Never-Ending Love

Amen Okay, this is week number 10 You only have one week left on foundations that fortify the family And hopefully you're growing in your walk with the Lord Hopefully you're learning more and more each and every week Hopefully you're being convicted of your sin and you're confessing that sin and getting right with the Lord and being able to Able to be used by the Lord in your family You know, it's so important to realize that the principles that we learn establish And grow every single day in our lives

And as we begin to apply God's Word to our life, we're able to see the effects and the fruit of how God wants to work in our families And it's so important to realize that you are the key ingredient to building the foundation in your home That is, you're here, you're learning, you're growing, and God wants to use you as you imp those In your family And so, as we go through these foundations, we help you understand exactly what God wants to do In your home, a forgiving spirit is foundation number one

It's the principle of alliance where I align my life with God's life, that I am an imitator of God. I love as God loves, I am forgiving as He is forgiving, and therefore that allows Me to stop treading water and to move along in my walk with the Lord as well as progressing in my family as we begin to build our relationships one with another Without a forgiving spirit Your family is stagnant Your family does not grow So it must be principle or foundation number one And then foundation number two was overarching prayer That's the principle of reliance, where I rely upon the Lord for everything

Dependent upon God for everything. I can't do this on my own And so, therefore, I call upon the Lord, I call upon His name, I call upon Him in truth, and I Follow what his word says, but I go to him in prayer, depending upon him for everything Foundation number three: an understand mind Proverbs 24:3 and 4 says, that by wisdom a house is built, and by understand it is established, it's fortified So I must have an understanding mind That 's the principle of compliance, where I comply with everything that God says in His Word. through my life Foundation number four is a non-compromising life

That's the principle of defiance Where I defy all sin, where I defy all iniquity and transgression, where I seek to live a life of integrity, where I don't compromise in any area of my life, because if I begin to compromise in one area, I will begin to Compromise in many areas, and unfortunately, we are in a society today where we begin to compromise in all kinds of areas We love to dabble. in the things of the world, thus bringing compromise into our home, thus destroying our families And then foundation number five is demonstrating faith

That is the principle of appliance, where I learned to put everything in the action, everything in the motion, everything in the operation so that My faith is seen by those that I love Foundation number six was awe-inspiring Leadership Isn it interesting that ever since we've talked about awe-inspiring leadership, our attendance on Wednesday nights has tanked? Think about that We talked about all-inspiring leadership, living and leading righteously and reverently, and since then Our attendance has tanked You want to know why? You know why People don't want to lead that way

They don't want to be held accountable to that kind of leadership It's too convicting People don't want to be held to that standard But that's the standard of scripture That's what David said to Solomon: that this is the kind of leadership that brings refreshment to a nation That brings is like a ray of sunshine after a cloudy day This is what the nation needs This is what needs to happen in your family And yet, so many people Refuse to lead that way And that's the husband's responsibility That's the father's responsibility That's where leadership begins

It begins at the top, with the Father leading the way And then thirsting for the Christ That's the principle of allegiance Awe-inspiring leadership is a principle of suppliance because you supply what everybody in the family needs And thirsting for Christ is the principle of allegiance because it demonstrates my loyalty to the Christ It says in Jeremiah chapter 2 that my people have forsaken me, the well of living water To dig for themselves cisterns that hold no water They no longer are loyal to me They are loyal to someone else Or to something else

And we need to have a great thirst for the Christ Because if that happens, if that happens in your family, if people are hungering and thirsting for righteousness Man, great things begin to truly happen within the family unit And then instilling biblical truth That's the principle of guidance, where you guide your family into the knowledge and the ways of God that they might understand the direction that God would have them go And then last week it was the foundation of overcoming evil with good, and that's the principle of dominance That is, you are not a victim

You're not overcome by evil, but you overcome evil with good You are the victorious warrior You are the dominant one because you provide good to those who do evil to you Which brings us to our 10th foundation And lo and behold, it spells the word foundation Of course, you didn't know that, did you? Until tonight But it spells the word foundation, and that is never-end love Never -ending love that is to permeate the family unit That we understand true biblical love And this, of course, is the principle of significance For never is a family more significant Than when it truly loves one another

