Love Like Jesus – 12/12/2018

WARNING PREACHY… (preaching to the choir)

In his excellent book Six Word Lessons to Discover Missional Living[1], Dr. DeVries wrote in the second chapter “Love Others Like Jesus Loves You.”   This chapter begs the question; How did Jesus love you?

Jesus was the incarnation of God, meaning that God became man (John 1:14) and was born and laid in a manger.  Then Jesus grew up and spent his public ministry showing men how to be reunited with God through faith (read the Gospels).  And then finally Jesus went to the cross to die and defeat sin and death, thus redeeming us (Romans 8).  

Jesus loved us by total self-sacrifice then He called us to follow in his footsteps…

²⁴ Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ²⁶ For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

Matthew16:24-26

This is Jesus’ plan for church growth; self-sacrifice for the others’ sake.  I’ll admit it, I rather like the plan of just improving the music offering of the church and increasing the friendliness of the greeter-team as the church growth strategy, but it seems that Jesus had a rather novel idea; sacrificial love.

So how does Jesus love you?  He sacrificed his being for you and now DeVries is reminding us that Jesus has called us to go and do likewise to others. 

Are you ready to dive into the waters of making disciples for Jesus?  Get DeVries’ book, it can be a bit daunting but Jesus is in the boat and he calms the wind and waves (Matthew 8:23-27). 

(Order a copy from Amazon here: http://a.co/d/1CropEG)

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[1] Six-Word Lessons to Discover Missional Living: 100 Six-Word Lessons to Align Every Believer with the Mission of Jesus by David DeVries; http://a.co/d/1CropEG