Cultivate | Love | Nate Grella

♪♪ ♪ I've turned into the atmosphere ♪ ♪ Spirit of God, Your heavy hand ♪ ♪ All is Your holy ♪ ♪ I pray over my heart and breath ♪ ♪ I'm healed by the stripes ♪ ♪ Your blood declares that I am free ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I pray, calling on the power of Him ♪ ♪ I proclaim ♪ ♪ Every weapon formed against me ♪ ♪ You must pray in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I draw a prayer bound to you ♪ ♪ The enemy has no rights to come ♪ ♪ And near my family ♪ ♪ No secret ever under God's peace ♪ ♪ No matter the circumstances across ♪ ♪ And still my destiny ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I pray, calling on the power of Him ♪ ♪ I proclaim ♪ ♪ Every weapon formed against me ♪ ♪ You must pray in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I know all the power of fear and darkness ♪ ♪ In my soul 'cause every key to everything between ♪ ♪ Our hope is in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm a love fear, I'm a love fear ♪ ♪ When the head of it comes near ♪ ♪ On the door frame of my life ♪

♪ Is a blood of Jesus' cries ♪ ♪ I will not fear, I will not fear ♪ ♪ There's an all in angels here ♪ ♪ I'm protected on our signs by the words ♪ ♪ I will not fear, I will not fear ♪ ♪ The enemy comes near ♪ ♪ On the door frame of my life ♪ ♪ Is a blood of Jesus' cries ♪ ♪ I will not fear, I will not fear ♪ ♪ There's an all in angels here ♪ ♪ I'm protected on our signs by the blood of Jesus' cries ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I pray, call it on the power of fear ♪ ♪ I'll go away ♪ ♪ Everywhere before the guests leave ♪ ♪ I pray in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I know all the power of fear and darkness ♪ ♪ In what's wrong ♪ ♪ There's every key to our grieving ♪ ♪ Our hope is in the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ In the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ See now we're the guys on ♪ ♪ There lay between us ♪ ♪ Now I'm the monster ♪ ♪ I could not glide ♪

♪ In this probation ♪ ♪ I'd send in ♪ In the village darkness, the all-outing kindness It's all through the shadows of our soul. The work is finished in the Indian Trinity. Jesus, Christ, my Lady. O God, who could imagine the sobering of mercy For what heart could find such marvelous ways The God of ages stepped down from glory To where I seek and bear my shield The cross is spoken, I am forgiven The King of kings calls me home To beautiful sin of your strength Come on, Jesus Christ, my Lady. Come on, church, now. Sing, come and hear the warrior He brings the one who's simply free How they rule the world Death has lost his grip on you You have broken the creature There's salvation in your faith Jesus Christ, my Lady. O, yeah. The King of mourning That sealed the promise Your very body began to breathe Come on, sing it out. Out of the silence The roaring lion Declared the grave has no claim

While I celebrate that, come on The King of mourning That sealed the promise Your very body began to breathe Out of the silence The roaring lion Declared the grave has no claim Jesus, yours It's a victory Come in, come in He brings the one who's simply free How they rule the world Death has lost his grip on you You have broken every chain There's salvation in your faith Jesus Christ, my Lady. O, Jesus Christ, my Lady. O, Jesus Christ, my Lady. O, Jesus Christ, my Lady. Come on Church, can we magnify him this morning? He's worthy. Jesus, we fix our eyes on you. We thank you for the cross, the evidence of your love. God, we magnify you this morning. See, we know we pray. ♪ ♪ Maybe we made this complicated ♪ More than it was ever meant to be

♪ As in it always meant about the same thing ♪ Oh, it brings us back to simple things ♪ You be the center of it all My heart belongs to you My Savior, all in all You're the one I hold on to ♪ For the beauty of your mind ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ Teach us to discern the glory ♪ ♪ When you serve ♪ ♪ And when you sit here, I will feel ♪ ♪ Keep us awake to what's important ♪ ♪ Just like Mary chose a better thing ♪ ♪ Oh for you are the sin to love at all ♪ ♪ My heart belongs to you ♪ ♪ My Savior all in love ♪ ♪ You're the one I hold on to ♪ ♪ For the beauty of your name ♪ ♪ My soul will never say ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ And oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, I ♪ ♪ For your glory, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, you want me every day ♪ ♪ For the honor of your name ♪

