Has anyone told you lately that God loves you?

See, some of you came in here today and that's almost an unbelievable truth. God could love someone wretched like me and you, but he does, man, he does. Like, that's what makes his grace so amazing. And he pours it out, not just a little bit. He doesn't just drip it on you like— he lavishly pours his love out on you.

How in the world could I ever think that? Because his Son put on human flesh, came to this earth, and died a most cruel death to save you and me from our sin. That's how I know. He loves me. Do you have a Bible or device?

I want to invite you to turn to John 13:34-35. We'll read that in just a minute. Let me, uh, let me do a little bit of a commercial before we get started. If you're a parent in the room, or even a grandparent, listen to me just a minute. Our Breakaway Weekend is 2 weeks away, less than, than 14 days, and is an amazing and an exciting opportunity for our 6th through 12th grade to come and be in an environment for 48 hours almost and be poured into and challenged.

And this year, the theme flows right along with what we've been talking about on Sunday morning with explicit discipleship. So for some of you in the room, if you were thinking like, hey, I really— I want to step in and volunteer and work, please go on the app and sign up. But I need to talk to parents because here's what's going to happen to parents. Oh yeah, they reminded me to sign my kid up. And then you get home and you forget.

Don't wait. Like right now, take that phone out. Most of you are on the church app. Go to the church app and go ahead right now. Don't wait.

Sign up now before you forget, because I can guarantee you some of you in this room are thinking about your Walmart pickup order and what you're gonna eat for lunch. But if you do it now, you got it done. How does that help us? Well, one, that helps us know how many kids are coming, how many t-shirts to order, all the— how much food to get. And it just really helps us.

But more than that, the value is that you're placing your child in an environment where we as Ebenezer can partner with you to influence your child to grow in their faith. And so do that right now. There is no dance that weekend. There might be football and rec ball there. I don't Does Georgia play that weekend?

I wouldn't know. Um, it doesn't matter anyway.

Uh, nobody booed that. I got— I was expecting a couple of boos from that one. But listen, there's always going to be something vying for your time. I'm asking you to prioritize that. Parents, help us out.

Jump on there, sign up your student. We would love, love to see them. We're in the middle of a series called Explicit Discipleship. Explicit means fully revealed, expressed without vagueness, implication, or ambiguity, leaving no question to its meaning or its intent. And we talked about repentance.

We're called to repent. Hand in hand with that is faith. We're called to believe, to trust our lives to Christ. And those go hand in hand. When I believe in Christ, I can't do that without turning from my old life, and I can't turn from my old life if I don't have something directional to turn to.

Like, I'm repenting, turning away in faith to the Lord. Last week we talked about one of the most important of those commands, which was baptism. And many of us had conversations like last week that lit my fire, that you would take serious. Like, hey, Jesus has called me in declaring and making my faith public to be immersed, to be baptized. And, and I want to challenge you again.

If last week you thought about it a little bit more, you're like, you know what, my timeline is out of whack. I, I was baptized at 6, but I didn't become a Christian until I was 20. Would you give us the great opportunity to baptize you again? Baptism is not mystical, it's spiritual, but it sets a tone and a mark in your life that I want to live for the Lord in this new life that he has given me. And this next command that we're going to talk about, really, it's like if faith and repentance go hand in hand, obedience goes hand in hand with what we're going to talk about today.

So would you stand with me as we read one of my favorite passages?

A new command I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so also you love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Father, be in this room today and speak to our hearts and challenge us And remind us, because of your great love, we can now have great love. Lead us, Lord.

We don't know how to do it, so we open our heart today and ask you to teach us. In Jesus' name, amen.

For love to be love, it cannot be forced, but it must be a transformed affection. You see, the irony is today I'm going to talk to you about the command to love, but to comply with this command nullifies that it's love because of the definition of love.

To love somebody, to love something, means that I have an affection toward that. And in this case, the love of God being that He is disposed toward us in a benevolent way to act on our behalf with no strings attached and no reciprocation. That's how much God loves you. God loves you even when you didn't love him. God loves you if you never love him.

God loves You. That's why I asked you earlier, when was the last time somebody told you that God loved you? But for love to be love, you can't force it. In fact, look at the first line in your study guide. For love to be love, you can't force it.

It must be a transformed affection.

I did a lot of just kind of haphazard little research. You know, I looked— I love music.

