LOVE MATTERS MOST

40 Days of Love - Part 1

Dr. Rick Warren (Edited & Adapted)

9 August 2009

Readings: Matthew 22:34-40; Colossians 3:12-17 TNIV

If you want your life to count it has to have a very clear focus. You don’t have time for everything, and not everything is of equal value. Jesus said there are two things that are more valuable in life than anything else - loving God and loving each other.

An expert in the Jewish Law asked Jesus, “Which is the most important command?” to which Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second most important is similar: Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.”[1]

Note in your outline that “most important” and “second most important” are underlined. God says these are the two things that matter most in life. Love for God and love for people. These are the two reasons why God put you here on earth: to learn to love him, and to learn to love other people. Life is not about acquisition – how much you get. It’s not about accomplishment – how much you do. It’s not about achievement – how much you earn. Why? Because you cannot take your car, or your trophies, or your money with you when you die. The only thing you can take with you is your character – who you are, or rather, who you have become, as a person while here on earth. Life is all about learning how to love.

Today we’re going to talk about the priority of love. Now we all know that love is important, but we forget it. We get distracted by other things. If you’re going to ever be a great lover, to learn to really love God and other people, there are the three laws of love you have to learn and keep in mind as you go through life.

LAW NUMBER ONE: The best use of life is love. God says you need to make learning how to love your number one priority, your primary objective, your greatest ambition, your life purpose.

Why does he say that? There are four reasons why love is more important than anything else.

1. Love validates my faith.

What does that mean? It proves that I have been born again; that I’m a part of the family of God; that I’m where God wants me to be, not on the wrong side. The proof of that is love. It validates your faith.

If you have an appointment to see a person of importance in government, before they let you in you have to authenticate or validate your identity. You have to prove you are who you say you are. That’s true of a number of things in life. You can’t just walk up to an ATM and say “Give me some money.” You have to validate that the card you are using really belongs to you by putting in a PIN code.

In order for you to spend eternity with God, you have to validate your identity. You have to prove that you really are a child of his; that you have trusted Christ; that you know him; that you have a personal relationship with him.

How do you validate your identity? The Bible says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”[2] That’s clear. In other words, God looks at your lifestyle and says, “Do you love me with all your heart? Do you love your neighbor as yourself?”

The reason why God wants you to learn to love, is because he wants you to become like him. In 1 John 4:20 John puts it very bluntly when he says, “If we say we love God, but we hate others, we’re liars. For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen.”[3] Love validates my faith. It proves I really am a child of God.

2. Love integrates my life. In other words, it becomes the dominant life principle by which everything else in my life is integrated - my social life, my financial life, my church life, my work life, my personal life. Every part of my life becomes integrated by love. You need to have something at the core of your heart that draws your life together, otherwise it becomes fragmented. When your life becomes fragmented you lack integrity. Integrity means that what you are on the inside is what people see on the outside. Your life adds up. It’s all one and the same.

Two weeks ago we talked about the fact that everybody has a dominant life principle, something you build your life around. For some people it’s money, getting rich. Others build their life around fame, becoming popular; or around success, achieving things. There is any number of things that you can make the dominant life principle in your life. But what you need is something that’s so strong at the centre, that your life is not going to fall apart when trials and problems and difficulties come. The Bible says the only thing strong enough to do that is love. Love for God and love for each other. It brings everything else into focus.

“Love is more important than anything else. It is what ties everything else together.”[4] Love integrates my life.

3. Love compensates for my sin. This is really good news when you understand it. It means that when I make mistakes, when I have faults and foibles, the first question God asks is not, “Did he sin?” But, “Does he love me? Does he love my Son Jesus Christ?” If I do, he covers over and compensates for that sin. He knows I’m imperfect, but what matters most is, do I love him.

1 Peter 4:8 “Most important of all continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.”[5] What does that mean? “…love covers a multitude of sins.” Two things: first, it means when you love Jesus Christ and he loves you, it covers all your sins past, present and future. God wants you and I to be with him forever. But there’s one problem. Every thing in heaven is perfect, but you and I are not, and so our imperfections have to be dealt with if we are to spend eternity in the presence of God.

However, when Jesus Christ came to earth and died on the cross, he stretched out his hands and said, “I love you so much that I’m willing to die for you, to take the punishment for all the laws that you’ve broken. I’ll do your time. I’ll serve your sentence. I’ll pay your debt. Because I love you, everything you’ve ever done and everything you’ll ever do that’s wrong, will be forgiven. If you’ll accept my love, it will cover all your sins so you don’t have to pay the penalty for them.” Isn’t that good news? It is good news, very good news!

