Sermon Transcript
Well, good morning, everybody. It’s sure great to be together, isn’t it? We sure had a great weekend. It started with the family fun night. We’ll show you a little bit of some slides in a few minutes, but that was such a good time.
Now to be together this morning, encourage each other around song and the Word of God. We’re gonna open up our scriptures this morning into the book of 1 John again. We’re kind of doing a series here we called Sure. How do you know for sure that you’re a member of God’s family, and how does that play itself out in our lives? In terms of our assurance and how we live.
So, I invite you to open up a Bible if you brought one, or just— there might be a Bible in front of you, or I’m sure there’s an app somewhere you can get a Bible there, or use the message note sheet. We got the passage that has already been read on the message note sheet for you this morning. Probably you’re aware of the Jesus Movement, at least a few of you are. Kind of like Woodstock. You ever— some of you have heard of that before, Woodstock, or you go back to the The early ’70s, the Jesus Movement was taking over.
It was in full swing at the time. And February of 1970, 4 guys walked into Chuck Smith’s office at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. And Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa really became a significant part of the Jesus Movement. But anyway, these 4 guys that walked in were musicians, and they were able to have a conversation with Chuck Smith, the pastor, and they said, you know, we’re just wondering if maybe we could come back on Monday night at your youth meeting and play music for your youth and, you know, what you guys are doing on Monday night. Chuck said, well, let’s— let me hear you play.
So they went out to their van and they got their guitars and they came inside and they did a little mini concert for Chuck right there in his office. And in Chuck’s words, Chuck said it was beautiful. I mean, what they did was beautiful, actually made him cry. And he said to them, so what do you guys call yourselves? And they said, we’re Love Song.
And this Love Song group that night, or that next day came back and they played for the youth meeting and they had a significant impact on the youth at that church. And from that moment on, this thing was gonna get going. That concert really kind of got things going at Calvary. And it spread from there so that Love Song became one of the first Christian rock bands that ultimately impacted thousands of people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, I bring this to your attention this morning because I think it’s fascinating to go back to how God worked through, you know, just some musicians at that time, but he continues to work through music in a number of ways.
In fact, for us, we were impacted, Bernice and myself. We weren’t dating each other at the time, but we were impacted by Love Song. I’m talking literally the group, okay? I can see some of you like reading into this thing. Do not read anything into this.
But anyway, we were impacted by Love Song in 1972. So, 2 years after they got the whole thing going, we were in Dallas, Texas at the Cotton Bowl, and they had called together this thing called Explo ’72. Explo ’72. This is a picture of those that are gathered, 80,000 people who came to this event. I’m sitting right over there on— you can see me, can’t you?
Anyway, it was a life-changing event. It impacted so many of us, and some of it came through the songs that were played. And one of the bands that played there was LoveSong. And one of the songs they played had these lyrics: Now the time to change our foolish— now’s the time to change our foolish ways. Feel the love the Son of God can bring by believing, by receiving him.
Feel the love. Now, that was a big part of that whole movement. Peace, love, dove, all the rest of the stuff, you know, that was going on at the time. But these guys were bringing a different message. Their message was we were made by love and we were made for love by the God who created us.
And he created us to sing a song. And the song that he created us to sing is a love song. And the tragedy is, is that sin came into the world and ever since we’ve been singing off tune.
And it’s not just obvious in the world, but it actually can be obvious even in the church. And so, this little passage that we come to this morning talks about what we can do, get back on tune with this whole matter of love and how it plays itself out in our lives out in the world, but also how it should play itself out in the life of the church. So, this is what John writes to these Christians in Asia Minor who are in all these different churches who are having some struggles in this area of love. And this is what he said, dear friends, I’m not writing you a new command but an old one you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard, yet I am writing you a new command.
Its truth is seen in him you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there’s nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. He does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded him.
Now, this is the first time in John’s little epistle here, 1 John, that John now begins to focus on love, and it’s not gonna be the only time. He’s gonna focus on love 2 more times in terms of a block of content. He’s gonna focus on chapter 3, verses 10 to 18, on love, and then chapter 4 and verses 7 to 21, which obviously, if he’s, you know, taken some time in 3 different places of this very short letter, just 5 chapters, to focus on love, that would suggest love is a big thing. And it’s something that you can never exhaust the topic. You can spend a lot of time just digging into this.
