I wanna know what love is
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Northside Church
What is love
4/24/22
Jamey Mills
Jamey Mills
April 24, 2022
What is love
Good morning… My name is Jamey Mills and I am the lead pastor here at Northside.
Gary Eaton has officially been confirmed as a member of our mt here at Northside… so be sure to pray for him and the rest of the mt… here at northside.
This is my last week with you guys for a couple of weeks.
1. Next week you are blessed to hear from Pastor Steve Lee…
2. And on the week after that, on Mothers day, Pastor Matt Kimmell will be sharing.
a. And that’s about as subtle as I can be in my reminder that Mother’s day is two weeks away…
b. We will have something here for our moms on that day…
I wanted to start off today by saying… DID YOU SEE THAT…
WHOA… last weekend… Easter weekend was incredible.
GF service was packed…
And Easter service (picture)... how amazing is that.
The Northside Story… continues to just absolutely amaze me.
We launched just over two years ago… one of the words we’d use to describe it is… change.
Two weeks in… it seemed like everything and everyone broke… for a while…
We moved online and then from place to place… and even though there were encouraging signs… It was hard.
I think our lowest church attendance in all of that was around 50… and last Sunday we had about 480 give or take a few… we had over 65 volunteers making it all happen… and stories… TONS of stories coming out of that weekend about what the Lord was and is up to. Over 50 Northsider cars parked out on the road to make room for guests… and maybe that seems small… but I believe it reflects the huge heart that Northside had to reach our community for Jesus.
I absolutely love what God is doing here… and I love being able to walk this with you guys.
What is the greatest way another person has shown you that they care?
Love is a word that we sorta fling around these days…
Picture… face only a mother could love…
I love ____
In our culture… ic
Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 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.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.
Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.
If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.
(NLT)
7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 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.
11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
13 And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. 14 Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.
18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. 19 We love each other because he loved us first.
20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? 21 And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.
John is known as the disciple that Jesus loves… and I think this passage reflects a lot of the reason… if you were to read all of what he wrote… I think you see that John seems to reflect the essence of God… or at least understand it… more than most. That passage is absolutely full… John has a heart for the people…
One of the foundational truths… that I want every single one of us to know and know well… whether we are here, online, have been a believer for a long time, or are still on the fence… it's life changing… mind changing… powerful truth.
You were intentionally created, you are intimately known, and you are perfectly loved.
Do you believe that? Do you live like you believe it? How would your life be different if you really were able to grab ahold of that?
One of the major truths John shares with us here… is that love comes from God.
Real love… and what it means to know real love… and what it means to really love… come from God.
It was God’s idea… it doesn't come from the minds or definitions of humanity… but real love comes from God… it’s defined by God… it originates with God… the source of it is found in Him.
So much so, that John literally says that God is love (twice). He’s not saying that God is an emotion (love is not just an emotion, in fact real love transcends emotion)... what he is saying is..
God, in His very essence is love.
What that means is… everything that God does… comes out of the reality or the essence of who He is.
One author said it like this… Even God’s wrath and discipline are firmly centered in… His love for you and humanity.
As a parent you might get that… Some of the most loving things we do as parents is direct our kids in ways that don’t always feel like love… I hate that part of parenting… but I love my kids enough to be that guy.
One of the reasons we have a hard time seeing God’s love through wrath and discipline is that our cultural view is completely broken.
If we came up with a definition that sort of encompasses what it means to love someone in our culture… what would it be? Could we say it in church?
I could have things like… Sex, not disagreeing with them, not disagreeing with what they do, enabling even unhelathy behavior…
What I came to is sort of self centered… make me happy in the moment kind of a thing… it's dangerously affirming or enabling.
It reminds me of what a pastor friend of mine shared with me a long time ago…
… The world says… you do you… you be you…
And the message of Christianity is… you die to you
One author says it like this…
Love is seeking what is truly best for another at your own expense.
Real love will always involve self sacrifice… giving for yourself… for what is truly right and good for another… NOT just making them happy… being seeking God’s best for them.
