Reflections on Love - Part 2

All right. Well, good morning, everyone. So good to see you today.

What a beautiful day and a beautiful day to continue on what we've been doing.

Started last week and continuing on this week, we've just been reflecting on love, love.

And I just, I actually, I really have enjoyed just preparing this week for this

message and thinking about God's love and the love that we're called to and

just kind of the beautiful thing that it is to say,

oh, no, I'm in Christ, and so my life is in Him, and so His love flows through me.

What a great thing we have, an opportunity we have.

As we get started, I just want to pray, see if you guys would join me.

So, Lord, as we just reflect on love, Lord, we want to be grounded in Your Word.

Lord, we want to be filled with Your Spirit.

Lord, we want You to give us eyes to see, Lord, the depths of Your love,

Lord, the depths of Your love for ourselves, but also for the people around

us, Lord, for this broken world, Lord, for the fact that your love is just,

it is in the background, the driving heartbeat of your mission in the world,

Lord, of your work in the world, of your reconciliation and your restoration

of all things, Lord. It comes from your love, and that's who you are, Lord.

So, Lord, let us be willing to hear from you and to be shaped by you,

by your word, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

So we're talking about love. And I mean, we talked about this last week a little

bit, but love is just absolutely central, central to Christian thinking, living, spirituality.

Every part of the life of faith must have love.

Love must be expressed in it. Love is not just a nice optional thing.

It's not an aesthetic bonus. It's not just something that we can add on to our faith.

What we talked about last week is that it's just indispensable.

It's so central to our calling to be people of love.

And I think we need that reminder. I need that reminder oftentimes because there's

just something in the human heart, in my heart and in your heart,

that is willing to forego love or to just sort of think, oh,

it's nice, but not really to really hold ourselves to this understanding that love is so important.

We are more comfortable measuring our maturity as Christians in our doctrinal

commitments, in the things that we do, and in our sense of spirituality.

We can kind of touch those things a little bit more.

They're more tangible to us. And so we say, Like, those are the primary things,

but love is so essential.

Biblically, love is necessarily paired with every single one of those things.

It doesn't replace those things, right?

It's not as if, oh, well, if we have love and we have bad doctrine and we have

no faith or we have none of this—.

All of those things must be paired with love. Love doesn't replace doctrine

or works or being filled with the Spirit, but it does accompany those things in our lives.

And so we just kind of need to think about that. Like we need to have this companion

of love as we walk out into the world.

Look, what Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy, Timothy is a book where Paul,

it's a pastoral epistle.

Paul has sent Timothy's kind of younger apprentice to build up ministries.

And so he's giving him reminders and instructions. And he says this,

the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart,

a good conscience and a sincere faith.

So all the tweaking and instruction and doctrine that Paul is doing in the book of 1 Timothy,

and probably we could say more broadly in the rest of his letters,

all of it has the goal of pushing us as followers of Jesus towards the goal

of seeing love coming out of a pure heart of a good conscience and a sincere faith.

The end goal of Christian maturity is love, to pursue love. It's really the whole ballgame.

And as we pursue true maturity, love will come.

But I just want to pause for a minute and just notice something together,

something that's kind I think, implied in what Paul is saying.

And that's that this is that we can learn to love, that we can learn to love.

Of course, it would be silly to give instruction with a goal of love if it's

not actually possible for us to learn to love.

There is implied in this idea that we can learn to love. Otherwise,

what would be the sense of what he's saying?

And I think it matters to say that, to say that love is something that we can

grow in and that we can be intentional about cultivating and developing because

there's some sense to it.

And it's important to say that because in our culture, we've taken that word

love and we've made it mysterious.

We've made it something that just kind of spontaneously happens.

And we've deprived ourselves with those romantic ideas about love,

we've deprived ourselves of the tools of actually cultivating love.

Because if you make it something that just kind of has its own power of its

own like, then you can't in any way develop love in your life.

I heard the term recently, saturated language. And I think when we talk about

love, I think, did Peter, did I hear that from you, Peter?

Yeah, yeah, thank you. That's like 50% of the things I hear,

I hear from Peter because he is a good for the, he's a source of knowledge. So saturated language.

So love is, it's just saturated with meaning. So in different meanings, right?

