Radical & Sustainable Love

Well, living in love is what we call a verse by verse study through the Bible. It's the book of 1 John. My name's René, one of the pastors here at TLC. And welcome to everybody joining us on the live stream. And hey, to everybody joining us here in person for the church service. Raise your hand if this is your first time back at an in-person service. Can I see a show of hands? Let's welcome all these people. It is great to have you here again. Awesome.

Well, I wanna invite you to grab your message notes that were handed to you when you came in. And you can also pick those up at TLC.org/notes on your portable digital device there. And as you get those out, I wanna tell you a story. A few years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the island of Patmos off the coast of Turkey. And I see a couple of friends of mine that were with us on the church trip. This is where the apostle John, when he was the last living disciple of Jesus Christ, was sentenced by a hostile Roman government to live out his life in exile on the island.

Now people toward the end could visit him, but he was a very elderly man. And so he was no longer able to get off the island himself. He was the only one of the original followers of Jesus Christ that was not killed for his faith, but he was exiled to this island. Well, when we visited this island, we walked all the way up to the top here, to the cave where he lived as a very, very old man. And then we walked down the path he would have walked down to the ancient church.

And with each step, we were picturing the old tradition that says that toward the very end of his life, people were allowed to visit him. They knew he was about to die soon. And so every Sunday, hundreds of people would get in their boats on the coast of what is now modern day Turkey. And they would make the journey, sometimes it was dangerous, sometimes hazardous, over to the island of Patmos to join John for church on Sunday morning. Can you imagine that?

And he could no longer walk, but every single Sunday, his disciples would carry John down to the church from the cave where he lived. And every Sunday, John, can you just imagine listening to the last surviving witness of Jesus Christ? Every Sunday, John, as a very old man would preach, and every single Sunday, he would say the exact same thing. And it was this, little children, God loves you. So love him and love one another. Little children, God loves you. Now, you love him and love one another. And he would say it several times, and he's like, let's close in prayer and have communion now. And it would do that every single week repeatedly.

And finally, somebody raised their hand, the tradition goes, and asked him, Father, why do you keep saying that over and over? And John answered, because the master kept saying it, over and over. Well, in our study of the book of 1 John in the Bible, a book that John apparently wrote when he was a very elderly man, we've indeed seen John say this, over and over and over, love one another, love one another. And in the passage that we're gonna look at tonight, he kinda doubles down on it. He repeats it three times in just six short verses, love one another, over and over and over.

Now, here's the thing with this passage and with this phrase, on the surface, it can seem very kinda like light. Love one another, who disagrees with this, right? Everyone agrees with this sentence from church culture to pop culture. Literally, there is not a person in our society right now, whether they're Christians or not, who would say, you know what our problem is? We just got too much love, right? No, everybody's all, we need to love one another. So here's my question, why is it not happening? Why are we not just overwhelmed by just love and happiness all the time? Why is anger growing? Why is hatred growing? Why is violence growing? Why is division growing?

Well, I think it's because there is a problem. When it comes to the command to love one another, it's a huge one. It is a massive blind spot that most of us have when it comes to loving one another. And it's this, unless my love for others is rooted in something bigger than me, more than me, it will drain me. Unless my love for other people is rooted in something bigger than me, it is going to drain me, it is going to exhaust me. The need is always going to seem much greater than my ability to love people.

And I think this is why people are getting more and more calloused, because we're more and more able to see the need for love in our society. It's like we're shutting down, because we just can't do it anymore. One example of this that haunts me a few years ago, Invisible Children, you might remember it, it was sort of the hot charity, rescuing Ugandan children from the warlord Joseph Kony. Great cause. But at the height of his fame, the founder of Invisible Children, Jason Russell, I mean, he was on all the late night talk shows and everything, he was totally forthright about the fact that he was doing it from a Christian motive, helping the people, probably in the millennials, he was the most famous conservative Christian, you know, helping these kids.

He suddenly had a breakdown. And he made the news in ways nobody wants to make the news. He ended up being hauled in by police because he was running around LA streets on Saturday night naked, completely, screaming at the top of his lungs, had a complete emotional mental breakdown. Why? Well, this is not me doing my own armchair analysis. Later, when he was better, he told Time Magazine in an interview, it's because his Christian mission to love wasn't rooted in something deeper than him. Here's the way he put it, watch this. He says, "I was listening to the ego more than the spirit." Wow, he said, "I made no provision for how to navigate achieving inner spiritual peace and tranquility."

