The Higher Order Of Love || Victory Church [Book of John #33]

worship this morning. That song, that song Grateful has become like one of my favorite songs of all time because it goes chance after chance after chance. How many of you can relate to that? Man, I can relate to that. Thank you Lord. Father, we thank you this morning as we get prepared to hear your word. Thank you for loving us so much. No matter what we've done in our life, you never stop loving us. And Lord, we just come before you this morning because we're about to learn something that's one of the deep truths of the Bible, something that's beyond our understanding and the natural. And you're gonna have to help us because so many of us are just coming to Christ, they're learning about Christ, how to receive this message. So I'm praying for every heart to be open and mind to be receptive. And today my prayer is God that you're gonna deposit something on the inside of us concerning your love that will never leave us or forsake us that will carry for the rest of our lives and it will change us into a new person. We thank you for it in Jesus name, amen and amen. You know, never think about this on a regular basis but every time we gather on Sunday morning, we have an opportunity to receive something that changes us into a new person. It creates something inside of us and that's the beautiful thing about going to church, learning the things of the Bible. And the more you study the Bible, you begin to realize that the Bible has transformative power. How many of you agree with that? You believe in that. And I've been praying this whole week and for some reason the Lord's just taking me deeper into prayer this week and took me back to a season in my life about 20 years ago where I was really having a struggle receiving the love of God from God. I went up to the mountains to kind of get away because I sensed that I was starting to burn out. I had a, we had such a busy schedule back in those days and besides the four services that were preaching every weekend, there's just a lot that goes on in a big church like this. And I've taken on the weight of the church too heavy, too much. And I was trying to get away with God. And you know, I came across that scripture where Jesus says, "Get away with me. Come to me and get away with me and I'm going to give you a rest." How many of you could use a rest? I needed a rest. And as I got up there, I was up in the north of Georgia

mountains and I was just by myself sitting out in the balcony and reading the Bible and just praying and talking to God. And I said, "Lord, I'm not going to watch television. I'm not going to entertain myself. The next two days I'm up here. I just want to spend time with you. I want to get along with you." And as I started getting along with me, I started, as I started getting along with God, I started talking to God. And I felt like God started talking back to me. And he asked me this question. He says, "Dennis, he said, 'How do you think I see you right now? How do I feel about you?'" And I said, "You know, to be honest, Lord, I feel sometimes like you're disappointed in me. I feel like sometimes I let you down. I don't always do the things that I should do with you or with other people." And I feel like I'm on a little bit on the edge and my temper is a little bit short and I keep finding myself fighting a little bit of depression and I've never had that before. "Lord, I don't know how you feel about me." And he began to unveil a truth to me that transformed me. It transformed my heart. It transformed my life. And that's the way the Lord is. From time to time, we get into a place where we're not certain about our relationship with God. But as I got closer to him in that moment, I began to realize that there was some revelation that he wanted to pour into my heart that I had never received before. And he called this revelation and I call it, and this is the message, "The higher order of love." The higher order of love. And he began to show me how he wanted me to come up a little higher. How many of you know God's always calling us higher? Amen. And I was down here in the world just dealing with worldly things and spiritual things as well, but I was here. And the Lord said, "I want you to come up higher." He says, "Because this particular revelation is a revelation that most Christians never get. They never get it. They live their whole life without it. And because of it, they struggle with me. They struggle with people. They struggle in relationships because they never understand how to function in this higher order of love. It's something supernatural that's imparted to us by God. It's beyond our natural abilities. You know when God says something like, "Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who

use you and persecute you." How many of you know that's another level of love that most people never, never, I remember ministering a series out of that, just out of what the Lord was sharing with me. It was a very personal series. It wasn't something that was a lot of scripture. It was just more of what God was showing to me. And as I did that, something happened in our church. Something turned in our church that shifted us into a new place that we had not been in before. While I was praying this week, I said, "Lord, it's been 20 years since I had that experience, but I want that same thing for all the new people in our church and also all of us that have been around for a while. Because sometimes we start our journey with God and we do receive His love, but sometimes along the way we get caught up in other things and it starts to dissipate in us. The power of the church is not in going to church, it's in being the church. It's not a place we go to, it's a life we live, and how we represent God to a lost and dying world that's immersed in carnality and worldliness that doesn't know God that has no relationship with God. And there's this big barrier between people in the world and the church world because so many people in the world don't trust the church. They don't understand the church, they see the church in the wrong light based on what people have told them or experiences they've had with people that are not mature in Christ. And so the Lord started speaking to me and the Scripture, the first Scripture that He showed me just happens to be the Scripture that we're in right now in the book of John. If you have your Bibles turned to John chapter 13, as Jesus is kind of wrapping up His life, He begins to talk to His disciples, and He's trying to impart some of His greatest truths in His last moments on the earth. As He's talking to His disciples, He's wanting them to get one important revelation. And here's what He says in John chapter 13 and verse 31, it says, "As soon as Judas left

