Forgiven Much, Love Much - Luke 7:36-50

Lord Jesus, we come on your name.

Lord Jesus, I pray you get the exaltation, the worship, the attention that you deserve this morning.

Holy Spirit, we invite you in.

We open our minds and our hearts to what you have to say.

Thank you for your unrelenting love, God.

We pray that you open our minds to your scripture, your alive and active, your everlasting word this morning.

We pray this in your more than holy name, O Jesus.

Amen.

Welcome to Skyline Church.

Such an honor and a privilege to be with you guys here today on this the first gloomy day.

I mean, winter was canceled until today.

It was gloomy again.

So my name's Adam.

I'm one of the pastors here today.

It's so good to be with you guys.

So I remember uh being in college, and a lot of my friends went to a college in a city called San Luis Obispo.

It's in the coast of California.

So I would go all the time to visit them.

And if I'm honest, I really felt like San Luis Obispo was the most ideal American city.

It was the perfect climate I wanted.

There was it was a beach town, the food was amazing.

So many of my close friends were there.

I loved going.

And I remember one time I went and my friends uh had made a bunch of other friends there from the church that they went to.

And I remember one time meeting a girl uh who was about my age, and we were talking, we were talking about faith, and she was kind of telling me this story, and she said that the other night, like, you know, she'd woke up at like 2, 3 a.m.

and she felt the Lord speaking to her.

So she she got up out of bed and went to the park and worshiped God for like two hours and called on his name in the middle of the night for two, three hours, and she got so overwhelmed by God's presence that she didn't even go back to bed, and she just went to school the next day.

And I was listening to that and I was like, wow, I've never done that before, you know?

And I just was kind of honestly I was kind of inspired.

And look, like, different people express their emotion in different ways different ways.

Uh it's not that I'm trying to like create some kind of stereotype that you have to step into.

And in a moment like this, where I'm seeing someone, another believer who's about my age, and I'm kind of inspired by her love for God, I'm kind of challenged and also get some vision of what my emotional response to God could be like.

There's kind of two paths that we can take in moments like that.

Because we're all going to have those moments.

We are exposed to believers of all kinds of different stripes.

And the two paths that are always before us in that kind of moment is the path of the spiritual enemy and our flesh and our sin nature.

Where we look and we encounter someone like that, and the enemy whispers to us, yeah, you're not as mature as them.

It's because you're not as good as them.

And they're always going to be better than you.

And the enemy seeks to use a moment like that to put you down, to lie to you.

But then, of course, there's always another path available to us in a moment like that as well.

Where we see the image of Jesus in a person like that, and we're inspired.

We see, we feel God pulling us, drawing us.

We we begin to interpret the moment as something that God has brought to us because He wants us, He wants us to be closer to Him.

Because He desires you more and more, week by week, month by month.

These are always the two kind of paths that lie in front of us, and let alone the fact that God's probably going to use you at some point in your Christian life to do that for somebody else.

And anytime these moments come, this is kind of what's in front of us.

And by God's grace, in that moment, I walked away inspired.

Like I knew that God loved me and that I loved him, but but I also man, I want more of that.

Honestly.

I was very impressed by her, and I was thankful that God had given me vision to a love that burned hotter for him, uh, an affection that was even more powerful for him.

And he used that conversation to begin to stoke that.

You know, I've had similar experiences when like serving with unhoused people, whether it's in Denver and LA, you know, people living on the streets, and they're not monolithic.

People that live on the streets, they're not like, it's not like they're all there for the same reasons.

And when you when you go out and serve them and work alongside them, you realize this.

And I can remember specific conversations where I'd be talking with one of them, and all they wanted to do was talk about Jesus.

And at first I'm kind of like, well, this is mental health stuff going on.

That's why they want to talk about Jesus like all the time.

But then when I get into some extended conversations with some of these image bearers, they change my mind.

And I start to think to myself, I think this person actually just loves God more than me.

I think this person is more excited about who Jesus is and what he's done than me.

And again, by God's grace, the same moment of inspiration, the same moment of encouragement, the same vision that God's drawing me closer to him.

And you know, as I experienced those moments throughout the course of my life, it led me to this question that I've asked continually as I've gotten older.

