Embracing Love, Unity, and Growth in Christ

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of the body. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with a washing of water by the word. [00:05:14]

But it's more than just fellowship is getting together. It's getting to spend life together with people. And that's what you get to do when you're around a campfire. That's what we're supposed to be doing when we're at church. Church isn't just, hey, we're going to, we go. We do this thing on Sunday morning. Then we go home and eat and we get the rest of the day to ourselves. [00:10:38]

In seeing that, the beautiful part of walking through that with our church family is getting to see the church family come together to help each other, to encourage each other, to build each other up, to be there for each other and minister to one another through those difficult times. It was beautiful to see the church coming together, though mourning itself, but realizing there was a family that was hurting even worse than they are and picking them up and being there for them and encouraging them. [00:25:01]

We know that God is still in control. The struggles of the year hasn't shocked God off the throne. He still has great and amazing plans for us. But what he asks for us is that we remain. We remain faithful. And we don't look at the past year and go, I'm just going to throw my hands up and do something else. But instead, we look at the past year and say, yeah, that was hard, but God was with us through the whole thing. [00:31:55]

Because as that scripture says, we must grow in every way. But by how do we grow in every way? It is by knowing the Bible and following. Following God's plan for us. So going and applying that to our mission strategy as we love people. We're going to grow and be equipped with the word in order to do this. In order to accomplish the mission that we feel and the purpose that we feel God has called us to do. [00:33:12]

For the church to grow in it, in every way, it has to be done through truth and love. But the church together has to grow. And not just, he's not talking about growing in number. He's talking about growing in maturity. So that we become less like little children, blown away and tossed around with every new fad that comes across, but instead growing stronger and stronger. It depends on the individual members growing in maturity. [00:36:22]

But in order to do that, in order to be able to tell what is truth and what is not, we have to be rooted in the Scripture. That's true. What is being mature in the faith, not being tossed around by one thing that somebody says and all of a sudden, that's the best thing in the world, even if it's counter to what Scripture tells us. We've seen that many times throughout the years. [00:39:11]

So what is it that Paul is trying to say when he's saying truthing in love? It brings notions of maintaining, loving, and doing truth. So it involves speaking. It brings notions of maintaining, loving, and doing truth. truth, yes, but it's more than that. It's deeper than that. It's not just speaking truth. It's doing truth. It's maintaining truth. By maintaining, it's keeping it. It's making sure that you're squared onto it every single day. [00:40:41]

Truth and love are necessary together. John Stott said again, he said, truth becomes hard if it's not softened by love, and love becomes soft if it's not strengthened by truth. So you can have truth, but if you don't approach truth, you don't share that truth in a loving way, people are going to see you as harsh and not going to listen to a single word that you're going to say. [00:42:55]

But by loving people, building relationships with people, we can show them the truth of Scripture. This is why in our mission strategy, the first part of that is loving people. It's walking through, becoming a friend, being an investor in their lives, being a coach to them and showing them how to be one who loves. We love people, not just because our mission strategy says so. We love people because Christ first loved us. [00:48:02]

We want to grow and maintain in truth and love because growing, into him who is the head, Christ, is going to be shown through our loving people and reaching them with the gospel. Loving on our community and helping them, being a resource for them, being there for them, walking through life with them. Why? Because Christ loved us first. [00:48:44]

Father God, we thank you for today. Thank you God for all that you do for us every single day. Father, as we leave this place and go out into our community, Father God, may we echo all of who you are and your love for us to every single person that we meet. Thank you, Father, for gathering us together today. And Lord, we pray this in your son's blessed and holy name. Amen. Amen. [01:07:13]