Love | Fruit of the Spirit Week 2

The Fruit of the Spirit, where we are looking at seeing God do amazing things in and through our lives over this 10 weeks as we study the fruit of the spirit. And last week, we started it out by talking about life's biggest question, which is simply, like, how do we truly change? How do we truly change? And if you missed it, I wanna make sure you follow along on YouTube, if you miss a week, go back and watch it. But if you missed last week's message, we talked about you don't change by trying harder, but we changed by submitting to the spirit. This is not a self-help series. This isn't a check the box series. This isn't more things for you to do series. This is a submit yourself to the Holy Spirit series and watch how God will change your life. And as you do this, I promise you, your life will become more and more like Christ. 'Cause as we submit to the spirit of God, the fruit in our life is the fruit of the spirit, which was your memory verse last week. I'm sure you got it memorized. I'll put it up on the screen just in case you don't have it memorized so you can follow along. But I want you to say with me, the fruit of the spirit is ready, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is what we're learning about over this series. And when we hear the fruit of the spirit,

I wanna remind you what it is. And you can write it down in your book, we're on page 26 today. And by the way, these books have been unbelievable resources for you. Make sure you're doing your devotions through the week, memory verses, homework, it's gonna help you grow. But the fruit of the spirit, you'll see this definition almost every single week of this series. It is the character of Christ being made visible in us as we walk by the spirit. This is very important that you understand what this means. The character of Christ being made visible in us as we walk by the spirit. I broke this down in a lot of detail last week, but let me give you to you one more time. Here's what it means. The character Christ means this series is not random virtues. We're actually studying who Jesus is. And I want you to know who Jesus actually is. So, so much of the message is gonna be focused on the character of Jesus, the life of Jesus. 'Cause as we see him, he set the standard for what the fruit of the spirit is. And then we realize that it's made visible in our lives, which means this, that your, the Christians should be different to the world, that we should stand out, that we shouldn't blend in with everybody else. There should be something that is different about you as you study the character of Christ.

And it happens not by your flesh or by your works, but we understand it happens as we walk by the spirit, which means change comes and not from our striving, but by his spirit. This is how we change, is that we open ourselves up to the spirit of God to do a deep work in our lives. And at the end of the service, I don't want you to rush off because that's the most important part where we just humble ourselves, we open up our hearts, and we let the Holy Spirit do a deep work. Let me just say it this way, and as I said in week one, you're gonna look different than you did a couple of weeks ago. By the end of the series, you're gonna be more and more and more like Jesus. And if you agree with it, can I hear a good amen today church? All right, we're gonna go in week two, we're gonna talk about the very first of the fruit of the spirit, we're gonna talk about love. And love is put there first for a strategic reason I'll get to in just a second, but I wanna just talk about this term love because we get it so messed up in our world today. Can you imagine if you were like an alien and you came down to earth and you were like trying to study us and our language. And you hear this phrase love. So it's like, I love my spouse and they go oh, that must be a big word.

And then at the same time you go and I love pizza, they're like, that's weird. Like your relationship with your spouse and pizza are very intense right there. We love our coffee shops, we love our hobbies, we love our sports teams, we love so much. So love has kind of diluted its term. My second daughter, I asked for permission, and I said, I wanna use you today because she's in this weird love right now of this thing that you might not know about 'cause you might not have teenagers, but I'll tell you it has like the craze out there today and she has this love for things called squishies. How many know what a squishy is, all right? All right, now very, very slim demographic, knows what this is, but she goes out and she buys these everywhere she goes. So for those who are a little bit older, for my generation, what Beanie Babies were for us, or silly bands for another generation, or some of y'all remember the tickle me elmo world, okay? That world where it's just like, you get infatuated with a toy, this is what this generation is infatuated with, and they all collect them. So my daughter, like this is one of hers, It's not real butter. It's just a squishy butter. You just squish it, all right?

