Someone might say, you know, my wife is so depressed, I am utterly helpless, you know, to offer her meaningful solace or support or counsel or aid. My son is sullen and distant and he wants nothing to do with his old man. There's nothing I can do. I have a friend, he's destroyed his family with his sexual addiction. And there's absolutely nothing any of us can do, he needs professional help. My question of this morning is this, are we in fact impotent? Are we in fact unable to offer the kind of intervention and help, do we lack the power and the ability to make a meaningful difference in the most significant hurts and pains and struggles and hardship of people's lives? The answer is we have that power. The Bible says, if we are in Christ, then out of us will flow what? From his innermost being, Jesus said, the one who believes in me, from his innermost being, and the core of him will flow rivers of living water, going out, bringing healing and hope, restoration to those who are struggling. This is God's plan for restoration, healing power to go out when the lives of those in his community intersect that out of one will pour into the other, life giving strength and power. What we call that is love, a word so overused in our world that it's virtually devoid of meaning anymore. But that's what it means, love, real love, agape love, the transforming effect of being adopted by God into his family and receiving his love so transforms up that out of us flows that same connecting, healing, love to other people and when that love is given it rocks lives and it rocks the world and for thousands of years people have been looking at Christians around the world and saying, my those people, they love one another and so it must be in our day. What is it to be a Christian? Is it to keep a bunch of rules? Is it to appear before the world as those people who don't say certain words and those people who don't go to certain movie and those people who don't do this or don't do that or don't steal or is that what it is to be a Christian? The Bible says that the end of the law is what? The end of all the rules is what? The greatest commandment is love, God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor, this is the sum of it all is being a Christian, getting that doctrine down so right that you can win any argument in your family reunions, those people in your family who are back kissed, you know, you can get that doctrine out, you know, that is that what it's all about. Having the Paul says in Galatians, circumcision or un-circumcision, don't matter, that was the reigning theological debate of the day. That's not what's crucially said, it's faith working itself out through love. When it's all said and done, the question is going to be, how did we love? That's what we'll be judged on. How well did we love? How well did we love? Now that's a challenge before us today. Now in the world, God take people like us and make us loving, so that out of us can healing and hope, see every, every problem experienced by people, and there's a multitude of them, aren't they? It would, it would shock the socks off of many of you to know how many women in this room have been sexually abused by a family member of their horrible truth. Well, with a damage of that, dominate their lives for the rest of their time on this earth, I say no. Folks in this room who are lonely, folks in this room who grow up in emotionally empty homes, folks in this room who have had traumatic marriages and divorces, and we could go on and on with the life experiences that people have experienced, and I want to tell you something, God has a plan for healing and restoration, it's called reconnection. All our problems stem from what? To all human struggles stem from what? Thousands of years ago, God and man were what? Separated. By our own sin and rebellion, God and man became disconnected. God comes into the garden for intimate fellowship with man, for community, for love, and what happens. Man is nowhere to be found. He's hiding. He's hiding. And when God finally makes connection with man, and he says, what in the world are you doing man turns and points at the woman, and the woman points at the man, and we have this separation, and we have division. Every problem that we have has to do with being disconnected, disconnected from God and disconnected from each other, and so when God reconnects us with himself, through adopting us into his family, then he also reconnects us with other people, and when that happens something powerful and awesome can take place in the midst of people and in their lives. That's what God wants. He offers His church life-giving power through the connection of one life to another. Now my challenge is to everybody in this room, but it's particularly to men, because God tells men to lead the way, I love it in our worship when we echo music. You know, to men singing and the ladies singing, one reason I like it is because the men always sing first. I don't know why they do that. I just like that because God says to the men, take the lead, take the lead, go first, take the initiative, and men when they love is not going to look like women when they love, by the way, and women don't want it to look like that. It's a powerful thing when men step forward and become agents of healing and wholeness, and a lot of men because it's an area of their life they feel uncomfortable with have withdrawn. They're not, and I want to say something, God wants you in the arena men, and He wants you bloody trying to be great lovers. And He wants you failing and falling on your face, but He wants you in the fray, because when all said and done and life is over, you will not have had a purposeful, meaningful life, which is what your soul