Powered By Love

 

Text: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Focus: enduring

Function: to help people see how Paul kept on regardless of his trials.

6 ^1-10 Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us,
I heard your call in the nick of time;
The day you needed me, I was there to help.

Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don’t put it off; don’t frustrate God’s work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we’re doing. Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we’re telling the truth, and when God’s showing his power; when we’re doing our best setting things right; when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

11-13 Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

Good morning and it is great to be back. I realized yesterday morning in prayer just how much the Holy Spirit is moving in our midst as we are being true to the faith as it was handed down to us through Jesus and the Apostles.

God has truly made us into an interdependent community. Brother Paul, the author of our text today speaks earlier to the same Church, the Corinthians, about the interdependence that we all have with each other. It is a bond of love that is fomented by the power of the Holy Spirit of Christ as we open ourselves up to the leading and direction of the Holy Spirit.

As you surmise from the bulk of my preaching, I believe that the moving of the Spirit, at least in my own experience, has always been to love someone more and forgive them. These are the times when I have sensed the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit whispering in my ear my need to love others the way that Jesus loves them.

I also believe that it is important for us to have faith in Christ. And the times that it is difficult to have faith in Christ are the times when we are suffering.

In this passage, Paul speaks of his faith and hope during suffering. They come through love.

I have been trying to learn how to live by faith in the midst of any suffering or hardship that I might be allowed to endure.

And in that process, I believe that God has a redeeming purpose in suffering. We know from scripture that he did with Jesus, the Christ. But we also learn that through faith in Christ in the midst of our own suffering we too are being like Christ in this world.

Paul talks about his suffering in this passage. He was beaten and left for dead. He was stoned and left for dead. And we read the list of the suffering that he endured when we heard our text. It was a lot.

And the reason for it was because God was using the circumstances in his life to bear witness to the love of God given to all of humanity through Christ Jesus.

I titled the sermon, “Powered by love” because I see the love that Paul has for the risen Christ and the people that Christ gave his life for, the world entire. I thought of titling it: “motivated by love” but I realize that God is love and therefore, Love is God.

So, as we are powered by God through the Holy Spirit, we are powered by Love.

When we love, we are being powered by God and it gives us the endurance to face difficulty.

Kathy knows what when I am suffering, I like to whine. I am short tempered and apparently, I can get sarcastic. Right now I’m a little bit confused because of the pain medications and that doesn’t help with my ability to respond patiently because I am angry with myself for the confusion and I need people to be patient with my response time. So, give me a few more moments this morning to respond.

And the reason I mention that I am a typical male patient who claims to be tough but needs a lot of nurture at heart is because getting impatient, frustrated and upset with the people you love leads me to feel guilty for my behavior.

Not shame, but guilt, or a conscience that is bothered. And then the enemy or our souls starts whispering doubt in my ear. And the doubt that evil whispers to me is that I am not measuring up to the standard of love that Christ said would be the hallmark of our Christian faith. But also where the Holy Spirit works leading me to love like God.

And if I listen to the enemy of our souls, it becomes shame. And shame is always what I call Satanic because it is an attack against the loving and merciful nature of Christ.

So, we walk by faith and we put off shame knowing that the power to love does not come from ourselves. It comes to us from the Holy Spirit. And for me, as your pastor, encouraging the leading of the Spirit in your lives is an important task that Christ has given to me.

Now, let me re-read the first and the last verse of today’s text. Paul talks about his suffering for Christ and transiently on their behalf because Christ wants them to live an abundant life.

It is his exhortation to them, It is the response that he wants them to get from his recounting of how God helps him through the trials that we face in life.

Hear these verses: Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us....
...Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

Because God is present in suffering, don’t squander the abundant life God has given us.

You know, I wonder if part of the way we squander this life abundant comes from a misunderstanding of John 3:16.

You know the verse and it ends with the phrase: “...that we might have eternal life.

I prefer to translate it more accurately according to the original Greek manuscripts as “life to the fullest.” The Greek word is literally “Life without limits.”

Do you see how that changes the narrative from “Jesus came so that when we die we can go to heaven” and many add the phrase “and not go to hell” to “Jesus came to give us the power to live life to the fullest?”

it isn’t about heaven and hell, it is about Christ’s presence in our lives restoring us to God and each other.

Through Jesus we see how he dismantled the unjust systems of his day in an effort to free the oppressed. They killed him for it.

He did it, according to John 3:16, because he loves us. God loves humanity so much that God sent His only son to save it.

To save us. To heal us. To restore us. To forgive us. To make us whole. This is God’s gift to us.

And motivated by that knowledge because he had experienced its help in the midst of suffering, he begs us to allow ourselves to be powered by the Love of God in our lives as well.