Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: We're going to talk about loving God. We're going to talk about loving other people. We're going to talk about how to receive that love, know that we're loved because unless we know we're loved by God, there is no way we can love anybody else. And this follows the theme of life that works. We've been talking about the fabric of people's lives unraveling because they need the divine weaver to put them back together again.

And with the power of His life within them, as we receive His life, we have the power to change, to follow, to trust, to serve, to pray, to stand, to care, to love, and to finish. We're going to turn right to the end of John's Gospel to chapter 21. Let's read the passage of scripture.

Afterwards, Jesus appeared again to His disciples by the Sea of Tiberius. Now it happened this way: Simon Peter from Capernaum in Galilee, the son of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. "I'm going out to fish," Simon Peter told them. And they said, "We will go with you." Now this begins the story of how they went out to fish and caught nothing, and in the morning, in the dawn light, in the mist, Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, appears on the shore.

And He calls to them and He says, "Have you any fish?" And they say, "No." And He says, "Cast the net on the other side of the boat." And they catch this huge catch of fish. In fact, they counted them, 153. That's what it says. 153 large fish. And as soon as that happened, John says to Peter, "It's the Lord."

Now, why did he say that? Because it takes you right back to the beginning of the story, doesn't it? In Luke chapter 5, where they toiled all night and caught nothing, and Jesus took Peter out in a boat and said, "Put your net down on this side of the boat," and they caught the huge catch of fish. It was obvious that Jesus did this miracle for a sign to underline the fact it was Him. And so they pulled the fish to shore, except Peter, being impetuous Peter, off he goes over the side again. He didn't walk on the water, he swam to shore. And when the other disciples got there, there was Simon Peter and Jesus talking together.

"Come and have breakfast," Jesus said to them, verse 12. "None of the disciples dared ask Him, 'Who are you?'" Now that's strange, isn't it? None of the disciples dared ask Him, "Who are you?" Well, it was Jesus, wasn't it? Did He look a little different? Apparently. Apparently. Two disciples walking with Him on the road to Emmaus, didn't recognize Him.

Till He broke bread, and even then they realized it was the Lord, and He vanished out of their sight. They didn't dare ask, was it the Lord? They knew it was the Lord. He looked different. He was the same, but different. I suppose when you're resurrected, you do look the same, but different. But that was the case here. "Who are you?" They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.

Again, a familiar token, something that reminded them of what had gone before in their relationship with Him, before the cross and the resurrection. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to His disciples after He was raised from the dead. When they'd finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you truly love Me more than these?" "Yes, Lord," he said, "You know that I love You." Jesus said, "Feed My lambs." Again Jesus said, "Simon, son of John, do you truly love Me?" He answered, "Yes, Lord, You know that I love You." Jesus said, "Take care of My sheep." The third time He said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?" Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time. "Do you love Me?" He said, "Lord, You know all things. You know that I love You." And Jesus said, "Feed My sheep." "I tell you the truth, when you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted. But when you're old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then He said to him, "Follow Me."

Jesus began with Peter with those two words, "Follow Me." And before the ascension and before He goes to heaven, He ends His conversation with Peter with those two words. "Follow Me." He really asked Peter three things. Peter, will you follow Me? Peter, do you love Me? And Peter, will you die for Me? And basically, those are the three things that Jesus Christ asks us today as disciples of Him. Will we follow Him? Will we love Him? Will we die for Him? Will we die for Him?

Now, let's look into this passage and find out how we can apply it to the subject of loving God and loving each other. Now, there are many definitions around today of what love is. I remember being on an airport somewhere quite a few years ago now. I was writing a book on love, different types of love and all of that. And I was intrigued to find on one of the airport's little cards that you could send to people. And at the top of the card rack it said, "Love is." And I was intrigued, certainly since I was getting the messages ready, and I thought, 'Well, I wonder what they think love is.' So I went and I bought a few of those cards. I have no idea what I did with them. I just used them as visual aids. But I do remember two of them that really struck me. One of them said, "Love is a warm puppy." That was strange. "Love is a warm puppy." Well, I think it's a whole lot more than a warm puppy. And the other one I remember is, "Love is never having to say you're sorry." "Love is never having to say you're sorry." It's amazing what people think love is. Actually, the grandest adventure of all begins with saying, "I'm sorry." And so I would heartily disagree with whoever it was that thought up all those definitions of what they believed love was.

