Interconnected Love: Loving God, Others, and Yourself

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All righty. Last week, Gary was here and preached a great message and encouraged us to, every day, morning and evening, quote the Shema. Have you been doing that? Well, if you haven’t, let’s stand up together. And here’s Jesus’ quote of it. So let’s read this together:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

And the second is this:

“Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater command than these.”

So here we go. You can be seated. Thank you.

So here we see Jesus adding a little bit to it. He adds another commandment—we should love others as we love ourselves. Jackie read this morning from 1 Corinthians 13, and there at the end, Paul talks about three great tenets of the faith: faith, hope, and love. It’s the tenets of our belief system.

Faith always looks backwards. Have you ever thought about that? But our faith looks backwards. All Israel was encouraged to often look back and see what God has done, right? Faith looks at—later on, we’ll take communion—faith looks at the work of what Christ has done. We’re constantly reminded, especially in the Old Testament: remember, remember, remember, remember. Remember what God has done. It’s God’s work in the past. It’s our own story of redemption. It’s God’s story of how He is redeeming the world. So faith kind of looks at redemption in the past.

We have hope. Hope looks forward with resilience and confidence that God will complete His work in the world and in our lives. He who began a good work is going to complete it. The world’s going somewhere. Good is going to triumph. Evil is going to be defeated. It’s redemption in the future.

But then Paul says the greatest of these things is love. Why is that?

Well, love lives in the present. It lives in the present—connecting with God, connecting with others and myself and the world with kindness, grace, forgiveness, and compassion. It’s redemption in the moment. It’s redemption now. It’s where the rubber hits the road. If I’m always thinking about or reflecting on the past, or always hoping in the future, I am not living in the present, am I?

That’s important to think about—that love is what happens in the present. That’s why it’s so important. Because we can only live in the moment, right? We can only live in the here and now, in the moment. And if we don’t have love in the moment, we don’t have anything. All we have is memories of the past and hope for the future. Okay?

That’s why love is so important. Okay.

I came across this saying in a movie called Calvary. I traced it back to this guy—I don’t know who he is, never read the novel—but I wanted to give credit where credit was due. I first heard the saying in a movie called Calvary, an Irish movie about a Catholic priest, and it deals with some really dark topics.

Basically, he goes to a confessional booth and the guy says, “I’ve been molested.” I won’t use the graphic things he uses, but at the end, he says, “You have one week to live. I’m not going to kill a bad priest; I’m going to kill a good priest.” And one week later, “I’m going to kill you.” The movie plays that out.

Calvary kind of follows the Passion of Christ in a modern-day setting. Very dark movie. Very hard to watch. I don’t necessarily recommend it, but about halfway through the movie, the guy is debating what to do about this. He goes to his superior, and the superior says this:

“People just want to be loved. And if they can’t find love, they want to be admired. And if they can’t find admiration, they will seek to be feared. And if they can’t be feared, they will work at being hated and despised. Beware of the man who wants to be hated and despised.”

I was so surprised by that, I rewound it and wrote it all down. At the time, I was working in a mental hospital, being a therapist there, doing group therapy—about two times every day for two hours—with people, doing counseling. It’s an outpatient program. We also had a spiritual vitality class that I taught once a week.

So I started bringing this to the class, and we started unpacking it. They started asking all sorts of wonderful questions about this, and it kind of evolved over time. In the end, it came to be one of my best therapy tools I’ve used with people. Over the years, I’ve unpacked it. I have a whole sheet I give people as we look at it, and they go through it, and it helps them to self-reflect on what’s happened in their life and their style of relating to others.

So let’s look at the first one. The first thing is: people want to be loved.

I’m a people. I want to be loved. So I take a deep breath and say, “I want to be loved.” How? I think I want to be loved. Does it feel a little strange to say that? It does feel a little strange to say it, doesn’t it? But it’s really true. In our hearts, what we want more than anything else is to be loved.

Where does this desire come from? Well, it comes from being created in the image of God, who is love, right? And Jesse has pointed this out in a number of his sermons. It’s based on the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—a love relationship. And God creates out of love. He creates, and God is loving. Love is not impotent. God is omnipotent. The Scripture says “loving is.”

Then I often ask people: what do you think is the most powerful force in the world?

Any suggestions? Love?

Well, that’s not what people usually say. We kind of are taught and believe—and the whole world tells us—violence is the most powerful force in the world.

