How's Your Love Life? - LIFECENTRAL CHURCH ONLINE

[Music] [Music] good morning everyone it is great to see you welcome to life central church my name is leon and a big shout out to those of you watching in rowley we are so glad that you guys are starting to connect again and hey if you're watching from hagley as well or maybe bronze grove or clivery moore tomorrow wherever you're watching you're really really welcome and of course there is so many people here in the room as well and you are so welcome as well in fact just before i get started i want to say we've got a really big week coming up in the life of our church which is the first week of october so next sunday october the 3rd is the end of this series reset then on the tuesday night the 5th we've got our life central midweek in person here which is going to be a worship experience it's going to be so good we're handing over to all the worship the collective guys and they're going to be leading us through that so you don't want to miss that you want to put that in your diary it starts at 8 o'clock but we're going to be opening up for about 7 o'clock outside there's going to be some stuff so that you can socialize and connect with each other and at 8 o'clock going to come in here and we're going to have an hour or so an hour and a half together it's going to be amazing then on that following sunday the 10th we've got two services here in house owen that sunday because we are baptizing people which is really exciting it's the first time we've baptized people since the pandemic started last march and so we're really looking forward to that and if that wasn't enough on that sunday evening at eight o'clock we have our vision gathering which will be digital it'll be on zoom so if you want to be a part of that then make sure we've got your email and we can communicate that out with you so that first week of october is going to be an amazing week put those dates in your diary um but i want to ask a question of you today you know questions can be uh clarifying but they can also be problematic can't they you know when you ask the question i don't know how many of you guys have ever asked your wife um or your girlfriend a question and you thought i really shouldn't have asked that question like are you really going to wear that tonight that's a bad question isn't it and then the other question that you can ask sometimes well how old do you think i am never ask that question how old do you think i am the question i have for you today is this how's your love life in fact why don't you talk to the person next to you no no no i'm not doing that how's your love life but when i say how's your love life i'm not talking about your love life i'm talking about your love life okay because actually we only have one word in english for the word love but in greek which is what much of the new testament was written in there are eight words and of course the word that we're looking at because we're looking in this reset series that when the apostle paul in 1 corinthians 13 he says you know what if you want to live your life the way god intended you to live it there are three things that you must make sure are in your life faith hope and the greatest of these is love but when paul uses that word love he doesn't use the word for romantic love or for friendship love or for family love he uses this word he uses the word agape and it's a selfless sacrificial unconditional love it's very hard to actually define but this is the kind of love that god loves us with and this is the kind of love that we are called to love others with as well so when i ask you the question i'm going to ask you many many times today how's your love life i'm talking about this i'm not talking about your romantic love life that's important i'm talking about this this is supremely important and last week we looked at the fact that when jesus came along there were two jewish rabbis that that had um a jewish rabbi developed like an interpretation of the law of god and it's called the yoke and we looked at these two characters shamai and hillel and shamai his kind of uh if you like centerpiece to how he interpreted the law of god and how to please god was obedience but hillel his centerpiece wasn't obedience it was love and jesus came along and sided very much with hillel but took it even further and not only pushed it but redefined what love was all about you see we've heard of the golden rule treat others as you would wish to be treated but jesus came along and said that's great but i'm going to take that golden rule and upgrade it to the platinum rule and it's literally this love others as i have loved you which is absolutely huge and a guy called andy stanley put it this way under the new covenant we do not love god and our neighbors we love god by loving our neighbors and guys here's the thing the hebrew word for neighbor literally means friend and it also means opponent so literally when jesus comes along and says listen if you want to show that you love me folks then it isn't by how much you know it isn't by loving the people that you love it's by loving everybody else your neighbor your friend and your opponent in the way that i have loved you that's tough innit really really tough love others as you have been loved by god and if you're not a jesus follower today please hang with us because we want to explain to you what it means and i'm hoping that as i go through today you'll get a little bit of a window into what it really means and i'll have to say as a follower of jesus i know that