Faithbase

Good afternoon. Thank you for showing up to my show. Thank you for being here. We appreciate everyone. Today I want to talk about love. You know, when you hear the word love, a lot of connotations come to people's mind. People say, I love this, I love that. I love my car, I love my house, I love my food, or this type of food I really love. I love this, I love that. You know, there's all these different sayings for love. But then you ask yourself, what is real love? There was a song in the 80s by Tina Turner, What's Love Got To Do With Me. There was another song by a rapper by the name of KRS-One. He said, love is going to get you. He was talking about the material aspects of love that people get caught up in. What is true love? People get married, but then not even over a year, and then their marriage falls apart. When they first were getting married, they were deeply in love, so they say. People say, I love my wife, I love my husband, I love my children, my siblings, and you're supposed to. You love your friends. I mean, you should. But what is the true meaning of love? What does love really mean, and where does it come from? Says John 15, 13. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. When we hear that, that greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. This is where God comes in and shows you what love really is. It says that while we were yet sinners, the other Bible text says, but God condemned his love toward us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's Romans 5. God's love is beyond explanation. God's love is beyond what we can even fathom. But we see that when we were sinners, he loved us. It says in John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but has everlasting life. And we just found out, we just established that yet while we were sinners, he came down to die for us. It's one thing to love somebody that loves you back. But then there's another thing to give your life for somebody or to be kind or happy for someone that doesn't love you or doesn't show any type of kindness to you. We're not talking about being naive and allowing yourself to be taken advantage of. No, we're not talking about that. We're not talking about any type of abuse. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about the purest essence of love. And that love comes from God. And as we established that, while we were totally away from God, he still loved us. And he loved us so much that he came down to die for us. And it wasn't like he was, it says, Hereth, this is 1 John 4, 10. Hereth is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the preparation for our sins. John 3, 17, for God sent not his son into the world to get them the world, but that the world through him might be saved. So God's love was always trying to bring us to him. So even when we weren't worthy of his love, he still loved us. He loved us so much that he wanted us to be with him. And he came down to die for us. He came down. When we think of God and Jesus, you know, the creatives of this world, but yet their love was so great. It's beyond human comprehension, but yet it's attainable. It's so attainable that it's been given to us so that we can be with him. It says that his love is so great that his love is infinite, but it's there for us. And that love he wants to bestow upon us. And when we accept it, we bestow it upon each other. Says God love is incredible, infinite, and unveiling. First Corinthians reads on first Corinthians 13, four through seven. This is the King James version. Charity. When they say charity, it means a lot. Charity suffers long and it's kind. Charity, envy it not. Charity, vain it's not. Not itself is not puffed up. Does not behave itself unseemly. Seeketh not his own. Seeketh not her own. It's not easily provoked. Thinketh no evil. Rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in truth. Beareth all things, all, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endures all things. I'm also reading another version. This is another version of the same text. This is a new living translation. 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. It is not irritable and it keeps no record of being wrong. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith. It's always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. That's the same first Corinthians 13, four, seven. It says love is not jealous or boastful or proud. So love is not when you want to put down somebody else. It's not irritable. It doesn't demand its own way. A lot of times we want our own way, but you got to be able to be, you know, love. If you really love somebody, we're not talking about steering somebody the wrong way, but you got to be able to go both ways, you know, in terms of understanding. It says it's not irritable. It keeps no record of being wrong. That's a big one. You know, when people do wrong, it's hard to forgive, and it's understandable from a human standpoint, but there comes a point where you got to be able to say, oh, you're going to always hold these things against me. You know, we're starting fresh. We always say we're starting fresh. We're starting new. You know, I mean, you don't forget to put yourself in harm's way, but you don't want to be in a position where you're always holding negative views on a person because of a past mistake. Love doesn't do that, but it rejoices when truth. In other words, when bad things happen, it doesn't, you know, bring that up, but when good things happen, truth happens, positive, spiritual good things, it rejoices in that. It never loses faith. It never loses