This question, if you're taking notes, how can I grow in my love for God?

What maybe sometimes causes the differences there?

Whether someone who loves God like at all and someone who doesn't yet?

How can I grow in my love for God?

These moments of inspiration where I see the Spirit of God in someone and am encouraged, I'm strengthened, I want more of it, how can that grow in me?

How can my affection burn hotter?

This is a question that, of course, applies clearly to Christians, something that we all want.

Jesus says, the most important commandment: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

This question is core to the sum of the law and the prophets, as Jesus summarizes it.

If you're here today, you're not quite sure what you believe about Jesus yet.

Perhaps your version of this question is, why do some people love God even at all in the first place?

Maybe sometimes you go to church or you know people and you you see an emotional response to God, and you're just like, I what is that like?

I have no idea.

And how does that even happen?

A really important question, and honestly, no doubt, there's a lot of ways and a lot of reasons that something like this happens to someone.

It's a complex question, but in our text today, we're gonna see Jesus give one of really the more significant answers to it.

We're gonna see Jesus illuminate for us what can lead to a greater love for him.

So we're gonna be in Luke chapter 7, 36 through 50.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

I'm gonna have it up here on the screen.

And just to be clear, the story we're about to read, there's a different story that has a lot of similarities, but is a completely different story.

The other story is repeated three different times in three different gospels, where another woman anoints Jesus.

But this one here in Luke is different from those.

Different audience, different responses, different people, different woman.

And so I just want to make that clear here up front.

And we're gonna see three things.

We're gonna see the woman's response to Jesus, we're gonna see the reason for her response, and then we're gonna see the woman's reprieve.

Find out even what that word means when we get to it.

The woman's response, the woman's reason for the response, and her reprieve.

So let's read it here.

Luke 7, 36 through 50.

Says this.

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at table.

And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, bought uh brought an alabaster flask of ointment.

And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair, with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.

Now, when the Pharisee, who had invited him, saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she's a sinner.

And Jesus, answering, said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you.

And he answered, Say it, teacher.

A certain moneylender had two debtors, one owed five hundred denarii, the other fifty.

When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both.

Now, which of them will love him more?

Simon answered, The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.

And he said to him, You have judged rightly.

Then, turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, Do you see this woman?

I entered your house.

You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.

You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.

Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven.

For she loved much.

But he who is forgiven little loves little.

And he said to her, Your sins are forgiven.

Then those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins?

And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you.

Go in peace.

Wild story.

The scene begins with Jesus entering a Pharisee's house.

And if you know anything about the Pharisees, they are become the mortal enemies of Jesus.

They're the ones who drive the ball down field to his crucifixion and death.

But at this point, it's still early in his ministry, and this Pharisee, Simon, honestly, seems more inquisitive than anything else.

And if you're like, oh, Simon, I know a Simon, it's just not the same.

There's literally nine Simons in the New Testament.

If you can come up and name six of them to me, I'll give you extra credit after the sermon.

This is a one named, that's the Pharisee named Simon.

And, you know, again, his posture seems to be one of honest sort of question asking.

And then the central character shows up.

Verse 37.

A woman of the city who was a sinner.

We don't know what kind of sinner.

Most commentators would say probably it's most likely that she's a prostitute, but not necessarily sure.

She could have been an adulterer, she could have been married and sort of like sanctioned, she could have been married to someone who was really immoral and sort of sanctioned his acts.

It could be all kinds of stuff.

And let's not get too specific where the Bible clearly wants to be a little bit general.

A woman of the city who is a sinner.

And maybe your next question is like, wait, aren't all people sinners?

To which the Bible clearly, in both testaments, multiple times, says yes.

And so when Luke says who was a sinner, what he's saying is she was known for that.

You know, like this is a person who society and the community recognizes for a specific thing, and that's some kind of sin.

This is how the society sort of looks at her.

And then we see how she treats Jesus.

Verses 37 through 38.

Her response.

This is the core to this first point, the woman's response.

She comes, she hears he's there.

She comes in, Jesus is reclining at table, probably with his feet up behind him, with everyone.

She comes up behind him to his feet, and she stands behind him, and you know, she wants to wash his feet.

No water.

That's okay.

