Proof of God's Love
Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from 1 John 4:17-18. Discussion points: Fully experiencing God’s love changes how we interact with him without fear, we can see whether we’ve been changed by God’s love by how we love others, sharing God’s love and encouragement can have far-reaching impacts on everyone around us.
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Scripture reader: [1 John 4:17-18] By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: Morning everybody. As I was coming up with my, crutches here, I'm like, oh, you ever remember the like the original Willy Wonka, like Charlie and Chocolate Factory. He like shows up in the cane and he does like a forward roll. I wasn't, and I don't know why I thought that that wasn't what I was gonna do because I'm actually, I, I hurt myself if everyone's curious. It's, yeah, so, happy to talk about it at another time.
Anyway, so really glad to be here with you this morning. and today what we'll be, we're talking about here is, we have, we're, we're, well, perhaps it feels like it's a unique point in history, but I don't actually know if it is, but this is the only time that I've been alive, so it feels unique to me, and some historians make it seem like this is also unique, and so, you know, we're living in a time when like love for others seems to be in short supply. You know, certainly we don't have to go far back to thinking about, you know, in, in 2020 when there was a lot of like hate crimes were definitely on the rise, but even since then in 2024, the FBI recorded more than 11,600 hate crime incidents across the US involving more than 14,000 victims. In a 2025 Pew Research Center, a survey found that 85% of Americans believed politically motivated violence was increasing in this country.
And it can be really discouraging for us, to see so much hate, but realistically you don't need to look at a survey or read statistics to, to see this, because I think we can actually feel it when we see people engaging and talking, usually online, but even in person, we see social media kind of showing us the hostility that fills our conversations. And you know how, how quickly we can begin to see someone not simply as a person with a different perspective, but an enemy and the other, so to speak. but the question that I, I, I, that comes to my mind is, is how do we as Christians make sense of this moment? How, how do we respond, not simply how should we react to the hatred around us. But how can we respond in a way that honors God and, and actually makes a difference?
Spoiler alert passage, love is gonna be the answer here, but what does that actually mean? Right? What, what do we, what do we mean when we say love and how does that actually make a difference? And so I'm really, I'm really excited to look into this passage because I think it's really, really easy for us in the church, especially if you grew up in the church, or been going to church for, you know, any period of time. We talk a lot about love. We talk about God's love, loving your neighbors, lo, loving your enemies, and, and we'll talk about those things. Even the, the passage that, that I wasn't here, in verse 16, God is love, is, is probably countless married couples like wedding passage for their wedding homily. You know, this whole idea of love is, is just kind of central to everything. It's almost like the Sunday school answer of Jesus is probably like 90% correct if you just say Jesus, similar with love.
And those things are true. Jesus is the answer, just so you know. but sometimes it can feel a little simple. And especially when we're talking about loving someone who sees the world fundamentally differently than we do. Or when we're talking about someone who's hurt us, or someone who seems genuinely opposed to what we believe. And perhaps most difficult of all when we're talking about someone who doesn't seem to want anything good for us, if anything, the opposite. So what does it actually mean to love that person and how do we love someone when our first instinct is to avoid them, argue with them, write them off. And how do we do so without pretending that our differences don't matter or the hurt that they've caused caused isn't real.
So our passage today, the author John points us to something deeper, and so hopefully we can listen with a careful ear so we can hear what God is telling us about his love. So with that being said, let me pray for us, and then we're gonna dive into the passage here. Let's pray.
Father God, yeah, when, when it does feel like love is in short supply, God, it can be really easy to become very tribal and defensive and just lean into that lack of love and point to the other side and say, well, they didn't love us, or it's really, really easy to say nothing really matters and all that matters is that we kind of make everything flat and, and, you know, quote unquote love one another. And God, I'm grateful that your idea, your invention of love. It's far more nuanced and far more complex. I'm grateful because that means that it's not so one or the other. But God, I also know that's a challenge because it's hard for us to understand how do we navigate between those options. And so God, we pray that you would open our eyes, open our hearts this morning as we look at your passage. So we can learn how to, yeah, be in a world like this where we are now, especially knowing that it doesn't seem like things are cooling off anytime soon. So Lord, we pray that you would move in our hearts and use your people to speak truth into our world and show love, that it has not felt, perhaps as, as tangibly, as we have. And so thank you and pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.