Think about that. Right now, we’re resuming nuclear testing, right? That’s the nuclear bomb. We’re threatening to blow each other up. Everything in our world revolves around violence, not around love. Okay?

But love is the most powerful force in the world. And love defeated violence on the cross. Violence did everything it could to God—nailed Him on the cross, tortured Him. In the end, love says what? “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Violence kills Jesus—kills love—and they put Him in a tomb. And what? Love conquers. Love rises again.

Love is the most powerful force in the world.

Love is also God’s gift to us, in that love always involves presence, right? So God sent Jesus to us—Emmanuel, God with us. God being present with us. Jesus departed, and He sent His Holy Spirit to be with us. God with us in the Spirit, loving us, being present with us.

Love is based upon the goodness of God. I love the songs this morning about the goodness of God—the good, good Father. God is good, and He wants to give us good things in a loving relationship with a loving Father. Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.” You have a good Father that wants to give you good things.

The psalmist says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” Love is sensual. It involves our senses. You’re invited to taste and see how wonderful God is. God wants to bless us. He wants to give us good things.

I love the definition—I studied under Dr. Dan Allender for three years—I love the definition he gives for love. I want to go back more. I don’t have time to do that this morning. But he gives this definition:

“Love is the giving and receiving of pleasure for the glory of God.”

I love that definition. It takes a while to think about it and unpack it, but I’ll leave it there. Okay?

Love is interconnected between self, God, and others. So I want you to think about that red circle. I want you to think about the Shema. What does God say? What order? What are we to love God with? We are to love God with our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. It includes all those things.

So look at that red circle, thinking about—that’s what it includes. It includes our capacity, as God created us as human beings, for the capacity to love. It’s what is inside of us. It’s how we respond to the world. It is how we love each other. These things are so interesting. Click enter to click in—yeah, whatever—they’re really interconnected. They’re really all mashed together. Put them in a blender, your white stuff would just get all in there. We can’t separate those three things from each other.

First of all, that looks at the love of God. What is it to love God? It’s simply responding in gratitude and in reciprocity to His love. We love Him because what? He loved us.

In Romans 1, Paul talks about—it’s self-evident everywhere that God loves us, right? And is giving us good things, that God is the Creator. But what happens? Men don’t give thanks. They’re not grateful. And as soon as that happens, we stop loving God. Everything falls apart. Soon we’re lusting for each other’s bodies, and all sorts of bad things start happening in our relationship with others. And our self gets completely messed up because we’re not grateful to a good Father. Suppressing gratitude for what He has given us.

We also are told to love each other. And I define that as the appreciation of the glory of God in each person. We are gifts to each other. One of the things is to honor each other. Jesse had a beautiful sermon a couple weeks ago—were you here for that?—we had all these “one another’s.” All the one another things we’re to do for one another. And we need to connect with one another. And if we don’t love each other, if we’re not connecting, it affects our relationship with God.

1 Peter 3:7 says, “Hey, this is a power play. Husbands, if you don’t love your wife well, your prayers are going to be hindered.” Ooh. Something’s hindered between me and God if I don’t love my wife well.

So think about—in the Lord’s Prayer, it invites us to look at “as we forgive others,” right? It invites God to hold us to that standard. Jesus said, “If you have something against somebody, and you’re going to make a sacrifice and worship,”—at the time that was how they did it—“go get that straightened out first, and then come and worship Me.”

So we see that how we relate to others can hinder at times our relationship with God.

And then there’s self-love. Self-love I define as loving what God has made me and extending the same kindness and grace to myself as God extends to me. And only then can I extend that love to others.

If I hate myself and have self-contempt for myself and what God has made, I’m not satisfied with who God’s made me to be—I want to be something else other than that—then we get into the whole thing of envy, all right, and self-contempt.

Whenever we have self-contempt—I spent three years studying this under Allender—whenever we have self-contempt, the flip side of that coin is we will have contempt for other people.

Whenever we practice self-love and self-kindness, we are more likely to start practicing kindness and forgiveness towards other people as well. So they’re all intricately entwined together.

So I’d like to talk a little more about self-love, because we’ve covered a lot here. I’ve been preaching the last month about loving God, about loving others, but not a whole lot about loving ourselves.

Matter of fact, I heard some very famous person on the internet—watching a video that you’d all recognize his name, a great hero in evangelical circles—and he said this:

“I do not believe in self-love.”

Wow. Wow. What’s that all about?

