What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love

Do you realize that you were created, that in your soul, in your heart, in your mind, even in your physical body you were designed and created by God to be loved?

There’s a song that got very popular, if you came here a little bit early, you heard it. And it’s What the World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love. And we had to make it from one city to another and it was hard to stay awake and so, the little rent car had XM.

And you got like a zillion stations so, like, every twenty seconds we changed to a new station. And if it was a little song we knew then we’d sing along. But we went through like fifty stations in two and a half hours just to stay awake.

And forty-nine of the stations had songs that were about love. Finding it, losing it, getting it, wanting it, finding it, getting it, losing it, wanting it. Love, love.

I mean, we heard country love, we heard hip-hop love, we heard alternative love, we heard easy listening love, we heard love, love, love. Tell you what, what the world wants is love.

Now, if you will open your notes, I want you to read along very carefully with me because if we’re designed and made for love and we don’t get it deeply, unconditionally, and authentically, some really bad stuff happens. And that bad stuff is why a lot of our lives are very complicated.

On the front of your notes it says, “When we are not deeply and personally loved in ways that make sense to us, we will settle for any number of pseudo-love substitutes.” Pseudo meaning false.

Substitutes, the idea is, I want love, do you want love? I’ve got that little thing going on inside of me going click, click, click, click, click, click, looking, looking, looking.

And if you don’t get it deeply, authentically, unconditionally in a way that makes sense to you, you’ll settle for substitutes like affirmation we receive from success. It feels a lot like love.

So if love is what the world needs, three questions emerge. Where do you find it? How do you get it? And how do you give it away? Where do you find it? How do you get it? And how do you give it away?

Let’s start with number one. Where do you find it? The source of love that’s unconditional, that’s focused on who you are, not what you accomplish is God. Listen to 1 John. It says, “Dear friends, let us love one another.” Why? “For love comes from God. Everyone who loves God is born of God and knows God. however does not love does not know God,” why? “Because God is love.”

John says the source of the love that you need in your soul, the only thing that’ll ever fill you up is the love of God.

And he says, when you know Him, when you are loved by Him, one of the evidences will be that you will naturally overflow in love relationships to others. And the most attractive people in the world, the people that I want to be around and you want to be around are what? Loving people.

No one wants to be around selfish jerks. We all want to be loving people but it’s just hard. And it raises the question: what would it look like to be loved by God? I mean, that’s so ethereal.

God loves you. I heard that all my life, I didn’t have a clue of what it meant. What would it look like if you could understand and feel and see and know that you are the object of God’s affection?

I put it in your notes. Zephaniah 3:17 is to me one of the greatest pictures of getting a grasp of God’s love for us. It says, “The Lord your God is with you.” Part of being loved is someone that won’t abandon you. It’s someone that hangs with you.

And not only is He with you, He is mighty to save. And you might write in your notes, above that word save, write the word deliver. Of course we know that He saves. He forgives our sins. But, especially in the Old Testament when you see the word “save” it has the idea of deliverance. When someone loves you and you’re in a jam, they show up and they help you get out of the jam! I mean, that’s who I call when I’m in a jam.

To be loved by God, the Lord your God – it’s His covenant name, it’s His personal name, Yahweh – is with you. “He is mighty to save,” and then look at the next line. “He will take great delight in you.” Underline the word in you.

It doesn’t say He’ll take great delight in how you look. He’ll take great delight in your position. He’ll take great delight in what you can accomplish. He’ll take great delight in your success. He’ll take great delight in you.

The One that created the galaxies and the billions and billions of stars. After He created everything, He created man and then He said, the pinnacle, the most important, the apex of all of His creation is you.

Not if you do something. Not because you’ve accomplished something. But you as you are, created by God, made in His image. He takes delight in you. He’d like to spend time with you. He’d like to bless you. He’d like to talk with you. He’d like to develop you. That’s what love does. It always brings out the best in others.

