look at this morning as we look
at this. Jesus is actually going to show
us this morning two ways to love.
He's going to compare and contrast the love of the world
with the love that should characterise his believers and
his followers. And, and really that's what he's
doing in this entire cement on the plane, which is kind of that
the latter half of Luke chapter 6 in the sermon.
He is showing this is the way that the world lives and this is
what it should look like for his followers, for the followers of
Jesus Christ. And so last week Dan looked at
this is the way that the world prioritises or views blessing
and happiness and joy. This is what blessing and
happiness and joy should look like for believers.
And so this week he's going to do this with love.
And then next week we're going to come back and we're going to
look at that in the in the sense of judging others.
But this week we're looking at two ways to love.
How does the world view love? And how should we as Jesus
followers view love? And really, Jesus command to us
simply is that we should love differently to the world.
We should love differently to the world.
The love of a believer, the love of a follower of Jesus Christ
should look remarkably different to the love that the world
values and the love that the world speaks of.
And I will just say at the start, when we think of love, we
typically think of romantic love.
Jesus isn't primarily speaking here about romantic love.
He's focused on how we we view love in general, how we love all
people around us. So my prayer is that this kind
of love is going to be the kind of thing that we can apply
obviously to our enemies, but also to our friends, to our
spouses, to our children, to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
He's giving us a new framework for love.
So what we're going to do actually is we're gonna jump
into the middle of the passage first.
We're going to start at verse 32.
And I guess look at the way that Jesus diagnoses that the the
love of the world. What is the type of love that
the world values that the world speaks of?
And then we're going to go back to the start of the passage and
then ask, OK, what is the kind of love that we should have as
followers of Jesus? So how does the world love will
read again versus 32 to 34? Jesus sees if you love those who
love you, what benefit is that to you?
For even sinners love those who love them.
And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is
that to you? For even sinners do the same.
And if you lean to those from whom you expect to receive, what
credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to
get back the same amount. So how does the world love you?
You'll see three times in this text Jesus repeats, Even sinners
do that. Even sinners do that.
So Jesus is saying that there is a way that the world or or
society or our sinful nature wants to love.
So the world does love, but what kind of love is it?
Well, I think simply the love of the world is, I'd say,
transactional. The love of the world is
inherently transactional. Look at the way he sees it, he
says. The love of the world will love
those who love them. The love of the world would do
good to those who do good to them.
It will lend to those whom they expect to receive.
So it's completely dependent. I will love those who will love
me back. I'll do good if I will get good
back. I'll lend if I get something
back and return. So simply I'd say who is the
focus of this kind of love? The focus is self.
And so first and foremost, the love of the world, it needs to
receive the ground level. For me to love, I have to be
loved. For me to do good, I have to
know I'm going to get good in return.
So first and foremost, the love of the world needs to receive
love before it's willing to give love.
It's inward focused. We receive and then we give.
And it's interesting because I guess if you, if you do a Google
or you know, if you look at the way that the world speaks about
love, I don't think they're going to speak about it as
openly as as I've just laid it out here.
If you ask, you know, someone in in the world, you say, you know
what is love. And they wouldn't necessarily
say this, but I think when we look at the world and actually
when we look at our own hearts, this is inherent in the way that
we live and in the way that we love.
When the love that is coming inward breaks down, the whole
relationship of love breaks down.
The top song in New Zealand at the moment is by Olivia Dean.
It's called Man I Need. You might recognise it from the
radio. It's it's pretty catchy.
But one of the main lyrics in this is she says come be the man
I need. Tell me you got something to
give. I want it, and I think that that
kind of speaks to that. What can I get from you?
What have you got for me? And then if I can receive love,
I will hand out love. And I think by nature, the same
goes the other way. If we receive evil, if we
receive wrong, what do we want? We want justice.
You know, if you're going to harm me, I'm going to harm you
back. And I think we find this
satisfying. Any action movie you watch, we
have this. If you've ever read like a Lee
Child Reacher book, usually the last scene finishes with Jack
Reacher, the good guy walking away from the scene and the bad
guys in a pool of his own blood. He's died and justice is done
and the reader is satisfied because evil was handed out and
then evil was handed back to the bad guy.
This is what we want. Jesus is gonna give us different
vision here. And so I think inherent, this is
the way that the world loves. It is a transactional two way
relationship. It's it's focused on self.
When the love end breaks down, the love outward breaks down.