So, again, if you've been growing with church, then love and God are closely connected. That's, that's not a surprise here. Even that phrase I said earlier, God is love. Even if you, there are people who are not Christian, never grew up in the church, but they just grew up in like America, they're gonna know that concept. They've seen it enough on a coffee mug or something. God is love, they're just gonna see it. It's something that is kind of baked into our culture. Not everyone's gonna believe it, not everyone understands it, but it's, it's certainly there. But what is it about God's love that makes it so unique? What about God is so closely tied to love, and what about love is so closely tied to God, and what difference does that make? And there's a lot of really valid, responses found in other parts of Scripture, but I think that there is, from this passage, one thing that makes, the biggest difference. And the difference here is that God's perfect love casts out fear.
We see this in verse 18, which says, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Again, there's this concept that God's love and fear are incompatible. They don't mix. Right, it, it, it's, it's like, what's the forbidden formula, ammonia and bleach. It's like they, they just, well, no, I guess those can go together, just not in a good way. It's like oil and water. That's probably a better one. They're just, they're just kind of diametrically opposed. They will never actually mix together. And what this verse tells us is that God's love is in such a way that we don't need to be afraid of Him. Right? And, and because fear is about punishment and God's love has removed all punishment for those who are in Christ.
And so therefore God's love, which sent Jesus to die for us, removes all punishment for all who follow Him and thus remove all fear for them. And that's like, you know, the church, like in post Jesus, you know, church, we, we, and especially in our modern sense, we kind of understand this. OK, yes, Jesus, no fear, we, we understand that Prince of Peace, all of these things, but we have to understand that. In the moment when Jesus came and, you know, came down to become a man, it was, must have been so revolutionary because the common understanding of God before Jesus came was all about fearing Him, right? You couldn't even approach God without dying, right? God probably seemed like this big punisher that who was out to make sure that everyone stayed in line. In fact, that's probably, there's enough of a remnant of that today where people feel like that the church and God and Christianity are about not breaking the rules, right? That's why you so often people are emphasizing, oh, let's put the 10 Commandments front and center, cause it's like, don't break these rules.
And, and so I think figuring out like the, the within that I think for those who are in the church, even as, as you know, as a kid I remember feeling this, it's like how far can I get without getting in trouble before God, right? What, what's, what's the line that I can toe to begin to understand that. But John tells us here that for those of us who are in Christ, we can be totally unafraid of punishment because God's love, if truly experienced, should have changed who we are. Verse 17 tells us that his love is perfected in us. As it makes us like him. Verse 17. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.
So this is a type of love that's so all encompassing, so perfect that if we've truly experienced it, we should be fundamentally changed. It tears down the dividing wall between us and God. It's that, it's that powerful and completely changes our relationship with, with Him, going from a previous iterations, understanding of almost like walking on eggshells around him to running into the arms of a loving Father. This should give us incredible confidence in our relationship with him because those of us who are in Christ no longer fear punishment. And so again, God's love, if truly experienced, fundamentally changes who we are and how we interact with Him. So if that's true, verse 19 gets a little bit of a deeper meaning here. But the beginning part says we love because he first loved us, right? So we've been fundamentally changed by God's love and it, it's done everything that changes our relationship with Him and changes us fundamentally. It's, it's that powerful, it's that great.
What happens next? It says then we love because he first loved us. This is not just like an order of operations, right? This is not just A, then B. But it's a statement that we are a whole new person because of God's love, a new creation formed from the blood of Christ. Again, God's love is so extensive and so profound that if we experience it, we cannot leave unchanged.
And so, thinking about this, it was March 2021, there's a man named Jansen Karp. He tweeted back when it was still called Twitter, he tweeted a picture of his, his, cereal, I don't know if you guys remember this, but anyway, let me, let me paint the picture for you. So this man, he, he's sitting down, he's eating his favorite cereal, he got it at Costco, so it's very close to my heart, he, he pours himself a bowl. He's eating it cinnamon Toast Crunch, you know, the cinnamon swirls, that, that beautiful off-white with like zebra cinnamon sugar stripes. He's eating it. Mmm, it was so good, delicious. Eats the whole bowl and he's got the milk at the bottom because if you eat the cinnamon Toast Crunch, if you're not drinking the milk and you're kind of doing it wrong, like it's like it's that that cereal milk he drinks is mm, satisfying, just amazing. He loves it. He says, you know what, that was really, really good. This is dramatization. I, I don't know if he's got a second bowl. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Just imagine us with it.
