Growing in Love

Well, Miracle Grow is our 10-week series in what the Bible calls the fruit of the spirit. My name is René, one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and I just have to say it is so good to be back home. Thank you. I've been in Romania and in Italy, and I brought back a little bug with me. A little exotic European bug, as you can hear, so pray that I don't lose my voice during the... Well, maybe some of you want to pray that I do lose my voice. So that's up to you.

But I was visiting TLC Global Ministry partners. You're going to hear a lot more about our trip in January during our World Outreach Week, but I do want to kick off the message by telling you about one amazing person that I met just this past week. Last Sunday morning, I was in Transylvania, the Transylvania region of Romania. And yes, Transylvania is a real place. And for those of you who have kids or grandkids, there is even a real hotel Transylvania, although vampires and monsters don't stay there. And it is a beautiful area.

Well, last Sunday morning, I went to church there. And by the way, in the worship service there, check this out. Last Sunday, they sang a song. I was so moved by this, I actually put up my phone and surreptitiously started taking video. You won't recognize the words, but the melody you just might recognize. Listen to this. Last Sunday morning. Anybody recognize that melody? What song is that? What is it? What's that? What a beautiful name. What a beautiful name it is. What a beautiful name it is. What a beautiful name it is. The name of Jesus.

And as I'm standing there last weekend in the midst of what you see around me, I knew that we were also singing that song at like the same day in our worship services last weekend here at Twin Lakes Church. And I have to tell you, while I'm photographing this with my phone, tears are just streaming down my face as I was picturing people in Romania and Santa Cruz and probably all around the world singing this. And I thought it really is a beautiful name in any language at all. And I thought the power of all of God's people together, just focusing on Jesus instead of all the things that we can disagree about, just focusing on Jesus, man, there is power in that name.

After church, I was invited to go into the beautiful Romanian countryside to the house of a family who met me at the church service. And after church, they said, "Hey, we want to have you over for supper." And I have to admit that just for a split second, I thought, "Wait, if someone in Transylvania says, 'I'd like to have you over for supper,' should you go? Should you go?" But I got over it, and I went to the home of this man. His name is Adrian, actually. He has been a pastor there in Romania for years. He now works with an orphanage ministry there in Romania.

And for much of his life, the country of Romania was under a brutal communist dictator named Nicolae Ceausescu. Nicolae Ceausescu famously visited North Korea, and he was so impressed with North Korea that he decided in Romania, they were going to out North Korea, North Korea, and they were just going to control every aspect of people's lives. And under his rule, Christians were severely oppressed. Churches were bulldozed. Believers were arrested and tortured, and then in 1989, he was overthrown. And suddenly, after decades of oppression, everybody was free to believe whatever they wanted to believe. They could be Christians if they wanted to. It was no longer an underground thing.

And Pastor Adrian told me, "René, for the first 10 years after that revolution, people just flooded into the Christian churches because they just could not believe they could do it without any fear." I said, "Is it still like that now?" And he said, "Not so much." He said, "It's still a much better situation for churches in Eastern Europe, actually, right now, than in the West." But he said, "The bloom's off the rose. People don't look at Christian churches with that much favor anymore." I said, "Why? What happened?" And check this out. He said, "Our churches were so used to being on the defensive against the oppressive regime that they couldn't stop that once the oppression was released, and so they just started being on the defensive against each other.

And they were so concerned about doctrinal purity and moral purity that they just kept splitting and splitting and splitting, and in the name of being pure, they kept splitting, and that's their reputation now. And so people are starting not to want to go to those Christian churches anymore because they always fight all the time." And I said, "Well, Pastor Adrian, what do you think Romanian churches now need?" And here's what he tells me. And I thought this was so relevant to our situation here in America that I said, "Wait, tell me again, because I want to write it down and I want to share it with my church next weekend when I preach, and see if this doesn't resonate with you." He says, "Right now, Romanian churches are known as the place to go if you want to be right." And he said, "Without compromising that, without compromising truth, our churches need to become known as places you go to be loved and to love.