In fact, the whole Scriptures, right? The Word of God, the Bible, is a message of love, and it’s as relevant now to us today as it was in God’s day, as it was in the ’70s. And part of what makes it so relevant now is that we’re still living in a world that has a ginormous problem. And what is that ginormous problem? We are living in a world that is corrupted by hate.
I don’t have to tell you that. You’ve seen it. And it not only plays out in the world, but it at times can play out in the church. And that’s why John specifically focused on this matter of hatred in the church and says in verse 9, anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. And then also in verse 11, whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness.
He does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded him. So, hate, obviously, we did start in chapter 1 with this whole matter of darkness and evil being present in the world. We talked about the dark side. Well, evil that pervades the world comes out in ways like hate or hatred. And this is a fleshly thing.
In Galatians 5, where you have a list of sins, okay, a list of sins. Galatians 5:19-21, it says, the acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred. There it is, like right in the center of the list. Discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. And to say, and the like, is to say, I could just keep on adding sins to this list.
He’s saying this isn’t an exhaustive list. It’s a list of what evil looks like, what sin looks like, what darkness looks like, and the kinds of ways that we are negatively impacted by that sin or these sins. So, it has impacted the entire world. John recognizes that here in 1 John. Paul recognizes that in the book of Galatians.
Hatred is something that could be described as detesting somebody. It’s abhorring somebody. It’s an internal attitude where perhaps it leads us to want to have nothing to do with someone, to treat them as slime or as dirt or somebody less than. Have you seen any hatred lately? Well, that’s pretty obvious, you know.
I mean, not only can we see it in ourselves, but you don’t have to look hard to see it around the world. Are there any people around us that are living with hatred toward other people? Well, what about the senseless shootings? See this all the time now, senseless shootings of mature people, older people, younger people. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
Senseless shootings of spouses and parents and past employers, teachers and principals, doctors and therapists now are getting shot. Crowds of people at concerts? People at garlic food festivals? Have you seen people’s character being defamed in our culture where there’s name-calling, there’s bullying, there are words or behavior that are slanderous or judgmental toward others? Or have you seen any racial, cultural, political, or religious hatred acted out or spoken toward other people that perhaps are different than us.
There’s so much hatred in the world right now, you find yourself like thinking twice before you go out somewhere. You know, should we go to that restaurant? Where should we sit once we’re in the restaurant? Do we go to that concert? Is this a safe concert to go to?
Are they going to do proper inspecting of people while they’re coming in? I mean, you know, why those things even come to our minds now is something that we get. You know, we know It’s a whole different culture right now. We don’t even want to tune into our news sources anymore because it seems like every time we tune into the news source, we’re reading about another hating, you know, another shooting or another something where people don’t care about somebody else anymore. And so there’s just like rampant hatred throughout the world.
And what John is saying is that the hatred that is out there can come into the church because it could come through our sinful desires and our fleshly ways and all that sort of thing. And hatred can wreak havoc on the church. It can show up in the church. Now, some of you are sitting here this morning, yeah, I’m not surprised about that. I mean, I’ve seen that before in the church.
It’s awful, but I’ve seen it. Sometimes— and you saw the list here just a minute ago, Galatians 5— sometimes this hatred’s connected to another term that was used there, selfish ambition. I got to have it my way. If I don’t have it my way, then, you know, I don’t want anything to do with these people. It can show up in the church.
It may show up because of past wound, may show up because of a past hurt or an unkind word or an unkept commitment, a promise of a commitment that was made that was broken. There’s so many ways it can show up. Now we might, you know, when we look at this, we might be tempted to think, well, we don’t have a ginormous problem with hatred, you know, that’s just something that somebody else has. But let me ask you, are you sure about that? Is there anybody you can’t stand that’s in God’s family?
I mean, you just can’t stand them. You wish that person would just go to another church, you know. Purposely, you sit on the opposite side of the room as the other person. I’m not saying that can’t happen. I mean, it could.
I mean, this thing can show up in so many different ways. There’s scorning. Scorning can show up in relationships. What’s scorning? Scorning is viewing other people as worthless.
A person’s worthless. It’s not seeing them in the image of God, seeing them as God created them in his image. There’s slandering others. Isn’t that a form of hatred? Putting others down, you know, basically condemning them.
