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Hey man, well, um many years ago, um one of my brothers Rousseau, also known as the Quester by most of your kids. Um in high school, he he moved over to Australia to do kind of like an exchange student program. And uh he he called me. I was living in Hawaii in Bible college at the time, and he called me and he told me the craziest story. He was like, bro, you're not gonna believe what just happened. I was like, What? Did you win the lottery? He's like, No, but kind of cool anyway. So I was like, okay, what happened? And he was like, I was getting off this subway uh in Melbourne, and he got off the subway, and everyone kind of went up the stairs to go up onto the sidewalk, and he was kind of lagging behind. And all of a sudden, as he's kind of heading towards the stairs, this homeless guy came up to him and pulled a knife on him and got him in a corner and was like, Give me all your money or I'm gonna stab you. And Rousseau's like, oh my gosh, and like freaking out, like, please don't kill me. I don't have any money. And the guy's like, Yeah, right, I know you got money, like, give me all your money. He's like, I swear, look, and he pulled out his wallet. He's like, I don't have any cash. Otherwise, I would give you some. Like, I would love to, but I don't have any money. And so this homeless dude tried to stab him, let him go because he didn't actually have any money. And so Rousseau walks up, and as he walks up, right across the street is his convenience store. So he goes in the convenience store and he buys a pack of Oreos. And he goes back down the stairs and he finds the homeless guy and he goes, Hey bro, thanks for not killing me. I bought you some Oreos. And the guy, he said, like the look on the guy's face, he's like, I've never seen anybody with a look like that in their life. The guy's like, Why did you buy me these? And he's like, Because you didn't kill me. And he's like, Oh, okay, thank you. And he said the guy was just completely in awe that he would actually do that. And most of us probably wouldn't do that either. If someone tried to kill you, you'd be like, I'm never going back down there again, and I'm never going on the subway, and I'm getting therapy now because I have PTSD. So just an amazing moment and an amazing demonstration of what it looks to show, what it looks like to show Christ-like love to people. And I was reading this week as I was prepping for the study, and this quote came up for me that Andy Stanley once said. He said, Imagine a world where people were skeptical of what we believe, but envious of how we treated one another. Isn't that good? Imagine a world where people were skeptical of what we believe, which as Christians, people are gonna be skeptical. Like we believe in a dude who died and rose from the dead and came back to life and has given us each like those are some crazy things to believe. So people are gonna be skeptical, but imagine a world where they actually envied how we treated one another. I think that in our culture today, most people are skeptical of what we believe, but I'm not sure that the world is envious of the way that we treat one another. I'm not sure the world is envious of the way that we love one another. In fact, sadly, to our detriment, oftentimes Christians are just as divided as the rest of the world. And sadly, Christians are often more divided than the world. Within the church today, there are doctrinal divisions in the church, there are moral and ethical divisions within the church, there are racial divisions, there are socioeconomic divisions, there are political divisions. And when when people think of Christians today, if you were to, if you were to ask your friends or your family members or your coworkers who don't know Jesus, if you were to ask them what comes to mind when you think of a Christian, I don't think love would probably be the first thing that comes to their mind. Christians are known more for what they are against than what they are for. Christians are often known for their disagreements more than their agreements and unity. They are known often for their hypocrisy rather than their integrity or their authenticity. They're known more for the rules that they keep rather than the ruler who we claim to follow. And so what I believe this morning God is inviting us into is this posture, this heart posture, and this lifestyle of becoming a people who are known and marked by love. Two weeks ago, I was on paternity leave, and my good friend Wesley Town was here sharing, and um he taught on John chapter 13, and I was sitting in the back. It was an amazing teaching on the new commandment to love one another. And I got so much out of that. And this weekend, as I was praying, I felt like we were supposed to double-click on that. I felt like we're supposed to go through the exact same passage because I believe that there's more in this passage that God wants to do in our heart. And so we're gonna be looking at this passage again this morning. The mandate that Christ gives to his church to be a people who loves one another. Because nothing will so astonish a fractured and a broken world as the genuine love that we as disciples of Christ are marked by. And I believe that this is what Christ wants us to be marked by. I hope that for you this morning, that as you walk out these doors, that you will become a greater person of love, that you will learn to love in the way that Christ has loved you, and that you will learn to love in the way that Christ has called us to love one another. So to set the context before we jump right into the text this morning, John chapter 13 through 17 is what's called the upper room discourse. It records kind of the final conversation that Jesus has with his disciples. He shares communion with them as we did this morning. And in the upper room discourse, in these five chapters, there are two themes that reoccur over and over again. The first one is Jesus is reaffirming his disciples of how much he loves them. And then after reaffirming them over and over of the love