Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! It is the day of love. The history of Valentine's Day — and its patron saint — is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Webster defines valentine as, “a gift or greeting sent to someone (special).” It almost always contains a message of love or affection that the sender has for the receiver. God has sent to this world a valentine, a message of the love He has for all mankind.
Read 1John 4:7-21
In our scriptures this morning we encounter a God who is, first of all, love. And vulnerability, it is the character Jesus modeled for us in dying on the cross. He was vulnerable in love to the point of incredible suffering. He knew what the cross would mean for him, and yet he considered the value of his own life as worthless compared to the risk of losing our souls forever.
Often vulnerability is the very thing that’s missing in our relationships with God and other people. You and I cannot cultivate a genuine, loving relationship with God if we are unwilling to let Him see us as we really are. Jesus already knows us, but when we try to hide ourselves from Him, well, we are not being honest with ourselves or our Savior.
The holiday of Valentine’s is rooted with intimacy. Genuine intimacy with God requires an open-handed trust in the goodness of His heart. We must learn to trust God’s love, before we can grow in relationship with Him. . We talk about the importance of trusting God’s love all the time, but we live like it’s the furthest thing from the truth.
Every one of you has claimed that you want to reach the lost, but yet you wait patiently for the lost to come into these doors.
Let me share with you a story that will let you know where my heart lies in reaching the lost. This true incident happened to Tony Campolo a few years ago. A few years ago Tony flew to Hawaii to speak at a conference. The way he tells it, he checks into his hotel and tries to get some sleep. Unfortunately, his internal clock wakes him at 3:00 a.m. The night is dark, the streets are silent, the world is asleep, but Tony is wide awake and his stomach is growling.
He gets up and prowls the streets looking for a place to get some bacon and eggs for an early breakfast. Everything is closed except for a grungy dive in an alley. He goes in and sits down at the counter. The fat guy behind the counter comes over and asks, "What d'ya want?"
Well, Tony isn't so hungry anymore so eying some donuts under a plastic cover he says, "I'll have a donut and black coffee."
As he sits there munching on his donut and sipping his coffee at 3:30, in walk eight or nine provocative, loud prostitutes just finished with their night's work. They plop down at the counter and Tony finds himself uncomfortably surrounded by this group of smoking, swearing hookers. He gulps his coffee, planning to make a quick getaway. Then the woman next to him says to her friend, "You know what? Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm gonna be 39." To which her friend nastily replies, "So what d'ya want from me? A birthday party? Huh? You want me to get a cake, and sing happy birthday to you?"
The first woman says, "Aw, come on, why do you have to be so mean? Why do you have to put me down? I'm just sayin' it's my birthday. I don't want anything from you. I mean, why should I have a birthday party? I've never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?"
Well, when Tony Campolo heard that, he said he made a decision. He sat and waited until the women left, and then he asked the fat guy at the counter, "Do they come in here every night?"
"Yeah," he answered.
"The one right next to me," he asked, "she comes in every night?"
"Yeah," he said, "that's Agnes. Yeah, she's here every night. She's been comin' here for years. Why do you want to know?"
"Because she just said that tomorrow is her birthday. What do you think? Do you think we could maybe throw a little birthday party for her right here in the diner?"
A cute kind of smile crept over the fat man's chubby cheeks. "That's great," he says, "yeah, that's great. I like it." He turns to the kitchen and shouts to his wife, "Hey, come on out here. This guy's got a great idea. Tomorrow is Agnes' birthday and he wants to throw a party for her right here."
His wife comes out. "That's terrific," she says. "You know, Agnes is really nice. She's always trying to help other people and nobody does anything nice for her."
So they make their plans. Tony says he'll be back at 2:30 the next morning with some decorations and the man, whose name turns out to be Harry, says he'll make a cake.
At 2:30 the next morning, Tony is back. He has crepe paper and other decorations and a sign made of big pieces of cardboard that says, "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" They decorate the place from one end to the other and get it looking great. Harry had gotten the word out on the streets about the party and by 3:15 it seemed that every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place. There were hookers wall to wall.
