IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE
40 Days of Love Preparation Service
9.30am Sunday 26 July 2009
I want to begin by asking you a question. How would you complete this sentence? My number one goal in life is …? In other words, what’s most important for you? What has top priority in your life? How would you answer? What word or phrase would you use?
For example, would you say, my number one goal in life is to be happy? Or, is it to be loved? Or to succeed at my career? Is it to be comfortable, or have fun, or retire, or get married and raise a family? Is it to be famous, or popular? How would you answer that question?
It’s an important question to consider, because your answer reveals your dominant life principle. Everybody’s got one. It’s the most important value in your life. It influences everything you do. Every time you make a decision, every time you have a choice, you access the database in your brain and you decide what you’re going to do based on your dominant life value.
For instance if your dominant life value is to have fun then you’ll tend to choose the thing that’s the most fun to do, because that’s what’s most important to you; to have fun.
If it’s comfort, then you’ll tend to choose the easiest thing to do, what’s most convenient.
If it’s safety, then every decision you make in life will be based on what’s the safest and most secure thing to do.
If your dominant life value is seek approval, to be affirmed and applauded, then your going to choose things in life that will earn you these things.
It’s very important to think through what is going to be the most important value in your life.
What does God have to say on this subject? What does he want your number one goal in life to be? We find the answer in 1 Corinthians 14:1 where he says this, “Let love be your greatest aim.” Let love be your greatest aim. Not status or success, not possessions, or power or privilege or prestige, not comfort, not money. He says, make love the highest aim of your life. Why does he say this? Because he is love. The Bible does not say God has love. It says He is love, and his foremost purpose for your life is for you to be like him. He created everything in the universe out of love. He created you to love. That’s why you are here. Life is all about learning how to love.
One day as Jesus was walking down the street, a man came up
to him and said, “Lord what is the most important command in the Bible? Can you tell me what really matters most,
what should I really focus on?” Jesus
said, “I can summarize that for you in two sentences.” “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind and
all your strength. And love your
neighbor as yourself. There are no
commands more important than these.”
That’s very clear. He said there’s nothing in the Bible that’s more important than these two things - loving God with all your heart and loving other people. He said if you get those two things, you’ve understood what I put you on this planet to do. Life is all about learning to love. Everything else is secondary. “Make love your greatest aim.” He says, “I want you first of all to learn to love me. Then I want you to learn to love everybody else. Once you’ve done that you’re ready to live with me.”
Life is all about relationships. It doesn’t matter how much you acquire, how much you achieve, how many accomplishments you make or rewards you win, or how famous you become. None of that matters. One day you’re going to stand before God and he’s going to say, “Did you learn to love me? That’s why I sent Jesus Christ so you could learn this. And did you learn to love other people? Because that’s what I put you on earth to do. It’s all about love.”
Four years ago we journeyed through Forty Days of Purpose. Last year we participated in Forty Days of Community. But there has never been a more important subject than what we’re going to cover together for the next forty days. Because life is all about love. The Bible says, “Everything you do must be done with love.” What does that include? Everything! I didn’t say that. God did.
Does that mean writing emails? Yes. Everything I write must be done with love. Does it include finding a parking spot when other people want it? “Everything you do must be done with love.” Does it include being nice to people who think differently to you? Does it include responding to people who ridicule you for your faith? Yes. “Everything you do must be done with love.” If you don’t, you are missing the point of life. This is a great verse for us to memorize together before we start 40 Days of Love. When you memorise a verse it is important to know where it is found in the Bible. So when you memorize a verse, say where it is found before and after because that’s often the most difficult part to remember. 1 Corinthians 16:14 “Everything you do must be done with love.” 1 Corinthians 16:14.
Today we’re beginning the journey of how you do everything with love, and we’ll begin by looking at the basics of love; five things the Bible says about love.
1. We love because God loves us. God is love, and all love comes from God. We love because God loves us. 1 John 4:7-8 says, “Love comes from God for God is love.” The reason why God wants you to love is because he is love. It is his character, his essence. He wants us to be like him. God is the source of all love. The reason you have the ability to love is because you were made in the image of God. That’s what makes you different from rocks and plants and animals. Animals do not love. They don’t have the capacity for it. They have affections, attractions, and instincts. But animals do not sacrificially love the way human beings have the ability to love. God gave you that ability. You were made in his image so you could do the two things you were created for. Learning to love God and learning to love other people. Life is all about love.