Now, I think the love of God, and the Bible states and reveals that the love of God has its roots, its beginnings, its dynamic start in the love of God itself. There is no way you can love anybody else until you've figured that out. Now, there are psychologists and doctors and theologians and social workers that all agree on one thing, that if a human being is not mature enough and healthy enough to be able to give and receive love, then they're not going to be complete and have a complete human experience. That is a fact, and it's not just religious people that believe that, and it's not just Christians that believe that. If we have been damaged in our relationships growing up, if we have been starved of love, if we have been rejected, if we have had our love trampled all over, if we are deficient in the ability to receive love and to give it. We will not live whole lives. We will not live whole lives. And when I think of those little cards trying to say what love is, I think of the Bible as a great big card from God. And He really says, "You know, if you want to know what love is, read My card. Read My letter, My love letter to you, for the Bible is God's love letter to human beings, to the human race." And it tells us what love is, how to love, what spoils love, what fuels it, and how you and I can experience it. It is love that makes the world go around, that makes life work. And haven't you heard the saying, "Stop the world, I want to get off"? Well, people say that when love has stopped, when somebody stopped loving them perhaps, they want to get off. Because it is love in a sense that makes the world go around. You know, women live their lives in their relationships. And if your relationships are going well, you're going well. And if they're not, you're not going well. And so it's a pretty important subject. So what is love? 1 John 4 states, "God is love." God is love. So what does God look like then? How can I know what love looks like? Where do I look to see love? Look in the manger. That's where you begin. Look in the manger. "For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life." Won't perish, but have eternal life. So you look in the manger. If you want to see where love is, you look in the manger. And then you look at the cross. If you want to see where love is and what love is, then look at the cross. Look in the manger and look in the cross. That is an example of God's love, God's sort of love, love God style, being primarily concerned with the other's well-being irrespective of the cost to itself. And that is a definition of agape love, the word that's used in the Bible to describe the love of God. The love of God. Years ago, as I struggled to know what to say to a whole bunch of refugees who had just come out of total trauma and were sitting in a church, and I found myself in the position of needing to address them. I simply tried to tell them the story of Jesus, how when He was a baby, the soldiers came and chased Him, and He became a refugee, just like they had become a refugee. And then as He began to grow up and He got into His ministry, He became homeless, just like they were homeless. And they began to identify with all the points of the Gospel as I tried to step my way in the story of Jesus through the Gospel. And then we got to the cross and I pointed out that He hung there naked on the cross, not like the pictures show, but they stripped Him of everything. That was part of the indignity that they used to perpetrate on crucifixion victims. And they understood that too. They understood that too. And then I said, "You know something, some of those things have happened to you or your daughters or your husbands just yesterday, last week, last month, last year." And if you could have stopped it, you would. If we could have stopped it, we would. But we couldn't. Jesus knew what they were going to do to Him, and He still came. So look in the manger. Look at the cross. And let me tell you why. Knowing what they would do, and that He could stop it happening simply by not coming, He still came because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. So if you want to see a demonstration of love, you look at Christ, you look at His life, you look at His birth, you look at His ministry, you listen to His words. You watch Him healing, helping, bringing life out of deadness, healing to broken hearts and hope to hopeless people, speaking to the oppressed and the poor and the prisoner. You look at Christ. God is love. And so establishing a loving relationship with Him is the first step in experiencing some of this love in all its dimensions for ourselves, a love that makes life work. First of all, then, we have to learn to love God back. And you do that by responding to what I've just said. Responding to the love of God demonstrated in the manger and the cross. "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God?" says John in his letter. "How great is the love of the Father that He has lavished," I love that word, "lavished on us." That we should be called the children of God. And as many as received Him, He says in His Gospel, to them gave He what? Power to become the children of God. God lavished His love on us. Even though we weren't interested in Him, even though we rejected Him, even though He knew what we'd do to Him, He still came because He loved us. Irrespective of our response or reaction. And that's the sort of love He wants us to experience for ourselves. We need to respond to it. If we're going to love God back, we need to understand that. Now, in my mom and dad's day, things were different when you fell in love. You, in the English word, we used courting, not dating, and there was a sort of little difference. Courting, you chose who you would court or go out with, as we used to put it, and then you stuck with them until it either developed into something permanent or it didn't, and then you mutually agreed to go and court someone else, but you didn't sort of swap around from here, there and everywhere. And my dad met my mom, I don't know where they met. She had just come down from Scotland, she was Scottish, and she worked in a factory. She worked in an ironing factory. She ironed for a living. And my dad, at the age of 17, very independent, swore he would never work for anybody but himself. And he started knocking on doors, and asking if he could mend bicycles, and then mend cars, and then he brought them to his little garage in Bootle, Liverpool. And he mended, and he grew, and he became a little business, and he ended up the biggest motor trader in the north of England. He was very, very successful. But he met my mom, and he fell in love with her. And she did not like him. She did not like him one little bit. And he begged her, "Please go out with me, Peggy. Please go out with me." And she said, "No, I don't, I'm not even interested." And in the end, he said to her, "Give me six months." "Would you do that, just to be fair to me? Would you give me six months, and I promise you at the end of six months, if you want never to see me again, I will not pester you ever again. I promise you that, I'll give you my word." And so she said, "Well, all right." And he courted her for six months. And the six-month deadline came, and he took her out for dinner, and he said, "I promised you that if you wanted to say, 'Get lost,' that I will, and I will never bother you again." And she said to him, "I can't imagine life without you." She loved him because he first loved her. And we are going to know love for God if we give Him a chance. If we allow Him to lavish His love, understand who He is, hang our hearts over this book, and try to fathom out God, and what He's about, and how He thinks, and who He is, and what it all means. You'll come to the point that my mom came to with my dad, and you won't know how to live without Him. The Bible says, "We love Him because He first loved us." And He just wants that chance for us to respond to Him. And loving God back begins with that. You have to be intent on giving Him a chance to get His hands on you and tell you how much He loves you. And it's as He tells you, as He shows you, as He demonstrates, and I have no idea how He'll do that, He'll do it in His own individual way with every single one of you, because you're different and you're individual. But He will do it. If you ask Him to. "Show me how much You love me, Lord." Is a wonderful place to start, and a very simple prayer that all of us can pray.