that he has for them, he shares the new commandment, which is that we are to love one another. And that word love is actually brought up 21 times in these five chapters, so it's a major theme. And I believe that this is what God wants to remind us of this morning. So would you look down with me again if you were here two weeks ago? John 13, starting in verse 34, here's what Jesus says to his disciples A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Now, as as Jesus is saying this, what I want to remind us of first and foremost, before we unpack what this means, is that if you're here this morning and you are a Christian, if you are a disciple of Jesus, if you are a follower of Jesus, your your life is under the authority and the headship of King Jesus. In this disciple series about a month ago, we looked at how Jesus said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples. And so to be a disciple of Jesus means you are under, you place your entire life under the Lordship and the authority of King Jesus. Your identity is no longer your own. Your body and what you do with it is no longer your own. Your sexuality and how you express that is no longer your own. Your finances and what you do with those, they're no longer your own. Your relationships are no longer your own. Everything that we have, the moment that you place your faith in Jesus, you said, I am submitting this to the authority of Jesus Christ. And so Jesus here, he says, now this new commandment that I have for you, that you love one another. And notice, he says, this is a commandment. It's a commandment coming from the commander, it's a commandment coming from the king. This is not a suggestion. This is not, well, if I feel like loving this person, I guess I will. Well, if this person has shown love for me, I guess I will. Jesus says, This is a commandment. If I'm king of your heart and if I'm king of your life, this is what the commandment that you are to live out, the commandment that you are to submit yourself under. And that commandment is chiefly this He says, to love one another just as I have loved you. And so this morning, my ultimate prayer for you is this that you wouldn't hear this as a good teaching coming from Pastor Zav or some good advice for how to make my life better and my people life me better. That you would hear these words, the story church, the story family, that this is Jesus speaking to you and his commandment to you, what he's commanding you with his authority is you are to love one another. So the question which Wes Wesley unpacked a little bit two weeks ago is well, what's new about this command? Because again in verse 34 he says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I loved you. And as Wesley pointed out, the first part of this commandment that is new is Jesus said, It is as I have loved you. The commandment to love one another is new because it is a commandment to live out the same love that Jesus showed his own disciples. Now, again, all throughout the Old Testament, before Jesus ever came, the Old Testament said a lot about love, a lot about loving God and loving your neighbor and loving your enemies. The Old Testament had a lot to say about love, but Jesus had not been born yet. And so there was no model or there was no example that showed us exactly what that love looked like. And so now when Jesus shows up on the scene, he's saying, This is why this is a new commandment. Your love is not just keeping the rules, your love is showing the same love that I've showed you. Jesus is the model, and Jesus sets the example for what loving others actually looks like. And so the big question for us is okay, well, what does his love look like? If we are to love people like Christ loved us, what does that look like? And what does that mean? And here's what's amazing: you don't have to make up the answer to that. Jesus just showed his disciples what he meant by loving one another at the beginning of chapter 13. So I want you to flip back. This is amazing. You don't have to look very, you don't have to make up, it's not subjective. What does it mean to love one another? Jesus showed them exactly what that meant. Look at the beginning of chapter 13, starting in verse 1. It says, Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And during supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, he rose from supper, and he laid aside his outer garment, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with a towel that was wrapped around him. So, exact same chapter, and by the way, in the original scriptures, there is no chapters, there is no verse references, it's all just one story. So this is the context. Jesus, when he says in verse 34, love one another as I have loved you, the disciples would have known what that meant because he just showed them how he loved them by at the Last Supper, taking a towel, sitting down, and washing the feet of the disciples. That was the type of love that Jesus was demonstrating and showing his disciples. Now, skip forward in the story to verse 12. Look what it says here. We get another hint. Verse 12 says, When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you. Now that phrase, I have given you an example that you are to do just as I have done to you, is a parallel statement to the same thing he just said in verse 34, where he says, A new commandment I give to you, love one another just as I have loved you. So notice, verse 15, here's the example that I've shown to you. This is what you are to do unto others. And then verse 34, love others as I have loved you. Jesus is saying, I just showed you what that means. So again, when Jesus says, love one another just as I have loved you, Jesus is not leaving this up to personal interpretation. Jesus made it abundantly clear he told the disciples to love him by showing them how he loved them. And the way that he loved the disciples and is now commissioning all of his disciples to love one another, the way he did that was by using his authority and using his status and his power as a means to serve others rather than personal