Source SM Recap: Volume #50

Series: Love IsWeek 4 – “God” The Word: 1 John 4:7-13, Psalm 139:14-17, 1 Corinthians 13:4-10, 13. Main Thought: Love made the first move, we respond to His love.

Message Explanation: God’s love is selfless, PURE and fully available. Love does not define God but GOD defines love.

 But one of the biggest questions that we all struggle with is, "Why do I not FEEL God’s love?"

- We are not seeking God. - We don’t love like God loves. We naturally frustrated with other people, annoying people. - We feel unworthy of God’s love. Feeling separated from God so we try to EARN it instead of simply accepting God’s love. 

The first part of what God reveals to us…

1.       God has UNCONDITIONAL LOVE for us

1 John 4:7-10: “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. ⁸ But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

This is how MUCH God Loves you: “God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

John 1:12 “all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the RIGHT to become children of God.”

God made the FIRST MOVE, we respond to THIS love. 

Do we love God only for what He DOES for us or for WHO He is?

2.     God has ADOPTED us into HIS FAMILY

We can have a personal Relationship with God through Jesus. 1 John 3:1a: “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!”

Parents who adopt a child go through a lot of sacrifice and time. God went through a lot to make us His children.

God knew us before He made us. Your existence is not random or an accident.

Psalm 139:13-18: "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.¹⁵ You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. ¹⁶ You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. ¹⁷ How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! ¹⁸ I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!”

God’s love does not begin with us. It originates FROM God. Because we have received His love, we need to…

3. Start reflecting God’s love to others

The test of Love is how we treat the people right in front of us (family, friends, enemies, teachers…). What actions need to change in order to show them God’s love?

If you and I are going to live like Jesus lived, then we are going to have to love like Jesus loved.

1 John 4:11-12: "Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. “No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

The 1 Corinthians 13 challenge: ^“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Take the phrase, “Love is patient” and insert my name….”Josh is patient, Josh is kind, Josh is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.”

Do this for every phrase of this verse.

We have an opportunity to reach OUT with God’s love. Commit to loving others the way that God loves us. 

- Thank Him for His love for you - Thank Him for belonging to His Family - Thank Him for dying for you

Element of Fun: The students played the game, ”Bite the Bag.” It was a fun game to watch at all campuses!

Music: Alive, Your Love Never Fails, Your Presence is Heaven to Me, How He Loves (closing).

Favorite Moment: We had 5 students receive Christ this past week at Source!

What’s Next: We are having a special kickoff night for Decrease Weekend!

To watch any of the series messages, check out the vimeo page

Source SM Recap: Volume #48

Series: Love Is Week 1 – “Grace” The Word:  John 8:1-11, Romans 8:1. Main Thought: Drop the stones of condemnations and live with grace towards others

Message Explanation: Have you ever been caught doing something you knew was wrong? Maybe it was something that you did that became public!  We live in a culture of condemnation and when someone fails, they are targeted. God’s love is shown through His grace unlike the world around us. Jesus helps us drop the stones of self-condemnation and condemnation on others and live by grace.

Object Lesson: We have placed a small rock and index card. Provide small rocks and an index card under each seat.

We find in this story that Jesus was challenged. A group of people decide to CONDEMN a woman caught in sin and celebrated her being caught.

John 8:1-3: “Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.”

Jesus was teaching the crowd and all of a sudden, He was INTERUPPTED.

John 8:4-6: “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.

Jesus has a choice. The religious leaders were trying to catch him in a catch 22. If he answered, “stone her” then he wouldn’t be grace and a friend of sinners. If he said, “no” then we would be rejecting the Law of Moses.

Jesus responds with grace and truth: John 8:7-8: ^“They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”  Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

The THUDS of the rocks could be heard…as people quietly walked away….

How do we show LOVE like Jesus?

1.    Grace is more concerned with our future than our past. 

John 8:9-11: “When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

Jesus does not minimize the sin by saying, “Go and sin no more.” Sin is serious. Jesus took it so serious, He was on a mission to defeat sin on the cross.

This is why Jesus came: John 3:16-17: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”

2.   Drop the stones towards others.

LAY down the STONES of condemnation. Open up your eyes to the PAIN AND SIN of others. Write down the people you have condemned. Pray that God would restore them. 

Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who survived the holocaust during WWII who wrote the “Hiding Place” She is famous for saying, “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”

When Jesus said, “Go and sin no more” He means because of MY GRACE you can leave your life of sin.

3.   Drop the stones toward yourself

- What stones of anger do you throw at yourself for past failures and sin. - Write down the people they need to forgive - Write down the areas they condemn about themselves and lay it at the altar

 It is NEVER too late for God to restore you and forgive you. Jesus came not to condemn the world but through Him they might be saved. Jesus came with a mission to “seek and save the lost.”

 Ephesians 2:8-9: ^“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”

Take this time respond to His Grace for salvation. Jesus says the same thing to us tonight.  He says to you and me, “I don’t condemn you.” My blood shed on the cross washes your sin away and now live a NEW LIFE in Me.

The question is, “Have you heard Jesus say to you, I don’t condemn you, now leave your life of sin?”

Element of Fun: The students played the game, “Face the Cookie” It was a fun game to watch at all campuses!

Music: Alive, Holy Spirit, Break Every Chain.

Favorite Moment: It has been great seeing how God is moving! - We had 5 first time commitments to Christ during High School Source this week! - We had 1 salvation at Source @ The Villages campus! - We had 3 Middle schoolers make a first time commitment this Sunday! - We had 5 students baptized this past weekend!

What’s Next: We are continuing the series, “Love Is” as we talk about how should we understand and show love of Jesus.

To watch any of the series messages, check out the vimeo page