And I’m telling You, You’re Gonna Love Me!
Reverend A. LaMar Torrence
Cross of Life Church, 1240 E. 7th St. Plainfield, NJ
I. Tell your neighbor, “I’m telling you. You are going to love me. “The prerequisite for our entrance into heaven is to love each other. It doesn’t matter how many people we tell about Christ. It doesn’t matter how many hunger souls we feed. It doesn’t matter how much money we put into the collection plate; the only way to get to heaven is to love God with all our heart, mind and soul and to love each other as Christ loved us. So I’m telling you that if you want to get to heaven, then you’re ‘gonna’ love me. Don’t tell me how much you love God but you can’t stand my guts. You gonna love me. Don’t tell me how well you can pray but you are quick to tell me off and cuss me out. You gonna love me. Don’t tell me how much you go to church, read your bible and watch TD Jakes, yet you can’t give me a hug, nor even acknowledge me with a nod or a smile. You have to love me. You gonna love me. That’s the message of Paul who echoes the words of Christ. We are to love each other.
A. And that’s all anyone desires. We want to be genuinely loved. We want to be love not for what we are doing or can do for others but we want to be love for who we are. We want to be more than essential lifelines to those who act as parasites absorbing our energies. We don’t want to have to put on a façade or project an illusion of acceptable behavior, but we want to be love with our faults and habits as we are. We want to be loved. We want to be the very essence of someone else’s day. We want to be the fragrant odor that fills someone’s nostrils as they inhale and exhale life’s necessities. We want to be loved. I want to be loved. You want to be loved. We want to know that our lives have more of a purpose than filling the hours and minutes with seamless routines and details. Our very souls hunger for love.
B. And many of us are willing to do anything for love. Some will settle for relationships hoping that the other person will change or that they will change and grow to love the one they are with. Some will stay in a loveless relationship from the fear that nothing better will come long. They settle for less. Many will compromise their morals and ethics just to be loved. Many are willing to loose their identities and individuality just to be loved. And many will pursue various interests to fulfill the empty void in their hearts in order to compensate for not being loved
II. St. Augustine believed that everyone spends their lives looking for the highest form of happiness which is the love of God. The struggle for most of our lives seems to be learning how to love. Humanity struggles with its knowledge of love. Although we have written about love, talked about love, and explored the many varieties and dynamics of love, humanity stills has to evolve in it practice of love.
A. We struggle with what the Greeks call “Storge”- which is natural affection best seen between a mother and a child. And yet, we read repeatedly about parents killing their children and vice versa. “Shaken baby syndrome.”
B. We struggle with “Philia”- which is the affection of friends, brotherhood and sisterhood (kindred spirits). We live in a world where we still ignore the injustices and needs of others. We are selective in who we love and/show love towards. There is still a racial divide in this country.
C. We struggle with “Eros”- the attraction of desire (sexual love).Lust has always been an issue for humanity: Adultery, incest, pornography, and prostitution.
III. The fact is that we still do not understand and know what ‘real’ love is. How do I love? So how do we love god with all our heart, our soul, and our mind?
A. For me to be loved, I first must know how to love. And I learn how to love by loving God first. The key to me finding someone to love me rests in my willingness to love my god and to love God’s people.
1. 1 John 4:8 “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”
2. 1 John 4:16 “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
B. Love involves knowledge and scripturally to know someone implies having a intimate physical relationship. It’s impossible to effectively love another without knowing them. Jesus could show love because he knew three things,
a) He knew the Father. For Jesus, Knowledge= relationship and obedience. Jesus knew the father and he was obedient to the father.
(1) He studied and He prayed. Don’t tell others how much you love God and yet you do not set time aside to get to know him.
(2) And because of God’s immensity, you can never know enough about him. I continue to learn that God’s knowledge begins when Christ takes me to the edge of what I think I know and says, “Now Jump.”
(3) In other for us to love, we must know and love God.
b) He knew us: Jesus says, “I know my own.” He knows us. Every detail: imperfections, habits, addictions, and sins. He knows what we been through, what we are going through, and what we will go through. He knows all about us. Who we slept with. Who we desire to sleep with. And yet, he still loves us.
(1) In order for us to love others-we must have some form of a relationship. We must get over our fears of intimacy and trust and learn how to love each other. You can love others without bothering to establish some form of relationship. Yes, I love but you can’t come to my house. Yes, I love but I don’t want you in my country. Yes, I love you but you cannot have the same privileges and rights as me.
(2) To know God is to love and obey Jesus.
(a) John 12:13 “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
c) He knew himself. “The father loves me because I lay down my life.” One cannot understand his or her own-self without first losing themselves in Christ. Jesus will expose your abilities and your limitations. You will know what you can and cannot accomplish. Jesus knew himself because he was willing to lose his life for the father. No one took his life from him, but he gave it willingly. This is the ultimate love known as “agape” -self-giving love. Sacrificial love.
(1) Our hindrance to love is our fear of loss. We don’t want to give us anything. But in order to gain, we must be willing to give.
(2) The reason so many of our relationships fail is because we equate love with passion rather than obedience and sacrifice.
(a) Commitment requires sacrifice.
(b) Commitment requires obedience.
IV. How do we show that love? Because is it not just about emotions, words, and feelings. We must practice it. Though our words, work, and worship.
A. Words: We do not realize the power words can have over our life. Words can empower and words can destroy. Words can embrace and words can cast away. Proverbs say “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” And “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Our words can bring us success or they can sabotage our destiny. What we say to others and to ourselves can lift us up and tear us down. Like the prophet Jeremiah, he wants us to know the power he has placed in our mouths. For us Christians, that imperative is important because, I’m learning that we as followers of Christ do not know how to speak words that lift people up and encourage them. We do know how to tear them down. We don’t know how to give honor where honor is due. So, we need to allow the spirit of the Lord to teach us how to be encouragers through speak words of life.
1. When you do speak; Speak words of Life. The power of life and death are in the tongue.
a) Love: 1 Corinthians 13:1 “If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing”
b) Integrity: Say what you mean and mean what you say. Isaiah 29:13. The Lord says: Is 29:13 “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
c) Faith: Proverbs 31:26 “She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue”
d) Empowerment: Hebrew 3:13 “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
B. Work:
1. Ephesians 4:15-16 “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
C. Worship:
1. We are all a part of the same place, the body of Christ, We’re part of the same time (our times are in his time). We all have the same blood-the blood of Christ. We all have the same mind-put on the mind of Christ. So there is no reason for us not to be able to love each other unconditionally. (Tell someone unconditionally). And that’s the critical determination for how we should love…unconditionally.
