Title: Love Connection
Text: John 15:9-17; key verse is 13
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Read Text!!!
Introduction:
- How many people remember seeing the show Love Connection?
- A show where they would try to match either a male or female with 3 possible bachelors.
- In hopes of making a love connection.
- Well in our text this morning, Jesus wants to make a love connection with the world.
- It is God’s desire to reconcile the world back to Himself.
- The only problem is that some people don’t want to be reconciled with God.
- Vs 13 of our text says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
- Now from God’s perspective, He wants people not only to be reconciled to Himself, but God also wants people to have a love connection with each in brotherly love.
- What is brotherly love? It’s when you are concerned about everyone’s spiritual, physical and emotional well being.
- The world takes one day a year to really show the people around them how much they care.
- I believe the Lord wants His church to show each other how much they care, not just once a year but everyday.
- Not only with people around us this morning, but also those outside these four walls.
- So with Valentine’s Day being on Monday, it will be a time where people express there love for one another through a variety of methods, here are just a few:
~ 73% of people who buy flowers for Valentine’s Day are men, while only 27 percent are women.
~ 15% of U.S. women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day.
~ About 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged each year. That’s the largest seasonal card-sending occasion of the year, next to Christmas.
~ About 3% of pet owners will give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets.
~ California produces 60 percent of American roses, but the vast number sold on Valentine’s Day in the United States are imported, mostly from South America. Approximately 110 million roses, the majority (red), will be sold and delivered within a three-day time period.
~ February 14, 270 A.D. : Roman Emperor Claudius II, dubbed "Claudius the Cruel," beheaded a priest named Valentine for performing marriage ceremonies. Claudius II had outlawed marriages when Roman men began refusing to go to war in order to stay with their wives.
~ In the United States, 64 percent of men do not make plans in advance for a romantic Valentine’s Day with their sweethearts.
~ The Empire State Building in New York City played a prominent role in the movie "Sleepless in Seattle." Each year and average of 15 couples will take (or renew) their vows on the 80th floor of this famous landmark.
~ Wearing a wedding ring on the fourth finger of the left hand dates back to ancient Egypt, where it was believed that the vein of love ran from this finger directly to the heart.
Transition:
- So by looking at our text, God wants us to have a love connection with Him first, and by that I mean to be reconciled with Him through Jesus Christ.
- Then He wants us to have a love connection with each other in brotherly love, meaning having a genuine concern for the other person’s welfare.
- How do we do that?
- How do we grow in love with God and with each other?
- Our text shows us how to grow in love.
- Especially in the marriage relationship, where it can be a little tense at times
- I love this story that I found that shows just how tense it can become:
There was a man sitting on the back porch of his pastor’s parsonage. The man said to his pastor, "Pastor, I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve never told this to a soul, it’s extremely difficult to tell you this now, but my wife and I have had a fight almost every day for the past 30 years of our marriage."
The pastor was taken back. He looked away. He nervously took a sip of his coffee. He didn’t know what to say. The young Pastor aid, "Everyday?" "Yes, just about every day." "Did you fight today before you came to church?" "Yes." "Well, how did it end up?" "She came crawling to me on her hands and knees." "MY Goodness what did she say?" "Come out from under that bed you coward and fight like a man!"
- In our society relationships are coming under attack, we need to know as Christians what the proper why to love each other and God.
- This is how we grow in love for God and each other, that when applied it will change our relationship with God and our relationships with each other.
Point 1: By Being Obedient
Vs 10, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in His love.”
- We all know that in order to live the Christian life we need to be obedient to God.
- We all know that in order to live in harmony at home, there needs to be structure and order.
- People following the plan through obedience.
- When we look further down in our text vs 13-14 it says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”
- So when we are obedient to Jesus and do what He says, He considers us to be His friends.
- Abraham was called God’s friend.
II Chron 20:7 says,“Are You not our God, who drove out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel, and gave it to the decedents of Abraham Your friend forever?”
- Abraham was God’s friend because he obeyed the Lord.
- Like close friends, Abraham and God communicated well with each other because of Abraham’s obedience.
- People ask, what does God’s voice sound like? You will never know God’s voice until you start obeying the Word of God.
Gen 18:17 says, “And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing.”
- We will also hear God’s voice when we develop in our lives obedience to God’s commands.
- Now in the family the art of communication and listening is very important.
- Just like it’s important with God, it’s also important in the home.
- If we don’t communicate with God we don’t grow, if we don’t take the time to listen to God, we won’t hear His voice and live under obedience.
- Well if we don’t communicate at home with our spouse and children, how will we grow?
- It’s been said in the home, the average Father in North America communicates 42 seconds a day with there children. And we wonder why we have problems.
- I thought this story was humorous on communication that drives the point home in many Canadian families:
Lady went to get a divorce—
Lawyer: “Do you have ground?”
Lady: “About 2 acres”
Lawyer: “Do you have a grudge?”
Lady: “No we have a carport”
Lawyer: “Does your husband beat you up?”
Lady: “No I get beat up for him everyday”
Lawyer: Screamed- “Lady what is your problem!”
Lady: “ Oh that is easy- We just can’t communicate.”
- It’s important that families take the time to communicate and listening to one another.
- How do we do it?
- Let me give some ways you can improve the home life:
1. Establish prayer in the home.
2. Husbands love your wife, and be willing to die for her.
- not just physically die for her but emotionally also, think of her needs before your own.
3. Wives submit to your husbands.
- There needs to be a leader in the home, if there are two leaders you have a monster.
