Names - Love - John 15-9-13 - May 17

You are listening to Teaching from Mountainside Church in Boone,

North Carolina, where we live as real people who are a part of a real family

serving a real God in the high country.

To learn more about our church, stay connected, or partner with us, visit mcboone.com.

I love what Sandy shared with that book, because one thing that we're going

to reference, and I'll remind you of this, comes from a quote from Sinclair Ferguson.

And it says that the greater the lover, the greater the love,

the lesser the object of the love, the greater the giver of it.

And I think that kind of wraps up what that book encapsulate and what Sandy was sharing, right?

That because God is infinitely greater, his love for us is infinitely clear as well.

And my mathematical mind was like, how do we talk about infinity?

Is infinity times infinity just infinity? Can you even quantify it?

And then there's this reality of infinity as a mathematical concept,

but then infinity as like a philosophical concept and the reality that what

it is communicating to us is the degree and not necessarily an amount,

but that God's love for us is to the utmost degree that we can even imagine.

So with that, let me pray for us and then we can hopefully experience God's love this morning.

God, I just, I pray that you would open our eyes today, that you would open

our ears to hear, you would open our eyes to see, you would open our hearts

to receive this morning.

And more than anything else, that we would experience your love in a tangible

way, that it would be felt, that it would be experienced, that we would know

in our heart your love beyond a feeling,

beyond also a concept,

an argument, an understanding of your love, that you would share it with us today.

That we would be people who are forever impacted and printed on and changed,

by the way, the way that you love us and your love for us.

As we talk about familiar verses that describe you and your love,

as we hear these wonderful truths, a lot of times they can just stay that in

my mind conceptually, that God is love, that he loves the world.

But I pray that this morning would make that, as people say,

that 18 inch journey from our heads to our hearts.

I pray for myself, Lord, that more and more I would understand and meditate

and be thankful for your love. And I pray that same thing for everyone else as well.

Would you just inundate us this morning, God?

Would you just overwhelm us in our hearts with your love for us?

And may we be people who love as well. Amen.

So I want to start off with a quote, a different quote.

We'll get back to that Sinclair Ferguson quote in a minute, but this is from A.W. Tozer.

And in the knowledge of the holy, he wrote or said, what comes into our minds

is a question. So I should probably ask it as a question.

Oh no, this is a statement. So I'm right.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing

about us. I'll repeat it as a question in a second.

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above

its religion and man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no

religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.

And so he poses this question or he reflects, were we able to extract from any

man a complete answer to the question, what comes into your mind when you think

about God? we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.

In other words, your life will always move in the direction of your thoughts about God.

Your life, the trajectory of your life will always move in the direction of

your thoughts about God.

So if you, if the sum and substance of your thoughts about God is that he is

distant, that he is harsh or indifferent, then you will live anxious,

you'll live guarded, you'll live out of that trajectory.

On the other hand, if you truly believe, as we're going to talk about this morning,

that God is love, then that reality, your thoughts about God will change everything

about you. It'll change the way that you pray.

It'll change the way that you obey. It'll change the way that you repent.

It will change the way that you worship. It'll change your entire life.

And of course, as we know from the greatest commandment, it will change the

way that you relate to others as well.

And we have that verse that they already read, 1 John 4, 8. Whoever does not

love does not know God because God is love.

Not just that God has love and not just that God shows us love,

although he definitely demonstrates it. It's a demonstrated love.

But that love is intrinsic to his very nature.

That God is love.

And because we are in sort of a name series, I think the obvious question is,

is love a name for God? Probably not.

I'd be stretching this one. It's definitely an attribute, definitely a characteristic.

In reality, because of the way that it happens, as I've mentioned before,

this sort of entire series has been

taking shape as we've gone and hasn't necessarily been planned out on the,

we've sort of followed the trajectory of God's names as it happens and it's

revealed to us in Genesis.

So in Genesis chapter 15, we encounter God as Lord Adonai.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

And then in Genesis 16, as Jake talked about last week and Rebecca shared,

we encounter God as El Roy, the one who sees.

And so by natural trajectory, if we were in Genesis 17, what we do is we encounter

El Shaddai, God Almighty.

