Love

So we are beginning a new series this week called Uncommon. And the idea of this series is relationships are funny. Would you agree with me on that? And they're hard.

And no one denies that, right? They have their ups, they have their downs, they have their ends, they have their outs, they're full of conflict, dispute, there's good times, there's bad times, there's communication issues, everybody brings in different backgrounds to who they are and what defines them as a person has been shaped by their environment. And all of us bring in all these things and they can be quite messy. And if there's anyone that says, I have relationships figured out, they probably aren't good with relationships, okay? Some of them we do are modeled well.

We do a good job with them. But others are bad and some of them are ugly. And we want to have the best relationships possible. So it's good for us to set aside some time every year, especially during February, because we're all still thinking about relationships, we're thinking about love, and we're thinking about all of those things. It's good for us to set aside some time and deal with the most important things in our life, and that's our relationships.

And these series are always the hardest for me, to be honest with you, because I deal with relationship issues as well. Because relationships are messy. Whether you're a spiritual leader, whether you're just the average Joe that walks in the door, we all deal with relationships, right? Relationships are hard. And because relationships are a bit crazy in this world, God teaches us about relationships.

In fact, God is a relational God. He knows about relationships and He has a lot to tell us about relationships. And whether you're a believer or not, maybe you've come here and you're not really into the Jesus thing, you know, the resurrection and, and, and all this stuff that's kind of hocus pocus to you. And I get that. But if you look at the Bible and what it actually teaches, it can be practical to the non-believer as well as the believer.

So if you'll go on this journey with me for the next five weeks on relationships, I promise you, we will all learn much together. I'm learning as I study and I'm sure you will learn as well as we dig into relationships. So we're looking at Romans, Romans 12. So if you have your Bibles, some of you have phones, smartphones, we'll have the scripture up on the screen. There's a lot of, you have your notes here.

You can pull out your notes. We've got all the scriptures up here. We have some notes that you can fill in as you go to kind of, so you don't fall asleep. You know, I know I can get bored, boring sometimes, but you have something here that you can follow. And Romans is a very interesting book.

It's, it's full of, it's, it's actually a very heavy book, full of doctrine and theology, particularly as it, as it, as it looks to salvation and God's relationship with us, grace, all these things. It can be a really heavy book. And Paul writes to the Romans. In fact, Paul hasn't even visited the Roman church, but he writes to the Romans in a different way than he does in the other letters. And he talks a lot about what it really means to live the Christian life and what it really means to be in relationship with God and to understand his grace and understand his love and, and, and the, the deep things and the mysteries that are just really hard to understand.

He takes that to another level. But in this chapter, in chapter 12, he kind of switches it up and he begins to talk about people and culture. So Romans 12, one through two, I pulled this out of the message paraphrase because I think it really kind of hits home. It kind of reduces it and makes it easy to understand for, for the average person. It says, so here's what I want you to do.

God helping you take your everyday ordinary life. You're sleeping, you're eating, you're going to work, you're walking around in life. And I want to stop there. I want you to take that section and I want you to add in your place. Maybe it's your dating, maybe it's your relationships, your marriage, your friendships, your church life, your status, your work life, whatever that is.

I want you to put that there. I want you to put it and insert it in that slot. You're eating, sleeping, going to work, walking around and place it before God as an offering. Other versions call it a living sacrifice that daily. We are conforming to his image, living out our ins and outs and our everyday things, walking out the spiritual life, working it out, embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

Isn't that cool? The best thing you can do for him is embracing what he has for us. Don't become so well adjusted. Now get this, well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. What does that mean?

That sometimes the culture can influence us so much we don't even know that it's giving us bad thoughts and it's conforming us to the way it does. Now there's good things about culture but there's also not so good things about culture. And sometimes culture influences us so much we don't even know it's influencing us. We don't even know when it's right and wrong, bad, good, whatever. Right?

So don't become so well adjusted that you're not able to discern what's going on around you is what Paul's saying here. Instead fix your attention on God and you'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants for you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. So we live in a world that's a bit messed up, right?

And relationships are messed up and we're so influenced by the things around us we don't even know that we're messed up a lot of times, right? And we think the common way, the common way with relationships is just how it is and we accept the typical, right? But God gives us an uncommon way in relationships. He's leading us to something best. So for the next week I'm inviting you to come along with me as we talk about subjects like commitment.

