A Life of Love

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, January 19th. Today, we finish our series on living the extraordinary life and we look at the words of Jesus for a better grasp of a life of love. Of all the emotions you have ever experienced, which is the most important one of all? Well, somebody would say fear because it protects me.

No. Well, joy and happiness, because that's sort of what everybody's longing for. All those may be well, but the most important emotion you have ever experienced in life is the emotion of love. It is the supreme emotion that God has placed within us. He created us to love Him and to be loved by Him. He created us to love one another.

It is the emotion above all other emotions. And think about this, it's the only thing you're going to take to heaven with you. Because you see, if your good works have already gone before and you leave all your sins and your weaknesses and your frailties back behind. And you leave faith and the promises of God.

I mean, that's all going to be complete. The only thing you and I are going to take to heaven with us is love. And the question is, do you love God? Do you feel God's love in your heart? Can you say that you genuinely love anybody?

Or would you have to say, you know, I've had some feelings, but true genuine love, I'm not sure. And the title of this message is A Life of Love. We've talked about a life of prayer and a life of service and all those in the series that have to do with the extraordinary life, which simply means an extraordinary Christian is this, a person who is indwelt by the Lord Jesus Christ, by whose words people know that we know Him, by our actions they see Him in us, and in our very presence they feel something of the Lord Jesus Christ in our life.

The person who lives the extraordinary life is a person who's learned some very, very valuable lessons about love. So, I want you to turn, if you will, to the twenty-second chapter of Matthew, a very important passage of Scripture. And I want us to look at this passage in the light of this whole issue of a life of love, because He covers it right here. And in the twenty-second chapter beginning in verse thirty-four, here's what is happening.

But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees in their discussion, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and here's what He said, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And He said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. He says, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Then He says, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So, we're talking about God's love, our love for Him, His love for us, our love for ourselves, which almost sounds like a contradiction, and then our love for other people. And if anyone's going to live a godly life, an extraordinary Christian life, a life that's above the norm and above the ho-hum that oftentimes people are settled for, then you have to understand there are four lessons of love that all of us have to grasp in our own heart and then to begin to apply in our own life. So, I want us to look at this first one, because in these particular lessons, all of us are going to find ourselves. We're going to see ourselves in some fashion, and the first one is simply this, and that is we must learn to receive the love of God. We must learn to receive the love of God. Now, someone would say, Well, I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. Didn't I receive the love of God? Watch this.

You received an expression of His love. But think about this. A person who is a Christian can, in their mind, they can think about the love of God. In the Scriptures, you can read about the love of God. You can talk to other people about the love of God. People can preach and teach about the love of God. In other words, the fact that God loves us, all of us probably say, Well, yes, I know that He loves us. There's no question in my mind about that. I'm absolutely certain, and we could all turn to some Scriptures and say, Here's what it says.

Here's what I want you to remember. You can receive many of God's expressions of love, but here's the question. Have you ever received His love emotionally? Have you ever accepted the fact that God loves you, not just in your mind, not just for the blessings that He sends your way, but do you feel it? Now, when you love someone, you feel it. When you're genuinely in love with someone and they love you dearly, you feel it. You grasp it.

It affects you. There's something on the inside. You can't even fully explain it. You just know it's there. Oftentimes, people will go through their life and never experience, listen, God's love. Never feel it. Never be able to perceive it deep down inside.

Somehow, they can't grasp it. So, let me give you a personal illustration. I'd been a pastor many years. And there came a time in my life when something was going on that I couldn't put my finger on. I've always been able to find God's will at some point through struggle or prayer, whatever. There came a point that I just couldn't figure out what God was saying to me.

I'd pray and fast, you name it, I did it, and nothing happened. So, one day I called four of my friends. I said, Well, you meet me. And here's what I said to them. I said, Now, I want to tell you everything I know about myself. And then I want you to tell me what you believe God is saying to me because somehow I'm not getting the message. So, after I had shared everything I knew from the time, my first thing I remembered in life, to that moment, one of them said to me, he said, Your father just picked you up in his arms and held you.