So He’s with you. He delivers you. He takes great delight in you. Notice, “He will quiet you with his love.” If there’s one thing I hear from people all the time, Christian or non-Christian in a high-stress, complicated world is, “I wish I had some peace. I wish I just had some peace in this marriage. I wish I had some peace in my heart.”

You know when you get peace? When you can unload all the issues and all the concerns and all the cares and when you have that sort of sense that, no matter what’s going on out there, it’s okay.

For many of us, that happens in a human relationship. There’s times I get completely overwhelmed and I write down all these different things and, you know, I’m really struggling. But it’s over a cup of coffee, sitting with Theresa, usually, and saying, “Honey, I know I’m not supposed to be anxious and I know I’m not supposed to be this. But I’m feeling all this and you know what? I’ve laid all this out in my journal and with God,” but I need, I need to sit down and we’ll kind of talk it through.

And there’s a quieting of that relationship. And you know what? That’s what God wants to do. He wants to quiet your heart with His love. He wants to tell you, You know what? Yeah, the economy is kind of rough right now, and the marriage has some struggles right now, and you’ve been single a little bit longer than you’d like right now and there’s some physical ailments that you wish would get better right now. But you know something? I’ve got it all taken care of. Like, you’re made to live forever. Would you, relax, will you?

I mean, if God is for you, who can be against you? If He’s got unlimited resources and you’re the object of His affection, you can go, Ahhhhh.

Most of our anxiety is always focused on what might happen someday, someway. And He says, I’ve got that someday covered.

And then, finally notice, I love this last line. He says, “He will rejoice over you with singing.” This is a picture, literally, of God. And for some of us men, this is sort of a hard picture because it’s a picture of God holding you like you’re a little helpless baby.

And if you’ve ever seen a mom, I have watched Theresa do this when our kids were small and now when she puts our grandkids to bed, I can hear in the other room. And she will hold the little ones and she’ll sing over them.

And it’s just sort of this, I just want to quiet you down. I rejoice over you. God’s presence, God’s power, all of God’s pride. You are His delight. He just wants you to know, That’s how I feel about you.

Can you imagine what would happen and how free your life could be and how you could simplify and begin to push some of the stuff on the front page of these notes to the side if you honestly, in your heart of hearts believed that’s how God actually feels about you at this moment?

And, are you ready? Nothing you can do can ever change that. Now you can have windows of blessing through obedience. But even when He disciplines us, it’s because He loves you.

That’s why Paul would pray to the Ephesian church. He would pray, “Since God already loves you, I pray that you might be strengthened in your inner man so that you might comprehend the height and depth and length and breadth, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge or comprehension.” That’s a great thing to pray for one another and for your kids.

Well, it raises a question, okay, can we all agree at this point, that’s true? God really loves me and He loves me like that.

Well, how do you make the connection, the fact that He loves and how do you get it operational in your heart, in your life, in your experience?

Notice what the Scripture says. It says, “God deposits His love in His follower’s hearts through His Spirit.” The same passage, 1 John, he goes on. He says, “We know that we live in Him and He in us, because He’s given us His Spirit.”

Put a circle around live in Him and then another circle, live in us, and you might put little arrows and connect them. We know, he says it’s absolutely true that we live in Him, connection; and He in us, connection, because He’s given us or He’s deposited in us His Spirit.

And then he explains how that works. He says, “And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges,” literally the word is confess, agrees with, “that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.”

He says there is a condition to experience and receive God’s love. Christ died on the cross, fully God and fully man, to pay for your sin, my sin, the sins of all people, of all time. He’s our sin substitute. He says, “If you confess and acknowledge.”

It’s not your good works, it’s not your religiosity. Christ died in your place as your substitute and if you turn from sin, receive His forgiveness, he says the Spirit of God comes into your mortal body and you live in Him and He lives in you and He takes up residence inside of you.

And He will then manifest the power and the presence of the living God and now you have that connection.