There’s scorning, there’s slandering, and there’s also shunning. I think this is one of the ways it does show up in the church, shunning. What’s that? Rejecting others. It’s, you know, ignoring them.
It’s refusing to talk to them. You ever had another Christian refuse to talk to you? I’ve walked up to a few Christians before and said, you know, hi. They wouldn’t even talk to me.
They wouldn’t even talk to me.
That kind of thing can show up in the church. Ginormous hatred can show up anywhere. And what this passage suggests is there is a perfect solution so that when hate comes to church, the solution is in verse 10, whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. What’s the perfect solution to hatred? It’s love.
You see it there? Love. What kind of love? This agape love, which is love of sacrifice. It’s selfless.
It’s unselfish kind of love. It’s the kind of love that is the result of what? Do you see it in verse 10? It’s the result of living in darkness or living in the light? It’s the result of living in the light.
If you live in the light, then guess what he’s saying? You’re gonna live in love. And if you’re living in love, then you’re living in the light. We’re talking about God’s love here. And if we’re living in the light and we’re living in love, then there’s going to be no stumbling into darkness.
You see that connection? So, the picture is we need to learn to live in the light, which would then help us live in love, and therefore then we won’t stumble into hatred, or we won’t trip over hatred, the sin of disdain of other people. We won’t scorn others. We won’t slander others. We won’t shun others, but we will live in love.
We’ll live in light. Now, where is that light found? You know the answer to this, many of you. It’s found in who? It’s found in Jesus Christ.
Remember Jesus said, I am the light, I am the light of the world, John 8:12. I’m the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness. There you go. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
So they’re going to live in Jesus in the light, and that light will keep them from stumbling into the darkness. And the reason why it’ll keep them from stumbling in the darkness is because they’re walking and they’re living in the light. Now, this isn’t hard theology, is it, to understand? I mean, I hope you’re with me on this whole thing. If you’ve got light, it’s gonna keep you from stumbling.
Have you ever stumbled in the darkness and hurt your toe? You ever smashed your toe? Why did that happen? Well, because you were trying to walk around in darkness and there was no light and you thought things were, you know, okay, but you didn’t know somebody put something in the middle of the floor where you usually walk and then, you know, now it’s a whole different thing. And it would have been different had there been some light, but there was no light, so you smashed your toe or you broke a bone or you fell on your face even worse.
Bernice and I recently were with the staff pastors and we just had a great time up at Hume Lake. And one of the things that you did up there was you went to some evening meetings, and usually the evening meeting ended late enough that it was dark outside. And we would go over and have some snacks and that sort of thing and hang out and talk. And there’s— they had fire, campfires there, not fire all over the place, just campfires. And so you could hang around the campfires and you could do all that stuff.
And usually you would end up walking back to your housing, your lodge, and it could potentially part of the walk be dark. I mean, like really dark out there. And so one of the nights as we were walking back, we took a a path that I’m part of this path. There was no light at all. It was just darkness, and we could easily stumble as we were walking along.
So I, I did the gentleman thing here, was I grabbed Bernice’s hand, and I’m holding her hand, and we’re walking through the darkness. And then all of a sudden, at one point, she let go of my hand. She just like removed her hand, and actually she moved away from me. When she took her hand away, she actually moved away. And I said, so why’d you do that?
And she said, well, I think you were about to fall over the edge, and I know you want me to live and be here for our family.
Okay, she didn’t say it exactly like that, but she did let go of my hand because she perceived that I was close to danger and I was about ready to fall over this cliff that was there. It wasn’t like a big cliff, but it was enough of a cliff that you You don’t really want to fall over that kind of a cliff. And so she had moved away, but you know what? The whole thing could have been prevented if we had some light, if we would have had a flashlight. What I didn’t realize at the time was we both had flashlights because we’re both like carrying our phones, right?
And it didn’t occur to us that you could take your phone out now and you could turn on the flashlight, but it didn’t even come to mind. That didn’t come to mind at all. Do you get the picture here? There’s a solution to darkness, and the solution to darkness is found in light. And the greatest light that we have in the midst of a dark world is the light of Jesus Christ.
