How Do I Love God?

Male: Hey, Porch. Please join me as we read God's Word together from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, verses 34-40.

"But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?' And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.'"

Now, our third message in our series called Disciple.

Kylen Perry: Porch, how are we doing? Are we doing okay? It's good to see you guys. I'm so glad you'd be back with us this evening. Special shout-out to Porch.Live. I love that y'all would tune in with us. A special shout-out to Porch.Live Indy, Dayton, and Greater Lafayette. We love you guys, and we believe in what God is doing where you are.

A couple of years ago, close to 100 other young adults and I descended upon Colorado for a week's worth of snow skiing. Anybody like to snow ski in here? I was jazzed for it, because this is an activity I have done since I was a very small child. We have pictures of me snow skiing with a leash from my dad, actual evidence of me sleeping as I'm going down the mountain because I was so young.

So the thought of going and skiing was really exciting for me. I love this activity. It's one of my favorite things to do, and I've been doing it for a long time. I've hit this point in my snow skiing journey where I've moved beyond the basics, and now I focus on some of the more sophisticated aspects of the sport. I don't just want to plow down the mountain. I actually want to hockey stop instead, because that's way cooler.

I know how to navigate through moguls instead of just rolling over the top of them. I know it looks way better, though it doesn't necessarily impact the sport much, if you keep your knees together. You look much more poised and elegant as you go down the mountain rather than being widespread and crossing your skis up.

I know some of the aspects of the sophisticated elements to this sport, yet when you go on a trip with 100 other young adults, what you realize is you get a mixed bag of talent. We had some people on this trip who came and had all of their own gear. They had, like me, grown up in the sport, and they loved to go and do it. They had season passes, so whenever they got the chance to go, they looked the part. We also had other people who had never seen snow before in their life. A true mixed bag of talent.

So it occurred to me, as one of the leaders on this trip, working with a team to organize this ski escapade, that I needed to help those newbies on the mountain make their way without too much trouble. So I abandoned all of my sophisticated understanding of the sport and began to contemplate the philosophical question…What is snow skiing? To which I arrived at the conclusion it's two things. It is speed and control.

Fundamentally, if you're going to teach someone how to ski, you need to help them regulate their speed and control their direction. You need them to be able to hit the brakes (otherwise, that ends very badly), and you need to help them learn to turn left and right. You see, I had to boil it down to the most fundamental skills possible.

Once I had deduced what it looked like to teach snow skiing, I assembled Kylen's very own ski school. Here I was, skiing down the mountain with 30 to 40 young adults skiing right behind me. Like a mother and her ducklings, we were making our way down the mountain. You see, my goal in teaching them how to ski was I didn't just want them to survive the mountain; I wanted to help them thrive on the mountain.

Now, why do I tell you that? Because you and I, in the story of Jesus Christ, are the ducklings. We're those who are following after our leader down the proverbial mountain of life, and his desire is to help us not just survive life but really thrive in life. He wants to give us some fundamental skills, some very elementary lessons, that knowledge which is most critical of all, so we can follow him in a way that looks like he himself. That's what we're going to talk about tonight. What is that most fundamental, critical lesson from Jesus? We find it in Matthew, chapter 22.

We're in a series called Disciple where we've been trying to wrestle with this idea that we don't want to settle for just knowing about Jesus. Instead, we want to know the real Jesus. Some of you are in the room, and you're like, "I know Jesus. I understand. Lived the life I couldn't, died the death I deserved, rose from the grave, beat death by death itself. Got it." Yet I genuinely believe there's more of Christ to see for you tonight.

So, if you're here, and you feel like, "I know this lesson already. The first and second greatest command. I don't need to worry about what this guy is going to say," then you're mistaken, because this lesson put me on my heels. It peeled back new layers of understanding that I did not know myself. So, I would invite you to let the Spirit work in this moment, because I think God has something very special in store.