My first job after graduation from graduate school was—I was a chaplain at a homeless shelter in Everett, Washington. One of my jobs there was to do spiritual and psychological counseling with all the men that were in their recovery program. More than once, I had a man who would come down and sit there and talk to me and say, “Oh, I love God, but I hate myself.”

And I’d say, “Okay. I don’t think that’s possible.”

They’d look at me confused, like, “What do you mean?”

I’d say, “How can you say you hate what God has made, and say you love God?”

Often with addicts—I just had one last week say this to me—he said, “I’m too sensitive.”

And I said, “No, you’re not. You’re sensitive. But sensitivity is a beautiful thing. You need to love that part about yourself, because we’re all addicts who are too sensitive.”

He said, “Yeah, you’re right. We’re all addicts who are sensitive people.”

But if God made you sensitive, that’s a beautiful gift He’s given you—not something to be hated.

As I work with men and they learn to enjoy and love that part about them, their addictions start fading away. Because often, by the time they’re 10–12 years old, they’re using drugs and alcohol to try to kill that part of themselves instead of enjoying what God has made.

Hans van Balthasar says this:

“What I am is God’s gift to me. What I become is my gift to God.”

Who I am—it was kind of alluded to in one of the songs today—Psalm 139 says, God formed me in the womb. He knew everything about me. He made me exactly the kind of personality He wanted me to be. He made me the sex He wanted me to be. He made me everything about me—my color, my hair, my skin, all my characteristics. He formed me. He made me, and He loved me.

And I rejoice. Psalm 139 says, “You are marvelous. You are marvelously made.” God loves you. We need to rejoice in who God made us to be, and discover who He made us to be, and rejoice in that.

But He didn’t make us all equal.

Jesus talks about the parables, right? Something about the talents. God gives one person ten talents, another person five, another three, another one. But He loves us all equally. But He makes greater demands on people that have been given more, and people that have less—He only requires from us to produce and become within the ability of what is given us, right?

And oftentimes we get in trouble when we start thinking, “I wish I was more like that person. I wish I could be more like that.” I’ve had people say, “I wish you were more like your wife.”

Well, you know what? I don’t.

I love her a lot. But God didn’t make me to be Jackie. God made me to be Carl, right? And I reflect His beauty and His glory and His wonder in a way Jackie never can. And she does it in a way I never can. All right?

He created us, each individuals that way. When we accept that about ourselves, then we can be okay with the place we’re at in the world, and we can honor others who are in different places and encourage them to be all God wants them to be.

We are to walk in the light as He is in the light, and when we do, we have fellowship with each other. Isn’t that just it? When we’re walking in the light and walking in love, we have fellowship with each other, and then the blood of Christ cleanses us from all our sins.

We live in a place then that is wonderful. It’s beautiful. It’s God’s light. We love each other. We honor each other. We care for each other. We live the life as God intended.

However, if we don’t do that, we start descending. And in my diagram, I have all this stuff above a line, and I have a dark line, and then we descend into something else. And it’s important to realize what starts happening when we walk outside of love.

We’re going to be looking a little bit at what happens when we go outside of love.

The first thing we seek—what does it say in there? What do we seek when we don’t find love?

We seek admiration. We seek to be admired. And that’s where envy comes in.

What’s the first thing admiration does? The need for admiration—it ranks, right? I’m up here. You’re down here. I need to get where you are.

We learn, kind of, that a whole system of the world is built upon that. Believe it or not, advertising is built upon that. Desiring something other than you are. Looking better than you are. “Drink the right beer—you’ll get the most beautiful woman,” whatever.

It’s looking for something outside of ourselves that’s going to satisfy, or some sort of status, gaining some sort of power.

Our whole system—go to school—and there’s kids that ain’t bright and kids that are bright. And the bright ones get rewarded, and the bad ones get shamed. Right? We kind of have a whole system of ranking people’s values. That’s the world system. That’s not God’s system. That’s the world system that has developed.

And it’s evil. It’s just plain evil. It began with Satan. Admiration says, “I want to be one like God,” right? And he fell out of his place.

And out of that, he comes to the Garden and says, “God’s good? Here—there’s something else beyond God for you,” right?

And we fall into that trap. There’s something else there that’s better than God. And we start seeking after that.

When we do that, then power—not to love and care for each other—power becomes something inside of us that drives our actions. There becomes a drivenness to us to succeed and become better than somebody else.

