Next Step Love - how?

Review - Next Step Love

A man walks into church on May 7th, 2011. He has some great coffee, chats with wonderful people, sings a few songs and walks away with one phrase from the sermon echoing in his head.

Next step love is a step out of our comfort zone and into risky territory. (last sermon's big idea)

He thinks to himself, that is brilliant! Love is a fruit of the Spirit, I should be showing more love. Next step love. He feels a little guilty for not loving more, loving better, extending that love out beyond those who already love him in return. He feels guilty, so he vows he is going to do better. He is going to show some Christian maturity if it kills him!

For the next two weeks, every time he saw a homeless person, he gave them $5 and said God bless you. Every day at work he thought of the person he disliked the most and talked with them and ate lunch with them.

For two weeks, he put himself in discomfort, he entered risky territory every chance he got. And at the end of two weeks he found himself at church again, completely drained and exhausted. He was emotionally drained from spending all his time with needy, unthankful and mean people. He was broke because he gave all his cash to people on street corners and wondered just what they'd spent it on. But at least he had earned a little fruit of the spirit.

If that man is here among us today, I have to tell you, STOP! You are doing a lot of great things for some not so great reasons. Last time was about what the love as a fruit of the Spirit is, so we can recognize it when we see it. Next step love is a step out of our comfort zone and into risky territory.

This week is about how we get that fruit in our lives.

Intro

Who among us isn't trying to love others more and better? We see what love can be... we want to go to there. We want to produce that fruit and sometimes, we really try. We strain... I'm a tree... if I can just pop out another piece of fruit... We strain, and we try, and we fake it... and with all that effort, we are going to produce something, but it's not going to be fruit!

The answer is not feeling guilty because we are not already loving more and loving further. The answer is not trying harder.

Many Christians are trying to live out of who they think they should become. Wearing a mask until, we hope, it becomes the real thing.

We put the cart before the horse. Or, in more modern parlayance, we put the trailer before the semi.

Do A Little Less - Be A Little More

Christian living is more about being than about doing

I said that two week ago, and I am still thinking it's true this week.

We need to do a little less and be a little more.

Paul is writing precisely against those that were guilting the Galatians into following a set of rules a set of commandments, in order to achieve maturity, status, to earn grace. In their case, it was circumcision. People had come and told them that they had to be circumcised to be Christ-followers, to be real, mature believers in God. And Paul writes, with a note of frustration:

Galatians 5: 1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. 2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.

Yet it is possible to take the list of fruit of the Spirit that Paul gives in this message freedom and shape a new yoke of slavery. To be a mature Christian I must force myself into this expression and definition of love, I must fill my quota of peace, and start working down the list: I am checking off peace, patience, kindness. Consider the irony!

No, Paul says, we freed by grace from that kind of earning. We are free in Christ from any enslaving law. It is a freedom in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, not a freedom to just gratify the flesh, so we will know we are truly living free in Christ when we start seeing these fruit in our lives.

Let's look again at the passage, Galatians 5

Galatians 5:16-18

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Galatians 5:19-25

19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Notice, again, that the comparison is between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. Works are what I do, directly, I caused something to happen. When we set up all the chairs in here, that was work. Fruit is a more indirect result of activity. You all came in and sat down. That is a fruit of our work setting up all the chairs, but it didn't make you sit in them. What is more, this is fruit of the Holy Spirit exhibited in our lives. So while we may be involved, the most direct action, the most direct owner, the one we attribute that fruit to is the Holy Spirit, not even us.

Yet, we too often confuse works with fruit and try to systematically produce this list in our lives.

Walk with the Spirit

On the other hand, grace is opposed to earning not effort. Grace is opposed to earning not effort. Paul is not telling us to sit on our backsides and wait for the Holy Spirit to deliver a nice plate of fruit, extra love on the side. Laziness or passivity was not a major feature in the early church, among the apostles, and certainly not with Paul.

There is an active component. We see that active component in the verses all around this list of fruit.

16. Walk by the Spirit

18. Led by the Spirit

25. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

That fruit appears as we walk by, and keep in step with, the Spirit of God

If we extend the metaphor a bit, do trees really produce fruit without any effort? Or are they working to extend their roots and branches, draw up water and life from the soil, soaking in the sun? Turning carbon-dioxide into oxygen.

There is some active element. We are told to walk with and by the Spirit. We are trees, bearing the Spirit's fruit, but we are also walking with the Spirit. You know what we are? We are Ents!

Nerd moment.

Walking with the Spirit, that is the With-God life.

So, does the tension between passive laziness and legalism sound familiar?

Spiritual disciplines? Yes. We are learning those, practicing those, and that is exactly learning to walk with the Spirit. Prayer, worship, silence and solitude, Scripture reading and study... right on track.

But if we are talking about love, in particular... and we are, what does it mean to Walk with the Spirit in the context of love?

Next Steps in Love

Last week we said Next step love is a step out of our comfort zone and into risky territory.

I'll stand by that. That is the fruit we are looking for. But if we aren't going to confuse fruit with works, we are looking for that love to come out of our walk with or following of the Holy Spirit. So are there next steps in our walk with the Holy Spirit that lead to this kind of love?

I believe there are.

We love as we are loved

By God

1 John 4:19 says "We love because he first loved us." And throughout that chapter John writes about how God is love and therefore, because He is love and He has loved us, and we are in Him, so then we learn to love each other. But it starts with God's love, and we have to understand, at the deepest and ever-deepening levels that God loves us.

God loves you more than what you know, understand or experience right now. God knows you better than you know yourself: good bad and ugly, yet he loves you profoundly, perfectly and he loves you forever.

