Don't Loose the Love

We honor every gift in the Kingdom. One of the scribes within our church community captures the Sunday messages. This is a sharing of those notes to encourage believers from the message!

Scripture: Revelations 2:4 (NLT)

“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first.”

Its interesting in Revelations 1:3 it states:

“God blesses the one who read the words of this prophecy to the church, and He blesses all wholisten to its message and obey what it says, for the time is near.”

But yet its the number one book that we avoid.

Here we go “Now I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at

first.”

Revelations 2:4.

Title “Don’t lose the Love”.

***Pastor then went into prayer before we continued.***

“Give us the courage to comfort us so we can become all that you have made us to be.”

Pastor:

I was listening to Tina Turner and she said “whats love got to do with it”.

We have devalued love.

If you take love out of Christianity then it crumbles.

If we remove love then we remove God.

Last week I gave us a spiritual challenge to self love.

I cant love you right until I have learned to love me.

I hope you all did your homework to see if you are loving you.

Honestly we love everyone but ourselves.

We can’t love others properly, so the truth is we may really like them.

So the scripture says “love your neighbor as you love yourself”.

But if you can’t love yourself then you can’t really love you neighbor.

Some people hate themselves so much that all they can give is self hatred.

Some people are crying to be healed.

Don’t lose the love.

So where did we lose the love?

I made a list.

Maybe I lost my love in ministry?

I fell more in love that You were using me then I loved You.

I fell in love with my ability then the One who enables me.

Some of us are outside of our creative order because we love more of what’s being produced.

If you couldn’t do the one thing you have been doing then all of sudden you couldn’t be who you

are.

What happens when you can’t do the one thing you once loved to do?

Life will send you through a series of re-branding.

Can we avoid this from happening again?

We need to get to know who we are internally.

Don’t let our life circumstances to turn who we are internally.

We identify who we are based off of relationships.

I like movies and you all know this.

“This Christmas” is now playing on Tubi.

You know Lauren London is dating a guy in the movie.

He said “her major in college relates to who she dates”.

She changes majors based off of who she is in relationship with.

That’s how some of our relationships look.

We lost our love in relationship.

I became more of a church member than in the kingdom.

I am on the usher board, youth choir, I am apart of various meetings, Sunday we have worship all day long.....all these things but, you still lack kingdom relationship.

You fell in love with your title.

God doesn’t let me ever be more of a pastor than I am a Christian.

Some of us look at church based off of our assignment. You are this and that.

But check yourself. Only thing we will do in heaven is serve.

When we see Jesus and He gives us His judgment, its going to be a heck of a day.

Some of us who think we are high will then be low and some of us who are low will be exalted.

Did I lose my love for Him in this family thing?

Did I become more of a family member than a kingdom citizen.

If you love your kids more than you love God then you are in trouble.

Don’t let God beat your child so that He can teach you to love Him again.

God will have your child in the ER and this will drive you back into His presence.

Have I lost my love?

Here is the truth....I used too______. (you feel in the blank)

I look at young believers and remember the fire I used to have.

I used to stay up all night reading the bible.

I used to never cuss.

Those cuss words never even occurred in my mind for a long while.

There is a difference between a cuss word and a curse word.

You are stupid, you are never going to be nothing, you are just like your daddy....that’s a curse.

We never understood these curses operate outside of Gods will and cast spells of witchcraft.

We become spell casters instead of kingdom people.

We celebrate witchcraft in the earthly realm.

We lost our love for God in these processes.

I am trying to move myself back to my text.

But can we sit here for a few seconds.

We just don’t wear hats.

They don’t look wicked and they don’t ride brooms.

There are a few witches that come to church.

There are a few witches who speak in tongues.

The whole time they speak in these tongues to tear down the body not to edify it.

God has graced you to shake their spells and their spells no longer work on us.

Maybe I lost my love when I lost my trust?

Can we go deep?

Most won’t admit this....I stopped trusting God because He stopped coming through for me the way

I wanted Him to.

We quote Proverbs 3 “trust in the LORD with all your heart”.

We trust God with our representative but not with our whole heart.

When I am angry I don’t trust God with my whole anger.

When is the last time you were naked before God about what you are dealing with?

God can handle you being honest with Him.

He can heal you better if you just say “God I love you but, you broke my heart”.

We won’t say these things in church or at the altar call.

God you made me mad. That’s not an indictment, its the truth about how you feel.

You are trying to get God to fix the representative but He needs to fix the authentic you.

You lost the love because the physical and emotional things He didn’t give it to you.

I thought that He had finally helped me to feel His love only for that love to turn into rejection.

