Love Is The Plumb Line

Well, good morning, everyone.

It's good to be with you.

By the way, let's do a quick poll.

If if Sarah had ended by saying the word of the Lord, how many of you would know what to say?

Some of you?

Okay.

Yeah.

So I grew up Catholic, and uh I'm not Catholic anymore, but there are certain things I miss.

And one of the things we did was whenever scripture was read, um, the speaker would say, The word of the Lord.

You're reading God's word, and everyone else would respond, Thanks be to God.

We're thanking God for God revealing Himself to us.

So let's try that.

The Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

There we go.

It's good to be with you this morning.

My name is Mac.

I'm one of the pastors on our team.

Also, want to welcome all of you who are joining us online.

And we have the kids in the service today.

Woohoo! That's exciting.

I'm gonna need your help in a little bit.

So just kind of focus and try to pay attention.

Um, we're gonna switch things up a little bit uh today.

As we start a new school year, we're gonna start a new sermon series.

But before you freak out or throw a tantrum, relax, take a deep breath, because we're gonna stay in the book of 1 Corinthians.

All right.

Over the next several months, we're gonna do a deep dive into the chapter that Sarah just got done reading, 1 Corinthians 13, which is perhaps one of the most famous chapters in the Bible, often referred to as the love chapter.

Whenever I officiate weddings, this is one that it's like a crowd pleaser.

Everybody chooses this one, uh, which is all fine and good.

But one of the things I want to remind us is that when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 13, he wasn't officiating a wedding, okay?

Um, he was writing a letter to a really dysfunctional community.

And this chapter is pointing to the solution uh to all of their problems.

Um the Corinthians were a mess, and Paul is writing to them because they've lost sight of what it looks like to follow Jesus together in love.

And so, what we're gonna do over the next couple months is we're gonna explore what it looks like to follow Jesus together and be marked by Jesus-like love.

And we're entitling this series Love Never Fails.

Love Never Fails.

I want to back into this series with this question.

So think about this for a moment.

Um, how do you know if a church is healthy?

How do you know if a church is healthy?

Um, no church is perfect, you all know that.

Um, but how do you know if a church is reasonably uh healthy?

Now, the most common answer that I hear to this question um is growth.

It's often assumed that if a church is growing, they must be healthy.

If numbers are increasing, right, if giving is strong, if the preaching is somewhat solid, and the programs are humming, well, the the assumption is the belief is sort of ipso facto, that church must be healthy.

And there are several problems with this assumption or answer.

One is there's just way too much evidence to the contrary, okay?

So every month, it seems to me, there's a new megachurch in the news headlines due to some sort of a scandal or mess that's sort of coming to light.

So despite incredible growth and outward success, when the when the curtain is sort of peeled back or pulled back, what looks successful on the outside is like disturbingly dysfunctional on the inside.

This is a common phenomenon.

And I want to be clear um dysfunction can exist in any size church, it's not just big churches, but I think that growing churches are uh super susceptible to this precisely because growth is often seen as evidence of health and then sort of shields everyone or prevents everyone from taking a deeper look.

I want to be clear that numerical growth is not the same thing as maturity.

It's just not.

A church can be growing rapidly, growing rapidly, and yet be immature spiritually.

The other problem with this is that growth is not the answer that Jesus nor any of the New Testament writers would give.

I want to submit to you that if you asked Jesus or asked any of the folks who wrote portions of the New Testament, hey, how do you know if a church is reasonably healthy, growth would not be their answer.

Um, just consider how Jesus related to growth and size and uh sort of momentum and numbers.

When you read the Gospels, um, Jesus knew how to draw big crowds, massive crowds.

And yet, whenever the crowds got big, Jesus would often say really challenging and difficult things precisely to test people's commitment and sincerity.

And it sort of had this inevitable result of thinning out the crowd.

Many people would leave.

Um, he would often say really hard things to sort of test people's commitment and thin out the crowd.

What's more is if you look at how Jesus stewarded his time and energy, he gave his best time and energy to a very small group of people, the disciples and maybe a few in addition to that.

And then if you look at the New Testament, sort of zoom out and look at the New Testament as a whole, you'll just notice that the primary question they're concerned about is not how do we grow bigger churches, but rather how do we become more like Jesus?