Now, truthfully, probably, you know, not to the same extent that he sacrificed his life and reached kind of red line, but truthfully, I have been there. I have felt, at times in my life, overwhelmed by the need for love that surrounds me, and I felt completely tapped out. Like my compassion ran out, my love ran out. And maybe you've been there as a parent. Maybe you've been there as a spouse. Maybe you've just been there as a human. Maybe you're there right now.

You know, a man named Douglas Coupland, he's the author who coined the term Gen X, and he's called himself an atheist, but he said something very interesting at the end of his famous book, Gen X. He says, "I have a secret." This is an atheist talking at the end of his book. My secret is that I need God, that I'm sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving, to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness, to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

I feel like in that moment, he really understood the gospel in ways that a lot of Christians who just try hard to love people don't understand it, and this is why the passage we look at in the book of 1 John in the Bible is so important, because it is about how do you find radical and sustainable love? We're in 1 John chapter four, verses seven through the first half of verse 16. I invite you to open your Bibles or your Bible app to that right now, whether you're joining us on the live stream or in person.

You know, we talk a lot about sustainability these days. Well, how do you have sustainable love for your family? For your coworkers? For your neighbors? For people who drive you crazy? For people who disagree with you? For people who even hate you? For homeless people? For addicts? For people who seem so needy? How do you not get calloused? How do you not get drained? Well, in these verses, John gives us three very powerful motivators, and if you grasp what John is saying, I gotta tell you something, this is a challenge for you tonight, because these are some of the most familiar verses in the Bible, and it's really easy to get them wrong.

But if you really grasp what John is saying here, it is going to change your life, it is gonna change every single relationship you have, it can revitalize your faith, it can revitalize our church as we gather again. So jot these down. John says, number one, love because God is love. Love because God is love. Starting in verse seven of 1 John chapter four. Dear friends, let us love one another because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God, and whoever does not love does not know God because, say these three great words with me, because God is love.

Now you might know in Greek there are several words for love. The one he uses there is the word agape, which means unconditional love. God is unconditional love. Now you might go, yeah, I've heard it a thousand times before, but think of John's cultural context. John is writing in the first century Roman empire, what were their gods like? Saying, oh, God loves you unconditionally, you could not say this of Roman gods like Jupiter or Zeus, right? They were selfish, moody, grudge holding. They basically, they were junior hires, right? No offense to the junior hires watching, but it was very conditional love from these guys.

In fact, I've said some times before when somebody comes up to me and says, you know, I appreciate the fact that you're a pastor, I respect what the church does, but I just don't believe in God. If I have a relationship with them and we're having a fun conversation, I like to ask them to describe the God they don't believe in. And usually what comes out is something like this, well, you know, the angry old white man up in the clouds with a beard zapping everybody who doesn't please him. And I say, well, guess what? I don't believe in that God either because you're describing Zeus. John is saying God is not like Zeus, God is love.

Love emanates from God like light emanates from the sun. John is saying every single action of God in your life is loving. Every single decision God ever makes is loving. Love is the ground of God's being. So picture it this way, you're not sourcing your love in your own little hearts, poor attempts to love people, you're sourcing your love in the infinite, most basic power in the universe because you're tapping into the love of God.

But then John goes even deeper than that. John says next, love because God loves you. Love because God loves you. You know, I often meet people whose root anxiety I think is the question, does anybody really love me? Does anybody even really like me? And often it's because they've been abused, cheated on, abandoned, betrayed, mistreated, wounded, sometimes by loved ones, sometimes by church, maybe even by this church. And so they wonder, will I ever be loved? And you might feel like that right now. And it's so hard to love when you don't know if you're loved.

It's so hard to love, it's so hard for that command to love one another, to not just be draining when you don't feel like anybody loves you. But John is saying here, you are so loved. Now you have always been loved and you will always be loved. These next two verses, they're so rich and they're like the heartbeat of the Bible, verse nine. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. Now, one and only there that translates an interesting Greek word, monogenes, it's used five times in the New Testament to refer to Jesus. It means unique, one of a kind.