The place you can go to be loved and to love the community. Wouldn't you say that's what we need to do too?" So let's talk about it right now. We're in the second week of our series, "Miracle Grow," studying what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit. And that's mentioned in this verse and a half, Galatians 5:22 and 23. This is our key verse for the next nine weeks. So let's read it out loud together. I really hope that you are able to memorize this verse during the series. Let me hear you say this out loud. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

Listen. I sincerely believe that at this particular cultural moment in our country, there is not a single Bible passage that is more important for us to study than that one that's on the screen right now. Because people all over this country, rightly or wrongly, are seeing Christians as hypocritical and judgmental and hateful and as rule-oriented. And part of it, we bring on ourselves because we forget what it is that God is trying to accomplish here. We as Christians sometimes think the role, the point, the end game of being a Christian is to be right or to be doctrinally pure or even to be large or to be effective.

But the Bible says, "Well, there's nothing wrong with any of those things." In fact, they're all contributors to what God wants to do in our lives. This is the point. This is the end game. This is where God wants to take us, is he wants to produce Christ-like character in us. And if we are doctrinally right and if we're effective and if we're large, but we aren't these things, then we're not becoming what God wants us to become. I've got to tell you, for a year since we first decided to do this this fall, I've been looking forward to this series. You know why? Because personally, this is probably the most personally, spiritually challenging series that I have ever taught you.

Because I look at this and I think I want to achieve things and I want to kind of get the American dream. I want to go for great goals and I want to become an effective minister. But is this being produced in my character? That's what God wants to see. This is so important that we started sort of a church-wide book club. We've got dozens and dozens of groups all over the county reading a little book called "Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirits" written by a British guy. Honestly, I would love for every single person here to at least grab one of these little paperback books after church. You can get them at the info desk. And then seriously consider getting into a small group, a home group, where we're going to go through just a little chapter of these.

Most of them start this week and you can get a list of the open groups at the info desk. But what we're doing in this series is we're taking one of these nine aspects of the fruit of the spirit each week and studying it. And this weekend I want to zero in on the very first thing Paul talks about. This is so important. I'm not even going to cover anything that's in that book "Cultivating the Gifts of the Holy Spirit." It is a great chapter. But the subject of love is so vast that you can read that chapter and get a totally different angle on this than what I'm going to be talking about tonight.

Because love is such a vast subject. We all agree, everybody on earth agrees, love is important. But what does that word even mean? Love is so hard to define. We live in a culture where I can say, "I love my grandson Freddy." And I love apricot pie. And I do love both of those things, but it means something totally different. So what is Paul saying when he's saying that we need to grow in love? That's the first aspect of the fruit of the spirit. What is the author of these words the Apostle Paul even talking about? Well, we can know what the Apostle Paul was thinking about when he talks about love.

Because in another famous passage that he wrote, he defines what this kind of love is. And that's 1 Corinthians 13. And that's the scripture I'm going to explore in depth today. So grab your message notes so you can follow along. They're in the bulletins you got when you came in. 1 Corinthians 13:1–7. We're going to study this to try to figure out what it means for Christians to grow in love as an aspect of the fruit of the spirit. So let's look at this. You probably recognize these words. Paul says, "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but don't have love, I'm nothing.

And if I give all I possess to the poor, and I give my body over to the flames that I may boast, but I don't have love, I'm what? Nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. It doesn't envy. It doesn't boast. It is not proud. It doesn't dishonor others. 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.

Now most of us have heard this before. In fact, most people in American culture hear these verses read often where? At weddings, right? But it's interesting. That's fine because if you live like this, you'd be an amazing spouse, right? But really, Paul didn't write this to be sort of a hallmark poem to be read at wedding ceremonies. In its original context, it is way more radical than just, "This is how to be a good spouse." Paul is writing to Christians in a city called Corinth in ancient Greece, and he's telling them what it looks like to really be a follower of Jesus.

He's telling them what it looks like to really be a true Christian, what it looks like to live a supernaturally changed life. And even at that point, he's writing 20 centuries ago, one generation into Christianity, and he realizes even at that point, Christians are already getting it wrong. And so he says, "Here's what Christianity is not. Here's what it doesn't mean to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus, who's having your life transformed by him, and here's what it really is." This is, again, just so important for us to understand, especially right now in this current era. So jot this down, and I'm just praying that the Holy Spirit will help us just seep into our marrow spiritually, a supernaturally charged and changed life, a real Christian life.

Number one, it is not the same as a gifted life. It's not the same as living a gifted life. Let me explain. Verses one and two, Paul makes a list of things that are talents or gifts. You can even call them supernatural gifts. He talks about speaking in tongues. He talks about the gift of prophecy, getting revelations from God. Now, we're not going to get into these, even though some of you might like me to, but the point is these were very, very spectacular gifts. And in the previous chapter, chapter 12, you see that in the Corinthian church, they were putting people who had these gifts on a pedestal.

