Renovating our Relationships
Renovate

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Lord , we do surrender to You. We surrender our hearts afresh to You. We surrender our lives. We surrender every care, every worry, every hurt place, every fractured relationship and every wound. We surrender it all to You. Lord, we surrender our ears now to hear Your word; prepare our hearts. We’re not here just to “check off a box.” We’re here to meet with You and to be encouraged by You; to be refreshed, healed and revived. Lord, we pray for revival for our church, that You would strengthen and energize us for You.

Lord, we pray for our city and for the churches in our city. This week, we want to pray for Mount Moriah Community Church and Pastor Sherman Blandon. We pray for their services today. We, also, pray for our Rocky Mount campus, for pastor Jonathan and their service today; Holy Spirit, be present. We pray that You would move in our part of the state, Lord, to bring revival so that many people, every man, woman and child would get a chance to hear the gospel and respond. We surrender all to You now. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

We’re in part six of this series entitled, “Renovate.” Today, we’re talking about renovating our relationships. Our key verse for this series is found in Proverbs 4:23 (ESV) “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” We are convinced that life is lived from the inside out, not outside in. We believe that the heart is the key and that God looks at the heart. The heart is like “the control center;” the “driver’s seat” of our lives, where we make decisions and we want to have a heart that’s right with God.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about the different aspects of our lives that affect our heart, that affect our will. We have talked about our thought life, our feelings and emotions. We’ve talked about how we feel in our bodies. Now today, we’re going to talk about our relationships. How relationships with other people affect us spiritually.

Dallas Willard, in his book, “Renovation of the Heart,” writes this, “Spiritual formation is always profoundly social. Anyone who thinks of it as a merely private matter has misunderstood it. Anyone who says, “It’s just between me and God,” or “What I do is my own business,” has misunderstood God as well as “me.” Strictly speaking there is nothing “just between me and God.” For all that is between me and God affects who I am; and that, in turn, modifies my relationship to everyone around me. My relationship to others also modifies me and deeply affects my relationship to God. Hence those relationships must be transformed if I am to be transformed.”

Did you catch the last part of what Dr Willard said? He said that if we want transformation in our lives, there has to be a transformation in the way we relate to other people. Today, we’re going to talk about the renovating of our relationships.

Our human relationships begin before we’re even born. That first relationship is in our mother’s womb ; how she feels physically and emotionally affects the baby in the womb. We know this; we’ve learned this through the years. That’s the first relationship; the first key relationship that every one of us has had has been between mother and child. You must say this is the most profound relationship, but it’s also perhaps the most terrifyingly fragile relationship because whether or not we feel accepted or rejected begins at birth. As soon as the baby is born, the doctor lays the newborn on the mother’s breast and skin to skin. The child begins to bond to the mother and from that moment forward, the baby begins to realize this is an important relationship; the baby doesn’t know the word, “love,” yet, but they’re starting to experience it–or not. Depending on that, we either feel acceptance or rejection from that earliest relationship.

Then, a third person ideally appears and it becomes like a family “trinity,” if you will, where the father comes in. The father comes in, kind of nervously, because it seems like a place “too holy” to interact for a moment –this thing that mother and child have. The mom’s already got a nine-month lead on the dad, but he comes in and then the baby feels a different kind of love and acceptance, ideally, from the father. Only in this holy trio that is God’s design, father and mother each give a different kind of love to the child, so that the child begins to feel accepted and loved. Then, the child observes that mom and dad love each other and then, the child feels this other love. I’m invited into this trio of love. They love me, but they also love each other. This creates the basic “building block” of a healthy relational spiritual formation in each of us– or not.

Then, other relationships are added– grandparents, siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts… as this goes forward and the child grows up. We know this, but did you ever think about it, though, because the truth is, many of us are walking wounded today. We came in the doors and we’ve been wounded since our earliest family experiences. We have felt rejection and so we started coping in certain ways. We felt wounded and hurt and so we learned to mask it and to bury it. It doesn’t matter, because not one of us was born into a perfect family; not one. Even those Christian families still have something of the sin nature left over.

