One profound privilege of being a Christian
is that you belong now to a family.
You belong to a family.
Pastor John Piper, author, pastor, says that the church
is not a place and it's not a building,
it's not a preaching point,
it's not a spiritual service provider,
but it's a people, the family of Jesus,
sons and daughters of God, a community.
Dr. Tim Keller said something similar,
described the church as a family of orphans
adopted by grace.
Pastor Rick Warren said in Purpose Driven Life,
you are called to belong, not just believe.
The truth is that as humans,
we're wired for belonging.
It's in our very DNA.
There was one author and sociologist wrote
that all people have a desire to fit
into some sort of group or category.
We all want to fit in.
If you ever were in high school or junior high,
you know all about that, right?
Fit in, I want to fit in,
I want to have the right shoes,
I want to have the right pants,
the right hairstyle for whatever the current moment,
cultural moment is, I want to fit in.
I want to belong.
There was this weird study that some scientists did
when they had some spare time and some money.
They decided, hey, you know what we should do?
We should test this theory out.
And what we're gonna do is we're gonna conduct
this study and intentionally divide some folks
into groups based upon only their preference
for chewing gum flavor.
So, okay, let's see.
Let's divide them into their groups,
chewing gum flavor, but after the participants
were able to kind of observe what everyone else's tastes
were, what their flavor of gum was,
certain individuals were given the ability
to anonymously give money to whoever they wanted,
any other participant.
And they wanted to see who they would anonymously
give this money to with the only commonality
or the only thing being measured was chewing gum flavor.
And some of you probably already jumped to the conclusion,
right?
Those who were given the opportunity to anonymously
give money to any of the participants
overwhelmingly gave the money to the participants
who shared the same like that they had
for the same chewing gum flavor.
Even without speaking, even without saying it
or getting together, they wanted to belong.
They wanted to give to those who were like them.
And that study suggests that our inclination
is to form tribes or groups.
It's just natural to us to find folks who are like us
and to want to be with them,
even at a superficial level of chewing gum flavor.
It's natural for humans to see the world
through this lens of us versus them.
I'll illustrate this point even further
by coming down here and grabbing from the front row
and wearing for the rest of the sermon a Charger's hat.
Crucify him.
And our ushers will go ahead and open the door
for the next thing that I'll say, which is,
I also have a dislike of the 49ers.
So, there you go.
I'm out there now.
I'm all out there.
But that just proves it, right?
You ever been to a football game or a baseball game?
You've seen the rivalries.
Then you introduce a little alcohol,
and then you've got fights and brawls going in the stands
and in the parking lot.
I took my boys once to a Charger's Raiders game.
And they're like, oh, I'm going to be a Charger.
They were young.
And it was actually preseason game.
They were young, but, man, can you imagine afterward
we made a beeline for our car.
There were fights breaking out on every side of the pathway,
the walkway there, people throwing fists,
and I was like, boys, just come on.
Eyes on me.
Eyes on me, ducklings.
Come on.
We got to go.
We divide.
We gather around what we like.
And who's like us?
Got friends down in Lodi, pastors.
And I remember having a conversation with one
then once talking about Lodi,
and there's some railroad tracks in Lodi.
And there's the people who live on that side of the railroad tracks,
and there's the people who live on the other side of the railroad tracks.
And these people are different and don't like each other.
And you can imagine what happens when government officials think
that the great idea is to integrate them into the same school.
And it's like, what on earth is going on here?
We've got to get through this tension that's here.
And for whatever reason, they've divided.
They have different socioeconomic status.
Maybe it's racial.
Whatever the divide is, we divide.
We're always drawing lines.
We're always building up walls, us versus them.
Don't even get me started on social media, right?
It would be one thing if we just wanted to belong to a group.
We just wanted to have folks that we could be with and be like.
But the problem is, as we've illustrated,
is that not only do we want to belong,
but we also in the end favor our group over other groups.
And this, in some instances, works its way toward wanting and wishing
and willing the demise of the other group.
So I want to ask you this morning,
how many invisible lines have you drawn in your life
separating you or us from them?
How many lines have you drawn?
How many walls have you erected to say, us, we're not like them?
And then I want to go a little bit further and ask,
at what cost to our ability to love as Christ's love?
What is the cost of those walls and dividing lines that you have erected
in your life, that I've erected in my life,
to my ability to share and show the love of Jesus in this world?
There is a cost.