She's in such an emotional state.

Gratitude, it seems, love, it seems, thankfulness, that she's weeping.

And she uses her tears to wet his feet and then uses her hair to clean the feet.

Now, uh later Jewish writings like the Talmud would say that if a woman let down her hair, it was a divorceable offense.

Now, clearly, she does not seem to care about that, even if that was a thing at this point earlier.

She then, after cleaning his feet, uh, which is, by the way, the job of slaves, she then kisses his feet.

And maybe you're like, oh, is that like a cultural thing?

No, it was just as gross back then as it is now.

Okay.

And then finally, anoints his feet with an expensive, like perfumed oil.

These are acts of adoration.

These are acts of thankfulness, seemingly, gratitude, seemingly, definitely of love.

It seems that she's had some kind of experience with Jesus before this.

We don't know what it was.

Maybe she listened to him teach in the crowds, maybe he had a conversation with her, but some interaction with Jesus beforehand has filled this woman with such an immense gratitude in love that it leads to this.

As one commentator who I that I loved how he put this, he was like, This woman doesn't say a thing, this whole scene, and yet her actions speak a thousand words.

They paint a million paintings.

She doesn't need to say anything for us to know exactly how she feels about Jesus.

And Jesus doesn't reject her.

But then we see another response.

We see another response towards Jesus.

Simon the Pharisee.

And what we see from him is doubt.

He doubts Jesus and looks down on the woman.

Simon says, inaudibly, I think, when it says it said to himself, verse 39, if this man were a prophet, which everyone thinks Jesus is at this point, then he would know the type of woman that is kissing his feet.

And the implied thing is that he would stop her.

He looks down on the woman and doubtfully on Jesus.

And both of these responses sort of indicate pretty clearly their emotional disposition.

Their emotional disposition towards Jesus.

They reveal how they feel.

You know, most times when I come home, most times, my kids see me and they're pumped.

Dad, they run up to me and they want to do something.

You know, other times I make them like a two, three-course breakfast on a Tuesday morning, and it looks like they want to lay me off.

Okay?

Their emotional disposition is usually quite clear to me in their response to me.

And it's helpful at this point to consider ours.

It's helpful at this point to consider ours.

And again, the point is not to like put as some objective, some kind of emotional stereotype, okay?

Like, men and women are different as far as how they respond emotionally, personalities are different than how they respond emotionally, and yet nonetheless, your emotional response to someone is a window.

It's a window.

Like you might say, oh, this guy, he never shows any emotion.

Put him in front of a football game.

We'll see how emotional he gets, okay?

Put him in front of something, like we always, to some degree, our emotions are windows to our heart.

And with this woman, what do we see as we consider our emotional disposition towards Jesus?

We see that she's willing to be embarrassed to show him honor.

She is willing to greatly inconvenience herself for the sake of deference to him.

She cleans his feet by dirtying her hair.

Talk about inconvenience.

And also she seems to spare no expense to honor him.

Breaking open an alabaster jar, at which point it's kind of useless because they don't really use corks.

You just break it open and then it's used.

She spares no expense for him.

And again, like when I read this text, I was in awe.

I was in awe about this the way that this woman's affection burned for the Lord.

And it's worth at this point letting the Bible draw us out.

And again, like in any moment like this, the enemy will seek to tempt you to despair.

But the Lord wants you.

All of your heart.

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

This is the fullness of your being, including your emotion.

And it's moments like this where the enemy does not want that, your flesh does not want that, tempts you to despair, but God wants more of you.

And he constantly draws you near with moments like this.

What is your affection like for God?

What areas, maybe different categories, does this just seem alien to you?

And look, we can be inspired by her.

The point is not to be judgmental, right?

That's what Simon does.

Simon is judgmental in the story.

The point is to look at it and let her be a lighthouse, illuminating a path to greater closeness with the God of the universe who knows your name.

Who knows your name.

Okay, so this is her response.

Pretty wild.

The next natural question is how did she get there?

What's the reason?

What is the woman's reason for this?

What is the woman's reason for this response?

So what we see is that Jesus then engages Simon, the Pharisee.

And it's kind of funny, like Simon says something to himself.

If this guy was a prophet, he would know.