gain. So when Jesus says we are to love one another as he loved us, that is what that means. It means whatever status or whatever influence or whatever power or whatever privilege we have, we are to use that as a means to serve other people. Paul the Apostle puts it this way very clearly in Philippians chapter 2, verse 5 through 8. He says, This, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count a quality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. The greatest demonstration and example of love we see as modeled in the life of Jesus is rather than using my status and power to have other people serve me, he said, No, I'm gonna stoop down and I'm gonna serve them. And this is so counter-cultural, not only in Jesus' time, but even in our culture. In our culture today, the world uses power and privilege and status to continue to build our own platforms, to continue to gain to build a greater following for ourselves as a means to climb the social ladder and get more money and a higher position. And Jesus says, I just showed you that that is not what true love looks like. True love means I don't hold on to those things. He didn't even count a quality with God, a thing to be grasped. He didn't hold on to, I'm God, so you must serve me. No, he demonstrated Christ-like servitude by taking the towel and washing the feet of his disciples. So the question for us, if we are to love one another as Christ loved us, the question for us is this What are the places in your life where you have power? What are the places in your life where you have influence? What are the places in your life where you have authority? And the question is, are you using those as a means to elevate yourself, or are you using are you using those as a means to humble yourself and serve other people? That is what true Christ-like love looks like. And the world, if we love people in this way, if if we use our relationships and our influence and our power and whatever positions God has given us to serve other people, the world does not know how to do that. This is a mark of a disciple of Christ. As we're in a series talking about what it means to be a disciple, disciples are called to love others through serving others in the same way that Christ has done for us. And this happens in every area of your life. Are you loving and serving your family? Are you loving and serving the people that you work with? Are you loving and serving your classmates? Are you loving and serving the people that God has placed in your life? Are you loving and serving the church family that God has placed you in here at the story? This is not a well, I did this here, that box is checked. In every area of our life, we are called to show this Christ-like love, which is demonstrated by the way that we lay down our lives and pick up the towel and serve the brothers and sisters that Christ has brought around us. And I'm so grateful to this church and for the way that so many of the people in this church demonstrate this type of Christ-like servant love. Like for so many people in this church who I see you guys serving, not just in the church, but outside of the church as well. It is a beautiful thing, but I believe that we still have a long ways to go as well. I believe that it takes every single one of us to say, okay, Christ, what does this mean for me? What does this look like for me? Where are the places where you're calling me to set the example of servanthood? What are the places where I might be able to climb the ladder, but instead I'm gonna climb down the ladder and serve the people around me? And the more that we can do this, Christ said, This is how all men are gonna know you're my disciples. Not by your perfect theology, not by, whoa, well, look at it, it looks like they have it all together. No, by the way that we love and serve people. So may we as a church continue to be a people who is is is m modeling the the love that we show others after the model that Christ gave us. Amen. Amen. So a new commandment I give to you, love one another just as I have loved you. It is a new commandment, first and foremost, uh, because we are called to live out the love of Jesus. Jesus is our example. But secondly, this is a new commandment in that it is a command to live on the love of Jesus. And this is really important. A lot of people miss the second point. You cannot live out the love of Jesus unless you are living on and resting on the love of Jesus. So chapter 13 is the pattern. It's it's we live out the love of Jesus. But when you move forward in this final sermon Jesus gives to his disciples, when you get to chapter 15, Jesus shows us this that we are not only to live out the love of Jesus, but the only way we can do that is if we are abiding in and resting on the love of Jesus. So chapter 15 is the power to love. Chapter 13 is this is the pattern for love. It's marked after Jesus, but the power for how we do that, we see in chapter 15. So I want you to flip forward just probably one page in your Bible. Look at John chapter 15, which again in the original, this is in a different chapter, different verse. It's all the same story. Jesus is showing us how he was able to love his disciples. And check it out in John 15, starting in verse 9. Jesus says, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. So notice there in verse 12, Jesus repeats the new commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. And so Jesus here is showing us how do we do that? How how can you and how can I how can we actually love other people in the way of Jesus? And Jesus just showed us how he did it. This is what's amazing. Jesus showed us how was he, as the God man, able to stoop down and humbly serve the disciples. And Jesus said this the key to Jesus loving us this way, he says, I was abiding in the Father's love. He was resting in the love of the Father, he was being loved by the Father. And because he knew how loved he was by the Father, he was able to overflow and show that same love to the disciples, who were not easy to love, by the way. Y'all know that, right? He didn't love