Jesus says, I’m the light. I am the light of the world. And if you follow me, if you connect with me, if you abide in me, if you abide in my light, you are not going to walk in darkness. You’re not going to— and I love that word stumble, don’t you? You’re not going to stumble.
You’re not going to stumble over things like hatred. Now, you can ignore the light. You could forget you have the light, which, you know, in a sense, that’s what we did at that moment in time. Recently, I was talking to one of our leaders about a trip that he took, and he took a great— they had a great trip to Paris, he said. I asked him, you know, how’d it go?
And he said, well, actually, it got off to an awful start. I said, well, you know, when somebody says like that, you got to know, right? So why did it start so awful? He said, well, my wallet was pickpocketed in Paris. That led to a very interesting conversation, in part because Bernice and I have had that experience when we were in Paris as well.
And what he said to us, we really identified with because he said, you know, with all the travel that I’ve done, I knew better. But I didn’t take the necessary precautions and it bit me.
Well, that’s applicable here, isn’t it? You know, we live in a world of darkness and we have all the precautions that we need found in Jesus Christ and walking in his light, but so oftentimes we can find ourselves, you know, sort of taking it for granted. Not taking the precautions, not really paying attention, not putting on the full armor of God. You know, armor of God, you just take that matter. The armor of God is meant to be put on with prayer, which means prayer needs to be a priority in our lives.
And so, one of the ways that we ought to be praying every day is, Lord, help me to walk in the light in this dark world. I can’t do this alone. I need to walk in your light. Do you ever pray that for other people? You ever pray that for a friend?
Lord, help so-and-so today walk in the light. Do you ever pray that for your kids? You want something to pray about for your kids, pray for that. Lord, help my son, help my daughter walk in the light, because I know if they walk in the light, they’ll walk in love. Boy, that’s a great prayer request, isn’t it?
You ever pray that for your spouse? You ever pray that for your boss? You might pray that all the time. I wish my boss would walk in the light. You get the picture here?
If the light is in us and the light is shining through us, it is a perfect solution to the ginormous problem that we have in the world. And this is a problem of hatred. In fact, it can change the world. Now, look at how John positions that concept that it can change the world. Look at verse 7.
And I know I’m kind of going backwards in the text, but some of you already figured that out. I hope you understand. But in verse 7 he says, dear friends, I’m not writing you a new command but an old one which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard, yet I’m writing you a new command. Its truth is seen in him and you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.
Question, what’s the old command? What’s the old command? Has something to do with love, right? So, the old command is love one another. You can go back into the Scriptures, you can go back to the opening books of the Bible, and you can read about love, and you can read about how God wants humankind to learn to love each other, to love Him, and to love each other.
And then that got written into the laws, such as Leviticus 19:18, where it says, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people. That sounds a little bit to me like hate, doesn’t it? Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. So there’s that old command.
You can go all the way back into the Old Testament and see from the very beginning it was God’s intention that we not hate each other. He’s talking about the family, the chosen people, the Israelites. I don’t want you as a family hating each other. Well, it’s just the same even now. He wants his church as a family to not hate each other, to not seek revenge or bear a grudge against each other, but we’re to love each other, to love our neighbor as ourself.
That’s the old command. And this old command is repeated in the New Testament so that when you get to a book like Galatians again in chapter 5, verse 14, he says the entire law. So this law that contained this old command is summed up in a single command, love your neighbor as yourself. That’s fascinating because he’s taken all that we know about the law, and we know that the law primarily has 2 focuses. I mentioned this last week.
It has an upward focus, a vertical focus on loving God, and then it has a horizontal focus on loving each other. What Paul is saying here is that the entire law, which includes this vertical, is summarized right here. It’s summarized in loving your neighbor. This old command was something not just for then, Paul is saying, it’s something that is also for now. In fact, if you love one another, it’s indicative of the fact that you love God.
You say you love God, then love your neighbor. If you don’t love your neighbor, he’s saying, you don’t really love God. So that’s how important this whole matter of loving each other is. So essentially then, you remember Jesus talked about the, the Good Samaritan and how he said, you know, this is indicative of the kind of relationships that we ought to share with others and this is what love looks like. What love looks like is it’s readiness— it’s ready to meet a need so that if we come across a need, we’re ready to meet the need, we have eyes to see the need, and we have a heart that’s willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary to meet the need.