As we come to Matthew, chapter 22, we need to know, as we desire to see the real Jesus, that Jesus is in the last week of his life. Meaning, everything he's going to say, everything he's going to do, and everything he's going to think… Everything about this man's life here in his last week matters so much. If you want to know what matters to someone, look at how they prioritize their time when time is running out. Jesus has one week to live, so he doesn't have any time to waste. Everything he's going to do is meaningful, because the moments he has left matter.

When we find him, he has already entered into Jerusalem. He has already overturned all of the moneychangers' tables, and we see that he has a verbal debate, a verbal altercation, with the religious leaders. It says this, starting in verse 34: "But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?'"

Now, it may be tough to pick up from jumping into the middle of the story, but tensions are pretty high when we find Jesus in this moment. The religious leaders are not fans of Jesus whatsoever, so they have decided to try to incriminate him. They want to call into question his credibility. We see he has already had two other debates up to this moment. This is the third of three debates in the story.

The first two were with the Sadducees, and we've seen that they've tucked tail and run because he has whupped them up. He's 2 and 0. The Pharisees decide they have something for him, so they do what any sensible person would do. They phone a friend. They decide to get the best person to debate Jesus as possible. If you're organizing a debate team, and you're going through the line and picking out your players, the lawyer is a pretty good person to pick, because that tends to be what they do for a living.

So they pick this guy who's a trained scholar on the Old Testament, specifically the Pentateuch, those first five books of the Bible. By rabbinic calculation, he would be very familiar with the 613 commands those first five books contain. He is the definition of a textbook nerd. He decides to come to Jesus and, according to the Pharisees, test him, yet if you read the gospel of Mark, you realize this man may not actually have malicious intent.

The Pharisees want to incriminate Jesus, but this guy is genuinely curious. We see that he comes to Jesus in Mark and asks, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Of all of the governing principles, of all 613 rules to follow, which is the most important?" It's like what you feel whenever you're listening to someone explain the rules to a really complicated game.

Have you ever had this experience? You're listening to someone, and they're trying to tell you how to play this sophisticated game, so they're telling you all of the rules, and it feels like they've been talking for an hour. You reach this boiling point where you're like, "Just tell me how I'm supposed to win!" That's what this guy is doing.

He's like, "I know all the minutiae of the Law, all 613 rules, but I just want to know what the most important one is. Of all of it, how do I win? Of all of the regulations and rules God has given in the game of life, tell me how I'm supposed to win." So Jesus answers him. He says in verse 37, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment."

He quotes the Shema, which was a prayer given to the nation of Israel by God as they entered into the Promised Land. We read this in Deuteronomy. This is the Shema. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." Jesus answers this guy's question with something so special to the heritage of the nation of Israel that for 1,400 years, from the date on which it was given, they would have recited this prayer twice every single day.

It's hard to pull into our modern context, but the best equivalent I can think of is kind of like our Pledge of Allegiance and our National Anthem all rolled up into one. That's kind of what they're doing, but instead of this being to America, this is a pledge and a praise to God. It's a declaration of a love to God, but it's also a celebration of a loving God. That's what he tells him.

This teaching tells us what matters most in life, which is to love the Lord. That's it. If you're wondering, "Man, what matters most in life?" it's to love God. Jesus qualifies what that love should look like. He says it's with your heart, with your soul, and with your mind. So, I want to unpack for you over the course of the rest of our time what those mean. How do we actually do that?

I'm just going to level with you. This is really like five sermons in one, so if you're taking notes, just buckle up, because we're going to really make a move here. If you're thinking, "How many points?" I'm just going to tell you we have four points up top. We have a lot of ground to cover. I'm going to try to race through it as well as I can and honor your time, but I think it's so important. So here we go.

The first thing you need to know as you try to love God is love for God is expressive in life. That's what it means when it says we should love the Lord with all of our heart. Now, we need to be careful, because our Western mind often equates the heart with emotion, but the Eastern mind, the context in which Jesus was speaking, would have equated the heart with expression. Meaning, the heart is way more than just the source of our feelings; it's the source of our desire.

