Nothing Without Love

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Glad to see you here.
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I'm so glad you could join us, and a special welcome to those of you joining us online.
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For those of you who don't know me, my name is Sarah, and I am also the children's pastor here at Crosscoin.
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I'm part of the preaching team, but on Sundays, most Sundays, I am occupied with other things in the building.
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But it is an honor and a privilege to be here with you this morning.
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Now I'm gonna name three names, and if I were to ask you what these three people were known for, I bet we'd all have similar answers.
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We would all think of like the same things.
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Okay?
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Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs.
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Now let me I'm not here to make any sort of political statement one way or the other, so please don't email Mac this week, okay?
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Um I'm just sharing some facts and widely accepted reports about these men.
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So if you're not aware, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, this worldwide global company.
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Um Elon Musk pioneered electric vehicles with Tesla, he owns SpaceX.
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And Steve Jobs, he saved Apple from bankruptcy in 1997, then went on to produce such innovative technology like the iPhone, which again, kind of globally known worldwide.
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These men have made a great name for themselves and are universally known for their achievements.
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They're known for being brilliant and innovative in their respective fields and have literally changed the world as we know it.
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Lots of good things have come from their successes.
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Their inventions and technology have improved the lives of so many people.
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But they also have personal reputations for being domineering or angry, a little self-absorbed, and just generally not treating the people around them with dignity or respect all the time.
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And some people have also critiqued the ethics of their business practices or pointed out the potentially negative impact of their products or companies that they have on communities or maybe even the planet.
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Now we can give these men the benefit of the doubt that this by assuming that they started out with good intentions, doing their work because they truly wanted to help people and make the world a better place.
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But somewhere along the way, it seems like they may have lost the plot.
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It appears that in some ways they're using their massive resources to make their name or brand more famous or to gain more power.
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Instead of letting love guide how they use their influence and resources or seeking the good of all people with what they have, they've let their egos take control.
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It's all about their image, it's all about them.
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And in some ways, that's similar to what happened to the Corinthian church.
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If you've been around here for a little while, on Sundays, you know that we've been teaching through the book of First Corinthians.
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And last week, Mac introduced the new series we're starting called Love Never Fails.
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It falls within our larger series.
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We're gonna spend a few months digging into um 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which is commonly known as the Love Chapter.
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And Mac did a fantastic job last week of setting up this series and showing us that the New Testament teaches that love, not numerical growth, is the measurement for the maturity of a church.
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So if you didn't get a chance to listen to Mac's sermon last Sunday called Love is the Plum Line, I highly encourage you to go back and listen to it.
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It'll give you some great context for this series and let you know where we're going.
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So before we jump into our passage for today, I'm gonna give us a little context for chapter 13 as a whole.
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Now, immediately before the passage that I'm preaching on this morning, Paul uses a lot of ink to write about spiritual gifts.
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In chapter 12, verse 1, Paul writes, Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.
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And in the rest of chapter 12, Paul goes on to explain that all the gifts are given by the same spirit.
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The different ways of serving are done for the same Lord, and the same God is at work in all our efforts, no matter what our gifts are.
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And then Paul stresses unity among the believers, despite the diversity of their gifts.
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And now in chapter 12, Paul also lists many of the spiritual gifts, like wisdom, knowledge, faith, speaking in tongues, and several more.
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Paul gives them this beautiful picture of how God's church is supposed to function.
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The believers in the church function like a human body.
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There are many parts with different jobs, the eye, the ear, the hand, the foot, but they're all working together as one unit.
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And in other parts of this same letter, Paul shares why God gives these spiritual gifts to every believer.
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In chapter 12, he says they are for the good of others.
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And then later in chapter 14, he says that gifts are given to believers to build up the church.
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So Paul wraps up this section by saying, Now eagerly desire the greater gifts, and yet I will show you the most excellent way.
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What is the most excellent way, you may ask?
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Well, I'm glad you asked.
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Let's take a look at 1 Corinthians 13, verses 1 through 3, which is our passage for today.
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If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
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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 do not have love, I am nothing.
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If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
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Now notice that the outworking of these gifts are big and flashy and impressive, you know, like fathom all mysteries and move mountains and give away everything I have.
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Someone who did those things would definitely attract attention, maybe even some level of fame if they did them over and over again or consistently.
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And we're gonna see how Paul evaluates those actions.
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But first, let's define the word love in this passage.
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The love Paul refers to here is not just any love.
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He uses the word agape or agape here, which is one of the Greek words for love.