the room, Jesus said, 'The time has come for the Son of Man to enter into His glory, and God will be glorified because of Him. And since God receives glory because of the Son, He will give His own glory to the Son, and He will do so at once. Dear children, I will be with you only a little longer." These were His last moments, really. And as I told the Jewish leaders, "You will search for me, but you can't come where I'm going." So now I'm going to give you a new commandment, everybody say new commandment. He's about to unleash the commandment of all commandments. He would say in another verse that if you fulfill this commandment, if you do fulfill this commandment, you fulfill all of the commandments. And when you start to operate in this, something happens. When you begin to function in this new commandment, God puts His hand on you and transforms you into a different person. So let's look at the new commandment. Here's what He says, love each other, let's say it together, love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. Not your faith, not how many times you go to church, not how many scriptures you can quote, not all the things that we do in church prove that you're my disciple. There is only one thing that is the evidence that you are truly my disciple and everything flows from this one revelation that you love people. You love people the way I love you. Now how many of you know loving people the way God loves us is not easy. It is not easy because people are people and they test our love. Do you not know that? And we all have people in our life that test us and the reality is we fail the test a lot. We fail it a lot. I had been failing the test one before I went up to the mountains.

I was starting to move away from loving people and starting to get a little bit disgruntled about life in general and I encountered this love of God and as it came to me, the Lord began to show me this is how the world is transformed. The world is not transformed through politics. The world is not transformed through government. The world is not transformed through business. The world is not transformed through education. The world is not transformed through anything other than one thing. How much can we love people? listen to this, that don't love us back? That don't return the love. How can we walk in this place of love? It's a higher order of love. And very few people master it, but when you do, this is a sign that you are a disciple of Jesus, and this is how you win people to Christ. The number one way you win to people to Christ is not quoting Scripture, not even witnessing. It's the demonstration of how much you love people. Love people outside of your family, outside of your core group. Love people that don't care about you, love people that even hate you, persecute you, love people, that if you can stay in the position of love and you don't let people taint you, then you can become a disciple of Jesus. I was studying for ministry many years ago, and in a class, not a class, it was a seminar, a man by the name of Roy Hicks was teaching, and he stopped in the middle of his teaching about leadership,

and he said, "I feel like the Lord is stopping me "to say this one thing to all of you pastors, "the future pastors, I was not a pastor yet." He said this, he said, "If you can stay free "from bitterness, you will make it in ministry." And I remember writing that down, and I meditated on that a little bit, 'cause I didn't really understand that until I became a pastor. And I began to realize if I can stay free from bitterness, I can be an effective leader, but can I tell you something? It's not just for pastors, it's for everyone. If you can stay free from bitterness, you're gonna have a better life. That's one of the things that the enemy tries to do, he tries to create situations in human relationships that cause us to get offended and get bitter at people. And once we get bitter at people, it shuts down our love for people. It begins to cause us to go inward and focus on self instead of on people. And so I started thinking, okay, how do I stay free from bitterness? And here's the, he says, here's the scripture. If you'll love one another, and then Paul writes a little bit further. By the way, Paul, up until this moment, Paul was, he was an enemy of the kingdom of God. He hated Christians.

In fact, he was the one standing there when Stephen is trying to give the gospel to Hebrew people, and they eventually stone him to death, and Paul is celebrating his stoning. And the last thing that comes out of Stephen's mouth, and I'm sure this must have had some impact on Paul, is said, father, don't lay this charge against these people. In other words, they're stoning me, but don't hold them accountable for this, forgive them. It's the same thing that Jesus did when he was on the cross, as he's hanging between the two thieves, and people are mocking him and scourging him, and he's in the final stages of breath. He says, father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. I've learned over time that God sees people at a whole different level than we see people. He's up higher, he's God, and we're not, and he lives on the inside of us, and if he can get through this kind of love to us, this is how we become effective for the kingdom of God. And it keeps us in a place where we don't get depressed, where we don't get down on ourselves, where we're able to function even when we mess up. So Paul writes this letter to the Corinthian church after he becomes a Christian, and here's what he says about love in 1 Corinthians 13. In verse one, he says, if I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels,

but I didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clinging symbol. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but I didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn't love other people, I would have gained nothing. We can do a lot of good works for the kingdom of God and still not have this higher order of love. And if we don't have it, we have nothing. No matter how many good works you do, if you're not a person that has the revelation and operates in the higher order of love, you have nothing. It's not gonna have major impact. Impact is not how much you know, how much you read the Bible, how many times you go to church. Impact is how much you get the revelation of God's love for people. Jesus would say this again in another way, in Matthew 22, verse 37. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul in your mind. This is the first and most important commandment, but the second most important is like it

