SUMMER OF LOVE

 

God’s heart is that we know and experience the vastness of His love, both in its magnitude and in its complexity.   One tradition refers to them as the benevolent, beneficent, and complacent love of God.As disciples and in our disciplemaking ministries, it’s important for us to ever seek to fathom the depths of God’s love and live in light of what we discover, and then to help others do the same

1.       God’s Creative Sustaining Love is evidenced in all that He has created, but especially in His provision for mankind even when people reject God. The model is found in nature and illustrated when Jesus said that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The proper response to His creative sustaining love is reverence and gratitude

 

2.      God’s Individual Redemptive Love is expressed in His eternal plan to call out people to be His own. It is this love that is expressed in the familiar first part of John 3:16. The biblical model of this love is seen in the events of the initial Passover. God redeemed people for Himself as they responded by believing and applying the blood of a lamb to the doorposts of their homes allowing the death angel to pass over them.  The appropriate response to God’s redemptive love is repentance and belief in the sacrificial atonement of Jesus Christ (John 3:16), which opens the door to the next expression of God’s love.

 

3.      God’s Covenant Family Love is accompanied by a new identity and position in Christ, “the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This expression of God’s love is seen in such passages as John 1:12 and 1 John 3:1-3. Family love includes (among others) justification, adoption, citizenship, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  The expected response to this expression of God’s love is faith-filled obedience. The apostle John states in his first letter that obedience is a clear indicator of being a child of God and is how we are to demonstrate our love

 

4.      Lastly, we bring God’s love into all relationship.  Whether in Friendships, family, romantic or our love towards God.  It marks who were are and what we do.   God’s Personal Intimate Love exposes us to the heart of God and is a result not only of maturity but continued alignment to God’s will.   Jesus said they will know His Disciples by the way we love one another.  I close with 1 Cor 13:4-8.  4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails.  1 Cor 13:13 states that these three remain.  Faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love.  SO let us love through this week.

 

5.      Pythias was accused of plotting against the tyrant and sentenced to death.  Accepting his sentence, Pythias asked to be allowed to return home one last time to settle his affairs and bid his family farewell. Not wanting to be taken for a fool, the king refused, believing that, once released, Pythias would flee and never return. Damon offered himself as a hostage in Pythias' absence, and when the king insisted that, should Pythias not return by an appointed time, Damon would be executed in his stead, Damon agreed and Pythias was released.

Dionysius was convinced that Pythias would never return, and as the day Pythias promised to return came and went, he called for Damon's execution—but just as the executioner was about to kill Damon, Pythias returned.  Apologizing to his friend for the delay, Pythias explained that on the passage back to Syracuse pirates had captured his ship and thrown him overboard, but that he swam to shore and made his way back to Syracuse as quickly as possible, arriving just in time to save his friend.So astonished by and pleased with their friendship, Dionysius pardoned both men.