Who do you love
Who Do You Love?
Luke 11:42: Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. -Luke 11:42
While it is important to God that we do our best to follow His commands, it is also important that we act in justice and love.
Kind of like a person working hard to provide their family with food, shelter, clothing, but then comes home and beats them. Or perhaps a less extreme example...they just don’t come home very much. Their role in the family is simply to provide income. There is no love there.
Today I want to focus in on love...how do we act in the love of God?
What does the love of God look like?
-Important point. We’ve all got our own ideas about what love is. What is should & shouldn't look like. At True North we firmly believe that if we are going to call ourselves followers of Christ we need to ask ourselves what God says. We all know that none of us is living up to God’s standards in every area of life, but at least we know what God wants and what we should be shooting for.
When it comes to love, what does God have to say? We’ll be digging into this more in a few weeks-near Valentine’s day, but for today, we can get an idea from a couple of things Jesus said.
-Matthew 22:36-39. “Great Commandment” (foundational lesson we find ourselves coming back to over and over)
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
John 15:13-“No greater love has man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
Take a closer look at that first verse. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” How do you love yourself. I’ve often simply overlooked this and pointed out how we tend to treat ourselves pretty well. Of course we love ourselves. But do you really?
I really enjoy just observing our culture and looking at the way we live our lives. There’s something I’ve noticed in just about every person I’ve ever talked to. Deep down & in the moments we take time to really look at ourselves, most people really don’t care for themselves that much.
Which statement is easier to believe or has the greater impact on you?
-You are a wonderful person. I really admire you.
Or…you know, I know of a diet you might want to try.
-You are an awesome father and great example to your family
Or…Can’t you get anything right?
Notice how quickly we believe the negative comments about ourselves? What do you really see when you look in the mirror? What do you resist telling anyone about yourself? What don’t you want them to find out about you?
We also tend to think that we are the only ones who feel this way. Everyone else has a great life-they’ve got it all figured out. The truth is that we’ve all got stuff like this. When I looked at this command from Jesus I realized I couldn’t ask anyone to love others the way Jesus wants us to until we dealt with how we view ourselves.
I’ll be honest with you. I just turned 37 at the end of last year & it wasn’t until I was about 32 that I came to terms with this issue. (include this?? I realize now that I got to a point in my life when I was looking to serve God more and He knew I had to deal with this before I could begin to serve him. Our goal at True North is to equip every one of you to serve God as he has gifted you, so I want to make sure you have dealt with your own attitude toward yourself.)
So what is the deal here? Why do we so easily get down on ourselves?
I think part of the issue is the expectations we have for ourselves. We compare ourselves to others and think that we should be as good as them in the areas they are good at. The problem is that we tend to ignore the things they are not so good at. There is no one person who is perfect in every way. This is the way God designed us. We are supposed to work together. No one person is supposed to have everything figured out. If anyone here does…they should be up here-not me!
(1 Cor. 11:14-20-we are one body with many parts).
(This is why we emphasize working as a team to make True North possible. No one of us has all the skills necessary for this church. Every person here has an important part to play.)
So we’ve got to stop comparing ourselves to one another. You need to realize that God made you the way you are for a reason. He put you in the family you live with. He brought you here today. All for a reason. God wants you to be the person he made you to be, and he has a role for you to play in Hid plans for this community and this world.
The other thing we need to realize is that we need to be careful where we get out impressions about ourselves.
-people make hurtful comments-sometimes without realizing it.
-“Hurting people hurt people.” Someone may be dealing with own issues and end up hurting us.
Especially hurtful if it is someone we trust or respected. We carry these things around with us for a long time.
-Willie’s story football coach story?
-We can’t depend upon other people’s impressions of us as our primary means of understanding ourselves.
-Need to consider first, what God says about you.
-He considers us to be His child.
(John 7:10-Father in heaven will give good gifts)
(other verse about who we are in Christ)
If you can accept this. That God cares about you and made you just the way you are. That He doesn’t expect you to be perfect, then you can begin to really love yourself.
Once you know this you can begin to deal with the feelings of unworthiness and self-hatred that come up in life. You can begin to recognize that they are lies.
You will also being to see the people around you in new ways. You will begin to realize that they may not care about themselves either and that they need to understand what you now know. You will begin to understand that they behave the way they do because they are themselves are hurting deep down and you will begin to love them as you now love yourself!
Exercise-write down on sheet of paper the negative image you have of yourself. Write down the comments someone made maybe years ago that still affect how you see yourself. Them do me a favor. Rip it up. It’s all a big fat lie. Those things are not true!
Jesus wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Once you understand how God sees you and begin to see yourself in a new way, you will be ready to start investing yourself into the lives of other. You will want them to learn what you have learned!
This is our desire for all of True North. We want to known as a group of people who care about others.
This is why we emphasize the need to be involved in a small group outside of Sunday morning worship. That is where you really get to know people who care about you and will be there for you.
This is our philosophy of ministry leadership. We emphasize the fact that God has called us all to be ministers-loving and serving those around us as God has gifted us. Some of us are called to commit ourselves to ministry full-time. We are not here because we are theological experts with knowledge you must learn from us. We are not here because we have a closer relationship with God than anyone else. We are here to invest into your lives. The primary job of those people is to invest into others-helping them grow in their relationship with God and equipping them to serve God.
This is also out mission as a church. To love and serve people outside of any relationship with God. To help them see what God sees in them and help them to discover the special role God has for them in fulfilling his purposes in the world.
I hope you leave here today with a renewed vision of who are you. Remember to let God’s word shape your opinion of yourself…not other people. Then take that renewed vision and apply it to the people around you. See what they see in themselves and help them gain a new vision, too!