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But this Greek word, this word for love, connotes an unconditional, selfless love that seeks the good of others before themselves.
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This love isn't based on feelings or emotions, it's an action.
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And this kind of love comes from God because God is love.
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This is the type of love God demonstrated to us when he sent his own son, Jesus, into the world to die as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
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So this agape, love, is the love Paul is referring to all throughout chapter 13.
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And the phrase have love, where he says, if I do not have love, that could also mean cling to love or adhere to love.
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So love isn't just a nice idea or something that gives us the warm and fuzzy feelings.
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Love is a way of being, it's a rule of life that we can choose to follow.
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It's action-oriented.
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And not only is love a way of life, here's the answer to that question, Paul is saying here that agape is the most excellent way to live our lives.
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It seems like one big issue the Corinthian church faced was that the believers were using their spiritual gifts to appear impressive.
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They thought that doing like big, flashy things was a sign of being mature and spirit-filled.
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But they were really only doing those things to get attention and to puff up their own ego.
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This appears to be one aspect of the larger surrounding culture that had crept into the church.
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In my research, I found this telling quote about Corinth.
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It says, Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form.
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And one commentator uh says this Paul is combating here the false view of Christian spirituality present in Corinth and its consequences, which entailed a fractured community.
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For Paul, the essence of true spirituality is self-sacrificial love, not gifts, knowledge, or miraculous power.
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Now, Paul is using some strong language here, and he does that to make a point to his readers.
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And I want to be clear, I am not shaming people who have the spiritual gifts that he listed.
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I'm not saying you shouldn't use your gifts in public, and neither is Paul.
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The gifts that Paul mentions are good things given by God through his spirit.
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Every spiritual gift is poured out by God's grace and given to every believer so that we can collectively build up God's kingdom, share the good news of Jesus, and serve others.
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So when Paul says that he is nothing if he doesn't have love, he's not talking about our value as people created in God's image.
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And our worth is not tied to our gifts or how we use them.
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Paul is talking about our heart and our motives.
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Here's one way to phrase what Paul is saying in these verses.
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Even the most impressive things are worthless without love.
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And that's actually our bottom line today, bottom line today.
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Even the most impressive things are worthless without love.
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Paul is highlighting one of the ways that God's kingdom economy works.
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He's explaining the spiritual value of our actions if they are not done in love.
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And he's reminding us that what the world deems as impressive is the opposite of what God says is impressive.
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Paul starts this passage with some powerful imagery, which I'm guessing was to grab the reader's attention.
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In verse 1, Paul says that even if he had the ability to speak in the tongues, you could also translate languages, languages of earth and of heaven, but he wasn't acting in love, he would be like a clanging symbol.
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Just want to make sure you're awake.
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His drum set was tucked away in the basement.
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Um, but when he was practicing, you could hear those cymbals everywhere in the house.
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Um Adam's a great drummer, by the way.
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He sounds a lot better now.
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Just wanted to make sure y'all knew that.
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Um we all know that listening to someone who's just starting to play the drums, or maybe like a kid who's just wailing on a symbol without any rhyme or reason can be uh pretty obnoxious.
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So, one way we could interpret Paul's reference here is that someone who's using the gift of tongues, but is not a loving person, is as off-putting as that clanging symbol when they speak.
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Now, some commentators think that in verse 1, Paul is referencing the pagan rituals of the day.
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Many of the believers in the Corinthian church had come out of the pagan religions that were active in that area, and they probably would have been familiar with the practices used in pagan worship.
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Some of those rituals included instruments, but they were also known for using ecstatic speech, maybe something that sounded similar to speaking in tongues.
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So Paul could be insinuating that the value of their actions, if they're not using their gifts in love, is as unproductive as the pagan rituals they walked away from.
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And I imagine that would have made the Corinthians more than a little uncomfortable because they believed they were being spiritual heroes with how they were using their gifts.
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Now, in verse 2, Paul mentions the gifts of prophecy, knowledge, and faith.
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And again, he says that if he could do all these incredible things, but he wasn't being loving, his actions are worthless.
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Paul hinted at this earlier in the letter.
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He says that simply having knowledge isn't what helps people.
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In chapter 8, verse 1, Paul writes, but knowledge puffs up while love builds up.
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Knowledge on its own is self-serving.
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Love is what builds people up.
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And now verse 3 sounds like the epitome of cross-shaped love, right?
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Giving away everything you have to those in need, sacrificing your body to hardship or persecution.
