Love, the foundation of all

Hello everyone, my name is Kaitlyn Humenik. Today we are going to be talking about something very exciting regarding not only Valentine's Day that was just yesterday, but also this whole month, and I'm sure you can guess what that is. We'll be talking about love today. Before we begin, make sure you subscribe to the channel and click the notification bell so you can get updates when new posts, new content goes live. Let's open this up with a prayer. Dear Father God, we come into your presence by the blood of your Son Jesus Christ. We thank you so much for this beautiful livestream. We thank you for the people watching, Father. I just pray over the people that are watching, Father, that you can plant seeds today, that you can introduce a new concept of your love, Father God, that you can show everyone how much you love them. I just ask Holy Spirit that I decrease so that you can increase and that your words can just flow through my mouth. Let the words resonate with someone today. Let it plant seeds so that it can harvest into something beautiful in their life. In Jesus' name, amen. So let's start off with what is love? That is the biggest question when it comes to love. Everyone always asks, what is love? So we can jump right into this with the most common Bible verse that is used in regards to that question. That is 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 7. This is also in the NLT version. It says, love is patient. Love is love is kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable. It keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. Love never gives up. Love never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. So this this verse is packed with so many things that describe love. This is the most important verse to go to. When it besides John 3:16, when it comes to love, because it talks about all of the actions that we need to be putting forth in our life, the the actions that we need to be the way we need to act towards other people, the way we should talk to other people. As shown in this verse, it's very clear that love is an action, not a feeling towards someone. As it says, love is patient and kind. That's an action towards someone. So when when God is telling us. Love is patient. For example, loving someone means to be patient. Or love is kind, meaning that means to be kind to people in all situations. Love is not jealous. So to love someone is to not be jealous of the things they have because you want what they have, because God provides for all of our needs. Love is not boastful or proud or rude. So all of these things are actions put towards someone else in order to show our love. It does not demand its own way. So again, going back to what love is— to love someone is to not demand your own way. So when we are caught up in situations where, um, sometimes we can get a little selfish and we forget that we need to put the other person first— so to love them, to show our love to them, is to not focus on what we want. And as well as it doesn't rejoice about injustice. So obviously we support the justice that God gives. We— the truth will always win out. The truth does not need to be defended. So we are always going to be pushing towards the truth, and that's part of what love is, is we're going to stand with truth. That's part of the armor of God, the belt of truth, that we walk with truth and it holds everything up. Love never gives up. It never loses faith. It's always hopeful. So all of these things are like applicable things that we can apply to our lives. And it endures in every situation. So this can go along the lines of long-suffering, how if you were, for example, if you were being treated bad by someone else, you're enduring through that because you love them, and you're going to continue to be patient towards that person and kind to that person. And these are just some special things that can come from love. And a lot of this stuff, if you dive deep into this verse specifically, there's more to it than what is shown, because it's directly stated that love is patient and kind. But if you dive deeper into what those words mean, you, you understand that compassion comes with kindness and that grace can come with patience. They're 2 separate things, but they correlate with each other. You can't have grace over someone if you're not being patient with them. You can't have compassion and have sympathy over someone if you're not being kind to them. So all— it all correlates back to one thing. And it just— it— when you— it pushes back all the things of the enemy, all the things that the enemy— the— all the ways that the enemy wants us to act, of being prideful, jealous, envious of people. All of— all this stuff that goes into love pushes back the evil. It brings forth the The light, the kingdom of light. A lot of the time when in regards to love, we hear the phrase, "You don't have to like someone to love someone." But you may ask, like, how can I love someone that I don't like? And these verses answer that. There's a verse in First John chapter four verses nineteen in the NLT version, and it says that we love because He first loved us. This is a very powerful verse because. It shows that we only love because he loved us. There's, there's no other reason for it. He chose to love us in our sin, and he chose to send, to send his Son so that we can have a relationship with him, so that we can go to heaven and live with him for eternity. That's love. And as seen in John 3:16, it says God showed us that he loved us by sending his Son. So it's very clear that love is an action, not a feeling. And there's another one in 1 Peter chapter 4, verses 8 in the NLT version, and this says, most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. When I read this verse, the first thing that comes to mind is grace, because God shows us abundant grace whenever we make mistakes, when we fall short, because we all fall short of the glory of God. So we We're gonna make mistakes and we're gonna continue to do so, but God pours out his abundant grace over us and he, he gives us forgiveness. And we— all we need to do is receive that. So when it says that love covers a multitude of sins, you're literally covering someone in your love with your compassion, your kindness. It covers the mistakes that people have made. And that all goes back to Christ because God is love. There's a verse in Romans chapter 12, verses 20 in the NLT version, and this one says, if you— if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. This verse is amazing to show— goes back to the question of how can we love someone we don't like. It, it shows that you can do tangible things for someone even if you don't like them, because love is an action. It's showing the love of God. That's how we can show how we are in fellowship with Jesus, because we're pushing forward the same love that he showed us. Um, there's a verse in Romans chapter 12, verses 3, in the NLT version, and it says, I give each of you this warning: don't think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourself. This, this verse hits a little hard because sometimes When we choose to not like someone, we forget that we have our own faults too, that we make mistakes. And that's again where grace comes in, because people are going to make mistakes and people are going to make bad choices. But their— someone else's choices and behaviors should not be dependent, or your love for them should not be dependent on their choices and behaviors, meaning that you should always be showing someone your love, the love of God, despite the way they choose to live their life. And it's— it goes back to the evaluation of yourself. Are you humbling yourself towards God, um, and not being prideful and thinking that you're better than someone because you made a better choice than them, or you live a better lifestyle per se? You know, it's— it goes back to just doing what Jesus did for us, of how God just pours out his grace and how none of us are better than each other. This is