sometimes even those of us who are followers of jesus we're not particularly loving i know i'm not particularly loving in my life and when i've missed it out i give you a bad representation of what this thing called faith is meant to be so i'm not talking from a point of i've got all this together by a long shot but i am saying this is what it's meant to be and here's my working theory when it comes to loving people who are not just your friends but those are your opponents and i developed this kind of theory myself several years ago and i've gone back to it because i think it's actually got something really relevant you see this is what i kind of thought that actually there's me in my circle okay and loving people in my circle is one thing and i think over the last 18 months this idea has been accentuated because now we call it a bubble i mean we never used to talk about who's in your bubble did we it's really interested in the first lockdown so many people say oh they're in my bubble and they're in my bubble and they're in my bubble i say no they're not in your bubble all right you're just seeing them all right because the bubble that little circle is those people that you say that's my circle and i think for most of us when it comes to love we want to love people in our circle and how many of you know it's hard loving people even in your circle isn't it because you're sitting next to him some of you aren't you because it's your family and you think crikey that's hard enough but here's what happens when loving people in your circle gets difficult what most of us tend to do is we tend to vote people out of our circle we push them out of the bubble maybe the difficult people anyone got any difficult people in your life yeah you don't look at them right yeah that's you and this is what we do we've all got difficult people i've got difficult people in my life okay too much conversation there all right over there and maybe watching a home you know don't nudge the person sat next to you we've all got difficult people but jesus says if you want to say you're a follower of me you've got to love difficult people as i have loved you what about different people people are just not like us you know i'm totally passionate about this church should be the place where we love different people like nowhere else church should be the place guys where we stand next to where we worship next to where we serve next to people who are not like us who are not the same color as us who are not the same background as us who are not from the same socio-economic stream as us difference should be something that pulls people into our circle not push people out and jesus was all about breaking down the barriers and breaking down the walls and including people not pushing people out but there are different people and we don't understand different so we tend to vote them out of our circle and then what about the damaged those who are damaged who are draining and i understand all this and we've got to look after ourselves and all of that i get all of that but i'm trying to make a point i think jesus is calling us guys in these days to include more people in our circle than we would feel comfortable with and then finally there's the dangerous people and i know that we've got to be careful and we've got to put things in place but god is calling us i really believe when paul says the greatest of these is love he wasn't just saying love the people in your circle he was saying love the world love your friend and your opponent as i have loved you that's challenging so we are going to dive into 1 corinthians 13 but before we do that and as we look at the scripture together i want you to watch this little piece of media because here's some of the scripture that we're going to look at but here's some incredibly insightful observations from some really young children maybe the bible and these young kids could teach us something today take a look [Music] recently a group of business professionals asked children the following question what does love mean [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] love is the most difficult gift of all to give away and at the same time the most necessary gift we need to emotionally survive [Applause] so may we learn to love with the innocence of children dipping deeply into the well of god's love for us [Music] [Applause] [Music] some quite profound stuff in there wasn't i love the one about at christmas time you know we're starting to maybe to think about that some of you already thinking about that now um you know love is when you stop unwrapping presents and just listen so good and maybe to love better maybe start with someone that you hate so profound and i think when we start to look at the bible and if you've got a bible i'd love you to switch it on or open it up 1 corinthians chapter 13 and last week we looked at the set setup for this really which was how paul kind of shocked his audience by by these people at corinth that valued fancy words and they valued you know preaching and they valued gifts of the spirit and they valued all of this but he said hey if you have got all of that you don't have love it's just a mess it's a noise it's a racket i don't like it in my ears and after shocking the audience he then dives into this beautiful which we always tend to push to weddings but it wasn't ever a wedding chapter these are not wedding verses these are life verses and paul says this in 1 corinthians 10 love is patient love is kind it does not envy it does not boast it is not proud it is not