So we probably should be talking about God Almighty, but we're going to detour and go back.

In some ways, we're talking about love, but in some ways, we're continuing actually

from what we heard last week with this idea of El Roy, the God who sees.

And there's this story that y'all might be familiar with in Luke chapter eight,

where Jesus is walking through the crowd. He's on the way to heal.

He's being delayed, obviously. And he's pushing through such a great crowd, right?

And we, we encounter this story where this woman who has been suffering,

bleeding for 12 years or however long reaches out and touches him and experiences

healing in that instant, in that moment.

And Jesus stops in his tracks and says, what happened?

Somebody touched me. He obviously knows who touched him, but you know,

he does those rhetorical questions who touched me.

I felt power go out for me. And all his disciples are like, the crowds are massive.

Everybody's touching you. What are you talking about? And the reason I bring

this story up is because,

In the NIV version, continuing that theme of El Roy, it says that the woman

comes forward because she realizes that she is unable to remain hidden.

And so when we talk about God's love, that's kind of what we're talking about

is that in full view of God's love, what it means that he loves is that we cannot

escape being noticed by him.

That we can't remain hidden. We must be seen. And in some ways,

that is exactly what it means when we read 1 John 4, when we read the passes

in John, we read other passages throughout scriptures that talk about God's love.

The simplest form of it is that we cannot remain hidden, that God loves,

and it is for our good that he loves us.

But let me just reread some of these passages, starting in 1 John chapter 4.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible, we're going to be in 1 John.

We're going to be in 1 Corinthians. And we're going to be in the book of John.

Those are the three places we're going to be.

So if you want to kind of like hold those places, we're going to bounce back.

I did not put them on the screen this morning because I'd really love for you

to be able to follow along with us.

If you don't have a Bible, there's a couple in the front, so you can grab that.

You can use your phone. It's just not as enjoyable tactically,

tactically, whatever that word is.

Tactiliciously. You've heard it. You've heard it here. So this is 1 John 4, starting in verse 7.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.

And everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

And this is how God showed his love among us.

He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him.

This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us.

And he sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

We're going to stop there for right now. And depending on your translation,

it might say something different.

But all of this is wrapped up in this idea that godly love,

we might call it Christian agape love, that special word for divine love that

gets used throughout scriptures that is defined, is by all accounts an unnatural love.

And what I mean by that is it doesn't come or originate here,

but it comes and originates from God.

It is a supernatural love. It's not intrinsic into our own ideas and.

Attempts at love apart from God. It is by nature, a supernatural love that has

its origin in him, in him alone.

And so while it's not a name per se, it still has that idea that we've been

talking about where a name of God is not something that defines him.

But it's something that he adopts and reveals himself so that he might define what it is.

And we encounter that exact same thing in this idea of love and the word of

love and the action of love where he himself is defining what it means to love.

And we can't just read those verses in 1 John and say, whoever loves has been

born of God because God is love and then define therefore God by our own understanding

of love. It's not as simple as that.

We must adopt what he says about love and we must let him define what love is for us.

And that's essentially what it means that we are his disciples.

That's what makes us disciples is that we lean on the truth and understanding

of God's word and we let him define it for us.

We don't bring in our own filtered worldly version of what our culture might say.

We don't let the noise and flow of the culture dictate how we see what love

is, but we turn to him and we let him define for us what love is.

And in that same way, as we talk about other names of God, as we bring up to

this morning, We can't separate any God's attributes.

We must hold them all together at the same time.

So his love is not just love, but it is a holy love because we can't separate

the fact that God is holy apart from his love either. We must hold them all together.

And a shallow view of God's holiness will lead us to a shallow view of God's love.

So we have to hold these attributes together. And it's such a more beautiful

picture when we do, because in his holiness, we realize that there is nothing

about us that has wooed him to us.

There's nothing about us that has attracted his attention in such a special

way, but he decides to love us even at our lowest,

even at our dirtiest, even when there is nothing about us that is attractive

at all. God still chooses to love us.

So his holiness amplifies his love and makes it a different,

a type of love that is different from any other.

So we should seek so often daily to meditate on God's love and understand God's

love and not impose our own ideas as he pours meaning into love for us,

not the other way around.