Christ said, By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have loved one Toward another Isn't it interesting? That's probably the most misunderstood word in the English dictionary You know, everybody wants to love, everybody wants to be loved But nobody's really clear on how to love and what love is really all about The world's confused about what love is Even in the church, we're confused about love And so the Bible speaks explicitly about how it is we are to live a life of love one toward another

And so the question comes for us: how is it we do that? How is it we understand 1 Corinthians 13, where it says, love never f? Say, well, wait a minute My husband's love for me failed My wife's love for me failed, or my love for my children failed How can the Bible say love never fails? Because of 1 Corinthians 13, that kind of love, the love of God, the love that is patient, the love that is kind, that kind of love, that never fails Because it always accomplishes what What God wants it to accomplish In fact, you know the chapter very well, 1 Corinthians chapter 13

Verse number four, it says, The love is patient The love is kind, it's a particular kind of love It has a definite article there, right? We talked about this last week The love of God is Long fuse The love of God is kind It bestows kindness all the while it's got a long fuse and is not jealous Love does not brag, is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own, is not provoking Does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things

Love never fails In other words, that love never fails If you understand that kind of love, it never fails If you understand God's love, it never fails So how do you have that kind of love in the family unit that is an essential foundation to building your f? God's love is a supernatural kind of love It's the kind of love that transcends that which is natural And yet, even in the church, we find ourselves confused About what love really is For example, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14:1, pursue love Okay? It's a word that means to hunt down love It doesn't say pursue being lo

It says, pursue love In other words, love is a pursuit You hunt it down You chase it down You follow hard after love In other words, love Is not a reward Love is a responsibility You get that? Love is not a reward Love is a responsibility Now, granted, we have received the reward because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life, right? So we have received the reward of God's love But love is a responsibility that you and I have To demonstrate to others

Once you look at love as a reward, you cease to love God's way So you must understand your responsibility in the process You are to pursue love Having pursued love, you can then portray love Then you can prove that love, and then you can proclaim that love But love is something that you specifically are to pursue People say, well, how can I do that? There's so many times I don't feel like lo someone else. I don't feel like loving my enemy. I don't feel like loving my husband or my children or my spouse or my aunt or my uncle or people in my family But that's okay

You don't have to feel like loving them Because love is a responsibility It's a duty For instance, the Bible is very clear as we begin to understand Scripture, and that is Love is a fruit of the Spirit, right? Galatians 5:2 and 23 The fruit of the Spirit is love How can that be? Well, that's because Romans 5 tells me that the love of God is shed abroad in my heart In other words, the love that's patient, the love that's kind, is the love of God that now is all over in my heart It's shed all abroad in my heart And because it's there, it's there because I am a partaker of God's divine nature

So, therefore, I really can show patience and kindness toward others. I can really truly demonstrate love to others because the love of God has been shed abroad in my heart All I have to do now is fulfill my responsibility to you That's it All I have to do is fulfill my responsibility to put into action my words about lo you That's what my responsibility is as a believer So, in other words, I don't have to wait to feel like loving you. I choose to love you. I don't have to even ask God to help me love you because his love has already been shed abroad in my heart

And the love of God is a fruit of the Spirit All I have to do is simply love you That's all I have to do Sounds simple, doesn't it? But yet we don't do that We just don't do that We somehow expect to be loved, but don't understand our responsibility to love And granted, it's great if you're loved by those in your family But what about those who aren't loved by those in their family? Are they relieved of the responsibility to love them, to demonstrate Christ to them? Are they free from that? On the contrary, no, they're responsible to do exactly what the Bible says

So the Bible says in Colossians 3. 1, put on love Philippians 1.9, ab in love Hebrews 13:1, continue in love. 1 Thessalonians 3:12, increase in love Ephesians 5:2, walk in love. 1 Peter 4. 8, be fervent in love Philippians 2. 2, be consistent in love Hebrews 10, 24, provoke others to love. 2 Corinthians 8. 8, be sincere In your love. 1 Corinthians 16:1, let all you do be done in love. 1 Timothy 1:5, love out of a pure heart Romans 13:8 to 10 Oh, no man anything but love The scripture is replete with the responsibility that you and I have to ex in loving others

