Recap:
Week 1 - Don’t be alone, be a fit helper, be vulnerable.
Week 2 - Disarm your words, past, and intentions so you can stop the war.
Week 3 - What is Love? Pursuing ultimate good, the tough things, too, pursuing what is best

This week I’d like to wrap this taken series up with a simple word: HOW
How do we love our spouse, how do we love people, like God called us to?

I don’t know if you have figured it out yet, but love with people can be difficult. Why is that?
Are some just mean and ornery? Yes.
Are some just confused? Yes.
Are some just inconsiderate and uncaring? Yes.
Are some people just ignorant? Yes.
Are some people just loving how they learned to love from others? Absolutely.

Hard truth here:
At some point, you are going to deal with what happened in your past or else it is going to have a recurring role in your present, sabotaging your future.

I understand you were raised in an environment where love was not given or shown. I understand you have been hurt by the people who were supposed to love you. I understand that life has dealt you some tough hands and it makes it hard to love again. I understand all of that and have experienced it, too.

But please hear my heart on this:
How long are you going to allow your past get to dictate the present?

What am I asking here?
I am asking youth stop loving out of your history and start loving our of God’s heart.

1 John 4:7-21
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot[a] love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

This is a long passage, but I am intrigued in how God’s love for us and our love for him is intertwined with our love for others as well. It would stand to reason that there would be a clear delineation between God’s love for us, our love for him, and our love for others, but we don’t see that here.

In fact, a stronger case is that when we experience the love of God, we reciprocate that love to him, and then a byproduct is that we produce that love towards others. It is like God’s love is the seed from which the tree grows, and as a result of the tree’s interaction with the one who gave it life, the tree produces fruit that has the ability to not only feed others around it, but also contains within the fruit the seed that has the ability to produce new trees.

It is like God’s love is the initial seed that develops love in us to the point where we begin producing love, planting that seed all around us.

Could it be that God designed this system where when you experience God’s love, it has such a profound effect on you that you love God back and love others through his love as a side effect?

Yes, that is precisely it.

So the key to loving effectively is not in accepting them, not in your concern for them, not in your compassion for them, (and all those things help), but the key is actually loving them out of your love for God.

Hear what I am saying:
How you love your spouse, how you love people around you, it is a direct product of the love between you and God.

So when I ask a question like “How do we love like God called us to?” what I really should be asking is “Do you love God well enough to love others effectively?”

Last week I said, “Whatever is in your cup is going to come out, so be careful what is filling your cup”

If you are experiencing a deficit in love in your life right now, I know it is so easy to try to diagnose the breakdown between you and that person, but have you considered that your love for God is directly linked to your love for people?

I just read this but it is worth reading again to prove this point. 1 John 4:7
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

If you want to love like God loves, then first it takes:

1. Being born of and know God.
Now this is odd language that we don’t often use.
In the Greek “be born of” is what you might expect: to beget, to give birth, but it carries the idea of “of the father,” meaning your source is the father.
Know is not just having a head knowledge, but it is an experiential knowledge.

So we could adjust the translation and still be accurate, just more figurative, in saying: “be begotten of the father, knowing him through first hand experience.”

I don’t know about you, but that gives new insight into the power of this short verse in 1 John.

Remember the context is loving others out of the love between you and God. So if I am going to effectively love others, I cannot do so without being born of the Father and experientially knowing him. Do you see now why your time with Jesus is so important? Do you see now why you spending time with him is so essential?

And loving others is just one facet. Every aspect of your life should spring from your relationship with God.

You are in covenant relationship with God and with your spouse. That covenant with God means more than a promise. It means you are born of and know God! As a result of this covenant, it means you are committed to the very fibers of your being!

This is the power of covenant!
This is why marriage is stronger than living together. Marital covenant.
This is why tithing is stronger than tipping God. Financial covenant.
This is why serving is stronger than attending. Kingdom covenant

Covenant says “I am all in and I am not going anywhere!”
Covenant also gives God the open door to bless those in that covenant.

I need to tell you about covenant and Genesis 15.
In Genesis 15 God makes a covenant with Abram.

Genesis 15:1-5
1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Listen, please understand, I am not denigrating God’s word here, but in that moment with Abram, they were just words. Yet while they were just words, Abram believed God.
v6
And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

That moment right there - Abram was born of and knew God. Abram knew God loved him too much for his words to fail. But remember, we are talking covenant here and why covenant is so important.

Look what happens next:

Genesis 15:7-10, 17-18
7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.

17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram

Historians say this act of cutting the animals in half was the way covenants were made in those days. The animals would be cut in half, and laid apart where an aisle was between the halves. Each person entering into the covenant would pass through the halves and then confess to each other, “May what has happened to these animals happen to me should I ever break this covenant.”

Why am I telling you all of this?
I want you to see how big of a deal covenant is with God. When it comes to you, he wants covenant with you, and he’d rather be sawn in two than abandon the covenant he made with you. THAT IS LOVE.

I know you want to love your spouse well and to love others around you like God wants you to, but you have to understand that God is a covenant God and that means we need to be a covenant people.

You need to be born of God.
That means saved. You’ve made Jesus Lord. You are actively engaged in the Word, in prayer, in discipleship, in development. You are addressing issues in your life and embracing God’s best because more than anything you want to be like Jesus, to please God, to love him with everything.
By the way - THIS is what Christianity looks like!

You need to know God.
You can’t know him and never spend time with him! You have to explore the depths of the word because the word reveals his character. You have to engage in time with Jesus to experience his tangible presence.

If you aren’t born of him, aren’t seeking him, aren’t striving to know him, how can you honestly say you are in covenant with him, and if you are not in covenant with him, how can you effectively love those around you when that love is rooted in the love between you and God?

