Reflections on Love - Part 1

So last week, okay, so I gave you an update. You know, we've had this,

we've been having this goal.

We're trying to raise some money for the upcoming move, which,

you know, hopefully will be sometime likely in October, but we're going to do

some remodeling and stuff like that.

So we've been collecting pledges, doing some fundraising to get our ducks in

a row so we can move into this building in downtown Snoqualmie.

And I let you know, our goal is to raise $350,000, which is, we think enough.

Like, it's hard to tell in this current environment how much things will cost.

But it's like that's a sum of money that we think could be enough to kind of

get our cafe built out and get our upstairs where we hope to have church built

out and do all the remodel stuff and to cover the move and stuff like that.

So our goal was to raise $350,000.

Last week, I let you know that our pledges were up to like $214,000.

And I'm happy to say this week, the updated number from 214 is 293,525.

So that's really a lot of progress towards 350. that's 84%. I did the math.

It's actually 83.86, but I'm calling it 84%. So I'm really happy about that.

And if you still want to be a part of that, you know, I think we've made substantial

progress, you know, but that last 16% of getting towards that goal,

if you want to partner with us to be a part of that, we'd love to have you.

I know some people have been still thinking about it and I understand no pressure,

but I'm really thankful, you know, I'm really thankful, honestly,

because I think I said a couple weeks ago when we were talking about this,

like that we just have super generous church.

And I've seen that in this process as well. So thank you all.

And just keep this whole project in prayer. You know, we're,

I keep saying they're going to start digging and they will. They're now permission to dig.

We are basically, our builders are like, when we finish our current job,

we're coming to you, which is really clear, you know?

So there's a lot of clarity going on and I'm feeling it as well.

So that's what's happening.

We have to survey the property. That's happening on Thursday because they have

to set the things a certain distance from the property lines.

And so we're getting all that done. And that's $3,000. Great. Wonderful.

Somebody gets out. I want to draw a line for $3,000.

And there is a job for that. So somebody is going to come out and do that for us.

And yes, so we're praying about that, doing some various things.

But I wouldn't be surprised if maybe there's some large hole,

even larger holes being dug by next week.

But we'll see. We really can't put a precise pin in it. but it is moving forward.

So all that is to say, thank you and it's going. It's great.

So we wrapped up a series last week called Forward in Faith and that's where

we've been talking about this building and this whole...

But now we're just able to go back into the Bible and think about things a little bit more.

And as I was considering what I wanted to teach, you know, summertime's a little,

there's a lot of vacations and people are around.

But I was just like, just saying, okay, you know, God, what do we need to hear?

And what are the things that we should focus on? And I actually was going to

do something else, but then it felt like the Lord just made it clear that,

no, we need to just talk about love.

And so I'm calling this message and then the one that's going to be kind of

a second part of this next week called Reflections on Love. And I'm setting

the bar very low because it's just some reflections about love, right?

And that's, I mean, that's honestly like, I think love is funny.

I think it's really, we would all, anyone who's been around the Bible and been

around church and spent some time getting to know Jesus, everybody knows that

love is so central to the Christian faith.

I mean, it is kind of right at the heart of what we could think about what it

is to practice and to be a person who is following after Jesus.

It's to be a person who loves with the love that he demonstrates and the love

that he gives and the love that he is welling up and forming within us.

Jesus was, if we read the Gospels, Jesus was obsessed with love in a way that

really bothered people, actually. in a way that bothered the people that he

was teaching to, the Pharisees and the religious people.

He understood love for God and for neighbor,

that is to say God and people, to be the whole goal of all the commandments,

of all religious observation, the whole goal of what the prophets were after

and what God was proclaiming in the world in the Old Testament.

He talks about that in Matthew 22, 36.

You have a familiar passage to all of us, I'm sure. He says,

teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?

That's the Pharisees asking this question. And he said, well,

this is it. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the greatest and most important command.

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

And all the law and the prophets depend on these two commands.

So any response to God, any listening to his word, any obedience to him,

like it's summed up and really under this umbrella of loving God and loving other people.

The whole goal of the commandments given in the Old Testament.

And I would say by extension, Jesus' commands. We see that very clearly in his teaching.

It's all about love.

Paul later, I mean, Paul, you know, this kind of the great theologian who helped

form and shape our ideas about what it means to follow Jesus,

particularly as non-Jewish people.