So what's the difference? Well, I'll put it to you like this. When you have feelings for someone, you experience emotion, but when you desire someone, that emotion evolves into a particular kind of expression. When you're interested in someone, you're not just content to admire them from afar. Instead, whenever you feel a desire to be with that person… "I want to be with them." What do you do? That emotion turns into expression.

You start texting them. You start talking to them and asking about them. You get on their social media and "like" those posts very strategically so they see that you have been watching. You go far enough back so they know this wasn't cursory in any way whatsoever. You may actually slide into their DMs. I'm not promoting nor condoning that that's the right, proper step, but that is an expression you may take as you're desiring to express your undying love for this person. This is often what happens.

We find that we love them from our heart, not just emotionally but expressively. Matthew 12:34: "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." God cares about how we live our lives, but here's what's really important to understand: God doesn't just want your obedience in life. He doesn't just want your conformity to his will or your compliance to his rules. That's not what he's out for.

God wants your heart. He wants your heart more than anything. He wants you to feel a love for him emotionally that overflows the banks of your life and expresses itself practically. That's what he wants. He doesn't just want you to have all of the feels but do nothing with them. He wants you to have all of the feels and those feels lead to a different way of life that ultimately impacts the person you are.

He doesn't want us to just act out of obligation. "Ugh! I've got to do this." He wants you to act out of inclination. "I want to do this." That's what this means, which is exactly what one of my seminary professors used to teach us. He used to say our external determinations depend on our internal inclinations, which very simply means that you pick in the world whatever you prefer at heart. That's it.

There's probably not a soul in this room who loves their alarm clock. You laugh because you hate it. It goes off, and it's like, "Oh my gosh. I can't turn the thing off quickly enough." The irony is we snooze it so it can hit us again in 10 minutes. It's crazy that that's the case. Not a soul in this room likes their alarm clock. We actually, in fact, hate our alarm clock. So why do we keep setting it every single night? Because we love the job it wakes us up for in the morning, or at least we want to keep the job it wakes us up for in the morning. I know. You want to keep the job it wakes you up for in the morning.

Here's why I use this example. Your greatest inclination is to make a paycheck, to keep your job, not to get more sleep. You see, your greatest internal inclination determines your external determination. That's what's happening here. That's what Jesus is getting at when he's saying, "Love the Lord with all your heart." He wants your actions in life, how you speak, what you do, the choices you make, the way you treat other people, and the conduct you keep… He wants all of that to spill forth, to overflow from a place of loving God.

Proverbs 27:19 says, "As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man." Our hearts reflect what's actually true about us. So, what's your heart saying about you? What's your heart actually saying about you? If you can do an evaluation here tonight, if you can do some investigative work on the internal aspects of your soul, what's it saying? The way you figure it out is you identify the actions you do take in life, and then you question the motivations that undergird them. That's how you figure out what's going on in your heart.

What does it tell you about your heart when you can't ever seem to say something nice to that coworker at the office or you always slip into cursing whenever you're around that group of friends or you habitually flirt with girls though you never have an intent to actually commit to pursuing one or you complain regularly about your family or you act like everything is okay and put on a strong face even when you know things are not okay? What's your heart actually saying?

Listen. God wants your heart, and if your heart doesn't want him, then he wants you to be honest about that. He already knows. You're not hiding something from him that he doesn't already know. He would rather you be honest. "Hey, if you don't want me, just tell me, because you can't fix your heart, but I can. But I will fix it when you're willing. I will step into the hurt of your heart whenever you're ready, and you will not be able to love me until I do so."

Some of us here do want God with all of our hearts, but maybe the most honest thing some of us can do tonight is just say, "God, I want to want you with all of my heart, but I don't." He can work with that, because he's in the business of changing hearts. That's who God is. He doesn't want you to fabricate obedience. He wants genuine desire, and if you do not have genuine desire, he wants to start by giving you that first.

