Love is the mission - a sermon by Adrian Warnock
Audio available at :-
http://www.adrian.warnock.info/2005/08/love-is-our-mission-sermon-by-adrian.htm
Its such a priviledge standing up here being overwhelmed by your love, by Gods love.
Many people will never know the love we all feel in this place.
Many of us know what it is to be unloved
Many go thru life only knowing hate
Some of us, like me, didn’t have too many friends at school.
Some of us, like me were bullied.
Some of us wept into our pillows and cried out in desperation "Somebody love me"
Even some of you who would never let it show outside are living lives of quiet desperation as you feel unloved.
We need acceptance. We need care We need love. But the thing is we dont know what love is. We dont always realise love is right here reaching out to us.
Love is here Love is in this place.
This morning, if youre looking for love you came to the right place.
But will you know it when it hits you in the face?
Did you realise you walked thru a wall of love as you walked into this cinema today.
Did you feel the love? Did somebody hug you? Did somebody greet you?
Did somebody ask you how you are?
Did some of you live all week for this?
Did some of you guests go your whole life to feel so much love in one place?
Love is in this place because God loves jubilee
VISITORS SAY-
“Feel like I’m coming home"
"Its a family"
Sometimes we dont recognise it when people are trying to love us- most parents love their kids. They just dont always FEEL love, and because they think love is feeling they dont know how to show their love to their kids.
Love can still be there when you are angry with someone. Love is the choice you make to forgive. Love is the faithfulness. Love is what we give.
What is love?
One of the biggest errors of our time is the belief that love is primarily
an emotion- reflected in dictionary
Love is about so much more than that- it is a choice that values something or someone other than ourselves at least as highly as ourselves or preferably more so.
It is a decision to care for and be kind to another come what may.
"love impels the one loving to deny self for the benefit of the one loved"
People would die for the love of their country, because they believe their country was more important than them. Every time we make a choice to put ourselves out for another we demonstrate love.
Where does it come from?
1 Jn 3.16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we
ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
1 Jn 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves
has been born of God and knows God. 8Anyone who does not love does not
know God, because God is love. 9In 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. 10In 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. 11Beloved,
if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever
seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is
perfected in us.13By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent
his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is
the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16So we have come to
know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever
abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this is love
perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment,
because as he is so also are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love,
but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and
whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19We love because he first
loved us. (1 Jn 4)
True love is seen in Jesus death- it is the definition- laying down our lives- makes cooking a meal for a new family seem small doesn’t it? Is it so hart to call up someone? To visit them? To spend some of our precious time on them.
God is love- he has been for eternity
He takes the initiative in our individual salvation- we didn’t choose him, he chose us
We hated him. He loved us. We sinned against him. He poured out his grace on us. He took our punishment- that’s what propitiation means.
How can we learn to love?
Love poured out saves us
The Spirit poured out convinces us of our salvation and of Gods love for us, this results in an overflow of that love for others.
Love is a mark of salvation
Love comes from God
Love saves us from ourselves- our selfishness and our fear
Love is our response to Gods love for us
Love is our mission. Its not task or people our task IS people
’Love for God and ones neighbour constitutes the sum of Gods requirements for the Christian. The man who loves needs no counselling. Love cements relationships between God and man and man and man. While love attracts, fear repels. When love gives, lust grabs. What love builds, hatred destroys. With love communication flourishes; with resentment it withers. Love is the ultimate answer to all the problems of living with which the Christian counsellor deals. Love therefore is the goal’ Jay Adams
Who should we love?
What or who we love is crucial- ´You love life and we love death´ Al Quaeda
Should we love only those who love us? NO- don’t wait for others to love us.—No need as SOMEONE ALREADY DID-
Love that overflows like a fountain vs stagnant love like a dead pond
Red sea vs Sea of Galilee
"Freely you have received freely give"
Take the initiative to love
We should of course love the world, but we should start with the church- it is our love for each other that will let the world know.
Start with one person in the church you can learn to love like Christ has already loved you.
Newfrontiers "a family of churches together on a mission"
Loving Christians in an inclusive outreaching way builds mission.
John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another:
just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all
people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one
another."
The above words have two application- for the visitor if real love is here this is a real church. To each of our hearts- we cannot know we are saved unless God has so poured out his love on our hearts that our love overflows for a body of Christians we are committed to.
1 Jn 5:13. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son
of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
1 Cor 13
