Love | Pastor Rebecca Peterson and Pastor Erin Peterson

We're actually kicking off a new series today called Juicy Fruit, let's go. We said, this looks like it is out of a 1990s birthday invitation this morning. I love it. Given to Lisa Frank vibes for anybody who remembers that era, for sure. So fun. And so before we jump in this morning, we want to take a minute and welcome everyone who is joining us online. We love you online family. And then I want us to put our hands together and welcome all of you to the Juicy Fruit event. We are so excited to have you here this morning. We are so excited to have you here this morning. We are so excited to have you here this morning. We are so excited to have you here this morning. I want us to put our hands together and welcome all of the men and women who are joining us in correction facilities all across the US. Come on, what an honor and what a privilege it is that God is allowing us not just to be able to minister to the people here in this community that he's planted us in, but to be able to bring hope to a hurting community and correction facilities all across the states. We do not take that lightly at all. And so I'm excited this morning

to be kicking off this series. I know it's Mother's Day. This is not going to be necessarily a Mother's Day message. And so if you're thinking, oh, I just get to tune out this morning because I'm not a mom, I'm a dude or whatever. Like, nope, you don't get to tune out this morning. And so it is our prayer today that God's word comes alive to you. It is a gift that God has given us. The Bible says his word is alive and it is active. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. And so it's our prayer this morning that his word comes alive to you. It pierces the deadest places of your heart. And so come on, we're excited to jump in this morning to this series. So our focus throughout this series is what the Bible calls the fruit of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit. And if you are a follower of Jesus, you have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is part God, it is God, and it is available to us. When you say yes to a relationship with God, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this is how we live out our walk with Jesus. The spirit of God is what empowers us and enables us to become followers of Jesus. And so we need the Holy Spirit.

We cannot live for Jesus without him. He is everything to us. And in Galatians 5, Paul is talking about what it looks like to walk in the spirit versus to walk in your flesh. Your flesh is you, your flesh is your nature. And your nature is messy. Raise your hand if you'd admit this morning like my flesh side, it's not so pretty. Like I don't, okay, you think you're pretty good in here. All right, I see what I'm working with this morning, 10. Okay, your flesh is a mess. Our flesh is not pretty at all. And so we need the Holy Spirit. And thank you Jesus that he has come to give us a new nature and that he empowers us to live out this walk. And so Paul is talking in Galatians 5. And he says, if you walk by your flesh, the fruit that you're gonna produce in your life is gonna be messy, that you're gonna live with jealousy. You're going to live, you're not gonna inherit the kingdom of God. You're gonna be angry. You're gonna live impure lives. And so he says, those who walk that way, they are not gonna inherit the kingdom of God. He says, so we've got to walk by the spirit. We need the Holy Spirit every single day of our life. And if we are living by the spirit, there's gonna be evidence in our life.

Galatians 5.22. It says, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And so this is the evidence of our walk with Jesus. If you are living an empowered life by the Holy Spirit, this is what should be developed on the inside of us. And the fruit should be coming out of our lives so that other people can enjoy that fruit. Yeah, and so today's fruit is love. We are kicking off with what we think is the most important fruit that we should seek to have in our life. And so we're gonna open up with what's called the love chapter. Chances are you have heard this at a wedding maybe. And so in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, this is Paul writing here to a broken church, and he is sharing with them what it looks like to love. So let's start reading. If you've got your Bible, you can turn there. If not, it's on the screen for you. 1 Corinthians 13 one, Paul says, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and I give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but I do not have love, I gain nothing. And so Paul is saying here like we are capable of doing incredible things. Like our faith can be high, we can serve people well, but if love isn't the driving factor, if love isn't what's motivating those actions, then we're really doing it for nothing. Paul goes on to tell us to do everything in love, and here's what it actually looks like to love. Picking up in verse four, he says that love is patient, and love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it's not self-seeking, it's not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, it always trusts, it always hopes, it always perseveres, because love never fails. And jumping down to verse 13 here to close it out, it says, and now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. And so out of all of these wonderful things, these wonderful qualities and characteristics, we have to have love in all that we do. So all of these other things, they're great, and we need them in our life, but love should be the main goal. First Corinthians 14 one says, let love be your highest goal,