We take the word love in our culture and everybody has this concept of love

And it's kind of like a wax nose.

We will mold it to be what we think of it as.

And we make it mysterious. We make it something that kind of just happens or

is spontaneous or appears out of nowhere.

And everyone says, everyone agrees, maybe not everyone, but most people agree that love is good.

Everyone loves loves. We love to love love and we love to talk about love and

how loving we are and how important all of our causes are and how all of our

causes and our understanding of the world is totally consistent with love.

Everybody loves to claim love.

But there's oftentimes, I think, no real sense or plan of how we can develop

love. and the idea of cultivating or growing in love is counterintuitive to

the mysterious ways we think about love.

But really, at the heart of Jesus' message and Paul's instruction in the New

Testament is this, I think, scandalous idea, at least scandalous in our culture,

that matters of the heart, matters

of love, matters of our affections are actually not a mystery at all.

They are not something that we're powerless over developing and growing in.

In fact, Jesus' ministry, I think, at its heart is the revelation that because

of God's love, we can grow into love.

That's why Jesus says the greatest commandment, commandment is something that

we must do, that we can do, is to love God and love other people.

If we can't, if it's not within our power to love God and love other people, then we are just doomed.

But implied in this is this sense that we can grow into love.

We can grow into become people of love.

Look at what Peter says about love in the book of 1 Peter.

It says this, since you've purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth,

so that you show sincere brotherly love for each other, from a pure heart,

love one another constantly.

Because you've been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable,

through the living and enduring word of God.

And then a quote from Isaiah, for all flesh is as grass and all its glory,

like the flowers of the grass.

And the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures

forever. And this word is the gospel that was proclaimed to you.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, the word of God spoken to us, is the through way.

It's the enabling thing that makes us be able to, that gives us a competency

to be able to love from a pure heart in this way.

The gospel is the seed spread from the Lord, implanted into our hearts that

can grow and will love. True love, the kind of love that Jesus has, that God has.

And to accept the gospel is to be enabled to love in this way that Peter describes,

this constant love, this faithful love, this growing into, putting on of love.

And I especially like, I think this is an important distinction.

This perishable versus imperishable language.

He's talking about the gospel being an imperishable seed that's going to grow

into imperishable fruit.

It helps, I think, for me to conceptualize the difference between the kind of

love that Jesus calls us to, this love of God,

love for people, this putting on love, this transformative love,

and the kind of love that comes naturally to all people, including me.

And if we're going to love the way that Jesus teaches us, then I think we need

to understand, we need to recognize that there is something called imperishable love.

There is this thing that we're called to, which is love of a greater quality

and caliber in that it is enduring and it is imperishable.

And we need to think about this because I think sometimes Christians say silly things.

This is a silly thing that Christians say sometimes.

I know.

Yes, yes, it is shocking. It's truly shocking. Christians say silly things and

we assume that people who don't follow Jesus don't know what love is. And that's not true.

They absolutely do. I mean, look, everyone, because we're created in the image

of God, has the capacity to love.

We have a natural and innate ability to love, perishably.

And that's the issue. Because look, here's what I know about myself.

My natural love is very fickle.

It goes to the point where it becomes exhausted because it's coming from me,

and I will find an end to myself and my ability to love, and then my love will fade.

We all have that ability, and that's a beautiful thing. It is beautiful that

all people are capable of love, and so we know what love is like,

and yet we all, I think, know this reality that our love, our natural love, is perishable.

But what Peter is saying here is that there's a kind of love,

a love that is rooted in the gospel, not in my heart or my feelings,

a love that is rooted in the gospel, rooted in the character of God himself,

a love that God puts into our hearts that's imperishable.

So it's of a similar quality to our natural love, but it is enduring,

and it is strong, and it perseveres in a way that natural love simply does not.

Jesus drew out the fact of this distinction in Matthew 5. We went through the

Gospel of Matthew recently.

As a church, We're not all the

way through there. We're going to start Matthew 13 in a little bit here.

Jesus said this, For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have?

Don't even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and

sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary?

Don't even Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your father is perfect.

See, Jesus understood that there is a difference between the everyday kind of

perishable love and the kind of imperishable gospel-rooted love that we're called

to put on and cultivate in our lives.

I think it's pretty clear that what Jesus was talking about,

I mean, he's talking about every common circumstances even today.

