Consequences of Love

Love, L-O-V-E, love. Simple word, four letters, but difficult. A couple months ago, we talked about the difficult doctrine of love. The thing about love, we think about what a difficult word that is to understand, the difficult word to experience, the difficult word to say. We use love in so many ways in our language. We use love so flippantly in our culture. What is love? Well, that is what we're going to be looking at this morning from another clear, focused passage from 1 John on love. Turn to me, turn with me to 1 John chapter three. We'll be looking at verses 11 through the end of the chapter, 11 through 24. 1 John chapter 3, if you're using a pew Bible, it'll be page 1022. Hear the word of the Lord. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. And whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him. And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him and he in them. And by this, we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. Amen. Well, our message this morning is on love. Obviously, verse 11 sets up the entire passage in our entire. Theme or topic for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning. that we should love one another. And in case you missed it, he says it again, kind of bookending there in verse 23, you are to love one another. Well, our basic outline this morning is going to be looking at what the command to love is. And then we're going to look at three different ways or three different reasons why John says that we are to love one another. So first, we're going to look at what the command is and then three reasons why we are to. obey the command. So, first, what? Verse 11. Love one another. Easy to say, hard to do. Love takes on a number of meanings in our language. I can rightly say, honestly say, I love cheeseburgers, I love my wife, and I love God. And all those will be true, but I can't mean the same thing or I better not mean the same thing. I can't mean the same thing when I love cheeseburgers and when I say I love my wife. You see, the object of my affection should really define the affection I have for it. My affection must be appropriate to the object of that affection. See here, we're getting into the problem of our sin nature. We're getting into the problem of our depraved heart. We're getting into the nature of our sinfulness, because what we naturally do is we take the affections that are only appropriate for God and we put them elsewhere. That's why the word love is so confusing and so difficult, and it only helps our sin nature, because I'm supposed to give God the greatest love that I have. Why? Because God is the greatest being. God is the most perfect being. God is the most lovely being. That's why he should have my greatest love. But I take that love that I have for God and I place it on other things. That's what makes me an idolater. That's what I must repent of. That's what I must fight against. But our natural state, that's what we do. We take that greatest love. We place it on other people. We try to find our ultimate satisfaction in our spouses or our children or in our friends. And we take that greatest love, we put it on stuff. We try to find our satisfaction in food or sex or entertainment. So you must be aware and conscious. And focus on our affections. What do we love? And we loving those things appropriately. When you look this morning, we're going to think about loving one another, and the focus here is on the church. The focus here is how the church and Christians are supposed to be loving one another. Now, there are texts in scripture where we can talk about loving those outside of the church, and there's other texts that talk about loving God more specifically, but our text this morning is about loving one another. But as we think about loving one another, we must see that it necessarily loving one another is only a fruit of loving God. We must have that proper understanding of what it means to love God or rather what it means for God to love us, and then we can properly think about what it means to love one another. It's actually in our text. Look at verse 16. How do you know love? It's because God. God laid down his life for us. If you want to see a definition of love, just start thinking about what it means to love one another. Look at how God has defined love. He laid down his life for us. Verse 23 does the same thing. There's two commandments. Believe in Jesus Christ, which in and of itself is an affection and love one another. You see, there's a cause and effect or there's a love and the fruit of that love. We don't just love one another. We're not just a. A community. We're not just a social club, we're not just here to gather for the purpose of hanging out with one another. No, we're here to encourage one another to love God. We're here to have fellowship. That's what true Christian love produces. And if we remember the context of this love, one another goes all the way back to chapter one. What is the purpose in which John is writing? Look at verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. Remember, we define fellowship as something very unique. Any fellowship is different from socializing with your friends. I could go around, I