How many songs do you think has been written about the subject of love? It's countless, actually. But I do know about between 15 and 20 times, whether in radio or in theater, there's about 15 to 20 songs with the exact title, "What Is Love?" Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me no more. Thank you, Bubba.

Dude, you just made my day.

Some of y'all get that. If not, go watch 9th Rocksbury. But I mean, you know, even the band Heart, which I will argue is one of the best female rock bands ever, sang a song, What Is Love. Our culture has a definition of love, but it's not the definition that God has.

And if we're going to be commanded, compelled to love, then we kind of need to know what we're talking about.

In 1740, there was a story written about love, about this man who was under a curse, and he was a really horrible person. In fact, he acted like an animal.

And he takes this other man captive. And this man's daughter decides out of her love for her father to take his place.

She becomes a prisoner in a castle that's full of prisoners because of the curse. And he's compelled that he must make someone fall in love with him.

But to fall in love with somebody can't be forced, right? You can't sign on the bottom line. You know, we talked about marriage last week. Some of you guys fell in love a long time ago, but you've lost that love because you fell out of the commitment.

And as this young lady is in that castle, she doesn't want to be there. She doesn't want to be around this, this person. But something happens that begins to shift the tide when he makes a choice to sacrifice himself to save her.

And everything changes after that. In fact, this story that I'm telling you was written in the 1740s. It was made a movie, an animated movie, in the 1990s and was remade just a few years ago in live action. It is a tale that is old as time. Now you're snickering.

You liked that, didn't you? Belle ends up falling in love with the Beast, but she wasn't forced. In fact, she had no reason to fall in love with the Beast. He's a beast. He acted like a beast.

I mean, invites her to dinner, she won't come, and says, well, you can just starve. Like the guilt wasn't going to help get her to the dining table, right? But that's the kind of tension we often feel When we hear that we're commanded or compelled to love, we can't do it as a checkbox.

You can't like just check it out. Well, I did a couple of loving things. Well, just because you do some loving things don't mean that you have love. Folks, listen, look at me. I'm gonna quote my— I'm gonna channel my inner Levi Skipper for a moment.

Look at me eyeball to eyeball.

Do you love? The way the Bible shows love. That's what I want you to do. I want you to take this scripture today and I, I want you to let it be a light, an analysis, a magnifying glass, and ask myself this question: do I love God and do I love others as a result?

Because I can't say that I'm going to follow any other command of God if I don't love him. Jesus said in John 14:15 If you love me, you will keep my commands. I can follow a list of rules and never love someone.

I can do all the right things and never have love. But if I go over here to this drum set and I hit the cymbal, you'll hear it. But if it's not with love, Paul said, it's just a resounding gong. It's a wasted Reverberation of sound. Now these three, Paul said, faith, hope, and love, these remain, but the greatest of these is love.

As faith and repentance go together, obedience and love go together. If I have trusted in this God who loves me more than anything, and I've invited him into my life, and he has rebirthed me, he has changed my affections. My affections are greater than my feelings. Some of you in this room have bought into this old oversensitized culture that if I feel it, I'll do it. If I don't feel it, I won't do it.

Folks, I'm telling you, you want a marriage that'll last 50 or 60 years, by golly, you're going to have love that you don't often feel.

Are you tracking with me? Like, stop basing everything on your feelings. Affections are those things inside that drive and move us to act. So with love, there is— if love is truly in my heart, then I will act towards someone in a benevolent way that does not benefit me. No strings attached.

If there is one string attached, it nullifies the kind of love that's there. The Bible has 3 primary uses of the word love. I'm talking about agape. Agapaō in the Greek. It appears in noun or verb form almost 300 times.

But this is where it's awesome. You ready for this? There's only 9 times the word appears as a direct command. Because what we're going to see today is it's not if we're called to love, it's who.

Y'all ready for some meddling this morning? It's who you're called to love.

If you are a born-again Christian, this Bible is very clear that he has put within you the affection of love. Some of you struggle with that. Let me tell you why you do. Some of you in this room, you heard this phrase, "If you love me, you'll let me touch you." Come on, now. Some of you grew up in homes where your mom and dad wasn't there, and that's the only definition of love that you have.

Some of you, for whatever reason, relationships just seem to be the hardest thing in your life because you don't know whether you can trust that they'll love you or if they're going to come back and get you. Some of you have family members and friends that have held aught against you for 20 years and you're ready for them to receive you back and forgive you, but they won't. And so that's what you think about when you think about love. And the reverse of that is true. Some of you for 20 to 30 years have held aught against somebody else and you still haven't gotten to that place where you're like, you know, out of the love of God and his power at work within me, I'm going to choose to forgive this person.