That's the first part of the command that we learn. You love the Lord with your heart. The next one is you love the Lord with your soul. Our point here is love for God is distinctive to ourselves. It's unique. That's what he means when he says, "Love the Lord with your soul." Now, I'll admit (and maybe this is incriminating, because I'm standing onstage and I'm supposed to know this stuff) "Love the Lord with your soul" was one of those that I didn't really know what we're actually saying.

"Love the Lord with your heart." You can kind of make up the difference between what you're hearing and what you're understanding. I think I know what that means. "Love the Lord with your mind." I think I can work that out and figure out the way that should work. "Love the Lord with your soul"? That's a hard thing to consider. For me, as I was reading it, I was like, "Man, I don't know that I have a good answer for that."

This is totally a sidebar, but for some of you in the room, you actually have doubts, questions about the things the Bible is saying. Take it from one who had questions in this passage. That's okay. If you're confused by something the Bible says or you have questions about something it pulls up, don't worry. He can work with you. He can answer those questions. There are solutions to your doubts. Just lean in and not away.

So, how do we love the Lord with our soul? Well, when I began to study this, what I found is the Hebrew word in the Shema for soul is the word nephesh. It was so illuminating to learn what the meaning of nephesh was. The meaning of nephesh, when translated directly, is throat, which is a weird swerve. Right? You weren't expecting that. I wasn't expecting that when I studied it. Throat is not exactly what I anticipated I was going to get when I was romanticizing soul in my mind until I realized why, in the Hebrew mind, throat was significant.

In their mind's eye, your life emanates both in and out of your throat. The very evidence of your existence moves by way of your throat. On a cold day, which we haven't had many of yet… We're going to get them. When we get a cold day, you step outside and see your breath in the air. This is what's crazy. That is the evidence of your existence. You're going to see it. It's like, "That's the evidence that I'm alive. That's the evidence that God has imbued me very distinctly, very uniquely to be who I am."

It says so in the Bible. Genesis 2:7 says, "…then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature [nephesh]." That's the Hebrew. You see, you don't have a soul; you are a soul. Your soul is from God Almighty, and it is for you personally. It's representative of your being and your essence. Your soul is not like any other soul in the entire cosmos. You are one of a kind.

You are a unique combination of personality, ability, and destiny, and because you're a unique combination of those three things, there is no one else like you anywhere else in all the world. It's fascinating. People spend incredible amounts of money on rare art. Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci sold for $450 million. Interchange by Willem de Kooning went for $300 million. The Card Players by Paul Cézanne sold for $250 million. Why? Because they were crafted by some of the greats and they are one of a kind themselves.

Porch, listen to me. You have been crafted by the greatest of all time, and you are one of a kind. There's no one like you, and the price on your head is the price of Christ's blood. That is an immeasurable value. That is a priceless determination. That's what God wants you to know. He wants you to love him with your soul. Psalm 139:13-14 says, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well."

When Jesus says you should love the Lord with all your soul, he's saying you should love God with whatever unique combination he has given you. I think this is going to be a massive point for some of you here tonight, because some of you need to simply know it is not possible for you to love God with all your soul while indulging some sort of insecurity that you hate about yourself.

Some of you are so dissatisfied by the way God made you, and because you're willing to entertain that dissatisfaction, you'll never be able to love him with all your soul. Whatever part of you that you feel insecure about or embarrassed by, whatever part of your design you wish you could change… "I hate this about myself." Like, your body shape or your personal interests or the background and family you come from or the social quirks that always pop up at the worst possible time.

You play the tape over and over and over again whenever you leave those conversations. "I was so stupid to say that. Why did I do that thing?" Whenever that happens for you, you need to know it's not possible to indulge that insecurity and love God with all your soul at the same time. For some of you tonight, the most loving thing you can do is stop criticizing yourself. Start embracing who God made you to be, start trusting what he's doing in your life, and start living into the story he's writing already. That's the best thing you could do, but it starts with some of you embracing who you are.