So, loving God back begins with being willing to let Him tell you about His love, show you His love. And once, of course, that happens, and you do figure out, "I can't live without Him. This is going to be a marriage, if you wish. This is going to be a lifelong and eternal long relationship that we're going to have together." Then our next concern, our next concern is loving Him first, above everybody else. Loving Him first. Because God says, "I want you to love Me first. It's the first commandment, the most important commandment." Jesus said, "is love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength." That's all that's left of you. Everything that you are and have, God says, "Now, I don't want you just to love Me back, responding to what I have done in love for you. I want you to love Me first."

Now, what does it mean to love God first? It means that loving God back takes precedent over all other loving that we do. All other loving that we do. Matthew 10:37, "Anyone who loves his son, daughter, more than Me, is not worthy of Me. Anyone who doesn't take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me." Luke 14:26, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, yet even his own life, he cannot be My disciple." Now, many people have said, "That is the weirdest thing. I don't believe Jesus even said that." "You're just telling us that He's telling us to love everybody." "So why does He suddenly say we've got to hate them?" He doesn't. He's using a comparative term. He's saying, if your love for Me does not so supersede your love for everybody else, it appears that it's almost you hate them and love Me. It's got to be that much of a comparison, then you're not worthy to be My disciple. So He's using a comparative term. Of course He's not saying hate in that sense. And if you have a reference Bible and you have little notes to it, it will explain that to you down at the bottom.

