- Text: Luke 6:27-36, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), No. 13
- Date: Sunday morning, April 6, 2025
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio Download: https://archive.org/download/exploringhisword/2025-s02-n013-z-extraordinary-love.mp3
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Transcript:
Well, I’m sure it will come as no surprise to any of you if you’ve spent more than about five minutes around other humans, that there are some people that are easier to love than others. And there are some circumstances where it is easier to love them than others. And when I say love, I’m talking in a biblical sense, not warm, fuzzy feelings.
That’s not a bad thing to have towards somebody, that feeling of warmth. But love, biblically speaking, goes beyond that. It’s an active verb.
It’s something we do. It’s something we sacrifice toward. If we love somebody, we are willing to put their good ahead of ours.
You know, we do this with our kids almost instinctively. My three-year-old that was just in here can get me to give her just about anything. Now, we’re not trying to spoil her, but she’s the baby of the family, and she has this smile where she smiles with her whole face, and she has like 500 teeth, and it just melts all of my resistance.
Yesterday, I needed to go down to Wichita Falls because there’s some equipment I’ve needed for the chicken coop that I’ve been trying to find for months, and finally found somebody who actually had it in stock, and so I was going to go down there, and Charla has been telling me that Abigail and JoJo have been asking to go to Chick-fil-A. And I thought, well, I’d really like to get down there and back, But okay, I will be a good dad and we will stop at Chick-fil-A first. I’ll take them with me. We’ll go to Chick-fil-A.
I’m sacrificing some time here. But those girls want to go to Chick-fil-A. We’re going to go to Chick-fil-A.
We’re eating. And she looks at me and says, can we get ice cream? Okay, baby, we will get ice cream.
Basically, anything she asked for yesterday, she got. Although I held the line on getting geese. We did not get geese.
they are less lovable than others. The same thing is true of us. But most days it’s easy to love my children.
It’s not always easy with other people. Like we do this instinctively with our kids. We’re not as instinctive in doing this with other people.
And if you’ve been up and down I-44 as they’ve had lane. . .
People are not willing to make the sacrifice, by and large. Now, obviously, some people do make the sacrifice, or some people just force them to make the sacrifice, otherwise the traffic would still be there. But it’s easy for our default setting to be selfishness.
I’m not going to let them get in front of me. I’m not going to let them get in front of me.