why, um, Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, the body of Christ. We're all one. We're all supposed to be in unity. So there's— there shouldn't be any comparisons. There shouldn't be, I'm better than you, you're better than me. There's— there's— that's not what it's like in the kingdom of God. We're supposed to be building each other up. We're supposed to be encouraging each other. We're supposed to be helping each other, pouring out our love for them, because that's how we can show that we're in fellowship with Jesus, when we are pouring out the love that he gave us. There's a verse in Matthew chapter five, verses forty-three through forty-four. In the NLT version, it says, "You have heard the law that says love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." This goes back to having grace over people that everyone, everyone is going to make mistakes sometimes. Everyone is going to fall short of expectations, and we need to make sure that we are just pouring out the grace that God gave us. That we need to those people. Who, even if they purposely tried to hurt us, we have to be praying for them. That it just says in the verse, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That doesn't mean— it's not saying persecute them back. It's not saying be mean back. It's saying to pray for them, to love them, so that goes in account of your actions, the way you're talking to them. And I know along with love comes forgiveness, and I know forgiveness isn't always an easy thing to receive, and it isn't always something to go ahead and just give someone. It's not, um, it's not easy to do that, but we have to make sure that we look back at what God has given us, that he has forgiven us. So who are we to withhold that from other people? Who are we to withhold the love of God from other people because we, we think that they don't deserve it? Um, we, we don't have the right to decide that because God tells us not as a request, as a command to love each other. And we have to stay faithful to that. We have to make sure that we are praying for everyone, that we are loving for everyone as, um, as he sees fit. Only in Christ's love, only in Christ's love can we love our enemies, because his love is the only thing that's true in regards to love. Because the love that the world gives is not true love. It's not It's not something that can fulfill you. It's always going to be something that lets you down because Christ's love is what true love is, and we can only find true love in Christ. So in order for us to actually bring that to other people and cover other people with that love, we have to know who Christ is. We have to know what comes with the love of God and how he treats us and all the things that he stays faithful to. Faithful to, we're called to do the same. And when it comes— goes back to that phrase of loving your enemies, basically, I never really understood what that meant until I— like I said before, when I realized that love is not based on a feeling, it's based on action, which means that you're choosing to be patient, you're choosing to be kind, for example, to someone despite how you feel about them. Or despite how, how they choose to live their life. As we said before, you don't have to agree with someone's behavior or choices that they make in order to show them that you love them, because loving them means to show them something that God gave us, and that's not dependent on how people choose to act. That's a lot of the time why we, um, we kind of get stuck in how to love others, because we focus too much on Whether they deserve it or not, or whether you should or shouldn't give it to them, when it's not based on that. Because none of us deserve the love of God, but he gave it to us anyway. He chose to love us because he wanted a family, and we're called to do the same. As before, it's not a request, it's a command. So we're called to go out there and love others, to show people the love of God, because we're ambassadors of Christ. So how can Someone who doesn't know God see Him if you're not exemplifying that, if you're not showing that. And that goes back to us and our walk of faith and our responsibility in the kingdom of heaven, in the kingdom here that He brought down on earth, is that we have to make sure that we are doing what is right, that we are focusing on being Spirit-led, and that we are going forth and doing everything in love, because that is, as the title says, the foundation of all It's the foundation of everything. You can't— you can have all of these gifts Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 before it gets into the verses talking about what love is. He talks about how you can have all these beautiful gifts in the world, you can have all of these amazing things, but if you don't have love, none of it means anything. And it kind of just shows how important love is because, as said before, it is the foundation of everything. That's how we can show other people the love of God. When people don't know— I've known so many people that have come to God because other people have been, have embodied the character of Christ, and that all comes from love. And people start to look at God differently whenever you can be easily forgiving like God is, whenever you can be patient with someone, when you can be kind even in the toughest situation, when someone made the worst mistake of their life, when you can have grace over them. That's exactly what God does for us, and we can't, we can't lose that perspective because sometimes we can get a little prideful and we can think that, that again, that this person doesn't deserve my forgiveness, or this person doesn't deserve to be the kindness that I can give to them, when in fact we're all sinners and God gave that to us willingly. So that shows a lot about how we should be treating other people. And And how we should be not only doing that because he commanded us to, but because we love him too. And as you as you grow to receive God's love, you can grow in your ability to love those you may not like because love is a commitment. It's not; it's a it's a daily choice that we have to make to choose in every situation to love someone despite what's going on. In Matthew chapter twenty-five verses forty in the NLT version, it says, "And the king will say, 'I tell you the truth.'" When, when you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me. I love this verse so much, and I constantly am thinking about this because it's talking about how the things you do to other people, you're literally doing to God. So if you're being kind to other people, you're being patient with other people, you're, you're doing that to God. Same thing as whenever you're being mean to someone or you're being impatient, you're doing that to God. And So when we serve other people, we're serving God. And I love that verse so much because it shows that, that we have to be mindful that it's not just about the way we treat people, but that's exactly how you're treating God. And people don't realize that when we choose to act a certain way based off of how we feel or how we, how we think, um, the kind of treatment that they deserve. But it's based on what God wants us to do and what you're going to give God, because what you give to others, you give to God. Another version of this verse really spoke to me. It's in the TPT, and this verse again is Matthew 25:40, chapter 25, verses 40. And it says, and the King will answer to them, don't you know, when you cared for one of the least of these, my little ones, my true brothers and sisters, you demonstrated love for me? I put this version in here too, along with the NLT, because the last part where it says, you demonstrated your love for me, It really speaks because it shows that it's like, that's how we can show God that we love him, is by treating other people with love, by covering other people with God's love. That's exactly how we can demonstrate that towards God, because again, what we do for others, we do for him. And we have to keep that in