them because they were like perfect. These were some hard dudes to love. But as Christ abided in the love of the Father, it was the natural overflow that it was an overflow of joy. And so this is what he now calls us to do. He says, The way that you are gonna be able to love one another is by first and foremost abiding in my love. He says it this way in John 15, verse 5. He says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and uh and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. So here's the problem the problem is a lot of Christians say, Yeah, love one another. Yeah, love people. That's that's a good idea, and I'm gonna try and do that. And you jump straight into the doing, straight into trying to serve, straight into trying to love other people, and you find yourself just running on empty. You're like, I'm I'm doing the thing I'm supposed to do, why am I burning out? I'm I'm I'm serving in the church and I'm serving in my family and I'm serving people and I'm trying to serve people like Christ did as a demonstration, but I'm just burning out, why am I burning out? And the reason you're burning out is this you are doing the thing that Christ called you to do without abiding in his love. You're skipping the abide in him and abide in his love and know how much he loves you. And the reality is this if you try to love others the way that Christ did, apart from first delighting and abiding in Christ's love for you, you will always burn out. This is why people burn out in ministry. People plant churches and people pastor and people are disciple people, and then they they kind of walk away from it all because they're doing the thing, but they're not first and foremost receiving that download of how loved they are by Christ. They're not going to that place where personal intimacy with Christ is being formed, and he's speaking over them. You are loved, and from that place of love, we get to overflow and love other people. And so Jesus even said this. He said, Apart from me, you can do nothing. You cannot love other people, and you cannot do anything of any spiritual significance that will add any value to anybody apart from first and foremost, abiding in the love of Jesus. And so may maybe this is a wake-up call for some of you guys. Maybe some of you are here today, and maybe you're like, man, I've been trying to love other people, and I've been trying to serve other people, and I've been trying to use my power and my position and my privilege and whatever God. I've been trying to use that as a means to serve and help other people, but you have not been drawing that from the source, which is Christ. You you've been trying to love other people in your own strength, and it is impossible to. Because Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing. And so here's the reality, and here's the way that it works. You cannot love anybody like Christ did until you first and foremost know how loved you are by Christ. You will never be able to serve others the way that Christ did until you marvel at the fact that the God man came down from glory and took on a towel and washed the filthy feet of his disciples. But he did not do that in his own strength. He did that because he was abiding in the love of the Father. This is why when the Pharisees came to Jesus, they said, Teacher, what's the greatest commandment? He said, First and foremost, it's this love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, might, and strength. The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. And what a lot of people do, and the world can even do this to a certain degree. They try to try to love other people, love other people. Well, if you if it doesn't first start with God, abiding in his love, loving him and knowing how loved you are by him. If you try to love other people apart from starting with knowing how loved you are from God, that's what leads to burnout. He said, love your neighbor as yourself, but guess what? You're never gonna love yourself until you know how much God loves you. So it's it's this try in the way that it works. As I'm abiding and delighting in the love of God, I actually begin to love myself. You actually begin to see yourself the way that God sees you. And as you begin to see yourself the way that God sees you, then you begin to see other people the way that God sees them as well. But it starts first and foremost, again, with loving Christ and abiding in his love and knowing how deeply loved we are by him. So again, this is this is this is a hard thing to do. It is a hard thing to love other people the way Christ did, unless the starting point for us is abiding in the love of Christ for us, delighting in God's love for you, drinking from the well of God's love and resting in his love moment by moment, day by day. Apart from that, if that is not your starting point, you will never be able to love your spouse the way that Christ has called you to until you first know that we are the bride of Christ and see how he loved you. You will never be able to love your enemies the way that Christ did until you first realize you were an enemy that Christ loved and he gave his life for you on the cross when we were his enemies. You will never be able to love the prodigal. Well, they walked away from the faith, that's them, they now get what they deserve. You will never be able to love and welcome them back until you realize, wow, that was me. That that's how Christ loves me. That I was the prodigal who turned my back on him, and I came back and he opened his arms and welcomed me back. You will never be able to love the lost until you realize that you were lost, and you were without hope in the world, and Christ left the 99 to come and pursue you. You will never be able to love the poor and love the marginalized and love the outcast until you realize how spiritually bankrupt and how poor and how destitute you were, apart from Christ's grace and your life, and his invitation to come and dine at his great banquet table. Simply put, the apostle John sums it up in 1 John 4.19, he puts it this way We love because