Message Outline

[Bryn Athyn Family Contemporary worship gathering, Bryn Athyn Church School, Bryn Athyn, PA, 2010.04.26, 0930.]

Introduce:

  • I am in love, and full of love, and it brings me joy.
  • My most painful moments have been because of love.

Connect:

  • Love is important
  • Lord is Love
  • But HOW do you love?

Instruct:

Love Defined (DLW 47)

  • To feel another person’s joy as if it is your own.

Three Parts to Love (TCR 43:1)

  • Outside of oneself
  • Be more at one with them
  • “Bless” them from yourself

The Secret to Love (John 15:1-17)

  • The Lord is the root of love
  • Keeping commandments improves love
  • Love others the way the Lord loves us: sacrificially

Apply:

  • Repent: work on your own spiritual growth
  • We are first attracted to ourself in others, but must then learn to love the OTHER in others.
  • Practice selfless listening: still mind, attention to body language, prayer.

Inspire:

  • When you love, you bring the Lord into people’s lives.

Divine Revelation about Love

Divine Love and Wisdom 47

Divine love and wisdom cannot but be and have expression in others it creates. The essence of love is not to love self, but to love others and through love to be conjoined with them. It is also the essence of love to be loved by others, for thus is conjunction achieved. The essential ingredient in all love consists in conjunction; indeed in it consists its life, which we call pleasure, gratification, delight, sweetness, bliss, happiness and felicity.

Love consists in willing what one has to be another’s, and in feeling the other’s delight as delight within oneself. That is what it is to love. In contrast, to feel one’s own delight in another, and not the other’s delight within oneself, is not to love; for this is loving self, whereas the first is loving the neighbor.

These two types of love are diametrically opposite each other in nature. Both indeed conjoin, and to love what one has in another-in other words, to love oneself in another-does not appear to undo that conjunction; but in fact it does so undo the conjunction that the more anyone has loved another in this way, the more the other eventually hates him. For such a conjunction gradually becomes undone of itself, and love then turns to hatred to the degree that it does.

True Christian Religion 43:1

The essence of love is loving others who are outside oneself, wanting to be one with them, and blessing them from oneself. Two things – love and wisdom – constitute the essence of God; but three things constitute the essence of God’s love: his loving others who are outside of himself, his wanting to be one with them, and his blessing them from himself. The same three constitute the essence of his wisdom because in God love and wisdom are united, as was just explained. It is love that wants those three things, however, and wisdom that brings them about.

John 15:1-17

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.”