mind when we talk to people, when we act in certain ways, because Again, as the verse said, what we do to others we do to him. So we have to make sure that we're keeping that on the forefront of our mind when we're going about our daily lives, that we can continue to be patient and kind and forgiving to people. There's another verse in Galatians chapter 6, verses 7, in the NLT version, and this says, don't be misled, you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. I love this verse too because it Every time I think of the previous verse we just talked about in Matthew, I always think about this Galatians verse because it's talking about the, the seeds you plant. So we— when you're being kind to someone, when you're being patient, when you're being forgiving and you're being gracious to someone, so on and so forth, you're planting seeds of those fruit. You're planting seeds of patience, you're planting seeds of kindness, and you always reap what you sow. And that means that you'll harvest back what you just planted, which means that other people will start to be kind to you. Other people will start to be patient to you, whether that's just directly from God, where God will be more— not more patient because he's always patient with us, but God will be patient towards you. God will be kind to you. And I just, as I said before, I love this verse because it just shows how it's like the things that you plant are the very things that will come back to you. And another way of saying this in the TBT is, you harvest— the harvest you reap reveals the seed you planted. And I thought that was really cool to add in here because it's the verse right after, and because the TBT kind of expands it in a sense. It shows that if you go back to the way other people are treating you and the things that you're— the treatment you're getting from other people, it makes you start to think, what are the seeds I'm planting? And that kind of made me really think as well. It's like we can, we can see the seeds that we're planting by the harvest that we gain from it. And I just, I love all those verses that tie into the same thing. And some can ask like, where can we get this true love for, for others? Where does it come from? And there's some verses that can directly answer that. And there's one in Colossians chapter 1, verses 8 in the NLT, and it says, he has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you. And there's a verse in 1 Thessalonians, or Thessalonians chapter 3, verses 12, in the NLT, and it says, may the Lord make your love for one another and for all his people grow and overflow, just as our love for you overflows. I love these 2 verses as well because it literally says that the Holy Spirit has given you the love. Whenever, whenever you receive salvation, the Holy Spirit comes to reside in you, as seen in the In the New Testament talks about how we are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and whenever you have that, you have the love of God. Then I think in the next chapter in 1 Thessalonians, in chapter 4, verses 9 in NLT, it says, for God himself has taught you to love one another. So if God has taught you how to love one another, it shows that the love comes from him. He's the root of all The love, all the love that we need to give to other people, all comes from him. He's the source of it all. And he didn't just create love, he is love. So we have to— in order to— when we trace all that back, it will always go back to God. Which means that when we invite God into our hearts, we have the very love that God has given us and that you can end up showing towards others. Another question that some may ask is, how do we learn to receive this love? Because you can understand that God gives us love, we can see what he did on the cross, but how can we fully receive that? And John chapter 13, verses 8 in the NLT says, No, Peter protested, you will never ever wash my feet. Jesus replied, unless I wash you, you won't belong to me. So we, we can't receive God's love until we put aside pride and self-sufficiency. Because what God, what Jesus did on the cross for us, we have to surrender that. We can't— you can— you literally cannot receive salvation if you think that living your life without Jesus is sufficient enough, because we know that Jesus is the one that saves us and he's the one that gives us access to God. He's the one that creates the bridge between us and God to be reconciled, for us to have eternity in heaven. We can't Come to the Father unless if you come to Jesus. So we have to put pride aside. We have to put self-sufficiency— we have to give up the, um, the feeling and the, the want to just not need any help from anyone else, because we always, we always need God's help. God has everything that we need, and we need to give up the desire to do what we want because we have to surrender to the thing that he did on the cross. We have to surrender to his sacrifice because we can't be saved without it. Amen. And that goes to show how we can then receive it, because when we, when we give up that self-sufficient attitude, that pride, we understand that we need a Savior. We understand that we need someone to come in our place, because if he never did that, then we would get the justice we deserved. As in the verses that said before, God's justice will not be mocked, and he He brings justice to those things that need to have justice. And God took that— Jesus took that payment on the cross for us, and we have to remember that sacrifice. And a lot of the time we hear that story all the time growing up, of the story of the cross, but we— because we hear it so often, we forget the importance of it. We forget what it truly means and what that truly meant to God, how When he sent his Son, what that meant to him, how he had to sacrifice his only Son to save us. And he chose to do that. He didn't have to do that. And it makes you really think about all the opportunities that Jesus has given us because of that sacrifice. And we are— we're free because of it. He gave us the opportunity to be free. So we are called to remain in that freedom as well. And we have to— that's part of it, is receiving his love, because it's not only our identity comes from him, so we have to be able to receive his love in order to step into the calling that we have, that he has for us, but to show that to other people. There's another verse in Philippians chapter 3, verses 9, in the NLT version, and it says, I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law. Rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. Again, this— that's exactly how we are saved, by faith in Christ, because he's the one that paid the price for us. We have— there's nothing we could possibly do to pay the price that we needed to pay, which is exactly why Jesus, a perfect human being, needed to take that for us. Because a blameless— the blameless Lamb of God took that payment on the cross for us. He shed his blood for you. And we can't forget that that comes from him, that our righteousness comes from him, because we are righteous because of him. That's because of the faith that we had in Jesus. And when we stop trying to focus on all these things involving works and good deeds, you're able to trust in the gracious gift of love. Obviously, good works are important. That comes after the fact. After we receive that salvation, and that faith funnels that. It's the foundation of that. But we have to be able to receive that gracious gift of love. We can't earn God's love because he freely gave it to us as a gift. He loves you just as you are. Um, and there's not a direct Bible verse that says come as you are, but we hear it all the time because God loves you, um, in the position you're in right now. And that doesn't mean we don't need improvement in our lives. That doesn't mean that we don't need help. But God loves you for who you are right now, because there's nothing we can possibly do to earn it, and there's no possible way we can earn it, because it's just a free gift given by God, and we have