Sermons

Most us of want to be loving. We want to grow and become kinder and more patient as the years go by. Unfortunately sometimes the opposite is true. As life’s heartaches come we can become harder and less loving. Blocks develop that make loving people consistently impossible. Even when one tries the jammed up inner life hampers our progress in love.

Last week we learned we must learn to love different, discouraged, damaged and sometimes difficult people. We must learn to love people who are far from God. We learned about some of those blocks and what to do.

This Sunday you will learn about “THE THREE MOST COMMON LOVE BLOCKERS”.  I will also show you a solution you can immediately put into practice.
For you to learn this you will need to make coming on Sunday a priority. I can’t wait to teach you this.

Only by learning to love well as a community will God grow us.

Blessings,
Joe

Please prayerfully consider the following scriptures and be prepared to discuss the questions in small group.

1 Co 13:1-7 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 John 3:16 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

Small Group Questions

• Share and experience where your anger or someone else’s blocked your ability to love?
• Why does God set a time limit on all anger?
  

  Eph 4:26-27 BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.

• Why is forgiving and resolving conflicts so hard?
  

  Eph 4:30-32 Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.  Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

• Why is trying to love people in your strength alone impossible?
  

  Joh 15:4-5 “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

• How often do you ask God to increase your love?
  

  1 Th 3:12 and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you;

• Describe how fear can turn you into a monster?
• How does fear block you from loving certain types of people? Be sure to discuss this!
  

  2 Ti 1:7-8 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.  Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,

  2 Co 5:7 for we walk by faith, not by sight.

• What would you do if you weren’t afraid?