And then Jesus says, answering him.

So Jesus like answers the thought to himself.

Does he know that because the Holy Spirit's like illuminated it somehow?

And he knows his thoughts?

Or is he literally just sitting across from the table and looking at Simon's face and he's like, hmm, this guy is not okay with that.

I don't know.

Something in there.

And then in response to Simon's internal response, Jesus tells like the world's shortest parable.

He goes, Hey, Simon, I got something to say.

And Simon's like, say it, teacher.

He's like, there's two debtors.

One owed 50 denary, one owed 500.

Denari, by the way, is like a day's wage.

So we're talking like two years' wages versus two months, something like that.

One owed 50, one owed 500.

And then he's like, neither can pay.

Moneylender forgives both.

Which one loves the moneylender more?

And Simon's like, I suppose the one who had the greater debt forgiven.

Jesus is like, exactly.

Exactly.

And then at this point, he pivots.

And he turns and he looks at the woman behind him, but he still is talking to Simon.

And he does a good old-fashioned character comparison.

These are all over the Bible.

He's like, Simon, I came in, you gave me no water for my feet.

She made her own water and cleaned my feet.

Simon, I came in, you gave me no kiss.

She hasn't stopped kissing my feet.

Simon, you didn't give my head oil, which is like a you know a way to honor someone and bless them when they come in the homes because the smell is nice.

She used a nice ointment on me.

He draws out for Simon, who's standing there in a posture of self-righteousness, he draws out for Simon the differences between the woman's response and between or between the woman's response and his.

And then he lands the plane with him and basically says, This is the reason for this, Simon.

She's the woman who she's the one in the story who owes 500 denarii.

You're the one who owes 50.

And then he says, She her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.

And the syntax there is not her sins are forgiven because she loved.

The syntax there is we know that she loved because her sins are forgiven.

Goes before, if that makes sense.

I'll come back to that.

And then he says to Simon, he who's forgiven little loves little.

He's basically saying to Simon, this is why your response to me is what it is, Simon.

Because you think you need to be forgiven a little, therefore, your love, your thankfulness is little.

Unlike her, who sees her debt more clearly and loves me a lot.

Now, at this point you might say, okay.

So Jesus is saying that if I sin more, then I will receive more of his grace and love him more?

Is Jesus actually saying that this Pharisee's debt is little?

Is that what Jesus is saying?

I think contextually, if we look at both the rest of the Bible and even not far off this passage, not the answer is not at all.

In fact, in verse 30 from the text last week with John the Baptist, we saw Luke, the author, say directly, the Pharisees have.

Have rejected God's purpose for them.

That doesn't sound like owes a little bit of debt to me.

But perhaps even more explicitly, Matthew 18, the only other parable, by the way, in which debtors are completely forgiven.

If we were to look at that parable, it begins by Peter the disciple saying, Lord, how many times should I forgive someone?

Seven times?

And Jesus goes, seventy times seven, did.

No.

Look, there was a king in a far-off country.

He came back to his homeland and gathered the servants.

One of them owed him 10,000 talents.

What's 10,000 talents?

One talent is 20 years of wages.

So 10,000 times 20.

If you make 50 grand a year, it's about$10 billion.

What's the point?

You could never pay that back.

The servant pleads with the king, the king forgives the servant his debt, but then that servant who's just been forgiven has someone who owes him money.

And the person asks for grace and forgiveness.

And that servant goes, nah, pay it all, or I'm throwing you in jail.

And then Jesus says, How could anyone do that who stands before God and has been forgiven a debt that they could never pay?

And that, by the way, is vastly greater than anything anyone will ever owe you.

How could you not forgive when you've been forgiven something times a billion in size?

In this parable, we see clearly the way the Bible wants us to perceive our intentional or our specific debt.

$10 billion, something that you could never pay.

Okay, so then what's Jesus getting at here?

In Luke 7, in our parable, what's the point that he's getting at?

The point that he's getting at is that if you've been forgiven a lot, you love a lot.

And therefore you must see clearly how much you have been forgiven.

He's not trying to convince Simon the Pharisee that he has little debt.

He wants him to see it clearly because a heart that sees it clearly is more aligned with reality, a heart that is that will explode with love for God.