rude it is not self-seeking it is not easily angered it keeps no record of wrongs love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth it always protects always trusts always hopes always perseveres love never fails i remember when i was doing uh english literature at my a level my uh english teacher saying to me that the best literature on the planet is in the bible she wasn't a follower of jesus but just from a literature point of view this is beautiful but the problem is the familiarity of these words and the beauty of these words means that we can ignore what they're actually saying and so what i want to do today is i want to take you through the 10 things that paul says here about love okay and then i'm going to ask you how's your love life how's your love life so the first thing that paul says is this that that love is patient i'm really terrible at this on anyone else like i'm like number one i'm you know oh my gosh love is patient and the word that he uses for patients it kind of means that takes a long time to boil i don't know about you but i don't take a long time to boil at all and i was going to say my wife will testify but that sounds really wrong so i'm not going to say that but andy stanley he said this patience is the decision to move at someone else's pace rather than pressure him or her to match yours such a great definition such a great hey it's about choosing to i'm going to go at your pace rather than pressure you to go at mine that's patience and of course if we're gonna love like god has loved that then what have patience to see well it says in romans chapter do this you surely don't think much of god's wonderful goodness or of his patience and willingness to put up with you how many of you know god's patient with you god so and i think when we're struggling to be patient with other people let's remember god is incredibly patient with us number two love is kind the original word um here carries a different meaning it's not just like a kindness as an act of grace it also um is used to describe a person or a deed that is helpful or useful they used to talk about food being not just tasty but kind because it's helpful because it's like it's adapted to a purpose and so you'd say something like that beetroot salad was really kind or if you're on our staff team that dirty burger was really kind all right because that's what we would say and it's almost like it's not just an act of grace but it's useful and adaptable again andy stanley says kindness is loaning someone your strength to love that loaning someone your strength instead of reminding them of their weakness and i was reading this book a love worth giving which is all about one corinthians 13 by max located quite an old book now and at the end of the one a chap one of the chapters he tells this story and it says this in the book entitled sweet thursday john steinbeck introduces us to madame fauna she runs a brothel and takes a liking to a prostitute by the name of susie madame fauna sets suzy up on a real date with a man not a client she buys susie a nice dress and helps her get ready for the evening as susie is leaving she moved by madame fawn as kindness asks her you've done so much for me can i do anything for you yes the older woman replies you can say i'm susie and no one else susie does their madame foreign requests now say i'm susie and i'm a good thing and so susie tries i'm susie and i'm a good and then susie begins to cry wouldn't god want you to say the same words in his book you are a good thing isn't that interesting in god's book you are a good thing be kind to yourself god thinks you're worth his kindness and he is a good judge of character you know i want to suggest kindness is something that is really missing from our society right now you know i said as any of you watch the video i filmed on my way over to to church i was just thinking about this chatting to my wife allison about this that you know at the start of lockdown it seemed like everyone was kind to each other and we were clapping the nhs on the steps and you know we were looking out for our neighbors and if you did go out in your car we were slower and it was a little bit more relaxed it is ridiculous now what is happening some of our crazy stockpiling some of our craziness on the road in the last few weeks allison and myself have stopped and helped two road traffic accidents help people have been in crashes we broke up a fight of two young boys that were kicking the daylights out of each other a couple of days a few couple of weeks ago we stopped through a little old lady that the car had broken down in the middle of a junction cars were going every which way around every single one of those incidents where we stop to try and help people i'm not bigging ourselves up this is just ridiculous every single one where we stopped to try to be kind everybody else on the road was banging their horns putting their fingers up at us because we were slowing them down by a matter of seconds to try and help other people our world needs kindness more than ever before and guys if we are followers of jesus we have been loved with a love that is patient and kind and jesus says as i have loved you so you must love one another love is kind number three love does not envy in other words it's not jealous some translations use the word jealous it's not striving after what others have or what we think others have and obviously social media is not helpful for this because we look at other people's social media and we think i want their life like i want their