The Power to Love Dr. Steve Walker

Transcription

1 April 19, 2015 The Power to Love Dr. Steve Walker Before we jump into God's Word all the way, I want to speak to the women of the church just for a minute. Our Simply Better weekend is now here, starting this coming Friday and Saturday morning. It's an annual event that is just an amazing time of encouragement, laughter, joy, and challenge for you. I know a lot of you have been kind of coming and going with spring breaks and vacations, and you might not have had a chance to sign up. Today is the absolute last day to sign up and register for that weekend next week. It's just Friday night and Saturday morning. You have to do it online, so go home and do that today, but don't miss out. Tomorrow is too late. There are already several hundred of you signed up, and we're going to cut that off as of tonight. So there you have it, ladies. Please don't miss that if you don't have to. Let's get our Bibles open to 1 Peter, chapter 1. Let me ask you if you have ever known a Christian who is really hard for you to love. Have you ever known a brother or sister in Christ like that? I'm talking about someone who's just weird. They're just bothersome. You just don't relate at all. I'm also talking about the Christian who you just really, really don't like. Whatever it is they've done, whatever it is they've said, however it is they have lived their life, it's virtually impossible for you to love that person. This morning, I want us to see that God wants you and me to love each other in ways that are humanly impossible. I want us to listen to the apostle Peter describe for us where the power to love like this comes from. I want us to realize that the one who commands us to love one another knows we can't do it. We can't. So let's find out why loving each other is so important to God, and then let's see how we can actually pull it off. The apostle Peter is going to help us discover those things today. If you're new, we're working our way through books of the Bible. We're in 1 Peter. We go through, verse by verse. We're in chapter 1, verse 22, so if your Bibles are there, let's stand for the reading of God's Word. We left off in verse 21 last week, so we'll pick it up in verse 22 today. Canyon Hills Community Church 1

2 "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for 'All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.' And this word is the good news that was preached to you." God in heaven, we just ask in the name of your Son and in the power of your Holy Spirit, would you teach us today? Show us, God, how in the world we can love each other the way Peter is calling us to do that today. God, I confess that we are way harder on each other than we need to be and should be sometimes. I confess, God, we're way more judgmental of one another, and I pray you would show us, convict us, and change us today into people who love each other like you call us to. Help us to know what that means and what it looks like, God. We give you this time. In Christ's name, amen. I'm going to actually start near the end of the passage, and then I'm going to go from there to the beginning of the passage, and then we're going to end in the middle of the passage, where we're commanded to love each other. As I read this and studied this, I see the command to love, in the middle, is bookended with where the power to pull it off comes from. I want to look at these two sources of power that you and I have that enable us to actually love each other like Peter is calling us to, there in the middle of the passage. 1. Being born again provides the power of permanent hope. Without this kind of hope, it's impossible to love each other like this. We see this in verse 23, where he says, " since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable " There's the permanence of the hope we have. In verse 3, if you get your eyes back up there where we were several weeks ago, Peter tells us "According to his [God's] great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead " Peter loves the picture of Christianity, or being a Christian, as being born again. It was how Jesus described it to Nicodemus in John, chapter 3. Do you remember that? Peter loved that description, that metaphor of what it means to be a Christian. It means to be born again. Whenever Peter talks about being born again, he always connects hope to it, and he does it again, first, in verse 3. He says, " he has caused us to be born again to a living hope " Then, if you look at verse 21, right above where we started today, he says, " who through him [Jesus] are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God." Then in verse 23, just a half a sentence later, he's talking about being born again. Born again and hope always go together. I think, at the very least, Peter is saying that at the essence of who we Canyon Hills Community Church 2