And I think inherent in this is the notion that love is
primarily not a feeling. Sorry, love is primarily a
feeling. It's not an action.
Love is a feeling. It's not an action.
No, it's not a choice. The love.
It's a feeling that we have the the romantic love at Bubbles U.
We have that feeling. When that feeling goes away, the
love goes away. That's how it goes, and I think
the world will tell us that love is a feeling.
When the feeling leaves, I no longer need to love that person.
So what? What's the problem with this?
What's the problem with this kind of love?
And we'll get to it more later. I'm going to kind of unpack it
all a little bit more later, but I'll just lay this out.
I think the problem is if If this is love.
If love is if love is transactional, it's not love.
This is not love Christian Christian author.
I really enjoy Edward Welch. He sees to us in this model
we're not loving people. Actually a better word to use as
we are needing people. My relationship with other
people is not love, it is needed.
So we're actually like a Leech. We're attached to them and we're
going, I need to get from you what what I need out of this
relationship. This relationship is not you
focused. It's me focused.
And when I stop getting what I need, I no longer need this
relationship. When one side breaks down, it it
all does. Maybe you'll say this is a
cynical take, but maybe I'd ask you to assist your own heart.
I've been assisting my heart this week and I think my heart
spends a lot of time doing this, looking to different
relationships based off what I can get out of it and and I grow
better when the N word is not coming in.
So how does the world define love?
It is, it is transactional, it is a feeling.
And so I think that's what Jesus is saying here.
You love those who love you. And so if this is the world, how
the world defines love, I think the question comes how then
should we as followers of Jesus, how should we define love?
How should we love? Let's read what She's a sees.
Going back to verse 27, he sees. But I say to you, who here love
your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who
curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
It's the one who strikes you on the cheek off of the other.
Also to the one who takes away your cloak.
Do not withhold your tunic. Give to everyone who begs from
you and to the one who takes away your goods.
Do not demand them back and as you wish that others would do to
you, do so to them. So if the love of the world is
inward focused, the love that we should have and should identify
us as followers of Jesus as primarily outward focused.
It's not transactional. It's not waiting for something
to come inward. It is completely outward
focused. I think Jesus is showing this to
the extreme right when he sees love your enemies.
We should love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless
those who curse us and so on. And, and this kind of love to,
to love your enemies, it just doesn't fit at all within the
framework of the world. In fact, all that we are
receiving is enmity, hatred, cursing and abuse.
And so yet actually, even when we received that, we should meet
it back with love, goodness, blessing, prayer.
And he's going to give some specific illustrations of this
in verse 29 and 30. So he says, hey, if someone
comes in and strikes you on the cheek, you'll imagine like,
literally, if someone comes in, you're walking down the street,
someone slaps you on the cheek. What?
What's your first reaction like? The blood starts to boil.
You want vengeance. Maybe you'll assess how big they
are before you think about striking back.
But you wouldn't want vengeance, right?
You would want or you'd want someone else to see and, and and
do something to it. We want vengeance.
Jesus is no, no, no. Turn the other cheek.
Literally offer them you. You struck my right.
Here's my left. And then he says if someone
takes your cloak, so think about your outer garment, your your
hoodie, your jersey. So someone came and I was
wearing a hoodie. They stole my hoodie.
I shouldn't run and try to tackle them and get it back.
I should be taking off my T-shirt and say hey, you forgot
this. You should take this as well if
people big from you. So the idea there is if
someone's asking you for a loan and and they have, there's
absolutely no premise that they could pay this back, you're
like, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting this money back.
Don't be like, no, this isn't a good financial choice for me.
Say no, give them the money, give them the line.
If someone steals, do not seek retribution.
What? What's the point with all these
examples? I don't know if they necessarily
specific instruction. He's not saying that we should
go and be completely cavalier with our money in every
situation. I think what he's saying here is
he, he's shocking us to see what kind of love this is in
comparison to the love of the world meaning this.
We pay no mind to the love that is coming inwards.
The way that we view the world, our first attitude, our first
mindset when we see the world, when, when we see other people
as love, love, love, love. How can I bless you?
How can I love you? Not OK What?
What's in it for me? Not weighing up a cost benefit
analysis. Is this gonna be worth my time
and my head space? No love, Love, love, love and
this is a love that shows itself in action.
John season first John 318. He says let us not love and word
and talk, but indeed and in truth loving and correction.
So Jesus here is calling us to this outward focused love.