As we study about, reflect on, hear about, experience and discover the love of God, we learn to love. We love because he first loved us. In worship we discover and experience that. In prayer, in answered prayer, we discover and experience that. In silence and solitude and in every page of Scripture we hear this message "GOD LOVES YOU!" And all of these are part of walking with the Holy Spirit. By no accident, these are all also called Spiritual Disciplines.

As we hear and understand that, we learn to love. We begin to see and know God's heart for us and that that love extends to everyone around us. We begin to catch that love for others. We begin to bear next step love as a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

By Others

But sometimes, it is hard to hear that message. God is invisible, harder to see and understand than what is right in front of me. Well there is another way we walk with the Holy Spirit and learn to love. When we walk with the Holy Spirit, we never walk alone, but we are called into community. And we learn to love by being loved by the people of God. That's you and me.

I said last week that we are doing really well at loving and supporting each other. And we are, and we will continue to take next steps in that and grow in that. And as we do that, we are showing the love of God. The Holy Spirit is working within and through us to produce that next step love. We are then a launching platform, a diving board, a home base, an orchard that is growing trees just filled with fruit.

Or we can be.

One quick thought. I said that there are next steps we can take even though we are doing great at loving each other, and here is one. This is the one I really have to work at, and maybe many of you do as well.

By default, we are the givers, we are the servers, we are the ones with things to give and share. We are loving others, but perhaps we find it more difficult to receive love.

Again, Paul connects this idea of love back to the Great Commandment, he quotes it in Galatians 5:14, and it is right after the Great Commandments in Luke that Jesus launches into the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus was talking to a male Jew and the main character of his story was a male Jew. As this guy listened to the story, who do you think he identified with? Who did he place himself as in the story?

I don't want to make too much of this. Jesus' main point is that we put limits on love, limits on who our neighbor is, and, I'll say it again, love goes beyond that, out of our comfort zone, into risky territory!

But Jesus' story could have been about how a Jewish man stopped and helped a poor Samaritan, being a good neighbor to him. How much more difficult, though, to be the one receiving love from someone you thought below you on the moral or religious food chain.

Can we learn to receive love? Are we the good Samaritan or can we admit to being, at times, the wounded Jew and receive love even from one we thought beneath us, less godly, less spiritual.

I think God teaches us love in particular as we are loved by those around us. and to love us truly, they have to know us truly, which means we have to start being a little vulnerable about who we really are. All of have hidden fears, worries, desires and hopes... secret sins and secret shames.

As we are vulnerable with each other, with those we love and trust, as we let others know our deepest, sometimes-ugly selves, and we experience true love and forgiveness, we learn how to love. It is risky, it is uncomfortable and difficult to allow others to know, truly love and serve us, but it is walking with the Spirit into next step love.

We love as we are called

So, we love as we are loved, and we receive the love of God and the love of others. This is a huge part of walking with the Spirit. It is no mistake that commentators call love the chief of the fruit of the Spirit, that Paul mentions it four times just in this chapter, or that Jesus called it the greatest of commandments. As we receive love, we are called into love.

I suspect many of us have had the first bud of next step love. We have had a glimpse of God' s heart for an enemy, for hurting and hard-to-love people. We have heard a quiet call to step out of our comfort zone and into risky territory. It was a quiet nudge, but this was not the guilt-induced straining attempting to manufacture fruit of the Spirit. This was a little tug of the Holy Spirit...

Come on, follow me, step over here and show God's love to persistently annoying guy at work. A little shift in our heart where we want to feed the hungry, serve the poor, comfort the bereaved, not because we feel guilty because we know that God loves them as much as He loves us... we get the glimpse within us of God's heart for them...

As we begin to understand more how much God loves us... as we allow Him to love us completely, as we open up and receive the love of others around us... as we are truly known and truly loved... we receive more and more of these little pulls and nudges.

And sometimes we quash it! Our temptation will always be to wait it out. It will pass like bad indigestion. A momentary fancy. A naive overly-optimistic fancy. Unrealistic. Unpractical. Risky! Out of our comfort zone! Out of the known, and into the scary other outer-world. It is a step out of our comfort zone into risky territory. But when the Holy Spirit calls, whatever voice it is that holds us back needs to be crucified! Is crucified and needs to stay dead and stay silent!

Just because it is the call of the Holy Spirit does not mean it is going to be easy. Remember, grace is opposed to earning, not effort.

As we come to know the love of God

and as we come to receive the love of others

we are called into Next Step love, out of our comfort zone and into risky territory.

Application

So a man walks into church May 21, 2011. He hears that as we come to know the love of God and we receive the love of others, we are called into next step love, out of our comfort zone and into risky territory. He hears that, and he goes home asking himself, does God really love me? And as he prays, as he reads the Word, as he meets Christ in large and small ways, he learns how radically God loves him. And as he comes week after week to Next Step Church, he sees the love of God through Bryan, through Katie, through Anna and each person he talks to. As he walks, in this way, with the Holy Spirit, he considers that annoying guy, Todd, who he forced himself to eat lunch with a few times last week. As much as God loves me, he loves Todd that much too. God must be amazing, because Todd is annoying!

But Todd's name keeps cropping up in his prayers, so he prays for him. He has been praying for him, so he starts asking Todd about his life and how things are going. And one day, he realizes, that he is showing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control with Todd.

So far from a yoke of slavery. So far from a set of rules. So far from feeling guilty about not showing more love and more love to more people.

As we come to know the love of God

and as we come to receive the love of others

we are called into Next Step love, out of our comfort zone and into risky territory.

May we answer that call.

Let us know your love God, let us walk with You and answer your calling Holy Spirit, and let us brim with love as a fruit of our walk with You.