And then he talks about fathoming all mysteries, and this is the language that Paul uses in other epistles too, to describe the ability to understand and teach the Bible. And then he says, faith that moves mountains, and this isn't kind of like the normal kind of faith, faith in Jesus. He's talking here about inspiring faith, like leadership faith, visionary faith. Paul is talking here in aggregate about really gifted people, and this Corinthian church was filled with them. You see, Corinth was like San Francisco in the Silicon Valley in many, many ways. I mean, you can see just geographically, it was on a peninsula, right on a bay. It was surrounded by oceans, so it was a shipping center. It was a tourism center. It was a financial center. It was where gifted people came from all over their world to be entrepreneurs and start businesses and to prosper, a lot like the Bay Area.

And as a result, the church there was filled with super smart, super talented people. And you can tell that the church at Corinth, it was a growing church. And Paul shockingly says here, it is possible for a church to grow. It is possible for a church to be helping people. It is possible for a church to have amazing preaching and moving worship and doctrinally pure teaching all without love. I mean, skip ahead to verses four and five for just a minute. Love is patient. Love is kind. It doesn't envy. It doesn't boast. It isn't proud. It isn't easily angered and so on. If you read this whole letter to the Corinthians to get context, you would understand that these verses, verses five and six, they're a list of everything the Corinthians are not.

They're impatient and they're cranky and they're rude and they're condescending and they're always getting bent out of shape. They're gifted. They're talented. They're successful as a church. They're not their attitudes. They're always starting little fights and hurting each other's feelings. And I have to tell you, I read this and I think, boy, do we need to hear this. As I was studying for this message, I ran across an amazing talk on this by one of my favorite pastors, Tim Keller, and I got a couple of great ideas from that sermon for this. Listen to this. He says, "In our American culture right now, what matters? Are you smart? Are you the best? Do you produce? Are you winning? Do you meet your goals?" So what if you're cranky and irritable? You're just a colorful character, kind of an eccentric. Isn't that true?

On both the right and the left in our culture right now, what matters is winning. Winning the point, scoring the point. However your group defines winning, whatever your current objective is, what matters is winning, getting in your little stab. And who cares if you're rude and obstinate and proud and insensitive and insecure and boastful and bragging. And this attitude is infecting the Christian church right now in America. And actually, that's one of the things that's the most frightening that Paul's saying here is that it's possible to be super successful as a church and as an individual to be super successful in Christian ministry and not really actually be a follower of Jesus at all.

This passage is kind of an echo of Matthew 7 toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, "On the last day, the day of judgment," he says, "people are going to come to me and many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?'" Just like in 1 Corinthians 13, "And in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles and then I'll tell them plainly, I never knew you, away from me, you evil doers." What? You mean it's possible to be super successful in ministry and not really be doing it for Jesus? In fact, to apparently not really know Jesus at all? Is that possible? Of course it's possible. And that's what Paul's saying here and again, so important to hear.

Sometimes it seems to me that the headlines about fallen pastors never stop. Why is that? Well, one reason, follow me here, is that we Christians in America, and I include myself in this, we tend to decide which leaders we are going to follow, whether it's in the church or in business or in politics, we tend to decide which leaders we are going to follow based on their giftedness. Right? Especially leaders in the church. That person's a gifted speaker, so I want to listen to him or her. He or she is a gifted leader, so I want to follow him or her. They are such charismatic, talented pastors. I want them in our church. We tend to judge our leaders, our pastors, by their gifts.

But what does Jesus tell us to do? Back in Matthew 7, Jesus warns against false teachers. He says, "False teachers will come." And he gives us a way to gauge whether or not someone is off track or not. He actually gives us, as his followers, a way to gauge whether or not that person should be followed or not. Now, do you remember what he says? "False teachers will come by their gifts. You will know them." No, he says, "By their" -- what? -- "fruit you'll know them." Not by their success, not by their giftedness. By their fruit, meaning the fruit of the spirit. What are they producing in themselves and others? Are they loving, growing in joy, growing in kindness, growing in gentleness?