could talk about sports with you. I can talk about politics, I can talk about the latest weather happenings or whatever it is we could socialize, but that's not fellowship. Now, fellowship is a unique friendship that Christians get to enjoy because fellowship is enjoying Christ in one another. Fellowship is experiencing Christ in one another. See, I have the Holy Spirit in me. You have the Holy Spirit in you. As we talk and we talk about our convictions and we talk about the gospel, we talk about what God is doing us. That's fellowship. That's not talking about stuff. It's not passing the time by with casual, fun conversation. No, that's getting into each other's lives. And that is a big, major aspect, the beginning point. for us to understand what love is. Loving one another is experiencing Christ in one another. Loving one another is putting someone else above yourself. Loving one another is laying your life down for others. So the command is love one another. And as we look at the three reasons why we are to love one another, we'll start to flesh this out a little bit more. The three reasons why follow the paragraph breaks. Verses 12 to 15, verses 16 to 18, and verses 19 to 24. Those are the three reasons why the sections. We are to love one another because it gives us assurance that we have eternal life. Verses 12 to 15. We are to love one another because it allows us to identify with Christ's love for us. Verses 16 to 18. We're to love one another because it provides assurance when we are overwhelmed with guilt. Verses 19 to 24. The first reason, verses 12 to 15, love one another because it gives us assurance that we have eternal life. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death in a life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. Here John takes the most infamous murder in all of history. Here, John takes a very familiar story and use it as an illusion, an illustration as to what this command means or why we should believe in this command. He's very clear. Whoever knows, we know that we have passed out of death in the life because we love the brothers. But he's teaching why we should love the brothers by setting up the negative. Because if we murder, if we hate, we're clearly abiding in death. Now, let's look at this analogy he makes with Cain. Now, obviously, Cain and his brother Abel, there are two clear paths presented. Right, remember, Abel, he makes a sacrifice to God, he makes a sacrifice of the finest lamb. And then you have Cain, who gives some of his crops. And when Cain sees that God is happy with Abel's sacrifice, He starts to have envy. Envy starts to boil, envy turns to hatred, and then he acts upon that hatred and he kills his brother. It was interesting, as you heard Brian Teller, if you go back and look at it, God knows what's going on in Cain's heart. Remember, after the sacrifices take place, he tells Cain, be careful. Sin is lurking. It wants to devour you. And what God was referring to was that envy residing deep in his heart. But Cain did not listen to God. No, he he acts on his envy, he acts on his hatred and he commits murder. Now, if you look at this story, the in the analogy that John is wanting to do, the analogy really works in two ways in John's own teaching. The analogy of Cain and Abel works in two ways. One, the analogy teaches us this. You cannot hate your brothers and sisters if you are truly experiencing the love of God. If you have truly experienced the love of God, you can't hate and murder your brothers and sisters. You see, Abel got it. Abel worshipped God. Abel understood that he was the greatest being, so he gave him his greatest gift. But Cain looked at Abel. He saw that he did not worship God, that he did not enjoy this, that God did not take his offering in the same way. What's amazing about this is some of the context. Cain and Abel are the only two brothers on earth at this time. Cain and Abel are the only two men there. They're really dependent upon one another, aren't they? Cain and Abel, you would think, would have to be colleagues and work together. But here, Cain takes his should be best friend. He takes his life because he can't be thankful for him. He takes his life because he envies what he has. Now, to think about this for own life, let's think about it within the church. How much does envy reside within this body? How much does envy reside in your heart? Against someone else, how much do you look around the church and say, I wish I had what they had? I wish I had the family they had. I wish I had the job they had. I wish I had the spiritual gifts they had. You see, friends, envy is lying there, its desire is to overcome you and destroy you. Envy, if you let it sit there and fester and grow, it's going to grow to hatred. And while you may know you'll never take someone's life physically like Cain. God still sees that as sin. God counts hatred as murder. Friends, what we have to do is look at one another. Love one another by being thankful for what God has done for each of us. Not envy what God has done for each of us, but be thankful for what God is doing and has done for each of us. The second way this analogy works. You see this very clearly in verse 13, do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. Obviously, Cain