This is my story. I was plagued for years by self-hate, yet I know I can't love God with all my soul if I continue to indulge that. Instead, I must embrace who God has made me to be, because who you are is from God and who you're becoming is for God. This is big. You don't get to live according to your personal preferences. You don't get to live according to the preferences of other people. According to God's Word, you get to live according to his preferences.

That's good news, because he prefers you to be exactly who he has made you to be. That's his preference. His preference is "I made you like this. I want you like this. And I'm not only going to leave you where you are; I'm making you into the one I want you to be, one that conforms with my will, that aligns with my Word, that looks the epitome of what I intended at original creation. I'm leading us back to Eden, and I'm going to make you right." You have to love him with your soul.

He also wants you to love him with your mind, because love for God is perceptive of reality. That's our third point. Now, it's typical that when we hear we're supposed to love God with more of our mind, we think that equates to just thinking more about him, learning more about who he is, learning more about what he does. That's not exactly what Jesus is saying here. To be fair, we should learn more about God, but we're not supposed to simply learn more about him. What we learn about him should influence the way we look at life. What we learn influences the way we look.

The goal is not just to know more about God; the goal is to do more with what I know about God. That's what he's working on. As you do with what you know, as you live according to what you've learned, he's going to continue to put more deposits into your life, because he does want you to know as much of him as possible. It's less about what you know; it's more about how you live in light of what you know.

It's like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. When faced with seemingly impossible odds and a great chasm between himself and the Holy Grail, all hope seemed lost for our hero. Indy stood there amidst a great canyon with no way across, his father held captive by the dreaded Nazis and time running out. Yet in that moment, when it seemed like there was no way, he remembered the words of his father from his own notebook that there, in the midst of that chasm, lay an invisible landing.

So Indy took what he knew and applied it to his life. He was able to perceive the imperceivable, step off the chasm into the abyss, yet land upon an invisible bridge, race across, and save the day. What do we learn from that story? In the same way, we are meant to take what we know to be true, not from Dr. Jones' diary but from the Bible, and we're meant to apply it to our lives.

You see, the Word of God is like a light to our minds. That's what the Scriptures say. The thing about light is light doesn't change anything about reality. What it does is it reveals what's actually real. That's what the Word of God does. That's what Psalm 119 tells us in verse 105. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."

Have you ever considered that there is more reality to this world than you may well perceive? Have you ever thought about that? Things may not be exactly as you think. There may be more reality that is not yet perceived by you. Have you ever considered that? That's an idea the biblical authors were well acquainted with. They were comfortable with this idea of mystery and the fact that things didn't look exactly as they were.

The way they were able to act into, live into, be a part of real reality is they increased their understanding of who God was and what God said. They filled their minds with his Word. We have to do the same things, because God's words bring clarity to true reality. That's why, as we follow Jesus, we read his Word daily, often, frequently. You read his Word, not because you have to but because he's trying to teach you.

As you read his Word, you ask good questions, you find friends to process with, and you don't give up when it gets hard. That's what Paul describes in Romans, chapter 12. The product of it is amazing. In Romans 12:2 it says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…"

How does that happen? Looking into, peering into the mysteries of God, reading his Word, learning who he is, understanding his will. "…that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." You see, we love God with our minds when we aspire to see the world as it should be seen, and the only way to see the world as it should be seen is through the eyes of the one who rightly sees it.

I remember early in my ministry career… I think it was my first year, actually. I was so stressed out and anxious. I couldn't get a break. I felt like I was failing at everything I put my hands to, and I was praying. I was like, "I don't know what else to do. I've hit my last resort." I was just praying.

I was like, "God, help me to be more patient. Help me to be more understanding. Give me wisdom to navigate these difficulties. Lord, would you help me to be more loving to my coworkers? God, I'm jealous of that guy. Would you help me to be forgiving and accepting and empathetic toward him? Would you help me?"

