Love, God's Way

· All over this last week, the week of Valentine’s Day, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, and unfortunately those in love relationships that are less than God-designed will express their love for one another.

· But, are the expressions of love that we see all around us the kind of love that God shows us?

Let’s see if we can agree on something, as a premise, before we get too far into this message today:

· God, the Creator of ALL THINGS, it stands to reason,...

God created LOVE!

If He created all things, He created love as well.

· So any expression of love has, at its core, the example of God’s idea of love to live up to, right?

· And God’s idea of love is the love that means giving all, unconditional, total.

· Agape love is the only kind of love God shows us.

· All other kinds are manmade, or at least have developed under the umbrella of agape love, and, to one degree or another, are just imitations of agape.

· They are not fake, mind you.

· Just lesser in their intensity and meaning than God’s agape love for you.

The March Toward Real Love

SECURITY LOVE: in the Greek, Storge

This love is the love that everybody needs to survive.

· It is that feeling of being cared for and nurtured.

· Some people would describe this as the type of love parents have for their children.

· This is so important: high on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; and studies have even proven that people have died of a "broken heart" (there have been no explanations for their deaths other than that).

FRIENDSHIP LOVE: in the Greek, Phileos

This is a love between yourself and someone that is totally honest, open and comfortable.

· You really only have this kind of bond with a few people.

· You might know a lot of people and be "friendly" with them in a group situation but they are not the best friends I am talking about here.

· And, you cannot truly be best friends with a member of the opposite sex.

· Ladies, if there is a man in your life telling you that you are his best friend, I promise you he wants more.

· If you try this kind of relationship, you will discover that down the line romance will always come up from either party and feelings will be misinterpreted and mistaken.

· When this happens, the friendship will change and possibly never be the same again.

ROMANTIC LOVE: in the Greek, Eros

· The much anticipated love!

· Most people experience this type of love many times in their life.

· It is when you see that person for the first time and he/she makes your knees go weak or gives you butterflies in your stomach. i.e. "Love at first sight”.

· Most people don’t even love the person they think they are in love with…they fall in love with the idea if being in love.

· This is more of a lustful kind of love; it wears off after a while and hopefully, under the proper and right circumstances leads to...

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE: in the Greek, Agape This is the sincere love, the love that lasts forever.

·This concept was created specifically to describe the kind of love Jesus showed on the cross.

This kind of love comes when you have found the person you are destined to be with.

· Nothing can destroy unconditional love.

· It is like when you have an argument or disagree about something with that person and you realize that it doesn’t bother you because the love you have for him/her overcomes everything.

Agape is true love, God’s love, and the love that we progress toward if we are progressing in Christ.

1 Cor. 13 tells us about some of the attributes of love.

· An attribute is something that is a characteristic of something; as in love.

· We know from scripture what those characteristics are…

o You can’t just say you love someone and then cheat on them.

o You can’t just say you love someone then beat them.

o You can’t love someone AND use them.

o You can’t say you love Jesus AND ignore what that means.

o In all of this the attributes of love are missing.

o And if the attributes are missing then so is the love.

o It cannot exist in an environment of dishonesty, violence, manipulation and disrespect toward another, among other things.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 NIV

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love is patient…

· Saying you are patient is quite different from practicing patience.

· For this to be grasped by you, you must demonstrate patience.

…love is kind.

· Again, saying you are kind is not enough.

· You must be found doing acts of kindness.

It does not envy...

· This can be a nasty one, indeed.

· Envy is a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions, etc.

· How can be in a love-relationship and, at the same time, desire a different relationship or be discontent with what we have.

· There is no real love present if this is the case.

…it does not boast…

· We boast when we speak with exaggeration and excessive pride, especially about ourselves.

· We’re not talking here about showing your loved ones’ pictures or being proud in the family sense.

· We’re talking here of being so consumed with self that you can’t help but make sure that others see you, above any other, in your relationships.

· You will brag on yourself before anyone else.

· These people are easily recognizable in any type of relationship because any conversation they have will turn towards them before the conversation is very old.

… it is not proud.

· Why is pride such a sin?

· Pride is excessive belief in one's own abilities (American Idol bombers!).

· It interferes with our ability to recognize the grace of God.

· It has been called the sin from which all others arise.

· Pride is also known as Vanity.

· It is the root of man’s denial of God’s existence.

· After all, if I am basically good, and can believe in myself above everything else then why do I need God?

· Well-meaning elementary school teachers told you to "believe in yourself."

· We, in America, have believed in ourselves right out of a relationship with our Creator!

It does not dishonor others…

· How many spouses have dishonored each other and the vows they took under the guise of accepting something that God created, marriage, by throwing away families because they had no concept of true love?

· How many children are shuttled between homes because their parents, not only, dishonored their marriage and family, but once they destroyed that one, they created another dysfunctional one to try and replace it.