That he would pour his meaning into what it means to be loved and what it means for us to love.

So with that, I want to read 1 Corinthians 13.

Knowing that in this chapter, whenever we see the word love,

I guess not whenever we see the word love, sometimes our English authors put

love in there when it's inferred that it's still talking about love.

So if you looked it up, the word love's not there, but sometimes in the sentences,

when you see the word love, it's love.

And then other times it's just referencing back to that word. Right.

But it's, it's the word agape, agapao. It's this special kind of divine love

whenever we read 1 Corinthians 13.

So Paul writes, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love.

I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,

and if I have faith that can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I

may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

So he divines love for us. Love is patient. Love is kind.

It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud.

It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered.

It keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues,

they will be stilled. where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes,

what is in part disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child.

I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I put the way of childhood behind me.

For now, we only see a reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face.

Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love.

And our translations probably say, but the greatest of these is love.

But what if it says, but the higher thing is love.

The greater thing to desire is love. Faith and hope are great,

but they're going to be gone in eternity.

We don't have to have faith anymore. We don't have to have hope anymore when

we're there, when we're with in the presence of God and fullness,

but love will still be there.

Not only that, but if we're, if we have faith, but we don't love, then we're missing out.

So faith and hope on this earth are filled full with love.

And as they disappear, all that will remain is that higher calling,

the thing that we should aim for even above these things, which is love.

And what we're given here is the special character of love, of God's love, not just worldly love.

The special character of love that is a forgiving love.

It pardons iniquities, it heals diseases, it forgives sins.

This is a forgiving love. This is the way that God looks at us. It's a satisfying love.

God satisfies us with good things.

It is a reality that thrills our hearts to know that we are loved by God.

Is a loyal love. This is how God's love shows up so frequently in the scriptures.

It is a steadfast love. It's full of loving kindness. It is a loyal love.

It's a love that will not let you go. A love that endures, a love that holds steadfast.

I want to give you a picture that I want you to think about later as well,

but imagine holding a loved one.

Parents, imagine holding your children.

Imagine holding them as they were babies or toddlers, holding them tight when they would squeeze you.

And now imagine what would happen if Emerson hugged you that same way that you used to, right?

Maybe he still does. He's a softie. He's good. He's a good lover.

Imagine that embrace that we get from a loved one, from a parent.

Imagine that embrace that we give our loved ones.

That is a steadfast love. Keep that picture in your mind as we go through and especially later on.

It is a measureless love. We talked about that. That's what Sandy was talking

about. How much does God love you?

As high as the heavens are above the earth and beyond, there is no limit.

It is limitless because God is limitless.

There's that quote that I talked about from Sinclair Ferguson,

the greater the lover, the greater the love.

And because God is the greatest, His love is the greatest.

And the lesser the object of the love, the greater the gift of it.

The more undeserving we are of His love, the more special it is.

More than that, it would be impossible for the collective intellect of humanity

across the ages to even comprehend what it is that God loves us and how he loves us.

There's that old hymn that I always think about with regard to love.

It's really hard to sing and play, and rightly so, but if you've grown up in

a traditional church, you probably heard it before.

The love of God is greater far than tongue and pen could ever tell.

It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hill.

And then the second verse or third verse, it talks about if we could fill the

ocean full of ink and if we could stretch out the skies and it was made out of parchment.

And if we're every person on earth were a scribe writing the love of God in

these heavens, then it would drain the ocean dry and the scroll of the sky,

even though it stretches could never contain at all.

This is the vastness of our God's love. It is a fatherly love.

It is a fatherly love that is full of compassion on his children.

In Psalm 103 or 108, it talks about how that God remembers that we are just dust.

He remembers where we came from. He remembers where we're going.

He remembers every fiber of our being and he cherishes and has compassion that

we're just here for a short time.

God does not love based on our performance or our earnings, but he loves by

his character as a father king with intimacy and with authority.

These verses about love describe love as an everlasting love.

Constantly talks about God as from everlasting to everlasting.

That our life is brief. We come and go, beauty fades, but God's love endures.

Always and forever.