I don’t know if I can trust Him anymore because I have gotten hurt from the process.

I feel like my enemies get more blessings than me.

I trusted God to save my family members but He let them die.

God can do more with your acknowledgment of truth.

Sit with Him and sit in His presence.

I am angry with you God.

What are you going to do with it LORD?

My trust in God grows more in these moments than in any other moment.

Go back to Chapter 1 of Revelations.

I am Alpha and Omega.

That’s normally all we can quote.

Revelations is written by John on an island called Patmos.

What they were doing was killing Christian leaders. They were killing all the Apostles.

They thought if they killed all of them then the movement would stop.

But they decided to send John to an island instead of killing him.

Did you know....

Australia was originally developed for prisoners?

You were dropped off there as a prisoner.

Jamaica was for every troubled slave that was kicked off the boat that couldn’t make it to America.

That was Johns story because he kept preaching and wouldn’t shut up.

Killing the believers just made them grow even more.

John said “It was the LORDS day and I was worshipping in the Spirit”.

“and suddenly I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet”.

Every word in the bible means something.

This word caught my attention “behind”.

John you mean to tell me a voice came from behind me?

In order for something to get behind me it had to walk past me.

So John had to walk past God.

He was worshipping in the wrong spirit.

You probably passed Jesus on your way to church.

But because you were in the wrong spirit you passed Jesus.

I find Him in the volume of the book.

I am a volume in His book.

I find Him in my history, in my story.

“He was waiting patiently” is what grandma would say.

John was worshipping and passed God.

Which gives me room to argue that maybe we have walked past God in our worship?

Watch this next part.

He was there but He wasn’t here.

Some of us need to understand that God was there but He is not there with me right now.

Just because you have had relationship doesn’t mean you have relationship.

This may be a call for you to come back to relationship with Him.

Go to verse 12 in chapter 1 now.

Revelations 1:12-16.

“(12) When I turned to see who was speaking to me, I saw seven gold lampstands. (13) And standing in the middle of the lampstands was someone lie the Son of Man. He was wearing a long robe with a gold sash across His chest. (14) His head and His hair were white like wool, as white as snow. And His eyes were like flames of fire. (15) His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and His voice thundered like mighty ocean waves. (16) He held seven stars in His right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword came from His mouth. And His face was like the sun in all its brilliance.”

If you are going to recover from the love you once had you have to turn around.

The God you have known is the one who is calling and all you have to do is turn.

Lets talk about how we missed Jesus in our worship.

We are called to worship but what is the object of our worship?

When you worship God what do you worship?

Many people worship in transaction.

You think to yourself “when I worship God what will He do for me?”.

We say things like “when praises go up, blessing come down” and this is not in the bible.

The only reason you have a thank you in your mouth is because you expect God to do something for

you in the process.

You think your praise will make God bless you.

This is not true.

God doesn’t work this way.

Do you want to know the way to get God to move?

Here goes the secret.

The one thing that will always make God move.

OBEDIENCE.

Any where God finds obedience you find God moving.

HE MOVES AT THE SPEED OF FAITH.

Faith without works is dead.

IF I do what He said He will do what He said He would do.

I wonder if guilt is my driving factor?

We serve out of fear instead of reverence.

You don’t really love God you love what He will do for you.

You feel bad about you ,so you want to be in love with Him but, you don’t even know who God is for

real.

John turns around and sees seven lamp stands.

Seven lamp stands.

What are there seven lamp stands?

They are the seven churches.

John is about to examine and will speak to seven different churches.

This is important to the text we are about to read.

Then he see’s seven stars.

What are these stars?

They are the angels.

Or seven messengers.

In the Greek the word “angel” means messenger.

When he is writing the letter he is writing the letters to the angles or the messengers in this

particular text.

Lets go to Revelations 2.

I believe the church is constant but the messenger is inter-changeable.

The church in Ephesus is a spirit.

Its the churches spiritual condition.

There are different messengers that are able to speak to the churches condition.

Revelations 2:1 says:

“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus”.

Revelations 2:2 says:

“I know all the things you do”.

Can I stop right there for a second.

Can I help you all out with how I read my bible?

There are certain phrases in the bible that scare me.

For me when I read chapter 2:2 it read “I see all the things you do”.

You all are going to sit here and act so saved after I said that huh?

Y’all are looking at me with a look that says:

“I have not ever sinned in my life”.

I’m like “God if you can just forget July the 17th. Just erase that 24 hour period because the next day

I got back on track.”.

Revelations 2:2 continues to say:

“I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You

have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they

are liar. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.”

But lets understand Ephesus for a moment.

What may be wrong is what they feel they have right?