A lot of leaders, even in the church, are gifted, but they're impatient and selfishly ambitious, and they lack self-control. And that's exactly what Paul is saying in this verse. And this is convicting and challenging for me, and it should be for any one of us in this room. And then second, Paul is saying, a true Christian life, a supernaturally changed life, is not the same as a moral life. It's not the same as living a moral life, kind of a really morally committed life. Paul says in verse 3, "If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to the flames that I may boast but don't have love, I gain nothing." Now, that's very interesting because these aren't talents or gifts here, right?

He's moving toward what they would have called in ancient Greek and Roman times, virtues, morality, and look at his two examples. "If I give all I possess to the poor." Now, today, a lot of people would call that a liberal vision of moral commitment, a full-on commitment to social justice. This isn't just a handout. This is somebody who is so committed to helping the poor that they personally live in poverty. Man, that is virtue, right? That is moral commitment. Isn't that what being a Christian is about? Or he says, "If I give over my body to the flames, that is dying for the faith. That's going to the stake." And many people would call that a conservative vision of morality. "I'll go to the lions in the arena. I will die for orthodoxy, defending the faith against those liberals." And Paul's saying, "Yeah, it's possible to do all that and not really be changed in your heart.

It's possible to be 110% committed to helping the poor and 110% committed to orthodoxy to the point that you die for it and be a total jerk, not be like Jesus at all." Last year, I was reading the book "Death of a King" about the last year of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life. Really good book, "Death of a King." And the author says that he, Dr. King, went through kind of a personal, spiritual revival in the last year of his life. That was fascinating to read about, but I found one detail particularly interesting. Dr. King memorized a Bible verse as kind of his theme verse for the last year of his life. And every morning when he got up and he started his day, he would quote this verse to himself from memory. And you know what verse it was? It was the key verse for the series, Galatians 5:22 and 23.

He said it to himself every morning. Now, why do you suppose he was motivated to do that? Wouldn't you expect him to memorize a verse in the Bible about helping the oppressed or feeding the poor or something? There's hundreds of those. Well, as he told his associates, listen to this, "It is so easy for any of us to fight for the right thing, to believe the right thing, to do the right thing, and to have all the wrong attitudes, to be unloving, unkind, unhealthy." And he started to see that in himself. And so he was focused on the fruit of the spirit. And this is exactly what Paul is saying here. Look at this verse again.

Question. "What in the world would motivate someone to give all they possess to the poor or to die for their faith, you know, at the flames as a martyr, if not the love of Jesus?" Paul's saying you can be motivated by something other than love. What would motivate somebody to do something like this other than love? Well, there's a hint back in the first verse, and almost everybody goes right on by this. "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding what? Gong or a clanging what? What's so bad about gongs and cymbals? I love gongs and cymbals, don't you? Like, McPhee with drum solos and stuff like that. What's wrong with cymbals?" This verse makes no sense unless you understand the cultural context.

Many scholars say it's referring to the worship at the various pagan temples there in Corinth. See, the way worship was done in those days was there was a procession to the temple, and the temple was full of people crashing cymbals together and ringing bells and making a big racket, and the idea was you were getting the attention of the gods. Whatever god was the god of the temple that you were going to, you were saying, "Hey, hey, crash, bang, crash. Look at us. Look at how we venerate you. Please, crash, crash, bang, pay attention, and give us your favor." And Paul's saying it's possible to do gifted ministry and sacrificial ministry and to do it. And basically, with every good deed and every gifted ministry idea you have to kind of be going, "Crash, bang, see, God, look at me. God, God, look, look, look at me. Give me your favor." Just like these pagan worshippers. And he's saying the telltale sign that you are doing it that way is you're short on love. There's crankiness. There's pettiness. There's rudeness.

And that's why Paul gets to point three. Real Christianity, real Christian growth is about relational transformation, relational transformation. Now, that's a mouthful, so what do I mean by relational, relationship transformation? Look closely at those verses we read. Love is patient, and when he says patient, literally in the Greek it says, "Love suffers long." Love is kind. It doesn't envy, doesn't boast, not proud, doesn't dishonor others, and so on. Did you notice every single word here is about relationships? Now, follow me. True biblical spirituality is not just, "Ah, I'm feeling peaceful. I am all serene. I'm blissful." And this is important because, you know, in our culture, even if we say, "I want to get more spiritual," it's still usually all about us. "I want to be more spiritual." What do you mean by that? "Well, I just want more peace of mind." But Paul here isn't talking about you being blissed out because, again, you can be a blissed-out jerk, right?

