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"Transformed Relationships: Love" John 13:33-34
by Clancy Nixon
October 23, 2005
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
For the last two weeks, we've been looking at the three greatest fruit of the Spirit:
faith, hope, and love. The Apostle Paul tells us that the greatest of these is love. This is
love week! Faith, hope, and love: these three lead to transformed lives, transformed
future, transformed relationships. We serve a God who changes lives radically. I know
that God's love changed me! When God moves in to our lives, and takes up residence in
us, we get an extreme makeover; we are regenerated, born again; we become different
people than we were before. Amen? Paul said this: "If anyone is in Christ, [he is a] new
creation! The old has gone the new has come!" Well, not exactly that: Paul got so
excited when he wrote about our transformation that he left out the verb in the Greek!
Literally, he wrote this: "If anyone is in Christ, New creation!" Christianity is a religion
of conversion, of transformation. When we tell our faith stories to people, we say how it
is that God changed us. It's important to say that God loves us just as we are, that's true.
But God loves us too much to leave us there. He is always wooing us to come up higher,
to love others as He loves us.
I'd like James Craft to come forward to tell his story of how God's love changed
him. James has been leading our Junior High Sunday school for two years now, and the
Jr. High now meet on Saturday evening with the Senior High... [James' testimony
follows at the end of this text]
When James was in eighth grade, he searched for acceptance and love until he
found it. Then he let God change him. God changed James Craft from a fearful victim
into a mighty man of God! What a selfless servant in a strategic ministry. As a matter of
developmental psychology, the age at which American children are most likely to receive
Christ is sixth grade, or about 12 years old. If you're serious about making disciples,
you'll consider youth
ministry. Please join me in asking God to raise up women youth volunteers who have a
heart for teenagers, who are serious about making disciples, to work alongside Amir,
Tony and James.
When you change, your relationships change. You may ask, how can I change so
that my relationships can be transformed? Better yet, how do I open myself to God, so
that He can change me? You can start in your mind. Repentance means to change your
mind. You can decide to relinquish your own will; to kill your self-will. C.S. Lewis said
that there are three kinds of persons in the world. (From "Three Kinds of Men") The first
class of men is composed of those who live only for their own pleasure. Other people
and things are regarded only as raw material to be cut up into whatever shape suits them.
The second class of person does acknowledge some other claim on them, such as the
good of society, or the will of God. This type honestly tries to pursue their own interests
no further than these claims allow. They try to surrender to the higher claim as much as it
demands, like paying a tax, but hope, like other taxpayers, that what is left will be enough
to live on. The third class of people is those who can say with St. Paul that for them "to
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live is Christ." Now listen carefully to Lewis: "These people have got rid of the tiresome
business of adjusting the rival claims of self and God by the simple expedient of rejecting
the claims of self altogether... The will of Christ no longer limits their will; it is their
will."
You may say, Clancy, that sounds noble and all, but how do I get there? How can
I totally forget myself, so that I will only what Christ wills?
If you want transformed relationships, you need a transformed personality. If you want a
transformed personality, you meet the living God in a powerful way that transforms your
life. First, you bow the knee and make Christ the Lord of your life, relinquishing your
own rights, your own opinions, and deciding in advance to do it his way. This is an
essential step. Many people have made this decision, but they still don't see the radical
change that they long for in their lives. It takes a long time to work through Lordship
issues. We bow the knee daily.
Most of us need even more than this decision to
see thoroughgoing transformation. We need our hearts circumcised; we need our hearts
of stone removed. We need God to give us a new heart of flesh. We receive God's love
in our hearts, and our hearts learn by experience. James needed to experience God's love
in order to know that God loves him. You and I need to experience God's love so we
know that God loves us. We need an encounter with God; a mountaintop experience, a
burning bush, a baptism in the Holy Spirit, a consecration moment, where you know that
you know that you know that God loves you, even you; God is powerful; God has a plan
for you; and that God is empowering you to live that plan.
If you want transformed relationships, seek God;
seek his glory; seek his face. Go to the mountaintop in prayer, wrestle with God like
Jacob, and don't let go until he blesses you. I still remember the place at Calvary Camp
where I rededicated my life to Christ a little dip in the ground where I fell on my face
and met God. When you have met God like that, you mark that experience somehow;
maybe with a pile of rocks, like the army of Israel after they crossed the Jordan on dry
ground - that is your Ebenezer. Like James Craft, you can hold on to that memory, and to
that empowerment. When the Lord sets you free you will be free indeed.
Listen to this scripture: "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another." (1 John 4:10-11) Notice that: Since God loved us
first, we ought to love one another. Jesus does not expect that we will love one another
until we have already seen the depth of God's love for us. Without a prior, life
transforming experience of God's love for us, we will be ill-equipped to love anyone else.
In our own flesh, we can't love others the way Christ loves us. When we receive God's
love for us, that love becomes a fountain overflowing from our lives, transforming all our
relationships.
Before I met Christ, I was like that bully who hurt James. I never hurt anyone
physically, but when I was a boy, I used to cut people with words of sarcasm and
condescension. I learned it at my mother's knee. It was not until I had an overwhelming
experience of God's love for me at Calvary Camp that I was able to love people who
were not easy to love. Jesus said, "If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a
bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you
expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that." Matthew 5:46-47 (Msg.)
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Let's say this together: "God's love changed me." Turn to someone near you, not
a family member, and introduce your self. Go ahead and do that now. Now that you have
found a non-family member, tell them one quick way that God's love changed you. No
more than two sentences. Something specific like this: "God's love changed me by...
healing my chronic foot pain and letting me run again...or by helping me to forgive my
mother for leaving my dad." You don't have to say anything terribly personal, and if this
is not your cup of tea, or maybe God's love has not changed you yet, you don't have to
say anything at all. Just listen. Go ahead and do that. The key to transforming your
relationships is to be transformed by God's love.
