Love Your Enemies And Hate Your Mom And Dad

As we are starting, I want to start with a question for you to be chewing on and
thinking about, could it be that the love and the devotion that moms and dads have,
the care and the concern that they have for their kids, could it be that that
would be a spiritual stumbling block or an impediment in the spiritual growth or the
lives of the parents? Could it be that the love and devotion parents have for their
kids is a spiritual stumbling block for them. I want you to chew on that for a
few minutes. We are starting a new five -week series this morning at Redeemer, and
if you've been with us for a while, you know, last Sunday we wrapped up our study
in the book of Revelation, and for the next few weeks, instead of working through
an extended passage, we're going to be looking at some of the things that Jesus
said that might at first glance be hard.
who love us, we are to love those who hate us. And along with that, Jesus said at
one point, if you're going to come to him and follow him, you must hate your
father and mother and your siblings. Now, those sound contradictory,
but they also sound almost impossible to do. In fact, the first one sounds
impossible. I'm supposed to love my enemies. That's not in me to do that. And then
the second one sounds like it goes against nature, to hate your siblings,
hate your parents, hate your children. So, two quick Bible study principles that we
need to keep in mind as we come to passages like this, where we look at it and
go, "Wait, can that possibly be true? Is that what this means? How am I supposed
to understand this?" When you come across something in the Bible That is confusing
or hard to understand the right response is not to just ignore it skip over it and
say well I don't understand that we'll move on to other things and you also should
not do what a lot of people are tempted to do Which is say I must reinterpret
this verse to fit my own wisdom or my own experience Wait when you come across
hard things like this You don't twist them to fit in with your thinking. The
principle here is you interpret Scripture with Scripture, you dig in, you take a
hard look, you look at the cross references in your Bible and see how that helps
you. You pray and you ask God for illumination, you seek guidance from others, you
look to commentaries and sermons. It doesn't mean that every time you come across
something confusing you have to stop and solve it right there, but you don't come
across something confusing and just disregard it. like, well, since I can't understand
that, I don't need to worry about it. God's word is here for us as a gift. - And
every word is valuable and precious, and we need to dig deep into His word. So in
this series, we're gonna loop back around to some of the hard things, some of those
things you may have read the first time and said, that doesn't make any sense, I'll
just skip over that. We'll come back and see, okay, how should we understand that?
How Can we understand what Jesus is saying here? And the two passages we're gonna
look at this morning. Well, before I read them, let me pray for us. Father,
we do, as we come to your word, confess to you that apart from the work of your
spirit in our lives, we will stumble, we will fall short.
And so we ask that your spirit would be our teacher, that you would give us the
gift of illumination, help us understand and see your word more clearly. We ask it
in Jesus' name. Amen. So these two passages, actually I told you to turn to Luke
14. Turn back to Luke 6 first. Just turn back a few pages to Luke chapter 6 and
look at what it says in verses 27 and 28. This is the word of God for the people
of God. Jesus speaking says, "But I say to you who here, love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,
pray for those who abuse you. Now flip ahead to Luke 14 and look at verses 25 and
26. Jesus again, great crowds accompanied him and he turned to them and said,
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and
children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my
disciple." Amen. May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers and the
flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever. Now, here's what these two
passages have in common. In both of these passages, Jesus is calling his disciples
to do something that I said is not natural for us It's not natural for you to
love your enemies and to bless those who persecute you and to pray for those who
abuse you and It's not natural for us to hate our family members who we people
were related to by blood marriage or adoption It is there's a natural affection and
bond that exists there and that same affection does not exist between us and our
enemies Now there are days, we've got to be honest, when with our family members we
can get a little irritated or a little angry or we get a little quiet when we're
not always happy with what's going on. And there are some of you who are here this
morning when you look back at relationships with parents. In fact, your relationship
with your mom on Mother's Day, this may be a hard day for some of you because the
mother -child relationship is a very important relationship and when that has not gone
well, that can bring a lot of pain, that can bring a lot of difficulty into
people's lives. Some of you find this day a very difficult day every year, but even
when the pain goes deep, the reason that we still have a bond and attachment is
because by God's design, He has knit us together. One of the reasons the pain goes
deep is because of the longing in our hearts to be connected. We're inclined or
predisposed to love family members, and we're ought to at least not stand up,
and we are also inclined, excuse me, to hate or to stand against those who would
oppose us, those who are our enemies. So I want to look at both of these passages
more carefully. The first one, Luke 6, "Love Your Enemies." The context for this is
Jesus' sermon known as the sermon on the plane. You may know that Jesus preached
the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, probably his most famous sermon.