On my little iPad it goes like this, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit. Then it goes, chhh. And it connects. And then a bunch of stuff, trrrrrr, downloads.

And He wants to download adoption and forgiveness and place you in His family and grace and seal you with His Spirit and give you spiritual gifts and create a new path and the same power that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you the moment you do that.

Now, he goes on to say that when we’re filled or controlled by the Holy Spirit, the outcome or the overflow is love. So, the Spirit lives inside of you, the Spirit, God, the Second Person of the Trinity, is the means by which God’s love gets from out there in here, and then look what it says in Galatians 5:22 and 23.

“The fruit,” singular, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,” it goes on to say, “self-control.”

So, that love that I just described about His presence and His power and you being the object of His affection, all of that is available. But there’s only two reasons why you can’t experience it.

Reason number one would be living like I did my first eighteen years outside of Christ. I intellectually was aware of God’s love, but I had never turned from my sin, asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life.

If you’ve never done that, today’s a great day to do it. It’s called being born from above. Or being born by the Spirit. The Bible calls it salvation. It’s when you experience forgiveness and His Spirit comes into your life and you are justified. You’re declared righteous before God because of what Christ did for you.

Now, the second reason, you can be a believer and His Spirit lives in you but what I’ve found is, I can have this thing and I’m not going to mention which carrier that it is but there’s times where I can turn this baby on and I can be working and then all of a sudden, “Cannot send mail. Cannot receive mail.” It drops. Just like you have a dropped call. It drops; I can’t get anything.

And maybe it’s because there are too many buildings or maybe it’s a dead spot. But basically there’s interference. There are times where interference from whatever signals come on that little pad, and I can’t get anything. I’ve got the pad, I’m connected, I paid my bill. But there’s interference.

And you can have the Spirit of God living in you, but if He’s not in control, if there’s interference like sin. Like you know exactly what God wants you to do, but you say no.

If your priorities are out of whack. If you get so busy and so inundated doing other things and pursuing other…you know, God in His great love doesn’t bless if there’s interference.

And so he says, “If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So some of you are here today that you desperately need to experience God’s love and intellectually you’re saying, Yeah, I really want that. And you’re saying, I know I’m really a Christian.

And you’re saying, But my life is crazy. And I’m not experiencing that. Well, guess what, part of how you experience it is, He wants to give you grace and He wants to speak to you, but it’s been a while since you really talked to Him.

And He wants you to stop and simplify your life and quit chasing the wind and be quiet before Him. And He’s going to bring people into your life, if you slow down, and get connected to them, where you get together and He’s going to show up in the physical bodies of other people and love you through their words and their arms and their feet and their kindness.

And so, all I want to get to you is to know one thing. You were created to be loved. The source of love is God.

And third, His Spirit can live inside of you, but you need to surrender to and be in alignment and obedience to that Spirit so what He has for you, you can actually receive.

Let me give you the two major ways that God has designed for us to experience His love. God designed love to be birthed and modeled in our families.

Ephesians 5:18, through chapter 6 verse 4. I’d encourage you to follow along and I don’t usually read a long passage. But this one is one you just need to lean back and here’s what I want you to listen as I read.

Notice we said: love comes from God’s Spirit. Notice he’s going to talk about you surrendering or allowing the Spirit to control you and then I’m going to show you, from Scripture, that God has a very clear design that where He wants us to learn about love is in our families.

He actually designed the family system to work in such a way that little boys and little girls would grow up feeling loved, affirmed, cared for. Not for what they do but for who they are.

Pick it up with me in verse 15. The apostle, after telling us all this great stuff we have in Christ, says, “Be very careful then, how you live. Not as unwise but as wise. Making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. Therefore, don’t be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” And he says, well, what’s the will of the Lord? “Well, don’t be drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled,” and the word means controlled, “with the Spirit.”