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Sounds a lot like how Jesus lived his life.
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How could being generous and sacrificing yourself amount to nothing?
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But Paul is saying that even our most impressive sacrifice, if we're only doing it so we can brag about it or post about it on social media, it does nothing for us spiritually.
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Even our most impressive actions don't mean anything if they aren't rooted in love.
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Because love gives our gifts purpose.
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It gives our gifts purpose.
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So, what does that mean for us?
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Even though we live in a different time and place than the Corinthians, I think we face some similar struggles that hinder us from following this smoke's most excellent way of love.
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One of the obstacles is that we live in a culture where people are overly preoccupied with their public image.
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And remember, the Corinthians lived in a similar culture where public boasting and self-promotion have become an art form.
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That just like reminds me of TikTok and social media, right?
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And the prevalence of social media today provides a platform for anyone to promote themselves and boast in the public eye and put themselves out there.
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Many people today build their reputations on what they can do publicly.
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And now the temptation for us as Christians is to do the same thing, but our self-promotion is through our spiritual abilities.
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And this is a common snare because some spiritual gifts are outwardly impressive, like they look really good.
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So in the church, the temptation is to build our identities around our gifting.
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We start to measure our spiritual growth by what we can do for the church.
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And because we're using our gifts to serve people, we deem the results and the impact of our actions as good, regardless of our motives.
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And then eventually we equate our level of spiritual maturity with our talent or our reputation in the church.
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But this is a false view of ourselves.
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The religious leaders of Jesus' day also got tripped up by this.
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These men had an abundance of knowledge about the scriptures.
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They served God daily in the temple, they read and interpreted the scriptures, but throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus frequently critiqued the Pharisees for their lack of spiritual impact.
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He even refers to them as hypocrites.
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Jesus said they cared more about their reputation than actually helping people.
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And he said they only did their religious practices in public to impress people and boost their image.
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Now, personally, the whole idea of being in of being impressive like in a big, flashy way, doesn't necessarily resonate with me.
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And some of you may have been thinking the same thing.
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You're like, I don't care about looking like impressive.
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I don't want to be up front.
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This doesn't apply to me.
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I can just, I can just tune out today.
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Well, I've got news for you.
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We have all fallen into the same into this same trap in one way or another.
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Your motives might just look different than someone else's motives.
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So I'll go first and share that being up front in the spotlight doesn't necessarily appeal to me.
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Like I said, it's not something I chase after, but I have caught myself serving or using my gifts to make a name for myself in other ways.
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As a self-diagnosed people pleaser, uh I have noticed that sometimes I help people because I want a reputation of helping people, of being a helper.
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Other times I've used my gifts to gain favor with people, or I serve other people to appear selfless.
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When my underlying motive is to appear impressive in any way, instead of being motivated by love, what I do amounts to nothing.
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Now, if you didn't resonate with my motivations that I struggle with, I'm sure if you did a little digging, you could identify some impulse other than love that may at times drive your actions.
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And that doesn't mean what we're doing is wrong.
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Paul just reminds us to check ourselves, to evaluate our heart and our motives.
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Because remember, even the most impressive things are worthless without love.
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Anytime we do something to show off our talents or boost our image, Paul says that we're missing the mark.
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My spiritual maturity is not measured by my reputation, it is measured by how well I love others.
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Now, if you don't believe me, let's look at what Jesus said about this.
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The night that Jesus was arrested, he was with his disciples.
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He taught them many things, even giving them a new command to follow.
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In John chapter 13, verses 34 through 35, Jesus says, A new command I give you, love one another.
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As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
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By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
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So our spiritual maturity as a church is not measured by our reputation.
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It is measured by how well we love.
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In his book, Invitation to a Journey, M.
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Robert Maholland Jr.
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Mahulan Jr.
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says, if you want a good litmus test of your spiritual growth, simply examine the nature and quality of your relationships with others.
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So one obstacle we face in following the most excellent way is that we as a culture are obsessed with our image.
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Another reason we struggle to follow the way of love is that honestly, many Christians today, myself included, speaking myself, would rather appear impressive than actually be loving.
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Because here's the truth.
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For most of us, serving on the welcome team at church is a breeze.
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And it doesn't take a ton of effort for a lot of us to show up for one workday with bridge builders in Milwaukee.
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And donating snacks for the snack drive is a pity, pretty painless, simple process.
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And all of those are great things.
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But it's a lot harder work to become a person who loves others well.