He explains in the book of Romans, he says, Love does no wrong to a neighbor,

therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

You know, law prohibits us from harming others, from harming ourselves,

from harming God, from dishonoring Him.

And Paul just says, but if we love, we're never going to come close to those

violations. We're never going to offend God. We're never going to offend people

because love just doesn't do that.

And so love, by virtue of what it is, it never violates the law.

In fact, it fulfills the law.

If we're wondering what the good life is, and if we're wondering how we ought

to be in the world and how we ought to pursue maturity and satisfaction,

if we want to know how to honor God, how to keep a clean conscience,

how to make much of our lives, how to live significant lives, impactful lives.

Love is always the answer. It's consistently through and through out scripture.

It is the answer. It's at the heart of everything, right at the center of all

Christian instruction is the call to love.

And in fact, every time I was doing like some word studies on love and just

going through, you know, different epistles, that is Paul's letters to the church.

And every time he's giving instruction, he always wraps it up.

Just love each other. You know, that's the shorthand for all of these things

that I'm telling you to do.

It's actually just love each other. Love God. Love others.

But it's funny because though we, I think, all realize that love is central

to Jesus' teaching, I'm not sure if people in the church, I'm not sure if Christians,

I'm not sure if I oftentimes think about love.

I don't reflect on love enough. I don't consider how important it is.

I just sort of take it for granted.

We like to pay attention to spiritual things, novel things. We like to pay attention

to churchy things, cultural things, what people should or shouldn't be doing.

We like to pay attention to scripture and we like to pay attention to what we're

doing in our lives and concerned about that. It's like, these are all good things.

They're valuable things. But I'm not sure if all of us, and myself included,

spend too much time thinking about how love is playing out in our lives.

I'm not sure if I do that enough.

And that's actually not really surprising. I mean, if we read the New Testament,

yeah, Paul is always telling us we should love.

Jesus is always telling us we should love. But Paul is also saying.

You know, he's giving a little slap around saying, okay, look,

this is obviously a failure to love.

There's anticipated failure to love.

That's why Paul tells the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 13, that famous passage on love.

He says this, if I speak human or angelic tongues, I do all these spiritual

things, but I don't have love. I'm just a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.

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

and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains, but I don't have love, I'm nothing.

And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over all my body in order

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

See, Paul, in the vibrant, Holy Spirit-filled ministry going on in the early

church, He could see the problem that we experience and continue to experience

today, that that problem was starting off there.

People would jump into this Jesus stuff head church, this church stuff head first.

They would be so excited and their lives would be changed and they'd be like,

I'm going to die for Jesus and I'm going to give away all my stuff and I'm going

to prophesy in the name of the Lord.

I'm going to be filled with the Holy Spirit and using these gifts.

And Paul could see that and he says, that's great, that's wonderful.

But he understands our tendency, the tendency of the early church and our tendency

to lose sight of what matters most.

And it's not doing all these things, but it's holding love at the very center.

He says, we could do all of these

things, all these things which are commendable and good and valuable.

And if we lose sight of love, then we just lose sight of the whole thing.

The wheels come off. The project fails.

We have to, and we have to always hold to this. We measure Christian maturity in love.

Without love, there is not fullness. There is not maturity.

And so, yeah, that's why I thought it would be good this morning to think about

love and to tell you some things you already know. That's my intent.

I will tell you nothing you don't already know this morning.

Very likely, unless this is all entirely new to you, right?

But I don't think so. If you've been around the church and if you've,

you know, studied the Word of God, I'm sure you've heard lots about love.

But I just want to remind us and to remind us of things that are important when it comes to love.

And with that in mind, I want us just actually to pray because of course,

we're not just doing a mental thing like we're asking the Lord to shape our

hearts and to teach us what it is to love. So would you guys just pray with me?

Holy Spirit, we welcome you in this morning. God, there's nothing novel in what I'm gonna say today.

There's nothing new. There's nothing surprising. Lord, it is the same gospel, your love revealed.

That we are just leaning into. And we want to know more of you.

And we want to hear more from you. And we want to have a vision for what it

means to be people of love.

And so, Lord, we just come. We are seeking your work. And we're asking you to work and to shape us.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. So, I've just got three points, three things I want to share.

Again, things you already know. And the first is this, God is love. God is love.