How do we sin relationally? All of our relational sins could probably fall into two categories: The first category is to assault one another, to do harm and the second category is to withdraw from one another to assault and withdraw. “Fight or flight.” Those are the two categories.

Just think about the Ten Commandments. Six of the ten are to correct our tendency for fight or flight, assault or withdrawal. “Honor your father and mother.” That commandment has to do with your relationship with your mom and dad; don’t dishonor them. “Do not murder.” That commandment certainly talks about assault, doesn’t it? “Do not murder.” Jesus takes it up a notch and says, “If you call your brother “Raca,” which means empty head, you’ve committed murder in your heart. “Thou shall not commit adultery.” That’s an assault on the marriage. “Thou shall not lie.” That’s an assault; it is, also, kind of a withdrawal. “Thou shall not steal.” “Thou shall not covet.” All six of these have to do with our relational sins.

The truth is, because we’re out of relationship with God, that broken relationship radiates out into all of our relationships, how we relate to ourselves and how we relate to each other. We must have healing and only the Lord can do it. It begins with the right relationship with God, when we realize that we are accepted, fully accepted by God through the Lord Jesus and then, out of that , flows the ability to accept others and to have real and meaningful relationships. Without that, we continue to sin against each other and to continually drive each other apart. We just can’t help ourselves. “Hurt people hurt people.” We need healing. We are relationally broken and we need Jesus to move.

Do you want some of that? The bible has a word for, it’s called love. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today–how to know the love of God.

In the apostle John’s first letter, he wrote to encourage believers to let the love of God renovate all of their relationships, to let the love of God flow in them, to them and through them to others. I believe, today, that we can let that same love of God renovate our hearts and renovate our relationships. As we look at the text today, I think we’ll see four ways that God wants to do that. Let’s dig in.

This is the first letter from the apostle John: 1 John 4:7-21 (ESV) 7 “Beloved, let us love one another , for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have cometo know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” This is God’s word, Amen.

HOW TO LET THE LOVE OF GOD RENOVATE OUR RELATIONSHIPS:

1. Receive the gift of God’s love for spiritual rebirth.

Receive the gift of God’s love for spiritual rebirth. We must be born again.

Who is the source of true love? Verse seven says, “love is from God.” Where does love come from? It comes from God. What kind of love are we talking about? The word is in our reading today, 27 times, 27 times we see if we could read it in the Greek. The Greek word, “Agape,” is the Greek word for God’s kind of love, which is unconditional love, sacrificial love.

It’s not like the world’s love. The best the world can achieve is apart from God; the Greeks called it “Phileo.” It’s where we get the name, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. “Phileo” is conditional love. I love you because you’re my wife, I love you because you’re my child. I love you because of… The world has this; it’s based on condition, but “Agape” love is unconditional love. It radiates from the condition within God to us and through us to others. It’s unconditional. It’s not, I love you because of. It’s, I love you in spite of.

That’s what John is talking about. He says that this “Agape” love comes from God. You can’t get it at the store. You can’t manufacture it. You can’t fake it. You must be born again by the Spirit and receive it, poured out into your heart, transforming your heart so that now you have access to this indomitable eternal heartbeat of God flowing to you and through you to others– God’s love. John opens with the word, “Beloved.” He uses this word, “beloved,” twice in our reading today. He’s an old man now. He’s the last living of the twelve disciples. All the other disciples have died martyr’s deaths. This is close to the turn of the first century. Everybody that he talks to, he calls them, “beloved, dear children.” He’s an old grandpa.

Now the word “love/loved,” is in there twenty-seven times. If we count the two “beloveds,” then we would have twenty-nine times in this one reading.

This passage is about love–God’s kind of love. He says “love one another.” Let’s look at these couple of verses, 7 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” It’s not the love that makes you born again. It’s the faith in Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only…” If you believe in Him, you have this. Love is like the evidence that you’re born again and not only you’re born again, but you know God.

