Heart Formed for Love

Prayer

The Measurement of Love

There’s a well-known children’s book written by Sam McBratney entitled, “Guess How Much I Love You”, about two rabbits (or hares), a son and his father, comparing their love for each other.

Little Nutbrown Hare begins by asking his dad to guess how much he loves him. He tells his dad that he loves him this much, holding his arms out wide. Big Nutbrown Hare responds by saying he loves his son this much, holding his arms out - and, of course, his arms are longer.

It becomes a heartwarming competition of the two professing their love for each other, son professing his love by his height or how high he can jump - and each time his father’s responds in like manner, but his height and jumping ability are always more.

Finally, as the day ends and it’s time for the young hare to go to bed, he tells his dad, “I love you right up to the moon.” “Oh, that’s far. That is very, very far”, Big Nutbrown Hare admits.

As he lays him down to sleep and kisses him goodnight, he whispers, “I love you right up to the moon…and back.”

Touching expression, try to emphasize how big our love is for someone - how far we’d go for them, good we desire for them.

Speaks to how difficult it is to measure love. How do you measure love? After all, love is one of the great immaterial realities - it’s not a material object, yet we know without a shadow of the doubt that love exists, it’s real.

Not just real, but immensely important - why else would we profess it in such big terms - to the moon and back?!

But it doesn’t make it any easier to measure - which just happens to be what we’re focusing on in our Advent sermon series, The Measures

Which is one of the main aspects of our Vision Framework, one of the sides. As I review this quickly, let me encourage you to know this, to make the effort to learn this - this is what we’re committed to as a church, our vision of moving and leading others into abundant life.

Vision Framework includes our mission (to lead others into the abundant life of Jesus Christ), our values (Kingdom First, Lived Obedience to Jesus, Shared Life Together, Heart Transformation) and our strategies (for worship, for spiritual growth - through spiritual formation), for mission (neighborhood church, intentional discipling).

But in this series we talking about the measures, how we know when we’ve been successful.

We began last week with our first measure, Mind captivated by the reality of God and his kingdom. (George Burns movie, “Oh, God!”)

Today we’re going to look at having a heart formed toward loving God and toward loving others.

Next week, authentic loving relationships with one another.

We’ll finish with actively leading others into the abundant life that comes through Jesus Christ.

This morning, what does it look like to be a person who’s heart is formed toward loving God and loving others.

I want to begin with talking about the nature of love, what does it mean to love in the way God calls us to love - and why is it so important that we make it one of our measurements?

Then I want to talk a bit about how would you have some sense of having grown in love - more than just the scales of “this much” or our height, or even to the moon and back.

Why this measurement? Why a heart formed toward loving God and loving others? We could have picked from a lot of different measures to determine whether or not we’re becoming the church we want to become (our numbers in worship, how often, total minutes spent reading Bible…)

Simply, it’s not just that love is real, but it’s good. It is, in fact, the greatest good. We were made in love by God, and we made for the purpose of love. We are simply, to love as God loves.

Why all the commandments are summed up in the two great commandments - the first, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul and with all your strength. The second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.

We see this emphasized throughout Scripture

1 John 4:7-8, Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (Knowing God is explicitly linked with love - if you don’t love, you’ve missed out on who God is and what God is all about because God is love, his very nature is love).

Another example: Romans 13:8-10, Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Debt in a way owns us. The one thing we should feel ongoing sense of burden, responsibility - I owe this, I have to make good on this, is love. Paul is saying we should be owned by this compelling sense of loving others. If you do that you will fulfill every requirement of the law, you’ll live exactly how God wants you to - with love as your guide.

This is why love is THE measure of spiritual maturity - It’s not how often you go to church or how much of the Bible you know or how much you give, how much you pray or hours you spend serving others.

These can all be great and wonderful things - they can help us tremendously to become people who love…but they are not necessarily loving actions.

In Jesus’ sermon on the mount, in Matthew 6, Jesus points to the teachers of the law as examples of people who are incredibly faithful in doing all these spiritual practices - they give, they pray, they fast. But because they do it to gain the admiration of others, for self-love, their actions are empty - they don’t reflect love for God or for others. They reveal that they don’t really know God - because God is love.

It’s the warning Paul offers in his incredible teaching on love in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 - If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

If we want to measure love, we have to begin by asking what love, properly understood, is. The best and simplest definition of love that I know of is this: to love is to be for the good of the other. It’s not a feeling (though it may involve feelings). It’s not primarily about romance or sex - though how and why we engage in romance or sex can be loving or not.

To love is to move from being primarily self-centered to being other directed. First and foremost to Jesus, to be for the good of Jesus - with everything that you have and everything that you are - and then to our neighbor.

Love is an act of the will, to will the good of God, of the other. It requires a heart that is soft, open, humbled - because it requires a willingness of submission to seek God’s good, what he desires, over and above your own. As well as a willingness to submit to others for their good. That’s why loving, really loving others - is so hard and so rare.

Let me just give you a few examples of what it looks like to be for the good of God - to love him. Another word for this is obedience, we demonstrate love to God when we willingly obey him. John 15:9-10 puts it this way: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

One way to love God is to willingly make available to God what he has graciously given to you…to love God is to lay your monthly budget before God - how would you have me spend what you’ve blessed me with?

Humble yourself toward reconciliation - because God is reconciling all things to himself in Christ Jesus…willingness to let go of your anger and desire to get back and forgive…or need to ask for forgiveness.

