Wow, you all sit so far away.
You know, last time when I spoke, I received some feedback that sometimes I speak very softly. So if you do not hear me this time, move forward. If the person next to you cannot hear me, raise your hand so I can speak louder.
As I meditated on what I should share, a hymn came to my heart. I am not sure whether you all know this hymn. Every time I sing it, it brings tears to my eyes.
A lot of times, I focus on the question that is asked: “What have I done for the Lord? What have I given for the Lord?” But this time, the Lord seemed to tell me, “Do not focus on that.” That is a proper response, but just focus on the first two or three sentences. Focus on the love of the Lord.
He gave us all. There is no question about it. Sometimes it seems to me that we do not quite appreciate it—not that I want to use that word—but it does not quite stick in our hearts. In our time, we just go our own ways.
With the brother and sister who are going to be baptized today, they gave good testimonies. They testified of how the love of the Lord is upon them, how His love is steadfast, and how His love never changes. That is what the Lord impressed upon my heart today: to share on that.
First of all, I want to share a story. The hymn writer was a sister. I do not know whether you have heard the story of how she came to write this hymn. Her name was Frances Havergal. She was British, and she lived in the 1800s.
One time she went to Germany and stayed at a pastor’s house. She went out one day and came back tired. As she rested in the pastor’s study, she saw a painting of our crucified Lord, the crucified Saviour.
It seemed to her that the Lord was speaking to her. At the bottom of the painting were the words:
I did this for thee;
What hast thou done for Me?
From that, she wrote the words of the hymn. After she finished writing, she looked at it and thought, “Well, that does not seem good.” So she took the piece of paper and threw it into the fireplace.
But amazingly, the paper was not burned. It came back out, and she picked it up. A couple of months later, she spoke with her father, and he encouraged her to save it. Her father then put the melody to the hymn.
I think that is an amazing story—how we get all these hymns and how we are encouraged by them.
There is also a story about the painting itself, and that goes back another century, into the 1700s.
Again in Germany, there was a painter. One day he hired a gypsy girl as a model because he wanted to do a painting. The girl came into his studio and looked around. It was the first time she had done something like that.
She saw that the man had been commissioned by a church to paint the crucifixion. He was working on it. The gypsy girl, of course, did not know anything about the Saviour Himself.
She looked and said, “Who is this? What are they doing to Him?”
The man said, “His name is Jesus Christ, and they are crucifying Him.”
The girl asked more questions. She was very curious, and the man told her all about Jesus—how He came into this world and how He died for the sins of men.
After some time, the painting of the crucifixion was completed, and the portrait of the girl was also completed. The last time the girl came to his studio, she asked him a question:
You must love Him very much, sir, when He has done all this for you. Do you not?
He never saw the girl again, but that question stayed in his heart. Finally, as he meditated upon it, he realized that the Lord Himself had died for him.
I think that question should echo in our hearts today. Sometimes we may forget that He must love us very much when He has done all this for us. Do we not?
Let us pray.
Lord, we do want to give thanks to You. Indeed, You have done so much for us. Lord, You have not only done so much for us; You gave Yourself to us.
Our hearts are full of thankfulness as we come back to You and give thanks to You. Lord, we want to pray for what is going to be shared later on, as we fellowship on the love of God. We ask for the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
Lord, it is not what I can say, but what You can say to the brothers and sisters. Lord, indeed, we ask that You may make all this word alive to each one of us, so that we can be moved and can answer You.
Lord, You have loved us so much. Enable us to love You. Lord, we do thank You, and we ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
I actually had an introduction here, but Ken is not here. You probably know that Kenny is an engineer, and I am an engineer, so we can talk about each other in our profession.
Engineers are sometimes annoyed by things such as scope creep. If you do not know what that is, that is fine. Essentially, it is when you work on a project and your customer says, “I want more things to be done.”
That is hard. It is hard for engineers.
I also want to share a little secret with you. If you want to annoy me somehow—frustrate me—I will tell you how. I hope you do not do it.
One thing that really gets to me is constant changes in specifications. I do not like it.
A couple of months ago, I was working on a project. I spent a whole lot of time on it, and things were going smoothly. Then one day my boss came in and said, “You know what? We would like to make some changes. Number one, I am not going to give you more time. Number two, you are not going to get more budget.”