to receive that. Another question that some may ask is, why should we love God? Because he loves us so much, so why should we love him? In Deuteronomy Chapter 6, verses 5, is in the NLT version. It says, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength. In Joshua chapter 22, verses 5, in the NLT it says, love the Lord your God, walk in all his ways, obey his commands, and hold firmly to him. These are beautiful verses because they just reiterate what we just talked about, how we have to God sent his Son to sacrifice on the cross. He took the payment for us, and we should just— we love him because of who he is, because of the fact that he chose to love us first, that we, we are called sons and daughters, that we are called his own. We are called children of God. And all the things that he gives us too, but it's about who he is and And in Mark chapter 12, verses 29 through 30, in the NLT version, it says, Jesus replied, the most important commandment is this: you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. That kind of puts us in perspective of how much we should love God. That, as said before, God wants a family. He wants us to pursue him. He wants us to love him with genuine love. It's not about just saying you love God. When we talked about before how love is an action, that's how we can show God that we love him, is by bringing his love to other people, by showing other people his love. Yeah, we love God for who he is. He's, he's good in himself. He's not good because of the things he does. He's just good, and we praise him for that. And you That's part of loving God, is praising him for the things he does, worshiping him for who he is. And it's not dependent on what we have done or what we haven't done, because it's all just about him. And he— we love God because he saved us and because he redeemed us. In John chapter 13, verses 35, in the NLT version, it says, Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. I love this verse a lot because it's, it's showing that love is an action, because it literally says that the love for one another will prove that we are from God. Loving each other is proof that we belong to Christ. It's proof that we're in alignment with Christ because his love is the definition of who he— like, he's the foundation of everything because The foundation of everything is love, and he is love. So we— when we reiterate that, when we bring that to other people, that's how we are proving that we are in alignment with Christ, which just shows how important it is to be in alignment with Christ, because other people can easily tell that we are belonging to Christ simply by the way we act. And that just shows how important our actions are and how important our words are. In the Bible it says how the tongue has the power of life and death, how we have to be careful with what we say too. We have to say everything Spirit-led, and we have to say it with love, because that's the whole point, is we're meant to build up the body of Christ. We're meant to remain in unity, because that's what God wants us to focus on, is just stop trying to divide everything and to come in agreement with division. We have to come in agreement with unity and try in our best ability to keep that unity, to keep ourselves glued together with Christ in the center, because that's how he wants— he— that's how he wants it. He wants a family. He wants all of us to be in unity. A family is in unity. It's not divided. And your love for someone, again, is not dependent on whether you believe they deserve it or not. And I think that's Um, a really powerful sentence right there because it just shows that we actually need to set aside our feelings. We actually need to set aside our opinions of people and the way we view people because people can do bad things sometimes. People can have a bad history. People can just be bad people. But we can't, we can't just take that and hold it against people when God didn't hold our sins against us. In fact, he actually did the opposite. He forgave us for our sins and he redeemed us. So again, as I said before, who are we to withhold that love from other people? That speaks to me so much because we, again, like I said before, sometimes we can just get prideful. We can just feel like we're better than other people because we have made better choices, or we can say to ourselves like, I would never do that, or that, that was a bad decision, I would, I would never put myself in that position. But We we have to have grace for other people. We like that that is so highly emphasized is that we have to have grace for people, and even for the people who don't have grace, we have to have grace for people who don't have grace. I have to constantly keep reminding myself that when I see how someone can make a mistake in a situation and someone else can not have grace over that person, and they're complaining about the mistakes they made. And I'm in a sense almost being judgmental because I'm like, well, you need to have grace over them because people can can make mistakes. But then I'm not having grace over that person for not having grace. And I don't know if that makes sense, but it's like we have to just be careful with the way, even if we're not saying anything, we have to be careful with the way that we think because our thoughts can funnel the words that we say, and then that can funnel into the actions we commit. So we have to. to just go back to what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. That's why it's so important to be Spirit-led, because in different situations the Spirit's going to tell us to do different things. I mean, in every situation it's always going to be love that person, but it can be shown in different ways. It can be like, hey, give this person a word of encouragement today, or be careful with the way you speak to this person because they're, they're a little more sensitive today, you know. That's why we have to just go back to our prayer closet and just first build a foundation with God, build a relationship with him, because that's how we can funnel the way that we act and the way that we treat other people, because it's all based on love. And again, as said before, it's gonna look different sometimes, and it's not always gonna be the same, but the one thing that is gonna be consistent is the love, is being kind to people, being patient. You shouldn't see yourself getting frustrated easily because that's the opposite of having patience. And that again goes with grace, as said before, is we can't have grace for people until we have patience. Because when someone, for example, makes a mistake, sometimes we can get frustrated easily because of it, and that's lack of patience. And they all correlate together, going back to the fruit of the Spirit too. They all relate to each other in some way. It's all tied into love, which is why love is the first fruit of the Spirit. God is a God of order, so all the order of the Bible in itself, but especially the fruit of the Spirit, is ordered for a reason— because love is first and everything else springs from it. And when we look at all these verses that talk about love, you can— it really puts you in perspective of, of how important it really is. We learn in school that when repetition is present, it it means that something is important. It's highlighting something that's key that needs to be remembered. That's something basic that we probably have all learned in school when it comes to reading class or English class is that we have to focus on what's being repeated because if you see something that's being repeated it obviously means something because it wouldn't have been repeated if it hasn't. And we can go over so many verses in the Bible that talk about love like The amount of verses in this Bible that talks about love is unending because God is infinite in himself and he is love. He wrote the Bible with love in his heart. He inspired the authors that wrote it with love and with a certain message on mind that were spoken through the words. As said