faith. It always looks for that. It's always like this. Always the upper side of the mountain. It's always the upside, and it endures every circumstance. Now, when you think about that, that's encompassed who God is. He has that love where he never gives up on us. He doesn't look back at our negatives when we ask for forgiveness. He sees us. He says he puts our sins in the sea of forgetfulness, so he looks at us as a whole new person. He doesn't look at us as the same person that made the mistake. He doesn't even look at our mistakes. Once we ask for forgiveness, he looks at us as a brand new person, so that's his love. He's patient with us. He's everlasting with us. His love endures forever. It says that's, and you know, just imagine that. That's who God is. Love also, you won't experience fear. It says John, 1 John 4 18, sluts love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and it shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. It says all God's love casts out fear. That's why in Psalms 23, it says, yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thou art, God is with me. Jesus is with me. So, if you're with me, he's with me, I'm not going to have fear. You know, fear will never shatter love. God's love will always be the victor, and you won't have fear when troubles come your way, when trying times come, whatever they may be, God's love will give you that security that you know things will work out. God's love will be the surety that you won't lose faith and won't panic, but that love is enduring and will last forever. So, you won't have fear because you know God's love is everlasting. It says God's love is too great to fully understand. As you can see, as I'm trying to explain it, but it's real. God's love is real. Ephesians 3, 18-19, and may you have the power to understand as all God's people should. How wide, how long, how high, how deep his love is. How wide is God's love. How long is God's love. How high is God's love. How deep is God's love. May you experience the love of Christ through it, through too great to understand. It's too great to understand. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and the power that comes from God. That's Ephesians 3, 18-19. God's love is so great that we as mere humans cannot fully understand it. We can't fully understand it, but it's still real. It's still there for us. It's there to bring us close to him. God's love is a shield that's surrounding you and keeping you safe. As we said in Psalm 23, for protection. It says, but let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let all who take refuge in God rejoice. Let them sing joyful praises forever. Spread your protection over them, that all who love your name will be filled with joy. For you bless the godly, O Lord. You surround them with your shield of love. That's Psalms 5, 11-12. It says God's love protects us. God's love surrounds us. God's love keeps us. That's what keeps you going. That's what keeps you up to speed. That love is so great that you'll be able to share it with others. God will not let you down because his love cannot fail. God cannot fail. His love will never fail. Psalms 36, 5-7. Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens. Your fullness reaches, your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains. Your justice like the ocean depths. You care for people and animals alike, O Lord. How precious is your unfailing love, O God. All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your love. It says, you know, God's love never fails. People have hurt you, betray you. You know, there's things that happen that hurt people from others. But God's love is not like that. God's love will always take care of you. That's why it says the love of God constrains us. That's in 1 Corinthians 5-14, for the love of God constrains us. That love is a protection that keeps us. And it's a security that you know that no matter what, he's always there. And it's not, and it's unconditional, you know. But in order to achieve that love, in order to really embrace that love, you have to give your life to Christ. And the beauty is it doesn't cost anything. God wants to take you freely. God wants to bring us into his love freely. It doesn't cost, it is always saying that love is something that you give it away, it comes right back to you. When you're freely taking God's love, you want to give it, share it with others. And the reason why that love is so free is because God looks at us as his child. It says, 1 John 3-1, see how much our father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are. But the people who belong to the world don't recognize that we are God's children because they don't know him. When you know him, you want to love him because he loved us when we didn't want to, when we were not lovable. But yet he sees us as his children. That's why we're called the sons and daughters of Christ, because he sees us as his children. That's the love that he has for us. And when he sees us as his children, you know you're going to want to be part of that. It's one thing, you know, to love somebody, it's that expression of connection. And that's what God wants with us. And that's a connection that God does not want to lose from us. He wants us to have it. And that's what he's freely giving it to us. And he wants us to dwell with it. It said God, you know, God loves us so much that as he said, he sacrificed his son, you know, he sacrificed his son to save us. The love of Christ is so great that words cannot describe it. But that love, when we embrace it, we'll show it in our lives. We'll show it the way we take care of ourselves and the way we interact with each other. We'll show it in the way we treat one another. We'll show it in the way we operate. You know, we'll show it in a different aspects in our lives. But God's love is there for us. And then he gives us a true meaning of love that help us in every manner that we do. It says God's love always allows you to change and grow into the person he wants you to be. God's love will help you. That is 2 Corinthians 5, 14 to 15. Either way, Christ's love controls us. And when it says control, it doesn't mean like a robot or machine. It means that he'll help us and is growing in the way we want to operate. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that he, that we have all died to our old life. So the old things we don't want to, we put away. He died for everyone. He died for this whole world so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ who died and was raised for 2 Corinthians 5, 14 to 15. So he died for us so we can be a new creature, new people, and now a new person we want to want to embrace and live that way so we can share with others. God gives us the Holy Spirit because he wants us to be filled with his love. And I may have said that he sends a comforter, but that, that comforter is to give us the ability to enjoy his love and share with us. And this is Romans 5, 5. And this hope will not lead to disappointment for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. You know, God feels that, that love for us. He says, you know, that love, when you begin a relationship with God, the Holy Spirit comes into your life. That's how, that's one of the connections he has. And it's with you through the good and the bad, through the ups and the down. It never leaves you nor forsake you. That's why it says he stands at the door and he knocks, knocks so we can let him in. And when we let him in, he stays with us. You open the door and he'll come right in and be with you forever. And then when he comes in and be with you, that love will also discipline you and make you a better person. It says, my child don't reject the Lord's discipline and don't be upset when he corrects you for the Lord corrects those he loves just as a father corrects a child and who he delights. Proverbs 3, 11, 12. Nobody likes discipline. When I was a child, I didn't like when my parents disciplined me. But I mean, they had to. There's things I did that weren't right. And if they didn't do anything, I'd keep doing wrong. And I can get myself in a whole lot of trouble. I might not even be here talking to y'all right now, you know, but that discipline is needed to keep you on the right path, to keep you to grow up to be a respectable, positive person. And that's the same with God's love. God's love is so everlasting, but when he sees what's going the wrong way, he's like, look, you gotta get back on the right path because if you go that way, you're gonna get lost. You're gonna get yourself into certain things. So it may seem harsh at times, but when we look at the whole picture, we see that love is needed to keep us in his love so we'll be that perfect person that he wants us to be. God cares when we're suffering. He cared because he loves us. It's not just sympathy. He really loves us. So when we suffer, he cared. Psalms 317, I will be glad and rejoice in your unfailing love, for you have seen my troubles and you care about the anguish of my soul. He sees what we're going through and he cares about it. So when it's just like, when you cry, he cries and he's there to comfort you because he doesn't just look at you from a standoff and says, oh, whatever. He cares about us and that love is there even in the rough times. Even when things look hopeless, you can hope in God because he loves you. Lamentations 3, 20 through 23. I will never forget this awful time as I grieve over my loss, yet I still dare to hope when I remember this, the faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness. His mercies again are fresh each morning. Even when you're going through these things, I mean, death, pain, whatever it is, they feel like I'll never pass. But remember this, God's love is faithful. He's there with you and he's going through this with you and he loves you that great that that love will keep you and he'll be able to help you get over that whatever you're going through to keep moving on. He'll help you to get that, he gives you the strength to keep moving on when these painful things come in your life. That's how his love is. His love never leaves us. God is loving. He does not want to harm you, but to show you compassion. It says in Lamentations 3.32, 3.33. Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love. For he does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow. Another text that says that God doesn't delight in the destruction of the wickedness, of the wicked, but that every man would turn and come to him. So he doesn't enjoy destroying the wicked. He has to because he can't let sin keep running amok. But his hope is for everybody to turn to him, but it's a free choice. You have to make that choice to come to him. And in making that choice, you'll be protected by him and his love will endure for you. Jesus' love is an example of what it means to sacrifice and serve others out of love. John 13, three through five. It says, Jesus knew that the father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God. So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist and poured water in the basin. Then he began to wash his disciples' feet, brined them with a towel and