My father, who's home with the Lord and experiencing the bliss of all eternity in the presence of Christ, used to always tell me Son, you have two responsibilities in life One, love the Bible And two, Love your bride That's it You do that, you'll have a great family You do that, God will use you greatly Love the Bible Love your bride That's it In fact, the greatest gift my father ever gave me was his love for my mother That was the greatest gift he ever gave to me My dad loved my mom And my mom, if she was here tonight, would tell you that, you know what, she can be pretty cant at times

She would verbalize that to you But my dad loved her immensely and demonstrated that love every s day That was his greatest gift to me When you think about your responsibility as a father and what you pass down to your children, you love your wife Ladies, you love your husband, and great things happen Isn it interesting that one of the responsibilities of older women in the church is to teach younger women, Titus 2:4, how to love their husbands

You ever think about that? As an older woman, are you teaching younger women how to love their husbands? Are you teaching your daughters how to love their husbands? Are you teaching women The church, how to love their husbands As an older woman in the church, you had this great res, not just to love your husband But to somehow teach younger women how to love their husbands But yet, isn't it not true that there is more of a breakdown in Not just the world, but the church of women loving their husbands And men there to love their wives as Christ loved the church

Sacrificially, giving themselves away to their wives That's the never-ending love that's to permeate the home The love that never fails, the never-ending love, is what we want to talk about this evening So, let me give you seven characteristics of never-ending love, okay? The love that never fails. I love to preach on 1 Corinthians 13, but I'm not going do that Okay, I'll refer to it a couple of times, but I want to talk to you about never-ending love This is the principle of supreme significance For your family

Never-ending love, number one, is this: Never-ending love is determined by a person knowledge of the living God Never-ending love is determined by a personal knowledge of the living God Now you know why so many people are confused about what love is For most people don't have a personal knowledge of the living God For instance, we have the word for love er, which is the romantic kind of love It's that sexual kind of love You see it on TV all the time, right? In movies And that seems to permeate our lives more so than anything else And we think that that's what love is, but

That's not what love is Okay? And then there's that Greek word storge, which speaks of the family unit, that natural affection that we have, because we Have a love for our children because they're from us Okay? But that's not the never-ending kind of love either And then there's ph, which is that love of companionship, which is great to have in every marriage because every in the marriage, everybody in the family wants to have a companion, right? It's that Affection that speaks of the companionship that I have one toward another

But the word that's never-ending love is agape, which is 1 John 4. 10, God is ag God is love God is uncond kind of love God's love is divine Okay? It's unending, it's uncond, it's unself, it's that kind of love And that's why it's so rarely seen even in the church Because it It's determined by a personal knowledge of the living God. I know him personally, I know him intimately, which allows me now to love you The lack of knowledge that I have of God is going to hinder my love for you Because everything I do in life stems from the knowledge of the living God, how I know Him

And what he means to me because of what the scriptures actually st. 1 John chapter 4, verse number 7 says it this way. 1 John 4, verse number 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God And the one who does not love does not know God, for God is love Okay? Very simply put It doesn't take much eff to understand 1 John 4, 7 and 8 God is love And those who love as God loves are born of God and they know God That's why God told Hosea that my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge

If they knew me, they would understand me, they would follow me, they would believe in me Remember over in 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, Paul says this in verse number 2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and lab of Love In other words, their work, their labor, was prompted by their love Their love for who? Not love one for another But love for the Lord Remember what it says over in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse number 14, Paul says, the love of Christ cont us The love of Christ constrains us

The love of Christ compels us, it moves us Having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves But for him who died and rose again on their behalf Paul makes it very clear that it's the love of God that compels us, that moves us, because we now understand That the one who gave himself up for us did so so that we would no longer live for ourselves But for the one who died and gave him up for us Okay? So Paul makes it very clear that God's love is compelling God's love is moving