The Greek word here has the idea of experiential knowledge, intimate knowledge; not just intellectual, book knowledge. It’s not that you know about God; you know God. You now are in a relationship with God.

I was talking to someone in the lobby after the first service. He gave his testimony about how a friend of his had been living a pretty wild life and got put in prison. When he got out of prison, he called him and started talking to him. His friend said, ‘What’s different about you?’ He told him, ‘I love the Lord. I have the love of the Lord.’ His friend says, ‘What does that mean?’ He said to his friend, “That love caused me to come to the Lord.’ That’s the proof that you’ve been born again and that you’re in the right relationship with God. This love, this “Agape,” unconditional, sacrificial love becomes yours and it causes you to love one another with the same love.

Verse eight says, 8 “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” John really “puts the cookies on the bottom shelf .” He makes it very accessible. If you are struggling with loving others, go back and check to make sure you’re born again, Make sure you’ve received Jesus as Lord and Savior. You can’t manufacture salvation, you can’t fake salvation. You can come sit in the church every Sunday and try to put that smile on your face, but the people closest to you know that you don’t walk in love. You walk in some other way, some other former nature, but not in love. This cannot be manufactured. If you know God and you’ve been born again of God, the chief attribute here that John highlights for God is “God is love.” Three little words. You can’t reverse them because it’s not true. If you reverse them, love is God, that’s not true because God is more than that.

John says in the same letter, “God is holy.” We can say a lot of those things, but the chief attribute is love; God is unconditional love. If you don’t love, go back and check– are you born again? Have you received Him? It’s the chief proof.

Titus 3:5-6 (AMP) 5 “He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we have done, but because of His own compassion and mercy, by the cleansing of the new birth (spiritual transformation, regeneration) and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out richly upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior.” He saved us because of his love.

Do you see that big word in verse nine? “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” What does the word, “manifest,” mean? It means “to make manifest or visible or known what has been hidden.” The world had never seen a God love. They had seen glimpses of it from God, but they really saw it when the Son of God appeared. Do you want to know what love looks like? Look at Jesus. That’s God’s love in the flesh . Manifest means “revealed, uncovered.” The world finally saw God’s love through Jesus.

Verse 10 says this, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Propitiation is a big word; some translations say “atoning sacrifice.” What does that mean? God loved us so much that His love was sacrificial, but God is also holy and because he’s holy, his holy reaction to sin is called judgment and so, to continue being holy, so that His holiness and His love are held equally, His love caused Him to deal with His holiness on our behalf. He sends His son, Jesus, as a propitiation, which means, “a satisfaction to His holiness.” The idea of propitiation has the idea of satisfying God’s holiness and judgment upon sin.

Jesus died in our place. He took our death so that we could receive His life. He took our separation, so we could receive His Sonship. He took our sinfulness so that we could receive His righteousness. That’s what propitiation means. Jesus satisfied God’s holiness; He was a sacrifice. This is the picture of God’s sacrificial love.

Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, who was so afraid of what others thought that he came to see Jesus at night. Nicodemus said to Jesus, ‘I can tell that you’re a great teacher. What should I do to receive the kingdom of heaven?’ Jesus told Nicodemus that his relationship to God could be restored by being born again through faith in Him. Jesus says this in John 3:3 (ESV) “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” You have to be born again.

He goes on to give him that great verse, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” How do you get born again? How do you get a new heart that has this “Agape” love for God, for self and for others?

What’s the greatest commandment? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ” It puts all of the loves in the right places. All of those loves are broken by our sin, but it puts it all right when we’re born again.

How do you get that? You believe in Jesus as the payment for your sin, making you right with God. Are you born again? This is the first step. The first step to healing from relational brokenness and experiencing transformation is to be born again by the love of God.

HOW TO LET THE LOVE OF GOD RENOVATE OUR RELATIONSHIPS:

2. Abide in God’s love, abandoning former defensiveness.

Remember what we talked about earlier? Our sin pattern is defensiveness; we assault or withdraw. That’s what we do.

