Romans 12, 9 through 13, that love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil and cling to what is good, be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Give preference to one another

in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer,

contributing to the needs of the Saints, practicing hospitality.

In recent weeks I have talked about love your neighbor as you love yourself. Take your skin, pull your skin off,

painful as it may be, wrap it around another person, so you see yourself in that other person with all of your

longings, all of your needs, all of your cravings all your pain and treat yourself the way you want to be treated in that other person.

And we talked about loving not just our neighbor as we love ourselves. We've talked about loving our enemy.

Pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you, do good to those who

despitefully use you, do not return evil for evil, but good. Now this morning, I don't know whether to call

it harder or not, but for some of you it don't sound harder for me, it sounds harder.

I want to call you to love the people in this room and other Christians that you know with

tender, heartfelt, fervent, affection.

This is different.

This is more. This is different than doing nice things for them.

This is different than returning good for evil.

This is different even than praying for them. It's different even

than blessing those who curse you. All of those are actions that you do with your

mouth or do with your mind or do with your hands or do with your

arms.

I'm now calling you to do something with your heart and your emotions and with your feelings called love with tender affection.

Now it is true that love is more than a feeling. It is true that love is more than a feeling

and that when you don't feel good feelings towards somebody you should still do good things for them. If it lies within your power to do a right and kind and

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