And next week we're going to really hit on commitment. You cannot miss next week. It's going to be incredible and you're going to hear such a good message. Actually Chris Scott's going to be sharing with us next week on commitment, marriage and commitment. And he's got a great story for you.

God's going to really pour into him about commitment and love and what it really means to be committed. And we're going to talk about conflict. We're going to talk about communication. We're going to talk about influence. All of us are influential.

We have a sphere of influence and we're going to talk about these relationships. Whether it's platonic or romantic, we'll talk about these things. And I really think it's going to really get us to a new level in our relationships. Thank you. You Thank you.

So today, I want to talk about an introduction. Uncommon love. Uncommon love. Valentine's Week just passed, and many of you are still thinking about what you did and what you didn't do. And some of you got together as a couple, and you decided, hey, let's not do anything this Valentine's Day.

You know, it's not going to be a celebration for us. And then the man, because it's usually the man, doesn't do anything, and the woman does it anyway, right? They had the flowers out on the table in the cars, and you're like, oh my, I thought we weren't doing anything. Okay, is that a lesson for you men? I always do something, like a little something, if anything, right?

Amen. So the women say amen. Some of you are still trying to figure that out. For us, Miranda was actually terribly sick on Valentine's Day. She, my wife over here, my lovely wife, yeah, she was really, really bad off.

So I decided to take the kids, you know, and kind of do something with them. I took them out for pizza, and we had one of those heart-shaped pizzas at Why Not. Have you ever done that, the Why Not heart-shaped pizza? It's really cool. It's kind of neat.

So we got together, we had that, and I said, you know what? Kids, we're going to go, and we're going to shop Valentine's Day for mommy. Yeah, so I blew it up. I went all out and went to Walgreens, right? And I took them down Valentine's Isle at Walgreens, and I said, you just go for it.

You know, get whatever you want for mommy, right? Well, Max is my sweet one, and he's thinking about mommy because mommy's sick, and he's going down. He says, he pulls out a little rose, you know, and it's cute, and mommy will feel better if I get this for her. And then he goes, and he finds this little heart-shaped candy box, you know, the candy box with the heart, and it has a little teddy bear on it, and he's like, mommy, this will make mommy feel better and stuff like that. And then my other one, Savannah, she's sweet, she's sweet now.

I don't want to make it sound like she's not sweet, but she was thinking about herself, and she went straight to the M&Ms, the pretty red, blue, Valentine color M&Ms, and said, I think mommy wants this. And I said, I bet mommy does want this, and within an hour, she was asking for those M&Ms. It reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons where Homer buys Marge the bowling ball and puts Homer on it and gives it to her as a present and says, I know someone who would like it if you don't, right? I mean, that's kind of how we do things sometimes, right? Some of you are probably, some of you are single and probably plan a date on Valentine's Day.

You ask somebody out because, you know, why not? You know, they'll probably say yes on Valentine's Day because neither one of us want to be alone, right? So it's a great opportunity. And you ask the person out, and on your way there, she calls you up. And I say she because usually it's the man that, sometimes it's the woman as well.

And says, I'm going to bring my friend. That's not a good sign, man. She's bringing her friend. And I've had that actually happen, so. The most horrible date I've ever had in my life.

I felt so uncomfortable the whole time. I was ready to get out of there. Peter, you had a great time. I'm so glad, brother. Tell us more about that later.

So many of us come from different places. Love, looking, maybe we're looking, maybe we're not looking, maybe we're single, maybe we're married, maybe we're just friends, trying to find good friendships. All of us come from different areas in our relationship. And it may not mean that we need a better date, a song, or a present, or a place, or a situation. It may not mean any of that.

It may just mean that in order to have the best relationships, we need to redefine what love is, what God's love is, and look at what He says about love. In fact, this comes from a very familiar verse that you're all familiar with. It's John 3, 16. I bet I could go around the room and everybody could quote it. But it's one of the most famous verses in the Bible, and for a good reason, because it sums up the entire gospel message and what love is.

For God so loved, for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. God is love. It's not some concept or some philosophy out there that somehow humans take a hold of and somehow it just shows up. It's just not some random thing or random act or anything. God is love.

He is the very personification of love. Jesus is love. He is the origin of love. He created love because He not only created love, He is love. He pours love.