He liked it so much he pours himself a second bowl, and then as he's getting ready to pour it, what he notices, he goes, that's, that's a little weird, that looks like a shrimp tail. And that's not just one shrimp, that's multiple shrimp tails in my cinnamon toast crunch. And these little brown pieces of the dark brown pieces of rice that are like cemented to my cinnamon toast crunch, that doesn't look like cinnamony sugary deliciousness, that looks like. Something else that maybe should not be consumed. And so then he takes a picture of it and he sends this tweet out, and he, he's kind of asking what's what's going on here? The reason I'm saying this is, listen, I don't care how much you love Cinnamon Toast Crunch. You are not coming back from that. You will never eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch again, at least the same. Like you're gonna be much more cautious of it, but the chances are you're just, you're just not gonna be different. You're, there is a BC, before Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and there's the AC, after Cinnamon Toast. You have a dividing line in your life where you just assume that the cereal you were gonna eat was going to be healthy and normal and no shrimp tails, and you're moving to the point where. Are there shrimp tails in this cereal? I'm really not sure. Let's pour this really, really slowly. Right, like you are fundamentally changed, right?
And, and, and if this happens to you, like it, like you, your, your pre-shrimp tail era and your post-shrimp tail era, it's sort of like God's love right? It's sort of like God's love. It's alarming, it's unexpected, and if you really experience it, there's no going back. And the dissatisfaction you have with cinnamon cereal. Is like the dissatisfaction you have with fearing God. You no longer want to do it because God love have made it repulsive to you. Oh, fearing God, like I don't, I don't want that. Like I, that makes me feel uncomfortable. I shouldn't, I shouldn't do that. I, I don't wanna fear God because I know God has made me a totally different person. I remember what it was like before and now it should be different. And you know that God's love has removed all punishment for those who are in Christ, and so then that means you are fundamentally changed.
And so I think that that's there's an incredible great news that the fun the the basics of that is that God's love, if you've experienced it, if, if, if the Holy Spirit has opened up your, the eye, your eyes and to see your sin and your need for a savior and seeing that the savior is Jesus, then yes, you do not have to face punishment. And that lack of punishment that that creates this fearlessness that's there. Is like an incredible like to live without fear feels incredible, especially in a world where there is so many opportunities to be afraid. I'm afraid of a layoff. I'm afraid of what's gonna happen with my kids. I'm afraid of what's gonna happen in, in, you know, my neighborhood. Can I afford rent? It's gonna go up. All of these places we fear, can I walk down the street? Can I do this? Can I do that? Can I go to church freely? There's all these places that we can be afraid. And so if there's any part of our lives that we can kind of move in fearlessness, I think we want that.
But then the question is, how do I know? Right? How, how can I tell that I have this fearlessness? I can have this fearlessness. I can say that I'm confidently been changed by God, that I'm fundamentally different than him. And I think the que the the the answer is in this passage, we know that we have experienced God's love if we love others. We know we've been changed by God if it's, it's, changed by God's love, if, if it's expressed towards other people, and we see this in verses 20 and 21, and this is, it's a strong language here. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar, but for he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen. In this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother.
If God's love has truly changed you, my, my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, then you should be truly truly changed too. Yes. And yes, it changes our relationship with him. That's kinda like the baseline of our understanding of God's love. But the world does not just consist of you and God. And thus his love, the God that who has given to us this love has changed us with this love that we've experienced, it should affect the the people around us as well. This verse tells us that this is not a new commandment. In fact, John, the author of his letter, is recalling what he's previously recorded in his Gospel account, verses like John 13:34, John 15:12 tells us that Jesus told his followers to love each other as he had loved them. And the thinking continues here in in verse 17 of this passage. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.
Really that last phrase, as he is, so are we in this world. What that means is then to be like him. Is to love his followers. And he says, here in, in, he's the word brother here is definitely referring to like brothers and sisters in Christ, and so, you know, but, but not to say that the only thing that God cares about is how we treat the people sitting in the pews next to us. We have other passages in scripture. Matthew 5:44-48 says, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same. And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same. You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
So clearly, Christians aren't just to love the people in the church. We must love beyond. We are surrounded by people. You know, I, I, I, I know we try to get involved as much as we can in, in the, the, the life of the church. But nothing, it your roommates, you can't, you're not gonna spend more time unless, unless you, unless you come to people, you have roommates with people in the church, you're not gonna be able to compete with the time spent with roommates, your coworkers, you're not gonna be able to compete with the amount of time you spend with your coworkers. We are all surrounded by people. Both brothers and others, both saints and aints, so to speak. Right? Roommates, parents, siblings, children, neighbors, classmates, co-workers, these are all people that should sense that you have been made new. Whether they're Christian or not, they should sense that God's love is pouring out from our lives into their lives.