So loving God means or involves a dying to certain of our other loves in a sense. If you don't take up your cross and follow Me, follows in all three accounts of this specific passage that Jesus is talking about where He's talking about the comparative love for people to the love that we have for Him. In other words, what He's trying to say is, our loving relationship with God must be supremely important, more important than our love for husband, children, friends, or anybody else in the whole wide world. Our lives should be focused on what that means and how we achieve it, for in this relationship lies the secret of loving that makes life work in all other dimensions. The more you love God, the better you love everybody else. That's the bottom line. And that's one of the reasons He wants you to figure out how to love Him supremely. It isn't for His sake, it's for yours. Because He knows that the closer you are to Him, the more you abide in Him, for you've been grafted by grace into the vine, and the same life that's in the vine is in the branches. And the fruit of that life is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, but love. As you figure out technically, if you wish, how that works, then He knows that all your other relationships, your husband, wife, and your children, and your friends are going to benefit. It doesn't work the other way around, the more you love people, the more you love God. No, no. The more you love God and figure out and are absolutely overwhelmed with His love for you. It releases you, it flows through you, that whole experience of being so loved, you just can't hardly stand it, releases you to love other people. And so you learn how to give love and receive it. And the secret is anchored in our knowledge, our reality knowledge of God.

So that's the way it has to work. We establish a loving relationship, the first step is experience the love in all its dimensions. And then the next thing we do is start and figure out how to maintain it. We begin by establishing it, we continue by maintaining it. Now the Spirit of God scatters this love in our heart. Romans 5:5, "God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Spirit that He's given us." By the Spirit that He's given us. And so as we establish our relationship with God, for us, it was a little different for Peter before Pentecost, but we living after Pentecost, for us, as you're born from above, as life in the Spirit, the Spirit of God, Christ's other self, however you want to describe that. As He makes Christ real in you, as He enters your life, as He invades your life. It's as if God is pouring in the love of Christ. Well, of course He is because He's pouring in Christ. And Christ is God, and God is love. And so you receive all the love that you need to do all the loving that you need to do. All the loving that you need to do. We're sort of totally dependent on God to even love Him back, if you get the picture. And we're totally dependent on God to love people as we should. That's absolutely obvious. Love is not a thing of natural experience of the natural man. The ability to love God and others is given to us by the Spirit. This love is not our own. We do not create it or have the power to express it. We return to Him His own love and express His love to others. Now, I want you quickly to turn to a wonderful passage written by John, of all people, John, 1 John 4, because this is the passage I would love to take a whole other session on and just take it apart for you. But you can do that on your own. It's a wonderful bit of homework. Starting to read at verse 7. "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever doesn't love, doesn't know God, because God is love." "This is how God showed His love among us. He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. 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 friend, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." "No one has seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is made complete in us." "We know that we live in Him and He in us, because He's given us of His Spirit." "And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him, and He in God." "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete, so that we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment, because in this world we are like Him." "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." "We love because He first loved us." "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar." "For anyone who doesn't love his brother, whom he's seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." "And He's given us this command, whoever loves God must also love his brother." You need to read that in two or three different translations, and it'll just keep, like a diamond, just keep turning it in the light. And if you just take three or four different translations, just pick off different translations, find the passage, and lie them out on the table, and just read it in this one and that one and that one and the other one. And it's like discovering the height of it, and the depth of it, and the width of it, and the breadth of it. It is an incredible passage, and John is summing up what he has learned. Now remember, John is writing this. Who was John? We are using Simon and Peter. John's nickname was a son of thunder. He had a terrible temper, did John. James and John were called the sons of thunder by Jesus, as a nickname. Sons of thunder. They went into a village one day, and the village wouldn't listen to Jesus. John suggested, "Shall we call down fire from heaven and burn them up?" And then you read 1 John 4. Now, that's what I'm talking about. God has taken a son of thunder and made him a son of love. The old tradition, of course, is about John so old, he had to be carried into the assembly in Ephesus, in his 90s probably. And every time the old godly apostle was carried in, reverently people would say, "Would you speak to the people? Would you speak to the people?" And he would say, "Brothers, love one another," and sit down. Or lie where he was. And they'd say, "Is that it?" And he'd say, "What else is there?" What else is there? Now, that's the change that God can make. He can make it in our caring, in our serving, in our praying, and in our loving. He can take a son of thunder and turn him into an apostle of love. So that's a wonderful passage for you to dig into a little bit more. So the Holy Spirit pours His love into our hearts. He lives in us as we live in Him. And the thing is, He's not going anywhere. He's not going anywhere. Now, why then do we not love others, and why then do we not love God? If the Spirit of God is in us, and He is love, we've received all we've got when we receive Jesus. We've received a person. The Holy Spirit is a person, you don't receive a bit of a person, a hand, an arm, a leg. You have all you're going to get. Now He hasn't all He's going to get. That's the problem. He hasn't received all He's going to get. And He's living in us. But we grieve Him, we quench Him, we resist Him. We've said our big sorry for sin, and the Holy Spirit came in. But we have to learn to say the little 'sorries' from then on in, to maintain this wonderful relationship that we've come into. He will never be pushed out of your life. He'll never fall out of your life. He says, "He that comes to God," that's you, "I will never cast out." And I do not believe a Christian can cast out the Holy Spirit. He's not going anywhere. And sometimes I think that the Holy Spirit has a pretty miserable time because He has to live in us. In Matthew, there's a man with a shriveled hand. Jesus heals him. It happens to be Sunday. And the Pharisees are furious because He's healed on a Sunday. Jesus looks around in anger and deeply distressed, and that's the word, grieved at their stubborn hearts, says to the man, "Stretch out your hand," He heals the man. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot His death. Now Jesus, God on earth, is grieved at what, the hardness of their hearts. Because they don't care about this man with the shriveled hand. They're just mad about Jesus breaking one of their religious rules, and they're trying to kill Him. They don't care about this man. And that grieves God. They don't love this man, this poor man with a shriveled hand. And you know, when God looks at us and we don't care about people with shriveled lives, shriveled marriages, shriveled relationships. That grieves Him. When we don't love people. Grieves Him. Grief is a love word. And Christ's grief was because of the hardness of their hearts. And when we grieve Him because we do not love other people, then the Holy Spirit is not able to shed abroad His heart in us and through us and help us to love and receive it.