♪ And in my day ♪ ♪ Tell the story that it be ♪ ♪ Of you want me every day ♪ ♪ For the honor of your name ♪ ♪ In my whole life ♪ ♪ For your glory, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ For you want me every day ♪ ♪ For the honor of your name ♪ ♪ In my day ♪ ♪ Tell the story that it be ♪ ♪ Of you want me every day ♪ ♪ For the honor of your name ♪ ♪ And oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ And oh, I love you ♪ ♪ It's only you ♪ ♪ Oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ In my whole life ♪ ♪ For your glory, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ For you want me every day ♪ ♪ For the honor of your name ♪ ♪ In my day ♪ ♪ Tell the story that it be ♪ ♪ Of you want me every day ♪ ♪ For the honor of your name ♪ ♪ And oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, I love you ♪

♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ And oh, I love you ♪ ♪ It's only you, Jesus ♪ ♪ Oh, I love you ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ Oh, you are the center of your heart ♪ ♪ My heart belongs to you ♪ ♪ My Savior all along ♪ ♪ You're the one I hold onto ♪ ♪ For the beauty of your name ♪ ♪ My soul is the same ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ ♪ The soul is the same ♪ ♪ Jesus, I love you ♪ - Before the sweetness, before the color, the ground gets tended to. The soil gets ready, seeds go in, and then we wait. In the same way, God is cultivating something within us, transformation. The Holy Spirit is producing fruit in our lives. It's different, real, sweet, and it lasts. Jesus said, "A bite in me." Because, apart from Him, we can only do so much. well hey welcome to compass our mission is navigating people to god my name is nate i'm one of the pastures here we are so glad that you are worshiping with us whether that's here in the room want to welcome those of you who are worshiping online as well today and if you're a guest here something I say at the north fort worth campus every single week is this give us six weeks we believe god is moving and working in this place so we'd love for you to be a part of this amazing community that we call compass also let's give a warm welcome to all of our men from all red who are joining us

today guys we're so excited for what god is doing in your midst and hey i love the opportunity to get to go around and and share at all of our campuses this summer but i got to be honest with you the collie ville campus you are my favorite campus all right now don't tell the north forward campus that all right all right don't let it get back to him but i'm really excited to be here with you today and it's been a while since i've been here and a lot has happened in my life over the last several months i thought i would give you a little update of what's been going on in my life back in march our son blake he got married to an incredible girl named madison so we added a daughter to our family which we love her dearly and then my daughter mckenna who she just finished her last high school basketball game she went out as a state champion it was incredible and then and then a few months later she graduated from high school so my wife a man and i are we're about to be empty nesters so if you could pray for us uh it's a difficult but it's also going to be an exciting season as we look forward to what god is going to do and i'm excited today to be here continuing this series called cultivate and i don't know about you but i have loved this series so far and this whole series is built around this idea that nothing in your spiritual life grows by accident not fruit not character not love not christ likeness that what we want to understand is that growth always requires intention and that's where this word cultivate comes in cultivate is this agricultural term that means to prepare the soil to clear the rocks to pull the weeds to till the ground so that something healthy can grow and spiritually the same thing is true now the part that we oftentimes forget is that whatever we cultivate it determines what we grow we either cultivate space for hurry or worry or distraction or self-reliance or we cultivate space for something else something better to take root in our lives and that's where paul begins in Galatians chapter five which is where we've been spending our time through this series that he says that if we want to cultivate the space for the holy spirit it's the spirit that can produce produce this good fruit in us fruit that looks like Jesus and when i think about cultivating i can't help but think about my summers growing up as a kid in northeastern ohio uh my grandparents they only lived about 45 minutes south of where we lived in this little town called stone creek ohio and whenever we went to their house it was this little homestead farm there was always a lot of work to do in fact there was a lot of fruit that needed to be picked uh they had these blueberry bushes that you could go right up to and you could pick the blueberries right off of the bush and they were the best tasting blueberries that you'd ever tasted you could eat them right there or you

