Advent Week Four: Love

First Speaker: 

If there is one thing that we all know deep down, it is that we are made for love. We all spend our lives searching for it. We want to find another person who will love us for who we truly are. Yet we are also terrified of the opposite. What if that other person will see us as we truly are and reject us?

For many people, their entire life is spent dangling between these two truths in a twisted dance. They are trying to show just enough of the nice parts of who they are to attract someone else but keep the dirty parts of their soul locked away. This is exhausting. And many people never truly find love, because they are simply looking for it in the wrong place.

Second Speaker: 

The truth is you were made for love.  But there is only one person who truly sees you for who you are and still completely loves you. This is because He created you.

In Psalm 139 we read:

Lord, you have searched me and known me. 

2 You know when I sit down and when I stand up; 

you understand my thoughts from far away. 

3 You observe my travels and my rest; 

you are aware of all my ways. 

The Lord sees you and knows you fully. He created your inward parts, He knit you together in your mother’s womb. He saw you fully when you were formless, He knew everything about every single day of your life before you were even born. God truly sees you. 

First Speaker:

What do we do with this truth? How do we respond knowing that we are stripped bare before a God who sees everything about us, from our wicked thoughts to our prideful rebellious lives? God sees all the parts of ourselves that we hate and hide. How could he do anything besides reject us? 

But He doesn’t. Instead, the God of the universe loves us. He sees us. He really sees us. And his response is compassion and love. 

1 John 4:9-10 says:

9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice, for our sins.

This season of Advent is a celebration of Jesus Christ being born as a human to show us His love, to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins so that we might live through Him, and live eternally in His love.

Church, let us worship Him in awe of His perfect love for us!