True Love
Last week Marsha and I spent about three days in Charleston,
kind of a little mini marriage retreat that we were having and we just enjoyed
doing nothing for about three days and in the process of doing that one of the
things we did is we just walked around some beautiful old neighborhoods.
And went into some galleries where they had beautiful
paintings and one of the games we like to play is just say if we had all themoney in the world which paintings would we choose and we would choose
different paintings and different artists and everything else and we came into
one gallery and there was this painting that just struck me.
The colors were beautiful, the technique that the artist had
used, and the subject matter also spoke to my heart and for a moment I thought
about actually buying the painting and then I looked at the price tag. And I said no way that's gonna happen. Well we do that too
when it comes to loving many times we get all excited about loving someone and
then we start having visions of loving them and then we look and there's little
white tag that's hanging there and it's the price tag and we say woah, that's
not gonna happen because of the price.
True Love Quotes
While we are yet sinners Christ died for
us. Died for us, no greater love that man has that he would lay
his life down for another.
How deep is your love? The love that God wants to
form in you and the love that God wants to form in me is a deep love. It's a
love that's willing to pay whatever price. You see most of the time when we see
the price tag, the price tag has to do with our time doesn't it? You can make
more money you can't make more time, and it has to do with our energy.
You get finished with a long hard day and you come home and
you plot down and all you wanna do is read the paper or watch the news and all
of a sudden somebody comes and says hey would you go out to the garage and get
the step ladder and crawl up on it and change the battery on that bleeping
smoke detector.
That's what we call it at our house the bleeping smoke
detector. Or someone comes in and you're done, you're spent and you've given
everything that you can and you've provided for the family and bills are going
to be paid, and the mortgage is going to be taken care of, because of what you
did and somebody wants you to help with a science project oh my goodness.
Science project they should have started on three weeks ago
but it's due tomorrow. I can go on and on and on maybe not hit the illustration
that hits you that when there's this crisis of energy, there's a crisis of
time, there's a crisis of even finances and God is saying to you love, give,
provide resource and you say hey I'm spent I can't that's the problem.
See that's the problem is we're drawing from a shallow well
and as long as we are drawing from a shallow well, we will never be able to
love in the way that God has called us in those four dimensions. The only way
that it becomes possible as John 15 says is when we abide in him.
And as we abide in him he's the vine we are just the
branches in all of his resources all of his supernatural energy all of his
supernatural resources even in finances the strength the will power everything
it flows from it and there's an endless supply in Jesus Christ. Where we get
into trouble is when we try to love apart from Christ.
The secret is not to try harder. The secret is not try to
manufacture a love that's not there, the secret is to draw close to Christ and
to abide in him. After the last service I was standing out by the connection
center and somebody came up to me and said I've been a Christian for six years
now and I still struggle with it.
He said, Pastor Steve do you still struggle with this? I
said 50 years plus and I still struggle with this. You know why that is? A part
of the reason that that is, is because abiding is a daily activity. Like eating
or breathing is a daily activity and the air that I breathed 50 years ago will
not provide the necessary oxygen that I need today.
I need to breathe today. And the meal that I ate two years
ago is not gonna nourish my body today, that's why it has an -ing on it when it
talks about abiding in Christ and the love that you and I are able to share in
the way that the scripture has taught us that we're to share, in all four
dimensions is totally dependent upon our relationship with Jesus Christ present
tense. That is the way to know true love.