So how do we know if we've experienced God's love? How's that that that you have to answer the question, how is it expressed to the people around you? Does it show itself to be present in my heart, in my actions, in my words, to others? Or does it not show itself at all? Of course we all fail at this. I'm not standing up here saying I have perfected this, I have not. God's love will not be perfected in us until Christ returns, to be sure. But is it becoming more perfect? Is becoming more complete? Is that love growing? And if it, if it is. Than the love that God showed us is probably there.
I really love and understand that agriculture is often used in the Bible as like an illustration. One, it's probably they, they didn't have Instagram and TikTok, so they couldn't talk about that, obviously, like, you know, the planting was probably the, the, their, their kind of communal experience, but I love it because it actually does a really good job of illustrating some spiritual truths here. Growing something takes time and patience and a lot of trust in a process that you can't control.
I didn't grow up with a lot of plants, well, that's not true. I, I think I did have plants, but I just didn't care about them, but it's not like it was something that like my parents were like, here, this is how you take care of a plant, this is how you put a seed in the ground. Or in a in a pot and you water it and food and all that stuff I didn't I didn't learn any of those things. My wife Lindsey, she's she's she's got this much more than I do. She's helped me really cultivate a deeper appreciation for God's creation in this way and I'm very appreciative of that, but still learning process for me. And so over the years in my best attempts I have planted flowers around our house and plants. So right now actually if you walk into our house we've got all these dahlias in these pots in our entryway because the first frost has come and we're like we're going to save those things as long as we can and our entryway is like a little bit of a greenhouse and so we have to like sidestep, but it's cool because we get dahlias for a little bit longer.
Anyway, but over the years what I've noticed is that the process is more or less the same. You put something in dirt, you do your best to take care of it, and then, and then you wait. And if you're like me, you probably spend a lot of time waiting and wondering, did I do it the right way? Is anything gonna come back next year? And, and our yard is, and, and, and the, the plants in our around our house are not, social media worthy. Better Homes and Gardens is not gonna come take a picture. We're not, we're not gonna be close. But seeing that growth over the years has been encouraging. It's reminded me that something that we've planted has taken root, right? And, and it, it makes me want to keep planting.
And the thing, the, the, the, the here is that it's the same for true for planting the, the love that God has given to us in the lives of those around us. You know, our responsibility is to keep putting God's love into practice, to show patience, to extend forgiveness. And as we serve others and we refuse to let the hatred, you know, that we see and experience around us have the final word, I think that, that, that changes us, and I think it changes the world around us. So now the question, you know, for you all is, do you plant his love in the lives of others? And they might not produce award-winning flowers right away. But I do believe that growth will come because God is the one who brings the growth. We see that all over scripture.
And the results aren't the point here. My, my, what I'm saying is not how, how many flowers have, have bloomed in the people around you, because again, God brings the growth. But what I see is that if you plant his love in the lives of others, then you demonstrate that you've received his love yourself. You're showing that his love has taken root in you. But if you're sitting here, and you're reflecting, and you're thinking. And you never planted, the question is why? Why not? Why do you not plant? Is it because of fear? Well, this passage tells us if we receive God's love, then we don't have to let fear dictate how we treat others. But there's a deeper question we need to ask ourselves here. If God's love, God's love never seems to make its way into the way we treat others, have we really understood and received his love in the first place?
This passage says that we need to take a hard look at the claim that, yeah, I'm a follower of Jesus, but I never show love to people around me. And it's, I, I think the passage says that this is something we have to really take seriously because your entire understanding of your place before God hangs in the balance of whether you do this or not. Again, not that you need to love people to earn God's love, to be saved by Him. No, this is the outpouring of a new creation of a totally different and changed person is this outpouring of love towards others.