When we get to Luke's Gospel, these same ideas are captured in Luke 6 in what is
often referred to as the sermon on the plane. Jesus wasn't on the mountain, He was
on the plane, and these would have been recurring themes that Jesus would have
spoken to and preached as he traveled around through Judea and through Galilee
preaching the gospel. And this whole sermon, both in Matthew and in Luke, in both
cases, Jesus is saying that the religion that these people have grown up being
taught by the scribes and the Pharisees is not in alignment with God's design and
purposes for our lives. And he's trying to say, "Let me show you where the things
you have always believed about how to live life and about how God interacts with
us, the things you've been taught by the scribes and the Pharisees." I want to show
you that that's wrong. I want to show you where they have missed it. And so he
begins the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 in verse 20 with a series of statements
about who it is that God blesses. In Matthew's Gospel we call these the Beatitudes.
These are the Luke version of the Beatitudes. And he is saying that you have grown
up thinking that you can tell who has God's blessing by looking and seeing who is
rich and who is well fed and who's laughing their way through life and who is well
like by others and he says that's not an indication of who has God's blessing.
In fact the opposite is true. Those who are poor in spirit, those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, those who mourn over their sin, those who are marginalized
or dismissed or hated by others, those are the ones who will have God's blessing.
And then he says that his followers are to love their enemies and be merciful to
all. And again the scribes and the Pharisees did not teach this, in fact they would
have taught the opposite. The idea of being loving and merciful was not at the top
of the list for the scribes and the Pharisees in terms of how to live a life
that's pleasing to God. So meanwhile Jesus comes along and says that those who
really love God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength will love their
neighbors in amazing and revolutionary ways.
One Bible commentator and Australian Douglas Milne says, "Nothing could show up better
the difference living in Christ's kingdom makes than the command to love our enemies
because nothing is more uncommon or difficult in normal relationships." He says,
"People naturally and easily keep up resentments and grudges swearing that they will
get even one day with those who have wronged them. Sadly, this can be true among
Christians. But God's way of loving, unheard of amongst human beings, is wonderfully
and lavishly displayed at infinite cost in Jesus himself and his crucifixion.
And that's the bottom line here. Loving our enemies is something that God doesn't
just call us to do, It's something that is true of him He is a God who loves his
enemies when God first loved you You were his enemy. He loved you even when you
were his enemy Now he did not make you his enemy. You made yourself an enemy of
God You are the ones who declared your independence from him said I don't want
anything to do with you and put yourself at odds with him. That's when you became
his enemy and Romans 5 verse 8 says, "God shows his love for us in that while we
were still sinners, Christ died for us." It's a good memory verse.
In fact, I want us to all say it together. Put it back up. "God shows his love
for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us when we were
enemies when we were following our own path instead of following in the footsteps of
Jesus God demonstrated his love for us By offering his son on the cross.
He showed us what it looks like to love and bless Your enemies now keep in mind
that the word that Jesus is using here when he talks about loving your enemies Luke
6 It's the Luke 6 here, it's the word agapeo, agape,
you've heard that word. It's not about your feelings, it's about your doings. It's
the kind of love that, as one commentator says, it's a love that has boots on.
It's a love that shows itself, demonstrates itself in actions, regardless of what
your feelings may be telling you. Think about for just a minute about what the
Bible teaches us about love. Love is a huge theme in the Bible. It tells us that
it is the greatest of all the gifts of the Spirit. These things abide, faith, hope,
and love. The greatest of these is love. It is the first on the list of the fruit
of the Spirit. Jesus said all of the Old Testament, the law and the prophets can
be summed up in this. Love God, love your neighbor. Galatians 4 says the whole law
can be summed up in one word. It's love. John 15, Jesus said to his disciples,
"This is my commandment that you love one another." In Romans 12, as soon as Paul
starts talking about the implications of the gospel for our lives, he says, "Let
your love be genuine." Philippians 1, when the apostle Paul prayed for the church in
Philippi. He prayed that their love would abound more and more. Paul reminds us that
the goal of our spiritual growth is not more knowledge but love. He says knowledge
puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who does not love, John says,
does not know God. If anyone says he loves God and hates his brother, he's a liar.
