| A 40 Day Experience - Extreme Love Message
Seven: “Loving God, Loving Others”
A 40 Day Experience sermon by C. Gene Wilkes
One of the evidences of our love for God is being part of
a church that gathers every week to worship, serve, and be
equipped for ministry in our mission fields. I found a list
of “Things You Never Hear in Church” I thought
you’d been interested in hearing. I wonder if any of
these will be heard here.
1. Hey! It’s my turn to sit in the front
pew.
2. I was so enthralled that I never noticed your
sermon went 25 minutes over.
3. Personally, I find witnessing much more enjoyable
than golf.
4. I’ve decided to give our church the
$500 a month I used to send to TV evangelists.
5. I volunteer to be the permanent teacher for
the junior high Sunday school class.
6. Forget the denominational minimum salary.
Let’s pay our pastor so he can live like we do.
7. I love it when we sing hymns and choruses
I’ve never heard before!
8. Since we’re all here, let’s start
the service early.
9. Pastor, we’d like to send you to this
Bible seminar in the Bahamas.
10. Nothing inspires me and strengthens my commitment like
our annual stewardship campaign!
OK, so those have nothing to do with our series “Extreme
Love,” but they do expose how we sometimes miss the
point of what loving God and loving other really means.
Loving others is not as hard as we make it out to be sometimes
(1 Thess. 5:15).
When Paul wanted his fellow followers of Jesus to know how
to treat each other, he started with very simple instructions.
He wrote, “See to it that no one repays evil for evil
to anyone, but always pursue what is good for one another
and for all” (1 Thess. 5:15) Earlier in that passage
he told them to “encourage one another and build each
other up as you are already doing” (v. 11). Loving others
is simply acting toward them as Christ would act toward them.
Here’s a story that describes the simplicity of love
toward one another.
Reverend Chalfant tells of a couple who were celebrating
their golden wedding anniversary. The husband was asked what
the secret was to his successful marriage. As the elderly
are wont to do, the old gentleman answered with a story. His
wife, Sarah, was the only girl he ever dated. He grew up in
an orphanage and worked hard for everything he had. He never
had time to date until Sarah swept him off his feet. Before
he knew it she had managed to get him to ask her to marry
him.
After they had said their vows on their wedding day, Sarah's
father took the new groom aside and handed him a small gift.
He said, “Within this gift is all you really need to
know to have a happy marriage.” The nervous young man
fumbled with the paper and ribbon until he got the package
unwrapped.
Within the box lay a large gold watch. With great care he
picked it up. Upon close examination he saw etched across
the face of the watch a prudent reminder he would see whenever
he checked the time of day . . . words that, if heeded, held
the secret to a successful marriage. They were, “Say
something nice to Sarah.”
“Say something nice to Sarah” summed up a grandfather’s
advice of how to love a wife for 50 years.
Loving others grows out of God’s love for us (1 Cor.
13:4-8).
God’s love in us empowers us to love others. Since
“God is love” (1 John 4:8), those who are loved
by Him will love others. “Everyone who loves has been
born of God and knows God,” John writes (v. 7). “We
love because He first loved us,” John continues in his
first letter (v. 19). To experience the forgiving, life-giving
love of God is to motivate us to love others.
Paul painted a portrait of love with words in 1 Corinthians
13. We too often limit the reading of this passage to weddings,
but the passage was inspired in the middle of a church-splitting
issue. Paul wanted his friends in Christ not to destroy one
another but to depend on the love of God in their hearts to
heal the hurts among them. His model for that word painting
was Jesus. See the brush strokes of his pen as he sought to
paint what Jesus’ love looks like when lived out in
the life of one of his followers:
Love is patient; love is kind. Love does not envy; is not
boastful; is not conceited; does not act improperly; is not
selfish; is not provoked; does not keep a record of wrongs;
finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor. 13:4-8a)
To love God begins by being loved by God. You will never
love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength
until you allow His love to cover and transform each of those
areas of your life. Loving God is more like learning to float
on water than to climb a mountain. Jesus calls us to love
God. That’s hard for some of us with Type A personalities.
