New Series: Love Walked Among Us
This Sunday we begin a new sermon series, Love Walked Among Us. For 100 days until Easter, we'll spend time together gazing at Jesus and learning to love.The Scriptures tell us that God is love (1 John 4:8) and that Jesus is God (John 10:30). Therefore, if we want to know God – and how God loves – we must look at Jesus.My prayer as we begin this series is that we would find ourselves caught up in the person of Jesus and irresistibly drawn to love him and love like him.While most of our series are verse-by-verse through an entire book of the Bible, this series will be more of a case-study approach.Each week, we'll still go verse-by-verse, but it will be a passage selected from one of the four gospels, and we'll spend time focused specifically on how that passage shows us the love of Jesus.We've purposefully borrowed the title and structure of the series from our friend and mentor, Paul Miller, and his book, Love Walked Among Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus. For the last few years, Paul has been mentoring and teaching our pastoral staff across Redemption about the person of Jesus and prayer.As we've gazed upon Jesus in the Scriptures, he's becoming more beautiful, more approachable, and more real to our hearts. I'm excited for our congregation to have a similar experience.This 15-week series will help us see five key building blocks of love. In case you want to read the passages in advance, here's what's coming:
Love shows compassion
1/13 – Love Looks and Acts (Luke 7:11-17)1/20 – Judging Blocks Compassion (John 9:1-41)1/27 – Self-Righteousness Blocks Compassion (Luke 7:36-50)
Love speaks the truth
2/3 – Honest Anger (Mark 3:1-6)2/10 – Being Honest Without Being Judgmental (John 8:2-11)
Love depends on God
2/17 – The Secret to Love: Dependence on God (John 7:1-9)2/24 – Saying "No" to Self-Gratification (Matthew 4:1-11)3/3 – Saying "Yes" to Gentle Intrusion (Luke 8:40-56)
Love is energized by faith
3/10 – Finding Energy to Love: Faith (John 6:1-40)3/17 – A Vision of Love (John 4:1-30)
Love moves through death into life
3/24 – Love Takes the Lower Place (Luke 22:24-27; John 13:3-5)3/31 – When Love Leads to Grief (John 12:20-33)4/7 – Love Under Pressure (Various Scriptures)4/14 – The Cost of Love (John 10:7-18)4/21 – The Birth of Hope (Easter)