Love That Conquered A Hardened Heart

LOVE THAT CONQUERED A HARDENED HEART

Text: I John 5:1 -6

1 John 5:1-6  Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.  (2)  By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  (3)  For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome,  (4)  for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.  (5)  Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?  (6)  This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth (NRSV).

Today I want to share the story of a prodigal father whose bad decisions had a chain reaction. He was supposed to be the bread winner. He was a “father of seven children”. He was an “alcoholic who worked on the railroad and didn’t live at home most of the time”. This prodigal father had created quiet a hardship on his family spending lots of money on booze and not enough on the bills. Naturally, the mother (Nancy) picked up the husband’s slack as she worked two jobs to keep food on the table.

The absentee prodigal father had a son who was becoming a prodigal son. We’ll call this son “G” for now. He was growing up as an angry young man. Like Hitler and Stalin, G’s father was an alcoholic. As G was growing up, it became more than obvious that the lack of a stable father figure in his life was having a negative impact on G.

It was G’s mother who held the family together in spite of the odds. It might have seemed to go un-noticed in G’s youth, but his mother was the one stabilizing force in his life that helped to keep G grounded.

Today we will explore a reveling rebel, runaway love and conquering love.

REVELING REBEL

Why do rebels become rebels? Is it because something is missing? Is it because of hunger? Is it because of hate? Is it because of a low self-esteem? Is it a survival instinct? Or, could it be a combination of all of the above?

1) Physical hunger: Can physical hunger motivate someone to do things out

of their normal character? Let me share a little snippet from G’s life that will help shed some light on how one thing could lead to another. G’s mother is working two jobs to keep food on the table for her seven kids and herself. (George Foreman. God In My Corner. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc. 2007, p. 117). G recalls how his mother, Nancy, would sometimes bring home a single hamburger to be divide eight ways. It was barely big enough for a bite. He grew up thinking that hamburgers were for rich people. He dreamed of the day he could eat a whole hamburger by himself. He also recalled the many times he carried the mayonnaise sandwiches to school. He sometimes envied the neighbor hood kids he played with as he sometimes saw them eating through a window tearing off the bread crust and pulling the skin off the chicken they were eating. He said that he would love to have these scraps that they would often feed their dogs. It would be years after he became a boxer that he remembered his stomach being full after a meal. (pp.4 - 5).

2) Spiritual hunger: After he became an adult, G finally became a success as a boxer. (p. 5). Though he was able to eat a full meal, G was starving to death spiritually. How many people does that describe in our world today? They have all that money can buy but no amount of money will ever be able to buy them the genuine and unconditional love of God that they crave!

Do rebels always win?

1) Lessons: As we know from the lessons we have learned and are learning from in life, rebels might win the battles they fight with others. But to borrow from the title of a musical, “their arms are too short to box with God”. Couldn’t you hear the voice of the announcer clarifying the size of the boxers in the match? “In this corner is the puny, the whiny, the finite lightweight. The other corner is terribly in adequate to accommodate the infinite God”.

2) Bad paths: God already knows what the results of what happens for those prodigals who choose the broad paths over the narrow way (Matthew 7:13 -14) that leads to life and the exploits of those who chose the far country (Luke 15:13). “We cannot understand Jesus’s being the Christ unless we accept that He is the Son of God”. (Francis J. Moloney. Daily Bible Commentary: James to Jude. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999, p. 146). That is why Jesus reminds us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).