God's love is that which is the motivation behind all that I do So therefore, The kind of love that's never-ending love is determined by a personal knowledge of the living God Because the more I know God and God is love, the more then I can love You, because love is my responsibility, not a reward that I am to receive Principle number two is this Never end love is not only determined by a personal knowledge of God, but it's demonstrated by what it does It's demonstrated by what it does In other words, love is more visible than voc

All right? You can say, I love you, but unless that love is demonstrated in visual kind of ways, then your words really mean nothing Isn't it interesting that the Lord never told Israel that he loved them into the book of Deuteronomy? Went all the way through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers Then in Deuteronomy, he says, Oh, by the way, I chose you simply because I love you That's it Now think about that The Lord knew that the best way to demonstrate his love for his people was to show them how he loved them

Was to redeem them from Egyptian bondage, was to protect them and watch over them, to make a covenant with them But it wasn't in Deuteronomy chapter 7 that he said, I want to let you know that I chose you because I love you Now think about that The Lord could have yelled from heaven that he loved them, but he didn't Instead, he demonstrated to them in very tangible, practical kind of ways How it is he loved the nation of Is And then That visible expression would be vocalized by him in the book of Deuteronomy by telling them that he truly did love them

Wouldn't it be great if our lives were consumed with the visible expression of love? 1 John chapter 3 says this in verse number 17 Says, who has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth Love indeed and in truth God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us His love was a visible expression of his comm Listen, love that's visible

God's love that's visible, never-ending love that's visible, is visible in several ways One, it's sacrificial, right? Its sacrifice sacrifices on behalf of the person it says it loves Love is always sacrificial It's always giving of itself, which demands a sacrifice That love that's visible not just as sacrificial, but it also is volitional That is, it's a choice that one makes. I choose to love you. I make a conscious choice

Remember, we told you last week, we are to have premeditated goodness, right? So we get up every morning and we premeditate our goodness because we're going to return good for evil If you don't do that, you're going to be caught off guard You'll be caught unaware Well, what are the ways you Premeditate your goodness is premeditate the visible expression of your love toward those in your family And that love is demonstrated not just through sacrifice, but a desire to choose to do what is right for the person that I say I love

On top of that, a visible love not just is sacrificial and volitional, it's beneficial In other words, it benefits you. 1 Corinthians 13, 4 or 6, love never see its own Own what? Its own welfare Love never seeks its own welfare Love never does for itself Love always does for some else It doesn't do for self Because a love that is visible is beneficial, not to me But to you Now, ultimately, it benefits me because it's more blessed to give than it is to receive So, there is a spiritual blessing that comes my way from God Himself But at the outset, love is beneficial to you

So I'm going to look for ways to benefit your character, benefit your well-being, benefit your life Benefit the way you operate. I want to make sure that you're taken care of That's what love does Love doesn't say, I want to make sure that I'm taken care of It says, I want to make sure that you're taken care of That's a love that's beneficial God's love for us was supremely beneficial Right? Because we escaped the fires of hell God's love for us was completely volitional He didn't love us because of who we were He didn't love us because of what we've done

He loved us simply because he chooses to love us His love for us is sacrificial He gave himself away He sacrificed his life so we could obtain his life The love that's visible is also judicial because love rejoices in the truth Love does not does not love evil, love hates evil Love makes judgment calls, right? Because it's judicial It rejoices only in the truth It doesn't rejoice in untruth It rejoices in that which is true. 1 Corinthians chapter 13 So therefore, God's love is a holy Kind of love It's a pure kind of love

That's why we said last week, Romans 12, verse number 9: let love be sincere, let it be unhypocritical Abhor that which is evil, cl to that which is good, right? Because a sincere kind of love, an unhypocritical kind of love, hates evil Hates lies, loves truth, loves goodness because God is good and God is true So a love that's visible is a judicial kind of love Makes wise choic. A love that's visible is an emotional kind of love because it rejoices in the truth, okay? So there's an emotion behind it, there's a joy behind it So it can be emotional

Love is not totally emotional, but it can be emotional because it does rejoice in that which is tr. and abhors and hates all that is evil The love that's visible, not just as sacrificial, volitional, beneficial, judicial, and emotional It's sensational It's a unique love Oh, what manner of love is this the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God? What otherworldly kind of love? What alien kind of love is this? It's from another dimension, says in 1 John 3, verse number 1 That the Father has bestowed up us that we should be called the children of God