I think the starting point for making sense of the centrality of love in the

life of a Christian is to understand this fact that God is love.

It's what John tells us in 1 John 4.

John explains this remarkable fact, God is love. And that's just his very character.

It's his nature. It's who he is.

John says this, he says, Dear friends, let us love one another,

because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God is love. Dallas Willard, my favorite, comments on this passage, and he says this.

He says, Love is not a faucet to be turned on or off at will.

God himself doesn't just love me or you. he is love.

He is creative will for all that is good.

That's his identity and explains why he loves individuals, even when he's not pleased with them.

And I love that little phrase. It's a really helpful idea for me to kind of

wrap my mind around what it would mean that God is love.

He says this. He says, God is creative will for all that is good.

It's such a helpful way to conceptualize God's love.

God's love for me and for you, it looks like is endless, consistent,

constant, creative will for the good. That is, he wants to see good come into the world.

He wants to see his creation restored to its original goodness as he made it

before sin spoiled things.

And so his engagement in the world, it's about his will.

He desires fundamentally to see things transformed and be made good again, to flourish yet again.

To relate to God is to know a person who is constantly wanting to see your peace

and your joy and your flourishing, like, true, spiritual, created, purpose fulfilled.

He wants your good. And who is constantly working in the world,

in your life, to bring about good.

We think about the ways that, like, in the Old Testament particularly,

like, God has understood.

Like, and I think of just like Joseph's story, like when, when he's,

I think it's, I think it's Genesis 50 after he comes back from,

from Egypt and he explains to his brothers that they intended this thing for

evil, but God intended it for good.

God intends good in the world and he works with people to bring about good. He is creating good.

He is creative in his good love as God's demonstrated.

It's not, it's not merely about his feelings towards you. And I think this is

hard because in our culture, in our society, we have romantic notions of love,

and they tend to be sort of just about inward feelings.

But God's love towards you is actually about his will for your good.

And sure, because he wills your good, he also has thoughts and affections and feelings.

I really actually don't. I cannot speak to God's feelings. I don't know the

nature of how he feels. But, of course, he would how all of those feelings were

because he wills your good.

Like, you can't will the good of someone and hate them at the same time.

Those two things simply don't go together.

There is this love and affection that comes along. And for all those,

like, the feelings followed.

I think Willard is right. If we understand God's love as his will for our good,

that actually helps us understand how he can love us even when he's not pleased with us.

You know, like my children are not always making me.

Happy. And in moment by moment terms, you know, sometimes they scream and yell

and then they, I know my kids, I know pastor's kids.

Who'd have thought? Sometimes they are obstinate and difficult.

And yet I love them because I'm always, I mean, I think anyone who's a parent

would say this, you will the good of your children.

And so that brings you back when you are, you know, momentarily frustrated,

your love, because you have this will for your good, it can replace and it comes

back and your feelings follow after that will for their good.

And it helps us to understand how God can love us even when he's not pleased

with us. Because God is love.

He always wants what is good for us.

And John actually goes on, he explains that actually that will for good,

God's will for good actually has a specific object and a specific goal.

He explains how this love is expressed in particular.

So he goes on in verse 9, he says, God's love was revealed among us in this way.

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

And love consists in this, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent

his son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

God's love for you and for me and for this whole world and for everything that exists,

his will for creative good, his will to bring about good and restoration in

the world is revealed, as John explains,

in his action, his intervention in the world of sending his one and only son

into the world that we might live through him.

There is no good for me or for you outside of that, but all the good and all

of God's creative will and all of his love is available to us in that promise and in that gift.

The gospel is the good news that God is love. He is creative will for your good,

and he is being expressed in and realized by him sending his son, Jesus Christ.

God is making a way for your good, for your salvation, for your redemption in

and through Jesus Christ over and against all the other things and all the other

things we put our hope in that end up not satisfying us.

God is saying, actually, you can have this wonderful, blessed,

good life through Christ.

See, Jesus, God looks at you and me and all of fallen creation and being loved,

he asked himself, how can we create good in the midst of all of this brokenness?

And his answer is he loved us and sent his son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sin.

So all of our brokenness, it's restrained, it's restored, it's taken away.

The guilt, the shame, all of those things are taken away because of what Jesus

has done on the cross and goodness is secured for us in him.

He brings good from brokenness.

Second thing that you know, but I'd like to remind you of about love,

is that love is unconditional but not unconditioned.