and it says love others as much. Now can I just tell you something? There's two equations here that I think play out in some people's lives. Some people don't love themselves. So it's hard for them to love other people. They don't understand that love also includes loving yourself. Not loving yourself in an unhealthy way, but feeling that, okay, I love God and I am not going to let condemnation snuff out my life. There's no condemnation when you start to serve Jesus and live for Jesus because He will forgive you of anything you've ever done, amen? And one of the traps of the enemy is when you do something and you blow it, the devil comes immediately with condemnation, with guilt, with shame to put on you so that you become ineffective for the kingdom of God. You get so down on yourself, you feel like you're unworthy to live out the life of God in the earth. But the other part is also true. When you start to love yourself, He says, "Don't love yourself so much that you forget about loving other people." That's another part of the equation that happens in people's lives. They get so consumed with themselves, they have no love left for anybody else. They're just so in love with themselves that when they get up in the morning, the first thing they do is go look at themselves in the mirror and try to make themselves even look better. They try to feel better. They post things about themselves. They take pictures of themselves. They talk everybody about what they're doing and they forget that people could care less about what you're doing. They could care less about what you look like, what clothes you have, where you've been, what foods you're eating.

They really don't care. The only person who cares about that is you, amen. How do we get to this place where we operate in the higher order of love? I'm going to give you three principles this morning. I think if you get these three down, you'll be on a journey, you'll be in a step-by-step process of starting to learn how to love people. First of, the higher order of love begins with this revelation. We love from being loved. We love from being loved when Jesus was talking to his disciples and we're going to get there in a few weeks in John chapter 15. By the way, when we get to John chapter 15, that's probably the most powerful series of scriptures in the entire book of John, so do not miss those. Those are going to be amazing. He starts to talk about abiding me and let me abide in you. He says, "If you abide in me and my word abides in you, whatever you ask, I will do it." Then he makes this statement. He says, "Abide in my love." Here's what he says in John 15, verse 9, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love." In other words, I love you from the love that the Father has for me. I realize how much God loves me that no matter what's going on, he's always there to love me and out of his love for me and me receiving that love, I love other people. You love people, listen to me, based on how you feel loved. The problem is most of us equate that with human love. We equate that with how people love us. There's basically three kinds of love and two of them are worldly love and one of them is supernatural love. The first one is eros love.

Most love is physical love, intimacy, relational love in the sense of a marriage or people loving each other. The second one is fileo love and fileo love is friendship love, people that you have close relationships that you love being with, that you love to spend time around. But the third one is agape love and this is the kind of love that people that don't know God never experience and is called unconditional love. Basically it's God loving us, listen to me no matter what you do, no matter how bad you are. It's hard for us to conceive that God loves not just us but the whole world. That's a hard revelation, God loves the whole world. He loves people, listen to me, they're child molesters. He loves people who've raped women. He loves people who've stolen money. He loves people who've murdered people. People that are imprisoned, God loves just as much as He loves you. Did you hear what I just said? Think of your worst enemy, think of the worst person that you have ever known or been around and understand that God loves them the same as much as He loves you. That's hard to believe. It's hard to conceive. We think God loves certain people but doesn't love others. How to love people that are hard to love. How to love people that have done terrible things, including things to us. How to love those people, because if we don't, we begin to step into a place of bitterness, of frustration, of unforgiveness, which shuts down God in our life. So God's saying, here's how you love. First of all, you've got to spend some time with me, and you've got to receive my love. If you have a hard time receiving God's love, can I just suggest you do what I did? Get away. Get away with God and talk with God and let him speak to you about how much he loves you.

Your his love is not the same as human love. Our parents may or may not have demonstrated love to us. I had a loving mother, but a father that never said one time to me that he loved me. So I struggled with receiving love because my own father didn't really love me until later in life. And when I came to God, I sort of looked at God almost like my father. And unfortunately, parents, we have that way of imposing that on our children. But I tell you something, you have a father that loves you unconditionally, no matter what you do, wherever you go, whoever you're with, he will never stop loving you. He will never stop loving you. I was a sinner. How many of you have been a sinner? How many of you know we're still sinners? We still do things that we shouldn't do, but I was a really bad one for a season. And I had a hard time receiving forgiveness, but once I did it, I would always go back and think, I still have a long way to go with you, God. And God says, you do have a long way to go, but it doesn't matter. It never changes my love for you. And if you will understand that, then you will be able to love people the way I love you. In the Bible, there's a story about a woman named Mary of Bethany, and she's in a room with Jesus. It's a famous story, and there's a scene where she is cleaning his feet with her hair. She's washing his feet with her hair. That's probably about as low as you can go. Ladies, think about that. You would take your hair and wipe somebody's feet. And as she's doing this, the religious people come in the room and they start to question Jesus. Do you know what manner of woman this is?

