Love Actually - Teachings from the Pulpit

Love actually is all around. It's in the glance of a lover to their love. It's in the eyes of a mother hugging her children. It's in the hugs of a father for his son. Love is everywhere - if you just look close enough you will truly see that it's all over this world. This week Pastor Mike discussed the love of Christ for His Church in his message entitled, "Stranger than Fiction".

Often times we find that we reject the love of another, and especially God's love because of our fear. Fear is a paralyzing emotion that forces everyone to freeze. Recently, in my own life I've found that fear has held me back from accomplishing the things I've always wanted to do. Looking back over the past two years or so, I've seen me go from a confident, enthusiastic girl into an extremely fearful, stressed, and emotionally drained woman. I feared everything from food poisening, to failing at something, to losing someone I loved, to bridges, even to the point that I was afraid to drive my own car. I don't know where the fear came from, but often times hindsight is better than foresight. I now realize that the reason I was so fearful was because I had put Christ out of the center of my life and into a closet somewhere. I started depending on people instead of God. I started trusting only myself, not Christ. And through that I went into a depression, truthfully loaded with crippling fear.

However, over the past few months I've begun to realize that I have nothing to fear except a life without God. Pastor Mike put it this way today, "Where there is sin, there is bondage". And I was sinning against Christ by pushing him aside and by my own pride deciding that I knew better than Him. Hebrews 4:15 puts it this way, "For we do not have a high priest (Jesus) who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet is without sin".

The first step to get out of bondage is to 1. Recognize where you've falled short of God's Best for your life - get real an evaluate your life choices. "When I refused to confess my sin, I was weak and miserable, and I groaned all day long... Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, "I will confess my rebellion to the Lord." And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone!" - Ps. 32:3-5

The second step is to 2. Replace your agenda with God's - agree with God's plans for your life - not your own. Living with your eye on the past only hinders you from achieving great things in your future. "There is no fear in love. But perfect lvoe drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." -I Johns 4:18

And third, we need to 3. Receive Healing by forgiving yourself. This is vital to being able to understand the great love of Christ. And before we can forgive ourselves we have to forgive those who have hurt or abused us in the past. For me, that's forgiving my own father who for years held me in bondage of emotional and physcial abuse and one who choose to find another woman to satisfy his "needs" instead of coming to his own wife. His addition to hurting us has made me so bitter towards men in general. It's made me not trust any man. However, bitterness is not an option - because it's only holding me back from living my life while my dad lives his without a care in the world. And often times when someone is abused for years we blame ourselves for the abuse by reciting things like, "it's my fault because I'm not good enough" or "he's doing this because I'm a disappointment". The questions roam in my head, even to this day, "Why doesn't he love me?" "Why am I such a disappointment?" = the fact of the matter is that it's not about me - it's about my father's insecurities and problems.

So finally, we need to realize that love covers a multitude of sins. Once we have taken the steps to get the healing we need - we need to "love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins" -I Peter 4:8 And God loves us always, unconditionally, deeply, and forever - We are loved!! :-)