God's love fell on you before you even existed. That's the special nature of our creator.

That even before you existed, he loved you.

Because before you existed, he was still there and he was still loving and he

has no, knows no other way.

He is uncaused. His love is uncaused and undeserved just as much as he is uncaused.

And so in Ephesians chapter one, Paul writes that he chose you before the foundation

of the world, that he loved you before anyone else knew you existed or could think that far ahead.

He chose you and loved you. And that's what makes God's love a transforming love for us.

That as we, we'll read in a few minutes, some verses in the book of John,

but as we love him and as we obey him and as we keep his commands.

He transforms all that we are.

As we experience his love and greater and greater understanding and detail,

as we stretch out and reach towards the limits that we'll never find,

we can't help but to come away different.

That's what makes God's love a glorious love. So we, we respond to that endlessness

and as it overflows and pours out of us in glory and praise,

this is the character of God's love.

And I think, I think it's easier us for us, for me to understand that God loves the world,

conceptually, at least we can, we can all vaguely remember, if not quote in

great detail, John 3, 16, right? For God so loved the world.

That's why he gave his son because God's love is a demonstrated love.

It's not just a concept that's thrown out there, but it's shown in every decision,

every choice that is made across eternity,

that he's not dealt with us or rewarded us based on our sins,

based on our iniquities, based on our failures, perhaps as he should,

but in his holiness and his divine justice,

he's dealt with and loved us as he's demonstrated through Jesus.

And so we read a few times in the last two verses of 1 John 4 that we read,

that he gave his one and only son, that he demonstrated it, that he sent his

son to be the propitiation for our sins.

That the measure of God's love is also the measure of his gift.

And the gift that he gives us is beyond measure in Jesus.

So maybe that's where you struggle. But for me, I think conceptually,

it's easier for us to understand that God loves the world.

He loves creation. He loves his people.

But perhaps it's more difficult for us to believe that God loves me, to make it personal.

Because I know me. I know my thoughts. I know what I've done.

I know what I've said. I know who I am.

I know what's happened to me. And so for us to make that transition from God

loves the world to God loves me is perhaps much more difficult for us.

Maybe if we try saying it out loud, we've been on a kick lately of saying things out loud.

Maybe we just say, God loves me. Would you join me in that? I'm going to count

again because we need help.

Three, two, one, God loves me.

Yeah, we can say it. Hopefully the more we say it, the more we believe it.

I'm not going to make you raise your hands because that was enough participation. But,

if I were to ask and just mentally raise your hand, I suppose,

how many of you believe that God loves you, but you're only like 80% sure of that?

Maybe less, maybe you're only 50% sure of that. Maybe you're only 20% sure that God loves you.

Maybe you think, I look at the way that I love my family, my wife,

my kids, the way I love my friends.

Does God really love me that way? Or the way that my family loves me, do my kids love me?

Does God really love me that way? Maybe we have those questions and what it means to be a disciple,

what it means to be a Christian, what it means to follow Jesus is not merely

this agreement of God's love in general.

But it is the spirit awakening our hearts to that reality more and more.

The reality that you are loved by God himself.

Not only that, not only making that transition into the recognition that God

loves me, but also to the extent that he loves you.

There's these passages that say it over and over again, as Jesus is speaking

this truth that God loves us, But not just that, God loves us in the same way that God loves Jesus.

This is what Jesus prays in John chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

These are his words. John chapter 14, 15, 16, and 17. Read them.

John 14 · chapter mention

He says in verse 20, chapter 17, My prayer is not for them alone.

I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,

that all of them may be one.

Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that

the world may believe that you have sent me.

It is, I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as

we are one, I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity.

And the world will know that you sent me and have loved them,

even as you have loved me.

That we may know, and then the world may see that God loves you as he has loved Jesus.

Augustine said that God loves every one of us as if there were only one of us to love.

That God loves each of you as if you were the only person that he could love.

God's love is not such that we have to beg for it.

We don't have to pray, God, come down and love me. Come and show your love to me.

God says, I am here with you. We see in John chapter 14, as he's saying this

John 14 · chapter mention

over and over again, in verse 23,

he says that Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey me in my teaching

and my father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.