wants at its core. You will not have had that if you have not had relationships. OK, take your sermon out loud. When you read Romans chapter 12, it says an awful, there's an awful lot of admonition there, but we could sum it up in these two ways clearly. First of all, as the call to love our family, to love those one another, those who are with us in the faith, and then to love those who oppose us, mistreat us, even hate us, we're called to love them both. So first of all, what's the Bible say? Love your family, verse 10 of chapter 12, be devoted to one another in what, brotherly love. And so God creates this thing called the church, and He pulls us all together. And He says, I want you to be a community like we've already described in this service. There's been a picture making its way around on the internet that has a story attached to it. The picture is of two little babies and an incubator in the hospital, and one infant has arm around the other. And underneath this picture is the story, and the story goes like this, that these twins were born and separated, placed in separate incubators to develop and one twin is thriving and the other is not doing well at all. And some nurse violating hospital protocol and hospital rules, it takes matters into her own hand, takes the ailing sickly baby and puts that baby in with its twin, with its sibling, and so the picture is then snapped of the healthy baby with its arm around the other, cuddling the other. And doctors' reports are that as soon as that happened within an hour or two, the temperature of the sickly baby stabilized, the heart rate of the sickly baby became stable, and it's begun to thrive and do well as well. That's what God says, a church is about, that's what God says, we're about, is to put our arms around each other, and bring health and wholeness to connect with one another, and so my question this morning is, who do you have your arm around? Who in this service, when the whistle blows, and it's time to go home today, will you have your arm around on the way out to the parking lot, in some way your life connecting with them. Who are you going to be with tonight? Who are you going to call tomorrow? Who's your life connected with? So that out of you is going a river of living water to someone else. Now, let me say what I can in just the next few minutes about loving your family, about what true, the true love that God wants. First of all, hey, true love is based on truth, seems to make sense, doesn't it? Romans chapter 12, the ninth verse, let love be without what? So we talk about love that has to be based on truth, means it can't be phony. It means that you can't be doing good deeds, saying nice things to people, when inside you truly what, despise them, dislike them, that doesn't wash, that's not true love, it's not true life to be nice to people, you can't stand, okay, that's a big challenge. How do you truly love so that your love isn't phony or fake? We have a particular problem with this in the church, you see because the church breeds the community of niceness. I mean folks who don't claim to be Christian, don't struggle with this, do that. They'll tell you what they think of you, but in the church we're not allowed to do that. We're not allowed to tell the truth, or so it seems. And so in the church we learn these rules of kindness and niceness that means very often people never tell other people what they really think. They never get below the layers, or below the veneer of niceness and kindness that we wear on the outside, that Jesus so despised people keeping the law, but inside they were wicked and their hearts were corrupt, and he wants to say rip off the masks, expose what you are, and so that's what it means to love, not in a phony way, but a genuine way, and so many churches are sort of a noxious, nauseating niceness that pervades, that's so unattractive to the world, and so unpalatable, I think to any Christians for that matter, we ought to flee from it, our true love, it's got to be based on the truth, I want you to understand the true love too, on truth means that if you're going to truly love other people, you must love them according to that which is true, what does the Bible say, to truly love you must hate, and that what the verse says, verse 9, to truly love you must hate what, evil, you must love the good and hate the evil, and that means we've got people who, there's a song that goes, if loving you is wrong, I don't want to be, what does that mean, what that means is, if my feelings lead me to do, which is actually immoral and destructive, then I'm going to go with my feelings anyway, because I'd rather be wrong if that's what the cost it is to love, listen, if you are intimately involved with a person outside of marriage physically sexually, because you love them, then you don't love them, that's not the way that you express love, you don't do wrong to other people and then claim that it's all about love, in fact that's all about self-centeredness and self-love, and it doesn't express the discipline and loving someone else according to the truth, when a parent caves into the incessant demands of a small child to buy me something, or I want to cope, or whatever it is, and the parent knows that that's not in the child's best interest, but they cave in because they want to calm that, they don't want to risk a temper tantrum or whatever, and they might even tell themselves well, I love them, that's not love, love has to be after the truth, understand that the pastivity is another point to make, so how many people, how many often in counseling you do with couples very often women that will be married to someone for a long time, and their husband's treatment of them is atrocious, and they've never