And if it seems like I'm being a little aggressive, a little, you know, fire and brimstone, this is really here, verse 20. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. So what do these verses essentially tell us? It tells us that our love of others is a mirror. The way that we treat other people shows us who do we look like. God through passages like this raises up our loving or lack of love towards others before every single one of us, myself included. And asks with great clarity, do you share my familial resemblance? Do you have, is it in the same way that you look at your family members, you go, oh, they have the same nose as me, the same ears, the eyes, the chin, you know, the, the whatever this thing is, you know, what is this, whatever the, the, the looks maxing of it all, do you, do we share the same image? And it's a mirror. Because if you do, then you will look like love. And if you don't, then maybe you aren't yet.
Verse 16, let me read it. So you, we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. And so you know I, I know that verses 20 and 21 are strong being called a liar if, if you're feeling this, I felt this, that, that feels heavy. And this passage is telling us if we hate our brother, who we can tangibly touch and communicate with and see and meet their needs and support them, if we hate them or neglect their well-being or wish for their failure. If we hate them enough to ignore their needs, but at the same time show up on a Sunday, show up at CG, show up at an event, have a quiet time in a prayer closet, reading your Bible, listening to worship songs, at the same time you say that you love God and sing these songs and read these passages. Talking about how changed you are. Then to quote 1 John 4:20. You might be a liar. You may have deceived yourself. Not just that you're lying to the outside world, but you've maybe even lied to yourself.
These are strong words, but honestly it feels accurate. How can you say you've been fundamentally changed by God's love if you hate the brothers? Or the others. So in this hatred, then. You are not like Christ. And you show that his love is not growing in your life, and if you look like hate. You aren't God's child. It's incompatible. Now I can't say for certain if you are a true Christ follower or not. I don't, I don't know your soul. I don't have, I'm not tapped into God's like rating system or that's something that you and God have to be working out and, and you be reflecting on. If you're feeling convicted by the Holy Spirit, then bring that to prayer, bring that to your CG, have a conversation with your family.
But yeah I think you hate towards others, and you say you follow Jesus, you've got two options. You got two options. Either you stop hating. Or you stop lying. You stop hating by putting aside your anger, bitterness, prejudice, and resentment that you feel towards people, that person. And you start planting the love that you say you have received that you say has fundamentally changed you, so stop hating and again it's not an immediate process again just like putting flowers seeds into soil, it takes time you need to take care of it. You can't just put a seed in the ground and just go. Done. It requires work, it requires cultivation. But if you do that, that's the beginning of you stopping hating.
The second option you have is to stop lying. Stop saying you're a child of God. Stop saying you love Jesus. Stop saying he is your peace, your strength, your shield. Stop lying. You're robbing God of the glory he deserves by misrepresenting his love in your life. And you're not only lying to other people, you're lying to yourself. And if you, you believe this lie, it will lead you to blindly walk in life. And you will be like those on the day of judgment that we read about in Matthew 22:7-22-23, which says, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name, and then I will declare to them, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
I'm guys, I know I'm coming in like hot this morning, OK, so I, I, I know this feels very, very aggressive, and so I don't say this with a sense of joy at all. I, I, I don't think that I have this figured out better than you. I, I'm, I'm just like you in the same exact space. He first loved me so that I could love, but I also struggled to love difficult people, and I get it. And so the question is not have I arrived, do I love everyone perfectly, and then I can be confident that I have been made this new creation in Christ. And then the question is, is God's love increasingly changing the way that I am and the way that I live? Am I confronting the hatred in my heart? Am I putting his love into practice to the best of my ability, by his grace, by his mercy, empowered by the Spirit? I just don't want anyone frolicking and skipping down a path believing that they're headed to eternal joy, but are actually headed toward eternal punishment.
So it's not a fun message. And John does not, John gives us a swift kick in the pants here, and as it should be. But I want to take this negative and turn it into a positive because I think it's much easier to say do this instead of don't do that. And so with the time that God has allotted for us to be in this world. He wants us to make his love more perfect in our lives. Which means, as we see from the passage. Means it must be shown.
So here's a really practical thought. If we're going to grow in love, we need to recognize that simply not thinking negative things about somebody is not the fullest expression of love. We can do better than merely refraining from wishing for someone's failure. Love should become something another person can actually experience. And I know that can be difficult. For, for probably all of us, if not most of us. One, because maybe we've really been hurt by people. And people said really unkind things or really hurtful things or done really hurtful things to us. Or it could be difficult because, you know. Maybe we grew up in families where affection was not abundant. You know, verbal encouragement may not have been the norm, and criticism were much readily available than a, a kind word. So I'm not saying that, you know, we all have the same background, we clearly don't. But you know this may be something that's difficult, but I think it's an area that we can all grow.