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If you're a parent, I'm just gonna take a wild guess and say that there have been times when you did something for your kids that looked like the right thing or the good thing, but your motivation may have just been to keep the peace, maybe, or stop the whining, or maybe just make your life easier for a little while.
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Never happens.
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Never never happens.
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Then I was wrong.
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I was wrong.
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But no, and no judgment for me because I'm not a parent, but I have probably done that maybe to adults in my time.
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Now, the harder thing to do in those moments is to ask yourself what's the most loving thing for the other person or people involved, and then act out of love.
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And of course, this doesn't just apply to parents.
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This is true for all of us in most situations.
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And the loving option might be more difficult because it means giving up what you want.
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And it might be more difficult because you'll have to deal with a tantrum or a bad attitude.
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Or maybe it will require more time and energy from you than you would prefer to give in that moment.
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So I'm gonna give you an example from my own life of a time that I did not choose the most excellent way, because uh choosing love was challenging, it was kind of difficult.
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Um, so I graduated from uh Moody Bible Institute in Chicago with my degree in children's ministry.
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And my brother, Adam, the drummer, also attended Moody at the same time.
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We were there there the same time.
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And one of my best friends in college uh was Mary Beth.
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She was from Georgia, and she couldn't always afford to fly home every time school was on a break.
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But our family lived in Wisconsin, just a few hours away from Chicago, and we had a car at school.
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So we would drive home on weekends and for holidays, and Mary Beth would often come home with me and Adam for weekends and holidays.
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So not only did Mary Beth and Adam know each other from school, they also spent a lot of time with our family when they came when we were at home.
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And somewhere along the way, Mary Beth and Adam started dating.
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And when Adam and Mary Beth first started dating, I was so excited for them.
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My brother and my best friend are dating.
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This is great.
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I was very happy.
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But as the relationship progressed, I started feeling left out, a little jealous.
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Um, and I'm I am ashamed to admit that I did not react well to those feelings and to that situation.
00:21:11.839 --> 00:21:19.519
Um, as I think back through, it I often acted uh passive aggressively instead of like going to talk to them directly when I felt hurt.
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Uh I behaved really selfishly and I did not seek their good above my own.
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I wanted what was what I thought was best for me.
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And there were even some cruel text messages that I wish I had not sent to them.
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Um Mary Beth and I were roommates our senior year, so it was kind of it was rough for a little while because I was not acting out of love.
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Now, as a student at Moody, I was taking Bible classes, learning theology during this time, serving in ministry, doing lots of good things.
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And in some ways, I grew closer to Jesus through that and became more like him.
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But even though I was studying the Bible and getting ready to go into full time ministry, obviously there was a part of my life where I was not doing The hard work of dying to myself and letting God's love shape my heart and attitude towards Adam and Mary Beth.
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But don't worry, the story has a bright ending has a bright ending because eventually we sat down and worked through it and talked through it, and I'm still best friends with MJ MJ, that's her nickname, and Mary Beth's to this day, and the summer after we graduated, they got married, I was the maid of honor.
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Happy story.
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Being a loving person, though, is not always easy.
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But God says it is the most excellent way.
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So if Paul was writing this letter to us at Cross Point today, what would he identify as impressive things that we mistake for spiritual maturity?
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Maybe what good things do we tend to value over being loving?
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And again, these things are not bad, and I'm not saying we always mistake them for spiritual growth, just that these might be areas we're tempted to prioritize over becoming people who love.
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So one of the things that came to mind when I was thinking through this, especially in our current climate of like culture wars, is something we might think is impressive, is believing the right doctrines, right?
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Now, of course, we want to study the Bible well, teach the scriptures faithfully, yes.
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But we could profess all the right beliefs and list them on our website, but if those beliefs don't shape us into people who love others like Jesus, then what we believe isn't important.
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And the giving, right?
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We talk a lot about generosity here, and it is a trait of a follower of Jesus.
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It's important.
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We could be, and we really we are, a super generous church.
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But if those resources that we collect are primarily used to make our church appear bigger and our name better, instead of meeting people's needs or helping people move into deeper loving union with Jesus, then they are fruitless.
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And another one that comes to mind, not just for us, but for many churches in our day and age, is like worship, right?
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Having the best worship team.
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Or do, you know, put some people, some churches just go all out for worship, and it seems like kind of a big show.
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And we do have a very talented worship team, as you saw today, led by Josiah, and Anna was up here.
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Like, we have a dedicated team, they are a gift to us.