And you might remember this word first appears in the book of 1 John in chapter one, verse 18, where John says no one has ever seen God, but the one and only son who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father has made him known. You know what John is saying? John is saying God has a face and he looks like Jesus. God has a face and he looks like Jesus. Now, we don't know what Jesus looked like physically, but we know what he did and that's John's point.

I wanna show you one of my favorite pictures. I love classic art and one of my all time favorite pieces of classic art is the famous etching by Rembrandt of Jesus with the masses. This is called, I don't know why it's called this, but it's called the 100 Gilder print. And I actually have a copy of this in my living room. It's hanging there. I just love it. Honestly, I can hardly look at it without crying. I love all the details he put in here because Jesus is surrounded by all kinds of people. You look in the corners, there's the sick people, you know, and the lepers and you can tell there's all kinds of outcasts here, even in the shadows that are almost unwilling to come into the presence of Jesus Christ.

But Jesus is there, he's welcoming them, he's healing them. And then there's mamas who are bringing Jesus their babes and arms and Jesus is welcoming them and Jesus is blessing them. And John is saying, when we see Jesus doing that in the gospels, that's what God is like. That's what God is like. You know, I've seen these websites sometimes you can go to where people try to put together a mosaic picture of a cruel God, you've probably seen them too or YouTube videos. What they do is they take, in my opinion, out of context, Old Testament stories, Old Testament images of God, and they put them all together and they say, see, this is why I don't believe the Bible because the Bible portrays God as a monster and this is why I don't believe in God because God's a monster according to the Bible.

And I can kind of see how they can come to those conclusions if you just look at those texts. But what John's saying in this verse is this, if the mystery of who God is, is like a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, you know? And every little Bible verse and Bible story is like one more piece of the puzzle. It's so hard to put together. What John is saying is that the picture on the box is of Jesus. That Jesus is where all those other pictures begin to make sense. He's saying this is what God is like. God came to show us himself in Jesus and this is love, he goes on. Not that we love God. And here, this is where it's so important when it comes to love not being draining.

This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us. You know, a lot of Christians miss this. They run right past this. And they misunderstand the whole rest of our faith because of this, not that we love God. Let me just put it bluntly, I'll put it this way. If I asked you why will you go to heaven? And you answered me by starting any sentence with I. Well, I love God a lot. I am a good person. I try real hard. John is saying this for some, that's not it. It's not about you, start the sentence with a he. He loved me. He saved me. He started it and he finished it. It's not that we love God. It's that God loved us.

This is so important because if I base my faith first and I see this error both in conservative Christianity and in more liberal progressive Christianity, both sides make this error, where I base my faith first in what I gotta do, you know, on the more conservative side of Christianity, sometimes it's like, I gotta be good. I gotta keep the rules. I gotta be holy. On the more progressive side of Christianity, sometimes it's like, I gotta do good. I gotta seek justice. I gotta help the poor. I gotta be a better human. What do they all have in common? It's all still about me. And John's saying, if you source your faith there, your faith there, you will eventually burn out. That doesn't work. There's no power there. You have to source it somewhere else.

There's a quote I love, a Christian thinker named Bernard of Clairvaux said, before you can be a channel, you have got to be a reservoir. Do you get that? That's exactly right. We all wanna be channels of God's love to our neighbors and to people around us. But you're gonna run out unless you've got a deep reservoir of the love of God behind you. Let God's love fill you. You dwell on that. John says, it's not that we love God, but that God loved us and then he gets even deeper and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Excuse me, atoning sacrifice.

Again, a very, very interesting Greek word. It's used four times in the New Testament, referring to Jesus Christ's death on the cross. So what's that all about? This is huge. In the ancient world, religion was basically all about people bringing their sacrifices to the temple to turn the wrath of God away from their sins. Almost all religions, in almost all eras, have something like this idea of guilt or debt or bad karma and how somehow we need to atone for guilt, pay off debt, balance the karma. And even if you're not religious, you have this sensation.

If you're a superhero fan, how many of you are like DC or Marvel superhero fans? Can I see on a show of hands? This used to be nerdly to admit. Now raise your hand proudly. Okay, me too. So in the Avengers movie, the character Black Widow says, "I got too much red in my ledger and I gotta balance it out." That's the whole idea, right? We need to work off the debt. Well, what John is teaching in this verse is that God loves you so much that he atoned for, he paid for, he balanced it all out. Why? So that now your relationship with him is based on love and not repayment.