The Bible says in 1 John 4:19 “We love because God first loved us.” Note the words, “God first.” God is always first in everything. He takes the initiative. The only reason you can love God or love anybody else is because God first loved you. And he showed that love by sending Jesus Christ to earth to die for you. He showed that love by creating you. He showed that love by everything you have in life; it’s a gift of God’s love. We love because God first loved us.
Sometimes you may think that you are not pleasing God, and God is always angry with you. You carry a load of guilt around all the time. You feel you don’t love God enough. But that is not the problem. The problem is you don’t realize how much he loves you. If you realized how extravagant and unconditional is God’s love for you, you would have to love him back. You couldn’t not love God if you understood how much he loves you.
If we’re going to talk about learning to love other people, you’ve got to first understand and know how much God loves you. That’s the purpose of these forty days, not just to talk about love, or read about love, or discuss love, but to experience the love of God. Because when you finally, fully understand how completely and unconditionally God loves you, you’re going to be more patient, and more forgiving, and more gracious toward other people.
People who are judgmental, sarcastic, mean spirited, angry, self righteous, and always putting others down is because they don’t feel good about themselves. They don’t feel loved, or forgiven. They haven’t experienced God’s amazing grace. Instead they feel guilty and bad about themselves; and if I feel bad about myself I certainly don’t want you feeling good about yourself.
When you love you always open yourself to being hurt. All of us have been hurt in some way, maybe by our parents, or peers, by professionals or partners. Maybe some of you have been abused or misused, or you’ve been rejected or abandoned or betrayed. During Forty Days of Love there will be opportunity for healing, because you can’t love others until you feel loved yourself. You cannot give to others what you haven’t received or possess yourself. Hurt people, hurt people. Whenever you see someone who is angry, it’s because they’re angry inside. It’s like a tube of toothpaste. When you squeeze a tube of toothpaste, what’s going to come out is whatever’s inside. You have to learn how much God loves you and experience that and let it heal your heart so his love can flow through you. It is impossible to love others until you really feel loved yourself.
So during Forty Days of Love, we’re going to work on this. We’re going to experience the transforming love that comes from God.
1 John 4:16 says this: “We know and we rely on the love that God has for us.” Do you know God loves you? If you don’t, you will have a hard time loving other people. It’s easy to love people who love you. That’s not the problem. I’m not talking about that. It is a different story when it comes to loving the unlovely, those who are difficult and irritable, loving people who are different, who are demanding. You can’t do that until you have God’s love coming through you. Love happens because we are loved by God.
2. The second thing that the Bible teaches us is that love is a choice and a commitment.
Love is a choice and it is a commitment. You choose to love, or you choose not to love. It is a choice. Today we’ve bought into this myth that love is uncontrollable. We ‘mythstakenly’ believe that it just kind of happens to you. We say, “I fell in love,” like it was a ditch. I couldn’t help myself. That’s not true. Love is a choice and love is a commitment. When a couple stand before their family and friends and exchange marriage vows, that’s a choice and a commitment. You can’t force somebody to fall in love with you. And you can’t force them to stay in love with you. Why? Because love is a choice. Love cannot be forced. This is true of all relationships. It is a choice.
Deuteronomy 30, “Choose to love the Lord your God… and commit yourself to him…” That same principle is true about all relationships. You must choose to love God. God isn’t going to force you to love him. You can thumb your nose at God and go your own way. You can destroy your life if you want to. God won’t force you to love him, because love can’t be forced. It is a choice.
This verse says, “choose.” I choose to love God and commit myself to him. It’s the same thing with everything else. I choose to love you and commit myself to you. You can choose to love anybody. So when you say, “I don’t love him/her anymore,” that’s your choice. Don’t blame it on circumstances. You are choosing not to love. Love is a choice and is a commitment.
3. Love is an action not just emotion. It’s more than attraction or sentimentality. When the emotion is gone does that mean love is dead? No, not at all. Because love is an action. It’s something you do. Love can cause emotion. In fact it causes the strongest emotions in human beings. It can create emotion. But love is not an emotion.