1 Cor 13 is one of the best passages in all of scripture where God talks about the heart… his heart behind what love really is…
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
(NLT)
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
He goes on to say… 13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
It’s so easy… to get caught up in the counterfeit nature of it all… were we give and receive it in ways that may feel good in the moment… that may encourage people for the moment…
Or where we are listening to all the wrong voices and paying attention to the wrong things… where we measure our life… our value by the wrong standard… that will always make you feel like you're not enough… feeling completely shipwrecked and worthless…
It’s one of the ways that I believe… Satan has been incredibly successful… if you get people to question their value… if he can get them to the place where people feel like they have to earn it in the eyes of God or in the eyes of men… the list of things that people will give up… compromise on… is not small.
And it is why God goes so far out of His way… to express His love over you.
Just this passage alone… do you hear it?
It is so important… that you understand… believe… and live in God’s unthinkable love over you…
You are intentionally created… intimately known… and perfectly loved by the God who created it all…
The Bible is God’s self revelation to humanity… it reveals those things God wants you to know… and God has left nothing undone… It’s literally like God was thinking… how in the world could I show them how much I care…
It’s literally EVERYWHERE. You cannot read the bible and come to any other conclusion…
Just some examples…
Romans 8 says that
God is for you
… Do you believe that? Not in the cultural sense… but that God truly aches for, fights for, disciplines toward what is truly and honestly best for you? No matter where you are, what you're struggling with, where you’ve been, right now… as we sit here… God is actively FOR you…
God formed you… Ps 139… talks about the sort of care… and detail that God put in your existence…
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
(NLT)
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
Do you hear the intentionality… in the way that God formed you… meticulously knit you together… wonderfully and perfectly made… God placed a unique part of his very image in you… the image of the Father… it's a way that you reflect the reality of God to the world around you…
It says that before you saw the light of day… God knew all of your days… and it says that we are on God’s heart and in God’s mind… HE thinks about you. There is nothing that God doesn't know about you.
In fact… Ephesians 2:10 says… we are God’s masterpiece… of all creation… There is something special about the relationship that God has with us.
Luke 15 illustrates how God is like a shepherd who’d step away from the 99 to find the one that wandered off… it's a statement of God’s pursuit of you…
God pursues you
sometimes we don’t see until after we draw near to God… but I look back at my life before Jesus and I was blown away at the ways God pursued me… even before I knew Him… and it talks about the party that's thrown when even one comes home. You are the sheep that He chases.
And John says that there isn’t anything that expresses God’s love for you more clearly… and perfectly than His sending His only son, Jesus… to deal with sin.
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
(NLT)
8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
God didn’t just send Jesus… but sent Him while we were still sinning… still rebelling… still far from Him. It’s the greatest statement that the world has or will ever know about what love is… and the value that you personally hold…
Jesus on the cross is the greatest statement that the world has or will ever know about what love is and the value that you personally hold.
One author said it like this… No-one who has been to the cross and seen God’s immeasurable and unmerited love displayed there can go back to a life of selfishness.
God has held nothing back… God wants you to know that You were intentionally created, you are intimately known, and you are perfectly loved.
If knowing where love comes from… what it is… and that you are the target of God’s crazy love… doesn't change the way we…
See Him
See yourself
How we spend our time and resources
How we see and do relationship
We are missing it. We aren’t seeing it clearly.
God’s love is revolutionary in us… and in the world around us.
And that's why John says what He does…
That God loved us first… and that His love is brought to full expression in us… and that those who live in God live in love.
Its the other major reason we need to step back and really step into… and embrace God’s love over you… not only does it…
reflect the reality of God’s presence in your life (never more like Jesus than when we love well)…
grow as we live in God…
but our ability to love others well is connected to our willingness to wrestle with and understand God's love over us.
We cannot give away that which you do not possess.
Living in… wrestling with God’s love is the starting place for loving others well.
We can never contain or exhaust God’s love and when it overflows out of our hearts and minds it begins to flow into the lives of those around us.
Do you want to be a better husband… put Jesus first and wrestle with it.
Wife… parents… son/daughter… neighbor… HUMAN…
The truth is, those who follow Jesus… love others like Jesus.
His love makes a difference… in us… and through us.
Jesus doesn’t just love the pretty, the educated, the put together… The bible is absolutely full of moments where you see God’s great love changing the lives of those who are hurting, lost and alone.
There is something about loving well… that silences the critics, that heals the hurts, that brings unity, that encourages the heart, that restores the soul… and that honors Jesus.