house i want their car i want their husband no no we don't say that i want what they've got or what we perceive they've got and it creates envy within us and craig grishela writer from america he said this envy is when you resent god's goodness in other lives and ignore his goodness in your own life that's what envy is and paul says hey love does not envy number four love does not boast it is not proud you know i think sometimes that's about focus isn't it and again how much of our focus is on us you know when we walk into our room when we walk into a room where there's people is is our focus here i am or is our focus there you are and actually love does not boast it is not proud love causes to love others in a way that opens up doors for others not just doors for ourselves and a week ago a friend of mine sent me this little clip which which is a certain kind of humor some of you might not get but again it just accentuates just how prone we are to want to open doors for certain people take a look at this what is a polite distance we conducted an experiment in the corridor of this commonwealth garden office block see how the highlighted person holds the door open for the person behind him he is being polite the distance involved is four and a half feet a greater distance will usually result in the door not being held open although there is a grey area of two feet depending on the attractiveness of the person walking behind a low-level attractive person may not have the door held open in the grey area but may receive the benefit of phantom politeness from an extra push on the door creating a window of opportunity for the person behind to pass through the doorway an unattractive person can sometimes pass for an attractive person by entering the two foot grey area and skipping a few steps to the door before it closes a very attractive person can sometimes increase the polite distance to almost 15 to 20 feet though this can sometimes increase the risk of embarrassment to the daughter some of you might not get that humor at all but there's just that sense of like do we open doors for people that oh they're attractive but oh we like them and actually we close them for everyone else but you see when we're loved in the way that god loves us we want to open doors for other people because the paul says it's not boastful it's not proud it's not all about you it's actually about what would it be like if we lived like that all of us if i lived like that more that would be great if we lived like wouldn't it be amazing in our community in our workplaces in our schools in our colleges in our universities in our neighborhoods if actually we lived like this and we loved like this it would be amazing then paul goes on to say love is not rude translation of that word says does not demand its own way it it's a word that means unbecoming acting dishonorably shameful or disgraceful behavior i think some of what we're seeing right now you know even with the stockpiling of petrol and i get that that this you know i get all of that okay but 18 months ago we were stopped by toilet rolls and pasta and now we stop piling petrol a lot of that is because we're kind of acting like it's just all about us and we get into our own little circle and we forget about everyone else and that's where the rudeness comes and that's where the the the kind of what paul would say the kind of disgraceful behavior of ignoring other people because it's all about you and then he goes on to say love is not self-seeking as if to back up the point he pushes it home even deeper love is not self-seeking in another letter that he writes to philippians he says it this way do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit rather in humility value others above yourselves and i'll talk about this in a moment not look into your own interests but each of you to the interests of others guys i want to say something strong today and i hope it's not out of anger because my next point is love is not easily angered but you know there's an obsession in our culture right now with our rights okay and i get that but i have to say if you're a follower of jesus i want to challenge you lovingly know your bible because the obsession with our rights okay is not a biblical concept in the way that it's become because for us it's all about everything is about my right so my right to choose my sexuality my right to choose my gender my right to do whatever i like my right to do to be whatever i want it's my right my right my right when you see the bible the bible has a value on rights but it has an even bigger value on responsibilities in the bible it's always we over me it's always me choosing to lay down myself for the good of other people and so i will do this because of those people i will lay down this right in order to benefit other people freedom freedom was always about the ability to choose the right thing for the benefit of others freedom has become about the ability to choose whatever the heck i want to do for myself and i want to say as a church this is so so important paul says yes you've got the right but you've got a responsibility and love is not self seeking and i want to say it's so important in relationships in marriage relationship well i was wrong i was right and you're wrong and yes you might be but actually love is not about being right love is about restoring love is about building a bridge love is about working things through love is about loving others in the way that god has loved you and then paul goes on to say love is not easily angered i