which means this is what we need to get right first. This is the most important thing that we need to get right in our life, because everything else that we do is going to flow from it. Tina Turner asked us, hey, what's love? Got to do, got to do with it. Well, Tina, God's word says that love has everything to do with it. And so this morning, come on, we're gonna establish that love is the most important, love is our priority, love needs to be our highest goal. And if we want to grow in our love for God, come on, point number one this morning is that we want to understand God's love. And so I don't know if we can ever fully understand God's love. God is God, his ways are higher than ours, but I know that we can look to the word of God to see the way that he loves us, to see what he laid out, what he modeled for us. And so we're gonna look at Ephesians 13, verse seven here, and this is Paul again speaking, he's writing to another church. Here's what he says about God's love. And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure

of all the fullness of God. And so Paul is saying in these verses here, when you are rooted, when you are established, when you're connected to the love of God, that you actually begin to grow in that love. And as you spend time with God and in his love, you actually understand the depth and the radical love that God wants to lavish on you and on me. And so it's this beautiful cycle, right? Like I get connected to the love of God. I start to understand his love more. I start to grow in that love. And at the end of this verse, it says that we're actually filled to the overflow of God because of the love that he is growing and producing in us. And so I wish that I could share with you that every single day I live my life to the fullest, walking just in the fullness of God's love. Most of the time I'm rooted and connected because God's done a work in my heart, but there are days and there are seasons where I'm not aware of the love of God and I'm not operating in the love of God. And it is in those days and in those seasons where my perspective just seems off. My relationship with God is affected. It's almost like my vision is even clouded, right? And so those times I feel disconnected from the heart of the Father

because I'm not connected to his love and it affects my relationship with him and also with others. But on the flip side, when I am connected to the love of God, when I have been sitting with God, when I have been just kind of relishing in his presence and I'm connected and rooted to that love, then I can see clearly and then his love feels personal and it feels deep and it feels like it is for me. And so I have the privilege of leading in our freedom groups here at Rise Church. And one thing I just wanna share with you because I hear it's like the common denominator. When people finish our freedom series here, they say, you know, finally for the first time, I am able to understand just how much God loves me, right? He loves me. And they're able to share like, I know God's a loving God. I have believed that he is loving towards people and even towards me, I've accepted him as my savior, but I have never walked and lived in the fullness of his love. And so we can't go through a 12-week course together in this place this morning, but I am praying. We've been praying that supernaturally, someone in this room, maybe for the first time today, you're gonna come to the realization that his love is for me. And if you go back to those verses that we read earlier, his love is kind, his love is patient.

He's not keeping records of your wrongs. He's a personal God who has a deep, deep love for you and we hope you grasp that today. And so we want you to know how much God loves you and just like Pastor Aaron was saying, it is a deep love, it is a vast love and it's a love that our human minds can't fully comprehend because it's a supernatural love and we're not supernatural beings and so it's hard for us to understand, but when we know he loves us and we get to choose to make that love the foundation of our. that that's the thing we're gonna establish, that maybe I don't know anything else in life, but this morning when I walk out of here, I know, man, God loves me, and my life is built on the foundation of his love, and then we get to receive that love when we get to love him back, and then those seeds of love begin to take root into our lives, and we're gonna begin to produce love, which we're gonna get to later. But in John 15, Jesus is talking about being the vine and us being the branches, and he's saying you gotta stay connected so that you can produce fruit in your life, and in John 15, he says, as the father has loved me, so I have loved you, and then he says, now remain in my love. Other translations say abide in my love,

which just means, Jesus, I'm sticking beside you. Like you love me, I'm sticking right beside you. I am remaining in you, I am abiding in you. I am spending time with you, I'm talking with you, I am having communion with you. I'm staying connected to the source of his love. It's kinda like that crazy boyfriend, or maybe your girlfriend you had in high school that was like super clingy because they needed love, right? Like I just need somebody to love me, and they were there like every time you opened your phone, they're there, every time you show up somewhere, they're there, right? Anybody's like, oh, that was me. Like I was the crazy, I was the crazy one, and sometimes I just wonder if Jesus is like, I wish there was maybe a little less abiding, like you're there all the time, but no, that's not how he loves us. He's like, no, I'm here, and you're here, and I want you to stick by me every single day of your life. I want you to abide in me, I want you to remain in me, because that love he wants to pour out, it's never ending. Like it never runs dry. The well of Jesus's love, it is plentiful, and it is abundant for every single one of us. And so you might think, man, I really require a lot of love from Jesus. That's amazing, because his love's never gonna run out for you,