It felt like everything I was praying… It was like, "Here's one more problem, God. Here's one more problem. Please help me with this, Lord. Help me, help me, help me." That's everything I felt like I was praying in that moment, and I was so overwhelmed. I was like, "God, what is the one prayer I can pray to cover all of the other prayers? What's the easiest way for me to just say everything I have to say, because I don't know that I'm going to get through all of it right now?" Have you ever been in that spot?

Here's the prayer you pray: "God, would you help me to see you clearly, because in seeing you clearly I will see everything else as a result." That's it. That's the prayer. Now, in the moment, I was making a last-ditch effort and grabbing something that felt good, but what has been amazing, as I've walked with the Lord and studied his Word, is I've realized that is a timeless truth that is encased in the greatest command.

That's how you love the Lord with your mind. You love the Lord with your mind by seeing how he sees, and you see how he sees by seeing into Jesus. When you see as Jesus sees, you don't withdraw from conflict; you seek peace instead. When you see as Jesus sees, you don't just spend money because "I've got it, and I can just put it out." You save your money and steward it for the benefit of yourself and as a blessing to other people.

When you see as Jesus sees, you don't just get pent up with frustration because things aren't going the way you want; you trust that the Lord is in control and he actually does have your good in mind. When you see as Jesus sees, you don't view people who are different than you as a person to be avoided; you see them as a person worthy of being welcomed. This is what it means to see as Jesus sees. That's why God wants us to love him with our minds.

This is crazy. God doesn't want you to just think about him more, to just know a bunch of stuff. No. He knows, "Hey, if you fill your thoughts with thoughts of me, and if you see as I see, you won't only see me more clearly; you're going to see true reality the way it's meant to be seen." That's a really generous invitation. God wants you to see the world as fully and capably as possible, but the way that happens is you love him with your mind. That's it.

The fourth and final thing Jesus teaches us is love for others is reflective of ourselves. Matthew 22:39 says, "And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This is easily one of the most well-known verses in all of the Bible, but I also think it's easily one of the most misunderstood verses in all the Bible.

So often, whenever we read this, and because we know our Bible so well, we think, "We're supposed to be humble. We're supposed to die to self. We shouldn't think more highly of ourselves than we ought. The greatest among you shall be your servant. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. We should look to the interests of others. You should give even at great cost to yourself." Because we know the Bible so well, we hear what we think Jesus is saying as opposed to actually listening to what Jesus is truly saying.

So, what's he saying? Is he saying, "Stop loving yourself; start loving other people"? No. That would be wrong. This verse is not saying you should love your neighbor instead of yourself. This verse is not saying you should love your neighbor in place of yourself. This verse is not saying you should love your neighbor more than yourself. That's not what this verse is saying. It's saying you should love your neighbor as yourself. Meaning, God's expectation of you is that you do love yourself, and the way you love yourself directly influences the way you love other people.

It does not give any license for egotism and pride and self-seeking. The Bible decries that idea in so many other places, but that's not what this particular verse is saying. It is saying there is a way you are supposed to love yourself, and it's so important to get that right because it directly impacts the way you're supposed to love other people. This is the second greatest command.

So, how are we supposed to love ourselves? Well, it's like an age-old leadership lesson. "Don't expect of others what you won't expect of yourself." I remember learning this very early in my ministry career. We had a director on our team who was the definition of hardworking. He was the guy who was super reliable, and he always came through in the clutch.

He was the one who, when he walked into the room, you breathed a sigh of relief, like, "Oh my god. Thank goodness Brent is here." You would feel so much relief when he would come into the room, because he was on your team. Yet one thing always stood out to me about this guy in particular. He would always announce at the end of the workday, 4:30 p.m., "I'm going home, everybody, and you should go home too," which stood out to me as really weird.