See, true love is a sensational kind of love Because it goes beyond anything that's natural to that which is supernatural Because it's God-ind It's God-driven It's motivated by the Christ It's motivated by the Spirit of God within me To reach out to you and to sacrificially, beneficially, in a very visible kind of way, demonstrate to you The Christ Ask yourself: Is that what you did today? Is that how you live in your family? That's never-ending love That's the love that never fails The love that never fails is determined by a personal knowledge of God, is demonstrated by what it Does

That's why Paul told Timothy: be an example, 1 Timothy 4:12, in your faith, in your speech, in your conduct, in your purity, and in your Love Be an example in your love In other words, demonstrate in a very visible, tangible kind of way that you are going to benefit those around you because you choose to That's the love that never fails Number three, the love that never fails is defined by its ability to keep on giving It's defined by its ability to keep on giving. 1 John 3, verse number 16 We know love by this

That He laid down H life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren Never-ending love is def by its ability to keep on giving You see, biblical love is not passive Biblical love is very, very active In fact, it's so active, it's aggressively act That 's why the Bible says we are to be fervent In our love, boiling over in our love, stretching out as far as we possibly can in our love Expending and extending all the energy we can in our love because our love is to be aggressively act toward the one we say we want to benefit

And so love that never fails is defined by its ability to keep on giving Remember God, when he came to earth, when he was born in a manger and came to die, he came into his own, but his own received him not So he could have said, I'm done It's over. I came to them. I left the glories of heaven. I left perfect bliss to enter into a fallen world. I'm here. I am healing everyone, and nobody cares. I'm going back Who needs this? Who wants this? Because inevitably, what you hear is: I have done this. I have given here, I have given that, and what have I gotten in return? Absolutely nothing

So, my question to you is: you did it for a reward? You did it for a benefit? Or did you truly do it sacrificially for the one you say you love? What was the real motive behind why you did what you did? You see, we need to weigh our motives because so often we do for a response We want there to be a response And when there's not a response, we stop doing what we've done in the past because we say it doesn't work Well, what do you mean by work? Well, work means that you respond to my overtures, my initiative, my visible expression of my commitment to you But most people just don't respond

And when they do, the response is never what I think it should be But we don't do it for a response It's always nice to get one Let's be honest, it is But that's not why we do it We do it simply because we want to demonstrate God to that person And God never did what he did or does what he does based on the response he receives He does it because he's a God who loves How about this? Love, same principle, is def by its ability to keep on giving One of the ways you keep on giving love in your home is through discipline, right? Because those whom the Lord loves, he scourges

Hebrews chapter 12, right? As a father disciplines his son Right? Following the example of our Father in heaven who disciplines us, right? We begin to realize That love is defined by its ability to keep on giving what people need, not necessarily what people want If we love our children, We will discipline our children, right? Because we want them to understand God and His love An undisciplined child gets an inappropriate view of the living God. A properly disciplined child receives an appropriate view of a God who disciplines his own In fact, let's know what the Bible says Book of Proverbs

The book of Proverbs says this in chapter 29 Verse number 15 The rod and reproof gives wisdom But a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother In other words, the child that's not disciplined, the child that gets his own way, the child that gets what he wants, is going to bring shame to his mother Now, the problem with that is that when you don't discipline your children and you give them what they want, they act real nice for a while So, shame doesn't come right away Shame doesn't come the next day Shame doesn't come the next week, always

Shame doesn't even come sometimes until the next year, or even beyond that And so we don't discipline our children We give them what they want, okay? And when we do, they seem to respond in an appropriate manner and they are easy to live with and they're and they're Sort of obedient, okay, because they've gotten what they've wanted We haven't disciplined them, but that's just the calm before the storm Because it's going to come crashing down all around the mother, and great shame is going to come upon the head of that mother Or it might not be today