could put them in the pine you could take them down to grandma's house and grandma would make the best blueberry pie that you've ever tasted you could go to see the raspberries or the blackberry vines and you could pull those right off of the vine and eat them there and you could harvest those and then there was the apple orchard where you could go and you could pull that fresh fruit right off of the tree and eat that apple right there and there's nothing better than the fruit right from the tree there's just something about fresh fruit that's right it's connected it tastes better and you don't pass it up and you know when I think back to those summers on my grandparents farm I can still see my grandpa taking me up into the apple orchard and there was this one tree that he had planted before I was born and when we would get to that tree he would always stop there and he would say these words this is your tree Nathan and then he would grab an apple off the tree and you say these are Nathan apples enjoy now as a kid I really didn't get it like I just thought it was cool that there was an apple tree named after me but now looking back I realized something more I realized that the fruit on that tree it told the story of the one who planted it it reflected the care and the pruning and the watering and the attention the fruit revealed the source and what my grandpa was doing all those years and he was cultivating that he was preparing the soil he was It grows where someone has cultivated the conditions for life. And here's the thing, when it comes to fruit, fruit doesn't lie. You know, there's a lot of things in life that you can fake. You can fake a smile. You can fake like you've got it all together. You can fake like you're strong, but you can't fake good fruit. Like fruit only grows when it's connected to the right source, and if you don't allow that fruit to stay connected long enough, it won't be good. And there's nothing that you can do to help it to improve. And spiritually, the same is true. The fruit of your life, your reactions, your relationships, your habits, your words, they reveal who or what you're connected to. It shows if the spirit is forming something in you, or if you're simply trying to do it in your own power, in your own strength. Now, here's something I've realized. When you look in a physical mirror, a physical mirror tells a lot about you, doesn't it? As I've gotten older, I'm realizing that there's more and more gray hairs in my beard and more and more gray hairs on the limited hair that I have on my head. And at 45 years of age, now I'm realizing I'm just getting old.

But the same is true in the mirror of life. When you slow down long enough to look at your reactions, your relationships, your habits, and your words, you start to notice the changes that are happening in you. Because whether you realize it or not, we're all in the process of becoming. We're either becoming more like Jesus, or maybe we're becoming more like the old version of ourselves, or maybe worse, we're becoming a version that we don't want to be. And so our hope through this series is pretty simple, that we would become people that bear the kind of fruit that helps us to look more and more like Jesus every single day. And it's the fruits of the Spirit that are cultivated in us that can help us to look like Him. Because when the Holy Spirit is at work in you, it shows, it grows, it becomes visible, it looks like something. And so what we want you to take away from this series isn't just what the fruits of the Spirit are, but really why they are important and why they matter to us and how you can become more like Jesus every single day. Because the fruit of your life is revealing who you're becoming. And so we have to ask this question based upon that. What kind of fruit is actually growing in me? And that's why Paul writes what he does in Galatians chapter 5, if you've got a Bible or a Bible app, I want to read these words of Galatians chapter 5 verses 22 and 23, this is what Paul says. He says, but the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now notice the list that Paul gives here, this isn't a checklist of things to perform, these aren't nine things that you just need to try harder to do. These are characteristics that are naturally growing inside of you as evidence of this life that is connected to Jesus. This is the kind of fruit that we should want other people to see in us, but it's also the kind of fruit that we want to see in the people that we hang out with as well. And Paul makes it really clear, the Holy Spirit produces all these kinds of fruits in our lives, which if we're honest, it means that most of us could use a little more of, well, all of them, right? Well, today I want to focus on the first fruit that Paul talks about, and I don't think it's an accident that Paul talks about this one first. Actually, I think this first fruit, it sets the tone for all the others, and so the fruit of the spirit that we're going to dig into today is the fruit of love. And the love that Paul's talking about here, I want you to understand this is challenging, because this word love today has been stretched to mean a thousand different things in our culture. Like people say things like this, some of you even say this, I love what a burger, right? Others of you, you say, "I love in and out," and all the people in the crowd said, "Amen," right? Some of you say, "I love the Dallas Cowboys." If you're brave, you might walk in here and say, "I love the Philadelphia Eagles," right? Some of you, you say, "I love my spouse, I love my kids." But Paul's talking about something deeper, something stronger, something far more costly. As I was saying this message, I started looking into what Paul is actually trying to convey as he uses this word love here. In the Greek, Paul, he would have had four different words that he could have used for this idea of love, but the word that he uses is this word agape. Now, if you grew up in the church, you've probably heard a sermon on this before.