It's not dependent on the love being reciprocal.
It's not dependent on getting it back and return to the point
that we would even love our enemies.
And for some of you, I'm aware when I say that word enemy, love
your enemy. For some of you, immediately
names come to mind. Immediately you're like, yes,
okay, I got a few people I can put in that category pretty
comfortably for some, I guess for those people, if you, if,
if, when I say enemy, those names are coming to mind.
This instruction from Jesus, it takes on a much more real
challenge because you've got faces, you've got situations,
you've got hurt, you've got abuse.
What you, I don't know what it looks like.
And what I will say is a few things.
When Jesus says love your enemies, to love does not equal
to trust. You wanna make that clear?
To love does not mean to trust. O, if you've if there has been
abuse, if there has been harm, if there has been hurt, it does
not mean that the relationship must be restored all the way
that you're going. Yeah, come into my house, hang
out with my kids, whatever it looks like.
He's not saying that, but what he is.
That trust is earned, but that love can be given.
He's speaking here of a heart attitude of love.
I do not wish the other person ill.
I want to extend to them the love of Jesus Christ.
And for others I feel thinking, I don't necessarily know if I
have any enemies in the way that he's speaking about this.
I don't think this lets us off the hook.
In fact, they know I know that it doesn't for two reasons.
Firstly, I will say enemies will come.
Enemies will come, I said because of this, I think
especially when he's using the word enemies here Jesus has in
mind religious persecution. So if you think about the
context, he he talked about the blessings and the woes last week
in verse 22. He says blessed are you when
people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and
spoon your name as evil on account of the Son of man.
I think especially what Jesus has in mind here is religious
persecution. And in this context to these
people, he's thinking of people who are opposing them because of
their faith. And we're actually guaranteed in
Scripture as a believer that will come.
That policy is in Second Timothy 3 verse 12.
All who desire to live a godly life and Jesus Christ will be
persecuted. So if we want to follow Jesus,
if we want to follow him with our lives, there will come a
time where enemies, persecution, opposition come even just on
account of our faith. And yet, there are many other
times in our life where we will come against enemies.
We'll come against opposition. Whether it comes through a
family member or a friendship that has broken down, or just
harm and hurt from the different interactions you have in life.
Enemies will come. Opposition will come, but I'd
also say this, this, this applies to all of us because I
think what Jesus is giving us here is an extreme example to
show how he is redefining love. This is a, this is a framework
for how we should love our enemies.
But as I said before, our friends, our spouses, our
children, our coworkers, our fellow church members, it is an
outward seeking that that is not waiting for love to come first.
And so, so maybe right now there's different situations,
even in this room, marriages where there is conflict in you
and you're going, I'm not apologising for nothing until I
get an apology first, until they realise what what they've done
to me. I'm not, I'm not acting first in
love until I feel love. I think I deserve to feel love
in this marriage or in this friendship.
I'm gonna wait for that. And then, and then we'll see
what happens. Or there's a coworker you you've
found out has been talking behind your back and you you've
just signed. Until they apologise, I'm just
going to completely ignore them. They walk past me at work, I'm
going to look in the other way. Maybe maybe there's a friend
that there's been a relationship breakdown and and you go I'm
nothing is going to happen until they make that first step of
resolution. Jesus is saying our heart
posture and this should always be love, love, love, regardless
of how much love comes back. And this is a hard task that
he's calling us to because our sinful self wants vengeance.
We want justice to be done. We feel like we need to receive
love. Jesus is saying no love, love,
love. And so if that's the kind of
love we're called to, the question inevitably comes U, how
on earth do you expect me to do that?
How on earth do you expect me to live in that kind of way?
On what basis, Billy, you don't understand my situation.
You don't understand the hurt that has come my way.
You don't understand the frustration that this person is
to me. And even if you look at these
different diagrams, you you go Billy, you notice that in the
second one there there's nothing coming inwards except anger and
enmity. Maybe you're in a marriage.
It's feeling pretty 1 sided and a different relationship.
You go on what basis of is any of this actually possible,
actually realistic? And to which I would say to you
simply, it's not. It's not if you just go.
I'm gonna pull myself out by the boots.
Bootstraps. Ohh.
Yeah. That that that was challenging.
OK, I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna try.
Love, love, love. You could maintain it for a
while. I think over time you would grow
bitter, you would grow empty and frustrated in the different
relationships that you're in. If you just say I'm just going
to go try smash this out, I want to speak to that on what basis?