How do we live like and become more like Jesus?

So if the marker of health, of being a reasonably healthy church, is not growth, well then what is it?

I want to show you all a little picture, it's a sketch, of what's uh called a plumb line.

Okay, so you can see this is a little bit of a drawing, and um what's in the person's hand is a tool, it's a device known as a plumb line that's been used throughout for centuries to help builders determine what's perfectly straight and vertical.

And so if you look at this picture, you'll notice that the individual is holding a string from a fixed point at the top, and at the very bottom of the string is a weight, and that's called a plumb bob.

And when you let that weight do the work of gravity, it creates a perfect straight line for the string.

And you can see that little device kind of that he's holding in the other hand to make sure it's not bent or he's holding it the right way.

And that will give a perfectly vertical line to know to note whether or not what the builder is building is perfectly vertical and will have a structural integrity.

Here's what happens when you don't use a plumb line.

Um that's a little bit of a joke because as I've studied this tower, it turns out it was actually built straight, but the ground began to shift.

But it gives a good sort of illustration of here's what happens when you don't use a um a plumb line.

Now, I don't know anything about building or construction.

I am not handy at all.

If something breaks in my house, I am I I don't know what to do.

I have nine tools at my house and half of them are screwdrivers, okay?

So it's not like I have personal experience using a plumb line.

Um, nerd moment, the first time I even learned what a plumb line was was when I was in college studying the book of Amos.

Um, because in Amos chapter 7, uh God tells Amos he's putting a plumb line in place to measure Israel's faithfulness and conduct.

Amos 7 · chapter mention

Here's what it says in Amos 7.

This is what he, God showed me.

The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plum, almost like what the picture we just looked at.

With a plumb line in his hand.

And the Lord asked me, What do you see, Amos?

A plumb line, I replied.

Then the Lord said, Look, I'm setting a plumb line among my people, Israel.

So here the idea of a plumb line is obviously being used metaphorically, but the idea is that a plumb line establishes an objective standard.

An objective standard that doesn't bend based on a person's preference, doesn't change based on convenience.

A plumb line is an objective standard, it's steady and true, and everything else must be reconciled with it.

And so if you're building a wall and you hold up a plumb line and the two don't match, the solution isn't to try to change the plumb line.

The solution is you gotta fix the wall, right?

That's the idea.

And I want to submit to you that there is a plumb line for everything in life.

An objective standard for literally everything in the Christian life, every relationship you have.

So in your marriage and the way you parent, and how you relate to friends and family and coworkers, there's an objective standard, a plumb line.

Every environment you're in, whether you're at home or at work or in your community, there's a plumb line.

Everything we do here together as a church, whether you're leading or serving or giving, whatever it is you're doing, there's a plumb line, an objective standard that if we don't meet it, if it doesn't match, we actually are the ones who need to be changed or transformed.

So what is this plumb line?

Well, we just got done reading about it.

It's love.

So here's our bottom line for today.

Love is the plumb line by which everything in life must be measured.

Love is the plumb line for which everything in our lives, both individually and communally, must be measured.

Love is God's plumb line.

God's objective standard for everything in life.

Love is the plumb line for following Jesus.

It's the objective standard for what it means to be a healthy church, and it's God's objective standard for actually what it means to be spiritually mature.

Love is the plumb line for the Christian life.

The standard that reveals whether we are actually aligned with God's heart and God's character.

And it applies to everything about us.

Everything on the inside.

So your desires, your wants, your affections, your thoughts, your thinking, your feeling, and then everything on the outside.

What you say and what you do, your actions and your behavior.

Everything needs to be aligned with this plumb line.

And if it doesn't, well, it's not the plumb line that needs to change.

It's us.

We need to change.

Better yet, we need to be transformed.

Here's how Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 16, 14.

He says, Do everything in love.

Now, kiddos, here's where I'm gonna need your help because we're gonna memorize this verse today.

Okay, so here's what we're gonna do: a little audience participation.

We're gonna break up into two groups.

So you all, this side of the sanctuary, you're group one.

Got it?

And you all are yes.

Great deduction.

Okay, we got Sherlock Holmes among us, right?

Okay, so when I say First Corinthians, you all are gonna shout 16.

And you all are gonna say amazing.