Some people may say, ‘Well, I didn’t say anything mean to her.’ No; you didn’t say anything at all. You withdrew. That’s just the other sin nature pattern. Both of those are with withdrawals from the relationship. If you say something mean, use bad language or call someone a name, that’s an assault on that person, but if you just go quiet and pout, that’s a withdrawal. Both of these are damaging to a relationship; they’re according to the old sin nature. They are not according to “Agape” love, which is the new nature.

We are to break out of this “fight or flight” response and move into a new response, which might be termed, “reconcile and abide.” You’ll notice the word, “abide,” in verses 11 through 16, which is where we are now in our text. The word, “abide,” is in there six times. The word, “love,” is there 27 times, counting “beloved.” There is something about abiding and loving that go together.

If we’ve been born again, we need to live according to the new birth. The word, “abide,” means “to live in,” “to dwell in,” “to stay in” and “to stay connected. He uses the word, “abide,” six times in four verses here. It means to stay in Christ; to stay in relationship with Christ and stay in relationship with other believers.

Sometimes, it’s hard because some of you are pretty “prickly.” It’s hard to get close to you without getting hurt a little bit. Primarily, the reason that “hurt people hurt people” is because they’re wounding others out of their own woundedness. They’ve been rejected in the past and they are often “prickly” because they’re afraid they’ll be rejected by you. They withdraw when it gets too serious. When you start talking about hard issues, they go quiet, right? It’s the “sin pattern.” They don’t trust others because they’ve been hurt in the past. They might have the same motives as we do because we don’t really trust ourselves. We don’t really love ourselves. We have this brokenness that goes, perhaps, all the way back to our childhood. Who can help us? We must be born again and then, secondly, being born again, we must abide, live in, dwell in, stay connected to the Lord.

Let’s look at what it says here in verse 11, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” “Ought to” is about owing. Paul says in Romans, “Owe no man nothing except your love.” That’s the unpayable debt that you’ll never pay off because of what He did for us on the cross. We ought to love one another. That’s what he said. You owe it. You have a debt to love one another.

No one has ever seen God. John likes to talk about this; God the Father is spiritual. No one’s ever seen Him. Over in chapter one of his gospel, he says, “No one has ever seen God, but the only begotten, he has made him known.” If you want to see the love of God, look at Jesus. There it is; He’s on the cross. He said, ‘I love you this much.’ He stretched out His hands and said, ‘I love you this much.’

Then, he says something surprising in verse 12, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” If you want to see God’s love, you can look at Jesus. Do you know who else you can look at? You can look at God’s people when they are walking in. They have the love of Jesus. It’s not normal to forgive somebody like that after they’ve committed adultery on you. It’s not normal to forgive somebody like that after they bad mouth you all over town. It’s not normal to reconcile with that person after they stole something from you. But, it’s the love of the Lord in you. How do I get that? You must be born again.

If you’re born again, you can live in it, walk in it and draw on it from Him. It’s not from me, it’s from Him, abiding in Him. The chief attribute that people will see, as they see God in us, is because we love one another. We love one another with “Agape” love, unconditional, sacrificial love. No one’s ever seen God, but if they see us, they’ll see love. This love is being perfected in us. It’s the Greek word, “teleioō,” where we get the word, “telescope,” which means you can see something from a distance. Something from far away is brought near. This idea, here, has the idea of that end goal, which is to be perfectly like Jesus; perfectly like God, so that our love is like His.

This process is called “sanctification;” we are being made and are growing into maturity. So this idea of perfection has the idea of this love being brought to maturity, so that it looks like the love of Christ. like that. As it grows, we become those like a reconciling force in the world that we no longer fight and flee. Instead, we pursue reconciliation. We forgive and we lean in; we don’t withdraw. We chase after. That’s what love does, by this verse 13. We know that we abide in Him and He in us because He’s given us a spirit, that Holy Spirit living in us.