I said, “Oh no, that is not good.” But he is the boss. What can I say?
So I had to scrap all the things I had been working so hard on and really start over again. I had to work very hard to catch up with the new things and make up the time so that, at the end, I could deliver according to the fixed schedule.
After a while—in this case, about two months—the boss came again and said, “Well, guess what? I am going to give you more changes.”
It was really the same thing. It got me frustrated. Work was not fun at that time. I said, “Lord, just deliver me from all this. I cannot take that anymore.”
But our God is humorous. Trust me, He is very humorous. Whatever you ask, sometimes the Lord does not give it to you.
Yet in this time, He seemed to speak to me with this very little phrase:
I have loved you.
I am sure we all have that experience. We are stuck in something and cannot get out. We hope the Lord can take care of it, but the Lord does something else to bring us above the situation.
Even though the condition has not changed, we are able to move on. It is just this little phrase: “I have loved you.”
I can confess that the work condition was the same. Nothing changed, but I was able to move on because I was contented. The Lord said, “I bring all these situations to you for one reason, and one reason only: because I love you.”
With computers today, it is very easy. You open an electronic version of the Bible and search the entire Bible for this little phrase, “I have loved you.”
It actually comes in five places, and that is what I want to share today.
Let us open the Bible to Jeremiah 31:3.
The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying,
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love:
Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
That is the first occurrence.
If you turn to the last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, chapter 1, verse 2:
I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us?
That is the second occurrence.
The third occurrence is in John 13:34:
A new commandment I give unto you,
That ye love one another;
Even as I have loved you,
That ye also love one another.
The next occurrence is in John 15:12:
This is My commandment,
That ye love one another,
Even as I have loved you.
The last occurrence is in Revelation 3:9:
Behold, I give of the synagogue of Satan,
Of them which say they are Jews, and they are not, but do lie;
Behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet,
And to know that I have loved thee.
Sometimes you put all these together and they seem random. How can all these happen together? But as I prayed over them, I found that there are connections between all five verses.
Today I would like to begin with fellowship on the love of God. Then we will come to the commandment the Lord gave us: that we love each other as He has loved us. Lastly, we will consider Revelation 3 and the letter to the church in Philadelphia.
First of all, when we consider God’s love, we have to ask a question: What is love?
Nowadays, we hear people say, “Do you love this?” Sometimes I have a hard time giving an answer. Tell me what you mean by love first, then I will give you an answer.
But from the Bible, it is very clear. In 1 John 4, it declares that God is love.
God is love.
—1 John 4:8
So, on one side is God and on the other side is love. If we want to know what love is—what true love is—we have to come to God. We really cannot separate them apart. Love is an essence of God.
As far as love is concerned, God’s love is the standard. Nothing else compares to God’s love. Let me say it in another way: any other love that we know of is inferior to God’s love.
When God said in Jeremiah 31:3, “I have loved you,” sometimes we may think that is so ordinary. Of course God loves us. We know that. God loves His people from Genesis to the end of the Bible. What is so special about it?
But if we read more about the time of Jeremiah, when God spoke to Jeremiah and said, “I have loved you,” we come to know the condition of the Jews at that time. Then we will be amazed.
Even though these words may seem ordinary, they are extraordinary.
After Solomon died, the nation of Israel was divided into two: the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. This is recorded in 1 Kings, 2 Kings, and 2 Chronicles.
According to some Bible literature, the time from King Solomon to the captivity of the northern kingdom by Assyria was about two hundred years. The time from the death of Solomon to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was about three hundred and forty-five years. That is a long time.
If you read through those texts, one thing is impressed upon your heart: over those two or three hundred years, the Jews were rebellious. From the beginning, they worshipped other gods. In the northern kingdom, there were golden calves which they came to worship. Only with a few exceptions of good kings, they went their own way.
It was not that God was silent during that period. He sent prophets. He sent ten prophets to the northern kingdom and seventeen prophets to Judah, asking them time and time again to turn back to Him. But the Bible says they refused to hear.
It was within this time that God came and said, “I have loved you.” If I were God, I would wipe them out—but I am not God. God came to tell them, “I have loved you.”