is is used as an analogy for the world against believers represented by Abel. The world, that rebellious order against God, will hate you if you experience and express the love of God. Now, this isn't the feel good message of the morning you are looking for, is it? The world will hate you if you're a believer, why would you expect anything else? They crucified our savior. We intentionally are identifying with a man they killed. Why would they think they should welcome us in with a great celebration? Why would the world love us if they hated our king, our shepherd and our savior? But here's a real question. Why? Why would the world hate you? Why should the world hate you? Is it because we dress different? We drive differently? We talk differently? Why, why would the world hate us? I think it's this, I think we should be so clear in expressing the truth of God, we should be so clear in expressing our love for God that the world sees something different. They hear something different and they realize they don't have it. You see what that does is it's going to put Either the cornerstone or the tipping block in front of their feet. Think about those testimonies you heard last week with Claire and Nathaniel Bullard. They professed and they confess that they saw in other people something they didn't have, and the spirit could use that to continue to bring hatred towards that person or the spirit, thankfully, used it to convict them and to convert them and to transform them into confessing believers. See, why would the world hate you? Why should the world hate you? I believe we should be living such lives that express a love for God that the world sees it. How obvious is it to the world that you love God? But here's the thing, we should we could go down and we could serve soup. We could help the homeless, we could do good deeds and we should do these good deeds. But is that in and of itself a lone Christian ministry? I don't think so, because if we go out and we serve soup and we help the homeless, all that is doing is helping people in their physical needs. And the world looks at that and they actually applaud us. They will say, good job, good work. No, we should go down and we should serve soup and help the homeless proclaiming the gospel. Christians aren't just about doing good deeds. No, we're about proclaiming. Our love for God. We're about proclaiming the glory for God. We're most and foremost about proclaiming God's love for the world. And how he will judge the world, how he condemns the world. How Christ overcomes death and sin in the world. Don't get me wrong, we should be serving soup. We should be working alongside the world, but think about it. If that's all you're doing. The world's going to come alongside of you and love you. And if this is saying the world's going to hate us if we do Christian, if we live as Christians, that's not enough. No, we have to persevere. We have to persevere in proclaiming the gospel, even in spite of the hatred. As I think about applying this, there's three ways in which I think we need to persevere. First, persevere in the midst of the hatred. Maybe you feel anger, maybe you feel the hatred, maybe you feel hostility from a family member, from a co-worker, from a colleague. What you must do is continue to love that person. It's counterintuitive because it's against your sin nature. You have to persevere in the midst of the hatred. Now, if they're hating you for doing something evil, then that is appropriate hatred, possibly. But see, Peter says, let them hate you for doing what is good. Let them hate you for doing what is righteous. Let them hate you for loving God and expressing that love. And the greatest way you can show them the gospel is to persevere in loving them, loving those that express hate for you. And you really have to have a heavenly mindset to do that, don't you? Because what you have to do is realize that Experiencing hatred is hard. Experiencing hatred is difficult. If you remind yourself, your hope isn't in people, your hope isn't in being popular, your hope isn't in having a good reputation. No, your hope is in Christ. Your hope is in the one that was hated. Your hope is in the one that was crucified. And this is how we persevere. Secondly, we should persevere in glorifying God by loving others. Hate makes us as guilty as murderers. Hating one another makes us as guilty as others, and what we must do is persevere in glorifying God by loving one another. Now, if we're to think about our context again, look around. It's OK to actually turn your necks. Look around. Who is it that you envy? Who is it that you hate? Now, you may say to yourself, I don't. Feel such hate that I want to go over and physically harm someone, but who is it that you have a? Agree with who is it that you have? Ill feelings towards. For this is inappropriate for the church, this is inappropriate for the people of God. The world should be able to look into this body. And see the love of God be expressed in such a way that they're attracted to it. They may hate us for it, but they should see a love that is unique, they should see a love that drives us to confess our sins, to confess even our dislikes of one