Have you noticed how all three members of the Trinity are in this passage –Father, Son and Holy Spirit? The Spirit radiates this ”Agape” love. Verse 14 and 15, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.”

Have you confessed that He’s the son of God, that He’s the Savior of the world? Are you born again? Are you abiding in Jesus? How do you know if you’re abiding in Jesus? If hatred continues to cling to your heart, you’re not abiding by the Holy Spirit. Right now, I’m asking you, because we’re not playing church. This is real. If you are watching online, here in the worship center or next door in our gathering place, look at us, Holy Spirit. Show us the face of the person right now that your feelings towards them borders on hatred. I don’t hate anybody. Do you love them? I can’t say that I love them. Love is the command. Hatred is the opposite of the command. Holy Spirit, show that someone who is not feeling love towards a person that they are not abiding. Gary, you don’t know what they did to me. You don’t know what they’re doing to me right now. I know what you’re doing to you right now. You’re not abiding. You’re not abiding and therefore God’s love is not flowing to you as he wants to. God is a God of love. This is the answer, my friend and it will show itself in our relationships.

Verse 16, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” In John, chapter 15, Jesus talks about the vine, he says , “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing… 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” Live in that. Take a “time out,” wherever you’re at in the day and say, ‘God, why am I not loving this person? Why do I feel tempted to assault them or withdraw from them and break off of that relationship with this person? Why do I not feel love for this individual? I don’t feel like You’re abiding in me. My relationship with You is out of order. It is creating a deficit in my spiritual life and I don’t want anything between me and You, Father.’

James 4:1-2 (ESV) 1 “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.” This withdrawal, this assault, this fight or flee is from the old nature, but when love is the heart beat, those things are put away.

What did Adam and Eve do when they sinned? They withdrew and hid from God. What did Cain do whenever his sacrifice was not acceptable and his brother, Abel’s, sacrifice was acceptable? Cain assaulted and killed his brother. Since our parents, Adam and Eve, were brought into this world, that sin nature that began in them is ours. We are relationally broken apart from Christ. Only the love from Christ can change this.

HOW TO LET THE LOVE OF GOD RENOVATE OUR RELATIONSHIPS:

3. Let God’s perfect love cast out all fear.

Let God’s perfect love cast out all fear. We are in verses 17 and 18. You’ll notice in verse 18, it says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” The word, “fear,” is used four times. Interestingly enough, it’s the Greek word, “phobos.” Does that sound familiar? The word, “phobos? It’s where we get the word, “phobia.” Notice how fear and love relate to one another. When we let God’s perfect, whole, complete love be the formation of our spirit, of our heart, it kicks fear out the door. The word, “fear,” in context here, is fear of broken relationships, specifically. He’s talking about God, at first, here because he says that this is love perfected. Verse 17, “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.” Because we have the love of God in us now, we’re no longer afraid of His judgment when He gets on the judgment seat, because we know Jesus is the propitiation for us. He took our judgment.

Romans 8:1, ESV: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Just as Noah and his family went into the ark and the judgment of God fell upon the ark, but all of those within were found safe, we are in Christ, because we have this perfected love, this whole love, that is ours in Christ. We don’t have to be afraid of a broken relationship with God; He will never leave us nor forsake us. We are fully accepted from God and because we have this full acceptance, we don’t have to look for it from others. Now, we can bring a wholeness, a perfected love to every relationship, not looking for what we can get out of others. Not saying, “you complete me,” in our relationships, but saying, “no, I’m complete in Jesus and I bring all of that with me to every relationship. I’m not looking to get. I’ve received all I need and I constantly abide and I continue to receive. Therefore, I can give because God’s “Agape” love gives.” “For God, so loved the world that He gave…” It’s a giving love , a sacrificial love and so, it casts out fear.