She's a prostitute. She's an outcast. And that day, that was a terrible thing to be. And she's doing this, and you don't even, you're letting a prostitute wash your feet. And Jesus goes into a teaching moment, and he says about this woman, here's what he says in Luke, chapter 7, verse 47. He says, I tell you, her sins and they are many have been forgiven. This really irritated them. They didn't believe in the forgiveness of sins that easily. So she has shown me much love, but a person who has forgiven little shows only little love. I remember one time when I was reading that, I said, I can relate to that woman. Can you relate to that woman? I can relate to that woman. I may not have been a prostitute, but my life was prostituted. And I did a lot of things that were ungodly in my life. How many of you have done some ungodly things in your life? And he says, when you get forgiven, you tend to forgive more. And what happens is many people forget what they've been forgiven of. They forget what they've been forgiven of because they spend way too much energy judging other people, finding fault with other people. Can you imagine what it would be like if you just woke up one morning and you realized how much you've been forgiven, how much you've been forgiven, all the stuff that you've been forgiven of. And once you start to realize that, then when you come in contact with people who do stuff to you, you realize, I have to forgive you because of what I've been forgiven. I have to forgive you. I've been forgiven much. That will always blind us from what we've been forgiven of and enhance in us what other people have done to us.

We'll sit there all night meditating on somebody that's done something wrong and we'll harbor it in our heart. And the longer you harbor it in your heart, the Bible says when bitterness gets inside your heart, it builds a root of bitterness and it defiles you. The reason so many people are so offensive, the reason people don't do good in relationships, even some of us in the church is because we're walking around. when people do something wrong to us. God says if you can function from the love that I have for you and the forgiveness I have for you, you start to enter into this place called the higher order of love. Every time I've been in counseling and I get counseling even to this day, only reason I like counseling now is because I don't like it but I need it on a regular basis and the reason I need it is because I forget things. I forget stuff. I don't know about you but as you get older you forget a few things and I forget about how much God loves me from time to time. I get caught up in the day-to-day lifestyle and I forget about that. I'm not meditating on that and the counselor will always tell me because I'll be telling him these things that I'm struggling with, things that are emotional, things like that. And I say pause for just a moment. Let me ask you something. This is a counselor. How much do you receive God's love? How much do you realize on a daily basis how much God loves you? And he'll remind me. He says the number one thing every Christian needs to remind himself every day even if you're getting up in the morning is that God loves you unconditionally. See a marriage would never break apart if people operated an unconditional love. Relationships would never fall apart if unconditional love was present. You have to understand unconditional love is what makes a marriage last. It's what makes a marriage go through the trials and tribulations that every marriage goes through as you get tired of being with that person. Relationships that you have that fall apart are because you forget how much God loves you. In the church, and this is probably the number one goal that we've had at victory for our entire 36 years, in the church, our number one goal is to put in you this understanding of God's love so that when you walk out those doors, you represent God. You're an ambassador for Christ. When a church does that, you cannot contain all the people that come to Christ through those people. Every Sunday, we have opportunities to learn about things and then go out and express it to the world. The more we express it, the more powerful the church becomes. I told the Lord long ago when we started this church, "Lord, I do not want to be a personality

driven church. I want to be anonymous. I don't want people even to know who I am. I don't want when people think of victory. They think Dennis Rouse ministries. I want them to think victory ministries." Come on, somebody. We don't want our name in highlights. We don't want to focus on the social media platform. I know that sounds unusual, but I kept reading the scriptures where it says, "Jesus humbled himself and made himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a bondservant, coming in the likeness of man." The Bible says, "When he did that, God elevated him in the heavens." Now, at that point, the world was still hating him, but here we are almost 2,000 years on the other side of that, and we're in love with him. We're following him. We're trying to learn from him. Millions of people around the world. He only had a handful of people around him at the time, and yet because of this love, it has spread like wildfire through the world, and this is why so many people come to Christ, not because they like the religion. It's because they like the love. They like the forgiveness. They like the grace. They like the mercy. How many of you like grace and mercy? Oh, my goodness. So first thing is you've got to love from being loved. The second thing the higher order of love requires is that you have to die to yourself. Now, we were tracking along pretty good until we got to this point. This is the hard part. I was reading a book by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, and there's this quote in there that it's a little long, and I hesitate to do. I want to read the whole thing, but then I feel like the Lord said, "This is so powerful. If you will get this, it can really move inside of you." Here's what he says. The first thing of necessity is that our treatment of others must never depend upon what they are or upon what they do to us. It must entirely be controlled and governed by our view of them and of their condition. The whole secret of living this kind of life is that man should be utterly detached. He must be detached from others in the sense that his behavior—now, this is powerful—is not governed by what they do. But still more important, he should detach from himself "For until a man is detached from himself." This is such a powerful statement. As long as a man is living for himself, he is sensitive, watchful, jealous, envious, and is therefore always reacting immediately to what other people do. You're a highly reactive person. It's because you're so attached to yourself. The Christian is a person who is taken out of this present evil world.