Why can we say that? In the first place, over and over in the Bible we are commanded by God to love each other. And you cannot command an emotion. If I told you right now “Be sad!” You can’t just be sad on cue. You can fake it. You can’t command an emotion. Emotions are often uncontrollable. If love were just an emotion then God couldn’t command it. Love is something you do. It produces emotion but it is an action.
In fact, the Bible says this in 1 John 3:18 “Let us love not with words or tongue [in other words, just talk about it] but with actions and in truth.” Love is something you do. Acting in love when you don’t feel it is the highest form of love. It’s a more mature love when you act loving toward a person when they’re not responding to you or you don’t feel it. It’s easy to love somebody who loves you. It takes nothing at all. But real love acts and does the loving thing when they don’t deserve it, when they don’t respond or when you don’t feel it.
Anybody who’s had children know that when they’re little babies and you get up five or six times in the night to take care of that little baby you don’t do it because you feel like it. You do it because it’s the loving thing to do. Anytime you’ve held a basin for a loved one who’s vomiting, you didn’t feel like doing that. You were giving them what they needed not what you felt like doing. That is the ultimate form of love.
When you’re patient with somebody who’s irritable – someone who’s being a jerk – and everything in your body wants to be sarcastic back to them, and you respond in kindness and politeness and love, you’re not giving them what they deserve but what they need, that’s love.
When you come home at night tired, and you do the loving thing not because you feel like doing it but out of love, that’s ultimate love. Acting in love when you DON’T feel it – is a greater love! Does that make sense?
Love is an action more than an emotion. James says it all when he writes that all big talk about love and faith is worthless if you don’t follow it up with actions. It’s of no value at all.
The second thing that is important to say about love being an action, is that it is always easier to act your way into a feeling than it is to feel your way into an action. If you wait for the feeling to come, then you will seldom end up acting in a loving way. If you start acting in love, the feelings follow, because feelings follow behavior. It’s kind of like prayer. If the only time I pray is when I feel like it, the devil makes sure I never feel like praying. Actually I need to pray most when I don’t feel like it. When I don’t feel loving, it is a test. God is saying, "Are you going to learn to love me and to love other people when you don’t feel like it?” God doesn’t want you living by your feelings. He wants you living by faith. So sometimes he lets the feelings go away. Then you have to love by faith and live by faith. When you love somebody and do the loving thing even when they’re not responding, and even maybe when they’re retaliating, you are loving by faith. That is an action.
In the book of Revelation Jesus says to the church “You have left your first love.” Then he says three things “Remember what it was like at first, repent [that means change your mind] and do the things you did at the start.”
What he tells the church is the same thing for renewing the love in a marriage or any other relationship. You remember, you repent and you do the things you did at first. The reason the love went away is you stopped doing the things that created the love feelings in the early days.
During the 40 Days of Love, there will be some practical assignments for you to do. You don’t learn to love by listening to a sermon, or reading a book, or by going to a small group and discussing and watching some videos. Those are all helpful things. You learn to love by doing it. Each week there will be some assignments for you to do to help you practice learning how to love.
That brings me to the fourth thing the Bible teaches about love.
4. The Bible says that Love is a skill I can learn.
It’s something you can get good at. Did you know that God wants you to become a skilled lover.
The early church was known for its love. May that be true of St David’s in the Fields, too, not only that you sense God’s love here, but also where you learn to love better.”
The next forty days starting from 9 August we are going to have lessons on loving.
The Bible says this in 1 John 4:7 “Dear friends, let us practice loving each other...” Note the word “practice.” The only way you get skilled at something is if you practice it. We’re going to practice loving one another during these forty days. “… for love comes from God. Those who are loving and kind show that they are the children of God and they’re getting to know him better.” Love is the proof that you’re really a believer, that you belong to the family of God. The Bible says we need to practice this skill.
In 1 Timothy 4:15 it says, “Practice these things and devote yourself to them in order that your progress may be seen by all.” We’re going to provide a way for you to measure your progress between today and the end of the Forty Days of Love journey. If you will do the things that we ask you to do during these forty days, not just attend and listen but do all the different assignments, you’ll become a more loving man, a more loving woman. Your character will be transformed and you will see your progress. But in order to see that progress you’ve got to practice and make the commitment to do it.