There's a whole lot. I mean we could spend a lot of time looking at what the
Bible says about love, but you get the picture. This is the big deal of the Bible.
This is central to how we live and how we respond to the gospel. If you wanna
focus on only one application of God's grace in your life, this is the one to
focus on. God, pour your love into me that I can abound with love to others.
That's the prayer of our lives. And these two verses that we just read in Luke 6,
there are four statements there where he starts by saying, "Love your enemies," and
I don't see these as four separate commands. The first is the command and the next
three are the applications of it. So he says, "Love your enemies." How do I do
that? By doing good to those who hate you. You want to know how to love your
enemy? Do good to those who hate you. Do you know somebody who doesn't like you,
do good to them. Love them with your deeds. And then it says, "Bless those who
curse you." Are there people in your lives who are opposed to you and say things
that curse you? How can you bless them? How can you pray for them? How can your
words and your deeds bless them? And then it says, "Pray for those who abuse you."
This is saying, through your deeds, through your words, through your thoughts, you
actively work to love your enemies. You do good, you bless, and you pray for.
Your love must be expressed in thought, word, and deed. It's expressed by what we
do. It's also expressed by the things you don't do. And it has nothing to do with
how you feel about your enemies. It's a decision you make to love them. It's a
choice you make. And by the way, I will just say, when you make that decision and
seek to actively love them, your feelings will come along.
God will put in your heart a feeling of love for those that you start blessing and
doing good to and praying for.
Now we should stop here. Can you think of people in your lives who you would
classify as enemies? People who seem to hate you. people who curse you,
people who abuse you or use you, people who just don't like you and they make it
really clear. And if we're getting real, can you think of anybody you treat that
way?
For anybody in your life where if you're just being really honest, you would go, I
just hate them.
There was a time, this was many years ago, when I had a former employer who filed
a lawsuit against me, and it was burdensome and costly,
and it was excruciating, it was a very hard season for us to go through. And I
remember entertaining hateful thoughts about this individual. I remember imagining
flying to the city where he lived and going and I was going to slash the tires,
just let all the air out of the tires in the parking lot. I mean, I imagined the
things I would like to do to bring pain and suffering into his life. Did anybody
feel like that about,
did anybody, where you're lingering, you're holding on to bitterness, you're hanging
on to hard things. The Scottish pastor Alexander Weith said he read once a diary of
a man who was confessing that he had to share the same house and the same table
with someone who he found unendurable. And Weith said, "The man betook himself to
prayer until he was finally able to write, "Next morning I found it easy to be
civil and even benevolent to my neighbor, and I felt at the Lord's table today that
I would yet come to love that man. I'm sure I will." He wasn't there yet,
but he started praying for that person, and he started asking God to give him a
love for that person. Listen, God loves your enemy.
Do you want to be opposed to those whom God loves? Love your enemy.
This command of Jesus is something we need to take seriously. If we're not taking
it seriously, if we're not doing it, we shouldn't just let ourselves off the hook
and say, "Well, I'm only human and I've been hurt deeply by this person." Yeah,
Both of those may be true. But that doesn't give you license to ignore the command
of Jesus. We are to love our enemies. Do good to them,
bless them, pray for them. Those are the active steps you take in trying to
demonstrate a love for your enemies.
In Jesus' day, the standard was an eye for an eye. Somebody wrongs you, you get
the same level of punishment of them. But here, he introduces a radical revolutionary
standard that shows us that's not how God treats us, and that's not how we're to
treat one another. There is a day of justice ahead for those who persist as enemies
of God. We just looked at that when we went through our study of Revelation.
Justice will come, but that day is not today. Today is a day of mercy and grace.
Until Jesus comes again, this is a day of mercy and grace. John 3 .17,
God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world
might be saved through him. That's what this is all about. There's a day coming
when Jesus will condemn the world. That's not today. So we should be gracious and
merciful toward those for whom God is showing patience and grace and mercy.
Jesus says in God's kingdom his people act like the king.
In the kingdom you act like the king. I'll just stop here. I heard a story about
a truck driver who had pulled into an all -night truckstrap and gone in to just get
something to eat and in this truck stop there were three tough -looking motorcycle
guys who were there and they were there to menace with people and they saw this
truck driver and they thought they just wanted to pick on him so when he ordered
his his food they went over to his table and said how's a bad old guy like you
get behind that truck how can you even get in there between that steering wheel
they just started messing with him and flicking him on the head one of them grabbed
a fork and started eating his eggs another one took his coffee and started drinking
it the man just quietly sat there and he realized he wasn't going to get anywhere.