What do you feel? Now, my father had died when I was nine months of age, so I had no remembrance of him. When he asked me that question, I just burst out crying. And I cried and cried and cried.

He's four men here. He asked me again. I cried again. Finally, he said, What did you feel? I said, I felt accepted, warm, loved, secure.

And I realized for the first time in my life what had been wrong. You see, if you don't, if you don't experience God's love, there'll always be a gap between you and Him. Not a sinful gap, just a gap.

It's an emotional gap. I would pray fast, you name it, I did it. And nothing happened. That day, it all came together in the most wonderful way. For the first time in my life, I experienced the love of God. Oh, I'd been saved. I could trust Him. I wanted to obey Him. I just couldn't figure out what there was between He and myself. And the truth is, there was nothing between us.

There was something missing between us. And that was my ability, my understanding to be able to receive the fact that God loved me unconditionally, no matter what. The reason I share that with you is because I know that there are lots of people who feel the same thing. There are lots of men who've come to me over the years as I've shared that and said, You know what? Now I know why I feel what I feel.

Lots of women have said the same thing. Now I know why I feel what I feel. I knew that something was missing in my life and it never dawned on me that it was my ability or lack of ability to receive and accept the love of God. And that's why I'm saying to you here, because watch this, until you're able to receive His love, you can't really love anybody else. Now watch this. You can have a deep affection for them.

Give them gifts, do all kinds of things. The reason you cannot is because genuine, true love comes from God. When you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior, He comes into your life.

Now watch this. He is able, remember the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, the very first characteristic.

He is able to love through you in ways that you cannot love someone else apart from Him. So the first lesson we must learn if we're going to live an extraordinary life, that's life on the highest plane, life at its best. We learn to accept and to receive God's love for us.

There's a second lesson I think we have to learn. We have to learn how to express our love toward God. What is the one single way that you and I know that we genuinely, truly love God if we do what? Obey Him.

I can give Him lip service. I can preach sermons and we can sing and read the Bible and give, but that doesn't, that's not an indication that I genuinely love Him. We love Him and we express that love toward Him when we obey Him.

So think about this. When you live out your life on a given day and you walk obediently before God, do you know what you're doing without even knowing it? When you live obediently before Him and obey Him, what you're doing is you're loving Him. Your obedience on a daily basis is love. When He asks you to volunteer to serve in your church or whatever it might be and you do that, you're loving Him. When He tells you to give, you're loving Him. And so often we think, well, in order to love God, I've got to go to church and sing and pray or do something, or do something dramatic.

No. He says, if you love Me, you'll keep My commandments. If you love Me, you will obey Me. So that you and I can express our love to Him every single day.

In fact, the truth is how many of our decisions on a given day indicate whether we love Him or not. What I want you to see is this, very clear in the Scripture that if I love Him, I'm going to obey Him. I'm going to do what He says because you see the Christian life is a life of commitment to the person of Jesus Christ. To walk in His ways. To follow Him.

He said, follow Me. So you have to ask yourself this question. Am I experiencing the love of God in my life? Do I feel that He loves me? Am I expressing genuine love to Almighty God by the life that I live, decisions that I make, words that I speak? Am I expressing love toward Him?

And nobody knows the answer to that but you. Do you really love Him? It takes more than lip service. It takes one simple thing, to obey Him in whatever He's requiring of you. So, lesson number one has to deal with this whole issue of being able to receive God's love.

The second is simply this. And that is, do I really and truly love God? Is my life an expression of love toward Him? That's the third lesson. This is the difficult one sometimes. And that is, I must be willing to love myself. You say, well that sounds like a big contradiction when you're talking about loving God and then receiving His love and then loving yourself. That sounds sort of prideful and pompous.

No, it's not. Because you see, listen to what Jesus said in this passage. He said, this is the great and foremost commandment. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

That's the second part of it. Love your neighbor as yourself, and the indication is that He certainly expects us to love ourselves. Healthy self-love says this, I respect myself. If I respect myself, there's some things I'm going to do and some things I'm going to avoid.