3 are as born-again people is that we relentlessly hope in what God can do rather than in what we can do. Are you with me still? This relentless hope, this permanent hope we have, is a result of being born again, hoping in what God can accomplish, not what we can accomplish. Nowhere in the Christian life is this more needed than in the area of you and me loving each other. We can't do it. I mean, do some of you know how hard you are to love? Do you know that? Because I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking of all the people who might be hard for you to love, but you never think you might be that person who is hard to love. I know I don't think that way. I mean, I'm loveable. Did you see me up there? That's our tendency. We just think we're okay. Everybody loves us. I mean, we're not that annoying. Yet we can be. I can be. We can't do it, and so Peter sets up the first source of power to love each other by teaching us that the seed that caused us to be born again is not perishable, but imperishable. Look at it again. Verse 23: " since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable " The metaphor of a born again-causing seed, here in 1 Peter 1, is clarified later in the sentence when he says, " through the living and abiding word of God " Later in the same verse (verse 23), the seed is the Word of God. At the end of the passage, we read, at the end of verse 25, the seed is the born again-causing " good news that was preached to you." So what's the point? The point is that our being born again lasts because God's seed, God's Word, lasts. It will stand as long as God stands. Peter calls this imperishable seed, this Word, this good news, imperishable. Then he clarifies. It's living and abiding. It's synonymous. This imperishable seed that causes you and me to be born again, the Word, the good news, is living and abiding. In fact, it doesn't die, and it's actually inside of us. Peter resorts to the Old Testament in Isaiah, chapter 40. If you look at verse 24, he quotes Isaiah, chapter 40. He says, "All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever." Again, the whole point is the amazing hope we live with. It's nothing like the glory of flowers or grass. All of that withers. All of that falls, but when you and I stake our forgiveness and our eternity to the good news, to the seed, to the Word of God that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, conquering my sin and my death and your sin and your death When we do that, we are promised that we will live forever. My life and my hope, your life and your hope, are now imperishable. Therefore, as Paul wrote in Romans 10, those who put their hope in him will never be put to shame as the result. This is the power of permanent hope. Here's how it relates to loving each other. It's the hope that God's love for us will never end, ever. God loves you with an imperishable, unending, unfailing, and unconditional love. That's the permanent hope we have because we're born again. We will Canyon Hills Community Church 3

4 never, ever again know what it feels like to be unloved or unlovable. If you are born again, you have the permanent hope of being permanently loved by God forever. That's where Peter wants us to see our source of strength and power to love each other the way he's going to call us to love each other. Now let that sink in for a moment. Nothing in this life can possibly happen to mark you or make you unloved or unlovable in the eyes of God. Nothing, no matter what it is, no matter what failure, what trial, what tragedy comes your way None of that makes you unlovable or unloved. Our power to love comes from the permanent hope of being permanently loved by God himself. So we love each other, and our love for one another is not attached to the stupid things in this world. For instance, what's in the mirror when we look at it It's not attached to what we see on the scale when we stand on it. It's not attached to how much we have in the bank or what we have parked in the garage. It's not attached to what we have hanging in the closet or what's on our ring finger. That is not what determines our lovability, and that's not what determines whether or not we love each other, none of that. That's worldly stuff. Our power to love one another in a unique and supernatural way comes from knowing that we are permanently loved by God. Amen? It has to begin there. If you are not convinced of how much God loves you, it's going to be really hard for you to love others, especially when they're not so lovable. 2. Being born again provides the power of purifying faith. This second source of power we get from this passage is now in verse 22. Not just permanent hope, but a purifying faith. This is the second source of power to love each other the way God wants us to. If the first source of power had everything to do with what God puts into us (a permanent hope), this source of power has everything to do with what God takes out of us. Look at verse 22. "Having purified " That's taking out. That's removing. "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth " Now I want to make sure we don't make the mistake of thinking Peter is teaching you and me that we have the power, somehow, to purify our own souls from sin. That's not what he's saying here, not at all. Solomon addressed that in Proverbs, chapter 20, when he asked the question, "Who can say, 'I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin'?" It's a rhetorical question. The answer is so obviously, "No one can say that," that Solomon doesn't even dignify the question with an answer, in Proverbs, chapter 20. Nobody can cleanse their own heart and make themselves pure. When Peter says here, in verse 22, "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth " he's referring to the purifying of our souls we experience through the precious blood of God's Son, who was without sin. He was pure and without sin, and he sacrificed his life and shed his own sinless blood on the cross for us that we may find forgiveness and eternal life. So the truth to which we are obedient here, in verse 22, is the same as the seed in verse 23 and it's the same as the living and abiding Word, right below that, and it's the same as the good news Canyon Hills Community Church 4