You know, you can't have a relationship with somebody where you always feel like you're in huge debt to them. That's not a love relationship. And God wants a love relationship with you. Now, theologians argue like crazy over exactly how the sole concept of atoning sacrifice works. What is the doctrine of atonement? What is the doctrine of justification by faith? But I love what a very doctrinally precise teacher named Alistair Begg says about this. He says, "What matters not is do you understand exactly how the doctrine of atonement works, but do you trust that Jesus did it?"

And he has a riff in one sermon that he preached recently that I loved. He says, "Imagine the thief on the cross." You know, the Bible says Jesus was crucified between two thieves and they both just berated him, cruelly cussing him out until one of the guys sees something different in Jesus. And he says, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom." That's all he knows about Jesus. And Jesus says, "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." So Alistair Begg says, "Just imagine that thief, kind of if you will, before an angel at the gate of heaven later that same day." Never been in a Bible study, never been baptized, never been a church member. If you'd asked him, "Are you a Christian?" He'd be like, "What's that?"

So the angel says, "Dan, what are you doing here? Why do you think you can get into heaven after all you did?" I don't know, I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I don't know what I'm, I don't know. All right, let me get my supervisor. So the supervisor angel comes, "I got a few questions for you. First of all, are you clear on the doctrine of atonement?" Never heard of it before in my life. I don't know what you're talking about. All right, what about the doctrine of justification by faith? The guy's just staring at him, like I don't even know these words. And finally, in frustration, the angel says, "On what basis are you here?" And the man says, "The man on the middle cross said I could come." That's the answer.

The whole atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ is real, but we may never be able to fully understand how it works in this life, on this side of glory. But guess what? What it comes down to is the man on the middle cross said we could come because he loves you, because he is love. I was on a website where an anonymous artist, it's a woman who says, "I don't want my name to be involved with this," but she paints, loves to paint pictures of Jesus. She loves Jesus, especially pictures of Jesus on the cross. And writing about the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, she had this quote, and it moved me to tears. She said, "This means that no punishment remains for those in him. What remains is joy. What remains is glory. What remains is the release of laughing, weeping astonishment. What the God of love has accomplished for us." Wow.

See, this is where John is going before he gets to love one another in this passage. He's saying, "You gotta soak in it. God is infinite love. When you worry that the universe might tend toward cruelty and punishment and evil, no, God is love. And God loves you. You fill up to be radically yet sustainably loving. You need to first fill that reservoir, love, because God is love, and God loves you, and then it will overflow." And that's John's final point, love because God loves through you.

Don't love because you got to. Love because it's an opportunity to actually let God live through you. Just like God takes care of people through the sunshine and the rain, and you get to be part of how God loves people. You get to be part of how God reveals himself to people when you love. He says, verse 11, "Dear friends, since God so loved us," this is, he roots it there, since God loves us. "So we ought also to love one another." Now look at this, this is just mind-blowing. "No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us. God's invisible. Nobody's ever seen God, but in a way, they see God when we love because God is love."

Remember hearing a story about an American GI right after World War II in war-torn Vienna, and he sees a child gazing into the window of a bakery. And so he goes in and buys some goodies and hands them to this little orphan boy, and the boy's eyes widen. And he says, "Mr. Are you God?" And John is saying, "In a way, you are. You show the invisible God when you love." You know, back in ancient times, back when this was written, the one thing that the Romans, who were persecuting the Christians, could not get over was the love of Christians. A Roman named Minutius Felix, Minutius Felix said, "They love one another before they know each other." That's like, you can't, we can't stop these people from, they're just, they're, one thing you can say about the Christians, they just love like crazy.

Question, is that our reputation today? I just saw a survey by a couple of pollsters, Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman, and they summarized their survey of what people think of Christians today, right now, 2021, with this quote, "Christians are often seen by people today as hyper-political, out of touch, pushy, judgmental, and arrogant." Now, you might go, that's not fair, maybe it's fair, maybe it's not. But that is the perception, so how do we go about changing that perception? Well, it's pretty easy, we just get back to our mission, that actually Jesus and the Apostle John here assigned to us, which is loving people, because that's how people see our God.

