Love! All Kinds but Each Needed!

 LOVE! God Created All kinds!                   Captain Kelly Durant   2-12-12

Scripture Verse: I John 4:7-22

There is a story about a little child about 10 years old who wanted to get something special for his mother for Valentines. He asked his friends at school what their Mommies usually got for Valentines and the other kids at school said, well, they usually saw them get fancy underwear. Well, the boy had saved $10 dollars and he went to the store with his Aunt and sneaked off to the Ladies department. He told the store clerk he wanted some underwear for his Mommy and she asked him what size.

The boy said, gee, I don’t know that, but he explained he that she is the most best and prettiest woman on earth! The lady in the store thinking she must be about the size of a model by his description gave him a medium size, thinking it was a good guess. Well, a few days later the clerk saw the boy again and he asked the lady to change the underwear. He found out after Valentine’s Day what her size was and what she needed an X-large! Well, when you love someone, you overlook their size, or any imperfection and you see them as beautiful! Right?

What we read makes it very clear that if you do not have love for your bother then you do not know God! I thought today we would speak reflect on the different kinds of love since we are close to Valentines Day and some people stop and reflect a little more on what love is. You may be familiar that the Greeks had different types of love, the love for God, pure spiritual love is Agape. Eros was the love between a man and a woman; and Philos is the love between brothers and family. Storge is the love between parents and children, and Xenia, the love for friends which is shown by hospitality.

Let’s examine each of these from the Bible. Even though the Greeks define it this way, love is something that includes everyone, all, but in a special way of showing it!

What is the first and greatest commandment as defined by God’s Son, Jesus? Let’s look it up.            Matt 22:37-40

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

To show our love towards God, we should be at all times loving Him by wanting to spend time Him with all of our heart and soul! We can show our love by reading and reflect on His Word daily, and by ‘praying without ceasing’. If we spend time with God then we will be full of His spirit and full of His Love!

The worst thing a Christian can do is to be out of touch with God, not praying, not reading his Word, and simply not loving Him! When you see another Christian being critical of others, complainy and rude, prejudice, and unloving then take note that they are not just letting their brothers down but they are actually offending God!

We must pray for them!  Your brothers & sisters here are made in the semblance of God and no one ever has a right to think they are better than, or of more importance than another person, because we show our love for God in the way we serve and treat one another! Jesus made it clear when He said that ‘if you have done it unto his servants, you have done it to God’. Matt 25:40

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Love begets love!

Those Christians who truly love God are those that love the most and they are the most humble and happy and willing to do anything at anytime for anybody! So when we talk about loving God, which is the same as loving your neighbor, we also are talking about setting aside a special time for Him, a time to pray and a time to learn from His Word because how can we know Him without learning about Him?

It would be like comparing say, Kevin, or any single person here, who may have said I have a new girlfriend now and her name, is say, Lisbeth. So one day a  few months years later I ask Lisbeth, How is it going with Kevin? And she says, well, he rarely talks to me excepts when he needs something, I wrote him a whole bunch of love letters so he would know all about me, but he obviously hasn’t read them because he doesn’t answer me.

He does come to see me on Sundays though, but even then He only visits an hour!?

Do you see how God must feel when we are not close to Him & love Him back?

We love God by honoring His presence in our lives in every minute in everyday and in every decision we make, amen?

When we talk about Agape love, we are talking about an emotional happiness like having a feast with one another, no that is loving God and one another with God’s love. Let’s look up John 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Philios is the love for brothers and sisters. I know it is impossible to be friends with everyone here in the Corps but if we really have a Divine love of God for one another, we will do our best to connect with, and have love for everyone the same.

Here in the US there is a city with the name Philadelphia and that means it is the city of brotherly love. The Philios part means the love towards our brothers. Thank God that our Christian forefathers of this country tried to set up a good standard to live by, but the reality today is that it is just another big crime filled city like so many in the world.

Many of us here wear the same uniform, and uniform or not as Christians we are in the same heavy battle together against the evil and sin in the world! Love, which is more than just a handshake, is giving a helping hand to someone in need.