So, having established our relationship with God by saying we're sorry, we have to say lots and lots and lots of little 'sorries' along the way. And that's what we get as we see Jesus and Peter in this passage in John 21, having breakfast, having breakfast. Jesus says, "Come and have breakfast, Peter. Come and have breakfast." He takes the initiative, and He comes where Peter is, and He invites him for breakfast. And today, I believe, as we go around our living and our loving, and something happens and we grieve the Holy Spirit, and something's come in between, and there's no fruit of the Spirit of love showing in our lives because something's come in between the life of the vine flowing into the branches and producing this fruit of love. When that happens and we grieve Him, we have to have breakfast with Jesus. Now, He is going to take the initiative. He's going to come to the seashore. He's going to build a fire. He's going to do everything it takes to remind us of the reason He wants to talk to us. Why did the fire remind Peter, do you think? It was a charcoal fire. When was the last time Peter had stood by a charcoal, not too long ago, right? In the courtyard, and warmed his hands, and what had happened? "I don't know him." He had denied him, not just denied him with oaths and curses. And a curse was, "As God is my judge, I do not know this man." He swore by God, which, of course, a good Jew is forbidden to do, that he didn't know Christ. So Jesus initiates the approach to Peter. He comes where Peter is, out of fellowship with him, miserable, needing reconciliation, needing to say a big, big 'sorry' along the way, and restore that relationship. And He reminds him.

Now, if I could use a personal illustration here. The morning that Jesus made breakfast for Peter over a charcoal fire, the acrid smell of the burning fuel must have brought to Peter a vivid reminder of another charcoal fire on another dreadful day already past. Have you ever had such vivid reminders of your failures? And do these reminders meet you at the most unexpected times and the most unexpected places? When that happens, try not to push the memory away. Instead, face it, however painful it is. But then once you've traveled back in memory, acknowledge you're part of the action, and ask God to forgive you once and for all. I remember failing to speak about Jesus to a beloved and dying relative. After that, every time I go to a funeral, and I smell the smell of death, I groan inwardly, and I murmur, "Lord, You know all things, You know how I failed You." The scent of lilies does it to me today. Or maybe seeing the hunched back of someone's aged aunt being helped off a bus. Our senses can develop the picture, bringing the scene into sharp focus in the dark room of our memories, and presenting us with a clear reproduction of our past. And I had to work with such flashbacks, letting my mind work through those pictures and sharing them with the Lord Jesus. He never took my photographs away from me, but He did stop me from putting them in an album and reviewing them every minute of the day. And He forbade me to show them to every single person who came along. He simply assured me I've been forgiven, and told me to remember that every time I needed to.