had them around him. So now, and then in verse 34, it says, so now I am giving you a new command, love each other. Jesus, just as I have loved you, you should love one another. The text is referring to the last supper. He was right before they sat at the table to eat the communion. This was during the Passover and he was bringing in the communion service. But when they came into the room, they were looking for, in those days when there was always a servant that would clean the people's feet. And if you think about it, it already sounds gross when you have to wash somebody's feet. But think about back then, you see now we wear shoes and we're covered, even though it still is, it still has unpleasant feeling when you're washing his feet. But back then they wore sandals. So their feet were atrocious. So for somebody to wash their feet, nobody was looking to do that. And yet Jesus, the King of Kings, supreme being, who we should worship, saw, he didn't look for somebody else. He took off the towel and washed each one of their feet. Washed it. And remember at one point, Peter said, you can't wash my feet. Because Jesus said, if I can't wash your feet, you're not gonna be able to partake of all this. And then that's when Peter said, well, don't just wash my feet, wash my whole body. But God was showing him that, look, this is how I love you guys. This is how I love humanity, that I came and been a servant to you. But then I want you to show that same love to one another. That's when he was going back and he said, I give you all a new commandment, to love one another. When we see this love from God, we'll express it to one another. And that's what the greatness of his love is, for him to do these things. And that's why, that's why when you do communion, everybody, there's nobody greater, nobody lower. That's why people, one of the reasons, that's why it's called the act of humility. It puts everybody on an even plane, because a lot of time, there are people in the church with different careers, different positions and things like that. But in God's eye, we all are even at the foot of the cross. And his act of communion shows that everybody loves one another, because we do this to bring a connection with us. Nobody's too great, nobody's too low, we're all even. But God loves, and this is the ultimate aspect of sacrifice. Outside of God dying for us, that's the ultimate aspect of his love. And the beauty of it, it doesn't end with him dying. He rose, and that's why he's still sending that love to us. It says, God loved his soul. God is love, so our love for others points them to him. It says, John 4, 9-12. God showed how much he loved us by sending his only, his one and only son into the world, so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love. This is not that we love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and went 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. This is 1 John 4, 9-12. Like I said, this is a New Living translation, but it shows that God's love, God's love is so great that when we accept it, we'll show it to others, and we'll wanna express it. And God's love is so great that it doesn't separate us from him. It'll keep us with him, and there's no way that we'll lose his connection, that nothing can separate us from God. Romans 8, 37-39, it says, "'Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'" When God brings you to him, there's nothing that's gonna separate us from him. That's why Paul says, nothing on this earth can separate us. So no matter what the trials are, not even death itself can separate us because God died for us, and he's coming back for us. So long as we hang on to God's love, long as we express it in a way that we're gonna live our lives with it, there's nothing that can separate from us. That's why the beauty of God's love is when he shares us his love, he wants us to be with him. This love is supposed to encapsulate us that we'll never be with him, that no matter what's going on, he's always with us, and that love will endure forever. And it'll be there forever, no matter what happens. Even if you close your eyes and you go down in a grave, there's gonna come a time where he's gonna come back and raise you up so we can be with him forever. That's a love that endures forever. God's love is everlasting, and that's an everlasting love that we'll have forever. That love, and in that love, we'll share with one another. It says in 1 John 3, 1 John 3, 11. So this is a message that he had heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. He said, we should love one another. It says, and this is the command, verse 23, and this is his command, that we should believe on the name, Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment, and he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him, and hereby we know that abided in us by the spirit which he hath given us. That love we'll have, that love we'll express to one another, and that's the beauty. It always says that you haven't seen God. People who profess, whether it be Christians and other things, that they love God, yet we haven't seen God, and as the text says, you profess that you love God, but you haven't seen it, but you can't love your brother and your sister who you see every day in terms of human beings. How can you say you love God, but you can't show that same love for one another, and that's the aspect. If he loves us, and we say we love him, and I'm not gonna say you don't, but if you've never seen God. Thank you for tuning in. I pray this message was a blessing. I look forward to seeing you next week. ♪♪♪