So God is love, right? He is, and His love is unconditional.

We know this, we believe this. I think conceptually it makes sense.

But I just want to clarify some things because there does come a little bit

of turbulence as we think about, well, what does that really mean?

His love for you, his creative will for your good is perfectly suited to be unconditional.

He can love you without condition because he is able to bring good from any situation.

He is the one who is able to work with people and his love, which is his will

for your good, is dependent on himself and it's not dependent on you.

It's dependent on his ability to bring good into any circumstance and it doesn't depend on you.

And so therefore it can be unconditional because God says, no,

whatever you do, whatever you want. I mean, the gospel is super clear on this.

The Bible is super clear on this. You are loved as a sinner.

You were loved not for your potential, not for your ability,

but because he looks at you and your brokenness and your pain.

And he says, I can bring good from this.

And so whatever the worst thing going on in your life, it doesn't make you any

less a recipient or a beneficiary of God's love.

His love is not dependent on you deserving his love in any way whatsoever.

It never has been, it never will be because he loves without reference to our

loveliness and he loves despite our unloveliness.

He loves us despite our sin. He wants to bring good in your life despite all

the obstinance and stubbornness that you demonstrate and that I demonstrate.

So if you're here wondering, well, does God love me like that?

Does he love me unconditionally? The answer is yes and definitely.

God loves you. He loves you on your worst day. He doesn't love you any less.

He doesn't will your good any

less on your worst day, even as you're digging the hole that you're in.

Deeper and deeper. God doesn't say, I don't know, I'm about done with this person.

No, he continues to want your good. He continues to love you.

He loves you when you haven't thought about him in months. He loves you when

you don't pray and you don't read your Bible. He loves you all the same.

His love for you is unconditional. He loves you even when you don't like him.

And in fact, he's enacted this plan for your good, the one that John talks about

in 1 John 4, and the one that John also tells us in John 3.16, this famous verse.

God loves the world in this way. He gave His one and only Son so that everyone

who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

God sends a gift, an unconditional gift of His Son that anyone who believes

in Him would not perish but have eternal life.

He makes a way for your good no matter where you're at, no matter how deep or

how much sin there is in your life or whatever.

No matter how much you've opposed him time after time again,

he makes a way so that you can have good and restoration and eternal life where

there was only perishing before.

He desires your good, and he desires that you would not perish but have eternal life.

But I think it's worth understanding this. Though God's love is unconditional,

it's not unconditioned.

He will never stop willing your good. He loves you unconditionally.

But I think if we walked with Jesus for a little while, we know that to effect goodness,

for this gift of Jesus Christ in your life to have its effect,

to bring about goodness, to make a difference in your life, it is conditioned.

It is conditioned. It's conditioned upon, as John says here,

upon your acceptance and belief, your trust, you're turning to Jesus Christ.

God freely gives his life. He gives the means by which you can have goodness and life everlasting.

He freely gives his life. He freely offers us the means to affect good in our

lives, but it's conditioned on relationship. That's why we talk about this.

This reality, like when we come to believe in Jesus, we come into a relationship with God.

And for relationships to be relationships, there's give and take.

There's showing up. There's involvement.

There's self-investment, right?

God gives himself, and we give ourselves, and in that, the good comes about.

John Barclay says this. He says, the Christ gift was given to the ungodly in

the absence of worth, and it was given to all.

There was no list and no selection determined by who's naughty or nice.

But it was given in order to transform the human recipients and to establish

a permanent relationship.

The receipt of this gift is necessarily expressed in gratitude,

obedience, and transformed behavior.

This grace is free. It's unconditional. But it's not cheap without expectations

or obligations, like all relationships are, by the way.

Those who have received it are to remain within it. Their lives are altered

by new habits, new dispositions, and new practices of grace.

I like how Jesus explains this in John 15, 9.

It's just like preparing his disciples for his crucifixion, his ascension.

And he's just like making sure

that they understand some things in his absence, what they need to know.

He says this, as the father has loved me, I also love you. Remain in my love.

You know, God's love is this free gift. It's relationship. It's unconditional to who you are.

Like you can take it no matter what is going on in your life.

You can step into it. But the conditioned part is that you're to remain in it.

If I give you the keys to a new house, you say you have no home,

you have no place to live in.

It does you no good unless you move into the house.