And all day long, they just play with these things. So my daughter loves squishies. So I was like, this is a weird infatuation with this thing. So the other day, she's like, "Dad, can you take me to five below?" Well, I've never been to a five below in my life. I thought that was like a winter store. And so just didn't quite understand. But I said, "No, I'm not gonna take you to five below." She said, "No, they're dropping a new shipment of squishies at 9.30." And I said, listen, I said, "If your mom wants to take you, she can take you." But I said, "I promise you, you can show up at any time and this will still be there 'cause nobody's gonna show up to buy these dumb things, okay?" So we get, I don't get there, my wife, who is way more caring, shows up at 9.30 in the morning. And this is the picture Katie sends me. And this is five below with a line wrapped around the building. And everybody's sitting there. They're fighting. This is like Black Friday, old school. You remember where they used to like rush the Walmart doors? And this is like, the managers there were like, "Only five apiece, you're gonna buy five pieces." People were bringing their whole families. So they all get five. I'm like, "Who's the guy that made these that is sitting on a boat somewhere, sailing around,

just retiring because of all this infatuation?" So I'm trying to explain love to my daughter. And I'm saying, "Jesus loves you." And then she's here in a mall. She loves squishies. And I'm like, "It's not the same." So let's look at what love really is. You can write it down in your notes this way. Here's what all comes down to. Love is the very nature and character of Christ. This is vitally important for you to understand what love is because when Paul puts love first in the list of the fruit of the spirit, he's not saying this is the first virtue that you need to work on. He's saying that when you're connected with God and you're led by the spirit of God, love is the very first part of the character of Christ that becomes visible in your life. That this is what should mark us as Christians because we're connected with the God of love. This is so vital that you understand. This is what we're called to do. Galatians chapter five, our passage that we've been studying, Paul says it this way, you, my brothers and sisters, we're called to be free. We understand that they're trying to put a bunch of rules and regulations on this church. And Paul says, no, it's not about all those rules. We talk about this in week one.

He says, so don't use your freedom to indulge in the flesh, which we talked about also the flesh versus the spirit, which one's guarding your life. But then look at, he says, serve one another humbly in what? Oh, come on, help me on every campus and what? Look, look, he's saying that love should be that thing that drives our life and should be the marker that we're connected with God. First John says it this way in the Apostle John and he wrote first John, wrote about love more than any other writer in the New Testament. And he says, whoever does not love doesn't know God because God is love. What an intense phrase. Like you don't, if you don't show love to people, you don't really know God because somebody who is connected with God displays love in their life because writing down your notes because love is the product of a life that's connected with God. So we understand that as we're connected with the spirit of God, we will start to overflow in God's love for the people around us, even the difficult people around us. Can I just say it this way? Where there is a lack of love, there's probably a lack of a connection with God. Because if you leave God out of that relationship or leave God out of that workplace or leave God out of that environment, then you're never gonna walk in the love

that God has for those people. So you start to respond in a fleshly way instead of a loving way, you start to lose your temper and you start to get angry and you start to feel jealousy, why? Because God's not in the middle of that relationship. So this is why it's vitally important that in every situation you stay connected with God 'cause out of that connection with God, you'll love people better. So let's learn about what love is. We're gonna look at the original language of every one of these words. And these are all written in the Greek. So you're gonna learn a lot of Greek over the next nine weeks. Let's start with love because there's actually four words for love in the New Testament Greek. There's four words for love that you need to understand. The first one is eros, which is romantic love. This is the sexual love. This is where we get the word. It's very interesting. It's a word that really is tied with feelings. Then you have storgate, which is family-type love. This is that bond you have with your siblings or with your aunts and uncles. It's just unique in that. Then there's filleta. This is friendship love. filleta is friendship-type love.

This is brotherly love. By the way, this is where we get the city named Philadelphia. Why? Because it's the city of brotherly love. This is where they get that term. It's the same idea. It's the idea of friendship, of connection. Here's the problem with all three of these loves. Is they're all transactional? They all have an escape clause. If you do something for them, they do something for you. You make me feel good. I'll make you feel good. You're connected with me. I'm connected with you. You treat me good. I'll treat you good. If you remove me from that group chat or you don't invite me to hang out, there's a problem. You see, it's a disconnect because these are transactional love, but God shows us a greater way. God's love is not these loves of feeling or even family or friendship. God's love is a deeper love instead of a gape love and a gape love is the love we're going to talk about today. It's unconditional seeking the highest good of another. It's the idea that no matter what they do, I am going to be behind them. I'm going to serve them. I'm going to do what's best for them because this is the love of God and this is what God did for you. I want to set the record straight. God's love for you is an agape love, meaning you didn't earn it, you didn't deserve it.