Everybody loves. You love people. Everyone loves, especially those who are lovely.

We love our spouse most of the time right naturally quite naturally it's easy

to do that because you develop affection for people who are close to you you love your children,

most of the time right and that's that's very natural and normal and good and

beautiful people you spend time around with your your friends your loved ones

we all know what that kind of love looks like.

And that kind of love is valuable and to be treasured.

Everyone loves those who are lovely. Everyone loves those who are close to them.

But the kind of love that Jesus points us to, and he's drawing this distinction

throughout his ministry.

And Paul is drawing this distinction too. And Peter's drawing this distinction too.

He's calling us to this perfect kind of love, a love that goes beyond loveliness.

And he's calling us to cultivate and have a kind of love that comes from the

very character of God, a love for unlovely people.

Because the gospel is the good news.

It's the great news that God not just tolerates unlovely people, sinners.

He loves them as they're still sinners.

In Romans 5, 6, it says this, When we were utterly helpless,

Christ came at just the right time, and he died for sinners.

He didn't die for your potential to be not sinners. He said,

oh, I see all these broken, unlovely, rebellious, hopeless people.

And in the midst of all their rebellion and all their anger towards me,

I look at them and I love them to the point where I will die forever.

Take away their sin and their shame and invite them into eternal relationship with me.

I'm going to do all the work from my desire to bring about good and transform their lives.

His death is the seed sown that brings love and life into the world, and it is imperishable.

And that love, it's imperishable because that love depends on him and what he's

already done, and it comes from his very character, as we talked about last

week, because God is love.

And in him, there's no shadow of turning, like there's no darkness with him at all.

Everything within him is just love and affection and joy and his goodness and

hope for this world. And he wants to bring about goodness.

He is creative love in the world. He's creative.

He comes and he develops relationship in people, people who don't want to love

him. He loves his enemies.

He loves sinners. He loves people who are in rebellion.

And so that kind of love, right?

If I put on that kind of love, then that kind of love

is imperishable because it is not disturbed when I get offended or when I get

hurt or when I feel as if I'm not being treated the way I deserve to be treated

because it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with God and what he has done.

He has been offended more than anyone ever could be.

Killed on a cross, rejected and despised by men, by the very people who were

to be expecting him and welcoming him.

And he says, yes, and yet still I love.

And yet still my love is given as the eternal invitation to men to come and

have relationship and to be embraced and forgiven.

So that kind of love is never threatened because its root is not in my heart

or your heart, but it is in his heart and in his love demonstrated on the cross

and in his character and in his work.

And that's so much of like what we talked about last week, right?

That kind of love will not wither or fade because it is not subject to my weakness,

my very natural weakness and your very natural weakness, my very natural inability

to love unlovely things, and your very natural inability to love unlovely things.

It is not dependent upon you. It's dependent upon Him.

So to learn to love, we need to understand the difference between the natural,

the perishable kind of love, and the imperishable, the supernatural love that

is demonstrated in the Gospel.

So we need to know that. And we also need to know this. We have to recognize

that the kind of love we're called to, we have to cultivate. We have to cultivate.

We can cultivate this perishable love in our lives, which is we can participate

in its blooming, in its fruitfulness,

in its coming to be a felt and lived reality in our lives, right?

So it's not like something that's going to be done passively,

merely, although Jesus does the initiating work of that love in the gospel.

But in order for it to take root in our lives and to make a difference,

we participate and we cultivate.

And Peter's instructions, I mean, he leaves us with that picture of this imperishable

love, and he goes on in 1 Peter 2, he says this.

In light of this love, therefore, rid yourselves of all malice,

all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander.

Like newborn infants, desire the pure milk of the word so that by it you may

grow up into your salvation if you have tasted that the Lord is good.

So this imperishable seed, this love, which can't be disturbed by my own changing

feelings or my own weaknesses,

that imperishable seed is from God, but there is something for us to do in this

process of becoming people who love and becoming people who are learning to love.

And that is that we have to Just like we do right now If you have a garden You

have to pull the weeds You have to tend the soil You have to do some things,

Which is not making the seed grow But it

is making room for the seed to grow It is protecting that thing Which is going

to grow And it is making room for it to grow So that seed is not stifled or

discouraged Or have its nutrients sapped from it We need to clear the ground

So that the seed of the gospel

can grow and bloom and bear fruit in our lives, that His love can bear fruit in our lives.