Well, what is all of that? It’s the old commandment That’s still not obsolete. It’s never gonna be obsolete. Now, I just mentioned this from this perspective. You know, in a culture like the one that we live in right now, it would be very easy to sort of let go of everything old, you know, ’cause we’re bent on everything new.
So, we want new gadgets and new thinking and new philosophies and new way of doing things. And so, we oftentimes focus on the new. What’s nice is that here in this passage, it’s focused on the old and how the old continues to have a place place in our lives today, and it has a place in the church just like it has a place in your family. Parents, you know this. You see your kids wounding one another with their words or hurting one another physically, beating each other up or whatever it is, you’re going to intervene.
You’re going to step in, hopefully, and you’re going to say something about how this is inappropriate. We don’t do this. In our family. We want to learn to love each other. And when Jesus came to earth, he brought a brand new way of thinking about that old command.
That’s what’s fascinating about this passage where John says, verse 8, I am writing you a new command. And this, this new command— notice this connection— is connected to Jesus. The truth that is seen in him. And now it’s seen also in you. You see that in verse 8?
Because— and here’s how we can see that this new command, which is an old command, is working itself out in you. We can see it because the darkness that was there, it’s beginning to pass. It’s beginning to pass, or another word we could say is it’s being replaced. It’s being pushed out with light, and not just any light, but the true light, the light of Jesus Christ. So, when Jesus came into the world, he brought brand-new meaning to this old command, and he did that by demonstrating love in new ways so that people saw in Jesus a new focus on love, a new insight into love, and new behaviors and how that played itself out.
So you remember he was with his disciples this one night and all of a sudden he stands up and he puts on a servant’s towel and he begins to wash their feet and he’s the King of Kings and they’re saying, wait, we haven’t seen this before. This is completely different. And what he did was meant to change them so that they ultimately came to see they are to be people who are serving others. This isn’t all about consumerism. This is about sacrificing on behalf of others.
In fact, he said, Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. That was new. That was new. That was the old commandment made new. And when Jesus said, greater love has no one than this, than one lay down his life for his friends, he was showing them something new.
But he was showing them something new with a whole new reason for the newness of it. We could say it this way. This is a simple way to summarize this— how this new command played out in Jesus’ life. It played out in his serving, his serving and sacrificing on behalf of others. I think that’s one of the things we love about the Family Fun Night is people all out there serving together.
We’re trying to do everything we can to bring Christ to our city. I always think of a Family Fun Night or event like that through 3 C’s: Christ, Christians, and the church. I think it’s a wonderful way for people to come to be touched in some way with the light of Jesus Christ through Christ, bringing Christ to the campus, bringing Christ into all that we do. In fact, I don’t know if you heard this, I just heard this this morning, that there were 14 children that came to faith in Jesus Christ on Friday night through the Child Evangelism Fellowship opportunity that they had there. Amen to that.
And I love that prayer wall that was there. And boy, the way that that worked out was— I’m looking at these folks who helped put the whole thing together and, you know, brainstormed it and all the rest of that. And that was so wonderful how that brought a whole new sense to the work that God was doing there that night and how many people dropped by the prayer wall and put up a prayer and, you know, gave them an opportunity to express some kind of spiritual belief, which is fine. We’re just grateful that they dropped by and dropped in. We brought to the people of our community Christ, Christians, and the church, the church Bridges Community Church, and they could see Jesus Christ through serving.
So Jesus came and he brought a whole new focus and a whole new understanding and a fresh perspective on serving, but he also brought a whole different perspective on seeking out the lost. He came to give his life so that the lost might come to faith in Jesus Christ. He came to seek and to save the lost. He demonstrated serving, he demonstrated seeking, And in the same way as he did, he invites us into that experience as well. Now think about this.
There are a lot of things in our life that can become old and stale. You know, they just need some freshness to them. They need to be redefined or they need to have new meaning. And it’s fascinating how sometimes this new meaning can come to the old. So for instance, you live for the most part without broken bones.
I mean, it’s— I don’t know, we’re not going to do a bone check right now, but you, for the most part, we live without broken bones, right? But then when you break a bone, what happens? You get a whole different perspective, especially if you’re right-handed or left-handed and you break the hand that, you know, you use the most. You get a whole different perspective on how important that hand is. Oh man, are you kidding?
