Loving One Another Is Loving God

Can you imagine the day? Can you imagine the day when you stand before God? And if you're a follower of Jesus, you don't cower at his feet. You don't grovel in brokenness. You're welcomed to glory. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the day that he whose hands and feet were pierced and side was pierced reaches out to you and says, come on, my child. You've had a hard life. It's been rough. It's been hard living for me in a world that hates me. It's time to rest from your labor. You imagine that? [00:27:26] (59 seconds)  #RestInHisPresence

But if we're not careful, we take our assessment of our self, and we transfer it to god, and we make it so that god would forgive us except it for that. You know what I believe? I believe that once you've seen God's love and experienced God's forgiveness, one of the easiest ways the enemy has to take us out of the fight is to take our eyes off of what Jesus did for us and try to convince us that we somehow have to earn it from him. [00:20:26] (38 seconds)  #EyesOnJesus

If the holy spirit's working on you, bringing you to that point where you're saying, want Jesus more than that, more than everything I've been up to this point. I want him. Then here's the cry. The cry is, god, I want Jesus, but I can't get there. I'm not good enough. And god will say, I know. I didn't send my son for perfect people. I sent my son to make people perfect. So if you'll say to him, God, if you'll take me, I'm yours. I turn my back on my sin. You are Lord. I'll follow you. Maybe you came here today and that love is not living in you. But having heard this message, you would long for that. [00:38:52] (54 seconds)  #MadePerfectInChrist

If I were to take a poll this morning and ask how many of you are good enough to get to heaven? How many of us would raise our hands? None of us would. Because the only one who was perfect, the only one good is Jesus and how did we pay him back for that? We killed him. Yeah. Well, he didn't stay dead because you know, grave didn't have a hold on him because he hadn't sinned because the wages of sin is death but the gift of god's eternal life to Jesus Christ. We'll get to that in just a little bit. But the only perfect one was Jesus. [00:05:14] (34 seconds)  #JesusOnlyPerfect

Say, but but what if I mess up? You will. Well, what if I'm not perfect? You won't be. But what if I can't promise God that that I'll I'll keep my eyes on him? You won't. But he'll always be faithful. Why? Because God can command us to love because he loves us. Let's pray. [00:41:15] (33 seconds)  #FaithfulDespiteFailure

Is that what's supposed to mark us as believers? That we're gonna fight with each other over the color of carpet and go start our own church? We're that's why we have Blue Haven Baptist Church because we wanted blue carpet. And we have Calvary Baptist Church because everybody knows that Jesus' blood was red, and so therefore, you need to have red carpet. Now that's when we when we live out this kind of love, a watching world sees something in us they don't have, when we fuss and fight and are selfish with each other and let pride rule our relationships, they see nothing in us they need. [00:16:52] (40 seconds)  #UnityOverDivision

We we said that loving one another doesn't mean having a warm affection towards each other. Like, I don't I don't look at Danny Smith and say, man, I just I love that guy. I mean, I do, but that's not that's not what love means. What love means is when I see Danny Smith broken down on the side of the road and I stop and help change his tire. That's loving someone. That's doing for them something they need. That's what god did for us when he sent Jesus, right? [00:04:48] (26 seconds)  #LoveInAction

So, he sent Jesus who is perfect to do for us what we needed. That is god's love for us. So he sent Jesus to live a perfect life, to die on a cross in our place, to conquer sin, hell, Satan, death, the grave, to be counted for our victory because it's what we needed and that is the example that we see of love. So that when Jesus says things like love your enemies, it doesn't mean that I look at my enemy and I say, man, I sure I sure wish I was around them. I enjoy them so much. [00:06:58] (36 seconds)  #CrossConquersAll