He is placed in a position apart and lives on a higher level. He belongs to a different kingdom. He is a new man, a new creature, a new creation. Everybody say new creation. When you become a Christian, you're no longer who you used to be. If you're still who you used to be, you need to go back and get born again. Not join a religion, not join a church. You need to let God come and take over in your life and create you all over again. That's the beauty of the born-again spirit. You get to start life all over again, without all the faults and failures and mistakes being held accountable to anymore. The Bible says when you give your art to Jesus, he forgives you of your sins, and he casts them into a sea of forgiveness where he remembers them no more. God's not up in heaven counting your sins against you. He sent Jesus to deal with your sins for eternity. And when you receive Christ, you receive the forgiveness of who you used to be. But you don't have to live in who you used to be. Paul said this one thing I do is forget what's behind me and press forward towards the upward call of Christ Jesus. This new creation says old things have passed away. Behold, all things are new. When you're living a new creation life, you're not the same person. If you're the same person, you've not been born again. You can talk about Christianity. You can talk about how you love Jesus. But if you're the same person, you need a double dip. You need to go back down under the water and get it washed out of you and remind yourself, you've been cleansed. You've been bought with a price. Everything you've ever done has been paid for on the cross.

And all you need to do is receive it and move forward from it. It's a new life. It's a new chance to start over again and now instead of living like the world, start living like God. Come up higher. Live at a higher level with God. He said he has to live at a higher level. He belongs to a different kingdom, a new creature. Because of this he sees everything differently and therefore reacts in a different manner. There says Christ, you can become like Christ God in this respect that you will no longer be governed exclusively by what other people do to you. You will have something within you that will determine your conduct and behavior. In other words, I'm no longer going to be defined by what has been done to me. I'm not going to live in the abuses of my past, the sins of my past, the mistakes of my past. I've got to let go and go. I've got to let go and go. I've got to let go of who I used to be and all that's happened to me because my life has started over again. What would it look like if the church lived like their life had started over again? That they're not just going through religious rituals on Sunday morning. They've had a true transformation of who they are now. They're no longer the same person. I have people that come up to me from time to time that I went to college with my old man and they go to me, "Dennis, you are the last person I would ever believe is a pastor of a church. How did you do that?" I said, "I didn't do it. God did it. He did it.

He can do it for anybody that submits to God." You have to find this place where no longer are you governed by yourself anymore. You're now governed by God. There's three things I've learned that you have to die to. Number one, you have to die to pride. Right now we're living in a world where a mental disease is growing in countless people called narcissism. You all know what narcissism is? Let me give you a definition in case you've never heard it. An extremely self-centered person who has an inflated sense of self-importance, a deep need for excessive admiration and a lack of empathy for other people. Anybody know anybody like that? You all know people like that. I know people that come to your mind when you hear that. Do you come to your mind? Does your spouse come to your mind? Somebody go to school with, come to your mind. It's getting sick, it's a sick place. It's a mental illness. It's a mental illness, and people don't realize that. And it's something that can be healed because once you come to Christ, you have to let go of yourself. If you're prideful, it's because you've never submitted to God. When you have submitted to God, God begins to deal with your pride. He begins to break you. He begins to create in you a broken spirit, a contrite heart, and you begin to realize without God,

I am nothing, I can do nothing, and I have nothing. I don't care what the world thinks about me, I care what God thinks about me. And God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. The more humble you are, the more you can love people. The more prideful you are, the more you hold on to anger and frustration and bitterness and unforgiveness towards people. So pride, you have to let go of. The second thing you have to let go of is you have to let go of offense. The Lord begin to show me, once I become a disciple of Jesus, I give up the right to be offended. Well, now what do you mean? I give up the right. You're now a representative of Christ. You're an ambassador for Jesus. You cannot maintain offense and be a good ambassador. As soon as you get offended, that's the number one trap of the enemy. It comes from a Greek word called scandalon. It's like the trap they use to catch a wild animal. Once you get trapped in offense, you become no more effective for the kingdom of God. You become a misrepresentation of Christianity. Most Christians that walk around with offenses have no fruit in their life. They're stifled. That's why the devil loves to offend you. Understand that every day you're gonna have opportunities

