Love

Love by Ed Pruitt

John 3:16-16

LOVE

SUNDAY AM 11/21/1999

John 3:16

16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

1 John 3:1

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

1 John 4:7-12

7 My dear friends, we must love each other. Love comes from God, and when we love each other, it shows that we have been given new life. We are now God’s children, and we know him.

8 God is love, and anyone who doesn’t love others has never known him.

9 God showed his love for us when he sent his only Son into the world to give us life.

10 Real love isn’t our love for God, but his love for us. God sent his Son to be the sacrifice by which our sins are forgiven.

11 Dear friends, since God loved us this much, we must love each other.

12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is truly in our hearts.

Love is both an attribute of God and a description of his being.

He alone is the epitome of divine love and the source of all true love.

His love is unconditional and he consistently seeks the highest good of the one who is loved.

God’s love for all of us is best described by the way that his son Jesus hung on the cross and died for all of our sins.

We all need to know that god was thinking of all of us, us meaning all of us that are here in the service this morning.

Now let’s read in John 10:10

10 A thief comes only to rob, kill, and destroy. I came so that everyone would have life, and have it in its fullest.

Today we find that there are a lot of homes are full of unhappiness, because they do not have Jesus Christ abiding in them.

Jesus makes a difference!

It tells us right here in verse 10 that a thief comes only to rob, kill, and destroy.

This thief that Jesus is talking about is sin!

The sin that is abounding in this world today.

Satan has a way of lurking around and making life miserable for anyone that he can.

That is his specialty in life to make it rough for you.

But now we can also see in that same verse that Jesus said that he came so that everyone would have life, and have it in it’s fullest, or as some scriptures tell it life more abundantly!

God gave his son that we should not perish but have life more abundantly!

Now lets break this down a little so that we may better understand where god is coming from.

Home is a place for the living!!

Hebrews 10:20

20 by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh,

Many of today’s homes, that are without Christ in them are little more than a place to eat, sleep, and park the cars.

They are places where no one wants to stay.

A lot of the children don’t want to stay home because a lot of the time both of their parents are spending all of their time working or worse out partying, rather than being home making a happy place for the family.

A lot of the parents are not happy because of what their children are putting them through.

And all of the time, the trouble is caused by the devil being able to worm his way through the lives of everyone in the family.

But glory be to god it doesn’t have to be that way, we don’t have to live a life in darkness, darkness being sins ways.

Jesus Christ can and will make the difference. His presence in the home encourages prayer and direction for a worthwhile life.

I am not going to try to make you think that just because you or your family is not living for Jesus today that all is lost because it is not.

There has to be a starting place and that starting place is for the one that will give their heart to god and pray!

The key word being the person giving their hearts to god.

Praying without god in your lives is useless.

God cannot hear a prayer that comes for a person that’s life is full of sin.

God cannot stand sin and until we come to that place in our lives and give up sin, become sick of sin, hate sin we are wasting our time trying to get god to hear our prayers.