Not only did He say, “I have loved you”; He said:
I have loved thee with an everlasting love.
To me, that means His love never changes—yesterday, today, and forever. That everlasting love is the love with which God loved them.
This is the first characteristic of God’s love: it is steadfast. From the time God chose Abraham and said He would raise up a nation from his descendants, through the histories of Kings and Chronicles, and leading up to Malachi, the people were unfaithful.
They were unfaithful in Moses’ time. Yet God still loved them. God did not wipe them out from the earth.
God sent forth His prophets, and in the fullness of time He sent forth His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. What did the Jews do? He was crucified by the Jews.
Even after all this, do you think God stopped loving them? No. God still loved them.
Paul wrote in Romans 11:25-26:
For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery,
Lest ye be wise in your own conceits,
That a hardening in part hath befallen Israel,
Until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in;
And so all Israel shall be saved.
At the end, even though throughout all the ages the Jews did not fulfill the purpose, they still have a place in God’s eternal purpose. Think of it. Is that mercy? Yes, that is the mercy of God. That is also God’s unchanging love toward the Israelites.
When we think about ourselves, is not God that way toward us too? Can anyone say, “I am always faithful to God”? None of us can say that. I cannot say that.
I would say that most of the time I am unfaithful. But thank God that He still loves us, and His love never changes. He even loves us when we are unfaithful.
Believe me, that is the thing that saves us, actually: His steadfast love.
Secondly, when we look at the love of God toward the Israelites, we find that God’s love is a suffering love.
We all know from 1 Corinthians 13:4—that chapter on love—that love is patient. In some older versions, it says:
Love suffereth long.
Love is longsuffering.
As I meditated on that, I wondered: as human beings with soul and body, we can suffer. We know what that means. But can God suffer? God is Spirit. Can God suffer?
The Lord seemed to point me to two Scriptures. The first concerns Lazarus. When the Lord came to the village and saw the people weeping, John 11:33 says:
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping,
And the Jews also weeping which came with her,
He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.
At least we know that in His spirit, the Lord can be troubled. He can be deeply moved. Ephesians 4:30 also says:
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.
We can grieve the Holy Spirit. We can grieve our Lord Himself. We can grieve the Father.
Some of us are parents. We all love our children. If our children come back and say, “I do not really love you,” that must hurt.
We also love our children in such a way that we want them to do the right thing. But if they keep doing the wrong things, and keep wanting to go their own way, that hurts. It is not physical pain, but you hurt inside.
God is more sensitive than us. When we read Malachi 1:2, God says, “I have loved you,” and the people say, “How have You loved us?” They are talking back. They are saying, “You love us? Really?”
That hurts. With human interpretation, that hurts. I have to say that it must have grieved the Lord greatly.
Then you may say, “Well, it grieves God. It hurts.” When we look at Jeremiah 31, those words were spoken just prior to the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, which came a year later.
If God is a loving God, why did He allow that to happen? Does He not love His people?
The Lord seemed to give me the answer: go and look at Luke 15. It is the parable with which we are all familiar, the parable of the prodigal son.
Most of the time when we read that story, we identify with the younger son, because that is the way we were before we were saved. We liked to enjoy the things of this world until the day God turned us around.
But if we turn our eyes away from the younger son and look at the father, there are days I wonder—because I am a father too—why the father let the younger son go. Did he have any choice? Why could he not persuade him to stay?
The answer is in the same passage. In Luke 15:24, when the son came back, the father said:
For this my son was dead, and is alive again;
He was lost, and is found.
The father knew that unless he let the son go, face all those situations, come to his senses, and return, there was no hope. In a sense, he did not want the son to leave, but he had no choice.
If he did not let him go, his son was dead. But when he let him go, the son came back. The Bible says he came to life again.
If we look at the captivity into which God put the Israelites, God did not say, “That is it. You will just stay there.” There is a promise in Jeremiah that God would bring them back seventy years later.
It was through the difficulties the Jews experienced—the destruction of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem—that they would come back, repent, and return.
What was God’s charge against the Israelites? There were two things. First, they served and worshipped other gods. Second, when they needed help, they did not turn to God; they turned to other countries and nations.
