I wanted to start by wishing everybody, all the mothers in the room, a happy Mother’s Day. God bless you—it’s a special day for you. As I was preparing the sermon, you know, I began to think about a mother’s love. A mother’s love is so special. It’s, to me, a gift from God, and it’s something that directly reflects the true love of God that we have in Christ Jesus. It’s a selfless love. A mother’s love doesn’t look for a reward back when they’re pouring out love.

When I think about my wife investing into my child and doing everything she does, the whole point is for what? That the son would be blessed, that the son would grow up and succeed, that the son would thrive. And what’s the reward for the mother? Is the thriving; is the success. The investing is not to receive back, but the mother is blessed when the son is blessed.

I began to think about that. The truth is God is so much like that. He has blessed us. He is looking for us to thrive in Him. He is looking for us to have success in coming into His Spirit, receiving that blessing, receiving His very presence and love. Amen.

I was watching an interview the other day of a bunch of young parents, and it kind of reminded me of Steph and Dave. I mean, young couples. And they hadn’t had kids yet, and they said, well, “Why do you want kids in the future?” And they looked and they said—some of the answers were really funny—some of them were like, “Well, you know, I’m afraid when I get old, I’m going to have to have somebody to take care of me, so I might as well have kids that can spoon feed me and stuff.” Another one said, “I’m tired of cutting the lawn. I want some help out in the yard. I need some help here.”

You know, as funny as that sounds, as crazy as it might be, I thought about the church. You know, we have that somewhat in the church. People come in and they’re like, “Well, why are you here? Why are you investing?” “Well, I really need healing. I really need some healing.” And what happens as they come and people begin to pray and they get healing? Oh, “I got my reward.” And then they’re out the door. They’re gone from God because they received the reward of what they wanted.

Or they’re saying, “Well, I really need some prayer right now. I’m really struggling.” What happens when they get the job? Well, their joy is complete. They’ve received what they were investing into, and it wasn’t God—it was the job—and now they’re gone.

You see, a mother-type love doesn’t look for the reward back; it is investing for the benefit of the child, that the child would thrive, that the child would be blessed, and the mother receives and rejoices and their joy is complete when the child thrives and succeeds in life.

I know so many of us here have taken up that heart of the mother over top of the church, working towards the success, not of their own bodies, but of the church body. My sermon today is to tell you that the Lord Jesus Christ is a reader of hearts: He sees your heart. He sees those who have taken up a motherly-type love unto God, a motherly-type love unto the Lord Jesus Christ for what He has done. It is being reciprocated unto God and I tell you—God sees your hearts today and your joy is going to be complete because God, as that song said, He is the blessing, and He is going to come down and fill His people.

My reading today is from Isaiah 49. It says—it’s going to be up here—It says, “‘Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has born? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you. See, I have written your name in the palms of my hands. Always in my mind is the picture of Jerusalem’s walls in ruin. Soon your descendants will come back. All who are trying to destroy you will go away. Look around you and see, for all your children will come back to you. As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘they will be like jewels or bridal ornaments for you to display.”

God has invested into us, and God has loved us like that mother’s love we see inside of this verse. That love is not meant to just sit dormant inside your heart; that love is meant to transform you. It is meant to transform you, and that love is supposed to fill up until it’s being shot back up to God. We are not meant to just sit back and receive, but we’re meant to receive and be blessed and then be transformed, that we might learn to love God, that we might replicate the love that God has had for us.

“That love is not meant to just sit dormant inside your heart; that love is meant to transform you.”

How do we know when that has happened? It begins to be expressed. That love begins to bubble up in the heart of the believer, and it is expressed. So today we’re going to talk about how that love is expressed.

Number one, that love is expressed in the church house. You know, you can always tell—I’ll go to some of your guys’ houses and I’ll walk in—and you can always tell what somebody loves based off of what’s in their house. You walk in the door, maybe you see vacation pictures and little vacation tchotchkes all over the place. Oh, okay, they love to travel. They love to see different places.

For some of you, you might have your grandchildren; pictures from every month. From the day they were born all the way up till 18. All the way up on their walls. Because that’s what you love. You love your grandchildren and the pictures are there.

Prior to Joshua, if you walked into our house, we had pictures of my dog all over the place. Isaiah Farina drew us a little picture. It was above our fridge, like a painting, a hand mural of our dog that was above our fireplace. It is very obvious what people love by walking into their home; it’s an expression of what’s on the inside.

So I want us to stop for a second. I want us to take a look around the church. Take a look at everything that we see in here. Take a look at the sash up on the cross, the lights, the wreaths. I walked by the classrooms earlier and saw all that was set up for the kids to have a great time. I look at the landscaping outside, the cleanliness even of the bathrooms. You see, you walk around God’s house and you get a sense of what God loves and what He values.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying He loves beautiful things. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s less about what you can see with your eyes and more about the hearts that have invested into God’s house.