This is a word that shows off oftentimes in Scripture, but in Paul's day, this word wasn't a common everyday word that people would have used. Like they would have known this word, it just wouldn't have been their go-to. And so when Paul uses agape to describe it, in this fruit of the spirit. What he's doing, he's intentionally elevating their understanding and our understanding of what this love looks like. And here's what Paul wants us to understand. This kind of love is not based on convenience or compatibility. It's not the kind of love that comes and goes with your emotions. It's not, I love you because it's not a love that depends upon someone else's performance or even their worthiness. Gape is the kind of love that shows up no matter who someone is, no matter what they've done, or even how you might feel about them. It's the kind of love that looks like Jesus. It's the kind of love that shows up when it's hard. It's the kind of love that doesn't change based upon someone's political views or even their social convictions. So the question is, how do we love like that? Because let's be honest, that kind of love, it doesn't come naturally to any of us. Like I would argue that not anyone in this room or anyone watching at home woke up today and goes, you know what I'm gonna do today? I'm gonna love the person who frustrates me.

I'm gonna love the people who drain me. I'm gonna love the person who keeps hurting me over and over again. I'm gonna love the people who don't agree with me and they said no one ever, right? I mean, most of us, we're just trying to love the people who cut us off in traffic on our way to church. But we're trying to love that person in the group chat that we're in that we really don't wanna be in and just comments all the time. You're laughing 'cause you know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Our natural instinct is to love the people who love us back. To love the people who are easy, the people who agree with us, the people who think like us, they act like us, they vote like us, you treat us well. Those people, let's be honest, they're not hard to love. But the difficult ones, the high maintenance ones, the opinionated ones, well, that's where it gets real. And look, you can't consider yourself a loving person just because your mom thinks you're great. I mean, let's be honest, she's legally obligated to. She tells you nice things, she brags about you, she makes you feel good, but agape love is different. Agape love is loving the person who is difficult. It's loving the people who drain you and wear you out. It is loving the spouse who's demanding. It's loving the in-laws who are dismissive or demeaning. It's loving the co-worker who tests your patients

every single day. And so the real question we have to answer is this, how do we respond to difficult people with love? And it's funny if you think about this, right? Because there's some things in life that come with warning labels at difficulty ratings, right? Like the other day, I came across this website that actually ranks IKEA furniture based out how hard it is to assemble. Now, if you've ever put together IKEA furniture, you know how you need the spiritual gift of patience, which Landon talked about a few weeks to go to put it together, right? Well, there's this website called flatpacktime.com. You can go to, and it gives you ratings of IKEA furniture, like easy, moderate, or difficult. Basically, stop what you're doing and pray because this is gonna take all day, right? Well, someone came up with this site because IKEA doesn't tell you how difficult it's gonna be to put this furniture together, but the people who have survived it, they definitely will. And listen, if you've ever built IKEA furniture with your spouse and you're still married. Well, congratulations, right? That's the fruit of the spirit there. Now, I share this because wouldn't it be nice if there was a tool that told you how high maintenance people were? Like, wouldn't it be nice if there was a warning label

on people before you got into a relationship with them? And you looked at it and you're like, "Warning, Karen Alert." Like, yeah, I'm staying away from that one, right? But love doesn't come with instructions. You don't get a difficulty score, you just get people. And some people, they're easy to love, and others, they're as difficult as putting together IKEA furniture. And when it comes to the world's idea of love, it's usually love based on feelings or conditions. It's transactional. If you do something for me, I'll love you. If you affirm me or you agree with me, I'll love you. If you make my life easier, I'll love you. But this love that Paul is talking about here in Galatians, it's completely different. Gape is supernatural, it's committed, it's sacrificial. It's, I'll love you even when I think you're wrong. I'll love you even when we disagree. I'll love you even if it costs me something. And the gape love is spirit. It's impossible without God doing something inside of us. Because the Spirit doesn't just help us to love. The Spirit empowers you to love in ways that you could never do on your own. And this is Paul's whole point. He's not saying try harder to love. What he's saying here is stay connected to the Spirit and the Spirit will grow this in you.

