Now What? Part 2

The second value at Seven Marks is ‘People.’ We want to be a church community known for our love of people. Sacrificially loving others is God’s preferred means of bringing about the death of our old self. Simply put, learning to love people like Jesus is how we become more like Jesus.

Christ is Enough
Hillsong Worship

You Have Won Me
Bethel Music

Worthy
Elevation Worship

Dallas Willard
“We must accept the circumstances we constantly find ourselves in as the place of God’s Kingdom and blessing. God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are, and if we faithlessly discard situation after situation, moment after moment, as not being ‘right’ we will simply have no place to receive his kingdom in our life. For those situations and moments are our life. It is absolutely essential to our growth…that we accept…ordinary existence as the place where we are to experience and find the reign of God-with-us as actual reality.”

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How do you make and measure progress in the way of Jesus?

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1. Knowledge or Transformation = Expertise

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2. Vibes or Transformation = Experiences

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3. Performance or Transformation = Effort

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4. Fruit of the Spirit

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John 13:33-35
Children, I’m with you only a little longer…I’m giving you a new commandment, and it’s this: love one another! Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. This is how everybody will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for each other.”

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1 Peter 4:8
“Above all, keep absolutely firm in your love for one another…”

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1 John 4:7-8
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

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Romans 13:8-9
Don’t owe anything to anyone, except the debt of mutual love. If you love your neighbor, you see, you have fulfilled the law. Commandments like ‘don’t commit adultery, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t covet’ –and any other commandment– are summed up in this: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

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Robert Molhulland
“There can be no wholeness in the image of Christ which is not incarnate in our relationships with others, both in the body of Christ and in the world…If you want a good litmus test of your spiritual growth, simply examine the nature and quality of your relationships with others…Our relationships with others are not only the testing grounds of our spiritual life but also the places where our growth toward wholeness in Christ happens.”

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The best way to tell if you are making progress in the way of Jesus is by how well you love others.

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1 John 3:16
“By this we know what love is: Jesus laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”

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1 Corinthians 13:1-3
If I speak in human language, or even in those of angels, but do not have love, then I’ve become a clanging gong or else a clashing cymbal. And if I should have prophetic gifts, and know all mysteries, all knowledge, too; and if I have faith to move the mountains, but have no love – I’m nothing. If I give all my possessions to the poor, and, for pride’s sake, my very body, but do not have love, it’s useless to me.

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1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient; love is kind…Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude; It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth…Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

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NT Wright
“The last lines tell their own story: bearing, believing, hoping, enduring, never failing–all these speak of moments, hours, days, and even perhaps years when there will be things to bear, things to believe against apparent evidence, things to hope for which are not seen at present, things to endure, things which threaten to make love fail.”

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NT Wright
“Love is the language they speak in God’s new world, and we are summoned to learn it against the day when God’s world and ours will be brought together forever.”

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Learning to love people like Jesus is how we become more like Jesus.

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John 13:3-5
Jesus knew that the father had given everything into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God. So he got up from the supper-table, took off his clothes, and wrapped a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a bowl and began to wash the disciples feet, and to wipe them with the towel he was wrapped in.

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John 13:12-15
“Do you know what I’ve done to you?” He asked. “You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and you’re right. That’s what I am. Well, then: if I, as your master and teacher, washed your feet just now, you should wash each other’s feet. I’ve given you a pattern, so that you can do things in the same way that I did to you.”

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We learn the language of self-giving love by adopting the pattern of the servant.

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Tish Harrison Warren
“We love people universally by loving the particular people we know and can name. We love the world by loving a particular place in it…Our love for the church universal is worked out in the hard pews of our particular, local congregation… The body of Christ is only known, loved, and served through the gritty reality of our local context.”

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Paul David Tripp
The call to a life of joyful servitude and willing suffering is itself a grace. In calling me to deny myself, God is freeing me from my bondage to me. Self-Focus never leads to happiness, it never produces contentment, and it never results in a satisfied heart. The more a [person] has themselves in focus, the more they think about how ministry inconveniences them, and the less they will experience true joy and lasting contentment. The call to servanthood is the tool that your Lord uses to free you from your discouraging and debilitating bondage to you. The call to servanthood is not just for the glory of your Lord and the benefit of others, but it is God’s grace to you…

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