When I look up at that sash, as beautiful as it is, you know what I’m thinking? How did they get it up there? How did they get the ladder? That’s so high. That must have been so hard. I look at the classrooms and I think about how much fun the kids are going to have, but I also think about how much was invested throughout the week preparing the lesson and preparing a craft for whatever they’re going to do in there.

God’s house has been adorned. It’s not with decorations; it’s with transformed hearts. You can see hearts that are being transformed and the love of God is bubbling up, and how does it come out? It comes out in all these things that we are surrounded with.

These things we have to understand, they didn’t just happen. We don’t have just like a lot of nice people here with a lot of free time on their hands that have nothing better to do. That’s not how it came to be. This happened because God drew His people in with love.

Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you in with an unfailing kindness.” See, that love comes in and transforms the person. It transforms the heart. It begins to shape who they are to no longer be about their own house. That’s what we have in this world. Everybody’s concerned about their own house—my job, my things, my car, my money, my whatever. Everybody’s concerned about their own house. How many are concerned with the house of God? That’s what God’s love does. It comes in, touches a man deep inside of them, and begins to transform them.

How many are concerned with the house of God?

Everything you see is a sign of love and thanksgiving to God. It’s not about the things, but what it is about is about transforming us so that we would replicate God’s love back onto Him.

I remember a long time ago when God touched me, and I remember when I first walked in—the love of God was so evident. The first thing I felt when God really opened Himself up to me—I came from a messed up background, I never felt God, I barely even felt my own feelings—but when I walked in, all of a sudden, I began to feel God. And immediately, the thing that struck my heart was His love.

That verse that says, “I have drawn you in with unfailing love, with unrelenting kindness”—that is what God is talking about. He is meaning to draw you in with His love. I tell you, don’t think that these things just happen. You’re not here on your own. You’re not here today because you didn’t have anything better to do. You are here because God’s love is going out into the world and calling you into His house.

You see, when that love comes in, God’s problems become your problems. You’re no longer about your own house, and your joy comes when the house thrives—when God’s presence thrives, when God’s goodness goes out into the world and thrives. That’s where your joy comes in. That’s the difference between worldly love and godly love.

Worldly love says it’s about me, what I got to get back. Godly love says, as a mother’s love says, “No, my joy is complete when God’s house thrives. My joy is complete when a thing I’m investing into goes and succeeds. That is my joy.”

I look and I see hearts that have taken on that heart of Christ. Remember, God the Father, He has those attributes of a mother. He is the strength, the power, the might. He is all those things, but He is also that loving kindness that draws us in.

The truth is He has invested into each one of us. He has tithed into you. When we talk about what a tithe is, the tithe is your first fruits, the best of your best: everything that you have, you give unto something else. That’s what a tithe is. God has tithed into each one of us. He gave His very best. He gave His Son, the One Son. He didn’t have a second one to take His place—His Only Son.

But the question today is, have our hearts replicated God’s love? Not worldly love. Not “I have nothing better to do.” Not “this is what I’m supposed to do on a Sunday.” But is God’s love transforming you to no longer be about your own house, but to be about God things?

He says, “See, I have written your name on the palm of my hands.” He is concerned about us. What is our heart’s motivation? This is a hard question that people have to ask themselves. What is my heart’s motivation? Why am I here? Why am I investing into God’s house? Why haven’t I invested into God’s house? We have to look at the motivation of our hearts.

I think about David. David goes and he says, “God…” He wakes up one day and he looks around and he has a beautiful house of cedar, and he says, “God, this is no good. I’m in a house of cedar, but You’re in a tent. Can’t go on, no way. I’m gonna build You a house.” And he calls up the prophet Nathan and he says, “Yo man, I have to do this.” And Nathan’s like, “Yeah, it sounds great, do it.” And then that night, God speaks to Nathan. He speaks to the prophet Nathan and says, “Whoa, hold on, that’s not gonna happen.”

And I’m gonna read you guys this verse. It’s gonna be up here. This is what God said to David: “The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you. When your days are over, you rest, and I raise up your offspring, I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”

This verse didn’t make sense to me when I first read it. I had to read it a few times. David comes and says, “This is wrong. I have to build a house for you, God.” And God, what does He turn around and say? He says, “No.” He says, “I’m going to make you a house instead.” That word house means royal dynasty. “I’m going to set you up, then when you’ve lived an abundant life I’m going to raise up your son. He will build me a house, but I will establish his kingdom forever.”