he first loved us. Which means if you don't know that, if you don't know Christ's love in your life on a personal and deep level, you will never be able to love other people the way that Christ has called us to. We love because he first loved us. And so, my question for you this morning, which I think there probably are a lot of people in this room, this is me sometimes, I'm gonna be honest, this is me sometimes. Trying to love other people without first going to Christ and knowing how loved I am by Him. So my question for you is this Have you been trying to live out the love of Jesus without delighting in the love of Jesus? Have you been trying to love others and serve others without being dependent on Christ's love for you? Because apart from that, we are gonna continue to fall short. And so my challenge for you this morning, and I believe it's just an invitation from God. I believe this is what God is inviting each one of us into. It's an invitation to come and rest in the love of Jesus. When's the last time you just sat in pure delight at how delighted Christ is in you? When is the last time you just sat and stopped praying for other people and just and just meditated on the reality of how much God loves you? That he, when he went to the cross, he didn't just die for the sins of the world, he died for you. Like he wanted a relationship with you. He knew all of the times you turned your back, he knew all of your sin, all your brokenness. And if he went to the cross just for you, that would have been enough. When's the last time the reality of that just has amazed you? God, thank you for how much you love me. And as you allow that to wash over you, that frees you and empowers you from a place of overflow to actually be able to live out the type of love that Jesus has called us to. To love one another just as he loved us. Jesus showed the disciples, here's how much I love you. And Jesus this morning wants to show you and remind each one of you in this room how much he loves you. And as you are reminded of that, guess what will happen? The natural result is you will become a person of love. You will not do it in your own strength, you will not do it by sheer grit and determination. Well, I guess I'm supposed to love this person, or guess I have to. That will never work. It's knowing how deeply loved we are by Christ, and the natural overflow of that is now we are able to love others in the way that Christ has commanded us. And so maybe, maybe you're here today for some of you. There's a few different groups of people in the room. For some of you, maybe you're here today, and maybe you've never known on a personal level how much God loves you. Maybe you've never known that God loves you. That Jesus came to this earth and he gave his life on the cross because he personally wants a relationship with you. Maybe if you're honest with yourself, you sometimes feel like a fraud. You feel like a fake. You're like, why am I here? Why am I in church? I'm not one of them, I'm not one of these people. Maybe it's because you feel so unlovable. Maybe it's because you've done a lot of things that aren't very lovely. Maybe it's because of the way that you've treated people, you feel like you're not deserving of love. And guess what? The truth is this, you're not deserving of love. And I'm not deserving of love. None of us are, and that's the scandal of grace. That Christ loves us in spite of ourselves. He loves us because of the finished work of his son, Jesus Christ. And so maybe you're here today, and some of you have never known the depths of how much God loves you. And my prayer for you this morning is that the Holy Spirit would awaken your soul to the depths of God's love. For you to just say, God, if this is how you really feel about me, will you just make that known? I want to encourage you this morning, if you've never known the love of Christ, invite him. Say, God, let me see myself the way that you see me, so that I can see others and love others the way that you see them as well. I believe this morning that God is already doing that through the power of the Spirit. He's awakening people this morning who have never known the depths of Christ's love for them. And I just want to encourage you, just receive it. Just receive the free gift of grace and the free gift of God's love. And maybe you're here today and you're in a different camp. Maybe you are you're a disciple, you're a Christian, you know how much God loves you, but maybe you haven't been abiding in that love. You you haven't been resting in that love. And you've been doing all this stuff, you've been in Martha mode, trying to serve people and trying to love people, and you're just drained, you're just empty. And the invitation for you this morning is to come back to the place where you're just abiding and delighting and resting in the love of Christ. That's not something that happens only at the moment of salvation that we know how loved we are. Man, we daily need to be reminded of that. God, thank you today that you're delighted in me. Thank you today that you're pleased with me. Thank you today that I've been adopted into your family. Thank you today for your grace. That's why we take communion every week, reminding ourselves of how loved we are. And if you're here today and you just feel like you're burned out, burned out on trying to help people, trying to serve people, trying to love people. Jesus today is inviting you to come back to that place of resting and delighting in his love. And third and finally, maybe, maybe you're here today, and maybe there's a person in your life. Maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's a roommate, maybe it's a brother or sister in Christ, maybe it's a coworker. And if you're completely honest, you're like, I just don't love that person right now. Maybe it's something they did to you. Maybe it's something they said to you. Maybe it's the way that they mistreated you or didn't show up for you in the way that you showed up for them. And maybe you're here, and if you're honest with yourself, if you look deep enough