to get offended at your spouse, at a friend, at your parents, at people in the church, at your pastor, when he's preaching a good word to you. I have people many times over the years of preaching that get up in the middle of my sermon and walk out the door, 'cause I said something they didn't like and it offended them. And then they get online, I'll never go back to that church again, because that pastor did this. How many of you understand something that every one of us has to deal with offenses? And the Bible says that mastering this love of God, this higher order of love, that when you get offended, you've got to put it down under the blood of Jesus. So I don't have a right to be offended. I know in a natural, in the world, I have a right, but in God, I have no rights. All my rights are now under you, God. It's no longer I that live, but it's Christ Jesus who lives in me and through me. How would Jesus react to this? Not how would I react to this? How would Jesus think about this? Not how do I think about this? How does Jesus deal with this? Not how am I going to deal with this? Come on, somebody. Once you learn to die to that, your life will change forever. Then the third thing is prejudice. You've got to die to prejudice.

Prejudice is prejudging someone based on their group, race, religion, gender, or political affiliation. People have asked me many times, he said, "How did you get all these people "from all these different nations "to come to this church and somehow get along? "How did you do that? "How did you get a church together "with all these different cultures, "all these different ways of thinking, "all these different lifestyles that they've lived, "come into one place because when you go to most churches, "it's usually the same kind of people in one church. "It's an all white church, and all black church, "and all Hispanic church, and all Asian church, "because we all feel comfortable in the people "that we've grown up with. "But then when we're forced into situations "where we're being around people "that maybe we don't have the greatest history with, "we're gonna have to overcome those offenses. "We're gonna have to overcome the division. "We're gonna have to overcome what the media does "to try to divide us on a daily basis." Did you hear what I said? When we started this nation, it was called the United States of America. You might as well re-change it if you're gonna change the Gulf of America, the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America.

Why don't you just call it what it is, the divided states of America. That's what we are now. And you might as well call it, the divided church of America, because most people are divided from other groups of people. One of the signs that you've been born again is it works on your prejudices, things that you've experienced from other groups of people that now you're no longer holding them accountable for because you're born again. You're a new creation. You don't have time to hold prejudice in your heart against other people, amen? When I was praying about this church, the Lord said, you're gonna have a church of many nations, which means you're gonna have to come up higher and love people that are different from you. but I don't know how to do that." And he says, "I'm gonna give you a higher order of love for people of different races." And I said, "Well, Lord, right now, this is back in 1990 when we started the church." I said, "Right now, what we have in the South is a big division between the blacks and the whites because of slavery, the history of slavery and the oppression of whites towards blacks." And I said, "I've never really learned how to love across the lines." And I said, "Give me an inordinate love for black people."

And he did, as you can see, as you can see. People said, "How'd you get so many black people in here? What'd you do? Did you play black music? Did you preach like a black man? What did you do?" (audience laughs) I said, "I didn't do any of that." (audience laughs) I started loving black people as much as I love white people. Are all you white folks, can you do that? Can you do that? Oh, maybe I need to ask the other side. How about you black people? Can you love white people as much as you love black people? Not everybody's laughing. (audience laughs) Not everybody's laughing. (audience applauds) And then he'd take it another notch higher. Can you love immigrants? Can you love people from other nations? Can you love people? (audience applauds) Are you gonna listen to the world and spiel all the vision between the nations? Are you just gonna love people? Are you gonna make this a legal church or a loving church? Are you gonna make this about loving people regardless of where they came from or what they've done?

Are you gonna love people outside of your culture, outside of your life, outside of your economic status? Can you love poor people as much as you love rich people? Can you love rich people as much as you love poor people? Rich people need a little love too, you know? (audience laughs) Can you love educated people even if you're not educated or can you love uneducated people if you're highly educated? Can you love across the lines? Be no respecter of persons like God. God does not respect us based on our race, our economic status, our education. He loves us all the same. He loves us unconditionally and he would sure like to get that in the church today. Come on somebody, he needs that in the church today. (audience applauds) I like what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians. Either way, Christ love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his no life, listen to this, will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ who died and was raised for them. So we've stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time, we thought Christ merely from a human point of view how different we know him now.

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. Everybody say new person. Oh, if I could just get the new person inside of you. Get you to reveal the new person instead of the old person. The old life is gone. Everybody say it's gone. A new life has begun and all of this is a gift from God who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us the task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the whole world to himself. No longer counting people's sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ's ambassadors. God is making its appeal to us. We speak for Christ when we plead, come back to God. God spoke to me in this verse. He said, I've given the first ministry that every new believer has is the ministry of reconciliation. And most of us think only one level of reconciliation, reconciling people to God. But also reconciliation means reconciling people to each other. One of the purposes of this church was to reconcile people to each other, to demonstrate to a lost and dying world that it's possible, that it's possible that there's one thing that can join us together.