The other thing this means when it says, “Love covers a multitude of sins,” is that once I’ve been forgiven, God gives me the power to forgive others, the ability not to hold a grudge against those who do wrong things to me. We talked a little bit about this two weeks ago. People who are negative, judgmental, critical, self-righteous, always putting other people down, and always wanting things done perfectly, usually means they don’t feel loved themselves. Maybe they’ve never experienced God’s kindness to them in Jesus Christ. When you understand how much God has forgiven you, you start being more gracious with other people. You don’t get as angry, or impatient, or upset as you used to, because you know how much you’re been forgiven. Now you are able to cover the sins of others.

“Love covers a multitude of sins.” When you really love somebody and they do something wrong, love doesn’t rub it in. Love rubs it out. The Bible says, “God wiped out the charges that were against us for disobeying his law. He took them away and nailed them to the cross.”[6] That’s the mark of love. It’s like an eraser. It removes the mark. God says I want you to experience my love so you can pass it on to other people, and so you can be gracious and forgiving and merciful when people make mistakes. The history of the world shows that God uses imperfect people, “sinners” to get the job done. He uses everybody who is imperfect but who love him.

One of the great stories in the Bible is the story of King David. He was the king of Israel, but he was far from perfect. In fact, he made lots of mistakes. He lied to the priest at Nob. He deceived Achish king of Gath. He committed adultery, then had the woman’s husband murdered to cover up his sin.[7] Not exactly a paradigm of virtue. But the one thing that stands out about David is that he loved God, and when confronted with his sin, he admitted it and repented quickly. Even in the middle of all of his ‘mess ups,’ he loved God, and wanted to do what was right.

It’s both confusing and comforting that God could say of David who had committed these terrible crimes, that he was a man after his own heart. It’s confusing because how can God say that of a man who had blown it big-time and made all those mistakes. But it’s comforting because God says I’m going to cover over his sins, because he loves me.

There’s a very important truth here that you need to grasp. God doesn’t expect you to be perfect. In fact, he knows you can’t be perfect, and we know it too. What matters isn’t that you haven’t messed up in life. What matters is do you love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself? God says if you do that it will cover a multitude of sins. Isn’t that good news?

Love is the most important thing. It validates my faith – it shows I really am a follower of God, that I know him. It integrates my life because I treat everybody the same way. When I make mistakes, it compensates for my sin.

Then there’s a fourth thing that love does.

4. Love reverberates forever. What does that mean? It means it goes on and on and on into eternity. In fact, it’s the only thing in your life that’s going to last. Everything else you do is temporary. But every single loving action is going to go on for eternity and God’s going to reward it.

In fact, the Bible says this. “These three things continue forever. Faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.”[8] If you want a legacy to last, if you want people to remember you, they will remember you for your love. People are going to forget all your work, all your wealth, all you made. One day, maybe after a generation or two when no one living remembers you, your family are going to throw away all your trophies and certificates. That report card! That gold watch that you were given when you retired! People are remembered for their love. Nothing else you do on this planet is permanent. It’s all temporary. You didn’t bring any of it in with you. You’re not taking any of it out with you. It’s all temporary.

I have had the opportunity of being with several people as they took their last breath and they have moved from this life into eternity. Never did anyone say as they were taking their dying breath, “I’m about to die. Please bring me my certificate of award… I want to look at it one more time. Bring me my diploma. Bring me my report card. Bring me the trophy.” Nobody ever asks for such things. When people are dying they don’t want things around them. What they want is the people that they love and they want to say to those people how much they mean to them.

The truth is that every one of us will eventually learn the basic truth of life, that life is about relationships, not accomplishments, and when it comes to the time when you pass from this life to the next, you’re going to want people around you who love you, not things. What matters right now is do I love God with all my heart, and do I love other people, because that’s why God put you and I on earth for however long we live. The Bible says life without love is worthless. It is a wasted life. “No matter what I say or what I believe or what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”[9]

If that’s true, and of course it is, then why do relationships get the short end of the stick? Why do we give our attention to other things. It’s because we get busy and overloaded and always in a hurry. When that happens we start to do what’s called relational skimming. Relational skimming is when you say, I don’t have time to get it all done so what I’m going to do is skim on my relationships. This can happen in your relationship with God when you don’t make time to pray and read his Word. It can happen with your wife or husband, your children, your small group, your friends when you don’t have time to nurture your relationship with them.

Skimming relationally is a big mistake! When you focus on what’s urgent but not important, like getting work done and reaching goals and paying bills, five years from today you’re going to have the results of those relationships you skimmed on.

Let’s put it into perspective. Nothing can take the place of love. It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got, or how famous you are. If your relationships aren’t loving and developing, life is miserable. Nothing can take the place of that.

When you and I stand before God after our life here on earth, he’s not going to say, “Tell me about your career? I’m fascinated by that.” Or, “Tell me about how many jobs you had, how many sales you made, how many deals you closed, and how big was your bank account?” Nor is he going to say, “Show me your report card. Tell me about your handicap. Tell me how well you did in sports.”