After the captivities, those issues seemed to be solved. One can say that God may allow difficult situations, even bitter situations, to happen so that He may gain us back.
In this process, I feel that God suffered more than the Israelites, even though He sent them away and allowed them to be captive for seventy years.
The next example the Lord seemed to give me is Paul. We all know Paul’s history. In 1 Timothy 1:16, he testified:
Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy,
That in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all His longsuffering,
For an ensample of them which should hereafter believe on Him unto eternal life.
When Paul wrote 1 Timothy, he was old. He came back to testify that he found mercy. Mercy is another word for love. He found love in God, and we find that God was patient with him.
If you look at Paul’s history, his name was Saul before. When he was a young man, he persecuted the believers. At that time, God could have let him go and said, “Go your own way. Do your own thing.” But God did not let that happen.
God intervened. The Lord met Paul on the road to Damascus, and that really turned him around.
What I am trying to say is that the love of God is a suffering love. Sometimes it is more than physical suffering; it is suffering inside, grieving inside.
Does God love us the same way? Maybe we do not think about it that way. Maybe we think that if we are more in the world, that is our business. What does that have to do with God? But God does grieve over that.
Even through all these griefs, He still loves us. He still works patiently in each one of us, because His objective is to bring many sons into glory. This is our salvation.
The next characteristic I find is that God’s love is uncompromising love.
As I mentioned, the problem with the Israelites at that time was that they worshipped other gods. God had to deal with it. Because He loved them, He could not let them continue in that way.
He arranged for Babylon to come and put the whole nation of Judah under captivity.
We should be very thankful because sometimes our makeup is that we like to compromise. But thank God that He will not compromise. He is working on each one of us until His purpose is done.
I do not think we like the word discipline, but it is an amazing word: child training. Hebrews 12:7 says:
It is for chastening that ye endure;
God dealeth with you as with sons;
For what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?
But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers,
Then are ye bastards, and not sons.
I am very thankful to the Lord Himself that He deals with us as sons. He wants to bring His sons into glory.
Another characteristic of God’s love—and this is the last one, though I am sure there are more—is that God’s love is always one hundred percent. That is putting it in my words, obviously.
One brother put it this way: God’s love is red-hot.
Sometimes we love each other only halfway—twenty percent, thirty percent—but we are never one hundred percent. But the way God loves us is one hundred percent, always one hundred percent. He never gives us less. He is not capable of giving us less.
God never holds back. God holds nothing back.
Developing the history with the Jews, God sent His prophets and servants to speak to the Israelites from morning to night. Jeremiah said that God sent him to speak to the Jews for twenty-three years, from morning to night, asking them to repent.
God is one hundred percent committed to His people. Last of all, He sent His Son.
Romans 8:32 says:
He that spared not His own Son,
But delivered Him up for us all,
How shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?
What else can you ask for? Can we ever say that God does not love us? He loved us, and He gave us all.
When we come to know God’s love, we cannot simply say, “Thank You, God,” and leave it there. When there is a calling, there should be a response.
When we come to John 13, the Lord showed us the great love of God toward us. On that night, He asked His disciples—He gave them a new and fresh commandment:
A new commandment I give unto you,
That ye love one another;
Even as I have loved you,
That ye also love one another.
—John 13:34
When the Lord says, “Love one another,” who is this “one another”? How is this “one another” related to us?
Today, at the Lord’s table, Jamie and Steve used words from the Gospel of John. Throughout the Gospel of John, John never mentioned his own name. He always referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
The Gospel of John, the epistles, and Revelation were written around AD 85 to AD 95. At that time, all the disciples who walked with Jesus had gone into glory; only John was left. The church was under persecution.
Somehow, the Holy Spirit came in to strengthen the brothers and sisters and encourage them to press on. The Holy Spirit used John.
When we read John’s writings, one thing we always find is the love of God. We just cannot get around it.
In John 21, the disciples went fishing. The Lord challenged Peter: “Do you love Me more than these?” He charged Peter three times.
But let us not concentrate on that. Think about what the Lord asked Peter to do:
Feed My sheep.
Tend My lambs.
What draws me to those two verses is the word My. We might take that lightly, but indeed, we are the Lord’s. We are loved by the Lord.