So God will use something to remind you of your failures. And when he does, think of this little picture of Jesus having breakfast with Peter. And say as Peter did, "Oh, I can't believe I did that. I can't I can't believe I did that." And Jesus said, "Well, I predicted you would, and you did it." He starts off dealing with Peter, really making sure Peter has figured it out. "Peter, do you really love Me more than these?" People have argued what the 'these' are. Was the 'these' the other disciples? "Do you love Me more than them?" Or was the 'these' his boats, his fishing boats, his job, his heart, his soul, who he was? Or was it Galilee, was it his family, was his wife there in the background? Was were the 'these'? Most people, commentators believe, Jesus was referring to the incident where Peter had proudly and boastfully stated, "Though all men deny You," looking at the 11 who were there, because that's all that were there. "I won't. This lot might, but I love You more than them. And I am ready to go with You to death, Lord Jesus. I'm going to Jerusalem." Thomas says, "Oh, you know, I might go, but none of the others wanted to go, but I'll go with You. I I don't know what this lot's going to do." And Jesus says, "Do you really love Me more than these?" Who were also sitting having breakfast, and that's what they believe it meant. And that's what the Spirit of God will do. He will bring you to such heart remorse about your failures. And until that happens, you cannot be healed from the past. You cannot be healed from the past. So He will intend to have breakfast with you and revisit those things that you cannot forgive yourself for, because He is going to forgive you. And what God has forgiven you for, you have no right to be remembering. And that's where you have to get with those 'sorries' along the way. For the love to flow back into your life and out through your life to other people.

So He'll remind you of what grieved Him. He'll revisit with you, He'll see you remorseful and repentant, and then He'll be ready to say, "Feed My sheep," then, "Feed My lambs." There's a whole lot more of loving to do, Peter. A whole lot more loving to do. Now, that was rather strange to me when I first looked at it. What does He mean, "Feed My lambs and feed My sheep"? Peter himself, in 1 Peter 1:22, says to the people he's writing to, "Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth, so that you have a sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart." Now this is Peter. Peter, not Simon. This is the Peter that God is producing through all these ups and downs and failures and successes, just life in general, life as it happens to Peter. He's able now as a leader of the church much later to say, "Love each other deeply from the heart, for you have been born again. You have been born again," He says, "through the living and enduring word of God." And so Peter is saying to people, "I said I love God, and I didn't. I denied Him. But then He worked with me, and He worked with me, and He said, 'Give me what you've got, Peter.' 'Do you really love me?'" And Peter said, "I phileo you." Jesus said, "Do you agape me?" And Peter said, "No, I phileo you." There's different words in there. "Do you love Me, Peter? Do you love Me, Peter?" Three times. That really must have gone home. Three denials. Three affirmations. And in the end, Peter said, "Lord, You know, You know, You know." It says, "Peter was hurt." "Now we've got right down to the nub of it. You know all things." "You know I'm only vaguely fond of You. I thought I loved You." And Jesus said, "I'll take it." "I'll take it. I'll blow on it, and I'll look after it until it blazes up in your life, a love for brothers, so you can go out and you can do all these things, and you can help other people love." As they should love.