Remain in it. that would be a great way for me to bring about your good potentially, right?

If I were to give you a place to be, that's why Jesus says, I mean,

this remain in your love is oftentimes translated in a different translation as abide in my love.

Like we move into his love. We move into a relationship and then we're to live

into it. And that's not performative.

I mean, it's just like it is the substance of the goodness that God is willing for us.

He sent his son so that we could have this relationship, so that our lives could

be the venue for his goodness, right?

But that's just not going to happen unless we're involved in it in some way.

And so, yes, it's unconditional love because he wills your good no matter what.

And he sent Jesus Christ for anyone, anyone who would turn to him.

You can step into it. You can move into this love.

You can move into this relationship. But with any relationship,

you are a contributor to it. So it is conditioned in that respect.

What a glorious condition it is to just be given life everlasting.

Not on the basis of your goodness, not on the basis of your qualification,

not on the basis of the fact that you're great at having relationships. Some of us aren't.

I will not say anything about myself. Love is where you remain. You occupy that place.

You move into that place. That is the condition of relationship.

We make our home in the love of God. And it is the most urgent thing for any Christian.

You know, if you're unsatisfied in your faith, in your relationship,

like make your home in the love of God.

Spend your days thinking about it. Consider what it means that he died for you.

Consider what it means that he loves you. Consider what it means that he sent

you testimony after testimony of his redemptive power, of his love,

of his grace, of his kindness.

Live in that, dwell in that, love in that. I mean, this is part of the practices

of discipleship that we talk about here, of becoming everyday disciples.

So many of them are just, one is like, examine your life every day,

by which I'm just asking you to just consider where God has shown up.

Consider where he's been faithful, where he's shown you his love.

We ask you to meet with God every day, to develop a prayer life.

I think the biggest obstacle to prayer life is what you think prayer is.

Most people think prayer is just like asking God for things,

and it can be that. Certainly intercession is part of it.

But honestly, so much of prayer is just leaning into and reminding myself that I have love to remain in.

I have a life which has been prepared for me. I have peace and joy and hope

in my Savior, and that life begins now.

And I think we get discouraged from that. We don't know how to step into that.

And I'm not saying it is not difficult.

And actually, next week, we'll talk a little bit more about, well, how do we do that?

But we are to remain. We're called to abide. And the final point here,

and actually, the worship team

can come on up while we go through this one, it's that love is put on.

It is something that we do intentionally. I mean, it's something that we're

called to demonstrate and let, like, as it's going to be sort of an overflow

of remaining in God's love. But of course, we express it to other people.

What Paul reminds the Colossian church of in Colossians 3.12 is,

As God's chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, to put on compassion,

kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.

If anyone has a grievance against another, just as the Lord has forgiven you,

so you are also to forgive.

And above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

I think it will be very frustrating to you if you think putting on love is feeling

certain feelings towards people.

Because I don't know how to manipulate my own feelings. Maybe some of you guys

are bitter at it than I am, but I'm not very good at it.

But if I think of love as, I think what God makes clear is, if I think of love

as engaging my will to bring about good for others,

willing the good for others, that's at least a little bit more within my reach.

Now, can I control my will?

No, not immediately, but I do think there are ways that I can shape my will

and I can hone it And we'll talk about all that next week. That's really the

whole substance of next week.

But if you're frustrated when it comes to loving other people because you don't

feel the right feelings or you don't feel them consistently,

consistency is the big problem, right? We can feel them sometimes, but not all the time.

What do we do with that? Like, how do we put on love? How do we love others?

Well, again, I think taking a step back and understanding, well,

actually loving others is understanding.

That God has good for them and I can want that good and I can will that good

and I can work to bring about that good in a way that would make sense.

D.L. Moody talks about love. He talks about his time studying love and what he came to understand.

He says this, I took up that word love and I do not know how many weeks I spent

studying in the passage, the

passages in which it occurs till at last I could not help loving people.

I had been feeding on love so long that I was anxious to do everybody good I came in contact with.

It's not about He doesn't say I just have all these feelings You

know No I look at people And I say God wants to bring about good in their lives

And so I become anxious to partake In bringing about good in people He says

And I got so full of it It ran out of my fingers You take up the subject of

love in the Bible And you will get so full of it That all you have to do is

open your lips And a flood of the love of God will flow out,

Love is not I think putting on a feeling It's not putting on a feeling But it is looking at people,

and saying, no, Christ died for them just as he died for me.