No. He’s going to say this. “Did you do what I put you on earth to do? Did you learn to love me with all your heart and my Son Jesus who I sent? Did you learn to love everybody else? That’s why I put you there.” What he is going to say is, “Tell me about your relationships.”

This is why we are doing 40 Days of Love, because love matters most, and if that is so then we must give top priority to working on relationships. All the other things are peripheral. Your relationships are your life. When we say, “I need to squeeze relationships into my schedule,” that means you’re missing the point. Law number one is the best use of life is love.

LAW NUMBER TWO: The best expression of love is time. Love is spelt T-I-M-E. The Bible says this in 1 John 3:18 “We must show love through actions that are sincere, not through empty words.”[10] Love isn’t something you feel, or something you say; it’s something you do.

Question: What is the most desired and most priceless gift of love? When people are in love, when people show love, what is the most desired gift? It’s not diamonds, or chocolate, or flowers. The most desired gift of love and the most priceless gift of love is your time.

Although we all have different amounts of energy, wealth, talent, and personality, we all have exactly the same amount of time. A hundred sixty-eight hours a week. You get to choose how you use it. As an adult New Zealand woman you’ll live an average of thirty thousand and three days. If you’re a man you’ll live twenty-eight thousand four hundred and seventy days. What are you going to do with that time?

Your time is the greatest gift you can give, because when you give someone your time, you are giving them part of your life. Time is a non-renewable resource. You can never re-live the time you give to someone, or re-claim it. Every time you give someone an hour of your time you’re never going to get it back. You can always get more money but you can’t get more time. You only have a certain amount of allotted days. So you need to choose very carefully how you give your time. If you give your time to a TV program, you’ve just given an hour of your life you’re never getting back. Was it worth it? You need to decide. What is your time worth? Likewise, when someone willingly gives you their time, they are giving part of their life. You need to understand that, and appreciate the cost involved.

That’s why when you give something to people, the most valuable, precious thing you can give them is your attention. Because when you give attention to somebody you’re saying, you matter to me. You are valuable. You are worth listening to. It is the part of your life you’re never going to get back.

Let me explain it. Jesus said that the essence of relationships is not what we do for each other and not what we give to each other – presents and things like that. Jesus taught that the essence of true loving relationships is how much we give of ourselves to that person. That’s love.

Often we men don’t get this. Many husbands and dads say, “I don’t get it. I give my family everything they need. I’m a good provider. I provide for all the needs for my wife and for all my kids. We live a very comfortable life. I don’t get it. What more do they want?”

What they want is you. They want your attention! Only you can give that. When you give that it means, I’m putting your needs ahead of mine. I’m putting your desire ahead of mine. That’s called love. Nothing can compensate for time, or gifts, or money, or clothes. Kids don’t need things, they need parents. They need your attention and they need that now.

The Bible says this “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”[11] They need it.

Dr. Richard Swenson is one of the world’s authorities on stress, and he wrote this: “I’ve come to believe that the speed of society is as much responsible for the problems of personal and social dysfunction as any other single factor. Virtually all of our relationships are damaged by hurry. We walk fast, we talk fast, eat fast. Then announce, ‘Sorry, I’ve gotta run!’ God, I suspect doesn’t fit any better into our break neck schedules than our families do.”

Chuck Swindoll said this: “Busyness destroys relationships. It substitutes shallow frenzy for deep friendship. Busyness feeds the ego but it starves those who love us. It fills the calendar but it fractures the family.”

You say, “How do I find more time for the people I love in my life?” That’s really the wrong question. They should be the priority. Then you figure out how to fit the rest into that. How do you find more time for the people who love you and that you need to love? One option can be to turn off the TV or the computer. Going by statistics generated in New Zealand in 2001 the average person spends approximately three hours a day in front of TV, which means approximately one eighth of your life, or ten years if you live to eighty. People will watch programmes about friends instead of making friends; or reality shows about somebody else’s family instead of working on the reality of their own family. It’s all spectator instead of participator.

God wants you to make time for relationships. Ephesians says this: “Live a life filled with love for others, [There it is again.] following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins.”[12] Circle “love” and circle “sacrifice” and draw a line between them. If it isn’t a sacrifice it’s not real love. You can give without loving but you cannot love without giving. Love means giving up my agenda for your agenda. It means I give up my time for your time. It means I give up what I’d rather do right now to do what you’d rather do right now. That is sacrificial love.

The best use of life is love. And the best expression of love is time.

Starting tomorrow morning let me recommend that you when you get up, before you get off that bed you says this, “God, if I don’t get anything else done today I’m going to love you a little bit more and know you a little bit better and I’m going to love the people you’ve put in my life. Because that’s what you put me on earth to do.” If at the end of the day you’ve done that, that day counted.