I am not saying you have to quit everything and go live in a monastery.
I am saying that your life should center around him.

You want to know how to have a life that you only dreamed of?
Let your waking thought be about God. Let your parting thought at night before you go to bed. Engage with him throughout the day no matter what you are doing. Seek him. Pray. Listen. Engage with other believers. Come to church. Be in covenant with God in every area of your life. Lead your family well. Be Kingdom minded.

If that is too much to ask, I am sorry, but that is what being a follower of Jesus looks like.

And one more note here:
If all of that looks like work to you, then with all due respect, you might not be in love with him.

Think about when you met your spouse. Monique and I wold walk down country roads picking flowers. Never in a million years would I have done that. But love makes even silly things sweet as long as they’re with the one your heart longs for. Does your heart long for God?

1 John 4:19
We love because he first loved us.
It doesn’t say we love God because he first loved us. It says “we love.”

How do you love your spouse and others as God intended?
It has to start with you being born of and knowing God.

Until you are born of God, until you know him, your love for others will always be a fraction of what it could be.

If you want to love like God loves, it takes:

2. Laying down your life
Matthew 16:25
25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

When we hear a verses like these, we automatically think of giving our lives for people in terms of dying. Hero level, medal of honor level sacrifice. While that can be accurate, there is more to giving your life than physically dying.

When you consider the context of Matthew 16:25, Jesus is clearly talking about our soul. The very next verse says, what profit is it to gain the world but lose your soul?

So the point is that in losing your life for Christ’s sake means you gain life.
What does this mean?
There is a stark difference between the temporal and the eternal.
It is of no benefit to gain the world and lose your soul.
It is of no benefit to gain here and now and lose eternity.

John 15:13 has the same exact ideology behind it.

John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Laying your life down is not limited to dying for someone.

Just like there is a clear difference between the temporal (here and now) and the eternal, there is a clear difference between your flesh and spirit.

Your flesh does not want to lay itself down for anyone or anything.
Your flesh doesn’t want to be crucified with Christ!

Look at what the flesh craves in Galatians 5:19-20
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like

No one wants to be treated like this! Now maybe you haven’t put a hex on them, committing sorcery, But have you lusted? That’s adultery according to Jesus. Have you lashed out in anger? That’s murder if you ask Jesus.
Are you currently in contention with your spouse!?!? Again, no one wants to be treated like this.

How do we want to be treated?
We want a spouse who is kind and patient, gentle, loving, able to manage well their emotions, someone faithful.

Who wants that? WE ALL DO.
And deep down if you really are a Christian, we all want to treat our spouse that way.

How do you think love like that happens? A miracle? No.

Galatians 5:22-24
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. 24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Here we are back at losing our lives, laying them down, being crucified with Christ.

What is my point?
Love is going to require you lay your life down. Your passion, desires, wants, dreams, feelings, future. EVERYTHING.

When you get married, you are knitting your life together with another person. That means that everything you are is tied to everything they are.

Just like 1 Corinthians 7:5 says
Don't withhold yourselves from each other unless you agree to do so for a set time to devote yourselves to prayer.

Let’s be real, sometimes you wanna, sometimes you don’t, but you lay everything down for your spouse. In the same way, everything you are is laid down for the ultimate good of the both of you.

If you are refusing to lay down your life for your spouse, I’ll skip the question of whether or not you really love them.
I am curious about your relationship with God.
I am curious about your spiritual walk.
I am curious if your really understand what taken is all about.

You might find this restricting. You might have the idea that this other person is supposed to help you reach your dreams, not force them to be laid down. That is the culture preaching to you, not Jesus.

I’ve had to lay my life down with Jesus. Crucified.
Yet I am more free now, more alive now, than I have ever been.

I’ve had to lay my life down with my wife and kids.
Yet I am more satisfied, more complete, than I have ever been.

Just like with Jesus,
Laying your life down with your spouse and family doesn’t limit you. It frees you.

If you want to love like God loves, it takes:

3. Taking on a new identity
Don’t hear, “Be different so people will like you.”
What I mean is, “Be the person God actually created you to be.”
Be identified by how well you love.

What is that? John 13:34-35
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

When you said yes to Jesus, you said yes to more than heaven.
You said yes to his life, not your own.
You said yes to the way he does things, not the way you do things.
You said yes to his will, his ways, his best, and yes, even his love.
Not only in embracing his love for you, but in how he loves others.

Jesus said people will know you are his by the way you love.

Question:
Would people know you love Jesus by the way you love your spouse? Family? Others? Yourself? If I followed you around and had around the clock access for just 3 days, would I know you are completely all in with Jesus by how you love?

So how can we take on that identity God has called us to when it comes to loving others?

Put others first.
Philippians 2:3
Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves

Be forgiving.
Ephesians 4:32
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Be honoring.
Romans 12:10
Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

Turn the other cheek.
Matthew 5:39
If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
What does this really mean?
Extra mile
These show you love them more than you love revenge.

Follow through.
1 John 3:18
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

Serve one another.
Galatians 5:13
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

Be Spirit led.
Galatians 5:16
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

I could go on with this for another hour.

There is so much in Scripture about how to love people, but how I’d like to end today is for us to take a moment and evaluate our lives and how we love.

How would you define your love for your spouse?
Selfish or selfless, demanding or serving, fleshly or spiritual?

What about your family? Friends? Enemies?

Psalm 139:23-24
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

I want to give you an opportunity to interact with God in this moment.
You can get a lot from a teaching like this, but it doesn’t compare to what God can show you in a moment.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us in this moment.
Listen and be ready to write it down or remember.

Two Questions
God, what practical things do I need to do increase the love between you an I?

What practical things do I need to do to increase the love between my spouse and I?
For those who are single, just change out spouse with others.

Let’s Pray.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?