June 23, 2024 - How to Experience a Love That Will Change Your Life - Pastor Paul Vallee

Transitions in life are extremely painful but necessary for new chapters to begin. Jesus knows his time was at hand in the final week of his earthly life. He knew he was about to leave; therefore, in John chapters 13-17, he is preparing his disciples for his death and resurrection and their new role in God’s kingdom. Jesus knows there will be sorrow before joy will be restored. Jesus will be leaving them, but another comforter will come and empower them to take on a greater role in the life of the new institution which we call the church, God’s called-out people. In this introduction, we see how Jesus models how we ought to love and serve one another. Yet, there is a need to define a term that we think we understand, but is often abused and loses its fundamental meaning, which is the word love. If we look at the biblical definition of God’s kind of love, we will discover that it is a self-giving action. But love is not a wimpy idea of letting people do whatever they want, as if that is the loving thing to do. Paul describes love as a church that tolerated sin and thought that meant they were loving. Listen to how he describes the nature of love. Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy; it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others; it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (1 Corinthians 13:4-6) Jesus, in this chapter of John, is going to address some of the unloving issues that the disciples were struggling with, pride, self-seeking behavior; that needed to be exposed and addressed for them to mature into the kind of leaders that the early church would desperately need.