Longing for Love Notes Recorded version here http://www.ascensionbath.org.uk/sermons/
Themes –
The need to be loved; The desire to have someone to love; We are built for relationship; Completeness in God’s love
Readings – John 4 1-19; Genesis 28 1-5 and 29 14b – 30; Psalm 36
Also using Eph 1 4; Romans 8 35-39
- This is quite a personal and deep thing for me to talk about, as I will share as we go.
- Something most people want is to be loved and to have someone to love. Films like ‘Love Actually ‘ are popular because they show that anyone can find that love.
Do you watch Big Bang or Friends?
What are they about?
Love! Realationship! each character is trying to find someone who will love them or they can love.
Then you have many other programs about people wanting love from Take me Out to Love Island
Even adverts use love, Amazon somebody to love, to sell
It seems to me that nearly everyone is looking for love, we seem to have the desire to love and to be loved built into us.
Now like me, for many years, you can try to avoid or deny it, but it catches up with you at some point that longing for love.
Tell about rejecting love and becoming a Vulcan, pushing emotion away ect.
- But what is Love and what is longing for Love?
“I am always thirsty for love; my longing for love is never enough.”
― Debasish Mridha
One meaning from the urban dictionary is
The most spectacular, indescribable, deep euphoric feeling for someone.
Love is an incredibly powerful word. When you’re in love, you always want to be together, and when you’re not, you’re thinking about being together because you need that person and without them your life is incomplete.
This love is unconditional affection with no limits or conditions: completely loving someone. It’s when you trust the other with your life and when you would do anything for each other. When you love someone, you want nothing more than for them to be truly happy no matter what it takes, because that’s how much you care about them and because their needs come before your own. You hide nothing of yourself and can tell the other anything because you know they accept you just the way you are and vice versa.
Love can make you do anything and sacrifice for what will be better in the end. Love is intense and passionate. Everything seems brighter, happier and more wonderful when you’re in love. If you find it, don’t let it go.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 says about love
“Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over another’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is not limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance. In a word, there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.”
- In Genesis we find Jacob who searched for the right person to love (1), but the trouble is for a lot of us is we do not feel that anyone will love us or even want us. Then there are people like the Samaritan woman (2) who is on her sixth man, sometimes we are just not happy with our choice of partner… Finding the love we long for isn’t easy and often very difficult.
I know of many people who are always looking for that love just like Jacob they cover distance and trails looking for it. Then I know others who just go for the first person who shows they any attention, but more often than not later on find that it’s not love but control.
All may be longing for love but many never seem to find true love.
I was lucky I met someone who saw me for who I was and got past my defences.
Tell how I met Bern and the strange longing I had to be with her
- We think about human love and long for it, many seem never to be able to find it and even when in a relationship are still longing to fill that hole with true love.
We long for love because we want to be loved, to know we are important to someone.
I am sure many of us know people who are continually looking for love or to be loved or most likely both.
However I think that that longing can only be filled once we find God’s love for us.
There is one who has always loved you and always will. Jesus showed how much He loves you by giving up all he had and was, God-hood, so He could die for you. This is true love, the love we were all made for, it fulfils us, fills the hole in us by giving us someone to love as well.
Romans 8.35, asks, ‘Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?’ I have found that when you know Christ’s love then you can find human love as well, because you are no longer driven to fill that hole.
Ephesians 1 4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.
Finding Jesus filled the hole I had, the one I filled with hobbies, it opened me up to love others for the first time and my wife in a better way.
Tell how that happened and how he helped me to love others and children.
We love each other because he loved us first.
1 John 4:19 NLT
- SO longing for Love is normal how we deal with that longing is what is important.
How will you deal with it, by filling your life with Hobbies; Things; Work; Pleasure; Or Jesus?
It is only though knowing the love of Jesus that you can fill the hole and be able to love others as a person who is loved.
Phil Andrews said
When we stop acknowledging God as the ultimate source of satisfaction in our lives we will look to other things to fill our need for significance and love which require less humility than acknowledging God. Which ‘idols’ still pluck at your heart? Work, money, power, family, fame, romance? Make a list of God’s faithful deeds to you and see those impostors off!
As Olive posted on Facebook
This Christmas we don’t need more stuff. We need more LOVE towards one another.
Let us pray
News Sheet piece
Longing for Love
Something most people want is to be loved and to have someone to love. Films like ‘Love Actually ‘ are popular because they show that anyone can find that love. In Genesis we find Jacob who searched for the right person to love (1), but the trouble is for a lot of us we do not feel that anyone will love us or even want us. Then there are people like the Samaritan woman (2) who is on her sixth man, sometimes we are just not happy with our choice of partner… Finding the love we long for isn’t easy and often very difficult, however there is one who has always loved you and always will. Jesus showed how much He loves you by giving up all he had and was, God-hood, so He could die for you. This is true love, the love we were all made for, it fulfils us, fills the hole in us by giving us someone to love as well. Romans 8.35 asks, ‘Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?’ I have found that when you know Christ’s love then you can find human love as well, because you are no longer driven to fill that hole.
(1) Genesis 28 and 29 (2) John 4
A Christian Warrior 