LOVE

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the Student of Life podcast. Listen, we're going to get into so many transferable truths throughout the content of these episodes that I believe God is going to use to help you apply, because he's going to reveal what's already been there the entire time. Enjoy. Yo, what's up? So this is the last episode of season 4 Uh, I— listen guys, I really enjoyed this. I was trying to give more interviews, like I said, but like I said, I'll speak about that in the trailer. Uh, season 5 will be better. I learned a lot of stuff in season 4, uh, just through scripts and, you know, just how to navigate certain things. And like I told you all, man, I'm learning as I go, as I'm just trying to grow and cultivate this gift that I believe God graced me for, or gifts, you know what I may say. And so nevertheless, I just want to appreciate you all for rocking with me. Uh, the title of this episode is Love. We're gonna conclude it with love, and it's not gonna be a long one. I'm just gonna, gonna speak from the heart, man, once again. And like I say, I promise you season 5 will be better because I've seen areas I can greatly improve, some things I can just tighten up on, some things I can stop doing. And as I just really, like I say, just try to evolve as a person and, you know, really taking this podcast series into something that I love to do, a part of just being a voice that I can reach the sphere of influence that God called me to reach. Nothing more, nothing less, man. And so I thank you all for rocking with me. And like I say, if you are a person of faith and this is blessing you, man, just please share, share with a family, a friend. And hey, we'll see where it goes from there, because like I always tell you, man, I just want to please the Lord and do what he has graced me to do. That being said, this episode is called Love, and you know, we do have the foundational text and something I didn't do a lot this season. Uh, but I just want to read from Matthew 22. Um, I believe it's the King James Version. Matthew 22, starting at verse 37, and it said, Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord God— sorry, thou shalt— I'm reading from the King James. Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto that, shall love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Now, for context, we know that Jesus didn't come to change the law or abolish the law. He came to fulfill it, and he did just that. And if we truly love God with all our heart and we have allowed and accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior today, It is written in our heart. We can't keep the law in our own strength, but we are Spirit-led and we're walking in the Spirit and doing the things of God. We are, we are keeping the law because our spirit man is not us, but it's, it's him who that is in us that has made, that has made us perfect. And so you in right standing, I'm in right standing when we are truly led by the Spirit. But when we give latitude to the flesh, and we're going to struggle with this latitude thing and back and forth, no one it's going to stay in the spirit of God all day, every day, all the time. If they say they do, they lying, they lying. So, but that's not an excuse to just willfully practice or habitually practice certain things. And so to truly love God, man, we have to continue to crucify this flesh, and it is difficult, but we're always going to have this war, uh, of being, you know, a spirit-led person, over a fleshly person, um, until the day that it's all over, when Jesus Christ returns, when our Lord and Savior God returns for us and we're caught up, or we die to live and spend eternity with him. And so if we die in him, and so it first starts with just accepting him, man, and then accepting the invitation to discipleship and plugging in and getting connected to the body of Christ through a local church, local ministry. And, you know, living this thing out. And a lot of times you want to connect because it's just accountability, man, encouragement, edifying correction, and so on and so on. And so to love properly, we need to do these things. And the only way that we can love our neighbor as we love ourselves is that we have to first love God. It's not that we supposed to dislike ourselves, but at the same time, we don't want to love ourselves so much to the point where we can also deny ourself and pick up our cross and follow Jesus Christ. Hope that's making sense. So you don't want to treat yourself bad or anything like that, you know. You have to love yourself in proper context. But most importantly, like I say, when it comes to your neighbor, wherever you are today, if you're at home, if you go to Hawaii, if you go to China, if you at the fast food restaurant, if you're in the grocery store, whatever you are in, whoever you are in the proximity of, that's your neighbor. So you can't skip the process or shortchange it. And God has called us to love, love. But today, you know, especially today, really throughout, probably just throughout since the world's been in existence, we make loving people a lot more complicated because we avoid the very people Jesus engaged. And Jesus had a unique ability, man, to treat everybody I mean, love everybody the same, but he treated everybody differently. He loved everybody the same, but he treated them differently. He had a uniqueness about him with that. He always took the time to the relational element. And I think many of us, many of us spend a lot of time constructing scripture to mask our shortcomings. We, we like to mask our shortcomings in areas rather than simply just doing what Jesus said. So it's so easy to sit up here and just quote all these different scriptures and find passages. He didn't mean this, he didn't mean that. Oh man, bro, are you loving? That's why we in the state that we in now. That's why churches, local churches, can't even unify today. It's so much like just us versus them, us versus them mentality. And when one— like, yes, God is love. He's also a God of justice. It's a God of wrath, righteousness. But his primary motivation to save us was love. That's why he sent— he became Jesus in the flesh. God became man in flesh, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And then you have the God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So we need the Holy Spirit to love like we're required to love. I cannot love people and be humble or take the things that I take. Some people might say it is weakness. Some people— I know I'm not a scary dude. I know Certain things I'll be like, man, sometimes I do, sometimes I do. I'm like, man, hey, look, today ain't the day, and I have to repent. But most of the time, if I'm truly being led by the Spirit, it's like, man, whatever, just show humility to him. Show humility through the grace of God, because that's scripture. So I'm not saying it's easy. It's way easier said than done. But think about Jesus, man. Jesus still decided to make it a command for us. He still decided to make it a command for us. So is it maybe because we should love just as he loved us? Think about it. Do we truly love as he has loved us? Because even scripture tells— he tells us to forgive