I remember a good friend of mine—we graduated from school—and he went to our organization to work and said, “I’m going to become the best therapist there.”

And I thought, “Oh, you’re setting yourself up for failure.”

Right?

We have the, “I’m going to be the best preacher. I’m going to be the best whatever. I’m going to be the best Christian.”

Right?

Why? Why can’t we just be who God made us to be?

When we do that, we start entering into the whole thing of admiration. When we get into that system, others who aren’t useful to us—what do we tend to do? We kind of reject them and push them aside. Am I right?

They’re not valuable to where I need to go.

Okay?

It’s based upon self-seeking. It’s based upon pride, really—the desire to be worshiped.

1 Corinthians 10:12 says basically this:

“It is not wise to compare yourself with one another.”

It’s not wise. Don’t do it.

Paul says people that do this have no understanding. “Ignorance” is also the word basically used there.

Sadly to say, when I was in the mental hospital—we’ll get down to some of what I found in there—but within the Christian church, I did a lot of counseling with various mission organizations online. I worked overseas counseling missionaries. I worked with a lot of pastors.

When we get to this part, oftentimes I find a drivenness for admiration, a desire for admiration. Sorry to say, even in our institutions and our seminaries, you can see threads of that through it.

There, it says: Become the perfect person with the perfect theology and produce the perfect church. And it works. We produce megachurches out of that.

But what happens?

So many times—just in recent years, just in the last month—those guys fall, don’t they? They come crashing down. Sooner or later they expose what’s really going on underneath it all.

Something to think about. Do we have that within ourselves?

Later on, we’ll look at James chapter 4—what happens when that starts taking over churches.

If I can’t find the admiration I want, then I work to be feared.

Fear violates through the loss or withholding of something that’s valuable or needed. “Do what I want, or you’re going to pay.” It’s the basis for law. It’s the basis for punishment. The law was built upon a system of fear—even the Law of Moses. All of our systems of law.

Right?

If I go out here and run a red light, I get punished. I look in the rearview mirror because I’m kind of fearing the cops. Right?

So it’s a system of fear. And fear uses power to manipulate people. It’s kind of the dad that says, “You know, I brought you into this world—I can take you out.” It’s kind of that attitude. And it creates fear within people.

1 John 4:18 says what? It says:

“There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out all fear.”

As I’ve gone over this with many of my clients, especially at the mental hospital, one leaned in—his mouth fell open—and just like a revelation he goes, “Oh my word. All I’ve been trying to do is get my kids to be afraid of me.”

Because fear works, doesn’t it?

You can manipulate kids and make them obey through fear. Right?

But that also causes all sorts of problems and even mental health concerns. Since people live in fear, we don’t function well in fear. We don’t function well. I don’t function well with the storms of fear.

I lived in one most of my life. I was just terrified. My dad used fear—beatings, all sorts of abuse. Right? And so that creates within us all sorts of psychological and mental health problems as well. All right?

Because we don’t know how to really love ourselves, or love other people, or how to respond, or how to live in the world.

If we can’t be feared, then we go into really the darkest place there is—and that’s when we want to be hated and despised.

Connection through violence toward others.

I’m sorry to say, but if you listen to the language of all the politicians today, that’s where we’re at. We’re at a very dark place. “Don’t follow what I want”—whatever the political system is—“I’ll destroy you.”

All right?

And we’re starting to see and hear more and more calls—on both the right and the left—to kill each other. Right?

That’s what hatred and despising are about. It is power through intimidation, humiliation, and violence—and even death.

We also find groups that get together and find fellowship through mutual hatred of other groups. Right? Whether it’s Jews, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, immigrants—whatever it is—we find ways of connecting through our mutual hatred.

But at least we feel connected, don’t we? Because we long for connection.

It’s the basis of sadistic and masochistic relationships. Sadly to say, within marriages where you have domestic violence, you have a sadistic person beating a person. But in the power of masochism, “I can take more than you can give out.” And that’s where we see people who actually work on being despised and taking violence as a form of connection.

It’s why the most dreaded call for a police officer is a domestic violence case. Right?

The neighbors call in—“a man and a woman are fighting, he’s beating her up.” The cops get called, and both of them turn on the cop. Right?

They want to continue their system at work. “Just stay away from us.” Right?

And it’s very dark. And very ugly.

Okay?

How could this—where does this play out among us?

And I was reading through, as I was preparing for this, and came across a scripture in James that—wow—it really just flew out at me. So I would like us to stand together, if we could, and I’d like us to try to read this together.