How so? Firstly, we can love our enemies
because we, as believers of Jesus Christ, know ultimately
that vengeance belongs to the Lord.
We know that we do not need to get even.
We do not need our relationships to be completely equal.
It is not our job to bring about justice on earth.
Pulses and Romans 12 verse 19 Do not avenge yourselves, because
vengeance belongs to the Lord. Our job is to love and leave
justice to the Lord and know ultimately every wrong will be
made right. And that is not our job.
But also, I just want to look at this as 35 and 36 and highlight
a few things for us as we think about how are we to love this
way. This 35 You see his love, your
enemies do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and
your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most
High. For He is kind to the ungrateful
and the evil, being merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
The basis for us to love in this way is in first understanding
that we are recipients of this kind of love.
The basis for us loving in this way is understanding that we are
recipients of this kind of love. Look at the end of verse 35.
Speaking about God, He says He is kind to the ungrateful and
the evil. Well, who is that?
That was us. We were the ungrateful.
We were the evil. And he's actually pointing us
here. Jesus is that we were first
recipients if we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
We were first recipients of God's completely outward focused
love. I mean, this is the most one
sided act of love you could ever imagine.
And, and we're actually on the the receiving side, we have
first received the greatest act of love when Jesus Christ went
to the cross to make a sacrifice for sin so that all who put
their faith and trust in Jesus Christ will have their sins
forgiven, wiped out clean simply by faith in Jesus Christ, in a
right relationship with God. Paul puts it this way in Rome's
fly verse 10. He says for a while we were
enemies. We were reconciled to God by the
death of his Son. We were enemies.
God loved us. Now we are to do the same and
that that's why he says in verse 35, when when we love this way,
he says, your reward will be great and you will be sons of
the most high. He's saying, hey, when we love
like this, we show ourselves to be like our father.
We're showing the family DN A we're showing that we are of God
because we are loving like God. And so so why does the world,
why does the world love the way they do?
Why does the world need this love that's coming inwards?
And I think the world loves the way that they do because we were
designed to be loved. We were designed to know God's
love, and the reality is, if we don't find it in God, we will
look for it. In fact, we'll demand it from
other people there. There is a gaping need, a gaping
hole in our heart to know the love of God.
We're either gonna look for it from God.
We're gonna demand it from somewhere else.
Edward Welch, who I quoted earlier, he he describes that
that we are living as love tanks with a leak.
So you imagine if I've got a plastic cup and, and I drill a
hole in the bottom of the cup and then I fill it up with
water. Yeah, it's gonna fill up.
But overtime, it's just gonna be leaking out and leaking out and
leaking out and, and, and after not very long, I'm gonna need to
go and, and fill it up again. And he's saying when when we
live our lives looking for what we should be looking for this
way, when we look for it amongst other people, when we look for
other people to give us the love that we need from God, we're
like these love tanks with the leak.
Yes, they give us this feeling of, of love and acceptance, but
slowly it's going to leak out and leak out and leak out
because it's it's not enough. And so we go looking for it
again and again and again and we get upset when it's not coming
in. Every relationship needs to give
us something. We'll continue to look to be
filled, but we'll never be full. And I just want you to
understand this. Only when we know that our
desire to be fully known and fully loved is meant in Jesus
Christ can we begin to love as He teaches us to.
Only when we are no, Only when we know this desire that we have
is only met in God, will we stop looking horizontally for what
can only be found vertically. We're going to stop looking at
every relationship as a need to fill our leaky cup.
And really what we're meant to do, I think, is to know truly
and seek to know that we are loved by God and to then bind to
that love comes down to us and we bend it and we extend it into
every relationship that we have. And so we are not leaky cups,
but we are, we are these these systems of water that are
overflowing into every relationship that we have to
love as we ought. We need to know God's love.
It's as simple as that. But how?
How can we know this love? How can we truly know the love
of God? And I want you to turn with me
to Ephesians. Ephesians is a couple of books
after Luke and the New Testament.
Ephesians chapter 3 and we're going to finish the this morning
because I want us to to think about as we come to a close, we
thinking, OK, if we are to love as Jesus teaches us, we must
first know and be filled and be satisfied by the love of God.
What does that mean for us to know God's love?