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But unless that worship draws us into God's presence so that we can receive his love and then go be his ambassadors of love and reconciliation out in the world, then even the most well-performed worship set falls flat.
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God invites us to become more like Jesus because Jesus is love.
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And when we grow in love, we are growing in spiritual maturity.
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Being transformed by God's love takes time.
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Maturity is not developed overnight.
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This is heart work done in cooperation with the Holy Spirit.
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But it is not usually pretty or polished.
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Those moments when we submit ourselves to Jesus can be kind of messy, like when I was wrestling with that situation with my brother and Mary Beth.
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We wrestle with God because we can be stubborn and selfish, and real love requires us to be selfless, selfless, kind, and to seek the good of others above ourselves.
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We are transformed by God's love when we give up what we want and put someone else first.
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We embody agape when we love, when we forgive someone who's hurt us, even if they haven't asked for forgiveness.
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We are following the way of love when we give our time and energy to advocate for the most vulnerable people in our communities, even when we won't get anything in return.
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And we demonstrate real love when we're feeling frustrated with someone, and we choose to be patient instead of lashing out in anger.
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Letting God's love shape our hearts, minds, and motives is a lifelong process.
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But over time, as we submit ourselves with humility to God's love and grace, our capacity to love grows.
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And when each of us prioritizes the most excellent way in our lives, we grow in spiritual maturity as a church and we expand our communal kingdom impact.
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Like the Corinthian church, I believe many churches today struggle to prioritize being loving over being impressive.
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And this has led to fractures and divisions within churches.
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It also feels leads to some people in the church feeling deeply hurt instead of deeply loved, and they may end up leaving the church or questioning things.
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So, friends, in this day and age, in our in our culture, we have a huge opportunity to embody real agape love to the world.
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And we can do that even this week.
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So every Sunday, we provide some action steps to help us practice what we just learned from the scriptures.
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And uh if you don't have a vision already of what that looks like, of how to apply this, or maybe where God's inviting you to step into this, I've come up with a few suggestions that you can take home with you today.
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So for prayerful reflection, spend some time with Jesus this week in prayer using these prompts.
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Where am I more concerned with appearing impressive than loving like Jesus?
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Ask God that question and see what he says, what he points out to you.
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Or you could ask, which person or people in my life do I struggle showing love to?
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Just kind of agape love.
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You could bring to God a situation where you're having a hard time envisioning what love looks like and ask him for wisdom or clarity, like how do I move forward?
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How do I love in this situation?
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And you could also ask God to help uh help you act out of love even when you don't feel like it.
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As a practice, this week, uh pick one situation uh specifically where you're serving or helping in some way, and use this framework to evaluate your motives.
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Ask yourself, would I still be doing this if no one was looking or if nobody knew?
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Or you could ask, am I doing this to make my name great or to make God's name great?
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And ask, what does agape or agape love actually look like in this situation?
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And use that framework to kind of uh to figure out what your motives are and where you're pivoting from.
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So in this series, we are going to take a deep dive into each of the characteristics of love that Paul gives in chapter 13.
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And I know Katie just read these verses earlier, but I'm going to read verses four through seven of chapter 13 again just to keep the most excellent way fresh in our minds.
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First Corinthians 13, 4 through 7.
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Love is patient, love is kind.
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It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
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Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
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It always protects, it always trusts, it always hopes, it always perseveres.
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Would you please stand with me for closing prayer?
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Just a quick reminder for those of you who are still looking for a group to join this fall, we do have a few that are still open.
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There is a Sermon Disketing group that meets after the second service on Sundays.
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It started last week, but I'm sure they'd be, they'd love to have you jump in.
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We also have an eight-week practicing the way group that's gonna be meeting on Monday evenings, and we have a four-week Sabbath group that will meet on Wednesday evenings.
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Those last two groups start this week, so if that's something you want to do, uh try to sign up before you leave today or ask us if you have any questions.
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Let's pray together.
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Father God, you are love.
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You embody love and you have demonstrated your love to us over and over again.
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But in the most beautiful way, you sent your son Jesus to live in this world, to die for us, and to rise again from the dead so that we could have life with you forever.
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Please help us this week to notice ways where we are not embodying this love, this selfless unconditional love, and start to transform our hearts.
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Help us to submit to that process, Lord, even in the hard moments when we're wrestling with our selfishness.
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God help us to be a people who love well and to not be concerned with how we appear, but to truly love others and to show the world your love.
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We pray this in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Go in his love.