Well, if you’re filled with the Spirit, well, what happens? Well, “Speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And then, by the way, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

When you’re filled with the Spirit, there is a joy in your heart, there’s a melody, there’s a perspective where you realize God’s in control and He’s good and you choose to give thanks.

And then he says: now I’m going to talk about relationships and how love works when the Spirit’s in control. And he says: the baseline is, no one steps up and says, “I’ve got to have my way on my terms.”

“Submit,” or, “surrender one to another.” In other words, God, You’re the great choreographer and You’re going to put relationships together. You show me my part of the dance. You show me my role so that I can get and receive Your love and then give it in the way You want me to.

And so then he starts and says, okay, family relationships. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body of which He is the Savior. Now, as the Church submits to Christ, so wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

And just before the women go, are you kidding? He says, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church,” well, He died, you’re starting to get the point, guys, “and gave Himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of the water with the word, to present her to Himself as a radiant Church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it just as Christ does the Church.

“For we’re members of His body. For this reason a man will leave his mother and father and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery but I’m talking about Christ and the Church, however,” application, “each one of you must love his wife as himself and the wife must respect her husband.

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother.” Respect. Don’t talk back. Listen to them. Obey them. Why? “Well, this is the first commandment with a promise. That it may go well with you and that you may live and enjoy a long life on the earth. Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord.”

He’s going to go on and talk about slaves and masters. But here’s what he says. The Spirit of God contains the love of God. The Spirit of God comes into a human heart. He’s going to say, there can either be resistance or you can surrender and say, I want to do life Your way.
God designed love to be birthed and modeled in our families.

And here’s God’s plan. It’s really very simple. A tiny little baby gets born and a mother says, “I want to nurture and love this baby.” And a father says, “Fantastic.” And the mother says, “I think this baby will learn how to love if I love my husband the way God says. And I really have to trust him. And so, I’m going to respect my husband and I’m going to encourage him, I’m going to affirm him. I’m going to realize he does have a pretty fragile ego. And I’m going to, when I have to challenge him, I’m going to do it in some ways that he understands. I’m going to ask some probing questions. And I’m going to take strong stands on things. But I’m going to let him know I’m behind him a hundred percent.”

And as that happens, a man feels loved and empowered and as he does, he feels, he experiences God’s love through his wife. He says, “You know something? I’m going to step out and I’m going to lead this family emotionally, spiritually, financially. And tell you what. I’m going to, I’m going to give my life for this woman. I’m going to figure out what makes her feel loved and I’m going to do what the Scripture says. I want to be a living representation of Christ and I want to love her in such a way and then she loves me in such a way and these little kids look up and see this mom and dad loving each other.”

And they create this secure environment that’s not performance oriented. And they have their ups and downs and when they blow it, they forgive one another. And they’re committed to one another.

And then kids grow up and they begin to obey and realize, “You know what? I don’t like these boundaries. I don’t like it when my dad says no, when my mom follows through, and when they’re both on the same page. But wow, I guess my life isn’t going down the tube like a lot of my friends and my parents are staying together and, boy, that feels kind of good and I guess if I can’t obey my mom and dad now, who I can see, I’ll never obey a God that I can’t see.”

And then they grow up and become adults and because of those kind of things they have a good self-image and they learn to trust God and they become adults and they actually kind of come back to your house and it’s full circle and your kids, adult kids, love you and you watch them start to raise their kids and there’s this dynamic called “the family,” where Jesus has clothes on called moms and dads and kids.

And it’s imperfect but it’s a design that God has put into place and when families follow this design, kids grow up strong, healthy, clear, great self-esteem, people of integrity.

Husbands feel supported and empowered. Wives feel loved and cherished. And when those kinds of families, very far from perfect but very different from the world, tell you what. People around go, “Man, what do you all have? Where did you learn that?”

Because see, a lot of them are out looking for position or fame or sex or success or appearance or possessions and they’re getting all the pseudo-loves and every time, keeps coming back empty.