And take off those shackles of unforgiveness that have held me back for so long.

I want to argue in this room today, some of you would believe in physical healing and mental healing, and you'll pray and ask God to give you this or give you that. God giving you a parking place at the front of Walmart doesn't compare to the miracle of him changing your heart so that you might love somebody else.

2 basic truths. Write these down. Number 1: God himself is love. You see, for me, as a— to say I'm Christian and continue living in hate is an oxymoron. I can't do it.

My nature has been changed. There's something different inside of my heart driving me. Jesus doesn't live in my heart But his love does. I'm gonna preach a message on that one day. I want you to hear me.

Kids, y'all use that phrase. Can I tell you, can I ask you, where is Jesus right now? He's in heaven. And what is he doing? He's sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that's exactly where you want him.

You don't want him in your heart because that robs him from everybody else. You want him praying for you to the Father through the Holy Spirit. That's where you want him. But you know where else I want him? I want him to come back.

Someone needs to say, he's going to come back. But right now he is ministering as your priest, not some human being. Jesus himself is your priest, giving us access to God the Father. That's where you want him. God himself is love.

1 John 4:8, God is love. If I know God relationally, he saved me, he's rebirthed me, he's regenerated me, he has put his love inside of me. And if I'm not letting that love flow through me, then I got some decisions to make, because that is the expectation, that his love might work through me. Number 2, we only know love when we know God.

You may have grown up in the most nurturing home ever, but if it wasn't a love that connected back to the love of the Father, to the love of God, that, that agape, unconditional, no strings attached— come on, you guys have had family members that would keep a record of wrongs. And if they gave you a present, I, I really hope this isn't true, I think I had a family member who kept a list of the gifts they received And when they went to buy gifts for other people, they would go back to that book and look what they got. That's not love. That is not love. And if we're keeping a record of wrongs, 1 Corinthians 13, kind of jot that somewhere too.

That talks about, it talks about the qualifications and the qualities of love. Like, guys, you may have grown up in a place that wasn't nurturing and loving. I'm telling you, now that you know Jesus Christ, Let his love infiltrate and engulf and surround your life and let it transform you. As he said in this text, a new command I give to you. The disciples had no clue.

They grew up knowing the great Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And you will teach these diligently to your children. But the Jews did a bad job of that because just a generation later they forgot who their God was.

Folks, if we follow the teaching of scripture and begin to see how we are loved and then let that affect us so that we then begin to love that same way, what a win! What a win!

That in and of itself reinforces when I preach a gospel that talks about a man who put on— God who put on human flesh, became man, and died on a cross to save me from my sin.

It's incredible. Listen, I'm telling you, we encountered a street preacher just this week. We went to the Braves game on Friday night, and I listened intently as I walked by. We were moving in a mass crowd across the interstate, and the guy did say, you know, God loves you. He doesn't want you to be in hell.

And I mean, the things he was saying, it was great. What I don't know is, was he doing that just so he could be heard, or was he doing it because he cared about that individual that was walking by him? That sounds critical. I don't mean it to be. I'm just saying the truth.

Like, if I love you enough that I'm going to tell you you're going to hell and you need to be saved, Then I also want to love him enough to say, "Hey, can we go have a coffee and let's keep talking about that?" Like, it doesn't just stop me going, "Man, I'm such a good person. I stood on a street corner telling everybody about the scripture, but I didn't get a person's name." I know I'm nitpicking. I just think it's a little bit more than that. See, when you look at this text, we get a mandate, we see a model, and we have a mark. We have a mandate.

Kevin's shaking his head over here. You love that alliteration, don't you, brother? Man, I did it twice. Do I get an extra A+ this weekend? Mandate, model, and a mark.

That's what we see in this, that Jesus mandated that we love one another the way he loved. That's the model. And it marks us to the rest of the world. By this the world will know you're my disciples. Not by how much you come to church, by how many Bibles you have, by how many verses you can quote, by how loud you can speak.

Do you love one another in the house of God? Because if you don't, when you walk out these doors, it nullifies whatever gospel you may preach. Because the world looks at us, and if we don't get it right in here, we can't go out there. So every affair— come on. Every time we hear of another leader falling from grace, it diminishes the power of the gospel.

