Love and God

Welcome! This month we have been exploring some of what the Bible has to say about relationships, and so far we have talked about the nature of agape love, love in the context of the relationship between husband and wife, and love in the context of family. I wanted to start today with a video clip produced by the children of a pastor in one of our sister churches in Florida. This video was shown at one of the Faithwalkers conference teachings this past December. I think it is a great example of agape love in the context of the family.

The video can be found here.

For the sake of the recording, let me summarize what the video has shown. A family is sitting down to breakfast together, and they run out of orange juice right before a young boy can pour some for himself. His brother, also a young boy, offers to get him some, and goes to the refrigerator only to find that they don’t have any. He jumps up to grab a big hat, and then takes the hat and goes out the front door. The next thing you know, he is in some kind of shed up on a tractor and starts the tractor. He drives out to some orange trees, and pulls some oranges off of the tree, filling up his hat. He then restarts the tractor and goes back, brings the hat full of oranges into the house (losing a few along the way). Then he goes to his back porch and uses an electric juicer to juice the oranges until he has a cup of juice in a measuring cup. He takes the measuring cup to the kitchen and pours the juice into a cup, and then brings it cheerfully to his brother.

Love in Family

Welcome! Today we continue our series on relationships, on love, focusing on the family. As I prepared for this message, one of the things I did was to think about and review various well-known stories and events from the Old Testament from the direct perspective of family relationships. I had never done this before, and I found it fascinating.

For one thing, I was shocked at how many family relationships in the Bible were what today we would call dysfunctional. What exactly is a dysfunctional family relationship? I came across multiple definitions but was struck by one reference that characterized a dysfunctional family relationship by five symptoms: (1) estrangement (avoiding one another), (2) anger (expressed or hidden), (3) lack of trust (tied to unforgiveness), (4) deception (valuing your own desires over truth), and (5) secrecy (including an unwillingness to change or face reality).

Love in Marriage

When Carl and John asked me to talk on the subject of “Love in Marriage” I told Miriam that I need to be on my best behavior for the next two weeks. I kind-of cringed a little when I heard the topic. Usually, when I give a talk God works on me on that particular subject that week. I’m not standing up here sharing these things with you because I’m an expert at loving my wife. In the business world a person learns how to do something well and then people pay them to share their insights and secrets. They’ve become an “expert” on a particular subject. But the difference in the business world and the church world is that there really isn’t anybody who’s an “expert” on anything. They may be further along than many of us. But we’re all a work in progress. The reason why I’m sharing these things with you this morning is because I’m a work in progress. And Miriam is a work in progress. We have “The Expert” working on us, changing us so that our marriage will reflect the love that God has for the church that’s talked about in Ephesians 5.

Love, Simply

Welcome! Today I am excited to be starting a new series with you on Relationships. Today I want us to contemplate what love really is, according to the Bible. The world and the Bible have different definitions of love, and so it is critically important that we really understand what love really is, or we will have no way to properly understand countless passages in the Bible.

I want to start with an excerpt from a story. The story is The Road to Oz, one of the L. Frank Baum Oz books (no relation, by the way). In this particular story several characters are wandering through the wilder parts of the Oz world together: Dorothy, of course, and her little dog Toto, too; Button-Bright, a small boy who was not so bright and loved to say “Don’t know” to every question, the Polychrome, the Rainbow’s Daughter, a fairy whose natural home was in a rainbow, and the Shaggy Man, a man who loved to dress in rags and who was the proud possessor of a magic talisman known as the Love Magnet. The Love Magnet caused all who were close to its owner to love its owner.