Riverside Community Church

Love One Another

LOVE

It is the most powerful force in your life, in all of your relationships

It is a powerful force with your spouse, a marriage without love is broken

It is a powerful force with your children, it is what compels them to obey

 

LOVE

It can mend a broken heart. It can comfort the needy. It can sooth the anxious and disquieted. It can give peace to the restless

 

LOVE

It is the most powerful force in the world, it is the most powerful force in the universe.

 

Let me ask you, why did God send His one and only son into the world to die for you, to take your sin away and save you?

 

‘For God so loved the world that He gave His own Son…’ 

Love motivated God, it is the most powerful force in the universe.

 

What if the Christians did this in the church, in Riverside. What if the sole motivating influence in our interaction & relationships with each other was LOVE.

 

Listen to the words of Jesus

John 13:34-35 (NIV)

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

 

What kind of love did God have to send Jesus, Agape, God love. What kind of love are we to have for each other, agape, a God love for others.

Love one another, this is a command, not a suggestion, a must do, not an option.

Brother & sister, Jesus has told me that I must love you. Jesus has told you, that   you must love each other. Look around, what do you see? Some more likeable than others? God didn’t tell us to like each other, liking everyone is impossible.

The command is to love, which is doable by all (not easy but doable).

 

What is LOVE?

A Biblical definition:

Compassionately and righteously seeking the well-being of another

Because loving is a command it is also a decision. Will I obey and love that person I don’t really like, or that kind of bugs me and gets under my skin. Will I obey and love that person who said something to me or did something to me that hurt.

         The answer is always and every time   YES, YES, Jesus commands it of me

 

1 Corinthians 16: 14

‘Do everything in love’

 Love is a life changer, personally in our lives and a church changer if love is our mantra, our highest value, to love one another. This church will be alive and on fire and the place to come to. This is great stuff for a bumper sticker or a T shirt –I love other Christians.

 

Loving each other here at Riverside is a symptom of your serious faith and following of Jesus Christ, it must be our signature dish, our highest attribute.

 

We murder the word LOVE in our English language, we’ll say I love chocolate, I love hockey, I love the colour blue. Come on! We are not seeking their well-being We prefer these things, we enjoy these things (half of these things we’re going to eat).     We do not love them.

 

So what does ‘love one another’ look like at Riverside, in my life & with each other? What does ‘life in the body with love for each other” look like?

 

What it isn’t, a fuzzy feeling, gushy emotion, or a sappy sentiment,  NAY NAY

 

Love one another was the message right from the beginning & everyone knew it back then and we know it to “love one another’.

1 John 3:11

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

Love one another was and is a command from Jesus, the One we follow

1 John 3:23

And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

Our source to love one another is God.

1 John 4:7

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Love one another is a debt we owe to each other

Romans 13:8

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.

 

Loving one another is a growing love –ever increasing

2 Thessalonians 1:3

We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing

Loving one another proves that God is in us

1 John 4:12

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Loving one another is compassionately and righteously seeking the well-being of another. Every time you talk to each other, seek their well-being  WOW how sweet it is. Every time you work with, worship with, meet with, think about, seek their well-being (NOT YOUR WELL-BEING, notice it is about their well-being)

 

I read on a Facebook entry recently, “If only somebody would love me ..” well it starts with you loving someone else. Here in the church we all need to love each other. What a dynamite place it is when Christians love Christians.

 

There’s the challenge, to love each other, to keep growing your love for each other.  It is a command of Jesus à will you obey, comply completely???