I think it's pretty true.

This comes into some theology things, but I don't think what we risk by not

tending the ground, I don't think we risk the seed dying, because again,

it's rooted elsewhere. It's rooted in his love.

That's not going away, but we do risk fruitlessness in our lives if we don't

tend to our character, if we don't tend to our way of treating other people.

So Peter says to do something to rid ourselves from malice, deceit,

hypocrisy, envy, and slander.

I basically think he is implying that these things are love killers or at least

love inhibitors, which makes sense.

I mean, it makes sense that he would tell us to do these things,

especially when we apply the definition of love that we talked about last week.

If you didn't listen last week, I had this little definition of love,

and that is that love is to will the good of another.

To me, that's important to have that definition in my mind because,

again, saturated language, we all have different ideas, and we oftentimes think

about, well, love is about my feelings.

And I think preliminary to me feeling a certain way in love,

I think affection and love go naturally together, right?

But actually, if I will someone's good, then the affection and the feeling follows.

If I want your good, I will look at you as someone who has great potential.

I will look at you as someone whom God loves. I will look at you as someone

who I can be patient with.

I can do all the 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient, kind, you know,

it doesn't keep a record of wrong.

I can do all that very easily if I see you as someone who I want your good.

It just comes naturally.

So Peter, he says we need to do these things, to rid ourselves of these things.

And it makes sense that we need to do these things. I totally lost my notes.

Could we just call it what it is? I'm lost in my notes. This feels a little,

hang on a minute. Just give me a minute.

If we take this definition of love, I think it's helpful because it helps us

cut through our romantic ideas about what love is and really get to something concrete.

Love is not just a feeling you have.

Feeling and affections follow, yes, but if you love well, if I love well, then I want your good.

And if you love me well, you want my good.

And if I love you well, I want your good even when you don't want your good.

And if you love me well, you want my good even when I don't.

Even when I've lost sight of what is good for me.

And I not only want your good, but I become the sort of person who's willing

to do some work and to sacrifice in order for you to see and to know and to pursue your good.

No matter how you treat me. I think

that's what love is. That's the love demonstrated by Jesus on the cross.

I think that is true love. That's the kind of love that we're called to.

And so it makes sense that things like malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy

and slander would be love killers because I can't want your good while also

being malicious towards you,

being envious of you being deceitful

towards you being manipulative towards you I can't do this those two things

simply will not go together they cannot exist together so I can't want your

good while also engaging in these things but I want us to think a little bit

about this instruction because Peter is giving really practical do-don't-do do-don't-do advice,

love don't have malice love don't have envy love don't slander.

But he's saying more, as we read in this verse, than just saying don't do these things.

In reality, because here's the thing, you have bad habits and I have bad habits.

You do things unthinkingly, unintentionally, and I do as well.

Now, malice is like a $12 word, right?

I don't think any of us use it

very often, and we certainly don't think of ourselves as malicious people.

But what about the lower end of the list? Has anyone here ever been hypocritical?

Anyone here ever envied anyone? Anyone here ever slandered someone,

spoken of someone in a way that was unfair and untrue? I know I have.

And I'll tell you, I didn't, when I've done those things, ever like think about it.

I wasn't doing it intentionally. It just kind of happened.

And so then the question becomes, what is Peter telling me to do?

Is he telling me to just try harder not to do those things?

And I think the answer is yes and no. I mean, obviously, we do need to engage

our willpower in order not to do something.

We do need to have some self-control and to develop self-control and to develop

willpower to be intentional about things that we aren't intentional about.

But honestly, that's not a really good direct strategy.

Because the thing about my willpower is I don't know how to get more of it immediately, right?

Like, I just like when you can't just have more of what you don't have in the moment.

I think actually what Peter is actually giving us is a real strategy to achieve

those things, but indirectly.

Because what does he say? If we pay attention, he's obviously saying don't do

those things, but he's actually calling us to rely on something other than our

willpower in the moment of need.

He goes on, he says, right? He says, don't do these things. But then he says,

instead, desire the pure milk of the word so that by it you may grow up into your salvation.