This is the third time he says something of the same sort in these few verses.

Back up just a little bit. It says that the one who loves me will be loved by

my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.

He will reveal himself to us. Back up just another verse or two.

I will ask the Father, if you love me, keep my commands. I will ask the Father.

He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. The Spirit of truth.

Is the transforming love of God, that he is excited to meet with you.

He is excited to be with you.

He's excited at your presence. He's not reluctant or stingy.

You don't have to beg him for it.

He loves to completion because that's the only way he knows how.

He loves full of mercy, full of grace.

And we see that picture of the prodigal father running to his child from a far distance.

And this is the way that God loves us. And as we have sung in the past,

that song, Reckless Love, right?

People, when that song came out, had opinions, because people have opinions.

About singing to a God that his love is reckless.

But the testimony there is that God pursues the one he loves to the furthest

extent without regard for himself.

And that's what Jesus demonstrated. Not that God needs to worry about his safety,

but to the furthest extent, God pursues the one he loves without regard for

himself. And that's what makes it reckless.

Not that God is reckless, but God loves you.

And I know I can't display the excitement of what that means just because of,

you know, flaws, but God loves you. And that's incredible.

In John chapter 15, it says those same words again, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

John 15 · chapter mention

He just repeats this over and over to us.

He says, If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love,

just as I have kept my Father's commands that remained in His love.

Remain in my love. Abide. Set up your tents. Live here. Dwell here in my love.

Don't wander off from it.

I told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

God loves us, but not only that. He writes here in John 15, if you keep my commands,

we read that in John chapter 14 as well.

John 14 · chapter mention

If you keep my commands, if you love me, if you keep my commands,

you will love me, remain in my love.

And then in John chapter 15, he tells us what that means. My command is this.

John 15 · chapter mention

So he says, if you keep my commands, Then he says, my command is this,

love each other as I have loved you.

We read in 1 John, we love because he first loved us. So he says, I have loved you.

God has loved you the same way that he's loved me. I love you.

Therefore go and love each other just as I have loved you.

And then he defines the limits of this love for us in the way that we should love each other.

In the way that we should love the person sitting next to you.

So you can turn to that person and be like, oh, I like this person.

I love them. But then you could turn next to you and maybe the other person

you're like, I don't really know them that well.

God says, love them in this way, to this extent that love lays down its life

for one's friends that we are to love to death.

Now you can, you can say that as unto death, but I like the brevity of love, love to death.

That's a phrase we understand. I love you to death.

Probably it came from here. I'm just saying that we would love to death.

1 John 4 starts off that way, right? Beloved, let us love one another.

And in verse 11, it says, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

We are marked as disciples by the way that we love, not just God,

but the way that we love people.

There's this confusing thing that happens in 1 John where it says,

right, that you can't love God if you don't love your brother, right?

You can't love God who you haven't seen If you can't love the people next to you, who you can see.

And so we stopped there and we're like, wow.

Confusing because the next couple of verses, it also says, you can't love your

brother if you don't love God.

You can't love the people you see if you don't love the God you can't see.

So it's confusing, but it all is wrapped up into this beautiful idea that we

are marked as disciples of Christ by the way that we love.

We get that love from God when we pour that love into others.

John chapter 13, Jesus says, a new command, I give you love one another as I

John 13 · chapter mention

have loved you, so you must love one another.

And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

People will know, not because you come to church, not because you only listen

to worship songs and your Spotify recap is just Bethel all day.

People will know you are his by the way that you love.

I think the problem is that we all recognize is that we love incompletely.

Unfortunately, I wish we could all love completely. I think we would all agree.

I hope we would all agree that we've all got some room to grow in the area of love.

At the very least, because the extent that Jesus puts on us to death,

that we haven't loved to death yet.

So we're not there. But even if we define that into death to self,

we haven't loved to that extent all the time. We're inconsistent at the very least.

So when we read 1 Corinthians chapter 13.

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

It is a description of what agape divine love looks like, but it is also a call

for us to love in the same way.

It's wrapped up into those verses of spiritual gifts.

And so it's saying, those are all good things, but the most important thing

is for you to love like this.