into the depths of your heart, you're you're harboring resentment towards them. You're you're harboring bitterness towards them. Or maybe it's jealousy, or maybe it's anger. I don't know what it is, but maybe you're here today, and maybe there's a person the Holy Spirit right now is bringing to mind, and he's saying, You have not been loving them in the way that I loved you. And my prayer for you this morning is that through the power of the Holy Spirit, you would realize how much Christ has loved you when you dropped the ball, that you would realize how much Christ loved you when you fell short, that we would realize the depths of Christ's love for us so that we can love that person even though they're not deserving of it, so that we can love that person even though they may have wronged us. And so, if there's anybody in your life today that you've been holding a grudge against, you've been holding anger in your heart or bitterness towards, I just want to encourage you this morning, do not walk out these doors without bringing that to the foot of the cross and just say, God, you can you can be real with God. You say, God, I just hate this person right now. Would you help me to love them? God, I'm just so angry and frustrated at this person. Would you help me to love them? God, I'm just bitter towards this person, I'm just jealous, I'm just resentful. Would you help me to love them so that the world may look at my life and not be hindered from seeing what Christ's life love actually looks like? And if there is anybody that the Holy Spirit's bringing to mind, I just want to encourage you this morning, do not leave here this morning without just bringing that person in your heart and in your mind, bringing that person to the foot of the cross and say, Jesus, help me to love them the way that you loved me. And if this is the type of people that that we are, if this if we rest in and abide in the love of Christ and now love others from that place, the world will begin to see the church and the world will begin will begin to see disciples of Christ in a new light. I believe that we as a church are doing okay in this, but I believe we still have a long ways to go. And so I just want to challenge you, first and foremost, let's be a people abiding and delighting in the love of Christ, knowing how loved we are by Him, so that when we go out, we can actually love one another the way that Christ has commissioned us to. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Jesus, I just I just thank you so much, first and foremost. It is amazing how much you truly love us. God, no, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor entered into the hearts of man, God, the things that you have in store for those who love you. God, thank you that your word says, as far as the east is from the west, so far have you removed our transgressions from us. God, thank you that because of faith in the finished work of your son, Jesus Christ, we are now robed in your righteousness. And so, God, when you see us, you don't see us the way that we see ourselves. You don't see us as some unlovable and filthy and uh pe horrible people. God, you see us as made righteous because of the work of your son. And so I just I just pray right now, God, for anybody in here who just needs a fresh revelation, a fresh download of your love, that even right now, God, you would just speak that over them. By the power of your spirit, God, reaffirm in our hearts the love that you have for us. And so I'm gonna take just a minute right now, just be still and just invite the love of Christ into your heart. Just say, God, help me to see myself the way that you see me. Take a moment, even right now, just be still and delight and abide in the love of Christ. Let's do that for just a moment. Thank you. Thank you for loving us. I thank you that we can abide and remain in a state of knowing how loved we are by you. And I thank you that we are primarily the way that people will see and know your love. By the way that we love and serve one another because of the example that you left us. And so, Christ, continue to help us to be a church that that models and that demonstrates this type of love in the world around us. I pray I pray, God, that you would continue to form us into a people and a community of love. First and foremost, here, God, that amongst ourselves, amongst this church, we would be known and marked by love. And in the world as we go out, we'd be known and marked by love as well. And God, I just pray, even right now again, as we just take a moment to just be still. If there's anybody in our life who we've been struggling to love, if there's anybody in our life that we've been harboring anger or resentment or bitterness towards, that even right now, Holy Spirit, just bring that person to light. And and in this moment, I just want to invite you. If the Holy Spirit is bringing anybody to light that you've been having a hard time loving or serving, I just want to encourage you to just say, God, I'm naming this person in my heart right now. Help me to love them the way that you love me. Let's just take a moment and be still. Invite the Holy Spirit to bring to light anybody in your life who you've been struggling to love and bring that to the foot of the cross. Jesus, we just thank you. Thank you for humbling us. Thank you for exposing the areas in our heart and in our life where we have fallen short, God. But thank you that your love for us isn't compromised even when we fall short. Thank you that although we love imperfectly, you love perfectly. And so, God, as we go out today and as we as we try to walk out the pattern of love, I pray we would just abide in the power of that love. We would find the source and the strength to love others as we abide in your love for us. So fill us with your spirit as we go out. This week would we love well? This week would people see your love for them in the way that we love and serve. And we can't do this on our own, Holy Spirit. So fill us and empower us to do this in your strength and in your name we pray. Everybody said amen.