And when we think of loving others, I want you quickly to turn to John chapter 10. John chapter 10. When you have time, read 1 Peter 5, 1 through 5. It talks about, "Be shepherds of the flock." Guess who's talking? Peter. "The flock that's under your care, serving as overseers, not because you must, but because you're willing as God wants you to be, not greedy for money, but eager to serve." "Not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. When the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away." Peter talks about learning to be an under-shepherd. And when he is reconciled to God and commissioned to his task to shepherd the flock of God. God says, "Now you're going to be My under-shepherd." And we know that in John chapter 10, Jesus talks about what a perfect, good shepherd is. And He talks about Himself, "I am the good shepherd." And then He talks about how He shepherds the sheep. And now He's telling Peter to be an under-shepherd. And guess what? Peter tells you and I to be under-shepherds too. That all of us are to go out and care for the flock in one way or another. Care for the lambs perhaps, the children. Or care for the old sheep, or care for the middle-aged sheep. We're all to go out and feed and tend and care for the flock. That's what under-shepherds do. And as I quickly looked just this afternoon at what an under-shepherd does. I read this passage, Jesus said, "Shepherd My sheep, feed My lambs, take care of My sheep." These sheep are His, they are not ours. We are just under-shepherds entrusted with the care of people that have come to know Christ to help and care for them. When I came from Britain to America, I left my heart behind in the hearts of probably hundreds of young people that I'd worked for for 14 years. And as I came, I said to Stewart, "If I could just leave them all mature and all great, that would be great." "I I wish I could." And Stewart said, "You didn't save them, and you don't have to keep them. You didn't save them, they're not yours, they're His." And that's the first thing you have to remember when you're an under-shepherd. You didn't save them, you don't have to keep them, but you are commissioned to care for them as an under-shepherd. So that when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will have a reward in heaven, and it's a reward that's going to be an incredible reward. So what did the Good Shepherd do? First of all, they knew His voice and they followed Him. He got to know them. They knew them by name. If you are caring for people, get to know those people. Give yourself to that task so that they know you and you know them. You share your life with them. Secondly, pray for them. The thief comes to destroy and steal them. "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full," says Jesus. But an under-shepherd guards the sheep. And we guard them through prayer. I have a situation in my life at the moment where I've been praying and praying for some little lambs, and God has been answering my prayer so incredibly, I stopped praying. And everything's fallen apart. And I realized I didn't guard them. I didn't hold the ground we gained. And I've repented of that. And I realized that under-shepherds never stop praying for the people that are under their care. And then be sacrificial. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And he does it for nothing. I think that's a word for the church today. He does it for nothing. "I'm not a hired hand," says Jesus. Nobody's paying me to do this. I'm doing it because I love the sheep, and I've come to lay my life down for them. And unless we have a sacrificial idea of what it is to serve Christ and to love others practically and to shepherd the sheep in love, and unless we get to the point where we say, "I'm going to do it for love, and I'm going to do it for free." And anything God gives me, it's Christmas. It's not what I want, it's not what I ask. Then those sheep are not going to be cared for. And then Jesus says, "Other sheep I have that are not of this pen, those also I must bring." And we need to be evangelical, and we need to bring them one by one by one by one to Christ. Mother Teresa, I believe, wrote when she spoke at the prayer breakfast in Washington. And somebody asked her, "How did you love 42,000 people, most of them who were dying and derelict? How did you pick them up?" And she said, "One by one." She said, "I never look at the masses as my responsibility." "I look at the individual. I can only love only one person at a time." "I can only feed one person at a time, just one, one, one." "You get closer to Christ by coming closer to each other. As Christ said, 'Whatever you do to the least of these, My brothers, you do to Me.' So you begin, 'I begin, I picked up one person. Maybe if I didn't pick up that one person, I wouldn't have picked up 42,000.'" "The whole work is only a drop in the ocean, but if I didn't put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less." "Same thing for you, same thing in your family, same thing in your church where you go." "Just begin, one, one, one." "And at the end of life, we won't be judged by how many diplomas we've received, how many great things we've done." "We will be judged by, 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless and you took me in.'" "Hungry not only for bread, but hungry for love." "Naked not only for clothing, but naked of human dignity and respect." "Homeless not only for a want of a room of bricks, but homeless because of rejection." "This is Christ in distressing disguise." My challenge to you today is this: Love one another. And just begin with one, one, one. Begin today with one, one, one. Pray with me. Lord, You called Your disciples one by one by one. Then You sent them out to find the lost sheep. To shepherd the 99, but then to go after the one, and the one, and the one. And to put our arms of love around them and bring them home. You made us under-shepherds, what grace. You lavished Your love on us and made us children of God. And Lord, until we really understand how much You loved us, until we let You, we give You a chance to show us and tell us that, and reveal that to us, we are not have a hope of loving anybody else. So help us get it right, help us focus on what it means to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. And then, dear Lord, send us out to find the one by one by ones. And then to shepherd that flock, to tend the lambs and the sheep. So that when the Great Shepherd appears, He will give us our reward. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.