another. Which is the most of all that we have to persevere in grace. I have to realize. How much hatred resides in my heart? I have to realize how offensive that is to God. I have to realize the judgment and the wrath that should come down upon me personally because of my hatred, because of my envy, because of my murder. And after persevering grace. The grace that I receive from Jesus Christ. See, the more I understand how much I deserve to die. The more grace I'm wanting to give to others. Who hate me? Who envy me? Who seek to murder me? We must persevere in grace. We must persevere in always seeing every sin in light of the gospel. That is only Christ's atonement that appeases God's wrath. Friends, we must persevere in grace. We are not to be like Cain, who lets envy and hatred overcome him. No, we are to be like Abel. We are to love God. We are to realize that that sin needs to be conquered by God. It can only be conquered by his son, Jesus Christ. Our second reason why we are to love one another, verses 16 through 18. We're to love one another because it allows us to identify with Christ's love for us. By this, we know love that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but indeed in truth. Now, here we have the highest bar of love. God's love for us, the greatest lover, God himself is the bar by which we are to measure our own love for one another. We know love because he laid down his life for us and we are supposed to do the same for one another. What a weighty. Example. What a weighty and high calling that is a calling that we can't do it on strength, a calling that I think is only fulfilled if you look at the very last verse. If we abide in God, we abide in his spirit. Now, this is unusual love. This is superhuman love, this is beyond our strengths. Let's look at why it is the greatest love. Why is Jesus Christ dying on the cross and rising again? Why is it the greatest love? Well, first, it's the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus Christ made the ultimate sacrifice. First, he's God. And he took on flesh. He took on a nature lower than himself, he humbled himself to become like us in every way. More so than that, he took on a judgment that was not deserving of him. He took on wrath that was not due Him. Even further, He took wrath from God so that those who were His enemies would not have to suffer it. He took the wrath from God for those like us who were enemies of Him so that we would not have to suffer that wrath. That's great love. Some men might die for a friend, but who's going to die for an enemy? Who's going to die for his nemesis? Who's going to die for those who hate him? Only God himself, Jesus Christ. Even more so, Jesus Christ is the eternal son of the eternal father, they have had perfect. Communion with one another ever before the creation of the world. This is a deep, abstract concept, but it's the real God we worship. There's an eternal father and eternal son, and they've had perfect communion. Throughout eternity. And then there on that cross, the sun gave up that perfect communion, even if just for a moment. That eternal father gave up his communion, his relationship with the eternal son. The son sacrificed his relationship with the father. Why? So that we could enjoy being sons and daughters of God, he sacrificed his relationship with the father so that in his death and in his resurrection and by our faith in him. We can come in and be sons and daughters, children of God. It's the ultimate sacrifice because Christ gave up his life for his enemies. Christ gave up his most distinguished identifying marker as the son. So that we could come in. And enjoy life and a new life as the children of God. Secondly, it's the greatest love because it has the ultimate purpose. This is so much selfish to think about, but the ultimate purpose is to save us from our death. God created us to have life, God created us to live in eternity with him. God's purpose was for us to have life, God's purpose was for this world to be good. But we corrupted it, we brought in death. And it's a great sacrifice because it brings about the ultimate purpose and that it saves us from our own sins. It saves us from our own rebellion against him. And it gives us great hope. Finally, it's the perfect model. It's the ultimate model. Because he laid out his life for not just his friends, but those he would call friends. He laid out his life for his enemies so that we would then be called friends. So what does this mean for us and how we love one another? Well, to take words from Paul, as Jesus looked on the cross, he realized it was the only way we were going to be saved. He realized that it was the only way we could possibly be redeemed, delivered from death and sin. And so he looked at the cross and he realized it was going to cost him mightily. It's going to cost him greatly. What he did was he looked upon the cross and he considered our needs greater than his own. He looked at the cross and he saw that the sacrifice meant that he would have to consider us more important than himself. He would have to consider our needs more important than his own. He saw that we were hopeless and the only way we could be saved was through him. That's how we're supposed to