You can't work for it, but God gave it to you. Romans 5.8 says, "But God demonstrates his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." This is vitally important for you to understand because you are not the initiator in this relationship with God. I know some people are like, "Well, I decided to come to Christ. Let me just be very clear with you." You didn't start that. God initiated the relationship with you. We were dead in our sins, separated from God, and yet God looked at us with a gape love and says, "I am going to die on the cross for their sins. I am going to be raised on the dead so that they can walk a new life. I don't know about you, but I'm grateful that why I couldn't save myself. God saved me. Is there anybody grateful for the agape love of God? Let me just say, I don't golf-clap the agape love of Christ. I save me out of sin and hell. Let me help you one more time. Are you grateful for the love of God that saved us and rescued us?" That type of love is what God tells us to demonstrate to one another. Now, it's going to get a little touchy because actually, if you're in our Bible reading plan as a church, today we're in John 13, which happens to be a key passage for our message today that I had already written months ago, and look at it, it says, "It says a new command I give you, love one another, agape one another." If you feel it, not just if you're related to them, not if they're friends of yours, agape one another. As I have loved you with unconditional love, now you must love one another. And by the way, look at this. By this, this type of love to each other, everyone will know that you're my disciples if you love one another.

Look how significant this is. The one distinguishing mark that Jesus said of His disciples would be our love for each other. He did not say by our doctrine, we will be known by our theology, by our church attendance, by our politics, by our worship style, by what we give or how we serve. He says you will be known by how you love one another. And if I could challenge the church of Jesus Christ, that we need to love better because we're known for a lot of things, and I'm worried we're not known for the main thing, which should be our active agape, unconditional love for one another and for a world that's dying and going to hell and needs somebody to show them the love that God showed to us. Because we've all know somebody who used to be in a place like this. that is now disconnected because some person did not show them agape love, and they got their feelings hurt, and they got offended, and they pulled away. But, by the way, let me just look right at that camera. If I can get the tight shot, that would be awesome. 'Cause I wanna hear, talk to somebody who's watching at home, and you've actually made it an excuse of why you're pulled away from the church. And I want you to know, listen, listen, people will let you down, people will hurt you, but it is not an excuse for you to disconnect from the body of Christ. It's time to come back. It's time to get connected again. It's time to get off the couch, and to get back involved. You have too much potential. I didn't say this in any other service, but I wanna say, you have too much inside of you to offer the body of Christ, for you to leave living

in your offense, and your hurt at home. It's time to get back engaged, and you go, well, they hurt me, I know, forgive them, let it go, and let's move on, because you're a vital part of the body of Christ. (audience applauding) Now, that to my message, 'cause none of that was in there. Can I just say this? We have to do our part to make sure that agape love is what we are known for. Gandhi says it this way. He said, "I like your Christ. "I do not like your Christians, "because your Christians are so unlike your Christ." I'm wondering when it comes to the body of Christ, when more people come to church if Christians walked in the agape love of God, the unconditional love of God. Can I take it another step forward? This is just a little intense, but we're having fun together, all right, church? I told you it's gonna be a challenging series. Paul said it this way. He goes, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels," this is the gifts of the spirit he's talking about, which we believe in, we're grateful for the gifts of the spirit. He goes, "If you can speak in tongues," but he goes, "But if you don't have love," he goes, "I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol."

You know what that means? If you say, "I am this," or, "This is what's right," but you don't live a lifestyle of love, you're just a bunch of noise. All right, so let's do a little illustration. Okay, let's have a little fun with this. All right, a little older, it's hard to get off the stage. Okay, let's have this couple stand up. This is, I want you to introduce yourself. Tell everybody who you are. Hey, I'm Bobby, this is my beautiful wife, Cat. And how long y'all been married? 17 years this December. Come on, come on, come on. And then part of "Radiant" for 10 years, amazing couple, love them so much. Okay, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little illustration too. And I know y'all hate being in the spotlight, Cat. You're such a trooper. All right, so, Bobby, you're gonna tell Cat, after 17 years, just what you love about her. Yeah, I'll keep it peachy. Yeah, I keep it peachy. Okay, let's, there's a lot of kids in the audience. I'll tell you the rest when we get there. All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Ready? Oh my goodness, where do I start, Cat? I love so much about your love for God,