I mean, we've seen it happen here, I don't know if you remember the evacuation center that we set up here during the massive CZU complex fire last August, where we provided people with places to stay, and wifi, and electric, and sewer, and food, and all kinds of other things, it was wonderful. But do you remember how people responded? Let me quickly remind you, watch this. It's just wonderful, because where I came from, you know, it was just terrorized by, I thought my house was gonna blow up, and this is like a little slice of heaven, it's so nice. People are so generous, and kind, and loving, it's just, it's great. It's just so overwhelming, the generosity of the community, and the church members has just been wonderful. Has really given us peace, and just feeling the love, and it's such a scary time for everyone.

I never, in my wildest dreams, expected. The sheer expression of love, when I was greeted by Barry, with water, and electricity, and Val, who came around a few minutes later, to say, "Is there anything else you need?" It just melted my heart. I couldn't imagine a more loving place to be, in a time when you just felt broken. Did you catch the things they said? It's a little slice of heaven, and we can feel the love. John's like, "That's right, no one's ever seen God, but in a way, when we love, they do."

Now, I know some of you are going, "Well, I missed it, 'cause the evacuation center's over. Now I can't love anybody. Well, I got some suggestions." There's so many ways. You know, you can work with our local outreach teams. We do stuff like that every week, and it occurred to us the other day that a lot of us might not even be aware of what goes on around here every week. So here's a really quick overview of just three of those ministries. This is a way that we want to love our community. Check this out.

We do oil changes, simple repairs. We get wholesale prices for the parts, and the moms will pay for that, and then the labor is completely free. When I first started doing this, we'd look at some of these cars, and it's kind of like, "Wow, it looks like someone's living in here," and then you realize that they are. And so that means a whole lot more when you're actually working on somebody's home.

Moms Angels has helped me out a number of times while I upgraded my cars, and I've seen a lot of people who were in great distress, and were having trouble, and this one thing made the difference between them being able to get to work and get their kids to school. So it's an incredibly valuable service.

When you are homeless, your circumstance is often that you don't have access. So this ministry is especially important for two reasons. One, the hygiene aspect of giving someone the opportunity to get clean, but then also that feeling of humanity. We want for people to not only feel clean, but feel included, wanted, loved.

I was homeless myself about seven years ago, so it reminds me of how far I've come. It just feels good to be able to contribute, be involved. It's very easy work. The clientele that we serve are so appreciative, and grateful, and gracious.

People's Pantry is a food pantry that hands out food once a week to the food challenge and people that need food within the Santa Cruz County, and there's a very big need in this area. We've been open basically every Wednesday for 52 weeks for the last 20 years or so.

You get to know people that come weekly, and you get to see them again and again, say hello, learn a little bit of their life story. Not only do they get a bag of produce, but they also get a bag of dry goods, and then after that, we have a prayer station, and the testimonies that come out of the prayer time are powerful.

It really made a difference. It really lifted me up when I felt I was all alone, but I wasn't. I just love that. We wanna tell people who feel all alone, you are not alone. God loves you, and Jesus loves you too.

You know, I wanted to show that to you, because sometimes I get the impression that people think that this, the square footage you see here in the auditorium, this is Twin Lakes Church, and so much just sheer square footage on this property is devoted to like the food pantry, and to the garage, and the mobile shower ministry, and many, many, many, many more, and if you're interested in getting involved, you can email robin@tlc.org. She's our local outreach coordinator.

Another way you can serve and love, if that's not your cup of tea, is welcoming people back to church. As we reopen and regather, we need ushers and children's workers, all kinds of stuff, but please don't serve out of obligation. To love sustainably. We need to root it all. We need to love, because God is love, because God loves you, and that reservoir then overflows when you realize that God loves through you.

Now, I keep saying you need to be a reservoir before you can be a channel, so how do you personally do that? How do you fill up your reservoir, and tap into the idea that God loves you, and know that personally? Look at the next verse. This is what John talks about here, verse 13. "This is how we know that we live in him and he in us. He has given us of his spirit." This is something that we probably don't talk about enough, here at Twin Lakes Church. The Holy Spirit.