Fear of what? Fear of being rejected. There’s nothing like being in a relationship with someone where you know that you don’t have to watch every word you say because the relationship is always at risk. I had better withdraw right here, because if I say this, that always ticks her off. Then she flies mad and assaults me, so I withdraw so that she doesn’t assault. All at the basis of this is fear; it’s a fear-based relationship. If you have fear in your marriage, then you don’t really have truth and love. Your marriage is ruled by fear. If you have fear in any relationship, you don’t really have truth and love. But, Gary, doesn’t the bible say that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God? It does, but it has more of the sense here of the fear of God, the fear of His displeasure, the reverence for His person and the respect for who He is. But for those of us that have been born again, we are children of God. We have perfect love now, that casts out the kind of fear from His judgment. We don’t have to fear His judgment. I still fear His displeasure, but I don’t fear that He’ll leave me. I don’t fear that He won’t be my Father anymore because He’s promised that He’ll never leave me nor forsake me.

The fear that remains, then, is this holy respect of reverence, but the fear that says, ‘I’m afraid that you will reject me, so I’m not going to tell you the whole truth, even though this part of the truth you need to hear because if I really loved you, I would tell you about this so it could help you grow. I can’t, though, because if I do, I’m afraid you’ll assault or withdraw’ is worldly fear. We can choose to walk in fear, but perfect love casts out fear because perfect love doesn’t worry about judgment or punishment.

Verse 18, “There is no fear in love,but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” If you’re still going around afraid that you’re not going to be accepted, if you’re still low in self esteem and you don’t know if God really loves you and you don’t know if He is still there, then you haven’t been perfected in love. You’re not abiding in love. You’re not going to let the wholeness of God’s love perfect you in your relationship with Him and your relationship with each other. It causes us to cast off all pretense and to love one another with genuine authentic love because we’ve cast off fear.

Listen to what Paul writes to the Romans. It’s a long list about how to love with this new transformed heart. Romans 12:9-16 (NLT) 9 “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10 Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other. 11 Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lordenthusiastically . 12 Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. 13 When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. 14 Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. 15 Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!” That’s what love looks like.

About twenty years ago, our associate pastor at the time after 911 felt called to move he and his family to Iraq and be missionaries there. They moved to Baghdad and opened up a training center to teach English to young Iraqi students so that they could pass the entrance exam to American colleges to help get a better life. It’s called The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). He was teaching his class and he said there was a man in the back of the room. He came in angry and left angry. He needed the class and he needed to pass English, but he didn’t want to have to learn it from this Christian American. Our associate said that every day he was thinking, ‘how can I reach this man?’ He tried everything and every time he would try to reach him because he was seeing it as an opportunity, not just to teach English, but to teach him about Jesus and to share the gospel. He said he could just feel the guy’s fist’s go up. He was praying to God about it and felt like the Holy Spirit told him that he would have to get close to this guy and he’s going to try to run. If he gets too close, this guy’s probably going to punch him a couple of times verbally, but don’t punch back. He’s going to say some mean things to you about being an American and about being a Christian. He’s going to say some things. Just take those shots and put the love of God around him. Just hug him with the gospel. Put your arms around him so he won’t be able to get in a good shot because you’ll be hugging him too hard. He said, “I did that by the power of the Holy Spirit. I just started pursuing this guy and and literally he would back up all around the room until his back would get against the wall and he couldn’t back up any farther. I would get right up close to him.’ The day finally came where he literally was cursing him in Arabic. Then, he leans in and puts his head on my shoulder and starts weeping. We hugged and he told him, ‘I want to know this Jesus, I want to know this Jesus the Messiah.’ That’s what love does – instead of assaulting back when it’s assaulted it tries to reconcile instead of running away. When another runs, it pursues. This perfect love is no longer tempted to attack or withdraw because there’s no fear of rejection.

HOW TO LET THE LOVE OF GOD RENOVATE OUR RELATIONSHIPS:

4. Let God’s redeeming love flow to you and through you to others.

He says in verse 19, “We love because he first loved us.” We love because He died for us and He paid for our sins. That’s why we have this “Agape” love because He redeemed us. Therefore, we have this redeeming love within us now, so that we have the power to bless others with this love. This love has transformed our hearts. It’s designed in such a way so that it flows to us and through us to others.