before, God is a God of order, so the words— every single word in the Bible has meaning. Every single book has meaning. And it just— I just can't get over how many times it's said in the Bible of how important it is to love one another. I mean, it shows you all in the Old Testament what comes from lack of love. All of the wars, all of the sins that people committed was lack of love towards God. Because if those— if all of the people loved God truly, they would show it. And their actions were the opposite of that. The whole Old Testament talks about— it just shows a lack of love and what came from it, what their punishment was for that. And then the New Testament, all of the, all of the words of wisdom that are talked about over and over and over again in all of the books, we see it's all based on love. All of these things are based on love. We can't grow if we don't first receive the love of God, which Again, just shows how important it is. And when you're— in regards to kindness specifically, I wrote this down a while back because it really, it really hit deep for me. Because when you're being kind to someone, you have to make sure that your heart is in the right place. Because being kind to someone comes from how much you love them. Not how much they deserve it. And I know with when it comes to grace, it can go along that lines too, but kindness in regards to that has always been something I always kept in mind, is when you're treating someone, it's not based on how you think of them. Yeah. It's not based on the mistakes that they've made, because a lot of the time when we're mad at someone and when we lack forgiveness, we focus so much on that hurt, on the things that they did to us or the things they did to someone else, that we forget to be kind. We forget to be patient with them. And most importantly, we forget to pray for them. Because it says, pray for the ones who persecute you. If you— if someone has hurt you, you should be praying for them. You should be showing them God's love. Because that's exactly how we transition from a bad season to a good season, is by looking back to Jesus. Because he's the one that levels us up. It says in Romans, I think chapter 2, verses 12, I think, I'm pretty sure, one of the verses in the beginning of Romans says that God's kindness is intended for us to turn from sin. And that, that just hits deep in itself because it shows what kindness can really do to someone. It shows how important that really is, that when someone— let's say someone has been bullying you your entire life, but you turn around and choose to be kind to them, That's gonna hit them. That's gonna make them feel convicted for what they did. It makes people think like, why is this person being nice to me? Like, what is the reason for that? In that very moment you can use that as a testimony to preach the Word of God, to show them the love of God, to say that, hey, this kindness is just from God. It's because he showed me kindness and he taught me how to be kind. And that's exactly where it comes from. And we can't show these things until we not only know God, but receive it from him, because he's the giver of those things. And that's just— that's the point of unconditional love. When we go back to saying how it's not about how much someone deserves our love, that's unconditional love, because there's no conditions for loving them. There's not saying, oh well, you didn't do this one time, or you made this bad mistake in your life, or you chose to do this. So I'm not gonna— I'm not gonna give you patience because of that. I'm not gonna be kind to you because of that. That's not unconditional love. God shows us unconditional love. Just the very thing that he— the very thing he did on the cross, that's unconditional in itself because it shows us that we were— we were— our spirit was dead before we were revived with Christ. That's, that's in itself what it was. Christ revives us. He resurrects us. We are resurrected with Christ just as he was, and our spirits become alive. But it really shows what our sins— how our sins needed to be punished. That God had to take a perfect human being that had no, no, no spots, no, um, nothing on him, and sacrifice him to pay for our mistakes. To pay for the things that we have done, and that that's unconditional love in itself. And it doesn't use, at least in the versions that I have looked, it doesn't use the word unconditional in the versions I have looked at. But it used it used faithful love, which I think it just shows a whole a whole scope of other things because it's loyalty. He committed to loving us. And he— that was despite what we have done in our lives. That's despite who we are or what we should have deserved. I mean, if you think about it, we deserved all the punishment in the world for rebelling against God. He gave us free will and we used it against him, and then we blamed him for it. We can't— we have to just focus on his sacrifice because that's where everything funnels from in regards to love. That is the definition of unconditional love. So as I said before, who are we to withhold that from someone else? Jesus literally died for us. Like, think about that. He literally died for us. He was a perfect human being that didn't need any punishment. He didn't sin at all, but yet he took all of our punishment. He took all of our sins and pinned it on the cross with him, and he died. He shed He shed his blood. He got whipped. He had the the crown of thorns. He had the nails put in his hands and feet. He did that for you, and we we have to remember that sacrifice because it's it's not we can't say that we love God when we forget all the things he's done for us, and out of respect for him as well, it's just like we can't. we can't forget the things he's done because of the purpose behind it, that he, he did it for a reason. He didn't just do it to show off, but he, he showed us how much he loves us. And it's as it says in the Bible as well, like, his, his love is like as far as the east is to the west. It's, it's unending. And in Romans 8:38, it says that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And And that just shows how powerful that is, which is exactly why we need to push that forward in the, um, within the body of Christ, because that's the foundation of everything. I mean, the— some verses that I have here in regards to that is in John chapter 15, verses 13, in the NLT version, and it says, there is no greater love than to lay one's life for one's friend. To lay down one's life for a friend. And that's exactly what Jesus did. I mean, think about that. He literally— that, that the way that was worded hits me deeper because it says to lay one's life down for someone else. He literally freely gave up. He chose to give up his life. That in itself is love. And there's nothing greater than that. And we can't— as I keep saying, we cannot forget it. I'm gonna keep saying it because we have to get it in our head. We can't forget that love is willing to sacrifice for the good of others, even to death, which is exactly what Jesus did. That's the extent of how much we should be loving someone, is that sometimes we have to sacrifice some things. Sometimes we have to give things up. Sometimes we have to compromise in a sense, but we have to, we have to push that love forward. Our first resort in every situation should be love. We should always be slow to speak and quick to listen, and that helps us to allow the Holy Spirit to tell us what to do. When we are slow to speak, we can take the time to ask the Holy Spirit, what do you want me to do in this instance? Because sometimes whenever we are so quick to speak When we're so quick to act about some things, we, we miss something. We miss— like, that was an opportunity for you to show someone patience. That was an opportunity for you to be kind to someone. And we miss those beautiful opportunities to show the love of God. We have to be focused more on what love is and why it is that. Why do we give that to other people? Because he first loved us. Um, In