Loving The Church
First15 Devotional
First15
4.9 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2020
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we wrap up our week on loving people, we look today at how we can love the Church as God does. Jesus says we will be known by the way we love each other. Would people know you’re a Christian by the way you love your brothers and sisters? People are messy, it’s true. We all are. And yet Jesus saw our worth and loved us in the midst of our messiness. How can you mimic that same love today as you seek to love his Church? Today we’ll look at the perspective and affections of Jesus for his people. May our hearts and minds be transformed as a result.
Our Scripture for today comes from John 13:35, and today's worship is Broken Vessels (Amazing Grace) by Hillsong Worship feat. Taya Smith.
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Live a life marked by faith.
The Bible has so much to say about our faith. And if I’m being honest, a lot of it is really confusing.
In Matthew 21 Jesus tells us that we’ll receive anything we ask for, if we have faith. Hebrews 11 tells us that it’s impossible to please God if we don’t have faith. 2 Corinthians 5 tells us that it is by faith that we “see” the path forward, and not with our physical sight.
But when I look into my own heart, I come face to face with ways I doubt on a daily basis.
I often trust in my own strength, lean on my own understanding, and seek to provide for myself with my own power rather than relying on the strength, empowering, and provision of God.
But, I also know that simply trying to have more faith doesn’t work either.
This is why I wrote a four-week devotional, Faith, to unpack what the Bible says about living a life marked by an authentic faith.
Faith isn’t something we muster up on our own. It’s not something we produce or create. Faith is the natural response to seeing, experiencing, and believing in God’s faithfulness.
And the pathway to greater faith is greater experience, greater understanding, and a true heart-knowledge of God’s faithfulness to us that guides our thoughts, emotions, and actions.
We've launched Volume 6 of our First15 Devotional Series, Faith, created to guide you into transformative experiences with God’s faithfulness and empower you to start living a life marked by authentic faith.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | As we wrap up our week on loving people, we look today at how we can love the church as God does. |
| 0:11.0 | Jesus says that we will be known by the way we love each other. |
| 0:16.0 | Where people know that you're a Christian, by the way that you love your brothers and |
| 0:19.8 | sisters. People are messy, it's true, we all are, and yet Jesus saw our worth and loved us |
| 0:26.5 | in the midst of our messiness. |
| 0:29.1 | How can you mimic that same love today as you seek to love his church. Today we'll look at the |
| 0:35.2 | perspective and affections of Jesus for his people. May our hearts and minds |
| 0:39.9 | be transformed as a result. Welcome to the First of Team Podcast. Our verse today comes from John 1335. Jesus says, by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. |
| 1:07.0 | The words of Jesus in Matthew 69 radically change the way that God's people are to relate to Him. |
| 1:15.7 | Scripture says, pray then like this, our Father in Heaven, |
| 1:19.9 | Hallowed be your name. |
| 1:22.6 | Through Jesus, we now come before God as his child. |
| 1:26.5 | And because God is our father, fellow believers are now |
| 1:29.7 | our spiritual family. |
| 1:32.0 | Other disciples of Jesus are our brothers and sisters. |
| 1:35.8 | And Church is now a spiritual family reunion designed to be centered around the love and |
| 1:41.5 | goodness of our father. |
| 1:44.0 | First Jean 3 1 says, |
| 1:47.0 | See what kind of love the father has given to us |
| 1:50.0 | that we should be called children of God and so we are. |
| 1:55.0 | We've been brought into fellowship with one another because God loves us. |
| 1:59.0 | We're children of God because he longs to have the relationship of a father and his children |
... |
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