Many of us spend much of our lives shaking our fists at God, saying, “Why did you let this happen to me? Why was this taken from me?’ Instead of doing this, tell the Lord, ‘I surrender all.’ Open your hand and say, ‘God, I receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I receive Your forgiveness. I believe. I want to know You. I want to be right with You.’ Then, that love begins to flow into us and it begins to transform us so that we’re born again and that God may love. We begin to know that God really accepts us and He is satisfied because of Jesus. We begin to experience self love and self forgiveness, so we no longer feel shame. Then, we sense that love empowering us to open the other hand, continuing to abide with God. His love flows to us and through us to others, so that we become conduits of His love. People will see God manifest in this world not because we know it all. Not because we can answer all their questions, but because we love them with a love they’ve never seen before. We love like that because He first loved us.

Verse 20 says, If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. If you go around saying that you love God and you hate your brother, you’re a liar because you’ve seen your brother and you’ve never seen God. How can you claim to love the one you haven’t seen when you can’t even love the one you do see? That’s what he is saying in verse 20. Wherever you have hate, you’re not abiding. You can’t fix everything. Not everyone will reconcile with you, but you can be reconciled in your heart that you’ve done all you can towards them and you can continue to love them even when they continue to hurt you. Well, Gary doesn’t that make me a doormat? No, that makes you like Jesus. He said, ‘when you do that, when you love your enemies, it’s like heaping hot coals on their head.’ It fries their brain. You’re supposed to hate me back. Why do you keep loving me? It just melts them down. That’s the power of love that God wants to be manifest in us. He wants love to be a verb.

1 John 3:14-18 (NLT) 16 “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? 18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.”

Love is a verb. It flows. It takes action. It redeems. It blesses. It gives.

This is the commandment that Jesus gave His disciples in John 13:34-35 (ESV) 34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” “If you love one another;” it’s the “proof in the pudding” that you belong to Jesus. Will you allow the redeeming love of God to flow to you and through you to others and in so doing, experience the spiritual transformation of your own life.

Allow me to close with one more reading about love. There’s so much about this in the bible, but this is perhaps the greatest description of what love looks like. It is found in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. Paul writes this, he says, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13 (ESV) “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its ownway ;it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

This is God’s love, church. I pray for a church, I pray for a people that we, as followers of Jesus, will spend eternity together. Let’s begin to let the love of Christ abide in us in such a way that it transforms all of our relationships. May it be so. Would you receive that today? Let the love of God be yours, so that’s the mark of your life. Not how much you own– not the house, not the job, but that people look at you and they say, ‘He is love. He is the most loving person.’ May that be you; may that be all of us. May we receive that with open arms from Jesus today.

Let’s pray. Lord, I pray first, of all for the person that’s here that has never known the love of God because they’ve never opened their heart to Him. Is that you, my friend? Right in your seat today, I invite you to do something about it. He’s listening to you right now. Would you talk to Him in prayer? You can do it right in your seat. You don’t have to move a muscle. You just have to move your heart towards Him and say, ‘Lord, I’m a sinner. I’ve been living my life apart from You, but today, I recognize that I need a Savior. I believe that You died on the cross for me. Lord Jesus, I believe that You were raised from the grave and that You live today. I believe that. Come and live in me. I want to be born again. I want to know You and be in a right relationship with You. Would you forgive me of my sins and make me a child of God? I want to follow You as my Lord and my Savior. I give my life to You. I surrender all.’ If you’re praying that prayer, believing, He’ll save you and He’ll make you His own. You’ll begin to have this “Agape” love that we’ve been talking about, pouring through you. Others are here today and you have Jesus as your Savior, but there’s areas that you’ve not allowed His love to pervade. Is it a relationship? Is it with a child or a parent? A brother or a sister? A cousin? A coworker, a spouse, a boss? Someone you used to call your friend? Right now, would you say, ‘Lord, help me to love that person. Show me how to love them as You love. I want to abide in Your love.’ In Jesus’ name. Amen.