As you can imagine.

Right?

Like if someone has saved your life, if you view it, if someone saved your life, you're gonna love them the rest of your life.

But if you don't think, if your perception is not that that's what they did, like if you're at work and all of a sudden the meeting of the managers happens and and and you're like, ooh, they're talking about my either being getting a raise or a promotion or getting fired, and they come out and they go, okay, yeah, you get a 10% raise.

And then you find out later that it was because a person went to bat for you in the meeting, other people wanted you to be fired, but they're like, no, no, no, you see this completely wrong.

Your gratitude changes.

When you see it more clearly, when you see the truth, when your view, your perspective is aligned with reality, that's what Jesus is saying to Simon.

You feel you have been forgiven, little.

Therefore, you love little Simon.

And so, a heart that sees their sin clearly is a heart that explodes with love for God.

But it can't, of course, stop there.

The point is not see your wickedness is worse than you ever actually thought it was, the end.

That's not the point.

The point is you must begin there so that God can pick you up, so that you can receive grace and mercy and actually now see that that's what you needed and be thankful for it the way that God has intended.

Listen to me.

If you want your love for God to grow, then you have to invite Jesus in first to let you see your sin more clearly.

If you want your love for God to grow, you must first let him persuade you that it's worse than you're willing to admit, and then you must let him persuade you that he loves you all the more.

A, and then B.

For me recently, I experienced this in such a powerful way.

As many of you know, the last previous two years of my life were characterized by just brutal chronic illness that made my life really, really difficult and hard.

I'd never thought about death before, and this is the first time here in my mid-30s where I'm thinking life would be easier if I was dead.

And one of the things that the suffering did was it drew out sin I didn't know was there.

It caused me in moments, especially alone, especially with God, to scream at him in anger and accusation, challenge his character because of the suffering.

Suffering, of course, being one of the big challenges that we all face in life.

And in the same moment that I would scream at him in anger, blame, wanting to blame him for what he had done, right as we planted a church, I felt deep shame.

I probably would have been more characterizable as the guy who thought he owed 50 denarii rather than the woman who owed 500, let alone 10,000 talents.

But the gift that God gave to me, or at least began to grow in me, in that season, was clarity.

It's actually worse than I thought it was.

You know that verse where Paul is like, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

I would look at that verse and be like, dude, I can think of 8,000 clowns worse than me.

What are we talking about, Paul?

But in this, the last two years in particular, God granted me for the first time to look at that verse and agree.

It was a gift.

Because after letting me be crushed by my mistakes, he helped me see, but then he helped me up in that order.

And now, I mean there's a lot of things that I could point to that are tangibly different.

One is worship.

When I sit in our service like this in worship, I'm way less distracted, way more just open and vulnerable and thankful, and I sing just much more expressively because I agree with what I'm saying more.

My prayer life, I had a prayer life, but it's expanded dramatically since then.

It's not, it doesn't feel like a chore now as much because sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't, right?

Like to some degree, that's all of our experience.

But one of the things the Lord gifted me through this, seeing more clearly and then receiving his grace and forgiveness, is I just I'll just go on an hour-long walk in the park and circle this lake praying because I want to.

And it didn't used to be that way.

The woman's response, the woman's reason, she loves much because she's been forgiven much.

Now the woman's reprieve.

Let's not forget these last three verses here.

Reprieve is a word that means like a judgment has been stopped.

Legally, if someone receives a reprieve, then the judgment has been waived, or at least delayed.

And that, and Jesus waves it here.

He already has for her, but as we'll see, he wants her to know that.

It's not over.

The last three verses, even more reason to love our Lord.

After addressing Simon directly with the parable, he then speaks to the woman for the first time.

And look at what he wants her to know.

Verse 48.

Your sins are forgiven.

He wants her to know the reason that she came in in the first place was because she understood this to some degree.

That's why she loves the way that she does.

And yet, here's Jesus speaking to her directly in front of a bunch of people who are no doubt judging her, because he wants her to be sure, in case there was any doubt.

He wants her to be sure.

Your sins are forgiven.

The Lord Jesus has just spent a moment helping Simon in his self-righteousness see more clearly, the first thing.

And now he's doing the second thing with the woman.