And the truth is that our human desire for belonging
is utterly and completely corrupted by sin.
It's corrupted by sin.
Sin is this small word that's just packed with implications.
The Bible shows that before anything or anyone was created,
God, who has no beginning, was there.
And that God exists in a unique way beyond our comprehension.
God exists as a Trinity.
God as three persons who share in one divine essence.
And in a sense, you could say that God existed
and has always existed in a community,
as hard as it is for us to wrap our brain around that concept,
that God, three persons in one essence, one divine essence,
has existed in a community for all time,
eternally existing in eternal existing mutual love.
Jesus, who is the second person of the Trinity,
said of his father that his father had loved him
since before the foundations of the world,
since before creation, they existed in a relationship
of mutual love.
And that is what makes up the Godhead,
or who we call God, three persons, one essence,
a God of mutual love.
And it was out of this eternally existing love
between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
that God poured out that love and created humankind, created us.
Humans exist because the God of love, overflowing with love,
made objects of love so that he could relate to them in love.
And not only that, but Genesis says that God made humankind
in his own image and likeness.
In other words, God made humankind with the same capacity
to love and to relate.
So if that's true and that's the beginning, what happened, right?
Well, we rebelled.
We rebelled against our Creator, and instead of returning to God
the love that he had poured out to us in creation,
we chose instead to believe a lie,
to believe that God was not out for our good,
that God wanted to withhold something from us,
that God wanted to keep from us what was good,
and that the only way that we could live in advance in our life
was if we took hold of it ourselves,
if we reached out and took hold of whatever it is that we wanted,
not trusting God, but instead grabbing it for ourselves.
And in doing so, we broke God's commands,
and humankind became lawbreakers.
And what has happened since then for all of humanity,
everyone who's in the sound of my voice,
everyone who's in this room, is this,
that we have gone into a death spiral.
Sin has caused a death spiral to happen with God's good creation.
And even in the biblical narrative,
the very next thing that happens is that two brothers turn against each other,
one against the other, and murders him.
We see the human relationship begin to unravel.
We see murder introduced.
We see war and deceit, deception, hating.
And we began to see the grouping and categories
that become all too familiar for us as humans,
where we gather up with those who are like us,
and those who are not like us, we hate.
Those who are not like us, we despise.
Those who are not like us,
we can even unconsciously make all kinds of judgments about them,
never meeting them, never knowing them,
they're just not like me.
They're not like us.
And so we divide, we conquer, and then we gloat,
like every time the 49ers lose.
Sorry.
I can feel the tension in the room.
We don't resemble the love.
We don't resemble the love that overflowed from the creator at the beginning,
that poured out into our lives.
But here's the glory of the gospel that God was not done with creation yet,
that God would not abandon his work,
that God had a plan even for that.
I work with wood often, well, at least I did before my garage
filled up with all kinds of stuff, so less often now than before.
But when I would go down and do some woodworking,
I'd oftentimes have this beautiful concept in my mind
of this thing I was going to create.
Of course, I lacked all the skill to do it,
but I had it in my mind still,
and the internet will make you believe all kinds of things about yourself,
that you can do anything, especially YouTube.
So I would go down to the garage and I'd be like,
here we go, we're launching out, we're going to build this thing.
And a couple hours into it, a lot of sweat later,
you look at your mutant child and you're like, ugh,
and throw it off into a bin somewhere to collect dust.
And repeatedly doing that, I abandoned many, many projects.
There are also other projects that I would start,
and if you had the dedication and the wherewithal, you would start,
and maybe it didn't originally look like it was supposed to.
But I had in mind a way that you could recreate this thing
to something beautiful.
That's a relative term, nothing I ever made was beautiful,
but functional.
God wasn't done with his creation.
He had created it in goodness, he had called it good.
But a function of that creation is that mankind chose rebellion.
And God, instead of wrapping it up in a little bundle
and throwing it on the dustbin of history or throwing it in the fire,
he says, you know what, I'm going to recreate this.
I'm going to do something unexpected.
And in fact, what God would do is that he would tear the divide
between heaven and earth wide open in order to save and restore his creation.
Jesus Christ, the God who took on humanity, came to do just that.
He came to reclaim the human heart, the heart that had been corrupted by sin,
the heart that had drawn dividing lines and said, us and them,
Jesus said, I'm going to reclaim that.
I'm going to reclaim that human heart, but not just rehabilitate it,
not just dust it off so that it looks pretty.
In fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to remake it.
I'm going to remake it altogether.
And Jesus as a man, he would love God perfectly.
He would love others perfectly.
He would obey God and he would seek him,
not for his own interests, but he would willingly place himself in our place
to take the just penalty for our sin on that cross
so that we in place of the penalty that we deserve,
the wrath that we deserve, we might receive forgiveness.
We might have our debt lifted off as we sang earlier.
It is done.
It is finished.
No more debt I owe.
To be a Christian is to have a completely new heart, a new heart.
Tim Keller has a quote, to be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.
To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.
The gospel is this.
We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe,
yet at the same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ
than we ever dared hope.
To be a Christian is to be, to have a completely new heart,
to receive the love of God in Christ,
to be set free from our guilt and shame,
and to be brought into a new family.
And the new hearted Christian, the new hearted Christian is governed by a law
and that is the law of love.
In Romans chapter 13, beginning in verse 8,
Paul writing to the church in Rome,
Jewish and Gentile believers where he's trying to get them to understand
the gospel of Jesus Christ and how glorious it is
that it didn't create two separate people,
but God in the gospel and the good news was trying to unite the people
to tear down the dividing walls and bring them together in Christ.
He's trying to do, say that the traditional walls and categories
of ethnicity and culture and religious background,
those are no more in Christ.
We are one, made whole again in Christ.
Those were the effects of sin.
Those were the product of a corrupt heart.
But in Christ we might be brought together again,
no more dividing lines.
He says this in Romans 13, beginning in verse 8,
do not owe anyone anything except to love one another,
for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
The commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal,
do not covet or any other commandment are summed up by this commandment,
love your neighbor as yourself.
Love does no wrong to a neighbor, love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.
To them, Paul is saying, beginning by saying,
don't owe anything to anyone except to love one another,
for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
Another version says, let no debt remain outstanding,
except your continuing debt to love one another.
And so Paul begins here by saying that your first priority in this new family
that you've been brought into in Christ,
if you are in Christ, you are family, you belong,
you are a part of a new family,
and in this new family your first priority is to love one another.
Church, love one another, love one another.
This is to believers, this kind of love has a drawing effect.
Jesus said to his disciples, they will know you are mine.
By what?
By the way you love one another.
The way we love one another becomes a drawing,
has a drawing effect on the world around us.
It begins here, it begins in the house,
and the way that we love one another becomes this standing invitation
to everyone outside that they can exit a world of hate,
and come into a kingdom of love.
Exit a world of hate, exit a world of walls and dividing lines,
and come into the kingdom of love.
That's what our love for one another does.
But it doesn't stop there.
It doesn't end there.
He goes on, Paul says not only that we are to love one another,
but then he says, when we love another, we fulfill the law.
And love another is a way of him saying,
kind of blowing it out, love one another, that's code for the church.
That's code for believers.
But to love another, well, that expands it out.
And he goes even further by saying to love your neighbor as yourself.
Well, Jesus taught who our neighbor is.
In the illustration that he used, it was the very people
that the Jewish folks reviled and hated, the Samaritans.
He said, he used them as the example of the person who did good
by loving the Jewish man who was injured.
That's what it means to love.
And so he blows it out and says it doesn't stop
with just loving one another.
He expands it to everyone outside.
You can imagine this, right?
If you go out and you hook up with someone at coffee,
you go to the local Starbucks.
And you meet them, you're like, hey, I want to evangelize this person.
I want them to know Jesus.
So I'm going to be super nice to them, always have a smile,
be very pleasant with them.
I'm going to love them.
They're going to think, wow, man, this guy's a believer
and his life is so different.
He loves me and he loves everyone.
I see the way he interacts with everyone else.
And finally, you break through and you get him to come to church.
I think you bring him here and he finds out that we hate each other.
We can't stand each other.
We're backbiting.
We're talking about each other.
There's little factions in the corner gossiping
and slandering and talking.
What is he going to think?
It starts here.
It starts among God's people to love one another deeply.
We can't bring them in until we understand that.
The moment they step in, they'll go, what a bunch of hypocrites.
What a bunch of whitewashed tombs.
And so it starts here, but it spills out the doors.
It tears down the wall.
We can't contain it because when it's in here
and it starts to bubble out, people start to take notice.
And then when they do visit, they go, oh, my gosh, it's even better here.
I was just meeting with you.