He's saying, "How do you treat people?" Not, "Are you blissed out?" You know, I think this whole chapter is in the Bible because Corinth was just the typical church. This is the typical church. A bunch of people call a church home, and half of them aren't speaking to the other half. Have you ever seen that? There's backbiting, there's gossip, there's abrasiveness, there's crankiness, and that's exactly what turns people off to our faith. Very few people are ever turned off by Jesus. They're turned off by us. Now, why does that happen? Why does religion sometimes seem to make people worse? More judgmental, more insecure, more arrogant, more fearful. Well, let me quote Keller again. I love the way he puts it.

He says, "Think for a second about how we teach our children to behave, to have virtue." He says, "Really, there's two tricks we always use, fear and pride." Fear, don't lie because you'll get caught. You know, Matt, like how do you teach your kids not to lie? If you lie, you'll get caught by Santa Claus or by the police, or worse, I will catch you, and you'll really get it. Fear or pride. We say those people who are liars are bad. Those bad liars. You are not a liar, are you? And we teach them to disdain liars. And you hear kids say to each other, like on the playground, "Liar, you're such a liar." And what they're implying is, "I am not a liar." That's pride. We use fear and pride to try to get kids to behave. And that's exactly how religion typically tries to get people to behave, fear and pride. Fear, you'll get caught by God and pride. You are better than them. And that is why religious people can turn into the worst people. So full of pride, so full of fear.

In fact, C.S. Lewis said, "Religion is actually the most effective institution at fanning fear and pride into flame." What do you think Jesus meant when he said, "For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." Because the Pharisees, the most outwardly religious people of his day, were full of fear and pride. But the Christian gospel does not base our character transformation on fear and pride. It's based on God's grace. It's based on the idea that on the cross, Jesus accomplished our salvation, a hundred percent of it. And as I receive that, and as I realize the extravagance of his love to me, then I'm transformed by the inside out as I meet Jesus personally.

And that's our final point. The supernaturally changed life is about meeting love as a person. It's about meeting love as a person. Now, what do I mean by that? Excuse me, meeting love as a person. Well, what's so striking about verses 4-7? Paul does not say, "So I want you to be more patient. So I want everybody to be more kind. Stop boasting, you bad boasters." If he did that, it would be just another set of rules based on fear and pride. Look what he does instead. He personifies love. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not. And he's personifying love. He's saying the way to be more loving is to meet love because this is who love is. Now, that sounds very mystical, but really it's not.

Child development experts have learned that if a child is born and is never picked up and cooed to and held, then that child grows up strangely incapable of love. If they don't get this kind of touch, in fact, in many cases, they die. What they've learned is we learn to love by being loved. The more we are embraced by love and flooded with love and surrounded by love, the more we're able to love. And that's why Paul's not saying, "Do these ten things." He's saying, "This is who love is." And I think Paul's personifying love to get us to think of a specific person. This isn't just beautiful poetry. He's very aware that he's painting a picture of a particular person.

I mean, when he says, "Love suffers long," how could he be not thinking of the one who suffered at the hands of those who crucified him? And when he says, "Love keeps no record of wrongs," how could he not be thinking of the one who looked him in the eyes and denied him when he was being tortured, and yet Jesus goes back and finds that disciple and forgives him? When he says, "Love always hopes," how could he not be thinking of the one who, while on the cross, turned to another person being crucified and said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise"? When he says, "Love always perseveres, love never fails," how could he not be thinking of the one who said, "I will never leave you or forsake you"? What I'm saying is Jesus is love personified.

See, when you realize that Jesus did all of that for you, not just to be a moral example, but he did it for you to buy your freedom because he loves you more than you love yourself. When you taste that kind of on the palate of your soul, when you let that capture your imagination, that's slowly going to get rid of your fear, because you realize I'm loved extravagantly by the creator of the whole universe. Loves me unconditionally and infinitely. That gets rid of your fear. And when you realize, "I don't have to go bang, bang, bang on the symbols. God, look at me using my gifts and my talents. Now don't you approve of me? I don't have to do that." Because there's nothing I can do to make God love me more or to make God love me less. He loves me unconditionally already. That gets rid of my pride.