What does it mean for us to be satisfied in the end of chapter
3 of Ephesians? Paul praised this incredible
prayer for the Ephesian church in the instance of this prayer,
and I'll read this 17 he sang. His prayer is that Christ may
dwell in your heart through faith, and that you being rooted
and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all
the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that
you may be filled with all the fullness of God Ull uses 2 words
here. He uses the word comprehend and
he uses the word No. We probably use those words
interchangeably, but they're different words.
The word he uses therefore know that is an academic knowledge
that is a I. I know this to be true because
I've read it and I kind of understood it.
But then he uses this word comprehend.
I think a better word would be the word grasp.
Now, this is a knowledge in our bones.
So the common example, we use this for young adults this week.
It's one thing to know that honey is sweet.
I could do all the science. I could work out.
Yes, OK, I've done the math. I've worked out the chemical
makeup of honey. Honey is sweet, but it's a
completely other thing, a different thing.
If I gave you a teaspoon of honey and told you to taste it
and you'd go, honey is sweet. I knew honey is sweet, but now I
know honey is sweet. These are the two different
types of knowing. Paul is praying for here that
they would know academically, but they now would know the love
of Jesus Christ. And it's going to tell us a few
things. I think.
Firstly, it's going to tell us that it's awfully easy for us as
Christians to know about the love of God and yet at the same
time not really know it. It's awfully easy for us to know
about the love of God and yet not really know it.
He's speaking to Christians here in Ephesus.
He's already addressed that in the letter.
These are people who love Jesus. They, they, they have accepted
the gospel. But Paul saying here, there's
more here for us. We know Jesus loves us, but
often we don't really know at any saying it actually should be
a life changing reality that shapes the way that we live and
shapes the way that we love others.
And secondly, I think this is showing us that this kind of
knowledge, this tasting, this personal knowing is available to
us. It's available to us because
this is the essence of Paul's prayer.
He's praying that they may know this kind of love.
I I think we spend a lot of our lives not truly knowing the love
of God. We know about it, but we don't
know it. Oses it's available.
I think that's the point of this prayer.
And so as I close, I want to give you a few things to Mull on
about what it looks like for us to meditate and know the love of
God and then to go out and extend that to other people.
What does it look like for us to strive to know God's love?
First thing I'd encourage you to do is to meditate on God's love.
And when I say meditate, I'm not talking about the, you know,
Eastern meditation where you empty your mind of everything
else. Actually, biblical meditation is
filling your mind. It's filling your mind with with
truth. 0 Meditate on God's love. So I'd say that's fine.
Assam, I'd encourage you. Sam 103.
Sit with Sam 103 with a pen and paper.
Set aside maybe 15 minutes, thirty minutes, and ask basic
questions. What does this sum tell me about
the love of God? That tells me that it is
steadfast. It tells me that it is from
everlasting to everlasting, so it will never stop.
It tells me that it is higher than the heavens are above the
earth, so it is bigger than I can comprehend.
What does this tell me about the love of God?
And then preach that to yourself.
What does this actually mean for me if this is true, that God
loves me in this way? Think about applying this to
different areas of your life. Sit with it, that it sit on your
heart, and then respond. I'd encourage you come back to
Ephesians chapter 3. Ask God that He may help you to
know His love. And this is not OK.
I'm gonna do this one time and then I'm sorted.
Actually in some 103 they say, you know, bless the Lord and
forget not all his benefits. Which means, you know, we're
very quick to forget these things.
We need to remind ourselves everyday.
And so I'd encourage you to build that practise into your
spiritual life, of reminding yourself of what we often
forget, which is that God loves us.
And my period is that from that we would go out into our lives,
not as leaky cups, but as overflowing systems of water,
pouring love into those around us, loving our enemies, loving
our spouses, loving our friends, loving our family as followers
of Jesus as we ought to, bending this love out, displaying this
love for us. O, that's my review.
And it's, it's been such a challenge for me.
We we will go through seasons in our life with us where love is
easy, where it feels like love does not demand a lot from us.
We feel like, you know, the love is more or less 5050.
There are gonna be seasons in life where it's not like that
and it's actually going to expose our real motives and
love. Are we going to love the way
that that Jesus calls us to love?
Are we going to be outward focused in our relationships?
So as we close, I might pray for us this prayer in Ephesians
chapter 3, and then I'll sit down.
Let's pray. For this reason I bow my knees
before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on
earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He
may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit
and your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith. That's you being rooted and
grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all
the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that
you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask,
will think according to the power at work within us.
To Him be glory and the church and in Christ Jesus throughout
all generations, forever and ever.
I mean.