and he's gonna continue to pour it out in your life. And so we've gotta have a foundation of his love. This is our first step today. We're gonna know God loves us, and we're gonna build our life on the foundation of his love, and then our second thought for this morning is that we wanna respond to God's love. So we're gonna receive his love as best as we humanly know how. It has changed us, and it has transformed us, which means now there's some work that we get to do. And so we're gonna receive his love, but the point of today is that we wanna ensure that we're receiving God's love, but that we're also pouring out God's love, that we are giving away the fruit of love to other people. And so our response this morning to his love is that we're gonna give that love away. Absolutely, and so as we consider giving God's love away, I want us to look at the story of Peter. It's found in John 21, and I wanna set it up a little bit for you before we jump straight in. Just days earlier, Peter has denied knowing Jesus, being with Jesus as Jesus was heading towards the crucifixion, and so Peter denies him three times. Jesus is, in fact, crucified, but praise God, three days later, he's resurrected from the grave, amen. And so the resurrection takes place, and Jesus, he's alive, he gathers with his disciples

by the sea, they share a meal together, and then Jesus turns to Peter, and here's where I want us to pick up in John 21, starting in verse 15. When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Yes, Lord, he said, you know I love you. And Jesus said, feed my lambs. Again, Jesus said, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And he answered, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And Jesus said, take care of my sheep. A third time, he said to him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him a third time, do you love me? And he said, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you. And Jesus said, feed my sheep. So praise God in these verses, we see the relationship between Peter and Jesus restored, and Jesus actually tells Peter, hey, Peter, the love that you have for me, it's actually gonna move you to action, like there should be a response because of the love that you have inside of you for me. And Jesus tells Peter three times, if you love me, I want you to go and share that love with others. And so Jesus reinstates Peter here, and he actually gives him a mission to go and love and serve the world.

And here's what I need us to know, Rise Church, this morning, that that mission that Jesus gave Peter, it's actually our mission as well, too. And so if you have said yes to the relationship with Jesus, here's really great news for you. You are filled with the Holy Spirit, and that Holy Spirit has power on the inside of you, and you're filled with his love, and that love begins to grow and develop and change you from the inside out. And it's actually God's love on the inside of us that motivates us and empowers us, and it actually propels us forward to go share that love with others. When we love God, there is a response that comes from our life, from that love of God inside of us. And here's what you also need to know. It is the love of God within you that allows you to go and share that love with others. If you are trying to share the love of God with a broken world and your own strength, I'd like to tell you from experience that you're gonna burn out, right? You're going to at some point say, people are messy and people are hard and I quit and I'm over it. You need to tap into the love of God that is growing inside of you to be able to share that love

and serve the world around you with the love of God. And so we can't do it on our own strength. Here is a verse that my heart goes back to from time to time that really just reminds me how I can love people really well. It's Ephesians 2, four and five. And it says, but because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. And that means me. When I was dead in my transgressions, and transgressions is a fancy word for sin, right? When I was at my lowest low and my grossest sin, that's when God said, I love her. And if God can do that for me and I received his love, the least I can do is to share that love and that grace and that kindness and that forgiveness with others around me because God has done it for me. And so I think for some of us, we need to remember that this morning. If you've been around Rice Church for any time, you know that loving others means that we serve them. And you're like, I know, we hear it all the time. Get in the growth track, get on the dream team, accept your serve request. That's because we actually believe it's part of our mission here at Rice Church to love and to serve others and to share the good news of Jesus.