It might not be tomorrow, but it's going to come Because the Lord God makes it very clear in the book of Proverbs That's why he says this: He says, Correct your son, and he will give you comfort He will delight your soul Verse number 17 You say, wait, I discipline my child, and there's no delight in my soul because my child's unhappy, and things aren going well Stick with it Stick to doing what God says in His Word, and they'll be great comfort in your home and great delight to your soul

But if you hold back the rod of reproof and you don't discipline your child, Great shame will come to the mother of that child It's going to happen See, love never stops giving what is needed And what's needed with your children is discipline to show them the love of God, to help them understand The true character of the living God who disciplines his children when they are disobedient to his word That's why love truly is defined by its ability to keep on giving Number four: true love is developed by obedience to God True love is developed by obedience to God when God's law Is dis

God's love is never displayed When God's law is disobeyed, God's love is never dis Because the love of God, the love that never fails, is developed by obedience to God. 1 John 2, verse number 4 Says this, the one who says, I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him But whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected By this we know that we are in Him In other words, whoever keeps the law of God, that love of God is truly maturing, coming to completion, being perfected in that individual

That's why we say we want you to understand the truth of God We want you to be in the Word, under the Word, hear the Word, listen to the Word, obey the Word Why? Because everything about your love being demonstrated comes from a proper knowledge and understanding of God Why is it I don't tell you stories? Why don't I tell you stories? Because my stories mean nothing They're just my stories And you probably don't even care about my stories My own kids don't even care about my stories So I know you don't care about my stories My stories are irrelevant Only God's Word is relevant

Only God's Word matters And everything in the Word of God can be illustrated by the Word of God, right? So why would I use a personal illustration? To illustrate the Word of God when the Word of God is best illustrated by God Himself, right? It's not that I don't tell you illustrations or give you stories. I do do that But very r are they given because they really mean nothing Because your ab to know and understand the living God is all that matters You don't have to know me You don have to know my family But you have to know God

And the more you come to know him and understand him, then the better you can love everybody else around you Remember The love of God, the never-ending kind of love that's uncond, that's unending, that's unself, that's unusual, that's only up and not deflating is a love that is determined by a personal knowledge of the living God You can love in a familial kind of way, the story kind of way You can love in an er kind of way without knowing God You can even love in a phile kind of way without knowing God But you can't love God's way, a never-ending love Without knowing God You cannot do that

That's why the unbeliever cannot do that They can't They don't understand God They don't know the love of God Anyone who knows God, who is love, can love the way God loves And that's the never-e kind of love that never fails It's developed by obedience to God The Lord said, if you love me, Then you keep my commandments Well, we demonstrate our love to God by obeying His Word, right? And as we obey His Word, then we can reach out to others Principle number f: Love that never fails is deterred by sin in my life Will always be deterred by sin in my life

And when I say that, I'm not talking necessarily about The big sins, if you can define it that way We think, oh wow, the big sins No, I'm talking about the sin of idl Which leads to the sin of lazin, which leads to the sin of carelessness And that's what leads to bigger sins Why do people commit the sins of immorality, murder? Homosexuality, the sins that we would consider biggies, right? They happen on a very small scale They happen with the sin of idleness

Remember the life of David, King David? David didn't wake up one day and say, hey, you know what? I think I'm going to have an affair with Bathsheb today Yep Today's the day Bring Bathsheba to me Today's the day I going to have an affair with Bath That not how it happened How did it happen with King David? Well, the Bible is very, very clear on how it happened with K David As rec in the book of Second Samuel chapter 11, says, Then it happened in the spring At the time when kings go out to battle, except one king, the King David

That David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabah But David stayed in Jerusalem The sin of idleness Led to the sin of laziness And the sin of laziness led to the sin Of carelessness Now, when evening came, David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king's house From the roof he saw a woman bathing If he wasn't idle, wasn't lazy, he wouldn't have been careless But you see, my love for others is always deterred by sin in my life And it begins, as my mother used to always say, id hands, the devil's work

