The Gift of Love

Mom and Dad both worked full-time, but when I was little one of my dad's business partners ran off with $300,000 of the business's money and put my dad (and family) in a big bind financially.

We always had food on the table, just not a lot of extras.

Like I always wanted clothes from Abercrombie.

Didn't get 'em, (except for the one time my friend Brian gave me his old Abercrombie t-shirt.)

I wanted braces cause my mouth was a mess.

Not happening.

There were plenty of people around who had less than we did, but also a lot of people who had more.

I didn't think about it a whole lot, but sometimes the people who seemed to have more and flaunted it got on my nerves.

But I can tell you this:

At Christmas, my Mom found a way to get a TON of gifts without a ton of money.

She would search relentlessly for the best sales until every kid and grandkid had like 5 presents/each.

Before she passed away, she was up to 3 kids, 9 grandkids, two daughter-in-laws, a son-in-law, and of course my dad who she always got gifts for.

That's 16 people, not to mention her friends and coworkers she got gifts for.

And Mom would cook until the point of exhaustion every Christmas and make sure everyone had more than enough food.

She just made Christmas special in every way, even though she never had a lot of money.

It sounds cheesy, but the greatest gift that she gave all of her family was her heart.

WE

*Title Slide*

We all have met someone in our lives who is selfless.

People who give the gift of loving other people, even if they don’t have a lot of money of stuff to give.

But those kinds of people are few and far between in our culture, because we have been told for the last 50 years or so that it’s all about us.

*Sassy gif*

Our culture tells us: “You do you boo boo”

So when we meet someone who wants to help others before they help themselves, we remember that, don’t we?

Sometimes we don’t know how to act towards these kinds of people...

Opening day of the first Russian McDonalds pic*

The picture was taken in 1990 at a time where the Soviet Union was opening up to western businesses.

It was the largest McDonald’s in the world at the time of its construction

But what shocked Soviets most was the fact that the workers in the McDonald’s were always smiling. Something they were not used to in Soviet restaurants where the service was unsmiling and cold. So many customers felt uneasy about the smiling that the bosses had to ask the employees to smile less.

If we aren’t used to it, we may not trust others-first people.

“Why are they being so nice?”

“What are they trying to get from me?”

But when we are around someone long enough who loves others as a lifestyle, we want to be around them more and more.

And we maybe even start to love people like they do.

GOD

*Title Slide*

A guy named John wrote a lot about love in the Bible.

As a matter of fact, he was known as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

Jesus loved all His disciples, but He had a special relationship with John. John was like his little brother.

And when all the rest of the disciples abandoned Jesus when He went to the cross, John stayed right there with Him.

Let’s take a closer look at what and WHO love truly is:

1 John 4:7–8 The Message

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love.

The Greek word for love here, agapōn, means continuous action… so think of it here like: “everyone who keeps loving others.” John is talking about an obvious lifestyle of love- the kind that shows people the life of God is truly present in us.

And on the flip side- when people are in the habit of NOT loving others, they can’t possibly know God because God IS love.

Augustine: Love is so much the gift of God that it is called God.

It is His very essence.

1 John 4:9–10 The Message

This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

Jesus being sent to earth to die for us makes God’s life in us possible—that we might live. But it does not guarantee it. And it’s also not something that you can’t walk away from later.

Hebrews 6:4–6 NIV

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

Not many churches teach this. A relationship with Jesus doesn’t mean you pray to be saved and then go and continue to live in sin.

You may have life by accepting Christ, but you may lose life by rejecting Christ. The offer that God makes to us, and the ability for us to respond, are all of grace. God sent Jesus. And only because of His love toward fallen, broken, sinful humanity can we hope to return to life.

Romans 6:1–2 NIV

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

If you love sin- like doing the wrong things with your bf/gf, talking trash about people, or sharing trash that you know ain’t right on tiktok, then you can’t love Jesus at the same time.

And if you continue doing those things- even if you accepted Jesus and said you loved Him at one time, then you are in danger of ending up in hell.

I don’t enjoy telling you that, but I love you enough to tell you the truth.

1 John 4:11–12 The Message

My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!

Complete- “Having been perfected.”

God’s love places a moral obligation on all believers to maintain a pattern of love for one another.

And here’s the cool thing about Christians loving each other:

Love is like a fire, it starts small and lights up what is nearest first, then spreads further and further out.

When Christians show love to one another first, that love starts to spread out to those around them.

The Love of God Burns in Our Hearts Lighter and paper illustration

1 John 4:7, 19; Jude 21

Preaching Themes: God: Love, Love

You have a magnifying glass and hold it up before the sun until you focus the rays on a piece of dry wood and set it on fire. Now, while you see the wood burning to ashes, will you tell me what it is that burns? Does the heat of the sun burn the wood or does the wood burn? The heat that you feel while the wood is burning, is it due to the sun or to the wood? Of course at first the fire is purely and simply the flame of the sun, but afterwards the wood itself begins to burn; the sun burns the wood and then the wood itself burns.

Even so the love of God comes into our heart, and then our heart loves too, and in both cases “love is from God” (1 John 4:7). No man is a Christian unless he himself loves God with his own heart, but yet our love to God is nothing more or less than the reflection of God’s love to us: so that it comes to the same thing.

John 13:35 NIV

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

WHEN WE LOVE OTHERS, CHRIST’S LOVE IS FULLY KNOWN IN US.

YOU

If you’re a Christian in the room, I want you to listen up:

Love each other.

Here in the church building and when you’re at school, the ball game and band practice.

If you claim the name of Jesus Christ but trash your brother or sister in Christ to other people, then you’ve got this whole Jesus thing dead wrong.

You need to ask Jesus to forgive you right now because trashing other Christians is disgusting to Him.

If you’re here and you’re not a Christian, I’m glad that you came tonight.

Because this could be the night that you experience true love for the very first time.

You have the opportunity to accept Christ into your heart and have the love of the God who created you inside you.

There’s nothing like it in this universe.

*Prayer- call to love and call to salvation*

WE

What if God’s love was made complete in each of us?

What if we learned to truly love one another as Christ has loved us and laid down His life for us?

That love would start to burn from you into the hearts of kids you go to school with. To your teachers, coaches, and principals.

Even the ones you don’t like.

People in your school would start to care more about others than themselves.

Detention would be empty and suspensions wouldn’t happen.

And God would transform our community just because we were willing to love each other like He does.