TITLE: EXPERIENCING FULLNESS OF
GOD’S LOVE
TEXT: 1 JOHN 4:7-21
INTRODUCTION
If there ever is to have the loudest voice found in
the world, it has to be the inner cry of most of the people, “Love me, please!”
Yes, “Love me, please”, the cry comes right from the bottom of the hearts of
the young as well as the old, the strong as well as the weak.
“Love me, please!” is something we are shy to talk
about, yet love is the very basis, key and common nutrition that we need in
order to nourish our souls. Since most of us will not express it through our
words, we have unconsciously expressed our needs of being loved by others
through our behaviors, actions, attitudes, pursues and indirect speeches.
Whether we are aware or
not, the greatest need one has for life is love, the desire to be loved and the
ability to love others, though it seems that many things are more urgent and
practical in our lives. For example, if I were to wake up early in the morning,
the first thing I desire is to enjoy my delicious breakfast. The second thing I
might be concern about is how I am going to reach my office or school. My mind
might be occupied by the things that need to be settled in the workplace or
classroom that particular day. Seldom do I wake up in the morning and cry out
immediately for someone to show me love.
Yet, we have come across many
real life experiences where we realize that without love, we just simply cannot
continue on with our normal daily living. Have you ever experienced or seen
someone losing their love ones, either through marital breakdowns, broken
relationship between boyfriend and girlfriend, loss of old-aged parents or even
under-aged kids? Have you ever seen others walking with their empty eyes or
leading a purposeless life abandoning themselves in the street corners? When
love walks out from our lives, for either a temporary moment or a permanent period,
we just could not pick up ourselves to enjoy a good meal, or to concentrate on our
works or studies.
When love walks out from
our life, most of us will come to a stagnant in life. Some will lock themselves
up or isolate themselves, spending times to grieve over our pains. Love is
silent, yet it has the power both in breaking the bones and healing the wound.
Love is quiet, yet it can pain our hearts or brighten our countenances. We have
lives because of love. The history can move on because there is love.
The moment we are born to this world, we have
knowingly or unknowingly started our process of seeking love. When babies cry
out loudly, they are not just looking for milk to feed their stomach, they are
also seeking for attention, they are also signaling their needs to be touched,
to be hugged, and to be attended. They smile because someone has smiled to
them. They utter with their baby language because they have heard others
speaking to them.
A statistic report from a research done on the new
born in the hospitals shows that, those babies who receive love and care from
their parents or care-takers, their mortality rate is much more lower than
those babies or orphans who are born without tender care and love from their
parents or relatives.
We have read news from different places of how
lives of babies were preserved when they felt the tender touch, heard the
whispers of their parents or siblings, urging them to be strong and to live on.
Doctors have pronounced that they would not live long. Yet there were few who
miraculously survived because their parents or siblings have taken effort to show
their love with physical touch. All these prove that the power of love is
incredible, it makes miracles and it makes impossible possible!
Since love is so important, and we need it
desperately in order to live happily and satisfactorily, yet it is a sad thing
to see that many just could not experience love or the fullness of love in our
family, in the relationship we enter and in friends or colleagues we associate
with. Marital breakdowns are found everywhere. New born babies are abandoned in
naked bodies among the rubbish. Children are left in the shelter with wounds on
body and in hearts. Parents are deserted in old folk houses, even on streets
and become homeless. Many are betrayed by friends, by colleagues, and even by
their own family members. Our deepest cry is: What has gone wrong? Where is
love? Where to find love?
There are normally two characteristics we find
among human love. Firstly, we try to receive love from others, who are equally
in need of love from us. We have placed our hope and trust on human beings who
tend to fail us. Our source of love is others, those human beings who are
vulnerable and shaky. Secondly, we try to meet our needs by being loved. We
love ourselves more than others. Our motivation of love is to meet our own
ends. We love others hoping that they could repay us with extra love. We have made
ourselves the object of love. We have made ourselves the central of love. With
the unending and unrest demands of our sinful nature, our needs just could not
be met and satisfied.
Proposition:
Every one of us needs love!
Interrogative sentence:
How then, shall we love? Where then, shall we find
love? Whom then, shall we love?
Transitional sentence:
In order to find satisfaction and fulfillment in
love, we have to know the ultimate source of love, which is God, and the object
of His love, which are His people.
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