Your mom never tell that? Your mom never told you that? Boy, you should have had my mom Idle hands are the devil's workshop That's why diligence is man's most precious possession Proverbs 12, 27, right? How many times have we quoted that verse to you? It is absolutely precious Why? If you're not diligent, you're idle If you're idle, guess what you're going to become? Lazy. L-Z-Y, you ain't got no alibi You're lazy, right? And laziness will lead to carelessness, and carelessness led to lustfulness, and lustfulness led to stubbornness And stubbornness led to foolishness in David's life

And foolishness led to fearlessness He feared not what he was doing He didn't even fear God It says he saw. A woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful in appearance So David sent and inquired about the woman What? Why would you do that, David? Why would you sit to inquire about this woman? And the ones said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uri the Hittite? You see, lustfulness is foolish Foolishness leads to fearlessness So it's his wife Who cares? Fearlessness leads to lawlessness And David sent messengers and took her And when she came to him, he lay with her

And when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house The woman conceived She sent and told David, and said, I am pregnant Then David sent to Joab, saying, Send me Uri the Hittite So Joab sent Uri To David Now, if you know the story, you know that that foolishness and that fearlessness led to stubbornness and dece Deceitfulness And that deceitfulness all happened because of his covetousness He coveted. another man's wife, and that covetousness led to shamelessness, because he would murder Uri He would lie about Bathsheba

He broke every one of the t comm in 2 Samuel chapter 11 And it all began Because when kings go to war, David decided to remain id And not do what kings do And idleness led to his laziness And thus you have the downward spiral of a king who fell into sin They love Bathsheba? No She was just an object of his eros, his physical appetite That's all Would he end up loving her? Yes, he would But the bottom line is His true love was deterred by the sin in his life

How many of us are unable to love our wives, our husbands? Our children, people in our church, our family members, because of some sin that we are harboring that keeps us from being what God wants us to be. M hurry, principle number six, is this true love that's sincere That truly is one that never fails, that's never ending, is deeply devoted so as to withstand all kinds of pressure Deeply devoted, so as to withstand all kind of pressure Remember what Solomon's wife said In Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verse number 6, put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm

The heart representing the source of one's affection. the arm representing the source of one's strength She says to Solomon, Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is as strong as Death speaks of the intensity of love Jealousy is as severe as she Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord Many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers overflow it If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly despised Why? Because love withstand all kinds of pressure It is invincible, it is unquenchable

It is absolutely the most intense thing that there is, so that withstands all kinds of pressure That's true biblical love That's never ending It bears the unbearable It believes the unbelievable It hopes amidst hopelessness Why? Because it endures all things And that's the kind of love that never, ever fails And lastly, the love that never fails is never dependent Upon a response in order to function It is never dependent upon a response In order to function, first John 4, verse number 10 says, In this is love Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the satisfaction

For our sins The fact of the matter is that if we look for a response There has been some kind of man motive in our action If at any time you are anticipating a response, looking for a response, hoping For a response You did what you did not because you truly wanted to benefit the other person You did what you did for, well, love never seeks its own, but you sought your own welfare See that? And so, therefore, you're not looking for a response Is it great to get one? Absolutely, it's great to get one Would everybody like to have one? Absolutely, we'd like to have one

But never any love is never looking for one because it truly wants to represent God To the one it says it loves How about you? Wouldn it be great to go home tonight and say, This is how I'm going to premeditate my goodness from now on? I'm going to have a visible expression that's going to benefit everybody in my home. I'm going to have a visible expression Of my commitment to my family, to my husband, to my wife, to my kids, to my aunts, to my uncles, to my grandparents, to everybody in my family unit, because I'm going to build a foundation that's going to be strong and that is

Solid, and I'm going to make sure that what I do is uncond benefit Everybody in the home by visibly expressing to them my undying commit to them Can you imagine what your home would look like in a month or in a year? If that was your commitment, let me pray with you Father, I thank you for tonight, chance to be in your word Lord, it's so good to be able to look into the word of God together Truly, you are a great God Father, all of us fall short of lo one another We really do That's no fault of yours That's all on us

And our prayer, Father, is that truly, Lord, we would tap into the love of God that's shed abroad in our hearts That's a fruit of the Spirit And that we would depend upon you to accomplish great and mighty things We love you and thank you for our time and your word In Jesus' name, amen.