Love (Relate)

Our theme for 2021 (which is almost over) is “Redeeming the Time”

In March I laid out a new vision for the church.

“Encounter God’s Transforming Love” became our new motto.

Our process steps are Respond- Restore - Release - Relate.

As we came into the advent season it was time to reiterate the process - but it also corresponds to the themes of advent.

Hope requires a response.

Peace comes from allowing God to restore.

Joy is found in release as we live out our calling.

And then there is love which permeates everything.

The first three steps are sequential.

Respond leads to restore - Hope leads to peace.

Restore leads to release - Peace leads to Joy.

But Love stands apart as does relate.

Relate is not a sequential step, because it starts even before we respond.

But I put it at the end to remind us that after everything else, we are still relating.

· Relate – We want to do all this together, helping and encouraging each other as a family in Christ. To do this, we need to be intentional about fellowship throughout our spiritual journey. Whether near or far, the relationships that we establish are of eternal value.

We have people who were part of this church at one time, but are now serving the Lord elsewhere, but we are still connected and we value those relationships.

In fact, people who are sent out from this church rely on the prayer and relational support.

I have often said that as missionaries we can only do what we do because of the prayers of supporters.

So what does this have to do with Christmas or Advent?

Well first because love is the theme for this fourth Sunday of advent.

And “Relate” reminds us to love and to prioritize relationship above all else.

But when we think of Christ coming to earth; He didn’t just come to save us, He came to relate to us - to show us what it really means to love.

1 John 1:1–3 NLT

1 We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. 2 This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

The one writing is the Apostle John.

He is the longest living of the original apostles.

He is writing to combat heresy that Jesus is some sort of mystical being - either not fully human or not fully God.

The gnostics would say that Jesus was just a man, but that he was possesses with some kind of spirit or ghost.

“He’s not a ghost! He’s my friend!” John would say.

Relationship is tangible.

God became flesh

He was fully God and yet fully man.

John 1:14 ESV

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

We are so used to hearing it that perhaps you have never stopped to think what a staggering truth this is?

God relates to you.

God became a man.

God became like us.

God became one of us.

He didn’t just take human form temporarily.

He was born, he grew, he lived and he died.

He had the whole human experience.

He experienced pain.

He experience disappointment.

He experienced rejection and betrayal.

He experienced loss.

He knows what it is to feel helpless, even as the Son of God.

As you consider your relationship with God, does it help to know that God can relate to you?

Isn’t that what it means to be in relationship?

Aren’t shared experiences important?

God knows you.

Who knows you?

Do I know you?

Do I really know you if I only ever see you in church?

What if I have been to your house?

What if I know your family?

What if I know something about your life?

Your story.

Your challenges.

Your likes and dislikes.

Your dreams and aspiration.

How many people in your life really know you?

You can have thousands of friends on Facebook, but do they know you?

You can have hundreds of acquaintances, people who would recognize you and know you by name, but do they really know you?

You have neighbors, work colleagues, friends from various chapters of your life.

There are people who know a part of you.

They see you in one context, but they don’t know the whole story.

You may even have close friends, but you are only close in certain ways and you only share part of yourself, because there is another part that they just wouldn’t understand.

I have even known people who do this with their spouse, they show only the side of themselves that their spouse is willing to see but they have another part of their life that their spouse doesn’t share.

For some that is their faith that they keep to themselves to keep peace in their other relationships.

Isn’t it good to know that God knows all of you.

He knows all about you - and not just your spiritual side.

He is there in your day to day life as well.

He knows all about your job, your studies, or your hobby.

He even knows your friends who don’t know or acknowledge him.

That’s right - they don’t have to believe in God because God believes in them.

He even knows your private thoughts, your hopes and your dreams.

And your doubt, fears and frustrations too.

God loves you.

I’m here to tell you that God knows you and He loves you.

Does God love my sin?

I’m not saying that God loves everything about you.

But I am saying that God understands your weakness and he loves you anyway.

The point is that God not only know what you do, but He knows why you do what you do.

He knows you better that you know you.

God sees something in you that you may not see in yourself.

He sees His image in you.

He sees the person that He created.

He sees His image tarnished and distorted, but totally redeemable.

He sees potential, possibility and even destiny.

Our human frailty and weakness is no longer a barrier to relationship.

He has been here.

He knows weakness and frailty.

He knows what we have to overcome.

But He also overcame it and is ready to show us the way

God’s love for us is so incredible, why would anyone not receive it?

Actually there is a very good reason why.

Relationship is vulnerability.

It all comes down to power.

Relationships are about power.

And successful relationships come from the willingness to be vulnerable.

Why does everything have to be a power struggle?

Simply because we don’t like to lose.

The thought is that if I don’t risk, I can’t lose.

We try to manage things so that we are in control.

We even manage or relationships so as to maintain some level of control.

And whether we realize it or not… we even do this with God.

Trust means risk.

I remember when I was kid, wanting to learn how to swim. The problem was that I wanted someone to teach me, but without letting go. I could paddle may arms and kick my feet, but I would freak out every time I did not feel those arms underneath me.

“Do you trust me?” my teacher would say.

Apparently not, because I’m still freaking out!

“You’re not going to drown!”

I wasn't convinced because I have water up my nose and I’m hyper-ventilating.

“I’m not going to let you drown.”

I can only believe it if I believe that I am loved, valued and that my life is worth saving.

Learning to swim meant learning to trust and that meant taking a risk.

When you take a risk, you look at everything that you know and what you believe.

And then you look at what you don’t know and what you think might happen.