your love for our family, your love for this series. Okay, okay, all right, all right. It's really hard to pay attention to this, isn't it? It's really hard to experience this, because why? Because you hear a lot of this. Okay, all right. First of all, you guys did a great job. Y'all give it up for the Sasser, so we love the Sasser so much, okay. All right. (congregation applauding) By the way, that's what describes most of your Christian life out there to the world. You wear the pray first bracelet with all their hearing is this. Because what you say and how you live, what you live is actually a lot of this. Because we could say the right thing, but we're not loving the right way. Because listen, love is not shown in what you say, it's displayed in how you live. Am I called for the church of Jesus Christ? It's to step up to the plate, and to say, let's be the most loving, caring people that walk in the agape, love of God, to a lost and dying world, and especially to each other as the church family. So that when the world comes in, they no longer evaluate us as hypocrites, because hypocrites are people that say one thing,

but all they hear is this. But we're actually people that back with what we say with action, because we have the love of God in our heart. Can I hear a good amen today, church? All right, so how do we love like Jesus? I think we'll have fun with this, three things, and we'll go quick with them. Number one, it's the way you love like God loves is you gotta look to Jesus. You gotta look at Him. Our example of love is Jesus, and Jesus loved radically. Jesus loved selflessly. Jesus loved even with difficult people around us. I think some of you just think that nothing ever bothered Jesus, but you gotta remember the Bible's very clear. So if you get annoyed with people, Jesus had the temptation to get annoyed with people. If you get frustrated, Jesus would have gotten frustrated, but Jesus did not respond in sin. He actually responded in agape love, and we see it all throughout the scripture, where Jesus cared deeply about people. Let me give you a couple of stories. We see it with a story of the woman in John 8, who was caught in the act of adultery. If you don't know the story, this woman was brought to Jesus by the religious leaders. They had caught her in the very act,

and they brought her to Jesus and goes, the law says to stone her, what do you do, Jesus? They're trying to test him. And Jesus kneels down and starts to write in the sand. Now, nobody knows for a fact what Jesus wrote in the sand, but most scholars believe what Jesus wrote in the sand, which is what I believe, is that he wrote in the sand their deep, dark secrets. Imagine this, we could see it in the passage. Let me put John 8 up there. At this, those who heard begin to go away, one at a time, the older ones first, they're looking down, they're like, what is Jesus writing? Oh, he knows that. And what are they doing? And they started to leave one right by one, 'cause Jesus is revealing, hey, you're gonna judge her, then let's just look at what's in your heart right now. And then as the people all left, Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are the people that are condemning you?" She says, "Nobody's here." And he says this phrase, "Neither do I condemn you." By the way, I don't know what you came in here with and what brokenness you came in here with, but Jesus is not here to condemn you. He's here to change your life. And if you're the person that's caught in the very act of sin, the greatest thing you can do is what this woman did and to get to the feet of Jesus,

'cause it's not the feet of Jesus that healing comes. It's not the feet of Jesus that forgiveness comes. It's not the feet of Jesus that you'll never feel shame, but you'll always get changed. Aren't we grateful for the feet of Jesus that we can go to at all of our times and at all of our brokenness and find life? And then put that verse back up there, and then he says, "Neither do I condemn you." And then he says, "Now go and leave your life of sin." By the way, Jesus showed us true love. True love is that we love people deeply where they're at, but we also call them to the higher standard that God has for them. So Jesus showed her grace, but also told her, "There's a better way." And I wanted to speak to some people here today, because some of y'all are on one of these two sides. One of y'all is like, "It's all truth. "I'm just gonna drop a truth, bomb on them." And you have no relationships and no grace. And you're going, "Well, I'm just an eight on the enneagram. "It's just what we do." You're mean, all right? And that's not what's gonna bring people to Christ. And by the way, nobody's changing their opinions because you drop your little truth bombs. So what do we do? Can we do what Jesus does? We bring total grace, and then we bring truth to it.

There's other people that are just all grace, and everything's loving, and everybody's way is great. And you gotta bring truth to the equation too. 'Cause you can't leave them in their life of sin. And Jesus showed us the better way. We love people deeply by meeting them where they're at, and showing them where God can bring them. This is what Jesus did. Let me give you another story. We see the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was this hated tax collector. We see that he's a shorter dude, and he was a guy who hated by everybody, and Jesus comes into town, and he climbs up a tree to see over the crowd. And as he gets up into this tree, Jesus walks by and looks at him. What is Jesus gonna say to the most hated man in the community? When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up. By the way, isn't it beautiful? A man that was everybody looked down on their entire life. Jesus looked up to you. He showed 'em dignity. He showed 'em respect. Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today. Jesus shows up to the guy's house. Why? Because one time with Jesus can transform somebody's life more than years and years of shame and condemnation,

