Seeking Love
Notes
Transcript
Mission and Vision
Today we are continuing our sermon series… Seeking
Say Seeking
Today we are talking about seeking love
Love is the primary function of human beings
We are creatures that are created to love
But because we are broken, we often seek love in places where it is not found
Because we are all built to love we know that it is what we should do
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
“I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving.”
“I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving.”
Or we seek a lesser identity, we seek to love things that will never bring about the desired result of fulfillment
So what is love?
Feeling
Choice
Biology
Loyalty
Responsibility
Relationship
YES
Love is necessary for life
There is scientific proof that living beings that have everything they need for life, apart from loving interaction with others, will fail to thrive and die
God created us to be social beings that are in need of relationship, affection, loyalty… love
What did God say about Adam being alone in the garden?
This is not good
And ever since Adam and Eve we have been seeking things to love and to fill our desire for love
People sought sacrifices, dominance, power, wealth, lust, control, self-righteousness
People sought other people and their affections, the praise and adoration of other people,
And whatever it is that we seek to love or seek love from will begin to make us in its image
When we seek loving others, we begin to seek to please or control people.
When we seek the love of others we walk on eggshells and side with popular consensus
When we seek the love of the world we seek its favor
When we seek loving things and posessions, we end up being posessed by them
When we seek love and validation from others, they become the functional gods in our lives.
Wherever we seek love will be the place that we are formed
Usually we seek love in others
The human need for love is partially met in others. But it could never be fully met in another human being. The need for love can never be met in a substance, or in and of ourselves
You can’t seek
There is always a space in our heart that is never filled by another person, including your self
One of the issues is that we confuse Love
Because we only have the one word for love we can love video games and grandma. We can love our pet and our spouse
Therefore we use the word Love when we mean acceptance, happiness, physical desire, we use the word love to substitute self-esteem, self-worth, we use the word love to substitute support
The word that we are talking about, ususally, in scripture is the word Hased or Agape
This is the type of love that God showers on us
This is the love that loves for its own sake
God loves us not because we are worthy, but because it is who he is
His love is not contingent on our actions or our inactions
His love is not conditional… we get a choice to accept of reject his love… but that doesn’t change his love
The desire for this type of love is directed towards things that can never fill the void
That is one of the lies we are fed is that true happiness comes from you following and fulfilling your own selfish desires
The truth of the matter is, if you read ecclesiasties, you will see that the end of that road is a feeling of Hevel. The feeling of grasping smoke
There is something inside you that you may seek to fill with other things but can only be filled with LOVE that is God. Because God is love.
Let’s go to our text
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Now the love that we see here is the word Agape
This is the selfless love
The love that seeks the best of others, not because of what it does in my life, but just because I want to see them flourish
This is the love that is not the love of the world, but it is the love of God that allows us to love perfectly
What John is telling us here is that our lives should be lives lived in love because of the love of Christ
We are to love others because we have been loved. We have been agape’d
The only way to truly know love is to know God.
This is one of the mysteries of Christian marriage.. at least what it’s supposed to be
Christian marriage is supposed to be the only place on earth where people make a choice to love each other not because of what they can get or how the other makes them feel but because they are loved and so they love the other
The Christian community is supposed to echo the love of God
We are supposed to be a group of people who, after accepting the love of God that was offered to us in CHrist Jesus, we choose to love each other has CHrist has loved us
THis is what transforms communities and the world
It’s not the programs you run, its not the way you cater to the ways of the world
We transform our surroundings by starting to love each other.
Agape love each other. That means that you should be living in such a way that you should be willing to lay aside your plans, your schedules, and your finances to serve those around you
I’m sure most of you were thinking lay down your lfie
It’s alot easier to say “ if someone came in with a gun I would jump in front of the gun to save you guys” than it is to say “if you need help at 3am I’ll be there.” To say “if your lights are getting cut off, I’ll bypass my datenight this week to help you out because I love you” its easier to say you’d dive on a grenade in theory than to have someone inturrupt your day off with needing to move
Because that stuff happens more often then the other stuff in our context
John is telling us the same thing that Jesus told us.
Love each other as I have loved you
Jesus said that the wold will know that Jesus is real and has come from God the Father by how we _______ each other?
Love!
Love is the command, love is the key, love is the way by which the mission of God is carried out
How crazy is that. That through the love of God we will be transformed and see others be transformed.
Lives are conquered and battles won by love
And the best part of all of this is that the love that is needed to accomplish this is given to us
The love that is needed to transform the world was birthed in that stable 2000 years ago
The love that is needed walked this earth and ate with the outcasts, served the poor, loved the sick, served the immigrant, welcomed the stranger, washed the feet of the disobediant
The love that we need today. The love that we are truly seeking chose to die on a cross for the ones crucifying him
The love that we seek resurrected form the grave and sent us his spirit so that we don’t need to seek any further for true love.
The love that we seek is living inside each and every believer through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit
That is the spirit of Christ inside you. God living inside you
You are what you love
Where you seek for love will capture you
If you are seeking love in the world, you will be captive to the ways of the world
But if you are seeking love… in the only place where true AGAPE love is found… in Christ Jesus, then you will be captive to love
You will no longer need to seek outside fo christ