He stood up, took the check, he walked by where these other guys were sitting, he
grabbed their check and he went over to the cash register and he paid for both of
them and then he left. But when he left, the waitress who closed it out watched
him drive away and then these tough guys said he ain't much of a man, is he, to
the waitress? And she said, "I think he just showed he's more of man the name you
are he said he's a great man he's not a great truck driver he just ran over three
motorcycles out in the parking lot with this truck he was close he almost had it
the
command of Jesus love your enemies do good to those who hate you bless those who
curse you pray for those who abuse you. This is not hard to understand. You don't
need a lot of Bible coaching to be able to get what these verses are saying. It's
hard to do.
It's hard to put into practice. In fact, it's only through the enablement of the
Holy Spirit. You try to do this on your own that you will fail fast. You need the
Spirit of God dwelling inside of you to empower you to be able to live this way
toward others. In fact, when you don't want to do it, that's when you say, "Holy
Spirit, I need your power."
Okay, that's the easy one. Now turn over to Luke 14 and look at this stuff that's
a little trickier to understand about hating your parents and everybody else. It's
the Mother's Day verse, right? Again, the context for all of this is key. Whenever
you come across a verse and you go, "I'm not sure I understand one thing you do,"
you look at the broader context, the verses that are around it, the chapter it's
in, even what's the theme of this whole book. And the context here, Jesus has just
told a couple of parables about coming into the Kingdom, about being welcomed into
the Kingdom, about being invited into the Kingdom. In the first parable in verses 7
through 11 he says, "To come into the Kingdom, you must come humbly." And then the
second parable in verses 16 through 24 he's talking about those invited guests who
are invited into the Kingdom.
when you come into the kingdom. There's a cost that comes when you accept God's
invitation into his kingdom. In order to be his disciple, he says,
and these are the verses that follow, "Hate your family, hate your own life, die to
self each day, renounce all you have." That's the cost. It sounds pretty steep,
but the point he's making here is that God's offer of salvation, the author to live
in his family, live in his family forever. This is a free gift that comes from God
that will cost you everything.
Got that? It's a free gift from God. You can't earn it, you can't buy it,
it'll cost you everything.
Jesus says that the blessing of God's kingdom is free to all who respond to his
offer to believe the gospel. To receive this wonderful gift from God, you have to
follow him, be his disciple, and you can't do it half way or half heartedly, you
can't do it double -mindedly, you have to be all in.
That's what he's saying. In verse 26 is the beginning of what all in looks like.
Hate your father and mother and your spouse and your children. Jesus is saying that
following him has to be more important to you than any human relationship you now
have or any relationship you will ever have. Following him, living for him,
has to be more important than any human relationship.
Actually, this is a Hebrew idiom that Jesus is using here. In his day, this was a
common way of speaking. You would declare your love for something by talking about
your hatred for the rivals. So you would say something like, Jewish man would say,
how do you like my daughter? I love your daughter. She's the most beautiful of all
the maidens. What about my neighbor's daughter? They are nothing to me, I hate them
all. You know, that's how they would talk, right? Or they would say, what do you
think of my wife's lamb stew? I've never had another stew like it. All other stews
I hate compared to this stew. That's the way they would talk about things. That's
how you would show your devotion to that thing. So that's part of the context for
this statement Jesus is making. His first listeners would have heard that. Now some
people, when they read this, hate your father and your mother and your wife, they
go, wait, doesn't Ephesians five say, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the
church? How can I love my wife and hate my wife at the same time? Titus two tells
older women to teach younger women to love their children and to love their
husbands. So how can the Bible tell me in one place to love him another place to
hate him. How do I understand that? Well here's what Jesus is saying, "Your love
and your allegiance for him must be so strong, so complete, so central that every
other human relationship looks like hatred in
comparison." Men you should love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave
himself up for her, but your love for Jesus should make your love for your wife
look pale in comparison. For some people this is a real challenging issue.
For some people to follow Jesus means to invite the hatred of your family.
You know we have brothers and sisters in other parts of the world that when they
decide to give their lives to Jesus, they know that they are beginning an enemy
relationship with their family. They will be kicked out. They will be hated and
despised and cut off. They will never see them again What do you do?
