Agape

I love the new church I've found! New City East Lake is a church plant from New City Fellowship, and it meets in an elementary school cafeteria. The chairs are plastic, and after the service everyone helps stack them up again. Every week we sing at least one song in Spanish, and the music is amazing! The musicians are incredibly talented, and the style is jazzy, latino, and sometimes bluesy. The kind you clap and sway to. The pastor is inspiring and expresses himself plainly. And I find that almost every week, the sermon has something to do with whatever I've been struggling with the past week.
Today's sermon was about love. Agape. God's love for the undeserving, seeing something infinitely precious in it's object. Pastor Pickett talked about how love is instinctive because God is love, and we all desire it. But part of the problem is that we desire to be loved, but we are called to love first.
John 13: 34-35. "A new commandment I five to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." He talked about how part of loving is taking initiative. I tend to let other people take the initiative, saying I'm an introvert, and I don't do the whole 'outgoing' thing. We need to pursue our brothers and sisters in Christ out of love. "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
1 John 4:16-17 "So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world." We need to be fully present and engaged. Everyone has been hurt by someone, and our next instinct is self protection and emotional distance. I am guilty of this too. I am too careful. I want to learn to love without restraint, to love the way God loves me. Who am I to hold back when He has given me everything out of love?
Ephesians 5:1-2 "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." Be imitators of Christ. Legalism is impossible with agape. We need to respond freely. He calls us to sacrifice and love freely, not because we have to.
Be relational. Be honest. "There is nothing more artistic then to love other people" - Vincent van Gogh. We need to visibly demonstrate the love of Jesus - "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 15:35