Over the last couple of years I have chosen a word to get me through the next year. A couple of years ago I had chosen the word JOY , because the joy of the Lord is my strength. This last year it has been the word HOPE. This year it is LOVE. I share this with you, to give you hope and joy through the upcoming year, and may the blessing of His Love overflow in all of your lives.
The more notes I make on this message on love the more I am seeing a need to make the first message/sermon an introduction. We all have our thoughts and opinions on love, and we know who God is, but do we know Him? So I here is my second attempt, and I hope that you will share your thoughts, insights, and even any corrections you think I need to make.
Message:
I have a question for all of us. When you hear the word love, what is the first thing that you think of?
If you would please write down your answer.
How many of you wrote down God? Did you answer your husband/wife, or boyfriend or girlfriend? Did your mother, father, or child come to mind?
These are all good answers. A husband loves his wife and vice versa. A parent loves their child and the child loves their parents. Relationships are usually based on love. But what is loves? Where does love come from? I would like to introduce you to Love.
Today we form relationships that do not last. Relationships built on sand with an expiration date. Yet real love is true and eternal, because God is eternal and His love is eternal. To know Love we need to know God.
Scripture tells us that God is our Heavenly Father. He created Adam out of the dust, and breathed life into him.(Genesis 2) Then He created Eve from Adam’s rib. He is also known to be our husband and Maker.(Isaiah 54:5-8). So we can see here the relationship between husband and wife, and the relationship of parent and child and how these relationships can teach us about the relationship with God and how they are all founded in love. The husband and wife relationship teaches us how two become one, and how we are to be one with God. Then that love produces a child or children, fruits of love. Love continues to grow and more fruit is produced. For this love to grow it needs to remain pure, and undefiled. How can we do this? He gave us us His commandments to keep us safe. There are two commandments that relate directly to relationships. Honor your mother and father, and do no commit adultery.(Exodus 20) Committing adultery is cheating on more than your spouse, but cheating on God. Honoring our parents, honors God. Keeping His commands keep us from being separated from Him.
In marriage the two have become one. The husband and wife become one flesh, leaving their old lives behind. As a bride of Christ, we leave behind the person we were and become a new creation in Christ. He chose us, but we also have to choose Him, and choose to leave our old self behind. Love is not selfish and gives all that it has.(1Corinthians 13) It is a choice we make over and over, everyday.
Do you remember the slogan ‘Choose Life”? Today let us choose love. ‘Choose Love, Choose Life’. You can technically live without love, but I say that life is not more than a mere existence. The word love is is used in many ways. People can say I love you, as easily they say hello. When God said He loved us, He proved it through His Son. For their is no greater love than a man lay down his life for another, and what greater man has there ever been? Jesus Christ, Son of God, gave up His life to save all of us.
Let us get to know this love by getting to know the One has loved us long before we ever knew Him.
Many Christians love the last portion of Romans 8, starting with verse 28. There just seem to be so many quotables in that passage.
Verse 28 itself is one of the all-time favorites, though too many people misquote it or misunderstand it. At one point the prevailing notion was, “All things work for good for people who love God.”
What the verse actually says is, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” In other words, there might be some “not very good things” that God causes to work together for good to those called by Him, chosen by Him, committed to Him, obedient to Him.
I think of big things like a death in the family, a disability, an unrighteous or unfair action by those in authority or anyone else who has power over…
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For the last few weeks I have been sharing my notes on preparing a message on love, that I have been working on helping a minister back in California. Sitting here today I have had many thoughts. First, here I am working with a person I had never met but God has brought us together to work on this project together. Which on its own shows how God’s love brings us together. Uniting strangers. The second is that it shows how there is no distance God’s love can’t reach. This reminds of how God’s love covers a multitude of sins. Preparing this message is also a reminder of the greatness of His love and how it is something that cannot be measured, and how His love overflows because there is nothing that can contain it. It is amazing, overwhelming and cannot be put into any container because it is bigger than all of us put together. At the same thing that joins us together. He is so wonderful and all consuming. His love is never ending. Isn’t that the greatest news you could hear? God bless you and your loved ones, with His love, peace and joy.
You and I should have joy. The joy of Jesus, is what the devil is truly out to steal from the “born again” believer.
As we look at Matthew 2, we see that after Jesus’ birth, the wise men pay Herod a visit as they are searching for the newborn King. Herod hears about this new King, and he gets upset and gathers together the chief priests and scribes to find out where this baby will be born at, and they inform Herod that Bethlehem is the prophesied location.
Matthew 2:7-10
7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.
8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.
9 When they had…
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Here is a song the world needs to hear.
We need love not hate.
When you hear the word love, what is the first thing that you think of?
Please leave your answer in the comments. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Without God there is no love and without love there is no peace.
“In a world gone astray from God there is no peace, but it also lacks charity,
which is true and perfect love…
Nothing is more beautiful than love.
Indeed, faith and hope will end when we die, whereas love, that is, charity,
will last for eternity.”
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
“We might say the whole mystery of our redemption in Christ,
by his incarnation, his death, and his resurrection, consists of this marvelous exchange:
in the heart of Christ, God has loved us humanly,
so as to render our human hearts capable of loving divinely.
God became man so that man might become God—might love as only God is capable of loving,
with the purity, intensity, power, tenderness,
and inexhaustible patience that belongs to the divine love.
It is an extraordinary source of hope and a great consolation to know that,
by virtue of God’s grace working in us
(if…
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emotionalpeace 