5 that was preached to you in verse 25. All of that equates to the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the truth. That is the seed. That is the Word. That is the good news, that Jesus died and rose from the dead. We're still celebrating Easter, aren't we? That's what we're doing today. That is the imperishable seed that gives you a permanent hope and has the power to purify your souls. Look at verse 3. Let's go back to verse 3. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope " How? " through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead " Look at verse 21. Again, Peter is consistent. He's not changing his mind here. " who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory " There you have it. The seed, the Word, the living and abiding Word, the good news preached is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Peter says, in verse 22, our souls have been purified by obedience to that truth. What is our obedience? It's our faith. Peter knows the gospel demands a response. It's one thing to just say, "Oh yeah, I've heard about Jesus. I believe he did all that," but that's not the response Scripture demands. Do you remember when Peter preached the first good news gospel message after the resurrection of Jesus? He preaches this sermon and the people hearing it say, "Whoa, Peter. Hold on here. We understand. What do we do with this?" Peter says, "I'll tell you what to do. Believe. Repent and be baptized, every one of you." A response is necessary to news like this, that a man died on the cross, a perfectly sinless man willingly, by being the Son of God, offering himself as a sacrifice on our behalf, and he doesn't stay dead. He rises from the dead. That demands a reaction. That demands a response. Peter says, "You've purified your souls by responding through faith or obedience to this truth. Through our faith in Jesus, our hearts are purified from putting our faith in the futile and perishable ways of the world. Look at verse 18. Look what we're saved from. " knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers " That's what we've been saved and purified from: the futile ways of the world. Look up at verse 14. "As obedient children " There's our faith. " do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance " That's what being born again has the power to purify out of our hearts and souls. It's the power to save us and cleanse us from the futility of living for the love-killing, perishable flowers and grass of the world, things like money, fame, commitment-less sex, lust, our own leisure, comfort, or conveniences, living for revenge, selfishness, or the approval of others. We are saved. We are cleansed from that by the power of being born again, because all of that, without fail, always withers and fades. Without a purifying faith, it is impossible for us to resist these love-draining temptations of the world. So there you have it, the two bookends of power for those who are born again. If there's going to be any love amongst us at Canyon Hills, or any church, for that matter, these two things have to be our personal experience. We have to be born again with the power of a permanent hope that Canyon Hills Community Church 5

6 God loves us and will never stop loving us, and we have to be born again with the power of a purifying faith. It dawned on me this week that these are the two things that supply our motivation for almost everything we do. It supplies our motivation for being in and staying in a Life Group. We make a big deal out of being in intentional relationships and friendships with other Christians that matter. Because of these two sources of power, we actually stay in a Life Group, even when there's a person or people in the Life Group who drive us crazy. Right? I know there's nobody in your Life Group like that. They're all in my Life Group. I'll just take that blame right here. But just in case someone is in your Life Group who is really hard for you to love, you're motivated by the permanent hope you have and the purifying faith you have to stay in it and love each other, even when it's hard to do. It's what motivates us to go on a Global Encounter Trip, where we take two weeks of vacation time and we go on the other side of the world with a team of fellow believers and we encourage Christians in some other country and our partners over there serving the Lord, and we bring the good news with us. That's what motivates us: a permanent hope and a purifying faith. It's what moves us. It's what motivates us to serve in the nursery and the preschool, even though we don't even have kids that age, or to volunteer with all of our special needs kids who come here on Sunday mornings and to do one-on-one with them back with the children's program during one of our services. What else could possibly motivate us to do that, except that we have a permanent hope and a purifying faith? Amen? 3. Being born again means we have the power to love each other. No excuses, no exceptions. None are given. None are allowed. Peter calls us to a kind of love the unbeliever has no power to give and the unbeliever has no hope of ever receiving unless they are born again. He gives us two expressions of born-again love here. In verse 22, he says, "Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love " We must love each other sincerely. That is a word that basically means without hypocrisy. We have to love each other without being hypocrites, and that alone should confirm why we need to be born again in order to love each other like this. It's because most of us, I think, are way more natural at being less authentic and more two-faced. That's the natural part of us. That's what we would normally be drawn to if we weren't born again. The apostle Paul takes a little bit more time and unpacks what this kind of unhypocritical love actually looks like. I want you to keep a place in 1 Peter, but turn back to Romans, chapter 12. Paul is teaching, in Romans 12, the Christians in the church at Rome how to love each other, what it looks like, and he unpacks it pretty well. We'll just look at it quickly, but I wanted you to get a feel for why it needs divine intervention, why we need the source of power of permanent hope and soul-purifying faith. Canyon Hills Community Church 6