There's a lot of things that can divide us, but there's one thing, one thing Christ. And Christ can come and join us together. Listen, when we die to ourselves. And we live unto God. Paul said, it's no longer I let live, but it's Christ Jesus that lives inside of me, who gave himself for me. If he can give himself for you, why couldn't you give yourself for others? to a dying world because they're not used to seeing Christians like that. All they're used to seeing is religion. People who are all about their point of view, their race, their style, their politics. That's why we don't preach politics here. And I know sometimes that makes some of you mad. But we refuse to do that because we cannot get an image of Jesus in heaven with some kind of flag, saluting the American flag, or that he's a red Jesus or a blue Jesus. Y'all all right out there? I can't see Jesus riding around in a truck with all these posters and bumper stickers about politics on it. Y'all all right out there? Jesus is for the whole world. He's for a dying world. As soon as you make it about politics, you've eliminated half of America from ever coming to your church. Did you hear what I just said? We'll never be a Republican church, we'll never be a Democrat church. If you vote for whoever, I still love you. Even if you vote for the person I don't vote for, amen?

You don't even know who I vote for. You think you know, but you don't. I keep it a secret because I don't want to divide this church. I want this church to be united, reconciled, breaking down the barriers that separate us. Come on, somebody. I see some of you. Well, now I don't know if I disagree with that right now. My whole life has been trained around this kind of thinking. That's right. That's right. Your whole life's been trained around this kind of thinking. Why don't you go read the Bible? It'll change the way you think. It'll change the way you live. It'll change the way you operate in the earth. Love is higher than all these other things that we make important in our life. Love is what brings people to Christ when it's all said and done and we go to heaven and we celebrate in heaven with those who are in heaven. He's not going to say which way did you vote? Which way did you think? How did you operate in the earth? Did you receive Christ and did you love people that don't know Jesus, even if they're different from you? When you sit down and have a civil conversation without getting in an argument with people because they disagree with you, come on with somebody, that's the kind of church we want to be. And then finally, I'll wrap it up with this. The higher order of love is what makes us look like Jesus. I want to look like Jesus. Do you want to look like Jesus?

Listen, I don't want to look like me. I don't want to look like myself. I don't want to get up in the morning and be all about myself. I want to be about you, Jesus. I want to be able to reflect you that when I'm around people, they see you. They see Jesus. And sometimes Jesus, I'm not that way. Sometimes I don't represent you well. How many of you can say that? I don't always look like you, but I want to look like you. And I remember talking to the Lord about this and I said, I want to love like you love. I want to be like you are. And the Lord took me to a scripture and he asked me this question. He said, think about the person that you struggle to love the most. Just think about that person. An image pops up into your mind. Somebody you struggle to really love. They've maybe done some really bad things to you. They might have rejected you. They may have abused you. They may have done some horrible things to you behind the scenes. I have a few enemies in my life. How many of you have amenities? I have people that have come against me in harsh ways. I have people that do things to me, just like you do. We all have that. Think about the person that you really have a struggle loving. Anybody got somebody in their mind about that? And the Lord said to me this one time, he said, the person in the earth that you love the least is the measure of how much you love God.

Y'all all right out there? You say, well, I don't believe that. Well, let me read the scripture for you. Let me see what the Bible says. John, the disciple John, this is what he writes. In 1 John, chapter 4, God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them lives in love. This is how love is made complete among us so that we have confidence on the day of judgment. In the world, we are like Jesus. Whoever claims to love God, yet hates a brother or sister, is a liar. Whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. Did you hear what I just said? If you claim that you don't love these people but you still love God, what does he say you are? A liar. You know who you're lying to, yourself. If you can tell the truth to yourself, your life will change. But if you keep leaving a lie about yourself, it will never change. And he has given us this command. Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and their sister. I was thinking about this not too long ago because we have so many different things that have happened in the earth in the last 20 years that cause us to have bitterness towards people. And one of the events happened in 2015 that really caused an uproar in our country.

When a young man walked into a church up in Charleston, North, South Carolina, in the midst of a black Bible study, with black people, black church, Amy Church, he walks into the church, sits down next to the pastor strategically. And if they're going through a Bible study, they're talking about Jesus. They're just talking about the Lord, having a nice Bible study in the middle of the day. At the end of the Bible study, he gets up, takes a pistol, and shoots the pastor five times dead. Shoots him five times, not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five times. Then he turns to a state senator who happened to be in that Bible study, shoots him five times, kills him. And by the time it was all over, he killed nine black people. White young man killed nine black people, tried to kill them all, but he only killed nine. Of course, he was sentenced to death. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. And after the trial was over, the family members of the lost loved ones got up to say their things. And at one by one, as they got up to say, the ones that were connected to the church, got up and said this, "As great a tragedy as this is,