Christ will forgive them just as he's forgiven me.

So I don't look at people as what they are. I don't look at people as how terrible

they are and all the bad things they've done.

I actually just look at people as people who are the objects of God's love.

And so I try to become a person who sees people that way. And that's the first step to putting on love.

And I think it's freeing to know that I don't need to feel a certain way about

people, but I can look at them and I can understand, no, God wants good for them.

And so I can become somebody who is gonna grow in and participate in bringing about good.

Again, like I don't think I've said anything here that is particularly novel.

I hope not, I wasn't trying to, but I want us to remember,

and I just want us to think, and again, we're gonna talk about this again,

particularly this putting on love and how we see people that way and how we

train ourselves to be people who are people of love because I do think there's training in this.

But I just want us to stop and I want us to begin to think about where we began

and that's that just God is love. God is love.

You know, that is the bedrock on which we stand, on which we've built our faith and our hope.

That His love is the means by which we can ever participate in and say that we love other people.

We love him because he first loved us. He is love and he wants good for us.

And I think the obstacles to our love are, I mean, it's like,

you know, Paul talks about how the greatest, there's faith, hope,

and love, these abiding things and the greatest of them is love.

But faith and hope are also pretty important.

Maybe you lack the faith. Maybe you're sitting here and you're saying,

man, I don't know. I don't know about this Jesus person.

I don't quite understand.

I'm discouraged.

I have questions. I have doubts.

And, you know, doubts don't disqualify you from the love of God because his love is unconditional.

And so he can look at you with all of your doubts and with all of your concerns,

and he can say, well, I can work with that because I can make a way. I can make a path.

I can make a way forward. No matter where you're at, no matter how long you've

been there, I can make a way forward to bring you to a place of faith in the

midst of all your doubts. But that depends on him.

Some of us just lack hope. Hope is...

Maybe hope is in short supply for you. And I want to just pray because honestly,

like for all these things, like they just so depend on God.

And I can't give you a prescription of how to restore all those things in your

life, how to have faith, hope, love.

But I can tell you this, God is love and he is not stingy.

He's not stingy. And in fact, he gives us what we need when we lack.

And so I want us to just pause. I want us to pray.

And then what we're going to do actually is we're going to take communion together.

And so as the worship team plays, you know, I just want you to grab the elements, juice and bread.

And what we're doing is we're doing this thing. we are not thinking about how

great we've done in loving Jesus, but we're thinking about his great love for us.

We're thinking about the great love, the great consistent love of the Father

demonstrated by sending his son to take away sins, to die for us,

and to show us what it is to love,

to demonstrate that so that we might come in and follow his example and seek

out his glory and and put him above all else.

And so, you know, you come in and you may feel guilty.

Well, this is the promise of forgiveness, right?

The gospel is that Jesus Christ has forgiven you.

He sees you on your worst day. He doesn't care where you've been. He can forgive.

He is the type who forgives. He invites you into relationships.

If you come guilty, remind yourself of that.

If you come and you're lacking hope and you're lacking faith, well, you know what?

Do you have enough faith to just step out, to grab what's on offer,

to get your eyes upon Jesus and not upon yourselves? And do you have faith enough

to just sit with the Lord and just say, okay, God, you've said these things are true.

There's going to be eternal life in you. You've forgiven my sins.

You invite me into relationship.

Lord, would you confirm that yet again?

So could you just take that, take some time with Jesus, whatever you need,

whatever is in the way, in the way of love. Or maybe you're feeling like on

cloud nine and you just know the love of God.

Like, so great. So celebrate that. But come to him with whatever you have. Come straight to him.

You're called to remain in his love. He proclaims his love to you.

Would you just seek him out?

And so as we do that, okay, so I'm going to ask you to do that,

to sit down and to do that, to take communion on your own. We're not going to do it together.

You're just going to do it on your own. And once you're done,

take some time in prayer and join us in worship again.

So I'm just going to pray for us as we enter into this time.

Uh holy spirit we welcome you into this place um god we we don't deserve you,

we're not you're not here um because you're

so impressed with us god um but you do we're here for you jesus we're here to

know you god we're here to know your love we're here on the basis of what you've

done we don't want to have standing before you god because we've earned it we

we have standing because of your invitation.

Music.