read something this week about a guy that that had anger issues in his life and when he had grown up a little bit and his kids had grown up they were talking about this and and he would talk he talked about his anger issues and his one child said well i don't ever remember you being angry when when we were young and he said this do you remember that tree near our drive the one that used to be tall that got lower and lower and lower and the branches went lower low he said before i came home he said i took it out on the tree and he said this interesting phrase i left my anger at the tree so i didn't have to bring it home wouldn't that be revolutionary if people people left their anger somewhere else rather than bring it home and maybe because if you're of jesus follower you know the significance in our faith about the tree and what jesus has done we call it the tree but on the cross wouldn't it be great if we could leave the anger there so we didn't have to bring it home love is not easily angered then number eight love keeps no record of wrongs love keeps no record of wrongs you know jesus defined love by saying as i have loved you that's how you're to love others well how have i loved you well well look in the bible uh here we go in psalm 130 lord if you kept a record of our sins who o lord could ever survive in other words god you don't keep a record of wrongs you know and what we often do i said this last week we're trying to earn points with a god who's no longer keeping score god doesn't keep a record of our wrongs and he calls us to love others in the same kind of way and that doesn't mean that we ignore wrong it doesn't mean that we step over wrong it doesn't mean that we deny wrong it doesn't mean any of that but it means that we deal with it appropriately and then we say okay and then we try and find a way to move on and rather than pushing people out of our circle we bring more people in love keeps no record of wrongs and enough for me you know we're not sprinkled with with forgiveness we are we are we are absolutely deluged in grace i love the song and we sang it i think here last sunday there's a line that says if grace is an ocean we're all sinking how many of you are glad that you've got grace in your life how many of you yeah let me see your hand come on because to me you know whenever i'm struggling to love other people and i am often i have to keep reminding myself of how much god has loved me and the grace and the ocean i'm sinking in and he doesn't keep a record of wrongs and he's incredibly patient and he's incredibly kind and he laid down his own life for me and if god has loved me that way that's the kind of love i'm called to love others with number nine love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth from the message translation this line says this doesn't revel love doesn't revel when others grovel i love that doesn't revel when others grovel takes pleasure in the flowering of truth and many of you know um we've had a very very difficult time as a church community the last couple of weeks with a very painful situation that has occurred a funeral that happened here on friday of a father and a young son and and you remember you know some of you know that and how hard it's been and we think of the verse from the bible that says that we we are called to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice and love can do both and sometimes on the same day love can stand where others are where they're struggling and hurting and love can rejoice when others are rejoicing and celebrate with them and that's what love does it doesn't delight in evil but it rejoices in the truth and then number 10 and i've kind of put these last few together by just calling it this love is always love is just always and paul says it always protects it always trusts it always hopes it always perseveres and it never fails and in that language that paul writes that word for fail is used to describe like the demise of a flower when it when a flower withers and dies and falls into the earth that's what it sees but and paul's saying love's not like that you know you know at a funeral i will often say well i will always say this is what we are doing today and this is what we are not doing today what we are doing today is saying goodbye to the physical presence of someone what we are not doing is saying goodbye to the love we're not we're not saying goodbye to the memories we're not saying goodbye to the influence because that lives on and love never fails isn't that good love never fails and paul kind of builds it up by saying it always protects it always hopes it always perseveres because it never fails so here is my question for you in the room those of you watching at rowley clevery brumsgrove wherever you're watching whether you're watching later all of us how's your love life if that's the definition of love as he has loved you that's how we're to love others how is your love life and then when i came to this last bit i have to say this really hurt me when i realized and looked in the mirror at my own life so i want to look at back to this and i'm taking out the word love and i want you to put your own name in there so let me use me as an example so if i if i'm to c if i'm called to love like i have been loved then surely it follows that i could say leon is patient leon is kind leon does not envy leon does not boast leon is not proud leon is not rude not self-seeking not easily angered leon keeps no record of wrongs leon does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth when i did that on my own i had to put my pen down and look at it and thinking god that is so far from what i am that is so far from what i am and then i stopped and i thought but you know what the christian faith is not about leon it's not about me trying to be something that i'm not it's not about me working hard it's not about me gritting my teeth and looking constipated and just trying really hard it's not about that it's about jesus because there's only one person who's ever lived the christian life and that's jesus christ so if i said jesus is patient jesus is kind jesus does not envy jesus does not boast jesus is not proud jesus is not rude not self-seeking not easily anger jesus keeps no record of wrongs jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth all of a sudden wow so here's the thing and i'm hoping and praying that this is almost revelation for some of you today what if we took those two concepts and brought them together what would that look like here's what it would look like jesus in leon is patient jesus in leon is kind jesus in leon does not envy does not boast he's not proud jesus in leon is not rude not self-seeking not easily angered keeps no record of wrongs jesus in leon does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth always protects always trusts always hopes always perseveres jesus in lyon never fails that's different than me trying hard then me grooting my teeth than me even though i don't feel like it i'm going to love you if it kills me this is about me surrendering my life to the one who loves me and who loves others through me and so in jesus as i die and you live you in me are patient you in me are kind you in me always hope always persevere always protect always trust so how's your love life how's your love life and i want to get really practical today and i want to go back to where we started with this theory of mind about the me and the circle who's difficult in your life right now and i don't mean oh yeah i've got difficult people no what's their name who is the person jesus is asking you to love who's difficult right now don't say out loud i don't want you to think of the name who's different who's different and and can i give you an example hey anyone that looks different from you is different and maybe after church instead of going and finding someone who looks just like you why don't you find someone who looks nothing like you and walk across the room and step outside of your circle because that's what jesus has done for you who's damaged in your life and i don't just mean oh yeah there's some really damaging no i'm in a name who is the person who's damaged and maybe who's draining you right now and jesus is calling you and maybe even dangerous maybe there's some dangerous people we have to be careful i get that but who is the name of the person or the persons that jesus is asking you to love because he has loved you that way how do you do it let me give you three practical things number one you got to decide you got to make a choice and this won't happen by nice music and and by a nice song at the end you've got to make a decision today name someone say god i am going to choose to love that person and then i'm going to ask that you would fill me with that love corey ten boone famous uh lady that was a jew uh in the second world war put in a concentration camp a sister was killed horrendous story she came out of that she tells an incredible story where she's speaking on an event several years later and she sees at the back of this event and she's speaking about god's love and she sees this guy and she recognizes the guy because he's a prison guard from the camp and at the end he steps and he's just he's become a christian he walks towards her and she sees him walking towards her and her heart is filled with hatred and bitterness and she says and as he walked towards me he stretched out his hand and all i felt was hate and bitterness but in that moment i asked god to help me and i stretched out my hand and she says and it doesn't always happen as quickly as this as i stretched out my hand he gave me what i didn't have which was grace and forgiveness now that doesn't always happen quickly like that but the point is this she made a decision to love even though she didn't feel like it you got to decide secondly you've got to dig deeper guys we've got to dig deeper in this whole thing i i'm praying that coming out of covid we as a church are going to be known not for our building not for our music not for our online ministry not for any of that but we're known for the way in which we love anyone want to say amen to that we're known for the way in which we love we've got to dig deeper for that we've got to dig deeper it means guys if god has blessed you if god has blessed you he hasn't blessed you to heighten your fence he's blessed you to lengthen your table he's blessed you physically with stuff your house is not just for you and your circle it's to bless others your car your your money your your abilities it's not just a height in your fence so you can be separate is to lengthen your table so you can include more people we've got to dig deeper we've got to walk across the room we've got to step out of our circle and into others we've got to dig deeper maybe those people who've hurt you maybe you dig deeper by praying for them i remember i've told you many times years ago another leader hurt me really deeply and it took ages and ages and it wasn't until i was listening to this teaching that said hey if someone's hurt you pray for them so i