This series of lessons introduces you to vision, mission, and strategy of Genesis Church. Experiencing love focuses on the five aspects of love: receiving love from God, loving God, loving others, receiving love from others, and loving ourselves.

We are starting a new series of messages that we are calling the Genesis Experience. These lessons will focus on five crucial elements that we want people to experience as a Partner of Genesis Church. The five experiences are…

  • Experiencing Love: We want to help everyone to grow in the five aspects of love. We will be looking at these today.
  • Experiencing Leadership: We want to help everyone grow in their understanding of what the Bible says about leadership within the local church, especially when it comes to elders.
  • Experiencing Growth: We want to help everyone understand the five levels of spiritual growth and how they can continue their own growth spiritually.
  • Experiencing Significance: We want to help people discover their unique design for ministry and thereby discover their personal significance in the world and in God’s kingdom.
  • Experiencing Influence: We want to help others to become more intentional in reaching others for Christ individually and as a local body of believers.

Let’s talk about Experiencing Love. When it comes to love there are five aspects to love.

  • We are to receive love from God.
  • We are to express love to God.
  • We are to express love to others.
  • We are to receive love from others.
  • We are to love ourselves.

Let’s unpack each statement and let me introduce each one to you.

We are to receive love from God

The first aspect is, we are to receive love from God. It’s one thing to know God loves you, but it’s another thing to receive God’s love and to experience it. God is always showing His love to you, we just don’t recognize it. God loves you enough to do several things.

  • First, God loves you enough to show you He loves. Romans 5:8 says, “God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (NLT). God’s love is visible, not invisible. God’s love has never been hidden, nor kept a secret. He fully displayed the width, the depth, and height of His love when Jesus died on the cross for your sin. God just didn’t say He loved you, be demonstrated His love through Christ on the cross.
  • Secondly, God loves you enough to sacrifice for you. God’s love is not only visible, but is it also sacrificial. True love is always willing to pay the price for the benefit of another. The most famous statement in the Bible reveals this truth. John 3:16 says, “For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (NLT). If you want to measure God’s love for you, then look at the price tag He was willing to pay for you.
  • Third, God loves you enough to accept you as you are. God’s love is unconditional. You don’t have to meet a certain standard for God’s love. Listen carefully to Romans 5:8 again, “God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (NLT). God loved you while you were still a sinner. This means that while you didn’t believe in Him, while you didn’t love Him, while you were rebelling against Him, while you were ignoring Him, while you were doing anything you wanted to do without acknowledging Him God loved you. He loved you in your worse condition. He loved you just as you were and just as you are.
  • Fourth, God loves you enough to not leave you as you are. God’s love is big enough to accept you as you are and big enough to take you where you need to be. Listen to Hebrews 12:6, “The Lord disciplines those He loves” (NLT). The word “discipline” means correction, training, improvement, or adjustment. God’s love wants you to reach your potential in life and the way God helps us do that is through discipline and correction. When your child disobeys you and you ground them, spank them, or withhold certain privileges from them… do you hate them or love them when you do that? You correct them because you love them. The same is true for God, when you are being disciplined by God He is doing that because He loves you.

God loves you and you need to receive that love from God when He blesses you, guides you, or corrects you.

We are to express love to God

Number two, we are to express love to God. Jesus summarized it this way in Matthew 22, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your mind” (v.28, NLT). In the big picture, this simply means with everything you have and with everything you are. However, I think it would be helpful to dissect this phrase into three parts and examine each one a little closer.

  • First, we are to love God with all our heart. This refers to the core of who you are, but with an emphasis on the will. The will deals with your behavior, actions, and choices. It deals with what you do (Matt. 12:35; 7:20; 1 Peter 2:12, James 1:22). We are to love God with our heart, our actions, and demonstrate that love with our behavior.
  • Second, we are to love God with all our soul. The term “soul” is closest to what we would call emotion and is the word Jesus used when He cried out in the Garden of Gethsemane the night He was arrested. Jesus said, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death” (Matt. 26:38, NLT). When we are talking about the soul we must include our emotions, feelings, attitudes, and convictions. Jesus is saying let your emotions, feelings, attitudes and convictions express your love for Him. It’s okay to get emotional about Jesus and the things of God (Prov. 3:21; 16:24; 14:23; Eph. 4:21). We express our love to God with our emotions.
  • Third, we are to love God with all our mind. This deals with our intellect, our understanding, and our thinking. The Bible has a lot to say about the mind and our thoughts. We are to let God change the way we think (Rom. 12:2). We are to fix our thoughts on what is true and excellent (Philip. 4:8). We are to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). We express our love to God with how we think.