At 3:30 on the dot, the door swings open and in walks Agnes and her friend. Tony has everybody ready. They all shout and scream "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" Agnes is absolutely flabbergasted. She's stunned, her mouth falls open, her knees started to buckle, and she almost falls over.
And when the birthday cake with all the candles is carried out, that's when she totally loses it. Now she's sobbing and crying. Harry, who's not used to seeing a prostitute cry, gruffly mumbles, "Blow out the candles, Agnes. Cut the cake."
So she pulls herself together and blows them out. Everyone cheers and yells, "Cut the cake, Agnes, cut the cake!"
But Agnes looks down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, slowly and softly says, "Look, Harry, is it all right with you if...I mean, if I don't...I mean, what I want to ask, is it OK if I keep the cake a little while? Is it all right if we don't eat it right away?"
Harry doesn't know what to say so he shrugs and says, "Sure, if that's what you want to do. Keep the cake. Take it home if you want."
"Oh, could I?" she asks. Looking at Tony she says, "I live just down the street a couple of doors; I want to take the cake home, is that okay? I'll be right back, honest."
She gets off her stool, picks up the cake, and carries it high in front of her like it was the Holy Grail. Everybody watches in stunned silence and when the door closes behind her, nobody seems to know what to do. They look at each other. They look at Tony.
So Tony gets up on a chair and says, "What do you say that we pray together?"
And there they are in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, half the prostitutes in Honolulu, at 3:30 a.m. listening to Tony Campolo as he prays for Agnes, for her life, her health, and her salvation. Tony recalls, "I prayed that her life would be changed, and that God would be good to her."
When he's finished, Harry leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, "Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?"
In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."
Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, "No you don't. There ain't no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. Yep, I'd join a church like that."
I just have one question for you, what kind of church do you really want to be? While at the New Church Leadership Institute training, I was challenged to re-think my love for God, His church and for all who are hurting and dying. It made me stop and think about how I can reach and love those outside of our doors and how that may include going to them, regardless of where they are! I can’t justify, any longer, sitting here and waiting for them to come to me or us.
The Apostle John in 1 John 3:11 wrote: "This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another."
Paul, in Romans 13:8 declared: "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law."
God’s kind of love doesn’t come naturally to us. Many of us either lived a selfish unloving lifestyle, or it was just beneath the surface.
For example, I think of myself as a pretty nice guy. I’m easy going, easy to get along with, give you the shirt off my back… BUT, not the food off my plate .If Tee or when Tee has taken food from my plate, I do not appreciate it. It’s not that I would always growl or snap. I did get edgy and irritable. It would spoil my whole meal.
Why would I be that way? Because, just beneath the surface - I’m as selfish as the next guy.
And if we don’t grab hold of God’s decree “Love One Another” more times than not we’ll revert to our old nature. God’s love always involves a choice and an action, and our love should be like His.
So, it is my challenge to you today to discern just how much you really love God. Do you have a vision? I know the church doesn’t because I help rewrite as well as cut and paste someone else’s vision statement for our conference papers. But do you as an individual have a vision that pushes me beyond my current limits of love and encourages this church to step outside of its boundaries to become the hands and feet of Christ? I challenge you to not only have a vision, but be a part of the vision and share it with the rest of us.
To bring this to fruition I would like to ask you to be active with me and my family as we approach the Lent season in fasting for a vision for our church. These 40 days is a solemn period of preparation for the celebration of Easter and the resurrection of our Savior. We will be starting a fast this Wednesday and continuing till Good Friday. In addition to modifying our diet, we are committing to prayer specifically for a vision for both; me, my family and for the churches that we serve.
With a heart of love I ask you to join with me in 40 days of prayer devoted to developing a vision for our church. I am asking that every morning and every evening we petition God to put on our hearts a vision for this church. I’m asking for us to unite in this effort so that we as individuals and as a church may be resurrected just as our Lord and Savior was on the first Easter.
I encourage each of us to love as if each day may be THE day of Christ’s return.
I offer this in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