and just make it 'em feel bad. And what does he do after one night with Jesus? He comes back and gives away four times more than he ever stole from anybody before. Why? Because that's what changes people's life. The agape love of God in action is what'll change people from their brokenness to the call that God has for their life. It's the call of God. Here's the next one. One more story. There was a story of lepers, and in the scripture, the lepers were the people who were the outcasts. They were the people that were, the disease was so horrible that if you got within six feet of them, they had to shout out unclean so that you'd move away. So they were never able to be touched, never able to be get close to. And Jesus shows up Well, Jesus, the Bible says he reached out his hand and he touched the man. This, my friends, is the Agape love of God. He touched somebody who was untouchable. Can I ask you a theological question? And I know you're not gonna get it wrong, even if you're new to church, okay? And I want everybody to answer out loud

at all of our campuses. Could Jesus, God of the universe, that anything is possible, could Jesus have healed the man from more than six feet away? Okay, very good, you're very smart people, all right? Some of y'all still didn't answer, like I don't know. Not a trick question. Of course he could have, but he got close. Because Agape love gets close to even hurting people, to broken people, to people who would even be a little messy in their life. And he says, I'm willing, he says, he'd be clean and immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed. This is Jesus. When you look at who Jesus was, he was always someone who walked in Agape love. Number two, if you wanna love like God, you gotta not just look at Jesus, but you gotta pray like Jesus. Because how many know, there are times where someone's gonna tell you, well, that wasn't very loving. Jesus wouldn't do that, and you're gonna go, why ain't Jesus? I ain't Jesus, I've got a lot of issues, and I ain't perfect, okay? But here's, hear me out. Most of us use that as an excuse

to live below the mark that God has for us. 'Cause we say, well, I'm just not Jesus, and I'm gonna mess up, and reality is, is Jesus dealt with very difficult people, but had grace for them, and loving, and towards them. How? Well, we know how he did it, because Jesus prayed a lot. You can see it in the Bible. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. So why did Jesus pray so much? Jesus prayed so much because people are so difficult. And Jesus was surrounded by some people who are kind of like the people you work with in your office, who were difficult. Or maybe the neighbor you have, or the family member, that's just a little bit difficult. And Jesus was around them, and the way he showed love to them is that he would get alone with the Father. And when he would get alone with the Father, he would get the will of the Father, and he would get the agenda of the Father, and then he would get the love of the Father to go and pour out into the broken world that he was called to minister to. Hear me out for all of our campuses. You can't love people well when your prayer life is a week. Some of you, you're trying to love people in your own strength, and that will always leave you empty. But as Christians, we don't do things in our own strength.

We do them empowered by the Spirit of God. So how do we get empowered by the Spirit of God? We get alone with God, we get filled up with his power, and we get the love of God poured into our heart because many of you are trying to give love that you haven't received yourself. So the best thing you're gonna do is learn how to pause before you go into a difficult meeting or a difficult conversation or around a difficult person, and you're gonna go, "God, fill me with your agape love, "and as you pray, God responds, "and now you can start to act like Jesus "because you can't do it in your own strength, "but you can do it by God's power, "and he's willing to give it to you if you'll just ask. "It'll change your life." So hear me out, when you pray like Jesus, you'll start to love like Jesus. And I think this is so important. We see Jesus all the time. He's praying, he's praying for his enemies, he's praying for the sick, he's praying for the broken, he's praying for even the people that crucified him and nailed him on the cross. How did Jesus love so well? Because he prayed for people in his life. It will change your life when you stop criticizing him and start praying for him. And God will deposit a love inside of you. I actually tell our staff all the time,

some of them are down here, down front. I tell them all the time, I go, "Hey, by the way, we know when you don't pray." Not because we have a camera hooked up like spying on you, because you're crazy, you are, you're difficult, you're irritable, you're like things just make you mad. Some, I've done it with some of our staff sometimes, I'm like, can you take like 30 minutes and just go pray for a little bit? 'Cause you're a little crazy. And if you would just pray and get with God, he would deposit a supernatural love in you and you'd stop acting by your flesh and start walking by his spirit. It'll change your life. Number three, y'all still with me today, church? Number three, you gotta be led by like Jesus. Be led like Jesus. [BLANK_AUDIO] 'Cause we're called to love like God, that agape love, that we look at Jesus, we see Him as the example, we pray like Jesus, so when we're weak in our own strength, we become to Him, and then we're led. God will give you assignments to where you go out, and you start to act on a way that starts to actually make a difference in the world today. Hear me out, radiant. Our love should be marked by action. And when you have truly encountered the love of God, and when that love has been poured into your heart,