What if God is calling out your unrighteousness so He can call out your righteousness.

Ephesus...the culture....it sits between two mountains.. Mount Koressus and Mount Pion.

God has blessed me with the ability to go to Ephesus.

The church drowned and they moved up further in the valley.

Then the city caught on fire. Then they moved up the mountain a little further.

Paul stopped at this church and established a church here in this city.

An epistle is a letter that was written by an apostle.

Ephesians is one of the shortest letters written by Paul but yet he spent most of his time there.

Ephesus was the second largest city in all of Rome.

In the ancient world this place was bigger than NY.

They had hundreds of thousands living here.

Ephesus was like Vegas....If your money was right, you could buy something strange for some

change.

It had a lot of freaks in this place if you know what I mean?

Ephesus was the stopping point between Rome and Turkey.

The Roman empire stretched and was massive.

Everything people had on their ships they traded in this location of Ephesus.

Ephesus got its name from this girl named Armetis.

She was a bad girl.

Study her.

She is dope.

You ever heard of the amazon women?

They pre-date Zeus.

They made her a daughter of Zeus when the Greeks conquered the lands there.

Everyone worshiped her because she was responsible for child birth, fruits of labor, hunting, etc.

Then here goes the Christians talking about loving Jesus.

Paul then spoke on how people are confronting liars and exposing the culture that was there but, is

exposing them in their faith.

They were more dedicated in their religion than their relationship.

They would more tell you how you are wicked than to tell you that Jesus loves you.

Thats how the church is today.

We are more apt to stare at people then are to give them a hug.

Shout LOVE.

LOVE!

The word “turned back” or “look back” happens five times in the text of John from earlier.

First thing you should know is that unconditional love- is agape love.

But we love God and people based off of conditions.

When it feels good we love people.

When it doesn’t feel good we don’t love people.

If you don’t meet our needs then we don’t love you.

Not only does this describe our relationship with people but, it shows it with God as well.

We only read our bible and came to church because God was answering our prayers.

How do you remove these conditions?

You have to shift your focus.

You have to love at the core.

I love Sheldon Matthew.

Not about what’s on the outside of him.

Its about what’s on the inside.

But If I only love the fact that he’s a scribe or loves Jesus or comes to church enough then this is

conditional.

But I have to love people at the core of who God made them.

So do you love God for who He is or what He does?

Agape love is also sacrificial.

A love that doesn’t cost anything is not a love at all.

What has your love cost you lately?

When is the last time you sacrificed for someone who was incapable of paying you back for what you

sacrificed?

You don’t love anyone that you are not willing to sacrifice for.

You have to understand that love is a will.

Its the matter of the will.

I choose love.

You all stop lying and telling people “I just fell in love them”.

No, you chose to love them.

When love is a choice of the will Its an act of commitment.

You have to wake up and choose each other everyday in a marriage.

Has our commitment or choice slipped when choosing to love God?

Accountability is a word we need to be re-introduced to.

Here is a promise.

Revelations 2:7 states:

“Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what He is saying to the

churches”.

If you can re-kindle your love for church, then I will re-kindle your love.

I found something.

I heard of the tree of life.

Genesis 3.

The thing Adam ate that kept him alive forever came from the tree of life.

So if I love people right, then I can eat from the tree that gives me continuous life.

I wonder which one of us are dying because we are not loving who we have been called to love?

Pastor why are you calling us to love again?

I believe we are in a season of loving us, others, and God.

God is walking us into a ministry of love.

This year makes nine years I have been ministering today.

I was driving this kid around and he told me his name had five letters in his name.

I said “I never counted the number of letters in my name”.

Guess what?

I have nine letters in my name.

Then I asked God “what does this number nine mean?”.

He said “nine is the number of months a baby is in the womb”.

I then got to thinking.

There are nine fruits of the Spirit.

He said “I am bringing you to a place of marination”.

“I am grooming you in private so I can bring you into a place of public”.

I then thought.

There are nine gifts of the Spirit.

If you have a gift then God wants to use it.

The baby is born and we are able to see the evidence in public.

The teacher is never present for the test.

When the teacher passes out the test they sit quietly.

Maturation looks like God giving you the test to see if you caught the lesson.

You are mature when you can exhibit the skill you have learned without the teacher facilitating the

use.

Some of us in this room have fire arms in Jesus name.

They have a mentality that goes like this “we will pray for you and shoot you in Jesus name”.

If you have ever shot a gun.

Your first shot was not in line.

But over time, you hung out with someone who knew what they were doing.

They set you up for success.

But when you learned how to shoot then you no longer needed the instructor to be there and

instruct.