7 In Romans, chapter 12, starting in verse 9, he says, "Let love be genuine." It's the same word, the same idea as 1 Peter: sincere, genuine. "Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." In other words, look at others and consider others as more important than yourself. Scoot down to verse 14. "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony [unity] with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." Church, everything Paul just wrote right there is the polar opposite of the way we would tend to respond in a worldly way. Unity, peace, weeping with those who weep, celebrating with those who celebrate, considering others more important than ourselves, not wanting to repay and get revenge when someone hurts us or lets us down All of that is supernatural, sincere, nonhypocritical love. Do you want to know what really messes with that kind of love? It's our sin. That's what messes it up. That's why we so desperately need the power of purifying faith and permanent hope. You see, let me confess to you. The old me doesn't want to love all that much. The me before being born again wasn't interested. Maybe if there was something in it for me, I might be interested in it, but I certainly wouldn't have had a whole lot of interest in loving anyone if they were the slightest bit unlovable. In the old me, I would be the one who would divinely determine whether or not you're lovable. You're probably thinking, "Man, you were rotten before you got saved." I was, but that kind of tendency is natural without the power of being born again. I certainly saw it in my life. If anyone caused me pain, if someone I loved betrayed me or let me down, you know, the old me would say, "Never again. I'm done. You're out of my life. There is no hope of me ever wanting, attempting, or needing to show you any love, no matter what." See, as a Christian, if this is still my attitude, it would be the peak of my hypocrisy. It would be the peak, the pinnacle of my insincerity in calling myself a Christian, knowing that when God sent Jesus to die for me, I was so unlovable, knowing there was nothing in it for God, and now knowing that when I sin against God, he doesn't stop loving me If those were the ways I was still responding to my brothers and sisters in Christ, there's a whole lot of hypocrisy there, but praise God, that's the old me. He has put a hope in me that lets me believe and trust in his commands, that they are good for me and when I obey and trust his commands, he is glorified. So loving each other without hypocrisy means we don't attach strings to our love. We love each other because we are loved by God. Anything different than that would be sheer hypocrisy. Canyon Hills Community Church 7

8 Let me show you that in Scripture. There is a place to see it. It's in 1 John. I want you to see chapter 4. Pick it up in verse 7. "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." So now he's talking about the hypocrisy here. If you don't love, you can't say you know God. If you say you know God, you have to love. You have to love each other. "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." There's our motivation. God loves us, and loved us first. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." I want you to look at verse 12. Peter declares a truth here. He says no one has ever seen God, but then he says if we're loving each other, God is in us, and guess what. They see God in us through the way you and I love each other. That is how God puts himself on display in our world. It starts and initiates with you and me loving each other. How else is the world supposed to see what God is like? You take that all the way down to your family. That's how our children and our grandkids see what God is like. They watch you love your spouse, or they watch you love and serve other believers. We must love each other sincerely, without hypocrisy. Yet he takes it a step further in 1 Peter and he says not only with a sincere brotherly love, but we're to " love one another earnestly from a pure heart " We must love each other earnestly. That's a cool word. It means deeply or intensely. It means continually, through thick and thin. Sometimes you have to push through in that kind of love. Do you remember when they asked Jesus, "Jesus, would you just tell us what commandment is most important?" and Jesus said, "That's easy. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength"? That's the first and foremost goal of every born-again person. Love God with all you have. Now we read Peter as saying we have to love each other in the same way. I think most of us in this room get the loving God like that part. That makes sense. We need to love God. He's God, so we had better love him. Right? We need to love him. We want to love him like that. Yet Peter says, "Yeah, but we have to love each other in the same way." It's hard for us to attach this same priority and intensity to loving each other. So why is Peter so emphatic about it? I think the apostle John, once again, gives us great insight into why this is so critical for you and me to embrace today. Turn back to 1 John. I want to show you some places where John really lays it out. Chapter 2, verse 7: "Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. Canyon Hills Community Church 8

9 At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes." Why is it so crucial for you and me to love each other? It's because it's proof that we have been saved out of darkness and into the light of God's love. There's a second area in here that tells us why it's so important. Look at 1 John, chapter 3. Pick it up in verse 11. "For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." Now that's pretty intense. He's telling us here, "The kind of love we have for each other is a willingness to lay down our own lives for each other." That's serious. Then he kind of describes a little bit of what that looks like next, beginning in verse 17. "But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him " Really quick, go down to verse 23. "And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us." John just spent more than 10 verses saying loving each other is proof that we have been saved out of death into life, God's Spirit abides in us, and we are a part of the truth. We belong to the truth. What is the truth? Do you remember the truth, the seed, the Word, the good news? The truth is Jesus died for our sins and rose again to give us eternal life. The evidence of us being a part of that is loving each other. He wraps it up in chapter 4, beginning in verse 19. "We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." Canyon Hills Community Church 9