as much of a heart burn this is, that has happened in my life and it's changed our life forever." They looked at the young man and they said, "We forgive you." We forgive you because God commands us to forgive you. I don't feel like forgiving, but I'm gonna operate in forgiveness because that's a higher order. That's a higher order of love. And the broadcast went across the nation that this small black church with a small group of black people that were faced with the loss of their family members instead of spewing out bitterness towards white people, spewed forgiveness. How many of you know that takes supernatural love? That takes supernatural love. What would it look like if our church function in this higher order of love? What if we could do this? If we could go out into a world instead of getting offended at everything, angry about stuff, talking about people, gossiping, finding fault, what if we could go out and say, "Lord, who do you want me to love today?" That's hard to love. Who do I need to forgive? If you get your heart clean, God will change you. So I want you to take a moment. I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes. I want you to think about your relationship with people and with God.

Maybe today you come in holding unforgiveness towards somebody. Bitterness could even be towards another race. Another group of people could be towards a family member, a pastor, a friend who did something that offended you. What if you just let it go? What if you just let it go? The only way you can really let it go, truly let it go, is you have to be born again. You have to have Jesus living inside of you, controlling your emotions, controlling the way you feel about things. And if you've never surrendered fully to Jesus, this is why you're struggling with offense. If you want to be free from offense, unforgiveness, bitterness, and you want to be able to represent God's love to the world, the only way you can do that is you need to repent, repent of your own sins, own the own things that you need to deal with, even offenses, unforgiveness as a sin, and let God forgive you so that you can forgive others. Maybe you have never fully surrendered to Jesus. If that's you this morning, I want to pray with you. I'm not going to embarrass you. I just want to pray with you. What I want to ask you to do is just lift your hand. That's me, God. That's me, all across this building.

All those of you that are watching online, you just lifted a God's seizure hand. I see all of your hands. Let's pray this prayer as we get ready to take communion. Let's say this together, Jesus. I repent of my sins. Lord, forgive me for anything in my heart that I've harbored against other people to deliver me from offense, deliver me from unforgiveness and bitterness, I believe. I believe you are Jesus Christ. I believe you're the Son of God who died on a cross from my sins, and today would you come into my heart and transform me into a new creation? Give me a new start, God. Help me to live a new life. Help me to come up higher and love the whole world. Today, God, I surrender everything in Jesus' name. Father, you see every surrendered heart right now. Would you come now? Would you drive out any darkness, any remembrance of evil in their life? Would you help them to start a new life to the day, God, that only you can do the born against spirit, the most powerful, creative miracle in the earth, where we start our life from a whole new place now. All of our sins have been forgiven. A new life starts today. Help our people recognize that. And Lord, as we get prepared to take communion, would you be with us in this process as we celebrate your life, and we thank you for it in Jesus' name, and everybody said, Amen. Hey, let's celebrate with all the people that surrendered the life to Jesus.

Why don't you take the bread out and hold it up in your hand? The bread represents Christ's body. And those of you that repented and received Christ, those of you that have known Christ, you are able to take communion. If you don't believe in Jesus, I wouldn't recommend it. But if you do, this is your opportunity, amen? The Bible says the bread is the representation of his body broken for us. Let's break it. This represents your broken body. And we ask you, Lord, to take this bread as we receive it, to understand rightly discern the Lord's body, that you bore sickness, took disease, took your whole, all of our sins upon your body so that we could be healed physically, mentally, and spiritually. As we take this bread, would you bless it as we remember what you did for us on the cross? Help us to come closer to you in Jesus' name. You can take the bread. Go ahead and take the cup out. The cup represents the blood, nothing more powerful than the blood. The blood of Jesus says without the remission, shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. God, we hope we take this cup in remembrance of you. This cup represents your shed blood on the cross. We take it into our bodies in remembrance that our sins have been forgiven, and they've been cleansed from us. You're no longer holding us accountable for the past. And today, God, we celebrate that communion with you, that we are a forgiven people, a people who are loved by God, so that we can now love others, no matter what they do to us. I pray that you would seal in us the supernatural, agape love of God, from this day forward, so that wherever we go, whatever we do, we represent you with love. I pray that over us as we take this Holy Communion in Jesus' name, you may take the cup.

At the end of your aisles is another container. Go ahead and pass that down, and let's celebrate what God is doing in this church. Come on, let's give him praise this morning. Thanks for being a part of Victory Church on the Pando app. We hope this content was a blessing to you, but we want you to know that you're not done yet because we want to hear from you. So send us a letter and tell us things like what God is doing in your life, how we can pray for you, or even content that you would like to see us create in the future. We just want you to know that we see you. You're important to us, and we love to continue to create some things in the future that will bless you. So send us a letter, and we hope to hear from you soon.