And so let love be the motivator. Let love be the motivator. You are loving and serving because of the overflow of what God has done in your heart. That's our prayer for you today, that you grasp that and receive it. Amen, in the book of John, Jesus is talking with his disciples about the way they've been doing things up until this point. He's like, but I'm coming to do things a little bit differently. And he says in John 13, a new command I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. He's saying, this is a result of my love. Like, I've loved you. Now you've actually gotta go and love other people. This is the response. And he says, by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. We've got a broken world right now where people are not loving people very well at all. And it's on us to be able to go take the love of God to our hurting world. And so we've gotta fall in love with God, and then we've gotta let his love change us, but then we've gotta actually go and love other people because this is how they're gonna know the love of God. This is how they're gonna know we're followers of Jesus by the fruit that is being displayed in our life.

God loves us. We love him back. He fills us with his love. We then go give his love away to other people. This is what God has called us to do, and he initiated his love first. And yet we just get to simply receive it. We get to abide in it. We get to let it transform and change us, but we don't get to keep it to ourselves. It is a love that is meant to be given away. First John 4-11 says, dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. That's a west side verse right there. Like we gotta love one another. But once more, like this is the response. Like I've loved you. Now you gotta go love other people. This is the command that Jesus has given us. So let me challenge you this morning, church. How are you loving people? How are you loving the people that God has placed in your life? Mamas, how are we loving our families? How are we loving our children? How are you loving the people in your workplace? Do they feel love from you, or do they just feel annoyance all the time? Like I'm guilty of that.

Like I pour out love all day, and then I come home and my kids, I'm like, y'all are getting on my nerves. Like, but they deserve my love. Like I get to point my kids to the love of Jesus because of what he's done on the inside of me. Are we bringing love into our relationships? The whole purpose of today is to examine the fruit in our life. So are we loving people? Pastor Aaron said what love looks like earlier. It is patient. It is kind. It is humble. It is forgiving. It's not keeping a record of wrongs. Love's not getting frustrated all the time. Love's not angry. And so if you wanna know if you're producing the fruit of love in your life, is this your behavior? Is this what you're seeing being poured out of your life? Am I being patient? Am I being honoring? Am I forgiving easily? Am I being coming slow to anger in my home? And then how is that love actually motivating me to love and serve other people? Church, yes, but not just in this church. When you're on the road, when you're in the grocery store,

when you're in your workplace, how are we loving people? Just like Pastor Aaron was saying, our mission, it's so simple, it's we exist to lead people, to love God with all their hearts. Like we want you to love God with all of your heart, but then we also want you to love and serve other people. This comes from scripture, Matthew 22. Jesus said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. So again, this is what we have to get right first. This is what we have to know, that we love God with all of our hearts. And he says, but the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot separate your love for God and your love for people. You cannot love God and hate people. You can't say that you love God and then never wanna serve and love other people. The two go hand in hand, but to serve people comes first from our love from God. It is going to be the fruit, it's going to be the result. And so if you feel like in your life, man, I'm just selfish, I don't have time for other people, you need to examine your love for God today. Come on, God, am I receiving your love and is it motivating me to actually serve and love other people? I've been so guilty of saying, God, just help me love people.

Like people are hard and I'm not really always a people person, like help me love my children. And sometimes I think that's not quite the right prayer I need to pray. Instead, it's God, let me receive your love so that that love can take root in my life and so that it will produce love that other people get to enjoy. The love we receive from God cannot be contained to ourself. We've got to abide in him, receive his love, let it grow fruit and then get out there and give it away to other people. This love is not meant to be selfish. It is meant to give away to others and the deeper that root of your love for God, the deeper your love for people will be. And the more fruit you're gonna produce in your life, the better mom you're gonna be, the better coworker you're gonna be, the better friend you're going to be when you are producing love in your life. There is a hurting world that needs your love and they don't need your manufactured love, they don't need your fake and phony love, they've experienced that and it didn't change their life. They need the supernatural love of God that's only gonna be produced inside of you by the power of the Holy Spirit. I was at a women's night this weekend with my staff girls and the theme of the whole weekend was a legacy of love.