That is very critical to our Christian walk: to know who we are, to know our relationship with the Lord, that we belong to Him, and that we are loved by Him.
So if we go back to this commandment from the Lord—“Love one another, even as I have loved you”—He is asking us to love each other. More specifically, He is asking us to love the ones who belong to the Lord, the ones who are loved by the Lord.
We ought to love each other because the Lord loves them.
In John 13:1, we read:
Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knowing that His hour was come
That He should depart out of this world unto the Father,
Having loved His own which were in the world,
He loved them unto the end.
Now we know that “one another” is not merely one another. It is the one who belongs to the Lord. It is the one who is loved by the Lord. That is whom we should love.
From that commandment, as an engineer, I ask the question: How are we supposed to love each other?
Thank the Lord that He is very specific. Engineers like specific things.
He said that when you love one another, you are to love “just as I have loved you.” There is no escape in that. We can say, “Oh, I love you the best I can,” but the Lord did not say that.
The Lord said that we are to love each other with the love He has for us. How He loves us, then we are to love each other.
As I meditated this week, I came to this: that is what the Lord wants. How do I score? It becomes a soul-searching time—whether I ever measure up to what God wants me to do.
If I make an inventory of how I love others, I come up short. The four characteristics of God’s love are steadfast love, suffering love, uncompromising love, and red-hot love. I can never measure up to them.
Sometimes I feel that I meet the Lord’s requirements, but in reality, I do not, even when I try my best.
Take, for example, steadfast love—love that never changes. As I look back, I see how my love changes.
Sometimes our attitude and our love toward each other depend on our feelings. We might say, “I feel good, so I will be nice to you. I love you.” But when I do not feel like it, I say, “Sorry about that. I no longer love you.”
Natural love depends on feelings. If that is the case, then it is not steadfast love. It is not love that never changes.
Sometimes we love people we know better. Sometimes we love people with whom we have something in common. Chinese people—I love Chinese people. That does not mean I do not love Americans.
Maybe we are in the same line of business. Maybe we have more in common. We can talk to each other and understand each other. That is why we love each other more.
Maybe we go to the same meetings or are in the same profession. But if that is the case, when those things in common change, the love changes as well. Maybe we no longer have things in common. That does not mean we can love each other the way we should.
That is not steadfast love.
More often than not, my love for others tends to depend on how they respond. If I am nice to you and kind to you, and you respond equally, I say, “Oh, that works very well.” But if you do not respond kindly, I say, “Wow, that is it. Forget about it.”
Love depends on relationship. Again, that is not steadfast love. It changes. As far as steadfast love is concerned, I never reach the standard.
Then there is suffering love. When everything goes along fine, I can love. But when the Lord calls me to bear the cost in loving each other, when the Lord calls me to go the extra mile and do something extra, I begin to shy away from it.
There is a story in the Bible with which we are familiar. Peter came and asked, “How many times shall I forgive my brother?” The Lord said:
Seventy times seven.
That really means always.
If I am on my own, I would say, “Lord, seven times—is that not enough? That is all I have.” But that is not suffering enough. That is not going the extra mile. That is not bearing the cost to love each other.
Then there is uncompromising love. I feel that in this society, at least I am taught to live with each other peacefully. Do not stir up waves. Do not make trouble. Do not hurt others’ feelings.
But the love of God is uncompromising. I know I have a problem with that. I love my children. Many times, if something is not quite right, I would rather shy back and not raise the issue.
But that is not uncompromising love.
As far as God’s love is concerned, wrong is wrong. He could not accept the Israelites worshipping Him and worshipping other gods at the same time. How can I accept my children being halfway in the Lord and halfway in the world?
That does not mean that when we see something wrong, we simply raise the issue and create a storm. Ephesians reminds us that we are to speak the truth in love.
The last one is the one hundred percent love—the fervent love, the red-hot love of the Lord.
Naturally, if I ask everyone, I think we would all give the same answer: we love our family more than others. Even then, you might say you love them one hundred percent, but you do not. There are always reserves here and there.
When you come to people you are not as close to, at least the way I see myself, I have more reserves. I hold back more because I do not know you as much as I should.
But that is not God’s love. God’s love is one hundred percent. It is always red-hot.
As I mentioned, in all these things I come to a conclusion that I fail—really, I fail.