Now there's 50, 60, 70 other people who are just like you,
who are growing in love and care and genuine concern.
Tear it down.
It is sin, Paul says, to allow a debt to remain outstanding.
It's sin to allow a debt to remain.
That doesn't mean you can't borrow, you can't get your car loan or your home loan,
but you should pay it back.
That's what that means.
When you borrow money from someone else, it's not your money.
Pay back, then it's yours.
That's what he's saying.
Let no debt remain outstanding.
Pay it the way that you agreed to on time.
But then he says there is a debt that no matter how much you pay,
will never be fulfilled, never be completely current.
It will always be running.
And that is your remaining debt to love one another.
And that means if you're here and you're 150 years old, anyone?
I see you.
Yeah.
Jordan back in the back, 150.
Or anywhere underneath that, no one in here can say, I have loved enough.
I have loved enough.
I'm free.
Jordan's going to love this.
Jordan's a good friend.
Jordan Mugford there at the back.
He raised his hand.
He's 150 years old, so he's got a lot of knowledge and wisdom.
He's going to love this one.
The national debt is about $30 trillion.
It's north of 30 trillion.
I can't even keep track of it.
North of 30 trillion dollars is our national debt in the U.S.
Did you know that if you were to spend $1,000 every single day of your life,
that it would take you 82 million years to pay off the national debt?
Spend $1,000 a day every day for the rest of your life,
it would take you 82 million years to pay off the national debt.
That's how big that number.
That's not even real.
That's not real money at that point in time.
That's just something.
You owe your brothers and sisters and others a debt of love
that is more expansive than the national debt.
You owe your brothers and sisters.
Turn to your left and right.
Look at the people around you.
These folks in here, your brothers and sisters in Christ,
if you are in Christ, you owe them a debt of love that is more expansive
than the national debt.
But the paradox is that we continually, as we continually pay on that debt of love,
we're actually fulfilling the law.
We're actually fulfilling the law as we continually pay on that debt.
We're living out God's intention for human relationships
in the fullest possible way, to love one another.
Paul had actually spent some time earlier in Romans explaining
what kind of love he is talking about.
Beginning in Romans chapter 12, verse 9, we read,
let love be without hypocrisy.
How many of you guys like hypocrites?
Yeah?
Detest evil.
Cling to what is good.
Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters.
This is a concept that's very difficult for some folks to believe that they were
brought into a family that is more real than maybe even their blood relatives.
More real that your brothers and sisters in Christ,
they are your eternal family, the family for which you will spend all of eternity.
And so you are to love them as brothers and sisters.
I love this next part.
Take the lead in honoring one another.
Take the lead.
Don't wait.
Take the lead in honoring one another.
And don't do it half-hearted, begrudgingly.
Do it with zeal.
Fervor like in the Spirit, like serving the Lord.
Love one another.
Rejoice in hope.
Be patient in affliction.
Persistent in prayer.
And share with the saints in need.
Pursue hospitality.
This is the kind of love that we've been brought into, the family of God.
What it means to belong is to belong in a family of love that represents the
words of Romans, that Romans 12 represents to us.
And it's very instructive.
But you know that this kind of love, while it would be good,
it would not be revolutionary.
There are groups in this world that do not have Christ,
yet love very well internally in their group.
Do you know the next part is what breaks it free?
The next part is what blows it out and makes it a revolutionary kind of love.
Bless those who persecute you.
Bless and do not curse.
Bless those who are against you, who are in opposition to you,
who stand for everything you don't stand for.
Bless them.
Hold your tongue.
Don't curse.
That's radical.
And later on down in verse 19 he says, friends, do not avenge yourselves,
but instead leave room for God's wrath because it is written,
vengeance belongs to me, I will repay, says the Lord.
But if your enemy is hungry, tell him, tough luck, move along.
Is that what it says?
What does it say?
If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If he's thirsty, give him something to drink,
for in doing so you will heap fiery coals on his head.
Brothers and sisters, we don't conquer evil with evil.
In this family, we conquer evil by doing good.
By doing good.
And this is the revolutionary stuff.
This is the stuff that people look in.
And when believers have lived this out, the outside world goes,
what is going on over there?
I've got to catch a glimpse.
I've got to know someone on the inside.
I've got to rub shoulders with them.
I've got questions.
Who lives this way?
Paul says we can live this way in Christ.
This is our invitation.
This is what we are brought in to belong to as a family that loves in this way.