I love this quote from another writer, Scott Salls. He says, "We must preoccupy ourselves less with trying to be like Jesus and more with simply being with him. For when we've been with him, we will become like him. The fruit of the spirit is caught, not achieved." I started by talking about how overcome I was at church in Transylvania last weekend in a room full of people singing "What a beautiful name it is, the name of Jesus." And realizing you were all singing that too back here at home, and I thought, "That's the cure, isn't it? That's the key." Not to be thinking of ourselves all the time. We always think about ourselves all the time. Even when we're thinking about being a moral person or accomplishing something, our thoughts are still all about us.

But instead to look to Jesus and his beauty and his grace and his extravagant love, and as we do that, his love becomes incarnated in us. You know what? We live in a world that is saying, in fact, there was an editorial in the Santa Cruz Sentinel today that basically said, "I am sick of Christians." We live in a world that is sick of Christians, and yet that same world is starving for Christians to do this and gaze at Jesus and truly become like Jesus.

I'll close with this. There's a little documentary that's become kind of an indie film sensation this summer. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" It's a movie about Mr. Rogers, of all people, the old kids' TV show host. The movie critic for Variety magazine, the trade journal, Owen Gleiberman, he wrote about it just about a week ago. This is kind of a lengthy quote. This is a couple of paragraphs. But I want you to see what's happening here, because Owen Gleiberman is just a sarcastic movie critic who loves to just rip people for their movies. But look what he says. This is so profound.

He says, "Who would have guessed that Won't You Be My Neighbor would have audiences lining up to see it? But in 2018, Mr. Rogers has become the last thing anyone might have expected him to be, a counter-cultural figure, a radical who can show us the way. You probably think I'm kidding or deluded, but after you see Won't You Be My Neighbor, you'll realize I'm not." Counter-culture doesn't mean hippies and peace signs, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. According to my Webster's, it means a culture with values and mores that run counter to those of established society. And right now, our society is hooked on self-righteousness. Fight fire with fire, and yet this cycle of rage has produced a cultural civil war, an agonizingly divided and rage-aholic society. And that's where Fred Rogers comes in.

Listen to this. Fred Rogers was a devout Christian and a lifelong Republican who trained to be a minister, and what he applied on Mr. Rogers' neighborhood was the key teaching of Christ. "Love thy neighbor." And while it's easy to say, "Great, that sounds like it was made for a Hallmark card," to see Won't You Be My Neighbor is, watch this, to be moved in the end to tears by the audacity of what Rogers incarnated. That is a very telling word, incarnated. I have no idea where Owen Gleiberman's coming from spiritually, but this is telling, because this tells me that what people all around us are looking for, are longing for, are starving of, are hoping for, is that Christians will incarnate the love of Christ.

That is what's going to make Twin Lakes Church a radical influence on our community. When they look at us and don't just see people who are morally committed to helping the poor, although that is a huge part of the result of this kind of lifestyle, and they don't just see people who are committed to orthodoxy, although that's important, and they don't just see people who are gifted, although God gifts us in hopes we use our gifts, but when they look at us and don't just see that, but they see the love of Christ, that's what changes lives, and that's the bottom line here.

The more I know the one who personifies love, the more love will be personified in me. That's what's going to make you so different that people are going to ask you about your faith, when they're moved not by your gifts, not even by your morality, but by, as Owen Gleiberman put it, the audacity of what you incarnate. Let's pray together, would you bow your heads with me?

Lord, I just pray that as a church we wouldn't be distracted even by gifts, or even by morality, although gifts and morality are a part of what it means to be a believer, but let them be consequences of our inner transformation, supernatural transformation, into the character of Christ. Help us to just gaze at Jesus and love, and maybe for the first time tonight, some people who are just checking out church tonight might say, "Man, I realize what this Christianity thing is really supposed to be all about. It's not just about building churches, and it's not even just about helping the poor. It's about really reflecting the love of Jesus and starting there.

So Jesus, I receive your love for me. I receive your grace for me. I receive what you did through your death on the cross of your resurrection, into my life. May it be more and more personified in me." And Lord, while we pray, we also want to ask for all those in the church who are going through rough times and all around the country, we pray that you'd protect those in the path of the storm on the East Coast, that you'd protect the firefighters here in California, including some of our own TLC family, that you comfort the victims of those fires and storms and help us in our desire to help them. But most of all, God, may we do anything we do to help them out of a reflection of your extravagant love for us. In Jesus' name, amen.