as I have forgiven you. But once again, we like to put— take that out of context and put up all these fillers why I can't forgive someone. While we can forgive someone, but Jesus said, forgive us, forgive us as I have forgiven you. Forgive us as I have forgiven you. Man, we gotta love with the love of God. So I also believe that we should love as he has loved us. We should demonstrate that type of love to others, because those who love like Christ in the Holy Spirit power will truly give evidence that they are his disciples, that we are his disciples. This is scripture. And some people might say, well, you know, I got to tell you the truth, okay? Yeah, I understand that love, true love, real love does that. I love my wife, I love my kids, my parents, my in-laws, they love me. So it's times where they edify me, it's times where they correct me, it's times where they tell me hard truths, it's times where they motivate me. My parents used to chastise me. Discipline, that's love. So the true love of God, man, he was full of grace and truth. So demonstrate grace before you're so quick to tell somebody the truth. So many times it's just we want to blot out the grace part. He was full of grace and truth. He was full of truth, that's true. He also was full of grace. So demonstrate that grace, man, before we be so quick to tell people the truth. Not saying that you are condoning what they're doing, but just saying, hey, you know, I'm gonna give you grace as I tell you the truth, because it's going to be in love. So we gotta really, man, be intentional about this thing. We got to be intentional, man. Like I said, would you look— when you look at so much that's going on in this world today, so much, so much evil, man, so much corruption We need truth, we need righteousness, we need correction, we need edification, man. We need encouragement. We need the body of Christ, the universal church, man, unifying together and preaching the kingdom of God and loving with the love of God, man. Whether a person is just like, uh, um, whether it's homosexuality, LGBT community, whether it's fornicators out here, whether it's person and people that you know, uh, are racist or whatever, because it's so easy to— fornicating, um, just alcoholics, drunks, like, because we like to bash certain people, we like to beat certain drums, you know what I'm saying? That we just— because we're not doing this, well, I'm gonna beat this drum. Or we like to beat drums the loudest that we're struggling with. That could be true too, but sometimes I believe the loudest drum that we beat is that we like to attack. We like to attack things that we're not doing. So we can't do that, man. We have to learn how to separate what people do from who they are, because at the end of the day, just like the thief on the cross when Jesus told him, 'You remain with me in paradise,' if they are breathing, the love of God and the grace of God and the blood of Jesus can still reach them. So are we demonstrating love, man? Loving on people and saying, 'Listen, I don't, I, I don't condone what you do. Jesus loves you too much He loves you enough to save you, but he also loves you enough to not let you stay who you are. I mean, I'll keep doing what you're doing, also say who you are, because some people are just evil. But he loves you too much, man. He loves you enough to come save you and meet you right where you are, but he also loved you enough to change who you are and become like him. Because we had to doubt ourselves. As I've said so many times, man, so love people. God is love. Love. The greatest gift is the gift of salvation that we will ever receive because it gives us the invitation to discipleship. But the greatest commandment of all is love, man. So I just want to encourage you that, man, I love everybody. I pray that these podcasts, you know, these episodes have blessed you, man. I just speak from my heart. Uh, I'm going to study communication techniques. I sometimes— that stuff just— oh my God, like, it just— I was like, man, I just want to flow and just speak what God gives me and move on with my life. But I understand it is an art to certain things, and I want to plug into that and learn certain principles, but at the same time, never allow anything to supersede the God element of it. Which is being Spirit-led. Because it— we can— so we can study something so much, man, that we get caught up in our ability to do it. So even in it, as I study and cultivate those things, man, I just want to make sure I'm giving complete latitude to the Holy Spirit. So I love you all, man. Be blessed. And hey, share, share, share! Help me build the momentum for season 5 because I'm coming out the gate and I'm gonna try to do a lot of interviews. Of course, never going away from the solo element because I just love getting on here and doing this part of it. This is what I love, man, soundbite episodes. I know sometimes, you know, I had this plan to stay around 30 minutes. Sometimes, sometimes I jump on here 7 minutes. Sometimes, you know, depending on if it's an interview, it goes 40 to 45 minutes. Look, it's the same way I preach. Sometimes I preach, it'd be like a 10-minute sermon. Sometimes I preach and it's like 45 minutes. My wife like, all right, now when you get close to that hour window Dally back. So listen guys, that's just all I'm doing, man, just speaking what God gives me. And I pray that, you know, he's changing. Matter of fact, let's close and pray. I've never done this on the episode. Dear Father Lord, we come today, Master, thanking you for the person that's listening to this, whoever they may be. And right now, God, I ask you to just continue to touch their heart, God. God, drive out the things that's not of you. God, help quicken them. God, help mold them, help strengthen them as they give complete latitude to you. God is all-inclusive. God, we fully surrender unto you right now, God. And God, right now I ask you to strengthen them, God. Strengthen their family, strengthen everyone that's connected to them, God. And you use them mightily to do your will, God, that they don't turn— try to turn you on and off, God, but they represent you, represent you, God, to other people, God, where they can see the the hands and feet of Jesus. And God, everything that they desire, God, long as it's according to your will, God, I pray that you help bring it to fruition for them. God, give them the patience, God, because we know you also are God of delayed gratification. And I ask you to give them the patience, God, give them the mind and the strength, God, helping take their mind captive by scripture, God, and casting out things that is not of you. In your son Jesus' name we pray, our Lord and Savior, God, helping them love as all of us love with the love of God. So hey, be blessed. Oh, sorry, in Jesus' name, amen. So be blessed, man. I love you all. Keep doing the will of God. Hey, what's up? I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the Student Life Podcast today. If this content has impacted you in any kind of way, please take some time to share it on your social media feeds. And also, if you want to connect with me or just learn more about me, go over to www.timothypratt.org. Once again, thanks.