And then we're gonna go back and forth.

So you're gonna say, do, do, do, follow me.

Okay, I'm I'm teaching you.

Okay, so you're gonna say, do everything.

We have one of the smartest congregations in Lake Country.

This is brilliant.

So let's give this a try.

And kids, you gotta, we're gonna see which group wins.

Okay?

Which is based on how loud you can get.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're that kind of church.

Okay.

So here we go.

First Corinthians.

16.

Wow.

Okay.

One more time.

I can't decide who won.

So uh one more time.

And repetition helps when memorizing Bible verses.

It just does.

You've got to keep doing it and putting it in.

So here we go.

First Corinthians.

I feel like you all deserve participation trophies.

I'm gonna be that guy.

No, I think maybe a slight edge to group one, okay?

But you also had more people, so don't be braggadocious, okay?

Uh Paul says, do everything in love.

It's such an easy verse to memorize.

It's a much harder verse to live by.

He does notice the word everything, do everything in love.

So there's never a time when we're not to be loving.

And so we have to sort of look at does everything in my life, everything on the inside and the outside, correspond and align with this concept of love.

And if it doesn't, how I interact with my parents, how I parent my kids, how I relate to my spouse, how I talk to my teachers, if it doesn't uh match up with love, then it needs to change.

It needs to be transformed.

And this is what Paul is teaching in 1 Corinthians 13.

Remember that the Corinthians have spiritual maturity backwards.

All right?

So they think being spiritually mature is all about impress being impressive and powerful, impressive displays of spiritual gifting.

And so they're sort of like competing with each other with regard to who manifests the most powerful spiritual gifts.

And the one who has the most showmanship is the one who thinks they're the most mature.

And Paul is going to completely challenge and reorient to this understanding of maturity by pointing to the plumb line of love.

Here's what he says to review the first three verses.

He says, If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I'm like a 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 a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I'm nothing.

If I give all that I possess to the poor, and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Notice what Paul is doing here.

He's naming the plumb line of love.

This is the goal.

But he's also drawing out the implication of this.

That no matter how impressive you are or what you can do, no matter what your spiritual gifting, if it's not done in and for love, it's worthless.

And he actually names two areas we Christians are often tempted to prioritize, to sort of show off or try to become impressive, that are meaningless without love, and that is knowledge and service.

It's great to know the scriptures.

It's great to serve in the name of Jesus, but without love, both of those things are worthless.

It's way easier to memorize Bible verses and learn some theology than it is to be transformed by love.

And it's way easier to serve other people and even to give generously than it is to be transformed by love.

Both knowledge and service are worthless if they're not rooted and grounded and motivated by love.

Without love, these impressive things are worthless.

So here's what I want to do for the remainder of our time.

I want to give you a theology of love.

Sort of zoom out and look at the idea of love from the grand picture of Scripture.

And see, if we want to understand love, we actually need to start with God.

This is the starting point.

This is where Scripture starts.

So here's what John says in 1 John 4.8, another verse you could memorize is God is love.

Three words.

God is love.

But I want us to notice that love is not just a verb that God does, it's a noun that God is.

In other words, God doesn't just act loving, God exists as eternal loving relationship as the Father, Son, and Spirit.

This is what the tri the Trinity is all about.

So think about it this way: the Father perfectly loves the Son and the Spirit.

And the Son perfectly loves the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit perfectly loves the Father or the Son and the Father.

And so these three individuals, three persons, one essence, are overflowing in perfect reciprocal love throughout all eternity.

That's about as good as I can do to explain what the Trinity is all about.

And I want us to note that love is the primary attribute of God.

God is love.

Love isn't some attribute of God that needs to be balanced with other attributes of God, like holiness or justice.

Rather, every other attribute of God is simply an expression of God's love.

God's holiness is an expression of God's love.

God's justice is an expression of God's love.

Even God's wrath, which isn't an attribute, it's a response to sin, is actually an expression of God's love.

It's a loving response to the sin in our lives.

Everything that God does is loving because it flows from who God is.

And there's never a time, because God is love, there's never a time when God wasn't love, and therefore there's never been a time where God hasn't acted lovingly.

You following this?

Which begs the question okay, great, that sounds wonderful.

