The Direction of Love
What did you do right?
About 15-20 years ago, back in the days when I was a youth minister, I asked all the Middle School parents to come and listen to the parents of our graduating Seniors. I invited them to be on a panel to talk to these parents and give them any advice, counsel, and encouragement they could.
We didn’t do this every year. But I had asked this group to do this because this Senior class was special. They were all leaders in the youth group. They were strong in their faith. These parents and these kids weren’t perfect, but they had done something right and I wanted to see if we could pass some of that wisdom on to this next generation coming up behind them.
So I asked them to respond to a question I often ask people in moments like this, I asked them, “What did you do right?”
No doubt, they had made mistakes along the way like we all have. But I wanted to know what they thought they did right that had made such a difference in their kid’s lives, in their faith, and in how connected they were with our church.
I’ll never forget what they said that night. They said, “We never spoke poorly of the church or the church leadership in front of our kids.”
In saying that, they acknowledged that they hadn’t always agreed with everything. That at certain points they wished things were different. But they kept those discussions between themselves and whenever they spoke about the church in front of their kids, they were always careful to build up the church.
When I asked them why, they gave this answer which, to be honest, surprised me: they wanted their kids to love the church.
They wanted their kids to love God, absolutely. But they also wanted their kids to love His church!
What’s at stake?
Have you ever thought about what happens when we don’t love each other well?
I think sometimes we get frustrated or upset, sometimes we’re hurt or we feel like things aren’t happening the way we think they should, and I understand all that. I’m not even suggesting that you shouldn’t feel that way. The question I want us to think about is what’s at stake when we don’t love each other well?
I wonder what’s at stake for our kids?
From time to time we’ll talk about the fact that our kids are leaving the church in mass number. There was a time when the research suggested that our kids left the church in their college years but then would come back to the church later on in life when they started a family. But that’s changed. Research now suggests that when our kids leave the church, more often than not, they don’t return. I wonder if that’s in part because of a generation of parents who didn’t realize the impact of the way they spoke about the church in front of their kids.
I wonder what’s at stake for our community?
I think about our neighbors, or the people we go to school with, or the people we go to work with. What happens when they know we’re Christian but they only hear us speak negatively of the church? What happens when what those outside these four walls think about those of us inside these four walls is that we can’t get along or agree on anything?
I wonder what’s at stake for our church?
What happens to a church when people within the church start forming alliances with each other, pockets of people who become polarized over issues or opinions or really anything other than Jesus, and allow a divisive spirit to start separating us?
I wonder if the way we love each other is more important than we might think.
Love comes from God
In 1 John 4, the beloved disciple, John, has a few words for us and if we will listen I believe they have the power to change everything about us.
John writes,
“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
1 John 4.7-8
Maybe you’ve heard these words before. But today I want you to consider the power of these words. The weight of these words.
John says we should love each other because love comes directly from God. Love, real love, is a product of the Spirit of God at work in your life.
When you love each other the way Christ loves you, that demonstrates that you are a child of God and that you, in fact, know God.
But John doesn’t stop there. He pushes his point here. He says that if you don’t love each other, really love each other the way Christ loves you, then you don’t even know God. Not really. Because God is love!
Maybe you thought it wasn’t that important to love the person sitting next to you this morning. Or the person that sits across the room. Or the person who is in the room this morning but there is conflict between you right now.
These words aren’t my words, these are the words of John and I believe he learned this directly from Jesus. If you don’t love or if you are acting or speaking in a way that is not loving toward another person in this church… then you don’t even know God. Because God, in a word, is LOVE.
Loving God = Loving His Kids
John also writes,
“If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.”
1 John 4.20-21
So often we talk about and we focus on loving our neighbors, loving people on the other side of the world, loving unbelievers, or loving our enemies.
But if we don’t love each other it doesn’t matter if we love the world around us, it doesn’t matter if we love unbelievers, it doesn’t matter if we love our enemies. Our testimony is toast when they walk into church and see we don’t love each other. They won’t believe in God when they see that we don’t love each other and treat each other well!
The credibility of our testimony depends on our love for each other.
You honor God and you honor his church when you love his children well.
It’s no different than my desire for my children to love each other well. If I were to discover that my kids didn’t care for each other, didn’t like each other, and let some disagreement separate them… it would cause me great distress. In fact, few things upset me more than when my kids don’t love each other and treat each other well. You can ask them. They’ve seen me get angry when they don’t love each other or treat each other well.
How much more would this be true for our Heavenly Father?
Our Ultimate Aim
In 1957, at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon on love and I want you to hear what he said…
“Let us never fight with falsehood and violence, and hate and malice, but always fight with love, so that when the day comes that the walls of segregation have completely crumbled in Montgomery, that we will be able to live with people as their brothers and sisters. Oh, my dear friends, our aim must be not be to defeat Mr. Englehardt, not to defeat Mr. Sellers and Mr Gayle and Mr. Parks. Our aim must be to defeat the evil that’s within them. But our aim must be to win the friendship of Mr. Gayle and Mr. Sellers and Mr. Englehardt. We must come to the point of seeing that our ultimate aim is to live with all men as brothers and sisters under God, and not be their enemies or anything that goes with that type of relationship.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
So many times what I’ve witnessed in churches are people who are rallying other people around their ideas because they want to win an argument or get their way.
I’ve seen people become divided on so many things that won’t matter a 1000 years from now. But because they’ve become so attached to their ideas, so upset and irate at other people within the church, so concerned about their preferences and their rights, they cause considerable harm to the church.
And then, I hear these words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was fighting for something that really does matter to the heart of God, the immeasurable worth of every person, and instead of condemning those people who opposed him and who were clearly in the wrong, he says that… “our aim must be to win their friendship…” And “ ..our ultimate aim is to live with all men as brothers and sisters under God, and not be their enemies or anything that goes with that type of relationship.”
I think if we did that, we might be living out John’s words to followers of Jesus everywhere “to love one another, for love comes from God.”
20 years later…
What’s interesting to me is that some 20 years later, I can look back on that group of seniors and many of them are still active in their church and serving as leaders for their church.
All because their parents wanted their kids to not just love God, but to love His church.
What if we decided to courageously and consistently love each other well?
Everything about who we are, our calling, our mission, our purpose, our witness, our growth as disciples of Jesus, it all hangs on this, it all depends on this – that we love each other well.
So may we commit to loving each other the way Christ has loved us.
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