John chapter 13, verses 34, in the NLT it says, so I'm now giving you a new commandment: love each other just as I have loved you, you should love each other. I love this verse too because again, as we said before, we love because he first loved us. And he's the great example that's not only to sacrifice himself for us to pay the price for our sins, but he— Jesus came down to be an example for us. And we have to look more into that in the Gospels, specifically of the course of his life, of the way he acted towards people, the choices he made, the way he spoke to people. It's all from love because he is love. So we need to, we need to reiterate that. We need to embody that in the fullest way possible. And I think that's such a beautiful thing too, that It's like he can share in our sufferings, that he can relate to our sufferings too. So that's it. When it goes back to God's love, we can understand that he— part of his love is him being faithful to it. Obviously, he's, he's there for us, and he's always going to be. And when we understand that God understands our pain because he literally went through it, It gives us some comfort to turn to him and for us to look at him and just ask the Lord to fill us, to, to just pour into us in abundant ways, because he can relate to us. He can, he can tell you what it was like to hang on that cross because he loved you. He will tell you what it's like to Um, to be in that position. He can relate to that, and that's comforting in itself because a lot of the time when we're looking for advice or we're looking for comfort from people, we kind of hold back, or we can push things down because we are afraid that people won't understand us, or that we're afraid that, um, people will just dismiss it almost. But God doesn't dismiss you. God, God will not push you away because of your hurt or because of your mistakes. In fact, it's the opposite. He pulls you in. He pulls you in so that he can forgive you and redeem you and make you, make you clean again, make you purified. And, um, that's another thing that we can't forget is that we, a lot of the time, we feel afraid to seek God because we made a mistake. But we can't come in agreement with condemnation because condemnation is not of God. It's not. In Romans 8:1, it says that for there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So it just— that's proof in itself that when you feel condemned, you didn't come in agreement with the conviction of the Holy Spirit, because condemnation is not of God. And that's something we can also find comfort in when we are— when we make mistakes, is that we know we can come to the feet of Jesus because he will accept us. He will, um, he will welcome us every single time with open arms, and he will redeem us. Like I said before, he will cleanse us. He will pour into us abundant joy and peace. And when it comes to that, when it comes to all the fruit of the Spirit in regards to that, um, we sometimes, we forget what that feels like because we don't feel it often. Sometimes we We— or you may have not felt it at all, the perfect peace of the Lord, for example. And sometimes we can forget that, and we can kind of push away the opportunity to receive it because we don't, we don't understand what it's like to feel that. When I, I can't— I, I can't describe in words what it feels like to be in the peace of God, what, what it feels like to have The perfect peace of God. It says in Isaiah 26, um, chapter 26, verses 3, that those who remain focused on God remain in perfect peace. Those whose minds are kept on God remain in perfect peace. And I, I just can't— I can— I would never be able to explain in words what it feels like to remain in the peace of God because it's unexplainable. But it's just something that we all need to feel. Same with the abundant overflow of joy, of the Lord's joys. Joy is a choice, it is, but when you feel that, it's like it's unwavering. Like, nothing can make you feel bad. Nothing can remove that, even how hard the enemy can try to remove it and to take that joy away. It's so powerful, nothing can affect it. And I can't even I can't even say that in good words to explain it, of how amazing his abundant joy is. Like, it brings the motivation and the hope of what he's gonna do in your life and what he's gonna do right now. And, um, it helps you to focus on that in itself. And all I can say is just sit at the feet— sit at the feet of Jesus, and he will give you that peace. Because we don't again, we don't have to earn these things. We just receive it, and that's what He wants us to do. We miss these things every single day because we're busy doing other things, or we we feel that God's not going to give it to us because we we sinned just a second ago, or we sinned yesterday, or we made a mistake right now. That's not how it works because God's forgiving. And again, in in Romans, it says that His kindness is intended for us to turn from our sins. It's intended for us to understand that we're— when we make a mistake, it's okay to come to the feet of Jesus. In fact, he encourages it. He wants us to because he wants us to— he wants to make us new again. He wants us to be refreshed, and that can come along with the joy and the peace. Another question that some may ask is, what is love? And we can just jump right into this. Um, with that verse that we talked before about, 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 4 through 7. We went— we talked about this in the very beginning, how love, love is patient, love is kind, love is not jealous or boastful, love is not proud or rude, it does not demand its own way, it is not irritable, it keeps no record of being wronged, it does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever truth wins out. Love never gives up. Love never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. I'm reading this again for a reason, because I want, I want you to look back at this verse and study it. I want you to go back in the NLT, the NIV, the Amplified, the TPT, the KJV, the NKJV. We need to go back in all of these different versions and look what it says about love, because All these versions can explain it in different ways, but again, if it's the foundation of everything, we should take the time to understand what it is. And that pours into everything else of why we should love God, why— how to receive the love, where does love come from, all of these things. It pours into that very thing, and we have to— we have to keep going back at that because that is the most important thing in order to take the next step forward. Another question that someone might ask is, does God really love me? In Hosea chapter 2, verses 19, in the NLT, it says, I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. We are the bride of Christ. We, we are reconciled with him and we are made one with him. That's kind of the analogy when it comes to When you get married is you're made one with each other. And that's the same thing with the body of Christ and Christ himself, is that he— we are the bride, he is the bridegroom. We're made one with him. And as it says, I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. That's another, another word, as we talked about before, for unconditional— unfailing love. You'll see that all throughout the Bible, the Bible, is that God has unfailing love. And compassion, and the he will show you the righteousness and justice. That's how we can. We are righteous in him. And of course, the most popular Bible or popular verse in the Bible in John 3:16 in the NLT version, it says, "For this is how God loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." So, going back to the question, does God really love you? Yes, plain and simple. And this verse automatically shows you that. It's not a feeling that God just said he felt like it, he felt like loving us. He showed us sacrificially. And that's— that means something. It's not like he just did something small. He sacrificed something. In order to show us his abundant love for us. And that is so clear in that verse in John 