How many of you have helped your brothers here with a ride, food money, or a job? Those that do that are practicing the love we preach and believe in and living as Christ! If we know about a person here without a job, or a place to live we should be as concerned for them as we would be for our selves! God’s love for another always has them in mind to help them obtain what they need.

I will confess several times I have suffered and even cried because I did not have the means to help another person with what they needed. A few years ago I remember a case when I was asked to help a young woman who is now paralyzed for life in a wheelchair due to the drunk coyotes who were bringing her across the dessert from Mexico crashed the vehicle and she got crushed inside.

She can’t get federal aid and she stayed with an unemployed friend with no means to help her! What I can only do at times is pray for others of the church or in the world and many many times I have seen God answer and supply for them when I could not do anything personal!

Love should cause us to love one another, pray for one another, and to be caring friends with one another, knowing each other’s spiritual needs and faults, and we must help one another to grow and live a higher standard in God’s Love! Amen?

And what about the Eros love which is exhalted on Valentine’s Day? It is the intimate love God intended for a man and a woman to have for one another. God made us to be attracted to the opposite sex and the Bible even praises human relations as a gift from God. Let’s look up Song of Solomon 1:2 (Read this on Valentine’s Day)

2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. (We will stop there because that is enough, right? Ha Ha!)

              

Relations inside a marriage covenant was made to be very pleasureful! Those that do not have God’s love have a serious problem though because they want intimate relations without including the One who created it! God commanded rules concerning man and woman relationships that protect us from harm and diseases, and all relationships include responsibilities with privileges, right?

The intimacy that two human beings have is not just physical, but mental, and spiritual! And it is an example or reflection of the deep love Christ wants us to have for Him because we are compared to be His bride. Rev. 21:9. But those that violate God’s standard miss the blessing of obtaining a true Love and a true relationship, and they reap the consequences of a low self esteem, a heavy conscience, and a burned bitter and cold heart towards the opposite sex and humanity!

Romantic love can be very beautiful and make your heart pound with great joy! And for those who are married, I pray you are being Romantic and ‘being special’ with your mate having a close communication and relationship! It is nice we set aside a Valentine’s Day to help us to remember to be nice and special to our mates or girlfriends but what must hurt God is to see so couples together with a love that is dead, without communication, beauty, or passion.

The wrong way is when the man works all week and then parties with his buddies on the weekend, and his poor wife gets stuck alone with the kids and the dirty laundry! If that is your case God’s knows your suffering, and we should talk about it to see how to make things better!

However, we do see a lot of families out together on Sundays and that makes me very happy to see especially those who come to our church Corps!

Storge is the love between parents and children, and it is sad that today many people suffer due to a loss of love between their family members. This is happening due to sin, selfishness, jealousy, and unthankfulness playing a big role in this society of dog eat dog. As Christians we must fight to exalt the families we know and support them!

Xenia is the love for friends which are quests and this is shown by hospitality. I am sure we all have had quests in our homes and it is a love that is done by serving another.  There are some people who almost never practice this type of love, but you should try it.

In the end love is what we reap if it is what we sew. When I open my doors, others will open their doors for me, right?  

God has a great plan for us and that plan is to transform humanity with His Love!

If we as Christians would just obey and love God and our neighbor in the radical way He intended then there would be no more selfishness and more wars, no more hunger because we would all share equally, no more prejudice and crime since we would all “do unto others as we would like to have done unto ourselves” and this earth could be a paradise with all of us living by the standard of God’s love!

How beautiful that would be!  And how is the love of God? God manifested His love to us through Jesus, and His way of communicating love was to sacrifice His life in order to give each of us eternal life!

Don’t get it wrong, so many people think that love is a feeling, a passion, a bunch of chemicals at work in our body, or an ideal that is an illusion, but we as Christians all know love is that and more than that: It is a sacrifice, a total giving of one’s self to serve God and others.

God created all the different kinds of love but in reality they are all the same, they involve deep emotions, passion, sacrifice, suffering, and the total giving of your self!

How much do you love? It will be apparent by the things you do and the way you live! How much you love will determine how much you are loved back! Have you accepted Jesus, God’s gift of Love to you?  Do you want true love in your life?  

Let’s pray….