REFOCUS: The Gang

Next Steps Opportunities: Landers are moving away from KidsMin to focus on adult discipleship.

Need a liaison for our partnership with Hope Women's Center in McKinney.

Kitchen... selling the gas stove and replacing with electric. Business meeting February 10 after second service.

IT'S ABOUT FAMILY

Illustration: From what you know about gangs, could you ever imagine gang life being reduced to a weekly one-hour gathering?

Francis Chan in the book Letters to the Church writes,

“It is hard to imagine one gang member walking up to another gang member and saying, “Hey man, how was gang this week?” Man I had to miss, you know… life has just been crazy busy.”

While gangs are serious and most are very dangerous… their very mission is fundamentally flawed… OURS IS NOT. Our mission is eternal and of the highest order as a Jesus follower. Yet, we have reduced what we do here to an optional weekly meeting. This is normal, expected even. We are losing connection with each other as a result.

In many churches, we have about as much of a connection to the people that are supposedly our spiritual family as we would to someone who visited the same movie theater as us.

MORE THAN A CLICHE

Does God really expect us to be close? I mean, like family close? It is totally natural to be close to people you are related to but your friends or strangers… people who aren’t remotely like you? Well that right there is the point… It is not supposed to be natural at all… it is supposed to be supernatural!

(ESV) — 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:34–35 ESV

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This verse makes it clear… we are to be known by our love. The church must be known for its love. In fact, it is this love that will attract the world to Jesus when they see it in action. Can you imagine what it would look like if we all took this charge serious. If we all made it our goal this year to love the way God loved us. To love in such a sacrificial way it wouldn’t even make sense. How exciting would it be for Pin Oaks to be known as a church that has supernatural love?

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

There is a powerful phrase in those verses. The phrase “love one another” is seen in the NT over one hundred times. The original language has it in a tense that is present, and yet active meaning that we are to read it as though it says, “keep on loving” each other the same way Jesus showed us how to do it in the first place.

It is not so much that Christians are to love the world less, as that they are to love one another more. Better put, their love for each other ought to be a reflection of their new status and experience as the children of God, reflecting the mutual love of the Father and the Son and imitating the love that has been shown them; their love for the world is the love of compassion, forbearance, evangelism, empathy—since all true Christians recognize they can never be more than mere beggars telling others where there is bread. (D.A. Carson)

We all need love. We’ve all been perfectly loved by God. Our job is to keep loving each other by pointing each other and everyone else back to where we found love in Jesus.

Here’s the thing, we can’t be content with just loving people better than the church down the street. We need to look for and strive after biblical love. Think of the last place you have bonded with others and even felt or described what you felt as love. Maybe it was coworkers, other parents from the same sports team your kids are on, a gym you attended, and the list goes on. Is the love you experience in your church really that different? It should be… it can be!

(ESV) — 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

When was the last time we evaluated our love for one another by thinking about how Jesus loved the people around us? I mean think about it…

illustration: picture a person or a small group of people in our church that you know. Now think about the extravagant lengths Jesus went to bring those specific people to Himself. Think of the whippings he endured so they could be forgiven. Imagine what he might have thought about them as He hung on the cross. No sacrifice was too great… he did everything necessary to redeem, heal, and transform those specific people. And He did that for us too!

Now hear these words from

(ESV) — 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Buried in the text of that verse is a powerful promise… of we love one another, keep on loving each other like Jesus showed us how… He will abide in us and His love will be perfected in us.

The word Abide is a simple active word that means live. We love and his promise is to perfect our ability to love as he walks with us. We are all in a process of learning how to love God better as we do life. But a lot of having God abide in us is letting him pull us closer together over time.

BETTER TOGETHER

(ESV) — 32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

This is the picture we are striving for every single day. It is so powerful to see what the church is supposed to look like and the stark contrast of what we settle for against this picture is staggering. When we love like that it makes the message of Christ more believable. If we are going to be a church that is serious about helping people meet Jesus we have to look seriously at how well we are pursuing unity and togetherness through intentional actions of love.

This is bigger than just avoiding arguments with one another… this is the kind of togetherness that looks like family. Where we meet one another’s needs and care for one another regardless of the time or effort required.

UNITY DOES NOT COME EASY

This is a level of commitment that is all but absent from the modern church. The reason we struggle so much with this starts with the concept of obedience. Obeying God grates against our natural desires. Only obeying God when it feels natural leaves us rarely obeying at all. In fact, it begs the question of who is truly in control of our life? If God has been given leadership in your life then the reality is He demands our obedience all the time. What comes of obedience… blessing. unexpected and often unseen blessing.

We have to return our focus to the truth that God is capable and more than enough. He is not a slot machine Jesus who gives us our wildest desires at the pull of a magic handle or phrase. He is a just, true, and loving God giving us what we need. But too often we get lost in our own desires. We lose sight of his ability and begin to replace it with our own effort. We stop trusting that He and His design for His church is whats most effective.

Have you considered what a disunited church looks like to the community around us? When you stop loving or settle for a lesser version of what he wants. What is the result of a church that is splintered? When our disobedience is left unchecked or unchallenged and it results in people trusting their way over Gods way it sends the unbelieving world around us a clear message… God’s ways are not enough. God is not enough.

For the church to thrive it needs unity. For unity to be achieved it takes love. For us to be loving.... really loving we have to have Jesus. He is the author of love. We have to stop trying to do things on our own and refocus on who he is and pursue him and one another at all costs.

God gave us instructions about our purpose and the goal of the church on this earth. He promised that to reach the lost that unity was enough and it is the method that works.

Conclusion