And the challenge at the end of the conference was, hey women, are we leaving a legacy of love in our life? When our children look at us, do they not just see our love but are they experiencing the love of Jesus Christ through us and so let me speak to the mamas this morning because we are constantly pouring out and nurturing our children and what a great privilege and honor it is to do that but it's also very exhausting. And so you've gotta abide in the Lord, you've gotta receive the love of the Father, you've gotta abide and let that love grow roots into your life so that when we pour out to our children, we're not just pouring out love to them, we're actually depositing seeds of love in their life and those seeds of love are gonna take root in their hearts because there is a broken world that needs our children to take the love of Jesus and it's not a puny love guys, it is a radical love and so when we love our families, moms, come on, we need to love them fiercely with the love of God which means you've gotta sit with the Father, receive his love and sow that fruit into the lives of your children and so my prayer this morning is come on, let's commit to be moms who are seeking after the heart of God. I pray this morning that you are filled to the measure of the fullness of the love of God and that you're sowing seeds into your children's life

that are not just gonna change their life but come on, it's gonna impact generations to come, their children are gonna know the love of the Father and their children are gonna know the love of God and you are changing generations to come because you commit today that you're gonna let the love of God change you from the inside out and you're gonna let the Holy Spirit produce the fruit of love in your life and so here's how we wanna close out this morning, we wanna spend the last just couple of minutes that we have today together in a time of prayer and so I'm gonna actually invite you to stand on your feet and we just wanna pray into a couple of different areas this morning and so for everyone in this place, this morning, if you just feel like maybe you are lacking in love and you're not seeing the patient, kind love of Jesus come out of you, you're actually like, I'm just, I'm seeing anger and I'm seeing frustration and I'm seeing just a not pretty side of me come out, this morning, we wanna pray that God's love fills you from the inside out, that you begin to produce the fruit of love in your life. For the mamas in here that are feeling tired and exhausted, whether you're raising little babies and little ones right now or maybe it's grown adult children or you're in the throes of teenage world in your home, we wanna pray this morning that God's love fills your heart so much that your heart is overflowing with love of God so that you are taking.

and that love to your children. And then we want to pray for those of you that are in here this morning, that you came in here today and God's love has not changed your life yet. He loves you today. No matter how far you've been running from him, no matter where you think your life has gone right now, I want you to know that God's love can radically change your life. It is so deep and so wide and so strong and so powerful. And so we want to pray this morning that maybe you came in here not knowing his love, but when you walk out of here, you know that God loves you and your life is radically changed by him. And so Pastor Aaron's going to pray over us this morning. And so I just want to invite you just to lift your hand this morning. If you could say, man, I could use some prayer this morning. Come on, all across this room. And lifting our hands is just a sign of just saying, hey God, we want to receive from you this morning. We are acknowledging that we are nothing with you and we need to receive more of you today. Let me pray for us this morning. Father, we tell you we love you this morning, God. We're grateful that you are a loving God and you look down upon us, God,

and you saw us in our mess, you saw us in our sin, and you thought that we were worthy, God, of rescue, God. So thank you for salvation. Thank you for a love that would do that for us, God. Father, there are people in this room, Jesus, they have known you to love others around them, God, but I am praying this morning, God, that for someone in here, Jesus, you are drawing their heart. The Holy Spirit is doing work inside of them and maybe for the very first time today, they are encountering your love, God, in a brand new way, Jesus. So would you continue to draw them in? God, would you change their life by your radical, deep love, God, that we can seek to understand by what your word shares with us, God? So Father, we pray for those who have known you, God, and who have loved you, Jesus, but for some reason, God, they feel a little disconnected from you, God. They feel a little far off and it is your love today, God. It's actually your kindness that's gonna draw them right back in, Jesus. And so for the person who feels far off, God, would you welcome them back? With open arms this morning, God, with your deep and radical love,

it is for them this morning. And for all the moms in this place, God, Jesus, we just pray that you would fill us, God, that we would prioritize spending time with you, Jesus, being connected with you, Jesus, being rooted and established in your love, God, and it would fill us so deeply, God, that we would overflow to our children, Jesus, that these children would see your love through us, God. It would be an example for them to follow, God. And like Pastor Rebecca said, it is for them, God, but it is also for generations. We proclaim that right now, that we are raising up world changers, Jesus, to know you and to love you, God, and to do great things in your name. And so Father, we lavish so much love on you this morning. You're the giver of love, Jesus. We actually are able to give love away because of the love that you have bestowed upon us, God. So may our lives, God, be filled with your love, and may we give it away to others. It is in your holy and strong name we pray all of this this morning. Amen and amen. Amen, amen.