confronted it, they've never called their husband on the carpet, they have never challenged that behavior, or for that matter parents with their teenagers, they've never entered the fray to say that's unacceptable, that will not be tolerated, no, they've stayed passive and to live because they say it won't work, they won't listen, and I don't want to risk the relationship because I love them, that's not love, refusing to enter the fray is not hating what's evil in someone else, if your son is a drunkard and you do nothing, you don't love them, you love yourself, you succumb to cowardice, it's hard to engage in love, but we must find a way because true love hates what is evil in others, you don't engage your spouse in their wrongdoing because you want a better life for yourself, that's our temptation, now you do it because you hate what is evil in them and what's destroyed them and because you love what is good and because you're called to be a ministering agent even if you lose in this engagement, even if even if it gets hard and difficult and loud, you enter the fray because you love, now you have to do that wisely sometimes, carefully, prudently, I like the mom, as John invited his mother over for dinner during the meal, his mother couldn't help noticing how beautiful John's roommate Julie was, she had long been suspicious of a relationship between John and Julie, over the course of the evening while watching them interact, mom started to wonder if there was more between John and Julie than she'd been told, reading his mom's thoughts, John said, I know what you're thinking mom but I assure you, Julie and I are just a platonic thing, about a week later Julie came to John and said ever since your mother came to dinner, I can't find a beautiful silver gravy ladle, you don't suppose she took it, do you? John said, well I doubt it but I'll write her a letter just to be sure, so he sat down and wrote, dear mother, I'm not saying you did take the gravy ladle from my house and I'm not saying you did not take the gravy ladle but the fact remains that one has been missing ever since you were here for dinner, now John received the letter back from his mother which read, dear son, I'm not saying that you do sleep with Julie and I'm not saying that you don't sleep with Julie but the fact remains that if she was sleeping in her own bed she would have found the gravy ladle by now, I just want to suggest that true love finds a way, so true love has to be based on truth, now here's a question and you ought to be asking it, so pastor how do we do it, how do we love somebody we despise, I mean if we're really not going to be hypocrites or phonies, how do we love people we don't like, well you do it by repenting every step of the way, yes you approach them with kindness and love that you don't feel but as you do it you're repenting of the fact that you don't feel it, you're repenting of the fact that your heart doesn't want to do it, you're repenting of the fact that you are so proud and so haughty that you are willing to set yourself up as judge and jury over the life of another person and declare yourself better than them so that you find such flaws in them when you've experienced the love of God who gives it to us freely even though we are smelly and noxious and unworthy and unlovable and so you do it by repenting every step of the way, there isn't any other way to do it. Secondly, true love is not only a true based on truth, it's determined, there's a determination to it, I guess I've expressed this already, it's hard work, what does verse 11's and 12 say of Romans chapter 12 that you can't lag behind in diligence, you have to be fervent in spirit, it takes constant prayer, you've got to persevere in tribulation to offer true love and the truth is some have quit the fight, you've given up, you don't try to converse with your spouse anymore, you don't try to connect with your kids because you say when I do it it doesn't work and it's too painful and it's not worth it and all you're saying by that is I'll offer it if there's results, God says offer it results are not because your source of love is not response from the one you're loving, the source of your love is not that it works, the source of your determination is not that you're seeing progress, the source of your determination is that I love you in the midst of your undeservedness and the midst of your hardheartedness and the midst of your stubbornness, I'm long suffering with you, you be long suffering, it's determined, it doesn't quit, it stays in the fight and that is oh so hard, don't pretend it's anything but and I will promise you in this room, if you are going to be a true lover you will quit all the time, you'll be on the mat and you will quit and then the Holy Spirit will come and he will prod you what and you'll get back up and you'll go back into the fight and and then you'll quit again and the Spirit will come and prod you and say no no no no no you stay in this diligent pursue love, how can we do that how can we have that kind of tenacity, Les Miserables, awesome story of redemption, Jean-Galjon the the thief is given safe haven by the priest right, you can find nothing to eat, he can find nowhere to rest his head and the priest opens up gives him safety and protection and after all the rub of the priest for this thief when it comes to the dark of the night the thief his heart still evil, wakes up and steals the silver of the church doesn't he, stuffed it in his bag leaves with a law pursues him and the law always wins the law always condemns and the law finds him and drags him back to the church to meet before the priest where the priest will deliver the defining convicting blow and so the law says to the priest he stole