04.22.18 What is Love? (series on 1 John)

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(NOTE: I had some technical issues so what you're about to listen to is a "Frankenstein" podcast: I re-recorded the sermon and added in the audio from the choir singing the anthem!) 

 

In this sermon podcast: 

1. Prayer of Illumination

2. New Testament reading  Acts 4:5-12

3. The Psalter & Anthem of the day: "Psalm 23 - The Lord is My Shepherd" (Howard Goodall)

4. Gospel reading  John 10:11-18

5. Epistle reading  1 John 3:16-24

6. Sermon "What is Love?" 

 

Sermon excerpt: 

In every age, with Christlike love, believers have gone where they did not have to go and suffered what they could have easily avoided.

"Laying down our lives is to lay aside our claim to our own lives for the sake of others. We lay down our lives when we put others first. We lay down our lives when we live for the good of others. We lay down our lives when we make time for others.[i]" 

To love others is to lay down our lives for them. When we lay down the completely normal human desire to live only for ourselves, and instead allow the love of God to reorient us toward the needs of others, we discover we are doing exactly what 1 John 3:16 is telling us to do without even thinking about it.  

[i] Feasting on the World, Year B, Volume 2, Kindle Locations 15555-15560.