Now if we're gonna love like Jesus, if we're gonna love the way that Paul describes it, if we're gonna bear this kind of fruit that actually looks like Jesus, then we have to understand where this love comes from and what does this love look like. And I think that Jesus, he gives one of the clearest pictures of this in scripture in a story that I think many of you have probably heard before, but I wanna look at it today through a different lens, through this lens of agape love. Because this story isn't just a story about helping someone. It's the story about loving someone who would have been hard to love. It's about someone who would have been inconvenient to love, someone who culturally and historically, you weren't supposed to love. And Jesus tells this story in Luke chapter 10 about a Jewish man, he's traveling down this dangerous road. Like it was the kind of road that you kept your head down, you didn't make eye contact, just like you're walking in New York City, right? And you walk as fast as you can because you were trying to avoid the danger. Well, on this particular day, as this guy's walking down the road, he encounters some bandits who attack him,

who beat him, who rob him, who strip him of his clothes, and they leave him half dead, half alive on the side of the road. And as Jesus tells the story, Jesus says that there's this priest that comes by and no, this isn't the start of a bad religious joke, all right? Jesus says that this priest knew the scripture, he knew the commands, he had taught people about love, but when he sees the man, he crosses over to the other side of the road and he keeps going. And so then Jesus says that there's a second man that comes by, he's a Levite, another religious leader, and he walks towards the man, but as he sees the man, Jesus says he steps around him and he keeps going as well. And the crowd listening to Jesus, they would have thought, yeah, that checks out, makes sense because they knew that the religious leaders of their day, they oftentimes avoided ritual impurity. And the idea of touching a half dead man on the side of the road, it would have made them ceremonially unclean. And so while this was disappointing to hear, it wasn't surprising to anyone, but then Jesus flips this whole thing upside down.

He says that the Samaritan man comes walking down the road and you gotta understand that Jews and Samaritans, they didn't just dislike each other, like they despise one another, that they avoided each other. Like this is the Cowboys versus Eagles fans level dislike. But honestly, I think you could take it further. Like this is more than just a sports rivalry tension. Like this is the different size of the political aisle level division. This is the modern day, Middle Eastern level hostility that we are seeing in the news every single day. They didn't talk, they didn't interact, they didn't share anything. This is a centuries old hostility. And Jesus says that this Samaritan, the one who had every reason to walk away, he walks up to this guy and when he gets to the guy, he doesn't look at him and go, "Man, you're looking rough. "I hope somebody can help you out." And then just keep walking. Instead, Jesus says that this Samaritan man, he gets down onto his knees. And he begins to clean the wounds of this guy. And after he's cleaned the wounds of this man up, it says that he bandages him up. And after he's bandaged him up, Jesus says that this Samaritan picks up his enemy.

He picks him up and he carries him. And now he's bloody and he's dirty, just like the guy laying on the side of the road. He puts him on his donkey and they head into the nearest village. And when he get there, they find an inn that has vacant. He goes to the innkeeper and he says, "Here, take this money. "This should be enough to cover his medical expenses "and to care for him. "And if it's not, I'll make sure to come back "and pay you the rest." And see, this is what agape love looks like. It's love that crosses the line. It's love that costs something. It's love that moves towards the pain rather than away from it. It's love that cares for people who can't pay you back. It's love that embraces people who don't agree with you or who may not even like you. Agape, it looks like Jesus. Now, Jesus, he ends this story. He's talking to the religious leaders who, And this is what he says, Luke 10, 36. He says, "Now which of these three would you say "was the neighbor of the man who was attacked by bandits?" In other words, which one loved like God left? And Jesus was using this story to reveal the kind of love that we are to have for other people. And so notice what Luke tells us next, verse 37,

it says, "The man replied, 'The one who showed him mercy.'" And then here's Jesus' this follow-up response. Then Jesus said, "Yes, now go and do the same." His directions are clear here. Go and do the same. Or in other words, he's saying, "I just want you to go love other people just like I do." Now here's what we can't miss. Jesus doesn't tell this story to inspire us for a moment. Like this isn't a spiritual pep talk or a half-time speech that he uses that will motivate us for like a week's time. He tells us this story because he wants us to be transformed and transformation doesn't happen by trying harder. It happens the same way that fruit grows by staying connected to the right source. Now remember what I said at the beginning? You can't fake good fruit. Let me ask you this, have you ever gone to the grocery store and you see a piece of fruit that looks Instagram-ready, like it looks so good, so you buy it off the shelf and you take it home and then you bite into it, but it tastes terrible. It's either because it was picked too early or it sat too long or maybe someone at the grocery store, they waxed it to make it look better than it actually was. It wasn't good fruit, it didn't taste like good fruit. You got catfished by some fruit, right? Listen, you can't fake good fruit. The fruit only grows when it stays connected long enough for the life of the tree to flow from it.