We want to do something for God. We want a Mount Everest-sized
challenge that we can accomplish for God. Others want to do
something because they are so filled with guilt that they
feel like they must sell all their earthly possessions and
feed all the poor people in the world before God will love
them. But all that is based on us doing something for God.
True trust is accepting what God did for us in Jesus as enough.
All we need to do is rest in that reality. It’s a lot
like learning to float on water.
I told my congregation about learning to swim again in order
to compete in a triathlon. I told them learning to swim at
this level was like learning to play golf at a higher level.
Most anyone can swing a club and hit a golf ball, but to play
more like a pro takes skill, experience, hard work, and the
gift of eye-hand coordination. I could swim—like on
a weekend trip to the lake. But I could not swim with enough
skill to finish well in a triathlon. So I joined a swim club
and began the daily toil of learning to swim efficiently.
I received this email from a member of the church after I
had told my stories of swimming again.
I have often used floating in the water and a child learning
to float as a parallel to our growth in Christ (especially
in difficult times in our lives or in accomplishing painful
hurdles of personal and spiritual growth). With the water
of “growth opportunities” all around us, and Our
Father’s hands under our bodies, He says in a calm voice,
“Relax, I'm right here. I won’t let you down.”
Then, in order for us to learn how to float, He removes His
hand from our backs, and we begin to struggle. And while we
feel very alone and vulnerable—struggling and swallowing
gallons of water—He all the while has His hands just
inches below our backs, knowing all along He has control of
our destiny and safety. It’s when we relax that
we can enjoy the water and His presence.
The secret to learning how to float is that we have to stop
fighting the water and trust our instructor. I remember I
found I could do this when I kept my mind off the water and
concentrated on the conversation my instructor was trying
to have with me. When I finally got it, we ended up having
a great chat, with an occasional reminder from him to breathe
deep calm breaths, to correct my posture, or raise my chin.
And all the sudden I realized: I’M FLOATING!
Some of us today need to let go and let God be the water
upon which our lives float. It’s more peaceful than
trudging up the mountain of religious works!
Loving God is free. Loving others may cost you your life
as you now know it.
In 1999, Steven Spielberg’s film, “Saving Private
Ryan,” told the story of a man who lost three brothers
in World War II. A group of soldiers was sent to find the
surviving brother and bring him home. Through the film the
question, “Just how much is one man’s life worth?”
surfaces. Charles Colson descried the film’s answer
this way:
The answer comes in a stunning scene at the end of the film.
It’s now 50 years later and Private Ryan is visiting
the graves of the men who saved him, who literally gave their
lives for his. “I lived my life the best I could,”
he says to their tombstones. “I hope in your eyes I’ve
earned what you’ve done for me.”
But we can see that he has gnawing doubts. Obviously distraught,
Ryan turns to his wife: “Tell me I’ve led a good
life,” he implores. “Tell me I’m a good
man.” “You are,” she answers him.
But the answer is not convincing. And how could it be? Behind
Ryan's question is the inescapable reality that however good
you are and however much you’ve accomplished in life,
you can never, ever repay such a debt.
But there is also a parallel to the gospel here that is so
powerful. God Himself gave His Son's life that we might live.
How does one repay Him for such a gift? Spielberg may not
have intended to raise the parallel, but when you portray
reality as effectively as he has, the gospel is not hard to
find.
If your own kids have seen the movie, make sure they understand
that final scene. Ask them: “Just how much is one man's
life worth?” Then tell them the answer: “It’s
worth the Son of God sacrificed on the cross for us.”
When you and I realize the price that God placed on our lives
through the death of his Son, we will love God with all our
being. We will live in gratitude for His sacrifice, and we
will shed tears of thankfulness for what He has done for us.
We will also find it easier to lay down our lives for others,
our neighbors, when we ourselves have been rescued.
C. Gene Wilkes is the pastor of Legacy Drive Baptist Church
in Plano, Texas. He is the author of Jesus on Leadership:
Becomming a Servant Leader, My Identity in Christ, and With
All My Soul: God's Design for Spiritual Wellness, A Fit 4
Continuing Study.
www.lifeway.com/a40dayexperience
|