He's letting her see more clearly as well.

And he doesn't want her to doubt that her sins are forgiven.

We've already seen Jesus' authority to forgive sins.

We saw that in Luke chapter 5 with the healing of the paralytic.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

Jesus says that, and everyone's like, what?

And they have the same response here.

What?

Who is this with authority to forgive sins?

Luke wants us to see that, but he's already said that before.

And the other thing that he wants us to see is that he wants her to know.

You think a good father in heaven, what parent wants their kid to question if they love them?

The other day, my son and I were wrestling, and he had this plastic Pikachu head with sharp ears, and he's swinging it at me, and he accidentally makes gnarly contact and cuts open my eyebrow.

And I was like, ah! I screamed, and he looked at me.

And then I looked back at him, and blood just starts coming down my face.

And my son's looking at me, and he goes, That's a lot of blood, dad.

And I was like, Yeah.

What do you think he wants from me in that moment?

He wants to know that his dad's good with him, still loves him, his dad forgives him.

And eventually I gave it to him, maybe 10 minutes later.

Because I'm a serial.

If you're here today, and for whatever reason, you feel your sin particularly strongly.

You feel your mistakes, your wickedness even, your shortcoming particularly acutely.

Maybe the Holy Spirit has begun to give you vision as he does with me all the time in that story I told.

Maybe the Holy Spirit has begun to give you a clearer vision of reality, and it hurts.

The Bible in verse 48.

Alive and active from God's word to you in your heart today.

Listen to me.

Your sins are forgiven.

If you have faith in Jesus, as we saw this woman has in the very last verse, if you have faith in Jesus, your sins are forgiven.

And God doesn't want you to question that.

Assurance of salvation is one of the great gifts that God gives his kids.

Doesn't want to manipulate you with doubt and fear.

Oh, stay above the heaven line your whole life.

You don't get to know.

No.

He wants you to know.

And that's why he says it to the woman, and why the narrative repeats it three times in three verses.

Who is this?

The authority to forgive sins?

Your sins are forgiven.

And finally, lest anyone think that forgiveness came to her because of her lavish display of love, verse 50 puts that notion to bed.

Your faith has saved you, he says.

Go in peace.

It is faith that saves, not your accomplishments.

Luke wants us to see that.

She didn't get forgiven because she came in and gave him this lavish display of love.

That's why she came in.

He or she who is forgiven much and sees their sin clearly, loves much.

This is what God wants for each of us.

Not shackles of shame, not envy, comparison.

He wants you.

Jesus wants her to know and to draw near.

As I've uh told uh the story of Lena, one of Joni and I's great friends, who we met several years ago and has since passed away, about our age, was trafficked into prostitution via a drug cartel in her teens.

By God's grace, after maybe eight years, she escaped.

And we became friends with her several years ago.

She came, uh we started having dinners with her, and we found out about the difficulty of her life.

She starts asking questions about God and faith, why God this, how could he allow this to happen in my life?

You say this, but this is my experience, talking through it, talked about the gospel.

As the months pass, maybe a year later, she eventually, Jesus, persuades her that he does love her and she believes him.

And you know what story she wanted read at her baptism?

The woman of the city whose love overflows for the Lord Jesus because of his compassion, because of his forgiveness.

And my prayer for us is that this story of this unknown woman of the city with some unknown sin does the same for you.

Does the same for us.

The courage to see your sin more clearly as the weeks and months pass in the confidence that God raises you up in his forgiveness and grace.

That's right.

Lord.

What an example of a person.

Who knows what this woman did, Lord.

No doubt she was filled with regret until she met you.

God, thank you for the way that you mature people in our lives, people that we get to read about in your word, who are so overcome with love for you that it shows up all the time.

God, I pray that you would silence the lies in any and all of our hearts right now of envy, of comparison, of shortcoming, and instead speak your truth to our hearts such that you want us closer.

This is why you inspire us with such vision.

And I pray that you would grant it.

I pray, Lord, that you would grant to each and every one of our hearts a greater love, because you deserve that.

Let us see more clearly what we're scared to see.

Let us receive more thoroughly what we never thought could be true.

That the God of the universe moves towards sinners with love.

We love you.

Jesus' name, amen.