your silver and the priest says what I gave it to him and then he turns to the thief the priest doesn't says what and Jean why didn't you take the candlesticks to I gave you those two you know when life begins to change and love begins to come out of us is when we realize we have a father who should have thrown us to the wolves but instead he looks at us in all our guilt and all our shame and says I want you to have the candlesticks till that's when you begin to love and you see the determined tenacity of our God to break open our hard hearts and pour his grace into them true love is self-abasing give preference to one another in honor be like Jesus who left everything the left heaven who left glory took on the form of a bond servant made himself of no account the Bible says make yourself of no account weep with those who weep I mean weep with them as if their wounds are your ones why because they matter more than you do and you truly believe that and rejoice with the joy of others because that they do well is more important to you than that you do well true love is self-abasing verse 16 is an important verse to give your attention to it says don't be haughty in mind associate with the lowly most people get some measure of their worth by associating with the most admirable the most personable the most famous the most wealthy the Bible says people who get grace do the exact opposite let me tell you something to think about we live in a we we live in of all things in our country a celebrity culture right we love to surround ourselves with people who somehow we feel like look this up in particular if we see somebody who's really famous and we want to be with them we like have a picture taken with them we like to say I saw so and so you know as if they're like height with us I just want to I want to give you a little hint for life if you're ever in the same room with somebody important some politico some senator some big you know college football coach some movie star consider it to be absolutely no big deal and I'll go one further don't get your picture made and don't get their autograph and don't walk up to their table and don't do anything like that because it's a great opportunity for you to say what the gospel helps me understand that there's nobody walking the face of this earth is better than I am and there's nobody walking the face of this earth is worse it just people who need the grace of God just like I do and the one person that I want to be thrilled about being in their presence is the Lord Jesus Christ that's the only association that truly elevates me and when I pick the least popular person in the room Jesus says you have chosen to do what you have chosen to associate with with me with me so when everyone else gathers around the popular go in the opposite direction it'll be good for your heart and the last point is true love true love is practically generous contributing to the needs of the saints practicing hospitality the Bible says let me just finish the sermon with the last point it's the call of love your enemies verse 21 of Romans 12 says don't be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good and you guys can figure this out and I'm gonna end the sermon right here I'm not having to finish this sermon why because I love you guys figure this out yourself it's this true love is not overcome by evil never pay back evil to anyone we are permitted no retaliation no paying back no bitterness no vengeance no refusal to forgive we may not injure those who have injured us from the mechanic who cheat you to the child who spurns you to the position who marries you to the uncle who raped you you may not extract your pound of flesh to repay evil for evil to hate those who have wronged us then evil has won the Bible says your conviction that God is for you and he is good is so strong that you'll let him even the scale true love overcomes evil with good true love seeks the enemy and serves him pursuing his highest good that's God's word counselor friend said that a man in his counseling office told him when he was a 10 year old boy he um his family was mean and to sit at dinner at his household was a tense thing it was either quiet or it was just sarcasm and you're just afraid of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing and he would he said he would get out of eating dinner as soon as he could and he would go down the street where there was a big whole house and a happy family and when it was their dinner hour he would go underneath the porch of that house and he would listen to the laughter coming through the floorboards and he would sit there and dream that that father would send his son out and the son would find him there and bring him in and invite him to sit at that table and be a part of that family he said he used to dream that if he knocked the milk over and at that table that the father wouldn't lash out at him that the father would say get my son another shirt I don't want him to miss this meal I don't want him to sit here in wet clothing the father would love him even though he was flawed rather than sisters if you look at your life and you say I don't see love coming out of me like I would desire then I want to suggest that you need to to realize that that dream has come true with you once you are under the porch outside the house but your father has sent his son to bring you in to sit at his table and to stare at you across that table with eyes of delight and joy you are the precious child of the living God perhaps you forgot the wonder of that this father's day if you want to be a greater lover run for the arms of your father and don't leave until you enjoy his embrace so much that you want to invite someone else into that circle with you