The Inevitable Results of Loving: There is a fairy tale of two brothers. As they were growing up, one leaned towards the dark side of his life and eventually turned into a wolf. Years later the other brother encountered that wolf and refused to fight him or kill him with his sword. He stood there and loved him. The story goes that over time, that wolf changed and eventually became his brother again. We worship a God of love that gives us the power to love the unlovely. To love those that hate us. Yes, we will feel anger and hurt, but we will chose love. We know, in the end that those people who ridiculed you and Jesus, that will end. The darkness will descend forever. The gospel tells us that Jesus looked over the city of Jerusalem and wept.

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A Surprise Definition of Loving: Why is it so difficult to define Love? People down through the ages have tried to define love. But we end up with multiple definitions of love. We know it when we experience it and occasionally are able to give it. But most of our definitions are just descriptions of what love does. Is love being nice to people. Is it buying someone lunch? In the Bible we look to the 13 Chapter of 1 Corinthians. In that chapter Paul gives a description of how love behaves. And so, love is hard to define.

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An Incredible Fact of Loving: Do you ever wonder how important the family of God is to each other? We need to love each other, but we are a screwed up bunch. How do we love each other? We think of the church as pure, but it’s not. We are all fallen, sinful, ragamuffins and God put us all together so we may learn to love each other, how to honor each other. The biggest problem we face as mature Christians is when the Christian life becomes boring, rote and commonplace.

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A Fundamental Key to Loving: We are a bunch of sinful, angry, ragamuffins. And God has put us all together. We live in a scary world. We live in a time where they don’t like us much. How do you like people who hate you? Especially when many of those people are even in the church? Steve says don’t be obedient and don’t be nice (he says those things don’t work). So what does he say we need?

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The Sweet Exchange: Embracing Christ’s Righteousness. Bishop Holcomb emphasizes the inadequacy of relying on personal achievements, heritage, or moral performance to justify one’s existence before God. He uses the example of Paul in Philippians 3, who considered his own credentials and accomplishments as loss compared to the righteousness found in Christ. He encourages believers to look to Christ rather than themselves for righteousness, emphasizing that faith is about trusting Jesus to save and provide rest and healing to the weary and burdened.

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Pt. 4 – Banished Craziness. Jesus said the world hated me and they will hate you too. We live in a fallen world. Sometimes we forget that. But, more important than that, we need to repent. Not just repent of our sins, but repent of cliche. So much of our faith is built on cliche and as a result we keep God at arms length. Life is hard and we must bring it to God in all it’s messiness. That is the true freedom. And, cheer up! Jesus is coming back.

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Pt. 3 – Managed Craziness. What do we do now? Should we hide from the world? Should we be in their face? Should we debate them? How in the world are we to react to the evil and craziness that is in the world?

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Pt. 2 – Controlled Craziness. The world is full of craziness. But, what we need to realize is that we are one of the crazy ones. We have this wrong headed idea that we are one of the good ones. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are all sinners, saved by grace. The best witness we can give in a world that is evil is our own confession. You say “What?” US, confess? Yes. Martin Luther said we are great sinners and we have a great savior. So, what does that mean and how do we do it? Where is God in all of this?

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Pt. 1 – Expected Craziness. In our culture, it feels like the asylum is being run by the patients. Things being said that just make no sense. And no one to say, “That’s crazy, that’s just wrong.” But it is not a new problem. It’s been around for ages. When you look at our culture it’s hard to decide if what I don’t like is really bad, or if it’s just because I’m just set in my ways. But, there IS evil in our world, and there is craziness. Where does it come from and what do we do?

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Have you ever thought about what we believe? I mean, what we believe can be really weird. We belive that God entered time and space, what hungry, he blew his nose like we do. We belive that he was hungry, tired, lonely and even afraid. We believe he died. And after he died, he rose from the dead. Even more, he is coming back for us? Who made this stuff up? If you don’t have something in your faith that you can’t explian, then maybe you’re worshipping an idol.

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