What is Love?
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What is love?
What is love?
*Night at the Rocksberry Headshake
Love is one of these actions we hear so often.
Love each other
Love your man
Love your wife
Love you mom and dad
Love your brother
Love your sister
Yet, to me and maybe to you, I feel like we only really use this word when talking about romance or when we are talking about family.
But if you joined us at our last outdoor service then you would know what Galatians 5:22-23 says
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
And the reason why we are looking at love is because it is a fruit of the Spirit.
As in the spirit that is living inside of you, if you are a believer in Christ— these fruits will be evident in your life.
So naturally we start with love.
Love is the easiest to fall in but the hardest to show everyday.
Truly love may be the easiest to show to those who love us back.
But what about the one who don’t love you back?
The people who are hard to love?
Aren’t those people who hurt you, disagree with you, laugh at you, bully you, cut you down— aren’t those people hard to love?
Of course they are.
Love is easy when love is reciprocated.
Yet love is so critical that when Jesus was asked about what is the greatest commandment he answered back with love.
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
He gives the greatest commandment to love God, then he says to love people.
And later in his life Jesus would say the new commandment that he gives us is to love.
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.”
Love, it keeps coming back to love.
Now I believe I have made a good case for why we should love but how do we love, well your leaders will figure that out, totally kidding.
How do we love.
Maybe we should start by looking at the opposite of what love is.
That is hatred.
You see my dad often told my brother and I growing up that it is so easy to hate and it is the hardest to love.
Which don’t get me wrong sounded troubling at the time, because I love my brother, but when he would upset me, hurt me, or be just a little punk.
My emotions would fly to hate before they would fly to love.
Because it is easy to get worked up, it is easy to wish bad things onto someone.
It is easy to reject, it is easy to gossip, it is easy to hit back, it is easy to fly off the hand with no recourse.
Hate is easy.
In our nation we see hatred running ramped.
Because it is easy to take shot at anybody and everybody.
but what does love look like in your life today.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Love is listening, love is learning, love is caring.
It does not mean you don’t have an opinion, because I believe you should, that is found in truth.
But that does not mean that we use our truth as a stick to beat people with it.
Love is laying yourself.
Love is submitting
Love is sacrificing
Love is what Jesus did.
He loved everybody by walking with him and eating with them, he did not change because he huge out with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, or the other sinners that were around.
We talked about John 15 last week, and here is the next section of that which I believe ties in perfectly.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
You see Jesus’s love for us people, you and I is not conditional.
We know that we cannot hold up to that, which is the point of the cross it was the ultimate display of love.
We didn’t earn it, we don’t deserve it, but Jesus still went to the cross and said I LOVE YOU.
Showing love is the hardest thing you will do, it is challenging but not impossible.
Love God and Love others.
Have a great night with your group!