In fact, the last verse of 12,

actually that last half of the last verse in chapter 12, is grouped into that

verse, all the verses in chapter 13, which Paul says, I'm showing you a more excellent way.

So he's saying, I'm showing the way that you should love.

He's not saying, here's the idea that you'll never reach.

He's saying, this is what, this is how we love one another.

Jesus tells us, go and love this way, that no one would escape your notice.

That try as we might, everyone in this room, in this church,

everyone outside of the church, everyone in Boone, everyone around us cannot remain hidden.

That's the way God loves.

That we would go and love to death. That Sam and Eric, as you go to Sweden,

that everyone you would meet would be seen and not escape your notice.

That they couldn't remain hidden.

This is the simplicity of the gospel for us and the gospel through us, that God loves you.

And then he says, go and love in the same way that no one would escape being

noticed, that no one would remain hidden.

And something amazing happens.

If you want to go ahead and come up. Something amazing happens as we love.

He says this earlier at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 2.

He says this, Paul writes, as it is written, what no eye has seen,

what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived,

the things that God has prepared for those who love him.

These are the things that God has revealed to us by his spirit.

That there are things that he has revealed to us, but they're not things that

we've seen, that they're not things that we've understood, that they're not

things that we've heard, that even as we read our Bibles every day,

even as we sometimes in different seasons, walk away from that going,

I didn't hear anything from God today.

There's always something being revealed that can escape our senses,

that it can escape our natural understanding, our cognitive thinking.

It's this thing that invades our spirit and invades our heart,

that we can experience this, even though we may not ever be able to express it in words.

And this is the spirit given experience of God's love, not a logical inference

from an argument, but something that is poured out, something that is felt and

something that is known, even if we don't have words for it.

He wants you to experience his love through the spirit and what that spirit

reveals about him into you.

That there's this kind of knowing that goes beyond information,

beyond analysis, beyond explanation.

In Romans chapter five, Paul says that the love of God has been poured into your hearts.

Through Christ Jesus, that God is pouring his love into your hearts,

not explaining it to your mind, but pouring it into your hearts.

And God has something prepared for us who love him in that.

If we continue in his love, that God has something prepared in advance for you to meet.

This is not natural for us. This is something we have to remind ourselves every day.

We don't wake up thinking, I'm just gonna love everybody perfectly today.

I know it, but we love, we wake up every morning and it has to be every morning.

And we say, how can I love today?

How can I love my family today? How can I love my husband? How can I love my

wife? How can I love my kids?

How can I love my family? How can I love my neighbors? How can I love my coworkers?

How can I love the people that I encounter?

This has to be a meditation of us every day because we'll just fall back into what's comfortable,

which is selfishness, which is the opposite of all those things you read in

1 Corinthians 13, when it says love is not, if we don't wake up and decide in

our hearts, where can I love? How can I love?

We'll fall back into the things that love is not.

So God, help us to experience your love in such a way, even if it's not with

our senses, even if it's not something we hear or read or see that the spirit

would teach us in our hearts.

And we would know, we would just know beyond reason, beyond understanding and

beyond doubt that you love us.

Love us to the greatest extent that has ever or will ever be possible.

And just as you tell us to abide in your love, that we would,

with all of our strength, with all of our heart, with all of our minds,

that we would pour in our effort to stay rooted in you and in your love for us,

so that we may be able to love others as you have loved us first.

That we may be able to love others as you have loved us. That we may be able

to see ourselves as loved and love others as the Father has loved the Son.

Lord, thank you for your love.

Even when we can't see it, even if we aren't meditating on it and it escapes

our sight, thank you for it.

Thank you that we cannot remain hidden from you.

God, I pray that you put it on our hearts. The mission, your mission to us this

morning, the gospel that no one would remain hidden in our lives.

That no one could escape our notice.

That the world might be full of your love and that we would be seen as your

disciples because of the way that we love,

and patience and kindness and

goodness and gentleness and self-control as we keep no record of wrong,

as we do not boast in ourselves,

as we do not delight in evil, but we rejoice with truth,

as we celebrate people,

as we weep with people, as our spirit goes with people to the farthest extents

of the earth, as we would love to death, .