Every time we see a church split, it diminishes the gospel. Every time we hear somebody leaving a church because they got their feelings hurt, going up the road to another church and talking about how bad this church is, it diminishes the gospel.

I told you I was going to meddle. Some of you are friends with people that have even left this church because they got their feelings hurt or they didn't get their way. Folks, this is God's church. This is Jesus's house. It's not about my way or your way.

We came here to pour out our hearts and our lives in worship to a God that we hope and pray will come and inhabit this place and do supernatural things to change my heart so I can go out these doors and do love and good deeds, as Hebrews 10:24 says.

Gosh, uh, oh, meddling.

Jonathan Edwards said this: For love is not only one of the affections, but it is the first and chief affections and the fountain of all other affections. What's he saying? He's saying if you have not love, it does not profit anything. Have I made the case today, folks? We are called to love.

My question is, how you loving? Point number 1, the expectation of love. He said, "A new command I'm giving you." The mandate to love is focused on who and how to love, not whether to love. We know from what I just quoted a minute ago, Jesus himself in Matthew 22:33, uh, 37 through 40 quotes The Old Testament. Lawyer comes up and says, "Hey, what's the greatest commandment?" They were thinking like, "Alright, go through that list of the Ten Commandments.

Tell us which one's the best one." So they could pick it apart. And Jesus breaks it. He says, "No. Love the Lord your God. That's number one.

Love the Lord your God." Do you notice he used the word "your"?

Is he your God?

I can tell you most of the time when you're sitting in a counseling session, either with two people or an individual, this is the problem.

And quoting my friend Kevin Hurt, he would say, "You got to get this right before you can get this right." And this right here between you and me and all the other people in my life will never be right until I get this right. Why? Because God God is love.

John wrote and said, "Before I loved God, he first loved me." Do you realize that, folks? He loved you even if you weren't coming to church. He loved you even when you were in the depths and depravity of pursuing your sin. God loved you. He was sitting on his front porch watching for you to come back down the road.

After eating after pigs. God loves you.

Bless his name. He loves you. And he modeled it between his Father and him. And you read through the Book of John and you hear he says, I love you as I've loved the Father and the Father loves me.

He loves you. Then he goes on in that passage to say, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Some of you have some good neighbors, some of you do not.

Some of you have neighbors, you know, if you, you know, I pull in and Pastor Grady that pastors Clarksville Baptist lives right next door to me. Like, I can, I can, I can toss a beanbag and hit his truck, man. I love seeing Grady when he comes in and we'll talk every once in a while, talk to the— I kind of feel like That show where the guy used to look over the fence, you know. Nah, I'm just kidding. I know what Grady looks like, but it's just good.

But that ain't always been the case. And some of you right now, that's your neighbor.

And Jesus wants you to love them. In fact, can I meddle some more? There's only 9 times out of over 100 uses of the word agape where it's in the form of a command. You ready for this? Jesus used it 3 times in the gospel.

And only 3 times.

When he said, "Love your enemy. Love your enemy. Love your enemy." It was about the object.

That one's like floating over like a lead balloon. He could have told us to love anybody else. In fact, when he said to love God, love others, he said, "You will love." It was a future tense. You and I have to respond to the affection of love to then express the love. So Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for them.

Do good to them." So when was the last time you did good to somebody you think is your enemy? I didn't see a single hand go up.

Some of us, "You don't know what so-and-so did to me." I don't. I don't know what so-and-so did to you. I don't know how you were abused. I don't know how you were robbed. I don't know how you were put on a shelf.

I don't know how you were neglected. All I know is I see a picture of Jesus Christ after he had been crucified, looking down at his crucifier saying, Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing.

I don't have that kind of power, but I've got access to that kind of power. I don't know who's hurt you. I'm just telling you, Jesus called us to consider to whom we forgive and love. I love God and he calls me to love others. The mandate of love is focused on who and how.

You will get lost and dismiss the idea of loving others if you start burrowing down to that hole of justifying why you should love somebody. What is today? God called you into this place to hear this message that he can bring healing to those losses in your life. Some of you need to go back in your life and you need to grieve those moments. You don't just grieve people who die, you grieve any kind of crisis and process what you felt and what you experienced and began to lament to the Lord.

Say, God, it hurts that my dad wasn't in my life.

Be my daddy. I mean, when he says that we, because of the Spirit of God, we can cry out, "Abba, Father," like, that's a very intimate word. If you didn't have a dad in your life, don't think that the God above, the Father above, is like the deadbeat dad you had, or the mom that deserted you, or the parent that abused you. Like, that's not God. He's in an other-than category.