3:16. That's another verse that we— so many people overlook because it's said so much, but we forget the whole point of that is that God sacrificed his Son. It's sacrificial love. So we have to be— we have to remember that when we go back to that verse. That should hit deep with us. Every single person, when you read that verse, it should hit with you that like, wow, God loves me this much. Like, put yourself in God's perspective. Like, this is how we can further come in agreement with these verses too, is putting your perspective in what God sees. Is if you were The father sacrificing your son for a boatload of people that deserve eternal punishment, but you love them all so much that you're going to sacrifice your one perfect son to do that for them, to give them eternal life, to give them redemption. That's how God felt. And it, it, it's so important when we go back to that verse to remember That God did it sacrificially. He showed us, so that's very clear that we need to show that to other people. In 1 John chapter 4, verses 9 through 10 in the NLT, it says, 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. It says that in the verse. This is real love. Love comes only from him. So we can't, we can't go about saying that we love each other, but we're not showing it because that's not real love. God showed us his love, so we have to do that to other people. We have to, we have to evaluate our relationships and really take the time to think, is this how God wants me to love someone? With a significant other or a brother or sister, a parent even. We have to evaluate the relationship. Is there love present in the relationship? You have to actually take the time to look in your circle and realize if there's love or not. Is God in the center of this? Is God being shown through your words and your actions when you're speaking to these people? Because if not, then we need to— we need to go back in our prayer closet and And allow God to remove the things that need to be removed so that we can further push forward the things that need to be. Because when we are carrying things that we're not supposed to, we don't have room for the blessings and for the other things that God wants to pour into us. We don't have room for it whenever we're so stuffed with the wrong things. One thing I have heard my own pastor say is, Holy Spirit, fill us up. Fill our spiritual tank up. To the fullest so that we can overflow into other people. And I— the— he used the analogy of a spiritual tank because every single day we should be asking the Holy Spirit to fill us up all the way to the top, overflowing into other people. And even when the world pokes and prods at us and your tank starts to— starts to leak a little bit, we have to even throughout the day continuously ask the Holy Spirit to keep filling us up because If you think about it, if you poke— if there's— if you have a plastic cup filled with water all the way to the top and you poke a hole in it and the water starts pouring out, obviously that level is gonna start going down. And eventually, by the end of the day, it's gonna be completely empty. And then what happens at the end of the day when we're— when we're still socializing with people? What do we have left to give them if we're not filled up with the Holy Spirit? Yeah. And that's something he recently has been putting on my heart for months and months. Every— it's in my daily declarations— is, Holy Spirit, fill me up to the fullest so I can function. Fill me up so I can overflow into other people. Because we can't function without him. We must be functioning on what the Holy Spirit gives us. And even when the— again, when the world pokes and prods at us, we have to ask for more filling because that is going to start leaking, and then we have to be filled back up again. We have to keep doing that. And that requires us to continually be praying throughout the day, to come into God's presence constantly. It's not just about your morning time with God and then you go about your day for the rest of the day and then you don't talk to him. Having a relationship with God is a two-way thing. It's not— it's a dialogue, it's not a monologue. So we have to not only take the time to allow God to speak back to us, we have to give him that time, but we have to give him more than 5 minutes of our day. In fact, having Him on the throne of your heart, having Him at your top priority, means that the time you spend with Him should be more than everything else you're doing in your day. If you're watching shows for 3 hours, 3 hours of your day, God's time should be more than that. God's time should override that completely. And the choices we make have to reflect on that. We have to be honoring to God. Amen. Because again, sometimes we just get too comfortable with who God is and we forget that he is a holy God, that he is holy. And we need to remember that, his holiness. We can't forget how perfect and amazing he is. Because when we start getting comfortable with our own desires, our sinful desires and the things that we want to do, when we choose that constantly over our time with God, What does that say to him? How is that showing? How is that showing God that we love him when we're constantly putting everything else over him? When we're constantly we're putting people over him? Whenever we start talking to our friends first thing in the morning rather than taking the time to pray to our Father, how does that make him feel? That that hurts his heart to see that his children are choosing creation over the Creator. And we have to— we cannot forget that because that is the whole point of love. It's not just allowing us to be filled up in order to pour into other people, to be ambassadors of Christ, to give the love to others, but showing it back to God. That's the least we can do, is showing it back to God, showing it to other people. And I'm talking to myself too because we all, we all need to work on something. We all need to go back in our prayer closet and focus on the time that we need to spend with the Lord. It's not— everyone's schedule is not going to look the same. It's not— it's never going to be the same, in fact, because everyone has different lives, which is why we need to be Spirit-led. And we need to first ask the Lord, like, is this something you want me to do today? Or do you want me to do another Bible study? Do you want me to do another devotion? Do you want me to take 2 hours of my day just to worship you. We have to take the time and ask what God wants to do because when we say, your will be done, not ours, when your desires, not ours, we have to put his desires first. That's part of humbling ourselves before him is putting him first. And we can't— we can never show, truly show the love of God if we in our own time we're not even putting God first. If we're not even Loving God in the best way that we can, and he's given us the ability to do that. We just need to use it. We need to push forth the love of God. And nothing— although nothing can separate us from God's love, that doesn't give us a right to disengage with him because we have more important things to do. We have to— our schedule has to be aligned with what he wants to do, and that That can hit hard for a lot of people. This is something that I personally have struggled with my whole life, is just doing what I want to do, is just first thing in the morning planning my day out, not even asking the Lord if any of those things are in His itinerary. We have to ask the Lord, what is in today's schedule? What do You want me to do today? Because that, that's part of having the peace. That God gives you too is because he has perfect timing. So when we're asking the Father, what do you want me to do today? And let's say you were planning on doing some homework today, but he tells you to wait till tomorrow to do that. Um, we also have to be Spirit-led with this because we have to understand that it's God's voice telling us these things. But let's say he tells you to relax today and to just enjoy yourself and have