Now What? Love

This week in the student ministry we continued in our “Now What?” series.  Our focus was love out of the text 1 John 4:7 -12 and Matthew 22:34 – 40.  We led off the night with Mandy telling her journey of trying to find unconditional love and how it was shown to her in college by many people which opened her up to God’s love.  It was moving and great for the student to hear from others not just my stories.  I then talked about how we can’t love people as we should without God.  I described how I loved pre-Jesus which was selfish and conditional, and then post-Jesus which was more selfless and unconditional because of God’s love for me.   

Secondly, God is love.  1 John 4:8 – 10 describe God’s love revealed in sending his son Jesus that we might have life in him, and how he sent Jesus as the substitute for our sin and mistakes even before we loved him.  This is unconditional love, a love that can’t be earned.  I spoke briefly about those who use the excuse “I am not good enough for God’s love, or don’t deserve it.”  I pointed out that I was not worthy of God’s love and really no one is, but God gives it to us graciously.   

Third, once we have experienced the love of the living true God through Jesus, can we keep this love to ourselves?  No we can’t.  God calls us to love one another because we have experienced unconditional love from him so we must love others unconditionally.  If we love the way God loves us even though no one has seen God, they will see God in us.  When they do, they will ask questions about why we love the way we do and then we get to share the experience of God’s love in our life through Jesus hopefully over time bringing this person to belief.   

We don’t save people; Jesus does yet he calls us to love and spread his message.  He let’s us be apart of saving the world with him.  This is an unbelievable honor.  What is holing us back from loving others the way God does us?  I pray you can breakthrough those barriers with Jesus help because when we live out the love of God in this world, people will be saved, and God will bless our church.  First, we must examine ourselves and make sure we have our priorities in line with God’s in order to live for him.