And when you’re really loved, you have the freedom to be you. Just you. And the most attractive person on the face of the earth is when you are really you, loved by God, free not to impress anyone, free to be you, free to accept you, and free to love others.

And so, that’s design number one. It’s an amazing design. I put a little chart there. The Holy Spirit. Then you have this relationship: husband to wife, wife to husband, parents to children, then children to parents. And it’s this vicious cycle of love. It’s God’s design.

And so what you’re going to find is that when we fail to follow God’s design or when others fail to follow God’s design and we reap the negative consequences, He’ll actually take our deepest pains, our dysfunctions, and our hurts if we bring them to Him and He’ll actually use that as an opportunity to express His love in the midst of our pain.

Notice the next point. It says, we often experience love most deeply when we need it most desperately.

Romans 5:3 through 5. It starts out, literally, verse 1. It says, “Thanks be to God. We have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. And we exalt,” or, “we rejoice in this brand new salvation that God’s given us.” And it’s exciting. And he says, “It’s in this grace in which we stand.”

And then in verse 3, he says, “But not only this, but we also rejoice,” or, “exalt in our tribulation,” or our problems or our difficulties. And then he says, why? “Because tribulation or difficulties produce perseverance and perseverance produces character and character produces hope and hope never disappoints because the Holy Spirit pours out the love of God.”

And what he’s saying is, when difficult, painful things come and you will turn to God and sometimes, you know what perseverance means? Just endure. This is a hard marriage. I endure. This is a tough situation. I endure.

You know what? I’m not getting any better physically. I endure. My parents are going through a rough time. I endure. But I’m turning to God in my endurance. As you endure what happens is something happens inside, your character changes as you trust Him. And as your character changes you begin to see, there is hope.

God can change me and He can change things. And the hope is received when the Spirit of God through the Word of God in the context of community pours out into your being and you actually can come out of very dysfunctional families and painful issues and experience God’s love and say, “There’s hope.”

That’s the girl that I met. The girl that I met not only had a difficult, painful, really negative childhood, she looked for love in all the wrong places and got married early. And then she had a husband who abandoned her – sleeping with someone else for a couple years and she didn’t know it. Then she gets pregnant with these twin boys, and he leaves, never to be heard of again.

I met her two and a half years later. It was in that pain that Theresa, out of a dysfunctional family and being abandoned by a man who was selling drugs, turned to God and she persevered. And that persevering and she would pray at night and sing at night and cry out to God and she didn’t have any money.

And in that persevering it built some character and I got to see the character of this godly woman. And that produced hope. And I met her about two and half years later where it was like a piece of coal turned into a diamond.

And I saw a heart for God and a love for God and someone who understood the amazing forgiveness of God, and it attracted me.

And I just came on the other end of it. I hadn’t been through difficult, painful times. I just was, I was empty in success. I was on the performance track. So I didn’t understand God’s love.

Affirmation felt like love so perform, perform, perform. Get As, score points, get pretty girlfriends. I’m loved, right?

No. You’re empty. You just appear plastic and like you have things that everyone told you would fill the hole and it never did. And it was out of that that I persevered. That built character. That I came to Christ.

And then said, “You know something? Adulation and affirmation and false intimacy and position, they’re empty. And it’s hard because I can see those things and I can’t see God’s love.”

Where are you at today? Would you like to really experience God’s love? I’ll tell you, there are very clear steps to experiencing God’s love. I put them in your notes. They’re very, very clear. They’re very, very clean.

Step one is you need to step down. You have to surrender. You can live life on your agenda or God’s agenda.

But a certain day at a certain time, even as a Christian, you’ve got to say, God, from this day on, I’m going to do it Your way. I know I’ll mess up, I know it’ll be hard but whatever Your Word says, I’m doing life Your way. I desperately need You. Some of us get there because the pain is so great there’s no place else to go.