Now that you broke it, you’re just thinking, oh, I don’t know what I’m gonna do anymore. You know, I can’t sign, I can’t do all these things. This has messed up my life. It could be a health change, a health change, an accident, call it whatever you wanna call it. But oftentimes we go through something like that and what does it do for us?
It gives us a whole different perspective on what we had perhaps been taking for granted. Isn’t that true? The old is all of a sudden made new, and we see it different than maybe we’ve been seeing it lately. I played recently Uno, U-N-O. You familiar with that game, that card game?
I played Uno recently with one of my young granddaughters, and that— we had a blast. And I remember thinking, I haven’t played this for like 20 years. I mean, it’s been a long time I haven’t played this game. And this old game all of a sudden became new. For me.
That song that the group up here today led us in, the beautiful song. What’s the name of that song? Beautiful Day? Beautiful Name. The Beautiful Name song.
It was good while we did it. Did I get it right? Okay, so it was wonderful, and we’ve sung that song many times, and But they did something a little bit unique. Do you remember this? You already forgot?
They stopped at a couple places and they read some scripture as we went along with the song. That was the song, right? See, I forgot too.
But it added a sense of freshness, didn’t it? All of a sudden, perhaps, You reflected on what we were singing or what was being read in a new way. Bernice and I recently, we had dinner at Apple Hill in the area over there by Sacramento, and it was just a normal dinner. You know, we ordered something that we would usually eat. We didn’t order liver, you know, or something like that.
We don’t do that. But— or duck or something. I know you guys do that, especially Dan. But we didn’t order that that night. We just ordered something that we usually order, but we had never ordered at this restaurant before, and so we ordered this usual order at the restaurant, but it came out and it was like brand new.
It was like we never had had this before. I don’t know what it was, secret sauce or something, but we both said to each other, this is really good. Now, that wasn’t to say everything we’ve ever eaten before was no good. It was just it had some flavor. Fresh taste to it.
And what Jesus did when he came was he brought brand new meaning to love in a world that’s filled with hatred and potentially for his church that he does not want to be filled with hatred. Now, so what’s the key? The key is walking in his light. The key is experiencing his love in fresh ways. There’s the gospel.
It’s not something that we have to do by ourselves. The newness, especially the newness of this, is found in Christ, isn’t it? It’s found in what God’s going to do in us. What happens when we come to Jesus Christ is he sheds abroad in our hearts his love. His love begins to transform us so that then we find ourselves loving even as he loved.
And when that happens, even as while he was here and has continued, the darkness began to flee away so that wherever Christ was, the light pushed back the darkness. We live in a world right now— did you see the you in verse 8? And you, and you. And you and you and you, mom and dad and friend and worker, and you can be used by God to bring light to the world in such new and fresh ways that people’s lives are changed and hatred, hatred is changed. There’s hatred that’s replaced with love.
So you go back to 1970 when Love Song walked into Chuck Smith’s office. Who would have known? Who would have known that 4 guys that had to go out to their hippie van and get their guitars would end up becoming a phenom in the early ’70s In fact, if you read through some of the accounts, there’s a feeling that much of the music we sing today actually goes back to that period of time where these Christian rock groups began to play music like we’d never heard before, and it went on to impact thousands of people’s lives, thousands of people’s lives with the love of Jesus Christ. I hope you don’t undermine the potential impact that you have as a Christ follower.
You say, how can that play itself out in me? Well, it’s not through your work, it’s through the work of Jesus Christ, the new work of Jesus Christ through our lives, changing us from the inside out. By love, for love.
Well, let’s thank him for it. Lord, thank you for the opportunity to talk about this this morning and just reflect together on the newness of love that is found in Jesus Christ that can transform us and transform the world. And so our prayer would be, if there’s anybody here that has not yet come to the light, that they would, that they would receive the light that’s found in Christ. And if that’s your desire, tell God that this morning. He’ll hear that prayer.
Lord, I’ve been living in darkness, and I ask you to change my heart and forgive me.
Make me one of your children.
Pour out in me light. May I be one who grows in love, and may love replace hate. God, change us, transform us, use us in a world that so desperately needs to see the love of Jesus Christ. And may that light shine strong through our lives. For we pray this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
