Free To Fail

- Opening Remarks and Introduction

Last week we started a new series called “Love Does” based on a book of that same title by the author Bob Goff. As the name suggests, our sermons for the next few weeks are going to talk a lot about love. Not just the emotion of love, but what we do when we love.

Tonight, we’ll look at how love doesn’t always go as planned. Have you ever had something fail when you tried really hard? Have you ever tried to show your love, and somehow it went all wrong? Not all expressions of love turn out how we’d like them to.

We’re going to look at Bob Goff as he plans to love, and the disciple Peter who failed through love, and see what we can learn about love.

- A Story of Love and Failure

So, let’s start our journey tonight by looking at a story about love and how it doesn’t turn out exactly as planned. It’s a love story of sorts, with some interesting, impulsive ideas.

When love gets into our brain, into our blood… we act differently. Sometimes we go overboard, and our actions might end up a bit out of control. In the book “Love Does”, Bob Goff described many times when love didn’t turn out quite the way he planned.

Several years ago, Bob met a woman named Maria and for Bob, it was love at first sight. Maria didn’t know it yet, but he was sure that he had found his future bride. It was only a matter of time before she understood their destiny.

It was 10 days before Valentine’s Day. Maria worked in an advertising agency in a high-rise office building. Bob had plans to make a big impression.

That impression, consisted of making a HUGE Valentine for the holiday of love. Bob got two sheets of 4 ft. by 8 ft. cardboard and glued the edges together. And made a perfect envelope with a stamp the size of a doormat. Inside the massive card, he wrote “Maria, will you be my valentine?” Simple… Straightforward… but massive in size.

Bob borrowed a truck and drove the gigantic card downtown into the garage of the office building. He struggled to get the card into the elevator, but all the time he couldn’t think of anything else, but the wonderful look on her face when she received this show of love. She was going to love it! Do you see where this is going?

He struggled to get the card into the elevator, with a few odd looks coming his way. The elevator arrived at its destination and Bob worked to get the Valentine out, but it didn’t want to come out. Then the bells of the elevator started to go off since the doors were open for too long. As the bells continued, this drew the attention of several folks, and a small crowd started to gather to see this guy struggle with such a large, bulky package.

Once he got clear of the elevator, everyone was staring at him, and Bob began to think that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. But it was too late. Maria was paged, came around the corner, and saw Bob standing there with a big dumb grin, and an overambitious card. Maria was shocked, embarrassed and mortified. What was meant to be an oversized expression of his love, ended up crashing and burning.

During the next six months, Bob knew that his first approach wasn’t quite right. But, he knew that he needed to do something. He decided to start his day by making Maria a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He didn’t feel comfortable bringing it to her office. But, he knew where she parked her car. … so he put it under the windshield wiper. Bob wasn’t sure why. Sometimes, he even put two sandwiches.

This sounds crazy, but Bob’s weird, and whimsy style of living lead to this impulsive show of love. Sometimes love is irrational. Sometimes it’s a spur of the moment thing. Sometimes, the actions of love may be strange, but they come from the heart. So maybe the illogical outpouring of love is the most honest expression of how someone feels.

Bob’s not the only one who reacted without thinking.

- Peter failed, over and over

There are all sorts of people in the bible that loved and failed, but I’d like to look at one that also had impulsive ways of showing love, the disciple Peter. It wasn’t so much that he was crazy, but that he acted before he thought thru things. He was sort of a ready, fire, aim kind of guy. He talked a lot and asked a lot of questions, but he didn’t think through everything as well as he should have.