So if we really want to know about God's love, it's good for us to really look at God's love and look at it for ourselves. So here's a few things I put down about what God's love really is. God's love is, first of all, unconditional. If you'll fill in the blank there, that's your first note. Unconditional.

God's love is unconditional. He didn't decide to love us when we decided to love Him. He didn't decide to love us when we decided to do the right things, when we decided to do the moral things. The Bible says, the Word of God says, when yet we were sinners, He loved us. We were yet sinners.

We were far from Him. We wanted nothing to do with Him. Yet, He loves us. No matter what we do, no matter where we are, no matter how we act, He loves us anyway. He does not put conditions.

He does not put rules on His love. His love is unconditional. And it also is unfailing. So the second point is God's love is also sacrificial. Sacrificial.

It cost Him something. And it was very costly. In fact, He gave His Son. His Son died on the cross. He made a commitment.

This is the ultimate commitment He made. He gave His Son so that you could have a relationship with Him. It was sacrificial. It wasn't something that He just decided to put, that He could just get rid of, you know. Let me just do this.

Let me give my Son and it's okay, you know. No, He gave the very best because His love is sacrificial. Thirdly, His love is personable. His love is personable. Again, it's not a philosophy.

It's not an idea. It's not a force. Love isn't just some kind of force out there. Jesus came to reveal the love of God to the world. He is the very personification of love.

He is love. When we see Jesus, we see God. We see love. He is love. And He desires to have a personal relationship with us.

He's not way up there somewhere where we're trying to reach Him. He is personable. He is our friend. Fourthly, God's love is acceptable. It's acceptable.

We can actually receive His love. It's open for all, for all who believe in Him. We have access. It is accessible. It's accessible.

And some of you walked in here today and said, I just can't receive love. Maybe you can. But through God, you can. Through Him, you can. His love is accessible.

You may be far from Him. Maybe people have hurt you, but His love is accessible. You can receive His love. And fifthly, God's love is accessible. It's accessible.

It's not for the perfect. It's not for the put together. It's not for the color, the age, the social status. It's not some kind of geographic location. It's not reserved for a certain people.

It's reserved for everybody. It is accessible to everyone who believes. For all who believe in Him have access to Jesus. Jesus is the fingerprint I.D.

Just like you have this iPhone, you know, or the phones with the fingerprint I.D. He is the fingerprint I.D. He is the key to knowing God's love.

And people in 1 John were trying to figure this out. John was trying to explain to the people about this love. And he goes in. I love how he says this in 1 John 4, 9, and 12. Starting with verse 9.

He says, This is how God showed His love among us. He sent His one and only Son. There it is. The sacrifice that I was talking about. Into the world that we might live through Him.

This is love. Not that we loved God. We didn't love God. But that He loved us. And He sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. There's a secret sauce right there. No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. And so we know and we rely on the love God has for us.

We know, we lean in, we rely on the love that God has for us. We love because, what? He first loved us. So the secret to understanding love. Before we can begin any kind of relationship with anyone.

Before we can try to figure out all the things that, you know, popular psychology tells us to do. Or the latest book tells us to do. And we're trying to figure out relationships. First of all, we have to understand before anything else that God loves us. We can't love God and others until we know how much God loves us.

So if you're following your notes, real love starts with being loved by God. Being loved by God. He loves you. If you walked in here today and you didn't feel that way, I'm going to tell you, He loves you. He loves you.

He loves you. He loves you. Get that in your head. He loves you. So the first step to learning love is not people.

Because people are broken. The world is broken. The world is hurt. It's messed up. Relationships are messed up.

But it starts with God. It starts with His love. Even our closest people will hurt us, right? I mean, think about it. Your family members will probably hurt you more than anybody, right?

They'll say something or do something wrong. You know, you go to the family Christmas party or whatever and it says, Hmm, I heard your daughter's dating that loser, right? You know? And you're like, why did you just say that, right? Or I heard you lost your job, you know?

Too bad for you. Maybe you should have worked harder, you know? You hear things like that, right? I mean, you would think that families would help each other and sometimes they harm us. Even our best friends say things and do things.

But we don't start with those things. We start with God's love. 1 Corinthians 13, 4 and 8. And this is just, this is kind of the love chapter. I mean, everybody has these in their wedding and everything, but it stands true.