When following Jesus means that your closest friends and family members May leave
you. Here's what you do. You follow Jesus
This sounds like a shocking statement to you To hate your father and mother Jesus
intended to make it a shocking statement He said this this way because he wanted
listeners to be then and now to understand that following him was going to be
demanding. He wanted them to understand that the kingdom must always have first place
in your lives. It must be the priority. It must be where your ultimate allegiance
lies. And if you're coming thinking you'll follow Jesus partially, it's not all in.
I can follow Jesus and keep this in the center. No.
But when we sing the hymn, "A Mighty Fortress" is our God written by Martin Luther.
In the last stanza of that hymn, we sing, "Let goods and kindred go." This mortal
life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still.
His kingdom is forever.
That's what Jesus is telling us here. Don't love stuff, don't love your family.
He wants us to prioritize our love for him and for the kingdom above all other
things. It was 30 years ago this month that John Piper's son, one of his sons,
Karsten, got married, and the son asked the father 30 years ago in preparation for
the wedding if John would write a poem to celebrate the wedding. And I'm not going
to read the whole poem to you this morning, because It's 700 words long and many
stanzas. But the title of the poem, what he said to his son, is about his wife,
"Love her more and love her less." And here's in part what he wrote.
"If you now aim your wife to bless, then love her more and love her less.
If in the coming years, by some strange providence of God, you come to have the
riches of this age and painless stride across the stage beside your wife,
be sure in health to love her, love her more than wealth." And he goes on in
subsequent stanzas to talk about loving her more than ease, loving her more than
art, knowing that his son was artistic and literary. Love her more than fame, love
her more than life. And it ends with this, oh, love the woman called your wife.
Go love her as your earthly best beyond this venture not. But lest your love become
a fool's facade, be sure to love her less than God. The greatest gift you give
your wife is loving God above her life. And thus I bid you now to bless. Go love
her more by loving less. That's the principle. That's at the heart of what Jesus is
saying in Luke 14. Your love for God should be so paramount,
so central, that your love for others looks like hatred in comparison. Which brings
me back to the question we started with this morning. Is it possible that your
relationship with your kids or other human relationships are a stumbling block to
your relationship with God? Can they get in the way? Can they become an idol in
your life? They can.
Could it be that the love and devotion and concern and care that parents feel for
their children turns out to be a spiritual stumbling block? The answer is yes, and
moms in the room, listen to me, especially you, it's true for moms or dads,
but I've seen this more with moms. Moms, it's possible for you to love your kids
too much.
Now some of you hear that and go, "Okay, I know what you mean. Yes, I understand,
but I just can't help it." Right? I know the heart of a mom. I know what that
feels like. You love your kids desperately. You do anything for your kids. When they
hurt, you ache. Somebody has said, "A mom is only as happy as the happiness of her
least happy child.
When when your kids are suffering, you bear that. You bear it with them. You do
anything for them. You die for them. God is the one who put that love for your
kids in your heart because he wanted you to experience and to taste a little bit
of the love he feels for his children. So he gives it to you so you can
experience it so you can know the father loves me with the same heart that I have
in loving for my children. Children are a gift from the Lord. We talked about that.
They're a blessing. For most moms I know, when your children are born, here's what
happens. They become the center of everything, practically and emotionally.
You sacrifice sleep for them. You sacrifice everything for them. You get up before
you want to, to care for them. You get up in the night when you want to be
asleep, to take care of them. You stay up late when they need you. When they're
sick, you drop everything for them. But here's where the trouble comes. By God's
design,
you bombs have two relationships that should be prioritized ahead of your relationship
with your kids.
Your relationship with your husband and your relationship with God. Those need to
come ahead of your relationship with your kids. In fact, if you want to raise kids
who are confident and secure and able to manage the challenges they're going to face
in life, you have to regularly and early start reinforcing these principles with your
kids. They have to know this will make them feel more secure and more safe than
anything else you can do if they know they're not the center of your world. Now
that sounds contradictory doesn't it? It seems like if I can let them know that I
do anything for them that will help them feel safe and secure. No they need to
know that you would sacrifice for them but they need to know they're not the center
of your world, that there's something bigger and more important than them in your
life. They need to know that they're not the center of the family.
Somebody has said that when children are bored, they draw a circle around their life
and declare themselves Lord of the Ring. I think that's true, right?
If they can control the family, they will. They need to know they're not the center
of the family. They need to know that they don't belong to you. They belong to
God. And that you are a steward.