Don't commit adultery or murder or steal or covet,
and then he kind of throws in this catch-all or any other commandments,
because they're all fulfilled, wrapped up in the commandment
to love your neighbor as yourself.
Paul brings in a couple of elements of the moral law,
the Ten Commandments, and how they express the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself.
With that same care and utmost concern that you give to yourself,
you are to give to the other.
You're to love as you expect to be loved.
Adultery.
Do not commit adultery.
That is hatred toward your wife, hatred toward your children,
hatred toward the other party involved and everyone they're connected with.
That is not love.
If you're a child of light, if you're in Christ, you've been called out of that life.
You are to abandon it and begin to live a life of love.
Adultery is not love, and it hurts a lot of people.
How many of you guys know that?
Adultery hurts a lot of people. It's not love.
Murder.
We have no right to decide unilaterally who gets to live and who doesn't.
That is not our prerogative.
That is over our pay grade.
That is not within our authority.
Murder is not love.
Stealing.
I know a lot of folks today will like to twist this and bend it and read.
No.
The Bible says that we're to entrust ourselves to the Lord.
It says that God will provide all of our needs.
The Bible says that he looks down on us and he knows our needs before we even know it.
And that we're to entrust ourselves to him to meet those needs on a day-to-day basis.
Stealing is taking that control into our own hands.
Stealing is saying, I will take what I want or what I think I need for myself.
It's got all the stink of the Garden of Eden.
They looked, they saw, it was good and pleasing, so they reached out and took for themselves.
Stealing is not love.
Stealing is taking someone else's stuff.
Because you have a higher estimation of yourself.
Dance break.
Coveting.
Lust.
Coveting is lust and it begins in the heart.
You can have the appearance on the outside that everything is good.
Did you know, like you can covet in your heart.
You can look and want what is not yours and what God has not provided for you.
And what he has deemed is not necessary for you today.
And you can look and want it and want it so bad in your heart.
And the Bible says that's not love because that distorts our relationship with God.
And that distorts our relationship with others.
We begin to look at them for what they have and what we want from them.
Not out of love.
Paul exhortation to love one another deeply and unconditionally is not this mere lofty idea for us.
Aspirational only, but it's really truly the very essence of our new identity in Christ.
It's who he has made you to be.
It is the new heart, the transformed heart that he's remade within you to be able to love this way.
It's not something you conjure up or you work up.
But it's something that you lean into, something he's already done.
And this radical love fulfills the law and it transcends our natural inclinations.
And it serves as a powerful testimony of the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ at work within believers.
People look and go, you're not the same if they knew you before.
Or they run into you and they go, I want more of what you have.
If we consider the implications of love and the kind of love that's listed here, the kind of love that tears down walls,
it's a love that blesses those who persecute.
It's a love that nourishes our enemies.
It's a love that's revolutionary in nature and it's something the world desperately needs to see.
Not only will it change individuals, but I have seen and witnessed this kind of love change communities.
This kind of love, if we become what we are made to be in Christ,
this kind of love can reshape the very community and fabric of the community around you.
Marriages can be restored where coldness and walls have been built up within a marriage.
Marriages can be restored when this kind of love is injected into the life of the marriage.
Family relationships are relationships that have broken down because numerous things.
When a believer says, I will no longer live as under the pattern of the world or under the sinful heart that was before,
but I'm going to live into the love that I've been invited into, the fellowship with God, who is love,
the fellowship with God I'm invited into, I will live that love out.
You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take the lead to honor the person who reviles me.
I'm going to take the lead to cross the bounds, the chasm that has developed between me and my spouse.
I'm going to take the lead and I'm going to honor them.
And I'm going to see, I'm going to leave it to the Lord and see what he does.
I'm going to see what this kind of revolutionary love could do.
It's not because I do some voodoo or I wave my hands a certain way and then boom, it happens.
And it's not even because I have the right words, it's because I trust my loving creator,
who created me out of his own love and wants me to live in that love every day.
Our deep seated needs for belonging is not just a human trait, but a divine design.
I'm going to invite the worship team to come on up.
God in his triune nature exemplifies what perfect community and love is.
We can look to him and we see through Jesus and his sacrifice
that you and I are invited to belong in a whole new way.
A whole new way. It's not about, hey I lived my life and I loved in a certain way out there
and then I met Christ and I just bring all that in here.
I promise you that's all the hypocrisy and bad stuff you see in churches.