And he loves you, and he's inviting us to love him. In fact, if the only other time that I hear this phrase, love God, love others, on these two commandments depend the whole of the law and the prophets. Like, when the volition of love is right in my life, I don't have to sit here and make a list of the rules and the laws. Like, it's flowing out of me. Y'all want me to sing to you?

The fruit of the Spirit's not a coconut.

Some of y'all are smiling, especially young ones. The fruit of the Spirit— if you want to be a fruit, no, you can't. The fruit of the Spirit is— say it with me. Now stop. The first fruit of the Spirit listed is love.

On these all of the prophets and the law hinge. Wow. In fact, Luke 6:35, Jesus is talking about the Golden Rule, and unfortunately the Golden Rule gets a little bit mixed up because we'll stop halfway through the verse. Treat others the way that you want them to treat you. We flip this over and say, well, so-and-so took my lunch, I'm going to take his lunch because I should treat others the way that They missed the last part of the verse.

It says, for this is the law and the prophets. If love is exhibited in the law and the prophets, then I should treat others with love, not just subjectively how I want to be treated. Are you following that logic? Because when he quotes it in 6:35, or quotes the Golden Rule in chapter 6:31, treat others the way you want them to be treated, he says even Gentiles, even Non-Jews know how to love other people. They just don't know how to love the way that God loves.

Then he says in 35, but love your enemies and do good and lend and expect nothing in return. So I ask you again, do you love?

Do you love? And if you do, what is the object of that love? It should be everybody. But I can't love everybody if I don't get this one, get this one right. Write this passage down.

1 John 3:18. 1 John 3:18. Little children, do not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth.

I remember It was March 1996, and some friends of mine invited me to go to lunch. I'm like, this is going to be great. Where are we going to meet? So we were going to meet at the bottom of the steps of the old student center at North Georgia College and State University.

So I'm there, and there's a Regions ATM, and I'm getting me a little bit of cash. I think we went to Pizza Hut. And all of a sudden to my left I see this door open and for some reason Dreamweaver starts playing on the speakers and sparkles start flying down as this young lady named Laura Thomas walks in the door.

Thank you, Joe. We didn't immediately fall in love. She was dating somebody, I was dating somebody. But we started going and spending time together. And then we started dating.

But both of us had been through some, you know, some weird relationships. We weren't ready just to kind of jump in and say, "I love you." "I love you too," kind of stuff, you know. I just remember where I was when I realized I love this woman. My nephew, who's now 34, was with me one night. It was a triple date.

We took Tyler with us. I at that time wanted to get a saltwater aquarium. I know I've got some of the weirdest hobbies on the face of the planet. Thank you.

You don't even know all my hobbies, Rick. So I'm talking to the sales guy about this, this saltwater aquarium. Well, Laura took Tyler at the time, 4 or 5 years old, to go look at the fish. And she's about 20 or 30 feet away from me. And I look at this moment and she looks back and we made eye contact and she was smiling at me and went, I love this woman.

I love— I want to spend the rest of my life with her.

And transformed my life. And I would say 28 years later, after doing life together and going through the ups and the downs, the good times and the bad, have molded that love to be deeper. And it's the way God works in our lives. God allows you to go through things so you can see his love exhibited for you. Second part of that verse, when he says, love one another, he says, just as I have loved you.

The model of love is defined and exhibited by how Jesus loved us, not a feeling. See, if I'd have just looked at Laura that day and said like, hey, I, I love this woman, and it didn't flow out of me in some way of affection, then it would have— I could have just told her I loved her, but it would have had no meaning.

Jesus showed us exactly what it meant. Let me back you up. Go back to the beginning of chapter 13, and then I'm going to flip over to 15 for a moment in John. 13 through 17 is what we call the Upper Room Discourse. Listen to how he opened it up.

Before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come, that he would depart the world— this world— to the Father. Now listen to this: having loved his own who were in the world, and he loved them to the end. Surrounding this command that he gave, Jesus told the disciples I'm leaving and I'm giving you a new command to love one another. He had just washed their feet, including Judas. He washed their feet, including Judas, and he tells them, I give you this new command.

Well, Peter, rather than going like, well, hey, can you tell us a little bit more about that love? Or can you break that down a little bit? Or like, he doesn't even listen. He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where are you going? Where are you going?