And the same is true of agape love. This is exactly what Jesus is getting at. Look in John chapter 15, this is what he says. He says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. "If you remain in me and I in you, "you will bear much fruit." He doesn't say try harder to bear fruit. He just simply says, "Remain in me." And then verse eight shines a whole spotlight on what this entire series is about. Jesus says this, "This is to my father's glory, "that you bear much fruit showing yourselves "to be my disciples." In other words, you want to claim Christianity? If you want to claim to follow Jesus, he says then you need to examine the fruit because fruit is the evidence. Fruit is the proof. Fruit is what shows the world who or what you belong to. You can't fake it, you can't manufacture it, you cannot force it. Agape love is something the spirit grows in you because the spirit, it doesn't just help you to love. The spirit empowers you to love in ways that you could never do on your own. And so if we're gonna love like Jesus, if we're gonna love the way that Paul describes here, if we're gonna bear the kind of fruit that actually looks like Jesus, then we have to understand how this love grows.

And so with the time that I've got left, I wanna give you three simple but practical ways that you can grow in the fruit of the spirit of love in your life. And the first one I'll say is this, you've gotta stay close to the source. See, fruit doesn't grow because the branch tries harder. It grows because the branch stays connected. And then the fruit of the spirit, you gotta understand it's not a self-improvement list. It's spiritual empowerment, which means that we've gotta move away from this mindset that many of us grew up with that, that it's just behavior modification. If I just do this, then I'll get better at love. Listen, we can't do this on our own. The Holy Spirit has to transform us. Jesus said in John 15, five, He says apart from me, you can do nothing. Not you can do a little, not you can do your best. He says nothing. If you wanna gop a love to grow in you, you have to stay close to the spirit. It's daily, it's consistently, it's intentionally. Because the more time that you spend connected to the source, the more your heart becomes just like our father's heart. The second thing I would say is this, you've gotta ask the spirit for help every single day. Gop a love is spirit produced. And just a few verses before Paul lists the fruits

of the spirit in Galatians chapter five. This is what he says in verse 16. He says, so I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. In other words, ask Him, Paul also wrote this about the Spirit in Romans 8, 26. He says, "The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness," which means you can literally ask the Holy Spirit this. Holy Spirit, help me to love these people today that are really hard to love. Holy Spirit, give me the compassion that I need that I usually don't have. Holy Spirit, help me to have patience with my co-worker today. Holy Spirit, give me eyes to see the way that you see people. The Spirit loves answering those kinds of prayers. He delights in forming the heart of Jesus in each and every one of us. And listen, the Spirit, he'll often give you opportunities to practice this kind of love, but understand this. It's not gonna be with easy people, not with the people who think like you, but the people who stretch you. And understand this, those moments are not accidents, those moments are invitations. Actually, something that God continues to reveal to me is that a God-based love, it doesn't grow in theory. It grows in real conversations, in real tensions, in real relationships. It grows when the Spirit meets you in the middle

of something uncomfortable and gives you the strength to love that other person anyway. Which leads to the last thing that I wanna give you today, and this is really gonna be a challenge that I want you to leave here with, and hopefully take this to heart this week, and that is this. Choose one person to love this week intentionally. See, a gape, it grows when you use it. It's like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the more you stretch it, the more you flex it, the stronger it becomes. You don't grow in a gape by just thinking about it. You grow in a gape by practicing it. So my question to you is this. Who's your neighbor this week? Who's the person that God is putting right in front of you? Is it that family member who constantly frustrates you? Is it the neighbor who always annoys you? Is it the person who you don't agree with? Don't wait for a feeling. Don't wait for a moment to be convenient. Choose to love them with the love that Jesus has shown to you. Several years ago, author Bob Goff, he came out with a book called Love Does, maybe you've read it. It's such a simple but powerful book. I highly recommend it if you haven't read it. And in that, he says something that I think is so important for us to understand. And he says this real love doesn't just feel something.