Everybody loves the idea that God is love.

But what is love?

What is love?

And unfortunately, we're living in a cultural moment where people are disturbingly and painfully confused about what love is.

For many people, they equate love with a feeling or emotion.

It's about getting warm fuzzies.

For other people, it's just sort of synonymous with being nice or kind, which are good things.

Just not the same thing as love.

One of the big uh things I'm noticing is that many people think love is about being affirming.

So if you really love someone, then you're gonna affirm everything about them and everything they do, which isn't the same thing as love.

In our culture, to express disapproval of what someone else is doing is almost like a violation of love.

It doesn't help that we live in a culture where we ask the word love to do way too much work.

So I minored in biblical Greek, and when you study Greek, there's actually four different words for love.

Um so they began to differentiate or distinguish between uh different kinds of love, whereas we ask the word love to do all the work.

So I can say, for instance, that I love coffee ice cream, and I do.

It's so good.

And I can say I love my wife Josie or my kids.

And it's the same word, but I mean totally different things when I use the word love.

At least I better, otherwise I'll get into trouble, right?

And so what is love?

What is love?

It's an important question.

And here's where I want to insist that in order to understand love, you need to look at and actually know the person of Jesus.

Um, here's how John puts it in 1 John chapter 3, verse 16.

1 John 3:16

This is my favorite verse in all of Scripture.

John says, this is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

So notice how John is defining love here.

He's pointing to Jesus.

This is how we know what love is.

Look at Jesus.

And then he goes a step further and points out that the best example of Jesus' love is on the cross.

Jesus laid down his life for all of humanity.

And so if we consider what Jesus is doing on the cross, we can conclude that love is other centered.

Jesus laid down his life for other people.

It's sacrificial, he's dying for other people.

It's Calvary-like, and it's cruciform, it's cross-shaped.

This is what love is.

It's other centered, sacrificial, Calvary-like, cruciform, Jesus-looking love.

That's what it is.

That's what it is.

And notice the connection that John makes.

He says, this is what Jesus did for us.

He laid down his life for us in love, and in light of that, we're then to lay down our lives for one another.

And in other words, the way Jesus loved us becomes the sort of plumb line for how we're supposed to love other people.

Just as Jesus loved us, we're to love others.

And this connection point, the way Jesus loved us, how we're to love, is found throughout the New Testament.

For example, in Philippians 2 5, uh Paul says, in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.

So in your relationships, Relationships with your friends, family, with us as a community, we're to have the exact same mindset that Jesus had.

Now, what is that mindset?

Paul goes on to tell us in the following verses.

That Jesus, being God, didn't consider equality with God something to be held on tightly to, but instead emptied himself, took on flesh, and ultimately went to the cross.

There it is again.

So just as Jesus loved us by laying down his life, we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

Love looks like Jesus.

Now, Jesus didn't just show love when he went to the cross.

This is super important.

That is sort of like the ultimate expression of sacrificial love is dying for humanity.

But in fact, if you read the Gospels, Jesus gives us a masterclass in what love looks like in tons of different situations.

If you want to learn how to love, you have to look and study Jesus so you can see what love looks like in multiple different contexts.

And if I were to sort of create a streamline for you, here's how it summarize the way Jesus loved throughout the Gospels is he consistently moved downward in mobility.

Instead of trying to climb the ladder, he moved downward and he moved outward in service.

So love moves downward in humility and outward in service.

Jesus consistently moved downward.

He befriended all the people who nobody else would associate with: sinners and tax collectors, people on the margins, on the edges of society.

These are the people Jesus intentionally hung out with to show that God's love doesn't exclude anybody, but is for everyone.

And then Jesus moves outward in service.

He spent tons of time serving people, feeding the crowds, healing the sick, casting out demons.

Jesus consistently moved downward in humility and outward in service.

And guess what?

It got him in trouble.

It didn't get him points with those in power because it threatened them.

Jesus was a troublemaker, he ultimately got crucified.

And guess what?

We're to be troublemakers too.

Not because we're doing wrong things, but because we're doing the right things in Jesus' name.

As a follower of Jesus, this is the point.

We're to do life with Jesus such that we become like Jesus and we actually live like Jesus by loving like Jesus.

This is what it's all about.

