God’s Purpose For Us 1) To Love

John 15:9-11“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

How do we experience this joy:

• Remain in his love
• Love his way

John 15:12-13 ”My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

The World’s love:

• Is based on selfish living
• What we will receive

God’s love:

• Is based on being selfless
• What we give

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend

• We need to be careful to not treat God’s command like a job.
• Instead, We do the job because we love God.

Worldly love is like a black hole:

• Never satisfied
• Never enough
• Always wanting more

Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

Romans 12:1-2 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Philippians 2:2-4 ”Then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

1 John 3:16 – 18 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? ¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Here is the truth:

• Love can Grow
• Love can also fade

When we are doing love God’s way – It grows

When we are doing it the world’s way – It fades

Ephesians 5:25-28 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

Short story about Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia and his wife.