Like, "This is one of the top dogs in our organization, yet he's telling us to go home? No, no, no. That doesn't feel right. This feels like a test." So I refused to do what Brent said. Instead, I decided to make sure I put on another pot of coffee, got back to work, and was the last one out of the building…that is, until eventually he called me into his office and asked me why I was doing that. Then he proceeded to tell me why he left at 4:30 every day.

He said, "Kylen, I can't take care of our team if I don't take care of myself. I leave at 4:30 because it's good for me, and I want you to leave at 4:30 because it's good for you too." Now, did Brent always leave at 4:30? No. Whenever the job required, he'd stay late. Whenever the job required, I would stay late. But what he was communicating to me is exactly what Jesus is communicating in this moment.

Brent was literally loving me as he loved himself. He wanted for my good in the same way that he wanted for his own good, in a way that believed what God said about him. I wanted to stay at the office and work really hard because I wanted to prove that I brought value to the organization, yet Brent knew my value isn't found in the way I work; my value is in what Jesus Christ has done for me.

All of my value is wrapped up in the cross, in the work Christ has done, not the work I can do. That's the most liberating thing, because when we know that it empowers us to love people radically. That's the issue here. You see, God wants you to love yourself so you can adequately love other people, yet where we often get into trouble is we're not very good at loving ourselves. News flash. You're actually not very good at it. I'm not very good at it.

Some of us can't love others because we don't find ourselves lovable. You're dissatisfied with how you look in the mirror or you're consumed with what people think of you or you constantly talk down to yourself because it's how your parents only ever spoke to you or you're embarrassed by your job. You feel shame for what you did in college or in that relationship or to that friend, and you don't feel like you fit into whatever room you're part of for whatever reason.

If this is you, listen. You will not be able to love your neighbor, because you cannot love yourself. You won't be able to celebrate other people, because they have what you want. You won't be able to serve other people, because you don't feel worthy. You won't be able to see people who are hurting, because all you see is your own hurt. That's why it's so important for you to learn how to love yourself, because it's going to empower you to love other people. If you don't find yourself lovable, you will not be able to do it.

For others, we can't love others because we do a poor job of loving ourselves. It's not that we don't find ourselves lovable; it's that we do a really poor job of loving ourselves. Like, you don't pursue God's best for you; instead, you pursue whatever feels good for you. You just want to feel desired, so you lower your standards to get some attention, or you just need to unwind, even if it means you have to have another drink, another vape.

You so badly want empathy from people that you vent about that problem, you vent about that person, you vent about your pain, and even though all that is so legitimate, the way in which you vent it doesn't help you; it only hurts you. It leaves you embittered. Some of you want so badly to feel accepted that you're even willing to compromise your own morals to make that happen.

If it's you, if you're here and you're entertaining sin in your life, you're not alone. I've been there. We've been there. This is a part of the human story. Yet what you need to know is you won't be able to love others because you're doing a bad job of loving yourself. You see, sin wants you to think you're helping yourself.

"I'm doing this. Man, it feels good. Actually, I get a high off of it. It's pleasant to my being. It gratifies my flesh. It does feel nice." It masquerades as love, but in truth, when you rip off the mask, all it is is hate from an enemy who does not want your well being. You're entertaining the very things Jesus Christ went to the cross to free you from.

For others of you, you can't love other people because you love yourself too much. You're too focused on where you want to be in life, what you want to achieve in the next five years, the kind of reputation you really want to have, the sort of circle you want to be a part of, the kind of experiences you want to have in life. You won't be able to love others because all your time, all your space, and all your energy are gone into loving you.

The danger here, if it's you, is you won't be able to see others because you can't see past yourself. You're too busy. You're too preoccupied with where you want to be in the future to see where God actually has you here in the present. You're too proud. You're too concerned with being impressive one day that you miss what's important to God here today. You're so focused on your purposes you're missing out on the purposes God has for you.