Love God with all your…

 

Heart

Will

Behavior

Action

Choice

Doer

Soul

Emotions

Beliefs

Attitude

Conviction

Feeler

Mind

Intellect

Understanding

Attention

Cognizance

Thinker

Before we wrap this section up on expressing our love to God. I want to mention one more.

  • We love God with our obedience. Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love Me, obey My commandments” (NLT). The way we express our love to God is simply to do what He says. By obeying Him we are demonstrating that we trust Him and love Him. This is why it’s important to stay in God’s Word. It’s in God’s Word where God gives us instructions for our lives and as we obey them we are demonstrating our commitment and love to Him. We express our love to God by obeying Him.

We are to express love to others

We are to receive love from God. We are to express love to God. Number three, we are to express love to others. Jesus summarized it this way in Matthew 22, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (v.39, NLT). Your neighbor can range from the person across the room or across the world. Regardless of who your neighbor is, there are three things we need to emphasize when it comes to loving our neighbor.

  • First, love your neighbor prayerfully. Love your neighbor even if they are mean to you. Jesus said, “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of Your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:43-45, NLT). You need to pray for your neighbor, but especially those people in your life that hate you, don’t like you, and clash with you.
  • Secondly, love your neighbor authentically. Romans 12:9 says, “Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other” (vs.9-10, NLT). Ask God to give you a “genuine affection” for the people in your life and find a way to “delight in honoring each other.” Honor the people in your life. Find joy in being able to lift them up.
  • Third, love your neighbor graciously. Ephesians 4:2 says, “Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love” (NLT). Everybody in your life has rough edges. They are going to say things that offend you, hurt you, and annoy you. But because you love them you are going to be patient with them, you are going to make allowance for their faults. You are not going to demand perfection. You are not going to be unrealistic in your expectations of people. You are going to be gracious toward them.

We all need to grow in our love toward others. We are to love the people in our lives prayerfully, authentically, and graciously.

We are to receive love from others

We are to receive love from God. We are to express love to God. We are to love others. Number four, we are to receive love from others. We are told in 1 Thessalonians 3:12, “May the Lord make your love for one another and for all people grow and overflow, just as our love for you overflows” (NLT). There is a give and take when it comes to love. I love you and you love me. It’s one thing to love people, but it’s another thing to receive love from people. Some of us don’t know how to receive love from others very well.

Sometimes love comes in the form of a blessing, a gift, a service, assistance, advice or counseling. Sometimes that love comes in the form of a rebuke, correction, or admonishment. Whatever form that love comes in we need to be able to recognize it and receive it. There are people in our life expressing love to you the only way they know how. Receive it.

We are to love ourselves

We are to receive love from God. We are to love God. We are to love others. We are to receive love from others. Number five, we are to love ourselves. Notice carefully what Jesus said in Matthew 22, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 39, NLT). This doesn’t mean being selfish, but it does mean you respect yourself and you see yourself as valuable and significant. You are a creation of God. God has a plan and purpose for your life. You care about your own physical health, emotional and mental development, along with your spiritual growth. The better you take care of yourself, the better you can take care of others.

Conclusion

At Genesis you will hear a lot about these five aspects of love.

  • We want to help you grow and mature in each one. From sermons to Life Groups to ministries to experiences we want to create opportunities and environments for you to experience these various aspects of love.
  • God does not speak to you about all five of these at one time. That would be over whelming. For example, there is one aspect of these five that jumped out at you. It’s the one that grab your attention. That’s the one God is saying to you, I want to help you grow and learn in this aspect of love. At this time in your life, God is saying something to you about one of these five.

If you need to talk to someone about one of these aspects of love, we would love to sit down with you and have a real conversation with you with where you are at and what God may be saying to you.