love one another. We're supposed to look at one another and see that sacrificing. Is what we're supposed to be doing, we're supposed to be giving up ourselves, our time, our energy, our prayers, our mental strength, our mental time. And our gifts, our deeds, our things, we're supposed to be thinking not of how we can keep all these things for ourselves, but how we can give them away. To one another. Because this is the model we learned from Christ. John gets in a very explicit detail in verses 17 and 18. If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? How could you say you're a follower of Christ if you're not going to give up your bread and your water or your milk to those in need? He said there's a real need to show love in action. We must not just say, bless you, God will take care of you and then have a cupboard full of food to the hungry. No. When we see the hungry, specifically in the church, if we see real physical needs or let's go beyond that emotional needs or spiritual needs. We see needs in the church. And we're not willing to meet those needs. How can we confess to have Christ as our savior and our king? It's inconsistent. Makes us hypocrites. We must love in action. Not just say, bless you, the Lord will take care of you, but do whatever is in our power to take care of. Well, it's interesting he uses this illustration of just saying, bless you. And not giving food, but I I wonder if what we really need to hear this morning is we need to show our love in our words. I don't look out and see poverty. I know there's needs in the church. But I don't see the problem of seeing so many physical needs and people just saying, bless you. No, I think the problem may be how we use the tongue not to bless, but to curse. Think about your words. We must think about our words and how they've been used to build up the body. How they've been used to encourage and challenge brothers and sisters. And how they've been used to speak ill of other brothers and sisters. Let us show our love in our actions and in our words. Finally, why we should love one another, loving one another can provide assurance when we are overwhelmed with guilt. By this, we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him, for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. Whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He has commanded us. Whoever keeps His commandments abides in God, and God in Him. And by this we know that He abides in us by the Spirit whom He has given us. Now let's just walk through this verse by verse, because there's a tricky part here in this verse. We're going to have to get our thinking caps on again. Verse 19 is fairly clear by this, and by this he's referring to loving one another in word and deed. We shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. So what he's saying there is we can have assurance of our own salvation because we can evaluate the fruit of our lives. We can actually reassure our own hearts by being proactively obedient to God in obeying this commandment, love one another. Now, verse 20 is where it is actually a fairly difficult verse. For whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our heart and he knows everything. Now, how these three phrases all connect into one thought is it's interesting. The translation is OK. But basically, what I think John is saying here is for when our hearts condemn us, when our hearts are overwhelmed with guilt. When our hearts are saying, how can you have any assurance before God? Because you do realize the envy. Because you do realize the hatred. When our hearts condemn us. God is greater than our hearts. And he knows everything. What I believe he's saying here is that when we have hearts that condemn us. We must not trust the subjectivity of our hearts, but we must trust. The God who saves us, we must not trust, we must not trust what we experience. Because we realize we have pure, impure motives, no, we must trust God who knows everything. He knows our hearts. He knows our deeds, he knows who we are in Christ. Now, think about that. If our hearts are overwhelmed with guilt. We may think, how could God ever love me? How could God ever save a sinner like me? Remember this, God knows everything now. He knew everything before the foundations of the earth when he chose you. He knew everything when he was dying on the cross for you. He knows more than you do how sinful you are. He knows how hateful we can be. He knows how hateful we are. And yet he still chose to die for us. He still chose to rise again, give us a spirit and renew us. When our hearts condemn us, we must realize that God's strength, God's power, God's provision. Is greater than our own hearts. You see, this verse is sweet, even though somewhat complicated for those who are overlaid with guilt. For those who wrestle with assurance, wrestle with I don't love enough. This passage is for you. God knows you don't love enough. Thankfully, you loving enough isn't a prerequisite for you becoming a faithful Christian. No, recognizing you don't love enough is a prerequisite for you becoming a faithful Christian, recognizing you need Christ to forgive you for every action, for every desire, for everything. Blessed are the broken