Second is then you’ve got to step away. You walk in darkness. For me it was hanging out in bars and doing stuff I knew was wrong and getting caught up in all my…I had to step away from the world’s values and I had to be separate from the world’s values.

And I had to say, You know what? This is really different and really hard but I’m going to do life Your way. And I’ve got to start hanging around some people that do life Your way. You step away.

And then you have to step in. You can’t be, sort of this, lone ranger Christian out there. You’ve got to get with a group of people that are on the same page that are moving and you say, “You know what? Little by little, I’m going to let you in on who I am, but I’m going to hang with you all.”

That’s, I mean, the reason that we’re so adamant about small groups is life change happens in authentic community.

Jesus lives inside of you if you’re a Christian, and He lives inside of other people and it is impossible to live and experience His love apart from deep, authentic connection and vulnerability with other people. Is it risky? Yes. The option, though, of not being loved is the only alternative.

And so, at some point you step down, then you step away, then you step in. And then when you’re in that community, at some point in time, you’ve got to step up. And you’ve got to step up and quit playing it safe and saying: this is my sober self-assessment. I’m good at this, I struggle with this. I want to be God’s man or God’s woman and I want you all to help me.

And I’m going to let you see the parts of me that are not very pleasant. Everyone has them. Because you never feel loved until you meet some people that see you’re not-so-pretty stuff and they look right at you and go, “Yeah, I’ve seen that. I still like you. In fact, I love you. I mean, I’ve seen that for years. I’ve got it. You’ve got it.”

Do you know how freeing it is? I mean, help me with this but is there anybody here who’s perfect? Just go ahead and raise that hand, do I see those hands?

We intellectually say that so why would I be threatened at a certain point to say, “You know something? I struggle.”

A guy last night, I was so proud of him. But you know what he said? He goes, “I’ve got to step in, I’ve got to step up. Yeah, I’m a part of the church and I’m growing, I’m making progress, it’s great.” But he was saying, “I need to go to the next level and I need to get real at a level where I really put my past behind me.”

And then what you do is you step out. You step out. And you get your focus off of you and you say, “I bet there’s someone hurting a little bit more than me. I bet there’s someone a little poorer than me. I bet there’s someone whose marriage is even more messed up than mine. I bet there’s someone whose addiction is even deeper than mine.”

And you just start to give your life away with your time and your energy and your money and Jesus promised, “Give and it’ll be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over back into your lap.”

And all I can tell you is, you want to experience the infinite, unconditional, powerful, life-transforming love of God, you step down, you step away, you step in, you step up, and then you step out.

If you want to be loved, here’s what it’s going to take. Every person in the world is stepping on something. We talked about the ladder of success, the ladder of appearance and some people really work at, “I’m going to be this super perfect mom,” and other people are, “I’m going to keep pumping those weights so I look and the girls all like me.”

And, you know, some people are trying to afford liposuction and other people it’s the, you know, we all got it, right?

But every one of us are stepping on certain things we think if we can just get this, we’ll be loved. And at some point in time, you know something? You step down from that and you surrender to God and you say, You know what? You may give me appearance, You may give me some money here and there, but I’ll tell You what I’m going to do. I’m going to step down and surrender to You, lock, stock, and barrel. Many of you, that’s the step you need to take today.

Second thing, you’re kind of in the dark. You need to step away and step into the light. You’ve got to step away from the people, step away from the environments, step away from the media that keeps giving you the messages that there’s some step there that will make you a somebody. And you step away and step into the light and you start walking in holiness. And boy, that’s a big one.

And you know, by the way, it’s not always drugs or alcohol. You can be addicted to shopping. You can be addicted to people’s approval. You can be addicted to all kind of stuff. You can be addicted to ESPN. You can be addicted to fantasy football. You can be addicted to just trivia. Where in the world is your life going? Do you want to be loved?

And then, third, you’ve got to step in. And you’ve got to get with a group of people and you’ve got to say: you know something? I’m going to play it safe at first because I don’t know you people. And I know you’re Christians, but Christians are flaky people like everyone else.