It stands true. Because the uncommon way says to do it the other way. If somebody does something bad to me, then I turn around and do something bad back, right? A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, yada, yada. We work from that point of view.

But we're told something different in 1 Corinthians. An uncommon way of thinking about love. It says this. Love is patient. Love is kind.

Love does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking.

It is not easily angered. It keeps no wrongs. Oh, it keeps no record of wrongs. It keeps no record of wrongs. Can I say that again?

It keeps no record of wrongs. Because we often keep record of wrongs, right? We're good at keeping record of wrongs. I'm good at keeping record of wrongs. I want to list all the wrongs that people have done to me.

I can't believe they did that to me. Do they think I'm going to do something back to them after they did that to me? Forget about it, right? We keep record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects. It always trusts. It always hopes. It always preserves. Love never fails.

God's love never fails. Which leads me to the second point. Real love is showing God's love to others. It starts out with knowing how much God loves us, and then it bleeds over into our relationships. We're able to love others.

Amen. So what do we do with this? I just want to give you a few practical things that you can do in your relationships that kind of apply to what we just talked about. Well, number one, uncommon love speaks. Uncommon love speaks.

It's okay to say I love you once in a while. Tell your spouse you love her or you love him. Tell your children you love them. Children, tell your mother and father I love you once in a while. Men, tell men I love you.

And I know we don't say I love you the way we say it to our spouse, but you can do it a manly way. I love you, bro. I love you, bro. Just slap them. I love you, bro.

I love you, bro. I mean, it's okay. It's okay to do that. It's okay to say those things. Tell your friends you love them.

Speak it. Speak it. Sometimes you need to speak it. We don't speak it enough. We don't tell people that we actually love each other.

Speak it. Uncommon love speaks. Number two, uncommon love writes. Uncommon love writes. I know we don't send letters around like we used to, right?

I mean, you hear about those romantic love stories where the letters go back and forth and people don't see each other for a long time and they just kind of build into chain letters and stuff. But we do have text, you know? Sometimes we... Yeah. Y'all use it a lot, right?

Some of you use it right now. Right there, there, there. No. Texting right now, right? You can text somebody.

And you can even emoji them, right? You can put a little heart, you know? And a little kiss or something like that, you know? And now we have these, like, moving pictures that you can do, you know, where a person's dancing, you know? Kind of do...

So you can do something like that, right? So write something, right? If it's a letter, if it's a text, if it's an email, if it's something, sometimes that goes a long way just by telling somebody, hey, hey, I love you. I appreciate you. Telling...

Whether it's romantic or whether it's a friendship, whatever it is, you know, I just want to tell you I appreciate you, I love you. It goes a long way. Uncommon love rights. Thirdly, uncommon love gives. It gives.

It gives. It gives. It gives. It gives. It gives.

It gives. Thank you. And a little gift can go a long way. It doesn't have to be anything extravagant. It doesn't have to be diamonds.

It doesn't have to be, you know, the latest thing. Well, Miranda says diamonds are fine. I take out a second mortgage or something like that to kind of pay for them, you know. But it doesn't have to be anything extravagant. A little thing goes a long way.

I went out of my way to get you Chick-fil-A today because I know you like it. I went out of my way to get you this special candy or whatever it is. I went out of my way to take this for you or do this for you. I went out of my way that way. It shows, it tells you that you really care about them.

The littlest things that I have are the most sentimental things. They don't mean a lot, but they're the most sentimental things because it pours out love. I really was thinking about you when I purchased this little cheap $5 item. But it just reminded me of you. And those are the most special things that you can have in a relationship.

It gives. It gives. Food, candy, whatever it is. Number four, it forgives. Uncommon love forgives.

And some of you are like, well, pastor, I can't forgive. It's hard to forgive. You don't understand what I've been through. You don't understand my past. You don't understand my family background.

You don't understand what this has done to me, you know. It's just really hard for me to forgive. And I know because I deal with it too. Because why? People are hard.

People hurt. People are painful. Relationships are painful. But through God, you can forgive. You can forgive.

Because God first forgave us. Back to His love. We did Him wrong. Yet He says, I forgive you. I'm reminded of the scripture.

Jesus is talking to the disciples. The disciples are asking Him questions. And they say, Jesus, how much can we forgive? And Peter says, do we give seven times, right? You know why he said it that way?