spirit, for there shall be the kingdom of God. You are lowly because you recognize your lowest state. That is a blessed place. Only. If in your loneliness you look up, And you see that God is greater, you see the power of God, you see the power of the gospel. So verse twenty one, he refer he now is speaking to a different group, beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God and whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. Here he's speaking to those who aren't overwhelmed with guilt. He's speaking of those who are obedient. And have assurance before God. And it's interesting here, he says, you can ask God anything and you'll receive it from him. Now, to stop, is this your your health, wealth and prosperity gospel? Does this mean that if I love you all, I can go ask for a Porsche? It would be nice. I don't think that's really what this passage is saying. I don't think we can say if we have enough obedient motives and desires in our life, then God will satisfy our sinful desires. That doesn't make sense. Now, I think the best way to look at this is, well, really the ethic that I try to follow. The ethic is simple. Love God, do what you want. Love God, do what you want. You see, we, by nature, are all going to do what we want. If we love God, we're going to want to do the things God wants us to do, if we love God, our desires and our wants are going to be conformed and transformed to be glorifying to him. But if we love ourselves, if we submit to the sin nature, if we submit to sinful desires, we're going to do what we want to be opposed to God, to be rebellious against God. See, I think about that ethic and I think about this promise. If I love God, I can ask for what I want. If I love God, I can ask what I want and he will grant it, because if I love God, if I'm following God, if I'm obedient to God, my desires and my wants are going to be conformed and transformed to his will. And when I pray, I'm praying the will of God. Now, I realize that's reading somewhat into the text, but that's the only way I can understand this because, again, it says, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him. It's not, let's do what pleases God so that He'll give us sinful desires. No, I believe it must be, let's do what pleases God and He will satisfy our godly desires. He will satisfy our godly requests. So verse twenty three, and this is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. So, again, going back to the very beginning of the book, this is the purpose. You have fellowship with the father if you believe in the son, if you believe in the son, you have a fellowship with the sons and daughters of God. These are the two you can you can. I read this. I see in this the two basic commandments love God. Love your neighbor. He is specifically for Christians, believe in Christ because he's your only hope. And love one another. Because our relationship to Christ is connected to one another. Whether we want to accept how complicated and difficult that it can be, our relationship to Christ is somehow connected to one another. Of course, I'm not going to be dependent upon you when I stand before the throne of God and have to make a confession of Christ. No, it's my confession of Christ. It's my proclamation of salvation. Christ gave us the church. Christ gave us one another so that we could learn from one another. Christ gave us one another so that I can experience Christ in you and you can experience Christ in me. The command to love one another means we confess our sins to one another because we trust that one another are armed with grace, armed with the gospel, armed with counsel and forgiveness. Let's close with our 24. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him, and by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. Now. We're going to close here in terms of the transition, because he is transitioning to the Holy Spirit. He established that he wants to seek our established our fellowship in the father and the son. Now, really, he's going to begin focusing the Holy Spirit, and it's just an appetizer for next week's sermon, where we'll look to what it means to abide in the Holy Spirit. Let's pray. Almighty God, we come before you. Your love is great. Forgive us, Lord, for taking the love that we should have for you alone. And seeking to the light and things of this world without love, forgive us, Lord, for not loving you above. and beyond all things. Forgive us, Lord, for loving your created things more than you, the Creator. Forgive us, Lord, for not loving one another in a way that expresses and enjoys your love for us. Help us, Lord, as a church to realize and understand the joy we can have in loving one another. Help us, Lord, to be willing to sacrifice To give up. To give up our comfort, to give up our goods, to give up our own entertainment, to give up our time for the benefit of the body, for the benefit of other believers. Help us, Lord, to see the gospel so clear and what you have done for us that we desire to give these things up as an expression of worship to you. I pray now that you would unify this body. Give us the harmony and the love and the peace and the unity that only Your Spirit can do. In Your name we pray, Amen.