FIRST LOVE FIRST
Love Is • Sermon • Submitted
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· 6 viewsIt’s the most sought after thing in all creation. It embarrasses young children, captures star-crossed couples, trips up the confident, and inspires the timid. Poets and prophets try to define it. People risk everything to have it. It is the motivation for our most noble acts and the cause of our fool-hardy exploits. Nat King Cole once sang, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.” Love is more than a feeling. There’s more to love than what the world may ever know. Love is a choice to share the character of God with someone else…whether they deserve it or not.
Notes
Transcript
DAY INTRO:
Father’s Day.
SBC - GREAT COMMISSION BAPTISTS
Before the Great Commission was given the Great Commandment was spoken.
Loving people builds the platform that allows us to share the gospel well. Without that platform, why would anyone believe the gospel you share?
SERIES INTRO:
“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.” - Nat King Cole
Love is a CHOICE to share the CHARACTER of God with someone else.
Love is a CHOICE to share the CHARACTER of God with someone else.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
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.
Without LOVE, your best WORDS are AGGRAVATING.
Without LOVE, your best WORDS are AGGRAVATING.
Without LOVE, your greatest WORKS and deepest CONVICTIONS are MEANINGLESS.
Without LOVE, your greatest WORKS and deepest CONVICTIONS are MEANINGLESS.
Without LOVE, your biggest SACRIFICE is a total WASTE.
Without LOVE, your biggest SACRIFICE is a total WASTE.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
You are FIRST loved.
You are FIRST loved.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
We love because he first loved us.
He SHOWED us.
He TOLD us.
He EMPOWERS us.
Because God loved you first, you can be filled to the full with love for others. You can be the FIRST to show love for others.
You don’t have to wait to reciprocate. You can be the one to initiate.
You can love FIRST.
You can love FIRST.
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.
In every circumstance, be the FIRST...
To be patient & kind.
To leave behind envy, boastfulness, arrogance, and rudeness.
To be selfless instead of selfish.
To grieve with those who grieve over the wrongs they have experienced.
To rejoice in the truth.
To endure the difficulties of other people’s idiosyncrasies, frailties, and failures.
To believe in and bring out the best in others.
To offer hope to the hopeless and help to the hurting.
Because you are first loved, be the first to love.
RESPONSE
RESPONSE
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.
Romans 5:8 - share the gospel.