It almost nullifies the moment that Jesus had said, I give you a new command. And Peter said to him, Lord, why can't I go with you right now? I will lay down my life for you.

He loved him to the end, right? He looks at him and says, Peter, before the rooster crows 3 times, you'll deny you even know me. Peter offered to lay down his life. When you look at John 15:12 He repeats this command. And he says, "This is the commandment, that you love one another." Again qualifies it, "Just as I have loved you." They have not seen that love qualified yet until the next morning.

Greater love has no one than this, that he'll lay down his life for his friends. Jesus modeled his love for the Father and he extended that to his disciples. They come to the Last Supper and he washes their feet as a servant, even to the man who's about to go turn him over to the authorities that leads to his crucifixion. Guys, I call that unconditional love. So when you and I in our Christianity think, well, I just can't— I cannot forgive that person, I can't go around that person, I loathe that person, I call that hate.

Maybe if you start calling what you're doing what it is, it'll start convicting you to twist that over and start loving one another.

You cannot justify hate if you're a child of God. This love has been modeled and explained and qualified. He says in 1 John 4:7-10, check this out: Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. He's the source. And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

If you live in hate, you really need to ask the hard question: are you still lost and dead in your sin? Hate has no place in the heart of someone claiming to be a child of God. I'm not saying that in a condemning way. I'm saying, you want to be freed from that? Then ask this love question.

He goes on, by this the love of God was manifested, that Jesus came into the world. In this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to cover our sins. If God would do that for us, then let me ask you a question. If the writer of Hebrews says you haven't suffered yet to the point of shedding blood, I'm asking you, have you loved to the point of losing everything?

How far has your love gone? Have you loved conveniently?

Folks, I'm telling you, you will experience something fantastic in the spirit when you say, Lord, I surrender all. How many times have you sung that song? I surrender all, I surrender all. We say it so flippantly. Have I really?

Have I really surrendered all? That if the police barged in here right now and put me in handcuffs and arrested me, Would I willingly walk out the door with them?

If somebody comes and they take my wallet out of my pocket, what if I reached in my pocket and said, "Well, here's my keys to my car too. Just go ahead if that's what you need." Like, I don't think we've ever gone to the extreme that Jesus has gone, but that's the model. And you're like, "Well, I don't— I can't do that." Well, I can't either. You're in good company. But I'm telling you what, you want to see the power of God awaken you?

Oh, surrender to that kind of love. Now we talk about wanting revival, but can I ask you a question? When all these people talk about revival, do they ever say, God, help us be revived to love one another?

Honestly, I, I— the songs we used to sing in revival growing up, I never heard that. And usually the same people that came in there with the hard hearts walked out after that revival with the same hard heart. If you came in here today with a hard heart today, would you let the Lord give you a new heart? Would you let him soften your heart to the things of God and to love the things that God loves? That's what the older brother missed in the story of the prodigal son, that the dad's heart would be so soft he would take the brother in.

But he was out there sulking in the field. God, you never gave me a party.

I mean, that's the way we act spiritually sometimes. Somebody will get blessed by God and we're like, God, you never did that for me.

Maybe God gifted you with the suffering you're going through because he's preparing you for what ministry you're going to do in the future. You just never know. Number 3, I'm running out of time. The evidence of love in this, all will know The mark of love is evident among— excuse me, the mark of love evident among believers can display and declare the gospel to the world. Notice I said can.

I said it can. It has potential. Now, I didn't dig too much into the verbs that are in this passage because they're not in the command form.

The form that it is in is in the what-if. In fact, you could kind of read it this way. A new command I give to you, that you might love one another. As I have loved you, so you also might love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you have love— might have love for one another.

Like, it's— God's waiting on you to respond. He's given you his love. He lives inside of you. You have the power. You just got to turn the switch on.

One of my favorite authors, Francis Schaeffer, wrote a small book. I mean, it's really, really thin. For those of you that hate books, this one's for you. It's called The Mark of the Christian. Here's what he argues.

If you turn over just for a few moments to chapter 17, verse number 20. After he says, sanctify them in the truth, he says, I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for all who would believe in me through their word. Guess who that includes? It's me. Jesus prayed for you and me right here, verbatim.

But this is what he prayed: that they may be one, even as you and I, Father, are one. You and me, and I and you. That they may be in us so that the world may believe that you sent me. Here's what Francis Schaeffer says: you and I nullify the right to preach the gospel if I can't one another with right. If I can't get it right in here, don't waste your time going out that door to tell somebody about the love of God.