They need to know moms. They need to know that you love daddy more than you love
them
They will feel more safe and more secure if they see that if they feel that if
they know that Then if they think they're the center of your universe and they need
to know that you love God more than you love daddy
Children who grow up understanding that these priorities are what's true in the home
and where they fit into the family structure. They will be emotionally healthy and
stable. They will be more grounded in reality. They will be able to face life as
an adult better. They need to know you love them, but they need to know that your
love for them is not ultimate.
I'm gonna show you two other passages as we wrap up this morning that will
hopefully bring some clarity to some of what Jesus is saying here. The first is in
Matthew chapter 10. You don't need to turn there. We'll put it up on the screen.
Jesus says in Matthew 10, "I have come to set a man against his father and a
daughter against her mother. Daughter -in -law against mother -in -law and a person's
enemies will be those of his own household." So it's the same kind of thing as
hate your enemy. He says, "Because I'm here, this is going to be the consequence.
There's There's gonna be family division and separation because I'm here. He's not
saying this is why he came. He's not saying I came to divide families. He's saying
my coming will divide families. This is gonna be a natural outcome of my coming.
And here's why in verse 37, whoever loves father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of
The the priority of your love has to be him. That's the point first of the Ten
Commandments You shall have no other gods before me Your spouse can be a God your
kids can be a God that you put ahead of God don't do that and The last passage
we'll look at is in Colossians in the book of Colossians the Apostle Paul is
writing To to the church at Colossian. He reminds his readers at the very beginning
of who it is we worship who God is
through him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things hold
together and he's the head of the body the church he's the beginning the firstborn
from the dead that in everything here's the the kicker he might be preeminent he
said this is this is our glorious savior Jesus and by virtue of his glory,
he deserves preeminence. To give first allegiance to someone or something other than
Jesus is to deny the glory and grandeur of who he is. He is preeminent above all
first place. Yes, parents love your kids. Yes, show love,
show a lot of love. If you've got a mama who's still alive, show a lot of love
to her today. Find a way to honor her. If your mom's not still alive, you can
still stop and thank God for the mom he gave you. Even if things were hard, ask
God today to give you things that you put in your heart that you can thank him
for, for your mom. But as we honor moms today, I can just about guarantee you that
If every mom here, that every mom, I can just by guarantee you, every mom who's
here would be delighted to hear her children say, "I love Jesus more than I love
you." And if that's what you long for your kids to say, "I love Jesus more than I
love you," then you need to be saying it to them, "I love Jesus more than I love
you." We started with a video about mom being a superhero. superhero. We're gonna
wrap up this morning with another video. This is a music video that I just saw
this week. It's from singer -songwriter Stephen Curtis Chapman and he talks about and
describes moms who are living their lives at the speed of love.
I want you to watch this.
She gets up at six in the morning and drives to the kitchen where the hungry
hearts gather Fill
your plane, say a kind word, look you in the eye and make you believe you
And
all the while the world goes rushing by
She just smiles and goes on living hard at the speed
She's got a heart that beats
She clocks in at the flower shop, puts her name tag on, says, "Hello,
I'm Beauty." Go
through throes, but she says the thorns are part of the roses. Beauty.
She starts to pray with Francine, Francine, just lost her mom Checks in on her
neighbors She's headed on At the speed (At the speed of love) (At the speed of
love) (At the speed of love) (At the speed of love)
The beats and the speed of love If
they say this world will never know her name
Leave, we're gonna f -
Just how much this world was changed By the ones who chose to run this race At
the speed of love
(upbeat
music)
God, give me your heart to beat
at the speed of love
Back on. Yeah, just watching that and thinking about my mom thinking about our moms
the sacrifices that moms make It's powerful. It's meaningful. It's significant Make
sure moms and dads That the love that you're running at the speed of is the love
for God that will fuel everything else in your life. Let me pray. Father, we hope,
as we've come to Your Word, that we have a better understanding. We trust that the
words of life that You've given us in the Bible, our words that will bring life to
marriages and to families and to all of us as we seek to love our enemies and as
we seek to love you above all things.
What I pray this morning for those who are here who might not have as their
central allegiance a love for you those who are here who would if they look
honestly they would say there are other things I love more than I love God. I pray
that our lives could be reprioritized today and that there are some who might
surrender finally and fully to believe that you supremely matter and that you are
preeminent. I pray that they would trust you today with their lives.
I ask it in Jesus name.
For those of you who are here