On the other hand, if you didn’t show love in any way at all, you’ve just wasted that day.

Love is an action. Love means taking time. Love means making somebody else’s agenda my agenda.

LAW NUMBER THREE: The best time to love is now. If you have an opportunity to show love, do it now.

This Sunday we are providing the opportunity to show love in making, or renewing, or revising your “Faith Missions Giving” commitment for the coming twelve months. This giving supports the missions projects outlined in the Mission’s bulletin distributed in the Parish News last Sunday.

The Bible says “Whenever we have the opportunity we should do good to everyone.”[13] Here is an opportunity to show love.

“Use every chance you have for doing good.”[14] In other words, do it now. Many people wait until after their death to give to worthy projects, but there is much more joy in giving while you’re living because then you’re knowing where it’s going.

The Bible says, “Whenever you possibly can, do good to those who need it. Never tell your neighbour to wait until tomorrow if you can help them now.”[15] What these verses are saying is never procrastinate in showing love. Don’t put it off. Do it now.

FMG response.

Question: Who else do you need to show love to today? Is there someone you need to phone, or write to, or call on to share a word of encouragement and love? It may be someone who’s in a rest home or in hospital; someone you need to invite over for a meal? Who is it at your work that everybody can’t stand because they’re so obnoxious but who needs massive doses of love? God specifically puts people around your life so you can show love to them. He wants you to do that.

There are some activities in life that you ought to delay or put off. But there’s one thing that you should never, never postpone – showing love. The Bible says, “Eagerly pursue and seek to acquire love. Make it your aim, your great quest…”[16] Or as the New Living Translation puts this verse, “Let love be your highest goal.” If love is the essence of life, the number one goal in life, then love should always take priority over everything else.

Why? Because you don’t know how long you’re going to have the opportunity. Chuck Colson and George McGovern were on opposite sides of the political spectrum in the 1972 presidential elections in the United States, but they both ended up with the same regrets. Chuck Colson wrote this, “As I think back on my life my biggest regret is not spending more time with my kids. Making family your top priority means going against a culture where materialism and workaholism are rampant. It means realizing that you may not advance as fast in your career as others do. It means being willing to accept a lower standard of living knowing that you’re doing it for your kids. It means giving them the emotional security that they’ll draw on for the rest of their lives.”

George McGovern, one time presidential candidate wrote a book about his daughter Terry who died in 1994. She was an alcoholic. They found her frozen to death in a snowdrift in a drunken stupor. After his daughter died, George McGovern poured over her diaries and contacted many of her friends and he discovered that he hadn’t been the parent that he thought he was. While he was reading her diaries he discovered this, while he was spending eighteen hours a day working for political causes Terry was writing in her diary how much she missed her daddy, and that he probably didn’t care about her anyway.” McGovern’s message to parents is: “Show more love to your kids by spending more time with them, especially as teenagers, no matter what it costs your career. That way,” he said “neither of you will have regrets.”

Then comes this very poignant quote. He said “I’d give everything I have – and I mean everything – for one more afternoon with Terry. Just to let her know how much I loved her and to have one more of those happy times that we used to have so infrequently.”

The question is not whether we’re ever going to regret living an overloaded, activity driven life, but when.

What are you going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? Are we going to change? It would be a waste of time going through 40 Days of Love if at the end of it you and I are not more loving?

I was challenged the Sunday before last when we held the Preparation Service for 40 Days of Love, to complete the love assessment provided in the sermon outline. There were many of the relationships listed there where I could only give myself an average score. One of the values we have as a congregation is that ‘excellence honours God and commends the Gospel.’ I was challenged in doing the first week’s reading in The Relationship Principles of Jesus when it spoke of seeking excellence in our relationships. It is commendable to do things well. However, if life is all about relationships, then it is even more important that we relate with one another to the very best of our ability.

Are your ready to get serious? Each week there will be some homework for you to do. This week I want you to take between five to fifteen minutes every day to talk with each of your family members, and to listen. Give them your full attention. Be willing to apologize if that is needed, but spend some quality time with the people God has put in your life.

The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.

Prayer:

Father, it’s so easy to get distracted from what’s most important - knowing and loving you and knowing and loving those around us. Forgive us for being task driven instead of love driven. Forgive us for valuing things and accomplishments more than people. We know this matters most even when our diaries do not show it. Thank you for this reminder today. We know that the people who love us are a gift from you. Please forgive us for taking them for granted. Forgive us for allowing other things to crowd out our relationship to you, and allowing other things to crowd out our relationships with others. Help us to make the sacrifices necessary to slow down and make time for loving relationships. Jesus, you modeled real love when you sacrificed yourself for us. We thank you for that. We want to love and trust you. We ask you to forgive us and fill us with your love, to follow you in life, and make love the primary aim of our lives.