Because he thought seven times was plenty, right? That's plenty of times to forgive somebody. But obviously, after seven times, they don't forgive you. And they keep doing wrong. Then you just stop forgiving them, right?

He says, no. You forgive them 70 times seven, right? You keep forgiving them and forgiving them and forgiving them. Because uncommon love forgives. Common love says forget.

But uncommon love says forgive, forgive, and accept them. Forgive no matter what. He accepted you. You can accept people. Forgive them.

Forgive them. Uncommon love forgives. And number five, uncommon love lives. Uncommon love lives. Love people in everything.

In everything you do. A living sacrifice. Relationships. Uncommon love lives. The people that are right in front of you.

Every day. As you walk in and out of work. In and out of play. Wherever you are. You can live love.

Live love. Romans 12, 15 in the Amplified says this. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Sharing others joy. And weep with those who weep.

Sharing others grieve. We share our joys together. We share our griefs together. We live out life together. And this is why small groups are so important.

I can't preach this enough. Every week I put this back out there. You've got to be in a small group. You've got to be in a community. You can't just an hour 15 minutes on Sunday morning just doesn't work.

When you're together, you do life together. You rejoice with each other. You share each other's sorrows. You pray with each other. You talk out things with each other.

You live with each other. You're living life. That's what love is about. It seems so uncommon to actually love the people in your community and in your church. It's just, you know, you're supposed to love yourself, right?

You love yourself and you keep a hold of yourself because we're raised in a culture that says, you know what? It's all about you, right? I'm American. It's all about me. It's all about my rights.

It's all about my benefits. It's all about what I get and what I want. But God gives us a different kind of love. He said it's much more than that. It's all about people.

And it starts with God's love. So in conclusion, let God love you. Some of you haven't. Some of you have been in church your entire life. And you've never understood what it really means to be loved by God.

You've never understood what it is to have a God who actually desires a personal relationship with you. You never knew what that means. First Corinthians 13, 13 says, and now these three things remain faith, hope, and love. But these powerful words are said, but the greatest of these, the greatest of these is love. The greatest of these repetitively I am.

Because I want you to know that God, wherever you've been, wherever you've come from, whatever your situation, whatever your background, I'm so far away from God faster. He loves you. I've been dishonorable to him. He loves you. I don't know if he'll ever accept me.

He accepts you. And with every head bowed and every eye closed, I want to pray for two types of people here today. There are those of you. There are those of you who never understood what that really meant. You may have even called yourself a Christian your entire life.

And perhaps you are, but you've never really tapped into what it really means to be loved by God. And therefore, it's never transferred over to loving others. So I want to pray for you today. I want to pray for you today. Dear Father, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, I pray that you would just deepen our hearts.

Deepen our hearts to your love, God. That you would ignite something in us. Ignite something in us. A passion for you, God. To know that inflame us from the inside out, Lord.

Change us from the inside out. Pour your love on us, Lord Jesus, so that we know you more. We know you more. In the same spirit of prayer as we're praying together, there are some of you today that have never, never given your heart to Christ. You never had a personal relationship with him.

And today, and I want us to take this time very seriously because some people here right now are getting ready to change their entire lives. God's getting ready to change some hearts today. Getting ready to change the trajectory of your life. Some of you here today, you've come in here broken and hurt and in pain. But you are ready to give your life to Christ.

And today is today. Don't miss out on today. If that's you today, I want you to be bold. I want you to raise your hand. Raise your hand.

Raise your hand. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Amen. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Anybody else, come on, God called out the disciples boldly. If you would gently raise your hand, I just want to pray for you.

I want to pray for you. Hallelujah. In the name of Jesus, we praise Jesus. We praise Jesus. Pray with me this prayer.

Lord, I admit that I've been far away from you a long time, Lord, but today, I'm trusting in you. I'm turning my heart and life over to you, God. Today is the day I make that confession that you died on the cross for my sin because you loved me that much. That, Father, you gave your Son so that I could have hope and I could have peace and I could live. I could live in you, Lord, because you love me that much.

So today, I believe that you died on the cross I believe that you're the Son of God. I believe that you gave your life for me. Today, I receive you. I receive your love. Come and live inside of me.

Make me whole. Make me new. We ask this in your name.