How does the Holy Spirit confirm God's love to you? Well, all sorts of different ways. I have had, and I've heard many other people talk about, spiritual experiences where suddenly, almost unexpectedly, I just felt pure, unfiltered love coming from God, like I had kind of touched the hem of his garment, and I'm standing there weeping and laughing, and it's amazing. I've spoken to people in the Middle East, with zero Christian background, who became Christians because they had literal visions of Jesus Christ loving them, and that brought them to Christ.

So yes, part of the spirit is those spiritual experiences, but I would say don't chase an emotional experience, because there are many other ways that the spirit helps us know the love of God that are maybe less spectacular, but just as powerful, like in worship. When a song just overwhelms you with a sense of God's love. I experienced that during our third song in the set today, just like, wow, God is so good. Or when you take communion together, there's times I've just been moved to tears during communion. Or Bible reading, I've been reading the Bible, suddenly I see God's love with new clarity. Or when somebody in the body of Christ helps you, you experience the love of God. Or just fellowshipping, hanging out with other believers.

Maybe those are not as dramatic as, say, a vision, but they're just as real, and they're just as powerful. So be in places where this kind of thing can happen, because these are always that the Holy Spirit can confirm to your spirit that God is love, that God loves you, and that God loves through you.

So let's bring this in for a landing. John makes this very personal in verse 14. He says, "And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son." It's like we have seen this, we know Jesus. We're telling you what we saw. "And testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world." Oh, great for John, right? He says, "But no, you can know Him too." If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them, and they in God. And so, let's read this last verse out loud together. "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us." God is love.

You know, one of my heroes in the faith is a man who lived in the mid-1800s, mid to late 1800s, named Dwight L. Moody. Here's a picture of him. Doesn't his style look totally contemporary again, by the way? This is a picture taken in the mid-1800s. But Dwight L. Moody lived in Chicago, and I'm gonna tell a story about him in one of my daily devos this week to "Wet Your Appetite," though he was transformed by the love of God. So when he builds this church in downtown Chicago, he really wanted it to be about the love of God, and specifically about the idea that God is love.

And he was so afraid that like, when he wasn't speaking, some speaker might preach some legalistic sermon or something, that message might get subverted, that he had, he was one of the very first people to ever use a neon sign. It was like an early version of a neon sign. And he had those words put in lights, neon lights behind the pulpit, God is love. So that even if the preacher didn't say it, people would see it behind his head.

Well, one day, a homeless man walks in to the church. He sees that sign, God is love. And the church service is going on, the worship service is happening. And he walks out and he's heard to mutter to himself, that's not true, that is not true. Because God could never love a wretch like me, it's not true. But those words keep echoing in his mind, God is love, God is love, God is love. And so he turns around, he slips back into church and he sits in the very back row and Moody's preaching. And he sees this guy and his head is in his hands, this little man in the back, and he's weeping and weeping and weeping.

And after church, Moody just says, excuse me, excuse me, high tails it back to this guy. And he puts his arm around him, says, "Brother, why were you crying? What was it about what I said that touched you?" And the man says, "Well, I didn't hear a word you said. Was it anything about anything you said, 'cause I don't know what you said." And Moody says, "Well, then why were you crying, brother?" And he points to the words, God is love. And he looks at Dwight Moody and he says, "Is that true?" And Moody cracks up in his Bible to the passage I preached on tonight. And he walks the man through this passage. And at the end of that conversation, the man placed his trust in Jesus Christ and he was a changed man from that night on. Not only in sobriety, he became a leader in the ministries, in that church and really a world changer, but not because he tried hard, but it's because he tapped into the infinite reservoir of God who is love.

And you can tap into that tonight too, right now. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me? Whether you're watching at home or anywhere else, or whether you're here in the auditorium, let's pray together. God, thank you so much that you are our loving God and you are here right now to love us. And even now in this room, there may be some people saying, "But is it true?" And it is true. And thank you that even now that invitation in John's epistle is extended to everyone to respond in love to you because you first loved us.

Maybe as a return, maybe as a first time commitment to simply say, "God, I'm tired of trying so hard and feeling drained of being heavily laden and burdened. So God, I need to tap into you, I need you. And I don't understand it all. I know I don't deserve it at all, but I wanna receive your love now. Thank you that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for me. And I don't know exactly what that means, but what I know it means is that the man on the middle cross invited me to come, that he died and rose again, that I could have life. And now I wanna follow you, Jesus, and receive your love. Change me from the inside out with your infinite, unconditional, unending love." In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.