Heads up: the purposes of God are so much better than any purpose you could ever design for yourself. He wants to save the world. That's amazing! That's why Jesus is calling people to follow him, to be his disciple. "Hey, I'm saving the world. I'm doing a good thing, and I want you to do it too." That's a purpose worth living for. That's a purpose far greater than anything we could draw up for ourselves.

The way he does it is he saves the world one person at a time, and he wants to use you to do it. But the only way it's done is by loving others rightly, and the only way we love others rightly is we love ourselves rightly first. Now listen to me. I need this to be really clear, because some of you are listening to this, and you're like, "This feels really heretical." Some of you are sitting here, and you're like, "No. I don't know that that's what it's teaching."

I'm not preaching a self-care gospel, just to be abundantly clear. I'm not telling you, "You just need to think more positive thoughts. And you know what? You really should complain about the commitments you have and find a way to get out of them. You really should get more vacation time. I can't believe they're holding out on you. You need to eat a healthier diet. That's going to make you more blessed in life." I'm not saying any of that.

I'm not preaching a self-care gospel, but I am preaching to you the real gospel, which is a soul-care gospel. That's what the gospel is. God saw your soul, and it was condemned, and he said, "I'm coming in to save it, because I want you for myself. I'm going to save your soul." Yet so many of us condemn our soul by way of doing things we know we should not do.

The way you love yourself rightly is you love yourself as Christ himself has loved you. That's it. How has Christ loved you? He has gone to the cross on your behalf. He has endured the wrath of God in your place. What that means for us is I can love myself enough to forgive myself. I can love myself enough to accept myself. I can love myself enough to not give up on myself, because Jesus Christ never gave up on me.

I can love myself enough to celebrate the fact that God is out of his mind, going crazy that you placed your faith in him. He loves that. All of heaven rejoices at the salvation of a single sinner. So, since God celebrates me, I can celebrate me too. I can love myself enough to hold myself to a higher standard. That's the Christian life. God does have a standard he is calling us to. He does want us to walk in that way, because that's the way of Jesus. So I can love myself enough to go that way. I can love myself enough to believe we have purposes in life. First John 4:9-12:

"In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."

Put simply, we love the Lord because he has loved us, and we love one another because he loved us. The reason we know it is because Jesus loved us with all his heart. Jesus' own expression was to be perfect in our place. Jesus loved us with all his soul. His distinction as the Son of God was laid aside that he might become the son of suffering. He loved us with all his mind. His perception was of a reality we knew not of. His perception was of a reality where we could be in relationship with God forever.

None of us knew that. We were darkened in the understanding of our minds, yet as he stepped in light of the world, he brought clarity to reality and said, "No, you can be with me forever." And he loved us as himself. His reflection has made you and me children of God. This is the love of God for you. That's the power of what he has done, and that power is found in Christ's love for us. Let me pray for us.

God, thank you for tonight. We're so grateful for this evening and a chance to sit under your Word. God, I flew through this thing, but don't let my urgency cost these people in this room the intensity of what you're communicating. You don't want a life where they do a bunch of things, where they get active and get to work. That's not your heart for them, God.

No, your heart for them is that they would love you with all of their being, God, that they would love you with their heart, that they wouldn't just be obedient and begrudgingly submitted but that they would desire you, that you would unlock something within them that loves you, God, that they would love you with their soul, they would embrace who you've made them to be and who it is you're making them into, that, God, they would love you with their mind, that they would learn about you and that learning would lead to new living.

And, God, that they would love others as themselves. God, you have loved them very specifically; thus, they should love themselves in light of that, and it should liberate them. It should unleash them, Lord, to make a big difference in the world and to love other people. This is your teaching, Jesus, the first and greatest command, and the second just like it. "Love me because I've loved you." It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Porch, let's stand together. We're really excited, because the evening is not over. We're going to respond in worship. Every one of us in this moment has a response to take. You should know we have a team down at the front, and they'd love to pray with you. If you want prayer, if you need processing, they're here for that. Let's sing together and celebrate the love that God has given.