If you have a taste, If you've tasted that the Lord is good.

Look, I mean, sure, if you want to become a person of love and if you want to

cultivate love in your life, cease to do these things that you know are love killers.

But when you are lacking the willpower, trying harder isn't going to work because

you're unaware of when you're doing these things in the moment.

Actually, instead, what we're told to do is to desire the word,

to desire the gospel, to desire a greater depth of the knowledge of the love

of God given to undeserving people.

That we would let that word come into our lives and just blow our minds and

our categories because it will.

I mean, honestly, if we come to understand and comprehend, as Paul prays for

us, the depth and the breadth and the might of the love of God,

that is going to transform us.

That is going to give us a desire to participate in love and to be people of

love that mere willpower alone could never give you because it'll give you a hope and a vision.

For your life of what it could be to be someone who participates in bringing

about good in people's lives.

You won't think twice about malice or slander or envy when you just look at

people with the lenses that God has when he looks at you and looks at me and

looks at all the people around you.

He looks at people and says, that's someone who's broken, but I can do so much

good in their life and I'm going to do so by pouring out undeserved love.

He doesn't have to think about not slandering people. He says,

because I've created them and I love them.

And if only we could have such an understanding that that word,

the love of God, imperishable seed would come into our lives.

It would take flower. It would give us the things that we cannot supply in our

willpower alone, in our self-control alone.

It would be our willpower and our self-control because God would so transform

our desires and our hopes and our expectations. Thank you.

But really what I am describing to you on this road to becoming a person of love,

I'm describing is to have this kind of will for the good of others involves

supplanting my own will from my own desires.

We need to surrender our self-will if we're going to be people who are willing the good of others.

We count others needs as greater

and more important than our own in these instances when we

love we count we become people

who have this attitude like jesus had servant hood not people who are here to

be served but people who are here to serve others not not people who have our

own agendas who who have come and and latched onto god's agenda for this world

and for the people around us for their good.

We need to surrender our self-will. Because I find it easy to love people right

up until they get in my way.

I'm great at that. I'm really loving right up until people offend me. I'm so good.

You are too. You do such a good job. You love lovely people so well.

But when people get ugly, when people get mean, when people get entitled,

all of a sudden I feel hurt and I feel forgotten and I feel unappreciated.

Well, that is oftentimes the end of my love.

Why? Because I'm so consumed with my own will and my own desires for myself.

You knew it was coming. Dallas Willard says this, we can undertake actions that

remove the barriers to love that reside in the various dimensions of the self.

They may reside in the will itself, ultimately the root of all resistance to love.

The will as a stubborn resolve to have one's own way to control others and to be exalted.

Such a person will be governed by the desires of the eyes and of the flesh and

of the pride of life. A reference to 1 John 2.16.

They're quite certainly headed for a life of disappointment and anger,

full of attempts at clever manipulation and hypocrisy.

To escape such a life, they have to surrender self-will as their governing principle,

a hardened resolve to have one's own way.

They will have to yield their will to good and to love and to God and learn

to seek what is good for others as well as oneself. That is what love does.

The worship team is going to come up here now, but I'm just going to wrap up

and just think about this and meditate upon this with you guys together.

Because honestly, if we want to learn love, if we want to become the sort of

person who is leaning into love and this kind of love, this kind of love that

Jesus calls us to and calls people to, calls you to,

then we have to come into a confrontation with our own self-will because you

have it and I have it and it's quite natural.

It's part of your sinful humanity that you judge your life and your wellness

and your happiness in reference to you getting the things that you want in life.

And I do too. And that is very normal and natural and sinful.

And what God calls us to through the gospel is to have this instead,

the supplanting of those kind of goals and motives and joys with the truer and

imperishable participation in life and mission with Him,

where we're able to give ourselves away and to be treated unwell and yet find

ourselves to be so caught up in the love and grace of our created father who

just like delights in us.

So much of my life and so much of what gets me off course of love is that I

have wants and I have desires and I have agendas, right?

And then when those agendas are stymied, it's a two-part thing.

Number one, I don't get what I want.

And then I slipped down the slippery slope of my insecurity.

And for some of you that comes out in your anger.

Which is probably malice. You could use those words interchangeably.

For some of you, it comes out in blaming other people and slander.