This is what it's all about.

Jesus like love is the fulfillment of the law.

Loving like Jesus is what it looks like to be faithful to God.

Here's what Paul says in Romans 13:8.

Romans 13:8

He says, Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.

What Paul is saying is don't go in debt to each other.

And if you are in debt, pay it off.

Except for in one area, and that is love.

Live in such a way where every single person you encounter, you owe them an infinite debt of love that can never be paid off.

So you're just gonna always show up with love towards that person.

Imagine, friends, if we actually did that in the church, where every interaction we had with each other was sort of uh a little deposit of love, trying to pay off an infinite debt of love we owe that other person.

Our relationships would look drastically different.

Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 22, 37 through 40, he says, um, Jesus responded, he said, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, your whole self.

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.

And then Jesus says, All of the law and the prophets, the entire Old Testament, hang on these two commandments.

And so Jesus summarizes the entire Bible by saying, Love God with your whole self, and then love your neighbor as yourself.

And the word hang here means to be suspended from.

So every think about that plumb line.

Jesus is saying, everything hangs from this.

Love is like the plumb bob at the bottom that makes sure everything is straight.

Your life needs to be aligned with this.

This is what it means to be faithful to God and fulfill all the scriptures, is to embody love, to be perfectly aligned with love.

This is why in Galatians 5, 6, Paul says, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

The Greek word uh for expressing here is energeo.

It's where we get our word energy from.

So Paul is saying, look, the only thing that counts in your life is your faith in Jesus being energized by love.

That's it.

It's the only thing that matters is your faith being energized by Jesus like love.

So follow this.

If love is the only thing that counts, the only thing that counts is your faith being energized by love.

If the entire Bible hangs on love, loving God with your whole self and your neighbor as yourself, then love must be the plumb line, the objective standard by which we measure spiritual maturity and church health.

Jesus-like love is the objective standard for assessing spiritual maturity and I would say church health.

And when you consider this, I want to submit to you, we need new metrics.

We need new metrics and new lenses for determining how a church is re if a church is reasonably healthy.

When it's all about growth, uh there's three main metrics.

These are the classic metrics that every church tends to focus on when they look at church health through the lens of growth.

It's the three B's.

You ready for this?

Building, how big is your building, budget, how big is your budget, and butts, how many people are coming on Sunday.

That's it.

But as I said before, you can have a massive building, you can have a lot of people giving and showing up on Sunday and be incredibly immature and dysfunctional.

Right?

So we need new metrics, we need new ways of measuring health that go beyond just quantitative measurements and counting.

See, counting is easy.

You can count how many people show up on Sunday, you can count how many people are part of a small group, you can count how many Bible verses you memorize.

Counting is easy, but measuring is much more difficult.

We need to shift from quantitative metrics to qualitative metrics.

How do you measure love?

How do you measure love?

That's the question.

And see, you can't count love, but you can measure it.

You can measure it.

But see, the way you have to measure it is to focus on who you are.

Love is about who you are and who you're becoming.

It's about becoming the kind of person where no matter who you're with or what context you're in, if someone bumps up to you, bumps into you, you overflow with love.

Love is about the overflow.

No matter what relationship it is, no matter what environment you're in, when someone interacts with you, what they get is Jesus-like love, because that's who you are and who you're becoming.

This is what the fruit of the Spirit is all about.

The fruit of the Spirit isn't something we squeeze out by way of effort, it's something that we become as we surrender to the Holy Spirit's work in our life.

So you're patient, you practice you're patient in your actions because you become a patient person.

You're kind with others, not because you're squeezing it out, but because you become, you've cultivated kindness.

You're a kind person.

It's just what naturally flows out of you because you've consistently surrendered to the work of God, the grace of God in your life.

Who you are flows out of you so that what's coming out of you is consistent with what's on the inside.

There's a congruity in alignment between the two.

This is what it's all about.

It's about becoming a loving person because you've been transformed by Jesus.

Here's what's more is that Jesus, like love, is to be our witness to a watching world.

So here's what Jesus says to his disciples.

He says, A new command I give you.

I'm giving you a new command.

Love one another.

How?

As I have loved you.

Again, this is the standard.

It's as Jesus has loved us, so you must love one another.