The fifth thing that the Bible teaches about love is…
5. Love is a habit. You can’t claim to be a loving person unless you are habitually loving.
Basically your character is the sum of your habits. If you only love off and on like a light switch, you are not a loving person. You may think you are a loving person but love happens when you love the unlovely. Luke 6:32 “If you only love those who love you what credit is that to you?” Loving only those who love me does not make me a loving person. Being a loving person is when you love the unlovely, when you love people who don’t love you, when you love people who irritate you, who back bite you and gossip about you. Anybody can love people who love them. That’s takes no character at all. God says love must become a habit.
I can’t claim to be loving unless it is part of my character. I cannot say to Grace, “I will be faithful to you six days a week.” Partial faithfulness is unfaithfulness. I can’t say that I have the character quality of faithfulness unless I’m faithful to her all the time.
Similarly, I can’t say I’m honest if I say, “I’ll tell you the truth ninety percent of the time.” That’s dishonesty.
I can’t say that I’m kind unless I’m always, habitually kind.
You cannot say, “I’m a loving person,” if you’re only loving to certain kinds of people. It’s natural as humans to be self-centered. It is our nature to think of ourselves first. I do it all the time and you do too. So we have to learn so that it becomes a habit.
Love has to become a lifestyle. The Bible says, “Continue to love each other with true Christian love.” (Hebrews 13:1 NLT) “Continue” means make a habit of it. Do it all the time. It cannot be off and on.
During Forty Days of Love we’re going to learn some new habits. Study after study has shown that it takes about three weeks doing something every day, to turn it into a habit and start getting comfortable with. Then it takes another three weeks, or about six weeks, about forty two days for you to really establish that habit in your life.
That’s why for forty days we’re going to be focusing on the habits of love.
If you want to get healthy physically, the first thing you do is you go to your doctor for a check up. The doctor figures out what you need to work on and then either he and/or a fitness instructor puts together a plan of action for you to get physically healthy.
The same is true in the health of any other area of your life including relationships. If you want to get healthy relationships you’ve got to do a check up. The Bible says this: “Test yourselves to make sure you’re solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need first hand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it.” Message paraphrase puts it very well.
So before we begin Forty Days of Love and begin looking at our relationships, we are going to provide an opportunity for you to evaluate yourself. It’s on the reverse side of your outline. It is a helpful exercise as it will give each of us an indication of whether we have made progress over these next weeks. In looking through it I realize there are areas I need to work on. We all think we are loving people, but the truth is there are a lot of areas where we can be quite self-centered. I want to challenge you to look at this and do a self-analysis because we’re going to judge ourselves at the end of forty days to see the progress we have made over that time.
These next six weeks are not just to be six lessons on love. Personally I want to be more loving. One day I’m going to stand before God and he’s going to say, “Did you do the two things that were most important of all. Did you learn to love me with all your heart? And did you learn to love other people?” I want to be ready for that day.
The book which each of you will receive this morning and which we are going to study is called The Relationship Principles of Jesus. It is written by Tom Holladay and is the same format as Forty Days of Purpose and Forty Days of Community. There are forty short chapters, one chapter to be read each day. The sermons each Sunday and the Study groups will pick up the theme for each week. You’ll need to have read the first seven chapters before your first group meeting. Even if you’re not part of a group I encourage you to do the daily readings as it will fill out what is shared each Sunday beginning from 9 August.
The object of this test is not to make you feel bad, because it could. We all struggle in the area of love. Forty Days of Love could easily become forty days of guilt. That’s not what is intended.
The idea is that when I see where I am in these different relationships, then I know where I can grow. Nothing becomes dynamic until it becomes specific. Unless I’m thinking about some real relationships during Forty Days of Love then nothing’s really going to happen. So let’s go through this together.
How’s your relationship with your parents right now? Just a quick evaluation. Would you say it’s poor, it’s great, it’s somewhere in between. How’s it going right now?
If your parents are dead, maybe you can improve your relationship with them in your attitude towards them. Maybe there’s some work to do there.