you will be driven to do things that do not make sense to the world. What do you think it is that drives us to forgive people that hurt us? It's the love of God. What is it that drives us to start nonprofits, to help the poor in our community? It's the love of God. What do you think it is that drives us to bring in foster children and adopt people out of this system? Why? It's the love of God. What is it that'll help you restore the marriage? It's not your own strength. It's the love of God being deposited in your heart, and God's gonna speak to you, and you're gonna step out in love, and through that love, you're actually gonna be able to be like Jesus, and make a difference in the world today. And it was the love of Jesus that drove him. The Bible says when he would see these crowds to have compassion on them and heal their sick. This is what we see all throughout the scripture, that God would move in action because why? 'Cause he deeply loved people. Here's your memory verse for this week, and I think it's so important. I love it that we're doing this every single week, and this one is a beautiful verse,

and I want you to take it, and I want you to memorize it, 'cause I think it'll help you. Romans 5.5 says it this way. God's love. Who's love? Not man's love. This isn't feelings. This isn't the family love. This is the agape love of God. Has been poured into our hearts through what? The Holy Spirit. How do we get it? Oh, help me out at every campus. How do we get it? The Holy Spirit, through the Holy Spirit. Not through your own strength, not through your own striving, but through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. I don't know where you lack the love of God, but I want you to know it can be poured into your life today through the Holy Spirit. But before you play, hold on just a second, just a second, 'cause I'm telling you, I feel the spirit of God in this. There's somebody that woke up, and you're giving God one more shot with your marriage. And I think the solution to the marriage, I know the solution to the marriage, is that it's agape love that needs to be poured in by the Holy Spirit. It's the love that looks past the differences

and past the frustrations and past the issues, and it says, you know what? We're gonna walk in the agape love of God, the unconditional love of God, the sacrificial love of God. You wanna know how to have a healthy marriage? You lay down your life for each other, like Jesus laid down our life for us, and watch how through that you're able to walk in the plans and the purposes of God, because that's where love is all about. It's not the feeling, it's not the emotion, it's not the family, it's the agape, unconditional love of God, and that's the love that you build your life on, and that's the love that'll go on and change the world. So how do we see that love in our life? Well, that's what Galatians tells us. If we live by the spirit, let's keep in step with the spirit. So what does that mean? Every day you're waking up, God, what are you calling me to do? And some of you, the agape love of God, is gonna speak to you about forgiving someone who you shouldn't forgive. Everybody told you, you don't forgive him? God's gonna say, no, no, no, the agape love of God as you forgive, just like he did on the cross. Some of you, it's the agape love of God's gonna call you to serve and radiant kids. What would, what in their right mind

would a group of people wake up early to go and serve with a bunch of kids? I don't never thank them. The love of God compels them. What would take, people at our church, they're crazy. They take their vacation time every year and go on a mission strip. Why? 'Cause the love of God drives them to action. Don't let it keep you in your seats. Let that love of God drive you to the plans and purposes that he has for your life. So here's your question. I wish I would have put in the book. I just didn't think of it for enough in advance. Ready? Where is the Holy Spirit leading you? Right now, to show agape love. Where's the Holy Spirit leading you? To show agape love. Maybe this week it's in your workplace. that you'll have broken off relationship. And God's saying, no, you show they agape love. You go first. Let the love of God be poured into your heart and let it be something that compels you, just like it compelled Jesus to change the world around you. Let's all pray. Just close your eyes all over the room.

I want you to invite Holy Spirit. This is the most important part of the whole service. I told you, where you invite the Spirit of God to do a deep work. So with your eyes closed, can you just hold your hands up like you're gonna receive a gift? Just ask God and say, God, fill me with your love. You're unconditional agape love. For my spouse, for my friends, for the church, for mission, for everything you call me to do, fill me with your love. Let's just have a moment right now, where we invite the presence of God in to change us right here in the room, and he'll do it.