Looking For Love

Looking for Love

We all are looking for love.

We know there’s a need for love.

We are creatures that need to be loved and need to show love.

Where can we find love? God is love.

If we know God is love, then all we need to do is turn to God, right?

It seems too easy but when you pray, He’s right there, wanting to love you!

He’s standing there with His arms open wide and why don’t we run into His arms?

How do we get closer to God? What keeps us from His love?

We build walls - Sin, Grumpy, Hate

Sin blocks us. It is a barrier a wall!

Grumpy Gus. - Grumpy people build walls. They want love but act like they don’t.

Perhaps they’ve been hurt and can’t see the thing they need to fix the hurt is love.

Break the hard heart.

Don’t let your love grow cold.

Matthew 24:10-13

10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Deceived

Satan wants to deceive you that God doesn’t like you or doesn’t love you.

God doesn’t love you because you’re pretty.

God doesn’t love you because you have money or are successful.

God just loves you.

How do you know? The Bible tells you so.

John 3:16

I can’t love Him because He doesn’t love me? Wrong

We love Him because He first loved us.

1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.

James 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.

Turning to the world instead of turning to God. / Unwillingness

Friends with the world is enmity towards God.

Matthew 23:37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

How do we show love back to God?

If you love me keep my commandments

Do you love God, or Do you hate God?

If you love someone, you do good to them, not bad to them.

If you love your Master in heaven, you do what He asks, it’s that simple.

John 14:15 “If you love me, keep my commands.

To love God you also have to Love one another

You can’t love God if you hate those around you.

1 John 4:7-21

God’s Love and Ours

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

John 13:34,35 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”