4. Value your children.
- They are an inheritance from the Lord, and you are blessed if your quiver is full of them.
- They are not a mistake, a burden or in the way, they are blessing from the Lord, and God has His hand on them.
- If we start with the basics found in God’s Word and learn to obey what we know, the family will get better. It is a fact, listen to this true stat:
A recent study by the University of Chicago showed couples who stay in an unhappy marriage and endure it are more likely to be happy 5 years later than those who decide to divorce. The study noted that even if no work is done on the marriage, ongoing problems were often viewed in new perspective over time. And when both spouse worked on the marriage, many problems were solved and communication improved. Finally, if only one spouse worked on the marriage, there was improved happiness in the one spouse despite a mediocre marriage.
- This proves scripture, that if we focus on ourselves, develop to change, become humble, admit when we are wrong, even if the other spouse does nothing, God says it will get better.
- Another way we can improve in our love towards God and each other is....
Point 2: By Being A Giver
"Dearest Jimmy, No words could ever express the great unhappiness I’ve felt since breaking our engagement. Please say you’ll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you, I love you, I love you! Yours forever, Marie... P.S., And congratulations on willing the state lottery."
- The Bible says, it is more blessed to give then to receive.
- To be a giver does not mean in the area of money only, but in time and friendship.
- To be a giver means thinking of others first before yourself.
- To be a giver means that God comes first and ourselves second.
- What do I mean? We need to take our daily lives and ask the Lord how He wants us to live. What do I do with my money that you gave me God?
- What do I do with my time that I will have free this week? Etc.
- So when God comes first, then the art of obedience will be more clearer for the believer.
- Now what about the home?
- Husbands need to be the example, take the lead, and put his family first as an example to his kids and wife.
- When the family thinks of the other person’s needs first before themselves, I guarantee the marriage will improve.
- When we look in out text and in life we see that God is a giver and wants us to learn this important truth.
1. God gave His Son
2. Water gives life
3. Plants gives food
4. Trees give oxygen
5. Sun gives light, energy, heat, and makes things grow.
6. Earth gives resources for us to live
7. Ground gives growth
8. Jesus gave His life for us so that we can be saved.
- Make no mistake our God is a giver, and He wants us to learn the principals of giving first to Him, then to our families.
- Lastly in order to grow in our love for God and each other we need too....
Point 3: By Making A Choice
Maybe you heard about the guy who fell in love with an opera singer. He hardly knew her, since his only view of the singer was through binoculars - from the third balcony. He was convinced he could live “happily ever after” married to a voice like that. He scarcely noticed that she was considerably older than he. Nor did he care that she walked with a limp. Her mezzo-soprano voice would take them through whatever might come. After a whirlwind romance and a hurry-up ceremony, they were off for their honeymoon.
She began to prepare for their first night together. As he watched, his chin dropped to his chest. She plucked out her glass eye and plopped it into a container on the night-stand. She pulled off her wig, ripped off her false eyelashes, yanked out her dentures, unstrapped her artificial leg, and smiled at him as she slipped off her glasses that hid her hearing aid. Stunned and horrified, he gasped, “For goodness sake, woman, sing, sing, SING!” (Swindoll - Strike the Original Match 68)
It was easy for the man to think and say that her voice would take them through whatever might come. But he didn’t realize what he was getting into. It’s easy to say, “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Words come easy. Any of you who work under a difficult boss, with a spouse, or with children - know how difficult the actions are to follow through on.
- In our text Jesus commands us to love one another, but we must make the choice to heed that command.
- We can ignore it, forget it, suppress it, or we can apply it and live by it.
- When we choose to live by it, we live under the full blessing of God.
- Now some people are difficult to love. (This is not a good time husbands to be looking at your wives, look right at me)
- How do we love people we consider to be our enemies?
- By choosing to love them, and by that I mean having a genuine concern for there life both spiritually and physically.
- We need to understand, love is not a feeling, it is a choice we make.
- At times in life we are not going to love our spouses.
- Disagreements and mentalities that come into a marriage relationship are not always pleasant.
- It’s in those times we need to choose to love our partner and work on things that need to be worked on.
- We are not always going to agree on the methods in which churches run or the way people run them, but we still need to love one another, by having a genuine concern for each other.
- We need to be happy when other people prosper, not envious or coveting.
- There is so much competition in the body of Christ today, that it gives off the impression to other people that we don’t have a genuine concern for our brothers and sisters in the Lord.
- That means our love level is a little low.
- The Bible says in I John 3:16-18 says, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”
- The church needs to grow in love towards God, in the home, and also in the church.
- All of us need to change and bring up the level of love in our hearts.
- We need to stop talking about it, praying about it and start doing it.
- I look outside today, and I see that I have the world’s goods, I need to show that I have the love of God in me by sharing and helping where I can help.
- You may also need to do the same.
Closing:
- According to our text there are 3 ways to grow in our love for God, family and people.
1. By being obedient
2. By being a giver
3. By making it a choice
- I give this story to sum up all that we have been saying:
G. Campbell Morgan, a profound British preacher whose four sons all became pastors, influenced millions with his preaching, teaching and writing.
One day, when his young son Howard finished preached, a reporter asked him, "Since you have five Pastors in your family who is the greatest preacher? Expecting the son to give the honor to his father, Howard surprised the reporter by saying, "My Mother!"
Often people do not realize that a mother’s love, concern and teaching are often far more influential on people than anything else. Never underestimate the power of love.
- When we chose to be connected in love to God, family and people, it will change every aspect of your life.
Lets Pray!!!