Ephesians 5:21 teaches us to “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”…reason you submit to the other person (willingly putting their good above your own) isn’t because they are so wonderful or deserving (though that may be true) - because what if they’re not? You do it out of obedience - out of love for Jesus.

To love God involves a willingness to take risks, to do what doesn’t make sense, to enter into ministry situations even though they make you uncomfortable, to take an opportunity to talk to someone about Jesus, share the good news, even though you’ve got a pit in your stomach even thinking about it

Willingness to give up something because it’s starting to dominate your life, you recognize it’s getting too strong a hold on your heart - becoming a greater treasure than Jesus. Idea of fasting - nothing but you, Lord, over my life.

And this same way, this is what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. That you would be for the good of your neighbor in the same way you look out for your own good. You willingly will their good as you will your own.

You’re sitting down, so looking forward to relax, savoring this time…and the call (or text comes)…I need some help.

All the hundred little things you can do on any given day for those in your family…do that extra cleaning for your wife…or, as a child, willingly listen and respond rather than make your parents tell you three times or you take a few moments to express appreciation for something your family member has done.

To love others who you encounter throughout the day: Take a moment to ask someone how they’re doing…with a readiness to listen and ask more. So much of our love is revealed in the mundane, the day to day interactions. I was in the Walmart parking lot yesterday morning…two guys yelling at each other (not for each other’s good). Show a little patience towards others. Take the time to look at them. Phone calls I get from Patty and Ruth Ann (the thought to take them one evening to go look at the Christmas lights).

Measurement of the Heart

Now it’s clear that love is revealed through our actions, by what we do, how we give ourselves for the good of God and for others. After all, as James writes, faith without works is dead. Our works demonstrate our faith, our love for God and others.

But as I mentioned before, it doesn’t tell the whole story - example of teachers of law that Jesus points out in Matthew 6, that even though they gave regularly and prayed consistently and had a habit of fasting - none of it was done out of love for God or others, but only out of consideration for themselves.

This is why we emphasize the formation of the heart, our will - our willingness to be for others. John Ortberg describes it this way: At the deepest level, pride is the choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts. Jesus said that the essence of spiritual life is to love God and to love people. Pride destroys our capacity to love.

If my heart is filled with pride, with self-love, with myself at the center, I cannot love others. I cannot be genuinely for their good. I can make it look like I am - like teachers of law, but it’s really for me.

Measure of our success is when our heart’s first response is to be for God and for others. As the resistance shrinks and willing surrender grows, that our natural inclination is for others.

I love the analogy C.S. Lewis uses in his book Mere Christianity. He’s talking about how being attentive to the sin in our life (which is always an act of unlove - because all God’s commands are about love - loving him, loving our neighbor). Listen to what he writes as we grow in faith and desire to be like God:

“We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity (against love, against being for another); I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.”

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is? In other words, like turning lights on suddenly in the cellar, it reveals our hearts. It reveals that I’m an ill-tempered man, I just didn’t have time to cover it up, I wasn’t ready.

We want a heart formed within us that doesn’t go against charity, but for it. We don’t want our natural reaction to be sulking or snapping or sneering or snubbing or storming, we want our natural reaction to God and others to be rejoicing and delighting and serving and building up.

Spiritual Direction - exercises toward loving God and loving others

To do what C.S. Lewis did: made a daily habit in his evening prayers (what we do on Sunday mornings) - to reflect on the day, sins of the day - and what that revealed about his heart and how loving he was (or wasn’t) toward God and others.

Do you remember that old arcade machine, the Love Tester? You’d throw in your quarter, grab the handle and the lightbulbs would flash up and down the machine until it would finally stop on one and reveal if you were anywhere from clammy or harmless to passionate or hot stuff! That’s not the love we’re talking about, but same idea, to take a measurement of your love, your willingness to be for the good of God and others.

Reflect on what it may be in your heart…is it pride? Holding a grudge?

Confess (or, give thanks to God!) your sin, join with Jesus in dying to sin, offer yourself in willing obedience.

This act of repentance is an act of love of God in the first place…Repent and believe!

Seek to be for the good of someone this week, someone outside the normal sphere (or someone you’re having difficulty loving)…a word of encouragement…a listening ear…gift of time, of friendship

Way to stretch who you’re willing to love

Inspiration - Season of Advent is a wonderful opportunity to delight in God’s love for us (really, anytime is, his love is complete and faithful and never-ending), but as we focus on God coming to be with us, drawing near, in the person of Jesus, it reminds us of his immense love for us.

In this season, my hope and prayer is that you hear Jesus say to you, guess how much I love you…this much (arms outstretched). Which, as it turns out, is a far greater distance than even to the moon and back…Greater love has no one than this - to lay down one’s life for a friend.

Receive that love, open your heart to it, let it envelope you, the reality of God who loves you to that degree, that he would leave the glory of heaven itself, humble himself to become human (taking on all our human frailties), and willingly laid down his own life.

I love the way John Ortberg describes it: “Jesus was no Superman. He did not defy his enemies with hands on his hips and bullets bouncing harmlessly off his chest. The whip of the Roman soldiers drew real blood, the thorns pressed real flesh, the nails caused mind-numbing pain, the cross led to actual death. And through it all, he bore with them, forgave them, and loved them to the end.”

And loved them to the end. Loved us to the end. Jesus has always been and always will be for your good. It’s why he came, why he came to die for us - that every ugly thing we’ve ever done would be redeemed, every wound we’ve inflicted healed, that we might experience full and forever life.

Let his love in this season of Advent be a gift to your heart, let it stir you toward loving him in return and toward others.