· Grown-ups listen to me here; THERE IS ALWAYS BROKENNESS IN DIVORCE.

· It can never be done right, in the sense that everybody’s okay after it’s over!

· There is always damage.

· The best that we can ever hope to do is minimize it, a task at which some are better than others.

· But in the best of these cases there is damage.

· In every case of divorce there is a lack submission to God by at least one party, but more than likely by both.

…it is not self-seeking…

· When we seek our own interest or selfish ends we have no hope of understanding what it was that God did for us by sending His Son to take our place on the cross.

· Imagine if God had sought His own self interests in creating man and the world.

· He could have made us robots, to mechanically obey His every instruction without the inconvenience of free will.

· He could have created a world that would have maintained its perfect form as it was in the beginning.

· As the old song says, Jesus could have called ten thousand angels to rescue Him from the cross.

· But none of these things were consistent with his character.

· So he put aside His self interests to teach us what love is so that we could have deep, meaningful relationships with each other, and Him.

…it is not easily angered…

· Love cures anger (wrath), which is another one of the seven deadly sins, by the way.

· America has become a nation of angry people.

· We have learned to get angry at…

o …other countries.

o …other religions.

o …other denominations.

o …other lifestyles.

o …Republicans.

o …Democrats.

o …people who believe in abortions.

o …people who don’t.

o …people who need welfare.

o …people who don’t even believe in welfare.

o …

· If you call yourself a Christian there is no room for your anger towards other human beings you deem sinful, or wrong in some way.

· Jesus ONLY got angry at religious play-actors, and it was termed righteous anger.

… it keeps no record of wrongs…

· We obviously have to throw this one out if we want to live in these modern times, right.

· We are all about keeping records of wrongs.

· It’s how we justify ourselves.

· It’s how we prove to ourselves that we are better than everyone else.

· It’s how we exclude others from our lives, our affections and our churches.

· But, the true Christian looks beyond that to the heart and soul that God sees.

· The true Christian sees fellow humans reaching for a God that they may not even know yet that they want to connect with.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

· There is no love response that includes evil toward a fellow human being.

· No excuse for excluding, ignoring or even being ambivalent toward another on the basis of your feelings for someone.

· Love is about feelings, but only as a response to the discovery of it, then comes the action.

· I can feel as though someone doesn’t deserve my love, but my response to them must be patience, kindness, and the rest of the fruits of the spirit of love we have been given.

· Because the truth is I don’t deserve God’s love any more than Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Sadam Hussein, the young man that shot up that school in Florida last week, or any other infamous murderer, or vile character you know of.

· Romans 3:23 says ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And finally,...

...it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.

· The fact is that God pursues us with His love, and the only thing that will cause Him not to win us with His love is our rejection of it.

· And, He’s not fooled when we tell Him that we love Him, but demonstrate in every area of our life that we really don’t know what love truly is.

In his love for us Jesus acts like a hound-dog, intense and focused as he pursues the hunt.

· That image comes from Francis Thompson, a 19th century British poet who wrote "The Hound of Heaven."

· Although Thompson was a follower of Christ, he struggled with poverty, poor health, and an addiction to opium (which in those days was sold as an "over-the-counter" medication).

· In the depths of his despair, Thompson described his flight from God: "I fled him, down the nights and down the days. I hid from him, and under running laughter. I sped … from those strong feet that followed, followed after [me]."

But Thompson also knew the unrelenting love of Jesus, the hound of heaven.

· In the poem Jesus pursues Thompson with "unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, and majestic instancy [or urgency]."

· He hears the feet of Jesus beating after him as Jesus calls, "All things betray those who betray me."

In a recent biography of John Stott, an English clergyman who is noted as a leader of the worldwide evangelical movement, and a man whom in 2005, Time magazine ranked as being among the 100 most influential people in the world, Stott refers to Thompson's poem.

· According to Stott, he owes his faith in Christ not to his parents or teachers or even his own decision, but to Jesus, "the hound of heaven."

· Stott writes:

[My faith is] due to Jesus Christ himself, who pursued me relentlessly even when I was running away from him in order to go my own way. And if it were not for the gracious pursuit of the hound of heaven I would today be on the scrap-heap of wasted and discarded lives. - Roger Steer, Basic Christian: The Inside Story of John Stott (IVP Books, 2009), pp. 262-263; submitted by Van Morris, Mt. Washington, Kentucky

God’s love, true agape love, is the energy He uses to pursue you.

· We fail in many of our attempts to demonstrate the love of God in this world.

· But, there is only hope for us, as humans, when we try to understand and grasp that the reason God pursued us down through time is that He loves us so.

· Agape love has caused a being that can create something out of nothing to woo you into His arms of everlasting hope and peace.

God loves you!

· And as we practice the different forms of love that we do there should come a moment in time when you realize that they are all a warm-up for the real thing, the love of God.

Let us pray…

(sing “How He Loves Us”)

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