TOPIC: Change, Growth, Love
REFERENCES: 1 Peter 1:22 (MSG), Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV), 1 Peter 4:8 (MSG), 1 Peter 4:8 (NIV), Romans 3:23 (NIV), 1 Corinthians 9:13 (NIV), 1 Corinthians 9:22-23 (NIV), 1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)
SERIES: It's A Brand New Year, Is It The Same Old You? | Part 6 of 6

SUMMARY
Now that you've cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. —1 Peter 1:22 :: The Message (MSG)

Has your doctor ever said to you, "Do this because your life depends on it!" As the verse states, our lives do depend upon love. Living depends on love. You may exist...but if you’re not loving, you’re not living, you’re just existing. If the good news means anything it means that we don’t have to be the person that we used to be. The Gospel is the power that is within us that allows us to become what we otherwise would not have been.

Life Giving Qualities that Love Creates Within Us:

1. Love gets us involved.
You can read about being compassionate, but until you get involved, you’ll never really feel it or know it; love and compassion must always have a face attached to it.

2. Love sees through our labels.
There really is only one label; we’ve all missed the mark. From God’s perspective, I am as fallen as the person who wears the worst label I can imagine. Romans 3:23 - for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

3. Love sees through our insecurities.
Are these people going to like me? Will these people notice me? What we are most interested in when we encounter people for the first time is not who they are, but what do they think of me? And because of this, we will miss what’s going on with others.

Two ways that love helps us to see beyond our insecurities:
1. Love gives us a growing power to love ourselves enough, to be thankful for who we are, and to forgive ourselves for who we are not.
2. Love helps me get outside of myself long enough to discover that the people whose favor I need so much are as weak and needy as I am.

4. Love helps us see through our rights
Success in life is measured in how many people get served as a result of our life.
Paul gave up his right to get paid for his work for the greater good.
Jesus said you need to lose your life if you want to gain it.

Listen to the final message in this series and see how, at the end, with all of these linked virtues, we are led to a place that we otherwise would have never been; when God produces within us the ability to love ourselves and to love other people. That’s the miracle, that’s the good news.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.—1 Corinthians 13:13 (New International Version)

MY COMMENTS
It is sermons like this one that motivates me to get up out of my seat, to get involved, to serve others and to feel compassion.