How to Find Love Week 2: Get The Picture

THE ILLUSTRATION: SEEING COMES BEFORE DOING

I want to invite two volunteers that have some artistic ability…

Object hidden in the box

Your objective is to draw a perfect replica of what is inside this box.

________

Recap of Last Week

Last week I talked to you about the fact that you have to get yourself right before you can properly love others.

We are trying fractured selves into relationships and expecting them to be whole.

If you don’t bring fulfillment into a relationship you will never get fulfillment out of a relationship

Today I want to shift our focus onto getting a clear understanding of what love is.

I’m preaching this morning on “Get The Picture”

1 John 4:8 NLT

8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Let’s Pray

Keys Out

________

Intro…Pictures that can’t succeed

Show the completed drawings…

Reveal what was under the sheet

It will probably not even be close.

You cannot give, imitate, or reproduce what you have not first seen.

________

Why couldn’t they draw it?

There was a genuine tension when I asked them to recreate what was in the box.

They hesitated

They guessed

They produce something—but they did not produce the thing

They didn’t fail because they were untalented artist.

They failed because they were trying to draw something they had never been shown.

When it comes to the manifestation of love in our lives this is my thesis:

We don’t reproduce what we want to…We reproduce what we’ve seen.

_____________

The Template of Our Trauma

A lot of us are living from the perspective that we’re bad at love.

The breakups

The divorce

The lack of closeness with our friends, family, kids, etc…

I submit to you that most people aren’t naturally bad at love…They are simply underexposed to it.

We try to love those that are closest to us

our spouses…Our kids…Our church…Ourselves

but we are doing so from a fractured place because we love according to what we’ve seen…

_________

We love from our places of trauma…

DEFINED: A deeply depressing or disturbing experience

Abuse is traumatic…but not being abused doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma that is effecting the love you produce.

Moments that effected you deeply…big or small create trauma points in our lives…

Our traumatic experiences have created subconscious reactions wherein our love is based on

Performance

We offer Conditional affection

Withholding

Transactional love

We are always drawing from the reference image we carry inside.

_____________

We have to see the real thing.

In order us to love rightly…we have to get a proper picture of what right love is.

The creation story gives us a perfect picture of love…

God exists in the perfect picture of love and relationship so much so that God has thoughts and gains purpose in the context of plurality.

Genesis 1:26 NLT

26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

There is no more perfect picture of love that the trinity…

three distinct personalities operating in complete unity.

This concept was summarized by the early church through a term called “perichoresis”

There are ties to an early greek word which means to “circle dance”

This is a perfect picture of the trinity…(Mutual submission, mutual celebration, mutual desire for the betterment of one another.)

This was the image of love that Adam and Eve were exposed to…

They had the opportunity to perfectly reflect love because they had seen perfect love in operation…

TR: So what happened? ________

Fear entered the chat

I believe that you can see a theoretical concept called the theory of adverse reactions..

If one thing is said definitively in scripture…the adverse of that thing can sometimes be definitive as well.

With that in mind let’s look at the verse that gives us the cure for fear…

1 John 4:18 NKJV

18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

If perfect love casts out fear…it stands to reason that potentially fear is the cancer the enemy uses to tarnish perfect love.

__________

The Fear of Missing Out

The enemy did not want Adam and Eve to live in the fullness of what perfect love was offering them…so he enacted a strategy

He inserted fear in the narrative with Adam and Eve

Fear that they were missing out.

Genesis 3:5 NLT

5 “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

The root of a fear that I am missing out on something good is the core belief that God does not want what is best for me.

Ultimately this decision is what robbed Adam and Eve of the identity they were created to enjoy.

The enemy steals their identity by stealing their trust….

He somehow convinces them that the tree of knowledge was more attractive than the tree of life…

This is still what he does to us.

—————- After the fall: With this new God perspective

Adam, the one who used to walk in the garden; hides in the woods.

Adam, the one who used to boldly walk in dominion; covers himself with the leaves.

Adam, the one who used to know God intimately… fears the God who comes to walk with Him

Not because God withdrew love

But because Adam now interprets God through shame

Sin didn’t remove God’s love…It fractured humanity’s ability to see it.

What if we began to see the fall of Genesis as less about rule-breaking and more about mis-seeing.

To see the outcome of Genesis as rule breaking based…is to see sin as having the capacity to change God..

Sin doesn’t change God…it changes me.

———————-

Jesus comes not only to define love…but to reveal it

Jesus came for one reason…to fix this errant perspective of God…

Since Adam…man has believed that God was mad at us and worth hiding from….