It does something. It moves, it acts, it shows up. It steps towards people instead of away from them. And that's a gape love. That's the fruit of the spirit. That's what it looks like when Jesus is forming something inside of you. Because the fruit of the spirit isn't just about becoming a nicer version of you. It's about becoming a clearer reflection of him. It's about becoming more like Jesus, one conversation, one act of mercy, one moment at a time. And listen, if you're sitting here or you're watching this online and you're thinking to yourself, I hear what you're saying in Pastor Nate. But I don't think that I can love like that. Well, you're right, you can't. Not on your own. But the spirit in you can help you to love. The spirit can give you the patience that you don't naturally have. The spirit can give you compassion that you can't manufacture. The spirit can give you the strength that you didn't know that you needed. The spirit can grow a love in you that looks like Jesus, even when everything else in you wants to walk in the other direction. You know, as Jesus, he finishes the story

of the Good Samaritan. He asks the religious lawyer this question. He says, "Which one of them loved?" And the religious leader answers the question correctly. And did you notice Jesus' response? He doesn't say, "Congratulations. Winner, winner, chicken, dinner." Right? He says, "No, now go do the same. "Not go agree with it. "Not go feel inspired by it. "Go embody it. "Go practice it. "Go let the spirit grow this in you." This past week, I had the opportunity to travel to the Dominican Republic with 58 of our high school students across all of us. and go ministries and I love going to the DR and being a part of what God's doing at go ministries. And throughout that week, I just asked God, God, reveal yourself to me. And as I was watching our students and our adult leaders serve, I saw a God they love being displayed time after time after time. But there was this one moment in particular that stuck out to me. It happened about three days into our trip. We were out in this town. It was about an hour from where we were staying.

And so we had been painting houses in the morning and we were going to be doing a field day in the afternoon with the kids. And normally between our first work period and lunch, we would go back, but it was so far that we just stayed in that town. And we were getting ready to eat lunch there and this little girl from the village, she walks in early, she was ready for field day. But it was still a few hours away and she came in, she was dirty. We could tell that she was hungry. And we asked our missionary friend Isaiah if we could feed her and he said, yeah. So we gave her one of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we had. And this little girl whose name was Elena, she just hung out with us until the rest of the kids arrived. And as she was sitting there, there's different groups of kids all over this community center. And she was sitting with a few of our students and some of our adult leaders and one of our students, his name is Briggs. He noticed that Elena just kept itching at her legs and scratching her legs and how dirty they were. And he looked at Elena and he said, can I help you? And she nodded her head, yes. So Briggs went over and he got this bucket of water that we had been using to wash our hands and he put it down in front of Elena's feet.

And this is what happened next. Right there in that moment, Briggs, he knelt down beside her and he quietly began washing her feet. No spotlight, no announcement, no look at me. Just the teenage kid who saw someone who was struggling and chose to love her the way that Jesus did. And I remember standing there and tears are just flowing down my face. And as I watched that, I thought, man, that's it. That's what a gape love looks like. That's what it looks like when the spirit grows something in you that doesn't make sense. It's this love that costs you something, love that moves towards someone instead of away from them. This is love that doesn't wait for a moment to be easy. It just shows up. And on that day, Briggs didn't just preach a sermon. He lived one. In that moment, he showed that little girl what the love of Jesus could look like and it was powerful. And so compass my challenge to use this, go and do the same. Someone's healing may begin because you choose to love them. So may you see the people in front of you, the way that God sees them. May you choose mercy over judgment. May you choose compassion over convenience. May you choose presence over avoidance. And may the world see Jesus, not because we talked about being loving, but because we lived it. So go and do the same. Have me father, we come to you right now.

Give us eyes to see as you see. May our hearts break for what breaks your heart. Father, when we look at others, maybe we look at them with love, just like the love that you displayed to each and every one of us. When you went to the cross and you paid the ultimate price. So father, fill us with your spirit. Produce this fruit of love in us. That when people look at us, they would say they've been with Jesus. So father, use us to be a light to those around us. Help us love well, to love just as you have. And we pray all of this in the powerful and the mighty name of Jesus. I pray. Amen. Amen.