started to pray for them and i started to pray dear lord please bless them with warts and boils over the whole of their body and and all this kind of stuff and then then god said no no no you pray for them in a way that you would want god to bless you and your family because that's the principle so i began to pray for him and his family that god would bless them financially and and spiritually and relationally and god did and as god did that our relationship was was was mended and healed and and the bitterness that was in me was taken away you got to decide then you got to dig deeper then thirdly you got to drink deeply from the well of jesus listen we will never love like him if we're not being loved by him and that means guys we have to drink deeply out of the well that is jesus guys as we finish i want to say to those of you in the room and those of you watching if you're not yet a follower of jesus or maybe you're new into all of this and you don't understand what it is that god has done for you i want to invite you even right now to sign up for our next alpha course it begins monday the 27th which if you're watching this live is tomorrow night it's online it's already people signed up for it it's a brilliant way that you can get to understand what god has done for you in jesus so i'd love you to sign up for that there's a link here on the chat or you can take your phone out text lcc alpha your name to 60 triple seven and we would love to register for that but i want to invite you right now guys to stand with me can we do that and i want to pray for you and you know if you're watching or you're in the room and you want someone to pray personally for you in the room that can happen today at the end of our time together which should be in around 15 minutes or so as you head out through those doors if you turn left there's a prayer space and we've got some people there that would love to pray for you you know i i i'm convinced that that this is kind of like this can't hold circle thing you know cycle thing you know that as we're loved so we can love but if i'm not being loved i can't laugh and if i do love you know then actually it's going to run dry it's only as i'm loved can i keep loving and it's a cycle it's a circle you know it's a whole process and we'd love to pray for you or maybe right now you are struggling over something in your life maybe someone left you maybe someone hurt you maybe someone wounded you and right now you know that you're so hot and so wounded you have nothing left to love and nothing left to give others i want to pray for you as well so in the room and those online i want to invite you to pray with me and i want to pray for you that the love of god would flood our hearts and lives again today and then we're going to sing an incredible song it's one of my favorite hymns actually it's an old song and by all i don't mean 1994 okay i mean like hundreds of years old and it just talks about the depth and the power of the love of god and when we drink deeply from that then we've got something and someone to give to our hurting and broken world so if you're in the room or maybe online why don't you just put your hands out if you come to do that and just ask god to fill you again with his love today i know i need this so much when i when i read that through leon is patiently i can't even read it without thinking i'm really not but when i think jesus and leon is patient jesus and leon is kind jesus in leon is not self-seeking he's not rude he always protects always trust then i say god would you fill me so god i want to pray right now that in these moments of surrender that we would receive again your love thank you jesus for loving us thank you jesus for keeping no record of wrong thank you jesus for almost drowning us in an ocean of grace and lord as we receive from you this incredible love vast as the ocean may we be people of reset who love others in a way that we have been loved and it may even start this morning at the end of our service by walking across the room and talking to someone maybe who we found difficult or who is different from us mates start here we pray and may it shake and shape and bless our communities in the name of jesus amen amen [Music] his precious blood who is love will not remember who can cease to sing his praise he can never be forgotten [Music] [Music] when prince of life our answer shed for us his precious blood who is love will not remember who can cease to sing his praise he can never be forgotten [Music] [Music] fountains [Music] [Applause] [Music] this [Music] let me oh [Music] let me seek thy kingdom only and my life be to thy praise thou alone shall be my glory nothing is [Music] myself it's your favorite [Music] it is [Music] his precious blood who is love will not remember who can cease [Music] [Music] who can cease to sing his praise he cannot be forgotten [Music]

Channel: LifecentralChurchUK

Views: 876

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: church, meaning, purpose, life, calling, lifestyle, Jesus, God, Spiritual Growth, God’s wisdom, Make better decisions, faith, decisions, peace, covid-19, coronavirus, worship, giving people hope, evangelism, telling people about jesus, good news, latest news, Sunday, hope, lockdown, jesus, why do christian believe in Jesus?, Church, life central church, lifeCentral, my next step, online ministry, how too keep hope alive, faith hope love, positivity from suffering, encouragement

Id: P0pCZpRzXck

Length: 45min 57sec (2757 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021