You know, when I read this out loud just by myself, it sounds like I’m just putting it on you. It’s not my intent. So I thought if we read this out loud together, maybe it won’t sound so… dark.

“Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it. You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to. You’re spoiled children, each wanting your own way. You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and His way. Do you suppose God doesn’t care? The proverb has it that He’s a fiercely jealous lover. And what He gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find. It’s common knowledge that God goes against the willfully proud, and God gives grace to the humble. So let God work His will in you. Yell a loud no to the Devil and watch him make himself scarce. Say a quiet yes to God and He’ll be there in no time. Quit dabbling in sin. Purify your inner life. Quit playing the field. Hit bottom and cry your eyes out. The fun and games are over. Get serious—really serious. Get down on your knees before the Master; it’s the only way you’ll get on your feet. Don’t bad-mouth each other, friends.”

Be seated.

The context of this chapter is James—in chapter 3, he’s talking about leaders, teachers. And he says, “Be careful. Don’t really have a lot of teachers, because you’re going to be held to a higher standard.”

And then he goes on to talk about teachers that are self-centered and self-seeking, and they produce strife. And then he says this:

“The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable and gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy. It produces the fruit of righteousness and is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

Just to summarize this thing—this infighting that he sees happening among the church. And we often look at the early church as a wonderful place. But if you look at the things Paul was dealing with, the things I think John was dealing with, the things Peter was dealing with—things haven’t changed.

There has always been infighting within the church. It’s always kind of been a problem, right? Because of our human nature of wanting something else than what God offers.

He says this cause is really a perversion of your desire for love, doesn’t he? You envy each other, okay? And envy is rooted in a desire for admiration, isn’t it? The desire for power. The desire for prestige.

And he calls that flirting with the world. That’s the world system. Right? You’re bringing the world system into the church, and you’re trying to function by the world system.

You want what isn’t yours. You don’t ask God. And when you do ask God, what—you just want your own way.

But it’s interesting. He said God’s a jealous lover. I love that. God is a jealous lover who longs to give you the good things because of His great love for you. God wants to fulfill your desire for love. Stop seeking it in other places. Find it within Me.

And He invites us.

What is the solution to stopping the infighting? It’s not about getting rid of all these things we have conflict over. There will always be conflict. There will always be conflict about how to spend money, whether to wear a mask or not wear a mask, what kind of music we’re going to have. Oh, it’s all going to be different opinions. There’s going to be conflicts. That’s just part of life.

For instance, in marriage—I’m doing some marriage counseling right now—they found that 76% of all conflicts in marriage are areas that can’t be resolved. And a lot of things in church probably can’t be resolved. And it’s okay.

It’s how we approach each other, isn’t it?

A friend used to say a wonderful thing: “It’s not the position you hold so much as how you hold your position on things.”

All right?

So what’s the solution? It’s internal.

Humble yourself. Receive God’s grace. Move closer to God—He’ll move closer to you. Find your desires fulfilled in a God who loves you so much that He wants to give you good things.

I love this part of the scripture here:

“What He gives you in love is far better than anything else you’ll find.”

If you’re looking for status and recognition and kudos—God’s love is so much better than that. So much better than that. Seek that.

Remember, my whole theology is based on this: God is good, and there is no good to the south side of God. Sin is simply trying to find something good outside of God. It isn’t there.

All right?

So I’d like to make a little shift here now, and I’d like to talk about anthropology.

When I was in Papua New Guinea as a missionary, we had traveling professors that would come through and give master-level courses. One of them I took was on anthropology. And they taught me two things.

What they taught me, first of all, about anthropology is about discovering what our culture’s worldview is. And worldview answers two questions:

1. What’s wrong with the world?

2. What do we do to fix it?

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that all cultures know something’s wrong. That’s amazing. And they always try to figure out some way to fix it.

Now, they say when you go into a culture, don’t go ask people what’s wrong and how to fix it. You observe what they do—their behaviors, how they live, how that plays out, and what they do to try to fix what’s wrong in the world. And then you understand their worldview and how they think.

And thinking about that, I realized that I have a worldview too—of what is wrong and how to fix it. And I also made a huge transition in my worldview in the last 20 years.

For the first 50-some years of my life, I had a very different worldview than I do now—what is wrong and how to fix it. I made a big transition.