See, I read this and my mind was kind of blown. You can understand when I say a mother’s love: that the greatest joy is when a mother goes and invests in somebody and that thing is blessed, that person is blessed. That’s God’s love, because He read David’s heart. And David’s heart was to no longer be about his own things, was to say, “It’s not my house, not my things. God, I want it to be Your house.” And God’s like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, it’s not My house. I’m going to bless your house.”

And David’s like, “Well, I want it to be about you.” And God’s like, “No, I want to bless You.” You see, this is the epitome of a reciprocal relationship, and this is the relationship that God wants for His people in Him.

Paul said to the Philippians church, make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one spirit and one mind. Let my joy be complete, not when you give back to me, not when I make a lot of money. No, my joy will be complete when you thrive.

You see, David and Solomon, they were ornaments in the house of God. Every victory, every blessing that they had, they gave credit to Him and said, “Lord, this isn’t me, it’s You.” And they gave it back unto God. And God took it and said, “Because you have a heart that wants to bless Me, I am going to establish your kingdom forever.”

God wants to change our hearts. He wants to transform us to no longer be about our own house, but to be transformed by His love, to replicate that same love that was given unto us, that we would be on display, that our hearts—as you look around this church and see all the things—would be on display, that they would be ornaments unto God. Amen.

So we can see that love is expressed in the house of God when you’re no longer about your own things, but you begin to become about the house of God.

Secondly, that love is expressed with being in the church body. I’m going to go back to my verse here in Isaiah: “Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has born? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you.”

You can feel that love for God and His church. Why is the relationship so strong between a mother and a child? Why is it so strong? Because they shared one body. For nine months, that baby was formed in one body. They shared every single morsel of food that goes into a mother’s mouth is not just blessing the mother, but it’s going and blessing the child as well. They shared one body. And when that child is birthed and it begins to grow up, they are of one flesh—one flesh for their entire lives. That baby is one flesh. So when the baby is blessed, the mother is blessed. When the baby succeeds, the mother rejoices because of it being one flesh.

God has that nurturing spirit. He is calling you to no longer be of your own flesh, to no longer be of yourself.

He is calling you to no longer be of your own flesh, to no longer be of yourself.

We have a problem with independence in this country. We have a problem with pride in this country. We have a problem with pride around us. Every day we see it. God’s love is calling for us to lower ourselves and to be of one flesh with God. I mean, I’m talking a mother and a child. I’m talking one flesh, one body.

God has called you into the church, the church body, His bride. What happens—the Bible says this is the mystery, this is the mystery—when a husband and a wife come together, they are a what? One flesh. One flesh.

We are the bride of Christ. We are the body of Christ. And God is calling us to come together with Him and be of one flesh.

The verse goes on in verse 16. It says, “See, I have written your name in the palm of My hands. Always in My mind is a picture of Jerusalem’s walls in ruin.” You see, even in discipline, God’s love is there. Even in discipline, He says, “Look, I had to discipline you, but every single minute, every day, a picture of those ruined walls is in My mind. Don’t think I don’t know.”

He reminded me of me, when I have to discipline my kid. I know I have to do it. I’m not good at it though. But in front of my kid I’m super confident. I’m like, “Oh, I know what I’m doing, yeah—you can’t—no more iPad or something.” And I get real tough, and as soon as the kid walks away, I go to my wife, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, did I do the right thing? I don’t know. Should I have given it? Should I not have given it? Was I too strong? Was I not strong enough? Is he going to grow up and be a sociopath?” I got to know what I’m doing. There’s no manual. Nobody tells me how to do this stuff. So I call and I’m like, “What do I do?”

We’re real tough in front of our kids, but as soon as we walk away, we’re—at least me—I’m like, I don’t know if I did the right thing. But there’s that love there to want to benefit the child. Even in discipline, to want to benefit the child. That is God’s nurturing spirit. That same spirit, even in discipline, is what has brought you here today. It is what brought you here.

For me, I look at my life, I look at God’s love and His kindness and His nurturing Spirit and even His discipline, and say, “God, thank you so much, for I would not be here today if it were not for You.”

You are not here by accident. You are not here by accident.

God is calling you to submit yourself—your carnal self, your independence—down onto God. Lower your flesh, your own flesh, your independent flesh, your separation flesh, your flesh that wants to be away from God. Lower that down and come down and say, “God, here I am. Transform me this day by Your love.”

Romans 13:8 says, “Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” You see, you know there’s transformation when love no longer becomes a one-way street.

Here’s the truth: you cannot be transformed and feel God’s love—you just sit there and bask in it. Hits you. You kind of just suck it all in. And you’re just there, and you’re receiving the blessings, the goodness, and you’re just there, you know, arms back, and then you walk out and you feel great.