For some of you, it comes out in feeling like a victim and feeling like nobody

appreciates you or cares for you.

And so you start to envy and you slip into these things.

Like, I do this all the time. This is my natural self,

that when my agenda and my desires and my self-will is threatened,

which it will be every single day, then I get insecure and I blame other people

and I get mad and I get hurt.

And that's the end of my love.

And what I think Jesus calls us to is to a real confrontation with that.

And I think in our culture it's hard because we're so, how do I say this?

I love my therapists in the room, but sometimes therapy, there's healthy therapy,

which teaches us to deal with the realities of life.

And then there's unhealthy therapy, which makes us think that life should not

be real, that we shouldn't have to deal with difficult things and hard things.

And sometimes we nurse our wounds to the point where they're just broken and

they really need curing.

And the way that we cure our wounds is that we let, as Jesus talks about over

and over again, we die to ourselves, we die to our own agendas,

and we die to these things and our insecurities.

When we do that Humility Actually

becomes an opportunity For spiritual development Like

so we see painful things And difficult things Things where our self-will

Is thwarted And we Instead of going down The descending scales Of insecurity

And anger And envy And being mad And feeling like a victim We pause ourselves

And we say Okay Jesus Okay.

Do you still love me? Am I still secure? Do I still have a hope and expectation

and a future that comes from you?

Well, yes. All of that remains true because it was never dependent on my circumstances.

And so when I come into difficult circumstances, I can pause myself in my heart

and I can just learn this habit to say, okay, this humiliation is a opportunity to grow into love.

That's a habit you literally need to learn. You can recognize the signs of anxieties

in your body and in your mind.

You can pause yourself and you can ask yourself, what is true?

Does God still love me? Am I still secure?

Even though I'm being treated in this unlovely way by this unlovely person,

can I still be somebody who sees this person in all their brokenness and still loves them?

And can I be secure enough to know that this person's treatment of me does not

jeopardize my well-being, my hope, my joy. These are habits that we learn.

So humility can be an opportunity.

Disappointment can be an invitation. And a loss of control can be an opportunity

for me to rejoice that, okay, God's gonna do the work instead of me.

But I'm telling you, like, literally, I'm trying to give you this understanding.

So how do we learn to love?

We stop when we start to feel angry.

We don't try to be, I will not be angry. That won't work.

But we stop and we remind ourselves who still loves me. Does the Lord still love me?

Where is my hope? Is it still in him?

Even though this person treats me this way and it makes me very uncomfortable

and it triggers many of my anxieties and my bad feelings in me.

Can I just kind of pause that and remind myself of what's true?

And can I do this crazy work of instead looking at this person who's treating

me badly and treat them for their good?

And guys, this is the invitation. I've given you this little phrase before.

Pastor in San Diego has it. I like it. He says, this is his thing that he repeats

to himself often. And I've done the same lately, a lot lately.

He says, nothing to lose. I've got nothing to prove. My life is in Christ and nothing else matters.

That's the gospel. You've got nothing to lose. Like Jesus has you right where he wants you.

He's got you. You are secure in his love. And so whatever comes at you,

like that's not going to change.

You've got nothing to prove. He died on the cross to invite you in,

to take away your sin, to make your life valuable,

to prove to you that you are a created person, the object of his love,

and that nothing that you go through can threaten that thing.

You've got nothing to prove.

Your life is in Christ. It is not in these things that we tell ourselves are

so important in life, in our self-will, in our performance, in what other people

think about us and how much money we have and how well we do at our jobs,

in what other people say, or we think that they say, which is always a different thing.

We can say my life is in Christ. Like what matters and what defines me and my

character and who I am is actually what he says about me.

And he says, I'm loved, I'm chosen, I'm secure, I can have hope in him.

My life is in Christ. And because all of those things are true,

I've got nothing to lose. I've got nothing to prove with my life in Christ.

Therefore, nothing really else matters.

Nothing else can steal what God has done for me.

There are many opportunities to grow into love and they oftentimes hurt, but it's good.

And so I ask you and pray for you that you would be bold, boldly step into uncomfortable

places and see them as opportunities to grow in love. This week and beyond.

So, hey, let's take some time. Let's stand up. We're going to worship the Lord together.

Yeah, that's all.