God can transform your heart in gradual ways, too. Let's say you do a searching
moral inventory of your life, and you discover that you really don't love other Christians
as Jesus commands you to do in John 13:34. A mistake that is easy to make is to think
that because our hearts are not radically changed through some encounter with God, and
we don't really feel love toward others, that we are dead in the water until God moves in
some mighty way. The truth is that feelings are not the basis of faith, not the basis of
hope, and feelings are not the basis of love. Love is an action verb. If you don't feel love
toward someone, then act as if you did. Your heart will be slowly transformed as you
love her. Lewis said, "If you injure someone you dislike, you'll find yourself disliking
him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less." Instead
of waiting to care caring for someone until you have a soft heart for them, just serve them
until your heart softens. I know people who wish that they had a bigger heart for world
mission, or a bigger heart for people in places like Uganda. They just think they should
care about world mission more than they do. The best way I know to get a heart for
Ugandans is just to go there and serve them. Come with me the next time I go.
Who wants to see their relationships changed for the better, transformed? [Raise
hand] Everyone. We'd all like to get along better with our children, our siblings, our
parents, our friends. We'd like a better marriage. We often pray that God would change
the people around us so that our relationships would be transformed. I've heard husbands
say that their marriages would be better if only their wives would...you can fill in the
blank. Keep the kids in line; Cook better; submit more; or make real money. I've heard
wives say that their marriages would be better if only their husbands would... you fill in
the blank. Make more money; talk about their emotions; take spiritual leadership in the
home. We need to be attentive to what we are doing to improve a relationship, not at
what the other person is not doing. First Peter says that husbands are to love their wives,
and wives are to respect their husbands. Husbands, are you loving your wives? If you
are, then they are more likely to respect you. Wives, are you respecting your husbands?
If you are, then they are more likely to love you. Reminding your mate of their
responsibilities rarely helps.
Love looks a lot like service. Dennis Bowne, who came to Christ on Alpha and
through our community, has learned a lot about love. He encountered God through the
love of a small group. He was a servant to Jeremy Hall at a time of need in his life.
Jeremy is blind, and he was laid off from his job at Worldcom about 18 months ago.
Dennis was in Jeremy's home group, and Dennis helped Jeremy in his interview process.
Over a few months, Dennis drove Jeremy to many interviews during the workday, and
waited for Jeremy to complete them, so Dennis could drive him home. Dennis has a full
time job, but he arranged his schedule around Jeremy's needs. That is what love looks
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like. Jesus said, this is how all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love
one another.
At John 13:34, Jesus said he gave us a "new" commandment: love one another.
Now the commandment had been given before we must not think that the law of love
was not part of the law of Moses, because it was. Leviticus 19:18 says, "You shall love
your neighbor as yourself." What was new was that this law was now given higher honor,
and was backed by a better example, Jesus himself, that it had ever been before. Jesus
said that we are to love one another as he loved us. What does this mean? Here in John
13, the most immediate referent example of that love is Jesus washing their feet. Jesus
showed them that his love was a servant love. Jesus washing Peter's feet must be seen
through the lens of Jesus' ultimate washing, his sacrificial death, washed in his own
blood, which cleanses us from our sins. What great love and mercy God has shown to us.
While we were yet sinners, He loved us, and gave himself a ransom for many. God's
love changed the world; God's love changed you and me. Let's pray.
The Testimony of James Craft
When I was in sixth grade, I lost all my friends. They were popular and into sports, and
since I wasn't `as cool as them,' I was ditched and abandoned. No one would talk with
me. No one would befriend me. I was alone in school and that made me an easy mark
for bullies. Walking to class was hellish for me, getting taunted and laughed at wherever I
went. I always sat alone at lunch and soon felt alone and worthless. When I saw someone
else getting picked on by an eighth grade wrestler, I stood up to him, only to have the
bully sit next to me on the bus ride home. He bashed my head into the side of the bus,
denting the inside and giving me a concussion. My grades were low; I had serious
thoughts of suicide. I was transferred to another school.
My parents knew that we needed to find a church where I could be cared for and loved.
The first church we tried failed. The kids refused to talk with me, and on a trip to New
York, I slept in the corner, cold and alone. I was apathetic, sad, and frustrated with the
world and God. It wasn't until I went to Christ the Redeemer in Centreville, another
Truro church plant that things changed. I was in eighth grade then. My parents had to
convince me to go to Youth Group, where I met Jay Bevers, an older student who talked
with me, and really cared about me, and he even prayed for me. During that prayer, for
the first time in my life, I felt the Holy Spirit moved in my body and I was changed. I was
able to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, seemingly showing that God was there... And
He was there for me.
For the first time, I felt someone outside my family truly cared about me. I felt loved, a
love that would remain steadfast regardless of my past, regardless of my weakness,
regardless of my status. It was an unconditional love. The Youth Group and loving
mentors taught me how to show that love toward others. Knowing that there were other
kids in my same situation, I felt a calling into Youth Work when I entered college, where
I was able to share that transforming love toward middle school kids.
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At a Middle School youth event, a kid brought a troubled friend. While he distanced
himself at first, I sensed the pain and trouble coming from the boy, and it seemed akin to
what I felt in the past. I soon found out by talking with him that he was surprisingly like I
was in sixth grade; his grades were failing and he felt that no one loved him or cared
about him. I was able to share how I was in that same situation where I felt no one cared
about me either, as well as tell him of how Jesus would love him no matter what. An
hour of talking and sharing later, he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior! Had I been in
high school, or middle school, I would have never talked with him, or never been able to
offer him hope. But with a God who was able to love and change me, I was able to tell
others of hope in Jesus and that he could do the same with them.
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