But Jesus comes to give us a fresh revelation…

The disciple who was the closest to Jesus…THE PERFECT DEPICTION OF WHO GOD IS HAD THIS TO SAY…

1 John 4:8 NLT

But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

“God is love….Not:

God has love

God does love

But God is love…

Love is not a concept God practices…Love is God’s very being.

_________

The isness of God

Early church fathers would take this concept and put it in terms and references that would ultimately evolve into love being referred to as God’s “isness”

God displays wrath…but He is love

God displays justice…but He is love

It refers to ontology not simply action.

When we see God’s love as the thing that he “is’ then we understand that everything else flows from that place.

This makes even his judgment something to be celebrated.

Judgment is enacted on anything that keeps you from HIS ISNESS.

1 Corinthians 2:9–10 NLT

That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”* But* it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets.

What is it that no eye has seen… God has revealed by His Spirit?….

IT IS THE LOVE OF GOD!

__________

A Love that’s bigger than you think

Ephesians 3:18–19 NLT

And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

God’s love is not only big…it is a love that surpasses knowledge…

In other words, you can’t possibly understand just how loved you are.

Paul prays for something that requires revelation not comprehension…

The love of God CAN BE KNOWN…But not mastered by intellect

This isn’t about learning…it’s about receiving…

We aren’t going to understand God’s love for us…

but we can receive God’s love for us even when we don’t understand why or how he would love us.

This is actually challenging as a pastor…because I’m telling you about something I can’t convince you of…I can only lead you to the one who can show it to you.

__________ We need a revelation

One of the primary purposes of the Holy Spirit is not simply to make us feel goose bumps and have great church services…

John 16:13 NLT

13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth….

What we have believed about God’s love…that it was available when we are good but not when we’re bad…is not truth.

We don’t need an education today…we need a revelation.

Education will make you think differently in the moment…revelation get’s in your bones.

Today…we need to let our theology bring us into an encounter.

Romans 5:5 NLT

And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to give you a full revelation of how loved you are by God.

You will not change your activity in a sufficient way apart from a revelation of how loved you are.

__________

God, give us a revelation of love

My prayer is that today the Holy Spirit would remove the box…so we can clearly see the authentic version of LOVE.

That he would not only let you know God loves you…but give you an intricate revelation of what that love looks like.

The Spirit doesn’t just remind us that God loves us…He restores our ability to see love again.

“You can’t draw what you haven’t seen—but once you see it, everything changes.”

____________

Today…finding love isn’t going to happen because you try harder to love better.

in many cases increasing effort will only increase effectiveness for a limited time.

What we need is a fresh revelation of the Love of God

True love isn’t achieved through effort…it is reproduced through revelation.

KEYS OUT

____________

Leaving our subpar learning

Some of us learned what love is from a subpar source

Some from absence

Some from abuse

Some from performance

Some from religion

And this sermon today is not about shaming us for what we’ve reproduced

BECAUSE we can only know what we’ve known

But God is so gracious in that he refuses to let us settle into the subpar when he has the superior available to us.

God is inviting you us finally see the original.

So that we can properly represent love to the world around us.

We don’t reproduce what we want to ….We reproduce what we’ve seen.

_________ Closing

Today we’re not simply talking about love…We’re going to let the Holy Spirit show us what love actually looks like.”

Les Miserables

Jean Valjean had spent 19 years in prison….Not for murder. but For stealing bread.

By the time he’s released, the law has done its job:

it punished him

it hardened him

it taught him exactly what kind of man he was supposed to be

No one will take him in….Every door closes—until one opens.

A bishop invites him into his home.

Feeds him.

Gives him a bed.

Treats him like a human being.

That night, Valjean steals the bishop’s silver and runs.

He’s later caught by the police and dragged back to the house.

This is the moment.

This is where fear expects punishment.

This is where Valjean braces for confirmation of everything he already believes about God, authority, love, and himself.

But instead of accusing him, the bishop says:

“Ah, there you are. I’m glad to see you. You forgot the candlesticks. I gave you those too.”

And as the police leave, the bishop leans in and says something Valjean has never heard in his life:

“With this silver, I have bought your soul. I have ransomed you from fear and hatred. And now I give you back to God.”

Jean Valjean repented not because he was threatened. He repents because he saw love.

Romans 2:4 ESV

4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

_________

To the person far from God…I’m not enticing you to follow Jesus by telling you how hot hell is.

I’m not going to try and convince you how terrible of a person you are.

I am simply going to tell you that there is a superlative for love available as displayed by a man named Jesus.