There is nothing in the natural man, nothing that we are taught in this world, and no natural love that we know of that is able to meet God’s requirements.
Then what shall we do? I do not have the answer. If you have answers, let me know. But I do want to suggest a starting point.
If the Lord opens our eyes to see the great love of God toward us, and if we really comprehend it, then in His glory and in His life we will be changed.
The Lord always promises that when He gives a commandment, there is sufficient grace for it. We can always go to the Lord and ask Him for grace, that we may love each other the way He loves us.
I find a wonderful prayer that Paul has in Ephesians 3:17-19:
That ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man;
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
To the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
May be strong to apprehend with all the saints
What is the breadth and length and height and depth,
And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
That ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
I think that should be our prayer: to ask the Lord to open our eyes, that we may fully comprehend the love of God.
That is the starting point. When we know Him and know His love, naturally we can love each other.
There is one more point to make. In John 13, there is something the Lord is after. When His disciples love each other the way He loved them, the Lord says in John 13:35:
By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples,
If ye have love one to another.
I think what the Lord is looking for today is this testimony: that God’s people, brothers and sisters, love each other as the Lord has loved us.
Finally, let us turn to Revelation 3, the letter to Philadelphia, from Revelation 3:7 through Revelation 3:12. I will not read everything. We have already read Revelation 3:9.
The latter part of Revelation 3:9 says:
And to know that I have loved thee.
I think that is very precious.
There were many churches at that time. Philadelphia was a city in Asia Minor. The word Philadelphia also means brotherly love.
There were many churches gathering and assembling throughout Asia Minor, but God singled out this assembly in Philadelphia.
He said:
Behold, I give of the synagogue of Satan,
Of them which say they are Jews, and they are not, but do lie;
Behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet,
And to know that I have loved thee.
It seems that God was raising up that assembly as a testimony to Satan, or to those who belong to Satan. In the Gospel of John, Satan is called a murderer and the father of lies. Satan has everything against love. That is who he is.
In the midst of this, God used the assembly in Philadelphia to say to Satan, “What do you mean by love? Come and see it.”
You may ask, “What made the assembly in Philadelphia so special?”
If you look at Revelation 3:8, it speaks of the condition of the church in Philadelphia. At the end, the Lord says:
Thou hast kept My word.
That is the key: they kept the Lord’s word.
Of course, that includes the Lord’s commandment: “Love each other just as I have loved you.” So that gives us a hint that the brothers and sisters in that assembly indeed loved each other in the way the Lord had loved them.
In Revelation 3:11, the Lord encouraged them to hold fast what they had. My interpretation is that we know they had the love of God, and they had love for one another. So the Lord asked them to hold fast to that.
What is the reward? Revelation 3:12 says:
He that overcometh,
I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God.
I am not in construction, so ask Ken about this. But we know that in a house, a pillar is a structure that can carry the load.
What this means to me is that they are going to bear responsibility in the house of God. I think that is very important.
Sometimes we talk about many freedoms and options, but in the book of Revelation, I do not think we are given options. In Revelation 2, there is a warning about the removal of the lampstand. That is a warning.
Loving each other is not an option. In order to fulfill God’s purpose for us, we have to love. We must love each other the way He has loved us.
I think I am running late, but let me close with a one-minute summary of what has been shared today.
We have fellowshipped on the qualities of the love of God. There are four qualities:
I also shared that natural love never measures up to God’s love.
The Lord commands us to love each other the way He has loved us, and that is not an option. Let me say again: that is not an option.
The alternative is like the Jews: the lampstand is removed. If we do not serve the purpose of God, we miss our wonder. If we do not love each other, we are going to miss the purpose of God for us.
Let us pray.
Lord, we do want to give thanks to You for Your mercy. Lord, indeed, You have mercy on us.
We want to pray that, Lord, we do want to repent. If we have not fulfilled Your requirements, enable us to return to You today.
Lord, enable us to draw from that fountain of love, that we may have the grace to love one another the way You have loved us.
We commit this word unto You. Lord, may You continue to work in our hearts. As we come to the end of the year, enable us to meditate on Your great love toward us.
Lord, enable us to really see that loving each other is not an option. We do thank You for Your word, and we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.