I became a Christian when I was 16 years old. And I started to try to become the best Christian I could be. I had boxes of John MacArthur tapes. I listened, and I studied, and I did everything I could. I went to evening classes. I took Bible classes. I would…

And I developed kind of this worldview out of all that. And I wrote it down—not so much what is taught, but what is caught.

Okay? Here’s what I call it. Here’s what I wrote down:

A Worldview Based Primarily on Knowledge

Once I accept Christ, my sins are forgiven.

What is wrong with the world is primarily outside myself.

I must perfect my Christian doctrine so I can be certain of the truth and instruct others in this way.

I must learn to argue and defend my positions in knowledge.

If others oppose this, I must work to correct them. And if they refuse to be corrected, oppose them.

I must attain positions within my spheres of influence—churches, institutions, businesses, education—to advance the cause of Christ in the direction it needs to go.

I must fight the good fight.

The kingdom of God advances when I convince others of the righteousness of my cause and they join me in the fight.

Power is found in truth and in persuasion.

Evil is overcome by proclaiming the truth, empowering those who believe, and exposing the error of those who don’t. And if they cannot be persuaded, then marginalizing them.

I served 18 years full-time as a Christian missionary on three different continents. I worked with many people, many different mission organizations.

And by the way, after 18 years, I was sick of it.

Why?

Here’s what I came to the conclusion of, as I watched so much of what happened. I said, “We know how to argue well, and we know how to fight well. We have no idea how to live well or love well.”

And I became very disillusioned and almost left the Christian faith.

And through a period of years, God started to bring about another shift in my theology and in my worldview. And now I am trying to adopt a theology and worldview based not on knowledge that puffs up, Paul says, but a system of love.

Here’s the worldview I’m trying to live now:

A Worldview Based on Love

What is wrong with the world primarily starts at the top of my head and ends at the bottom of my feet.

God knows this and loves me anyway.

He invites me to come and feast on the good things He offers.

When I humble myself, God’s forgiveness, kindness, and grace transform me.

I find God delights in me and in who He created me to be.

I learn to love who I am and who God created me to be—genuine self-love.

The joy of life becomes the giving and receiving of love in this relationship.

Only then, and only then, can I love myself and others as God has loved me—extending the same love and grace to others as God has extended to me.

The kingdom of God advances as Christ loves others through me, as I participate in His body—the church—which demonstrates His love to the world by loving each other and the communities we live in.

Love is then manifest to the world, and evil is overcome through forgiveness and doing good to everyone—even our enemies.

The other week, we worked together as a congregation on what we want to move from and what we want to move towards. So I came up with a list of things that I’ve been trying, over the last 22 years, to move from and move toward.

• I want to move from self-contempt to self-love.

• I want to move from seeking to influence to seeking to be present—in love, graciousness, and kindness.

• I want to move from arguing and debating to listening and curiously questioning others so I can understand.

• I want to move from seeking knowledge as a means to dominate to seeking knowledge as a means to love God, love others, and love myself more fully.

• I want to move from being driven by my need for love and admiration to resting in the arms of a loving Shepherd, listening to His voice, and letting Him lead me.

• I want to move from judging others to being empathetic.

• I want to move from theological certainty to theological mystery. We don’t know—I don’t know everything. Even the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 he didn’t know everything. If he didn’t, I surely don’t. So I want to—and he talks about—the mysteries of God. I want to live in those mysteries.

• I want to move from evangelism as facts to believe and ideas to be closed, to an invitation to ask and knock—that the door will be opened to a relationship with a gracious God who wants to give us good things.

• I want to offer an invitation to find all our desires fulfilled in Christ.

• I want to move from repentance being about stopping and avoiding specific behaviors to repentance being about learning to return to a Father God who delights in my presence—and then feasting on the good things that He offers.

In conclusion, we have come full circle.

I want to say—I believe that all theological knowledge, all Christian ministry, all of how we live in our daily lives should have this one common goal and focus:

To love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We’re about ready to celebrate communion. At the end of the Last Supper, Jesus says these words to His disciples:

“A new commandment I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know you are my disciples—if you love one another.”

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for the gift of Your Son, Jesus, who modeled for us how to love each other. We thank You for Your Holy Spirit that has given each of us gifts for the use of ministry within Your church. We thank You for the unique gift that each person here is to the world, and the way they uniquely reflect Your glory and Your love.

Help us to love and honor each other well, so that we can reflect Your love to this broken world—that Your kingdom would come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.