It's when we bring all that stuff in here and think we just go on with it.
No, it's about saying my heart was made new.
I need to, Paul later on in Romans says we need to put on Christ.
We need to be clothed in Christ.
We need to put off our old stuff and put on Christ and live into our new identity in Christ.
No longer for hate, but for love. No longer to divide, but to unite.
The revolutionary love that Paul describes in Romans is not just an ideal,
but it's a calling for every single Christian.
It's a love that goes beyond our comfort zones, beyond our natural affinities,
but beyond all the lines that the world wants to draw and say these are your categories, now get into them.
Race has been a big one, right?
The world comes and says these are your lines, get in your categories.
And the church of God is a beautiful tapestry.
It says those aren't the lines we look at anymore.
We are united in Christ, brought together in his love.
Forget those lines, I won't listen to that anymore.
That was Paul's heart in writing Romans and writing Galatians.
One man brought together the dividing line conquered in Christ so that we could live in love and unity.
We could see the power of God manifest among us in the relationships that are restored
and the people who are saved, the lost who are brought in,
the house of the Lord, the people of God gathered to worship,
the churches filled with ears eager to hear the word of God.
Isn't that a beautiful dream?
A vision to see what God could do through a group of people who are just dedicated
to do to one another what he did for us.
We're not giving more. We can never be greater than him.
He gave far more than we could ever give.
But we can follow his example and love each other.
And we can begin here so that when we bring others in,
they too get to experience that kind of love.
Will you bow your head, close your eyes?
So we pray before we pray, I just want to take a moment and have you examine your heart.
I want you to reflect on your own tendencies toward tribalism,
your own tendencies to draw lines, categories, your own mentality of us versus them.
We joked about football. We can set that one aside.
There are other areas.
I'll tell you right now.
I have seen brother and sister effectively slander, gossip, hate,
and as Jesus says, the kind of anger that is likened to murder.
Their own brothers and sisters because of a political disagreement.
Those are the world's lines. Those are the world's lines.
Always comes around. We hit this time.
And we want to own and slaughter the other side.
And it's interesting to see how the church reacts. We can be something different in this world.
We could be something that shines the love in light of Christ.
Maybe your tendency is that you draw circles of love and acceptance around only a few people
and you exclude others for whatever reason.
I tell you, the gospel of Jesus wants to break down those walls.
He wants to open up and let Christ's love shine through you in a way that will blow your minds as you begin to do it.
Where have you drawn those lines?
I also want to say some of you need to look for a way this week to radically serve,
to take the initiative, to take the lead, to serve in honor of another.
That there's someone that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you even now.
That you need to cross the breach. You need to cross the great divide and take the lead to honor them.
And that in that relationship you're going to see the love of Christ break loose.
I also want to say that here in our church and in the church of Jesus at large,
we need to take steps, active steps to bridge the divide that we experience here.
And this involves reaching out across the aisle to people who are not like you.
I don't know if you know this, but in churches people still divide all the time, even within the same walls.
Whatever the group, whatever the category, whatever the area.
Maybe it's age, maybe it's race, maybe it's culture, maybe it's money.
Whatever it is we divide, even within the walls of the church.
That's the old man, that's the old self, that's sin.
We're being invited into the new life, the new heart, the love of God.
Father, we pray and ask that you would fill us with your love.
We ask that the Holy Spirit would help us in the times that are difficult
or the times where we revert to the way it's always been.
Help us, Lord, to overcome, to put off the old self and to put on the new self
that's being made in the image of Christ, to clothe ourselves with Christ
and find Christ's love, the kind of love that would step down from heaven.
That while we were yet enemies, that He would die for us.
That when we were the furthest from you and had done the most to offend the God of creation,
the God of love, that you would cross the breach.
We're not doing anything new, we're only reflecting the goodness and love of our God.
Help us, God. We're not strong enough.
Help us, God, we don't have the strength, we need the Holy Spirit at work in our lives to do this.
God, we probably are even blind to even see the areas that we even need to address.
Help us to see.
Give us eyes to see where you're leading us in love.
Lord, may you do a radical work to the brothers and sisters who are present in this room
as they go out as ambassadors of love
and we begin to see your goodness and your love break free in this world.
All glory to you, you alone we say, in Jesus' name, Amen.
Let our love be the evidence of our transformation
and the invitation for others to experience the belonging that can only be found in Jesus Christ.