And so, I’m going to figure out who’s going to not share what I share with other people and little by little by little I’m going to, but I’m going to do life with you all. I’m going to make it a priority.

Some of you make it a priority to work out. Some of you figure out how to work seventy hours a week. Some – you make a priority. You do what matters to you. So you decide what matters to you. You want to experience love? You step down, you step away, then you step in.

And then someplace in this stepping in, you take a step of vulnerability and you say: you know something? I know I’ve presented this side and I’ve showed a little bit of me. But I want you to know I got some things I’m not proud of. I’ll tell you what. You will experience the love of God like never before.

And then, you step out and you get on your little spiritual bicycle and you say: you know what? I’ve got to get going, I’ve got to get focused on helping some other people.

Here’s my question: what step do you need to take? God loves you. “The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty to deliver. He takes great delight in you. He will quiet you with His love. He’ll rejoice over you with singing.”

But there’s a condition. And the condition is, you need to figure out whether it’s a ladder issue, a stepping away and into the light issue, a stepping in issue, stepping up.

And then, it’s by faith. You say, God, I’m afraid. Everything I’ve ever done, in fact, in Scripture, every time I find anybody that’s doing anything significant either an angel or someone comes and says, “Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, do not…” Why? Because they’re afraid!

Well, that would mean people would know this? Yep! They would! But think of how much energy you use hiding it, how much energy we use pretending.

Where do you find love? The source of love is God. It comes through His Spirit. You need to walk in His Spirit. How do you get it? The ideal is that it’s in this family system and for those of us with families, let’s ask God to help us create those kind of families of Ephesians 5 and 6.

And then, no matter where you’re at in your pain, sometimes we get loved most deeply when we realize we’re really desperate and we say, “Okay, I’m willing.” Final question. How do you give it away? How do you give it away? The Romans 12 application is serving in love.

Everybody makes decisions and all those decisions make you. Make a decision today.

Second thing is, I thought of something real, real practical and it’s really brief but I thought of the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the most loving person in the world was Jesus, right?

The most loving person, so, what did He do? And I literally, I mentally went through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. I just went through the life of Christ, life of…I thought, what did He do? Are you ready for this?

This is how Jesus loved people. He did it by talking with them. He did it by walking with them. He did it by eating with them. He did it by praying with them. He did this to His family, He did this with His friends, He actually did these things with His enemies.

He did it by playing with them. I’ll tell you, I think Jesus was a very fun guy to be around. Holy for sure. But a lot of us, we don’t get some of those jokes. That day He said, “Hey, Pete, John, come here, you know what?

I mean, He was real. He was loving. I think they played together. He suffered with them. When things got hard, I mean, they went through it together. And then He did two things, both with His family, His friends, and His enemies. He taught them. And He forgave them.

Now, you know what? I don’t know about you, but that list is not rocket science.

If you’re leaving here, now what should I do to become a more loving person with my family? Oh, with my friends. Mm, with my small group. Mm. Even at work. Yeah. Or even with my enemies.

Here’s a novel idea. Talk with them. Eat with them. “Hey, you want to go for a walk?” Pray with them. Play with them. If you’re in the role, teach them. And if they’ve hurt you, forgive them.

Let me just ask you, in your family, are you doing that? Or are you too busy? You’re too busy to eat together? Jesus wasn’t too busy to do that. Too busy to talk together? Too busy to take a walk? Too busy to have some fun?

And so, are you ready? Now we’re back to the very first page, aren’t we? Why are you too busy? And what I’ll tell you, if you’re honest, go to that front page and see how many of the things in the right hand column that I listed are about all the demands you feel that you’ve got to do and at the heart of it, is what you desperately need is to be loved.

And you think and I believe and we’ve been brainwashed to believe that we can find it in those things. But you’re smart people. If you could find it in those things, you’d have found it by now. My recommendation: take a big step.