fun, go outside, Spend time with your family and do all your work tomorrow. Do your homework specifically tomorrow. But sometimes when we get, um, we get so controlling in a sense, we, we kind of forget that it's up to God, that we need to understand what God wants us to do because his timing is perfect. So that means if he's telling us to do a specific thing at a different time, we have to trust that's for a reason. Because that's also How I have literally been able to receive peace in such a busy schedule is being spirit-led and just focusing on what God wants us to do. Because when I put aside the things that I want to do and God is saying that's for later, there's a time and a place for everything, when he's telling me to put certain things aside and to focus more on other things, I have— I literally have more peace because I finally let go And I'm like, you know what, this feels good. This feels like I can just breathe. Like, I'm trusting that by doing this activity tomorrow, it's gonna work out fine because he told me it would. And his word does not fall void. His word returns void. He's not gonna lie. He's not a liar. He's the definition of truth in itself. So we have to trust when he tells us to do things. We have to make sure that we are focusing on who he is, and in regards going back to as we transition back to that verse in John 3:16, it just reminded me of his forgiveness too, and how because he did he did that because he forgives us and because he wants to redeem us, and his forgiveness is. So amazing and so complete that it's though— it's as though we have never sinned at all. That's how complete it is, is that it's not like he forgives us and everything that we did is still there and we're still going to be punished. Like, it's as though it's literally wiped clean. Our red slate is wiped white as snow, and it's completely, completely forgotten by God even. His love cannot be changed or broken, and that's so powerfully spoken in John 3:16. Um, in Romans chapter 5, verses 5, in the NLT version, it says God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love. Um, again, as we said before, the Holy Spirit gives us that love. The Holy Spirit's presence in your heart shows that God's— God has love for you because he's always with you, because the Spirit never leaves us. He's always helping us. He's always showing us the best way to live, and we have to rely on that because he's trustworthy. We have to begin to start to trust him more and to understand that he, he has the authority. It says in Proverbs 16:33 that we can throw the dice, but he determines how they fall. So we can make choices and decisions, but ultimately God is the ultimate decider of that, of how they fall. So we have to, um, We have to be wary of that, that we just need to— God wants the best for us, and that's comforting to hear because a perfect God who knows everything and is trustworthy wants the best for us. So it just gives us more, more ability to trust him, for us to be able to just return to him and understand that the things he tells us have importance to it. As, as I said before, God is a— God is a God of order. So even the things he speaks to us is there for a reason. His words have so much power, and we can't forget those things. Um, in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 18, in the NLT version, it says, and may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. His love is never-ending. It's unconditional. And the more you get to know God, the more you see how inexhaustible his love is for you. The more you dive deep into his character and of who he truly is, that's when you get a pers— some kind of perception of how his love is. Because we are finite beings, we can't fully perceive. If God's love is infinite and it's unconditional. We can't fully perceive that, but the more we dive deep into who he is and we build a stronger relationship, the more we can see how much that is. And when in regards to before how we talked about how showing love to God is how it should be, that's not just you saying you love God, you should be showing it to him. There's some verses that correlate with that. In Matthew chapter 10, verses 42, in the NLT it says, and If you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded. Again, as we said before, what you do to others, you do to him. So when you serve others, you serve him. That's showing your love to him. In John 14:21, in the NLT version, it says, those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. In John 20, chapter 21, verses 15 through 17, in the NLT, it says, do you love me? Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep. And going back to the verse before where it says, those who accept my commandments and obey obey them are the ones who love me. That is showing that you actually have to engage. You have to focus on the commandments, the the things he's telling you to do because that's being obedient. That's showing that we love him. In Hebrews chapter six verses ten in the NLT. It says that He will not forget how much you have shown your love to Him by caring for other believers. Again, that's showing our love by putting things forward through action, through our words. We're doing things to other people through love. In Psalms chapter 122, verses 1, in the NLT it says, I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. This verse is amazing too because all the other verses talk about serving other people in order to show our love to God, but this last verse actually talks about worship, how we can show God we love him by praising him, by praising the things he's done, worshiping who he is. That's the difference between praise and worship. They're 2 different things, but we have to be able to have both of those in our walk with Christ, is understanding the things he's done Praise him for it and worshiping who he is, and that's exactly how we can show our love to him by helping others, bearing good fruit, keeping his commands and being obedient, and worshiping and praising him. As we close out, I want you all to bow your heads and pray with me. Dear Father God, we thank you for this beautiful live stream. We thank you for the people watching. I thank you for pouring out your abundant wisdom. Um, into this livestream, Father, for funneling everything involving love. That I just pray that these— the words that were spoken planted seeds in people, that they can be harvested into abundant blessings in people's lives. I just pray, Father, that you can allow them to see your love in a different way, allow them to see you in a different way, because you are love, Father God. Help them to come back to your feet, Father God, for any Anything that they've done, you have forgiveness for. Your kindness is intended for us to turn from our sins, to come back to you, because your arms are wide open for all of us, Father. And we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your sacrifice, for sacrificially sending your Son to die for us, Father God. And we thank you for your love. We thank you for loving us despite who we are, what we've done. We thank you that it's unconditional, that it will always remain faithful. And we thank you just for who you are, that you were— you are good despite what happens. You are good despite, um, who we are, despite what we've done as well. And we just thank you for who you are. In Jesus' name, amen. Before we close out today, I wanted to share with you the bold vision that we have here at John Humenik Ministries. We plan on reaching everyone with the gospel before the rapture As well as raising up 1,000 churches to further preach the gospel online. I ask you to prayerfully consider becoming a monthly partner or making a one-time donation. We take all these proceeds and push it back to the ministry, back into the ministry. So if you feel led, if you feel led to make a one-time donation or become a monthly partner, you can do that at our website, which is humenik.com/give. And that is spelled H-U-M-E-N-I-K dot com slash give. Thank you and God bless.