10 All right. So what does this look like? What does real-time Christian loving one another look like? Because here's the danger of what's going on in some of your minds right now. You're seeing all this about hating your brothers in what John is writing, and so this is what you're tempted to do: "I don't hate my brothers. I don't necessarily enjoy them. I don't fellowship with them. I don't hate them. I mean, I don't feel like murdering them." So what you're doing right now is already finding excuses and exceptions to not loving them. So let me give you some biblical ways this kind of love shows up so we don't leave here thinking, somehow, "This doesn't relate to any of us. It's all those people who hate people." No, not at all. I'm going to give you a pretty big list. Let me give you some ideas of what this kind of sincere and earnest love looks like. First of all, it means we endure being wronged meekly. We're going to mess this up. We're going to somehow offend each other, even in our desire to want to love one another. We need to endure that. We don't bail on loving each other every time someone disappoints us, lets us down, or discourages us. We are so judgmental of each other. You know, the non-christian world always accuses us of being judgmental of them. If they really knew us, they would see how judgmental we are with each other. That's what Peter, Jesus, and Paul are trying to get us to stop doing. We endure being wronged with meekness. Secondly, we renounce boasting and calling attention to ourselves. Listen. Christianity is all about God getting all the glory. It's way more about God than it is about us. Right? So when we love each other, we don't care who gets the credit. It's not about getting everyone to be impressed with us. It's about helping each other be more impressed with Jesus. Amen? That's what it means to love each other. It's not about trying to prove to each other that we have it all together, we've figured it out, we have our doctrine perfectly precise, or we didn't sin for the last two hours. It's all about Jesus. Thirdly, we spend time and energy supplying the needs of others without fretting over our own needs. We take care of each other. We do things like give courageously and generously to the Food Bank and to our Aid and Assistance fund because we know there are people amongst us who are hurting and needy. We may not know them personally, but we can help, and so we do. That's what loving each other looks like. Fourthly, we risk making necessary reproofs that are almost sure to be interpreted as something other than love. In other words, we risk speaking the truth in love to each other, even if it means they may judge us as being judgmental or holier-than-thou. We're so afraid of someone thinking we're holier-than-thou we just don't say anything. We ignore the obvious, and we have to stop doing that. That's not loving. Canyon Hills Community Church 10

11 Loving is coming alongside a Christian brother or sister, putting your arm around them, and saying, "Hey, I just want to talk to you about something. There's something I'm hearing. There's something that, I think if you knew how that sounded, if you knew what that looked like, you might want to know." That's speaking the truth in love to each other, and we do that taking the risk. Yet, do you know what? The opposite is true also. Fifthly, we receive reproofs without animosity and defensiveness. It goes both ways. When someone needs to come up to us and say, "Hey, come on man. I don't know if this is what you mean, but that sounds so prideful," we do in private, we do it lovingly, and we speak that way to each other. Sixthly, we cover over a multitude of sins and put away our list of grievances. We forgive, we let it go, we don't bring it up to the person, and we don't keep bringing it up to each other. We let it go and we let love cover over it. I'm not saying ignoring sin and pretending it's not happening. I'm saying when it's repented of and forgiveness has been asked, and we recognize it and call it what it is, then let's let it go. Let's quit holding it against each other. Seventhly, we rejoice when others prosper when we don't. I think this is when you know you're learning to love. This is costly. The price we pay to love each other like this means we're going to lose some of the cherished glory of the temporary flowers and grass of the world. Again, John writes in 1 John: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." We, who are born again through the Word of God and who hope in the Word of God, will endure forever. Today, church, I'm going to challenge you to decide that all the stuff we use as excuses and exceptions to loving our fellow brothers and sisters We need to decide that those excuses and exceptions are nothing less than self-condemning and proof that the love of God may not be in us. So would you do something with me right now? Let's not think this applies to someone who's not here today, but let's just let God apply it to our own hearts. Would you bow your heads, just for a minute? Would you just take the quiet time right now and just ask yourself if there is a brother or sister in Christ whom you have written off and chosen not to love? I'm not talking about that person who's in a sinful lifestyle and is unrepentant and is doing and saying things that are ungodly. I'm not talking about pretending none of that happened. I'm talking about just the person in your life who is just difficult to love. They may have even asked you for forgiveness already. Maybe it was something that happened or was said a long time ago and they don't even know they offended you. Canyon Hills Community Church 11

12 Is it time to say, "God, show me a way to start loving that person, slowly and surely, again"? Maybe it's about serving your brothers and sisters. When was the last time you volunteered to do anything for someone else just out of pure love, because of God's love for you? Is it time that you roll up your sleeves in God's family and say, "Hey, what can I do around here?" Maybe that's it for you. Take a moment and just talk to God. Heavenly Father, I just thank you in the name of Jesus that your Word doesn't let us off the hook. It keeps calling us to a deeper and deeper level of holiness and godliness. God, I pray in this area of love that there will be a tidal wave of commitment in this church, that we will love each other without hypocrisy and be a people who love each other sincerely, genuinely, and earnestly. God, I pray that the ultimate result will not just be that we know how to be loved and feel it, but that the world would see how you love. I pray, God, that the greatest result will be that you get the glory and people will want to know what the source of our power is, and we can joyfully tell them we are born again. God, work in us today. Use us in a mighty, powerful way. In Jesus' name, amen. Canyon Hills Community Church 12