And eventually you come to the conclusion that what you know is more important than what you don’t know.

And that what you believe might happen is more compelling than fear may happen.

Sure the future is unknown and scary like learning to swim- people drown in water.

But I also look at people having fun in water.

I want to have fun.

I don’t want to spend my life on the sideline, living in fear.

I’m going to get in, face my fear and take a risk.

Love means risk.

Love and relationships are just like learning to swim.

We know that people can drown in relationship.

You can suffocate if you get in to deep and things get out of control.

On the other hand, you can never swim without getting wet.

You can not be in relationship without being vulnerable.

Love takes risk.

But consider that God took that risk first.

1 John 4:10 NLT

10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

Yeah, well he’s God!

Exactly, but being God he allowed himself to become vulnerable.

Philippians 2:5–8 NLT

5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. 6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, 8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

The God who controls everything didn’t feel the need to control.

The sovereign God became vulnerable.

The almighty humbled himself.

Why? To show us what it means to love.

Loves necessitates risk.

God took that risk.

Faith means risk.

So what does that mean for us that God took risk?

We talk about faith as having a relationship with God

Relationship with God means that we respond to what God has done for us.

We learn to love God the way that God loves us.

By becoming vulnerable to God and to others.

By taking the risk to be in relationship.

John says that the result of believing is fellowship.

1 John 1:3 NLT

3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

What is fellowship - two fellows in a ship?

Sort of - it means we’re all in the same boat - so to speak.

The Greek word is Koinonia - it meas to have things in common.

Not just a few things that we like, but to share a common bond.

Like we are all swimming in the same pool.

And we hold one another up and keep each other from drowning.

Faith is believing that my life is tied to and dependent on the life of God.

And by extension, your life is tied to mine because we share the same bond of life in Jesus Christ.

Next week we are going to celebrate the bond that we have with one another and with Christ by taking communion - and for those who would like to, we are adding footwashing stations.

We do this thing called life together because its a whole lot better than doing life alone.

We pray for one another, encourage one another.

We help and support each other.

Because together we can do more than either of us can alone.

Relationship is eternal.

So why is relate part of our process? And why is love part of advent?

Isn’t love for valentines day? Does it have to be Christmas too?

So first, this is more a familial love thing.

Love is central to the Christmas story because it is central to God’s story.

It’s pretty much at the center of everything.

And relationship is not something we only talk about when we want to fell all warm and fuzzy.

Relationships are essential

Show me a person who say they don’t need anyone and I’ll show you a person about to self-destruct.

Even the Lone Ranger needed Tonto.

Behind every successful person is a network of supportive relationships.

And we benefit as much from feeding into those relationships as we benefit from their support.

We embody Christ to one another.

Not only do we see God in each other but we get to be God’s representative to each other.

We get to be God “with skin on.”

I heard the story of a little boy who was frightened one night during a big thunderstorm. Terrified, he called out from his room, "Daddy, I am scared!"

His father, not wanting to get out of bed, called back, "Don't worry, son. God loves you and will take care of you."

There was a moment of silence. The little boy said, "I know God loves me, but right now, I need somebody who has skin on."

John writes that he knew Jesus in the flesh - with skin.

How do generations of believers know Jesus with skin?

They experience the living Christ through Christ-filled believers.

You and me are being “God with skin on” to each other and to the world.

Relationships are a conduit

How does the life of God flow through believers?

It flows through the conduit of relationships.

Can’t we just receive everything directly from God in prayer?

Let me ask you, how many times have you asked God a question or sought God for something and the answer came through someone else?

Pretty often! Why is that?

Because God operates through relationship.

Even God Himself is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Relationship is an inherent part of His being.

When God created us in His image, part of that image is that we were designed to be in relationship with God and with others.

As a church, we are described as the body of Christ and having various gifts.

Why the body metaphor or the gifts?

Because we need to know that we have need of each other.

The life of God flows through relationship.

The power of God is released in relationship.

The fullness of God is attained through relationship.

That is why relate is part of our process.

Our respond, restore and release is all in the context of relate.

And relate is only at the end because it continues

and it causes the process to repeat and take us higher.

Relationships are life-giving

There are different categories of relationship.

Some of our relationships are draining - you are constantly having to put time and energy into them.

If you don’t keep up with these relationships, they will probably fall apart.

Other relationships are sustaining, even life-giving.

These relationships seem to stay intact, even if they go through dormant seasons.

You don’t mind or measure the time that you spend together.

It’s as if you are never really apart.

Have you ever met a friend after a long time apart only to find that you have grown in such similar ways that you are closer now that you were before even though you haven’t spent all that time together?

Are there people who have been in your life for only a short time, but who have left a permanent impression on your life? Something that they showed you or taught you or modeled for you changed your understanding and perception of life from that time forward.

Are there relationships that ebb and flow, sometimes you have a lot of time to spend to gether and sometimes you don’t, but they are beneficial just the same? You don’t have to always be together to know that you are loved. Love is communicated in the simplest of ways and the rest of the time it is just understood.

These are the relationships that are eternal, because they are not dependent on time or space or distance.

All of this is made possible because eternity came to earth and took on human flesh and entered into relationship with us to show us how to have eternal relationships.

We can relate because we have learned how to be in relationship.

We can really know each other because we are fully known.

We love because he first loved us.

He showed us how to be vulnerable and gives us the ability to risk.

As we celebrate this holiday season, we are all going to have opportunities to relate to other people - or not.

I suggest that you embrace relationship, not just as part of the season, but as part of the process of God’s work in your life.