How about your marriage prospects? How would you say those are right now? Marriage is a God-given desire. If you’re not married and you want to get married one of the things that we will be doing during 40 Days of Love is talking about how we can become less selfish in our lives, how we can love in a better way.
If you are married, how about your spouse - your husband, your wife? How’s your relationship right now? Be honest. If it is struggling, how can I begin to see it grow? How can I take even a good relationship and make it even better?
How about a relative? There’s a line there you can write a name in. It might be a brother, or sister you want to relate to better during Forty Days of Love. It might be an aunt or an uncle. Write their name in and then assess where the relationship is.
How about someone you work with? Maybe it is somebody you have just met or you’ve known for a long time that you’d really like to work on expressing love to them during Forty Days of Love. Write their name down and say how things are going.
Or how about a neighbor? Jesus says we’re to love our neighbours. That’s all of our neighbours. But who’s the one specific neighbour you’d like to really work on during Forty Days of Love, loving them in practical and specific ways? Rate yourself on that one.
How about a different or difficult person in your life? Somebody who irritates you. Somebody who it’s tough to love. Somebody who just doesn’t respond when you try to be kind to them. How about that kind of a person? God is up to big challenges and the person you think there is no way I could love that person, write their name down. Then watch what God’s going to do during Forty Days of Love.
For some of you it
might be your son or your daughter that you’d like to write in the next line on
your outline: I’d really like to work on loving this child during Forty Days of
Love. Write that in and where the
relationship is right now. Then watch
what God’s going to do.
God does work. Nothing’s too hard for him.[1] Here’s the incredible thing. A little bit of growth in our love has a great impact in their lives. Love is so powerful that when I grow a little, wonderful things happen.
A mother who was feeling overwhelmed by her children, her schedule, her responsibilities, the busyness of her home was reading 1 Corinthians 13, one of the chapters that we’re going to study together in our small groups during 40 Days of Love. As she read it, five words leaped out at her - “Without love I am nothing.” So she wrote those words and put them on her refrigerator and her car and on her mirror, where she could see them all the time. Here’s what she said. “I realized that the single most important thing I could do was to love my family. So I began to live my life by the love of Jesus. I began to run my home on love power. It was as transforming as when I accepted Christ into my life. Focusing on love brought the happiness back into my life and my home.”
In some of Jesus’ last words to his disciples right before he went to the cross he says this: “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples [that you’re my followers] if you have love one to another.” The mark of a true believer is not a cross, or a fish, or a dove, or a crown. It is love. Do people know you’re a follower of Jesus because you’re the most loving person they know? How do you become that kind of person? Five things
1. To become great at relationships I must Commit to growing. You don’t become a great lover accidentally. It is intentional. You’re going to have to make a commitment.
2. Learn how Jesus did it. Jesus is the model of perfection in relationships. We’re going to learn the different ways Jesus did it, through listening to the messages each Sunday and Rick Warren’s talks in our groups; through reading The Relationship Principles of Jesus; and discussing this in small groups. We’re informed on Sundays, but transformed through meeting together as part of a small group. We will also memorise the verse set down for each week.
3. The third thing we’re going to do is we’re going to Practice the skills. You cannot become great at relationships if you are a hermit. You need to be around other people.
4. We’re going to Develop the habits. You’re going to learn some new habits over the next forty days, the habits of the heart.
5. You need to Trust God to help.
On your outline there is a verse, Philippians 1:9 “This is my prayer for you, that your love will grow more and more and that you will have knowledge and understanding with your love,” not an immature love, an insightful love.
What the world needs most of all are people who genuinely love.
Prayer:
As we close I invite you to follow me in this prayer in your heart. You don’t have to say it aloud: Dear Jesus, I want to be more loving. I want to work on my relationships. I want to learn to love you with all of my heart. And I want to learn to love other people. I want to be known as a loving person, and to make learning to love you and learning to love other people my number one goal in life because it’s all about love. Lord, I have hurts in my heart that need to be healed I need to be filled with your love. I can’t give to others what I have not got myself. I need to experience your forgiveness and grace. I need to know your love so that it can overflow out of my life into others. Replace my fears with your love. Replace my hurts with your peace. I want to learn to know you and love you more, through your Son, Jesus Christ.