The Conviction of Love: Loving As Christ Loved

Spurgeon put it this way. This is what I ended on last week. He said, this love will lead to practical action. Has anybody offended you? Seek reconciliation. Oh, but I am the offended party. So was God. And he went straight away and sought reconciliation. Brother, do the same. Oh, but I have been insulted you might say, just so. So was God. All the wrong was towards him yet he sent. Oh, but the party is so unworthy of my love. So are you, but God loved you in spite of that and sent his son. He says, go right. In other words, go literally do the same. [00:53:39] (49 seconds)  #seekReconciliation

And listen, if you're here visiting with us, I want you to know that's exactly how we're gonna love you. We want you to know that we love you desperately, that we care for you. We love your family. If you're going through stuff, we wanna hold your arms up. We wanna hold onto you. We want you to know we love you. Not because we have to, but because we can't help it because that's who Christ is in us. Ain't that an amazing kind of love, guys? [01:19:37] (30 seconds)  #weLoveYouHere

Literally, it means that while we cannot see God, we know that he exists because he was revealed fully through Jesus. It says, if we love one another, it's a conditional phrase. In other words, if we choose to love others, which I've told you already is a moral obligation because we were first loved by him. If we love. This is based on last week. We don't have a choice. We have to do this. Again, how can we receive the love and forgiveness of God and not give that to someone else? [00:55:38] (33 seconds)  #chooseToLove

That's why we're convicted that we must love others. That's why students, you can't walk into a class and start getting on your phone and realize that God is sovereign enough to sit you right next to someone who may know the very story that you have and they are going through the same thing you've been through and if you don't turn to them and begin to speak to them, it's amazing how Satan can distract us with this thing and keep us from loving others because if we don't put our heads up, we won't see those people around us. [01:07:59] (38 seconds)  #eyesUpHeartsOpen

And at once, listen to this, in other words, what he's saying is, here's the question, who loves Christ? Who loves him? Listen to the people he talks about who rise up and say they loved him. And at once, up from the dark dungeons and the cruel racks, the rises, the confessors cry, we love him those who were persecuted. And from the fiery stake where they clapped their hands as they were being burned to death, the same answer comes, we love him. [01:14:25] (28 seconds)  #loveThroughPersecution

He says, God has so loved us. How could we receive that same love and forgiveness and then not love others? It's a good question, isn't it? Because we're allowing ourselves to be the judge of who we should love and who we should not love. And the reality of it is, I told you this last week, God laid this on my heart many, many years ago that once we become Christians, we give up the right to choose whom we love. [00:51:58] (25 seconds)  #noSelectiveLove

We need to understand. We need to love each other in that way. We have a moral obligation to do that. Why? Because we represent the king. The one who loved us so much that he sent himself in the person of Jesus to die for us. So we love in that way in the same way that he sent himself. We give ourselves up and love us. I've told you this a thousand times. All love requires inconvenience. We have to inconvenience ourselves. [00:52:31] (28 seconds)  #loveRequiresInconvenience

Look around you. If we are gonna be a family, that means none of us. We've said this over and over again. No one falls to the cracks. That means you're hurting, we walk with you. That means whatever you need, we're gonna try to be there with you because we love you. That's the essence of this. When you walk into this place, I tell my students all the time, man, you're not gonna agree with everything I have to say, but you're never going to a day in this class you're not loved. [00:57:05] (30 seconds)  #noOneFallsThroughCracks