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

So Jesus is saying, look, the quality of your love, the way you love one another, is the way that the world is gonna know that you belong to me.

Because people are gonna look at you and they're gonna notice how you're loving, and it's gonna remind them of me.

This is how the world is supposed to know that you belong to me by the way you love one another.

And yet, if we're honest, we have some work to do.

Because this isn't the thing that the church is known for in our broader world.

Gandhi put it this way: he said, I like your Christ, I don't like your Christians.

Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Ouch! So we have some reputational repair to do.

And the way we're gonna repair our reputation as a church is not by bopping people over the head with Bible verses, it's by loving people in the way of Jesus.

Yeah?

And so I really want to encourage you.

It's so interesting.

I I get like little emails throughout the month, and it gives us gives me data as a pastor.

And nationally, like church attendance is like, well, it's it's on the decline because of kids' sports and all this stuff, right?

But but so the average attender doesn't come every week.

They come like every two to three weeks.

And I just want to challenge you to maybe push against that in this season.

Instead of letting your kids dictate your lives, make it a priority to be here throughout this series because we're not gonna be able to do the kind of reputational repair I'm talking about, or experience the kind of transformation if we're not all showing up and going, I want to grow in love.

So I just want to encourage you.

I think this is gonna be an important series for us as a church, and I want to challenge you to make it a priority.

Now, as you leave here today, I want to give you some action steps.

As you know, we give you prayer prompts every week and then a practice to try on.

Here are your prayer prompts.

Number one, where is my life out of alignment with Jesus-like love?

This isn't a shame or guilt thing.

This is just an honesty thing.

God already knows this area in your life and loves you perfectly, so don't be scared.

But what's one area that you're like, you know what?

Um, I'm not, I'm not really manifesting or reflecting Jesus-like love.

When people bump into me in this area of my life, it's not love that flows out.

It's competition, it's anger, it's impatience, whatever it is.

Where am I more concerned with appearing impressive than loving like Jesus?

Whew!

Like all the Corinthians have been like, that's me, right?

And I submit that a lot of us still have that same problem.

We'd rather appear impressive to other people rather than actually be loving.

Who is Jesus inviting me to love more intentionally with humility and service?

Remember, Jesus moved downward and outward.

So, where might Jesus be inviting you to stoop a little bit, to move downward in humility or outward in service.

And then here's your practice for this week.

And this is all, it's not about trying harder, but it is about sort of stepping into something with intentionality.

So, first step is you're gonna identify one person Jesus is calling you to love intentionally this week.

One person.

And it might be someone who you're finding is difficult to love.

That might be even better.

Could be a coworker, could be your spouse, could be a child, whatever it is, but identify one person.

This is the person, Jesus, you're gonna help me love this week.

Secondly, spend time asking Jesus to help you see this person the way Jesus sees them.

So you're gonna start by going, Jesus, give me your eyes to see this person exactly how you do.

I wanna view them from your perspective.

And then here's how you're gonna love them.

You're gonna pray for them each day, and then you're gonna find one way to take action for their good.

It's that simple.

So you're gonna spend time thinking, God, how do you see this person?

And then you're gonna commit to praying blessing over them every day this week, and you're gonna take one action for their good.

You're not gonna grow in love, I'm not gonna grow in love, and unless I can do it one person at a time.

So start small and let's get some reps here.

Couple reminders as we leave today.

Number one is get connected.

We had signed up Sunday last week.

If you weren't here for it, aren't part of a group or a serve team, it's not too late, and I'd really challenge you to get connected.

And then uh speaking of connection, next Sunday, kids, listen up.

Next Sunday's donut day.

Yeah.

So if this is your normal service, plan on staying afterwards to hang out and connect.

If you normally attend the second service, show up early so you can be part of that.

All right?

Um, that's all I have.

Let's stand for closing prayer this morning.

Jesus, we thank you for your love.

Scripture says that we love because you first loved us.

And so we thank you for chasing us down with your relentless, perfect, unwavering love.

And we ask, Jesus, we invite you to continue to transform us by your love.

We want to surrender to you in love, be transformed by you in love, so that we can then can overflow in love toward one another and toward every single person we encounter.

So, God, align us from the inside out by the plumb line of life.

Have your way in us.

We ask that in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Go in love.