I'm going to be careful what I put into this body and what I keep out of it. I'm going to respect myself enough to watch how I dress. I'm going to respect myself enough to look at my potential and find out what that is. I'm going to respect myself enough to do my best. I'm going to respect myself enough to depend upon Him, to trust in Him, and to walk in His ways.

Because I know His plans best. You see, all of that is healthy self-love. Because remember this, He says you're not your own, you're bought with a price.

And so all of us are the purchased possession of Jesus. And as a result of that, that means this body, your body, who you are, God created you for the purpose of loving you and being loved by you. Therefore, we should respect this body. We should respect our mind, will, emotion, our spirit, our soul. We should respect every facet of our life.

Why? Because of who we are. He says we're His created beings. That is, we're His children. There's nothing on the creation to match who you and I are.

That's nothing to do with being pompous and profitable. It has to do with what God says we are. And if you're going to have the right kind of attitude toward other people, you've got to have the right attitude toward yourself. Well, there's a fourth lesson I think we have to learn, that's this. We must learn to reach out to others in love. And in John chapter thirteen, I want you to notice in this passage what He says. He says, A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have loved one toward another.

So, you know, loving somebody else, loving other people, is not an option. Now, somebody says, Well, but you just don't know so and so. God does.

And I don't see anything in here. He says, By this all men know that you are My disciples, if you love certain people. It's not what He says. He says, if you love one another. Let's ask yourself the question, how many of us have acted in such a fashion before in our life that it was very difficult for somebody to love us at that moment? Amen?

We've all been there. And so therefore, we have to be forgiving toward other people. Now, watch this. To love someone doesn't mean that I like them necessarily. I may not like what they do. I may not like the way they act.

I may not like what they have done. I may not even like that kind of personality. Can I love them as a person?

Yes, I can. Because I can look through all of that on the surface and see that here's a soul. Here's somebody that God created and that God loves them. They're all messed up in their emotions, in their mind. They're all messed up.

Why? Either nobody ever told them. Or somehow along the way, they got off track. Or maybe they never got on track.

But you know what? Some of us could have stayed off track. Some of us could never have gotten on track. It's the grace of Almighty God that any single one of us is saved. Amen? All by the grace of God that He reached down and saved us.

And when we bounced off the track once in a while, by our own will, He bounced us right back with some discipline to get us on track. That is the awesome love of God. And it's interesting what He says here. He says we are to love one another.

There are two reasons He said that, and I want you to watch this. For example, He said in Matthew, the fifth chapter, notice what He says here. And a lot of people don't particularly like this verse of Scripture because sometimes it sort of rubs us the wrong way. But here's what He said, verse forty-four, But I said to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. It's real hard to love somebody who's persecuting you.

And it's very difficult for us to love somebody who mistreats us. Here's what I want you to remember. There are two reasons Jesus said that. One of them is that He wants us to be compassionate and forgiving toward others just like He has forgiven us. Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ Jesus has forgiven you. So His first reason is that you and I would be compassionate and loving.

Watch this second one. The reason He said to love your enemies and pray for them is because loving them and praying for them protects us from becoming angry, bitter, hostile, resentful, all of which are self-destructive. When a person lives with anger or bitterness, jealousy, all of these things, what happens?

It affects them not only emotionally, their relationship to other people, but listen, it affects them physically. You cannot live with bitterness and resentment and anger and hostility in your heart without suffering, not only emotionally, but ultimately it's going to show up in this human body because God didn't create us to carry those. And so the truth is, He said, pray for your enemies. Love your enemies.

Pray for them in spite of what they do. Why? Because He wants to protect us. Listen, He certainly felt every bit of that. And what is He doing on the cross?

Praying for them. Why? Because that was the right response. Here's what He said in this passage. By this all men will know that you are My disciple, that you have loved one toward another.

You think about it. You can work, for example, in your office or in your business for ten long years and they know you're a Christian. It's things you say and so forth. But let somebody wrong you terribly. Terribly they wrong you and everybody sees them wrong you. And they see you, no anger, no bitterness, no hostility. You know what happens? In one incident you make your most awesome impact in that whole office. More in one incident than you did in ten years.

Why? They see you acting like Jesus. Thank you for listening to A Life of Love. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.