That's a lead balloon.

If I cannot love my brother and my sister that God has called me to be together with, when I go out, how can I declare that to a lost world?

In Katy, Texas, there was a dry cleaner. The sign on the door said, "One Hour Dry Cleaners." And so this man drives over to find this dry cleaner, and after filling out the tag, he told the clerk, "I need this in an hour." And she said, "Well, I can't get it to you till Thursday." He said, "Well, I thought you did dry cleaning in an hour." No, that's just the name of the store.

Kind of like Dollar General.

I have yet to find anything in Dollar General that's a dollar.

By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Love restores Love forgives.

Love goes after.

When you were stuck and lost in your sin, the Lord came to you.

And he rescued us, and now we're in his team. We are the lifeguards looking out to see who else might be drowning.

Is that you today? I asked you at the beginning, I ask you again, do you love? You can't force it. It only comes from a changed heart. If you're here today and you don't know Jesus Christ, that explains why you may not have love in your heart.

Peter said this: Since you have in obedience to the truth— in obedience to the truth— purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.

Fervently. That word, the root of that word means to spread out your hands.

The command is clear. We're called to love. Close your Bibles and your notes. Let me shepherd you for a moment.

As I said at the beginning of this message, some of you in this room, you didn't have love modeled In fact, in the name of love, some of you were robbed and abused. That hurts my heart because I believe that the Lord, if he can, if he can heal you physically, he can heal you spiritually and heal your soul from that pain. That may be the very thing that's keeping you from going to that level where you can experience a true and authentic love with your Father and then with other people. Do you know Jesus today? He said if you don't know Jesus, you can't love.

But if you do love, it's because you know him. Do you know him today? Do you know Jesus Christ? Have you been saved? Have you repented of your sin and turned in faith to Christ, believing that he's the Son of God who died on the cross to take your sin away and was raised again to give you eternal life?

Is that you today? For the rest of us in this room, maybe your, your love has waxed cold, as the Bible would say. And I know, I know something that might help you. What if this week you found one person, your neighbor, that person you don't get along with at work, a wayward family member, and you just did something nice for them? Don't say anything.

Don't say, "Well, if you love me back, you'd say thank you." Don't do that stuff. Like, it's not shameful.

But is there one person in your life that you could do a loving act for this week that would help spur and rekindle that, that raw way of just loving? Last service, we had a little baby cry out at the end of service, and y'all know kids in the room don't bother me at all, but it made my mind think about when my kids were little and how innocent they were. And like, you know, you've had a newborn that's got drool all down their face, and you're like— they go to give you a kiss and they just— they don't pucker up, they just— and the drool just kind of oozes down your face. Or if you're like me, Caroline spit up in my face one time— in my mouth.

She did not know it was absolute love. Mm.

That God would birth in us that innocent childlike love again to love him and love others. There is somebody out there in a situation where they have no one that loves them. They don't know what love is. We should be the love experts, not a bunch of trolls on a Disney movie that look like rocks. But some of us act like rocks, and we need the Spirit of God to take that rock-hard heart and make it soft again.

A hard heart can't beat But a palpable heart can. Lord, would you get us to a place where we can see your love evident and alive in our lives in such a way, Lord, that it would transform us to love lavishly on those who are around us? This altar will be open. Whatever your need is, Randy, myself, Kevin, we're all in the room. We would love for you to come.

Maybe, maybe, you know what, can I do something weird? Could I do something weird? Ladies in the room, when we stand up, if you've ever helped counsel during any of our events, I want some ladies to come. Just come stand. There's gonna be myself and Randy and some of us down here.

If you, if you're a male and you've ever counseled with it, just kind of come to the sides. Come and let us pray for you. If you're a female and you're like, I just like a lady to pray for me, you don't have to tell them what's going on. Just come and be prayed for. I know I prompt— this is, this is impromptu, but I just feel like some of you today, you don't even know what to pray.

Come and let somebody pray for you and intercede for you. Maybe that, that, that lady that's up here could stand in the place of that mom that deserted you, or one of us men could stand in the place of that dad that deserted you, and come and let the Lord give you the love that might allow you to forgive that past hurt and to experience the love of a Father who loves you so unconditionally. So as you stand right now, as we get ready to sing, ladies and men, if you've ever counseled with us and you'd be willing to come and stand up here to receive somebody else, just come right now. Come, come as we sing.