Here are my notes from a sermon I gave on Feb. 8. Remember these are my notes the full sermon had serval ideas frm memory. So if it sounds incoherant, it wasn't as bad live.


Since it is coming up on valentines day I thought I would talk about Love. Now don't worry I am not going to talk about the gushy romantic love. Honestly if you don't have a spouse or are dating you probably hate to hear about love and valentines anyway. But I am not going to talk about it. One I am not the best at it, and two, the world does not revolve around it. I am not going to talk about the unconditional love either. You are probably saying to yourself “That pretty much covers it so what is he going to say?” Well I am going to talk about something that I used to struggle with, and I think that someone here probably struggles with it too. But first I want to read from Matthew chapter 22:35. Keep that in mind as we go on. Blue Like Jazz is a really good book. If you get an opportunity to read it it will open your eyes to some different perspectives on our faith. But as I was reading this book years ago, there was a chapter about love that really struck me and reminded me of some things I had gone through.
In the book the author Donald Miller tells of how he was dating this girl for a while. But no matter how hard she tried, he just couldn't believe she loved him. She told him and told him, but nothing worked. He would beat himself over it too. Kicking himself around and comparing himself to other people and things like that. Well I don;t want to tell the whole story, but I see it all the time, people just look around and start saying “what if?” about so many things. And comparing and hating themselves for nothing. But back to Don Miller, he just couldn't accept her love. One day he was cleaning his bathroom and the words “Love your neighbor as yourself.” came into his head. Here is the rub, we don't willingly treat others badly, so why do we do it to ourselves. That leads to the other part of that verse from Leviticus 19:18. We have to love ourselves, but in order to do that we must accept love from others. Accepting love from others is like accepting a gift. People can bring us gifts all they want, but if we never open them we don't ever get the great stuff that is wrapped up. Once we are willing to accept the love of others things work out better. There is no more tension between us and those that love us. This is not just for romantic type loves either.
Have you ever had a friend that just listen to you. “I can't do this” or I stink at that” it is hard to deal with right? Well those people are getting their worth from something other than God. They are letting “stuff” name them. And when our value does not come from God we will always seem inferior. As odd as that sounds, only the creator of the universe, a being so great He can do whatever he wants to, makes us feel the way we are supposed to. Our value only comes from God. (read Blue page 86)
Love our neighbors as ourselves. So if we can't love ourselves how can we fulfill that command? Eric talked about love being a verb a couple of weeks ago, which it is. Tossing a Frisbee is a verb too. Relationships are just like that. You have to have reciprocal action. When I started college I was at a stage where I had just ended, rather badly, a relationship with a girl who was great and ended up getting engaged to my best friend. But I was basically afraid to do that again, I didn't want to injure somebody else like I had her. She was a good friend too, and she was friends with all of my other friends, both guys and girls. I believed that I wasn't a good guy so I didn't deserve friendship. But I wanted it, badly. But I also didn't want to torch these bridges like I had others. So I kept myself kind of away, but not too far. It happened one day when I transferred to PCC and began making friends there, that I realized that if these new friends could accept me for me, and I knew that God loved me just as I was, then I was okay. (talk about Nouwen.) I learned the true value of me, and how to accept that value. (Psalm 139 and Matt 10.) God made me, so I must be good. Thats what he said when he created Adam, and I am in His image. So if I am good, then I can love that.
And speaking of value, here is one way that you can put a value on your life. You are worth dieing for. Think about that. God was willing to die for you. You were worth it. So all of you single people out there if so-and-so isn't willing to die for you, are they right for you? Husbands are you willing to die for your wife? Your kids? Wives, would you give your last drop of blood for your husbands? Those are hard questions, but remember, you are worth dieing for. Jesus did it for you. Don't ever feel that you are inferior, God loves you and wants you to accept that love. Once we can accept that then, it is so much easier to accept it from others. And when we all go around loving each other as we love ourselves, the world is coming into alignment with Gods original plan.