Jul. 27, 2025

Pastor Dave's sermon begins at 19:50 min into the video. The music "The Family of God", "The Power of Your Love", "Lord I Need You", "Lord, I want to be a Christian", and "Word of God Speak" are licensed under CCLI Copyright #2723035 and Streaming Media #22024223 licenses.

Love One Another - The Heart of True Discipleship

Pastor Dave delivers a convicting sermon on love as the defining characteristic of Christian discipleship, drawing primarily from 1 Peter 1:22-25 and John 13:34-35. He emphasizes that genuine love flows from a purified heart through the process of sanctification—obeying God's truth by the Spirit's power. Using vivid analogies like cracked pottery filled with wax and the temporary beauty of parade flowers, he illustrates how sincere love withstands testing while earthly glory fades. He candidly admits his own struggles with loving perfectly and challenges the congregation to examine whether their lack of love might indicate spiritual impurities. He contrasts society's definition of love as mere tolerance with biblical love that includes both tenderness and tough confrontation when necessary. His sermon culminates with Jesus' example of washing the disciples' feet and His revolutionary commandment to "love one another as I have loved you"—a standard far exceeding "love your neighbor as yourself." He concludes that people will recognize Christ's disciples not by their theological knowledge, political views, or church attendance, but by how well they love others.

Your spiritual journey isn't measured by how much Bible knowledge you've accumulated or how perfectly you follow religious rules. Instead, it's revealed in something far more challenging and transformative: how you love the difficult people in your life. This message invites you into a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Jesus—where love becomes both the evidence and the method of your spiritual growth.

When you face conflict, disagreement, or even betrayal, your response reveals the true condition of your heart. Are you loving from a place of purity, or are there hidden cracks in your spiritual foundation that show when the heat gets turned up? This isn't about becoming perfect overnight; it's about allowing God's love to transform you from the inside out, creating authentic change that others can see and feel.

Pastor Dave’s Key Teachings:

1. Love Flows from a Pure Heart -"Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart" (1 Peter 1:22). Before you can truly love others, your own heart needs cleansing. This happens through the ongoing process of aligning your thoughts, attitudes, and actions with God's truth. "A lack of love could be an indicator of an impurity in our soul and in our heart... if we're to love from a pure heart and a purified soul, if I'm not loving, could it be an indicator that there's an impurity in my thought life?" asks Pastor Dave. When you find yourself being impatient, unkind, or holding grudges, ask yourself: What areas of my heart still need God's cleansing touch?

2. Sincere Love Withstands Testing - True love is genuine and sincere, without hypocrisy or play acting. Like pottery without wax filling the cracks, authentic love doesn't crumble under pressure in relationships. As Pastor Dave insightfully notes, sincere love endures even when there's heat in the relationship, remaining without wax, pretense, or phoniness. Love is truly tested not in easy moments, but when someone disappoints, disagrees, or even hurts you. Will your love melt away like wax, or remain solid?

3. Fervent Love Stretches Your Capacity - We're called to "love one another fervently"—strenuously, with stretched-out effort. True love requires sacrifice and going beyond your comfort zone, just as Jesus stretched His capacity by going to the cross. As Pastor Dave noted, "Love that's fervent for another is love that will sacrifice for that person... The idea is to stretch your capacity by sacrificing in the effort to love." When loving someone costs you time, money, pride, or convenience, you're experiencing fervent love. This is where spiritual growth happens.

4. The New Standard: Love as Jesus Loved - "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34). The measure isn't how others have loved you or how you love yourself, but how Christ has loved you—unconditionally, sacrificially, persistently. "The measurement is not how well someone else loves you, or how well you've been loved... The standard is how well have you been loved by Christ," observes Pastor Dave. When someone doesn't deserve your love, remember you didn't deserve Christ's love either, yet He gave it freely.

5. Love is the Mark of Discipleship - "By this all will know that you are My disciples if you have love one for another" (John 13:35). Your reputation as a Christian isn't built on your theology, politics, or church attendance, but on how you treat people. "They're going to know we're His disciples by how well we love. How well we serve, how well we seek others' highest good," explains Pastor Dave. People are watching how you handle disagreements, treat service workers, respond to criticism, and care for those who can't help you in return.

Scriptural Foundation:

1 Peter 1:22-25 - Establishes that love flows from purified hearts through obedience to truth, while reminding us that all earthly things are temporary.

1 Corinthians 13 - Provides the definitive description of love with 14 characteristics that serve as a spiritual mirror for self-examination.

John 13:34-35 - Contains Jesus' revolutionary new commandment that elevates the standard of love and identifies it as the mark of discipleship.

Galatians 5 - Reveals that love is the first fruit of the Spirit, providing the supernatural power needed to love as Christ loved.

John 17 - Shows Jesus praying for our sanctification through truth, connecting our spiritual growth to our capacity to love.

Your Journey Forward:

1. Examine Your Heart: Ask God to reveal areas where impurity might be hindering your ability to love. Confess specific attitudes, grudges, or prejudices that create barriers.
2. Practice the 1 Corinthians 13 Test: Weekly, review your relationships through the lens of patience, kindness, humility, and forgiveness. Where do you see gaps?
3. Choose One Difficult Relationship: Identify someone who challenges your ability to love. Pray for them daily and look for practical ways to serve them.
4. Stretch Your Love Capacity: When it's inconvenient or costly to show love, see it as an opportunity for spiritual growth rather than an obstacle.
5. Remember Your Standard: When someone hurts or disappoints you, recall how Christ has loved you through your failures and extend that same grace.
6. Seek the Spirit's Power: Daily ask the Holy Spirit to produce His fruit of love in your life, recognizing you can't manufacture authentic love on your own.

 

Closing Prayer and Reflection:

"Lord, You know our thoughts and You see our hearts. And You hear the whispers of our prayers across this room today. Lord, Your word is challenging to us, especially this passage today. So, Lord, help us to respond in faith, to adjust our living by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Lord, increase our capacity to love fully and reflect Your image into this world. We ask it in Your name, amen."

Reflection: The journey of learning to love like Jesus isn't about reaching perfection—it's about allowing God's love to transform your heart so completely that it overflows naturally to others, even in the most challenging circumstances. As you walk this path, remember that every act of love, no matter how small, is both a gift to others and evidence of God's ongoing work in your life. Your love has the power to reveal Jesus to a watching world.