And so there's a phrase that goes, give some of their flowers while they can still smell them. And so as the gateway to this, you know, gateway application to this passage is You know, I hope that you understand how every moment is precious. And every opportunity is unique to impact someone's life for the good. And if we're continuously asking God to deepen our understanding and our experience of His love, then I think we'll find ourselves drawn to giving people their flowers regularly. Even if it's the others and the brothers, right, the others who are different than us, who infuriate us, who don't get that person at work, the person in our dorm or in our apartment building. And the brothers, the bro, the brothers who are critical, the brothers who seem fake, too conservative, too progressive. And so I'm not saying, you know, you have to agree with all of them and everything they believe and everything they do, but I'm just saying that, you know, you can't use your disagreements with people as an excuse to abandon. You know, the love that God commands. And I think that when we begin to put God's love into practice or continue and deepen our practice of showing His love to others, we may discover that it grows in places that we didn't expect.
So a few years ago our neighbor, he, he has a much more green thumb than I do, and so he gave us some grape hyacinths. If you, if you know plants, grape hyacinths are these like really small but really kind of cool, flowers, really attractive, we asked him, hey, can we have some? He's like, oh yeah, sure. We went, got some, we put some into the ground in front of our house, and what's really cool is that. They keep coming back every single year, and, and there's always more than kind of last year, like the previous year. But what's really cool is that like so we put it in in this one concentrated area like in in the back of the the front yard. But then as we, as the season comes up, we'll slowly notice, oh, look, there's a grape hyacinth over there, a place that we didn't plant. Oh, there's also one over there. And oh cool, there's one here. And each opportunity and each sprout of that plant is another opportunity for more grape hyacinths to grow. Just because that's how the plant operates.
And I think God's love can be like that. You know, when we take the love he's given to us and put it into practice around the with the people around us, I think it can have an impact beyond what we initially imagined. We don't know what God will do because God's the one that brings the growth, so we don't know what God is going to do with it. We are not responsible for the results. Again, it's not about the result of it, it's just are you showing God's love? Are you planting God's love? Are you showing Him, giving him, giving her their flowers. Or not. So you know, a simple act of kindness can open a door. You know, these little things that we might not even think of as just being kind, being loving, maybe God will do it and do more with it than we'd ever expected.
And so you know, I really think We have to come before God honestly this morning. Ask yourself What, what does it look like? If someone were to interview all the people in your life, what would they say about you? Would they say that yeah they're really really kind they're really loving they're really generous they're always ready to help. Not that they do everything, but they're they're willing. Or would they say something else? And if you still have breath in your lungs, your heart is still beating, and you're in that latter camp, you have an opportunity. To do more, to do different. So that you can reflect the image of your father, who is love. And I think if you are in a place where you need to repent, then this is a good time because we're about to take holy communion together, which is a holy meal for those who follow Jesus.
And you know, I, we, we do this, you know, every single week, and this is an opportunity for us to really come before God, but maybe this week, you really ask yourself, take a moment, take a longer moment to ask yourself. Am I showing this love to the people around us, around me? And if you haven't been, you've been struggling or maybe there's a there's a particular person in your mind right now. That maybe you've taken the moment, repent, that you have not been as loving to them as maybe God would want you to be. And maybe you pray that God will give you opportunities, even this week, even today, to be more loving to them, to be more kinder to them. Not expecting that they would be fully changed, but expecting that God is in control and God can do something with that. And so a communion meal is a meal for those who follow Jesus.
On the day that, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and the cup, and he broke the bread and took the cup and he said, this is my body and my blood given for you. And he says, every single time you take of it, do this in remembrance of me and my sacrifice. And so we commemorate this meal every single Sunday here at CoaH Somerville. So with that being said, I'm gonna pray and I'll invite the music team to come up, and we'll get ready to do communion. Let's pray.
Father God, I just thank you for challenging me, challenging us, God, I, I, I know that I need to be more loving. God, I feel like that is a message that you are firmly planting into my heart this week. And so God, would you give me opportunities to love those who are harder to love? Give me more patience to be more generous. And God, I pray for all of us here who may be feeling a similar thing, feeling the lack of love in our lives. God, would you show us that we have been fundamentally changed and we can step out with great confidence, knowing that you are there with us, you are going to help us in it, because you've done everything through Christ. And so Lord, we thank you and pray to us in Jesus' name, Amen.