Uncommon – Part 1

Uncommon Love

(Romans 12:1-2 MSG) So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. (2) Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

How many of us know that the world does not have it together where relationships are concerned? Just check out culture and it does not take much to see what their perception of relationships is and that it does not work.

God wants to set us apart from culture today by the way we love.

What Does God’s Love Look Like?

If we are going to understand real love, then we must go to the source of love and that is God Himself.

(John 3:16 NKJV) For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Love is not something we came up with or made up. God so loved, He did something.

• God’s love is unconditional.

You cannot qualify for God’s love.

• God’s love is sacrificial.

God’s love cost Him greatly.

• God’s love is personable.

God’s love is not philosophy, it is a Person found in Jesus.

• God’s love is acceptable.

You can actually receive God’s love. Reset the love button by receiving His love.

• God’s love is accessible.

God’s love is available to every human being that will simply believe, in spite of background, history, etc.

(1 John 4:8-12 NLT) But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. (9) 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. (10) 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. (11) Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. (12) 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.

(1 John 4:16 NLT) We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in His love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

(1 John 4:19 NLT) We love each other because He loved us first.

• The secret to walking in love is to first walk in how much He loves you!

You cannot give what you have not received!

Your “love walk” will never go beyond your ability to receive the love God has for you.

• The first step to love is not to step towards them; it is to step towards Him!

(John 13:34-35 NIV)  "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  (35)  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Two things to note about these verses:

• Walking in love is not a suggestion. It is a commandment.
• This is the way that the world we know that we are Jesus’ disciples: the way we love one another.

How Do We Show God’s Uncommon Love?

(1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NIV)  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  (5)  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  (6)  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  (7)  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  (8)  Love never fails…