That’s somebody who—you don’t have to be transformed to feel the love of God. The first time I felt the love of God, believe me, I was not transformed. It set me on a road to go and say, “God, I’m going to submit to You, and You have to come in and transform me.”

But you can tell when somebody has been transformed by the fact that it’s no longer a one-way street. Somebody has been transformed when they’re no longer a one-way street into them, but the love of God begins to flow out. Back onto God first, back onto Him, and then what? It has no other outlet but to love the things that He loves and to begin to invest in the things that are important to Him.

All of a sudden, somebody starts to change. Somebody starts to put away their own flesh. Their prayers begin to expand, and they stop praying about their own things and begin to pray about God things. They target the needs of the body. “Who is hurting that needs prayer? Who is sick that I can fast for? Who needs lunch? Who can’t eat that I got to go make some soup?”

All these things is what it means to be part of the body of Christ, because guess what? If I’m separate, her toothache doesn’t affect me. But when you’re of one body, what happens? That toothache affects the entire body, and the whole body is invested in numbing that pain and stopping it and healing it.

1 Corinthians 12 says that “there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

See, we can understand what it means to be part of the body. I’m not talking about your attendance. I’m talking about your heart lowering itself to no longer be your own man and saying, “God, I gotta come into the body of Christ.” I want to be of one body. I want to be of the mother and the child of one flesh coming together with God the Father, for that is the mystery, and I want to come down and submit myself unto You. And I want to be one flesh with You, God. God, I want my heart to be invested. I want that love to overflow my heart, to no longer be of myself, but to begin to be about You,” because that’s what love does. Amen.

For you married couples, do you remember when all of a sudden the love first came on, and all of a sudden you lowered yourself? Like you might have been a big tough guy before, but all of a sudden you’re like, “Hey, do you need anything? Can I get you lunch?” And you’re bringing them out and you’re buying the movie tickets. And I used to leave strawberries in my wife’s locker in high school. You know, I never did nonsense like that! But all of a sudden, my heart was being motivated by love to lower my carnal self —to lower my carnal self, to lower my independence and be vulnerable and put it down, that’s what love is meant to do.

God’s love is meant to come in and overshadow who you are and overshadow your flesh and put it down that you might become one body with the church and with God. Amen?

Historically, I’ve always been one to handle things on my own—my own problems. Just how I was raised, I was taught to kind of handle things on my own. And I remember when I first started to come into the church, all of a sudden it was the weirdest thing to me because I would come in and all of a sudden my problems, somebody else was taking on the burden. And I was like, “Wait, this doesn’t affect your life. Like what happens to me means nothing to you, right? It’s not going to—you’re going to wake up tomorrow and you’re going to be exactly the same no matter how my situation works out.”

But all of a sudden, people started to be invested into what I was doing. And I remember coming to the church and these people wanted to share my struggle. And I thought about this verse: “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it, and if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” This was a revelation for me.

In the times I was struggling spiritually, the church was there with truth and to pray me through. The times I was struggling in the physical, maybe financially, all of a sudden God was putting it upon someone’s heart to come in and bless my home without even knowing where I was at. In times of sickness in my home, when I was either too tired or too caught up in all the chaos that I was surrounded with to stay awake, there was somebody there to say, “Listen Kris, I got it. You go to bed. I will stay up and pray.”

You see, today I think about that, and I think about that verse, and it just blows my heart away what it means to be one with the church body. So today, when someone receives healing, when someone in here receives a job, when someone in here graduates, you see their joy is my joy because we are all of one body.

The church body has been there for many of you as well through the suffering, and I tell you today, we will be together in honor and rejoicing. Today, I want your eyes to be open to the goodness and love of God. I want you to realize that you are not meant to be of your own flesh. You are meant to be one flesh with God.

“...You are not meant to be of your own flesh. You are meant to be one flesh with God.”

God’s love is meant to come in, transform you, and make you lower yourself down. Make you put your carnality down and begin to take up the flesh of God. Begin to invest yourself. God’s love is meant to be reciprocated. It’s meant to be replicated in the hearts of His people. Amen.

So God is calling us to not only express the love in the church body, to put away our own things, take up God things; He’s also calling us to love—it’s meant to be expressed in being one flesh—to put down your carnal self and be one flesh with the church.

And finally, that love is expressed in the church vision. Let’s look back to our verse in verse 18: “‘Look around you and see, for all your children will come back to you. As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘they will be like jewels or bridal ornaments for you to display.’”

This verse strangely uses two different tenses. It kind of threw me off. It says, l
“Look around you and see”—that’s like a present tense—and then it goes on to say, “your children will come back”—that’s like talking about the future. And I read it at first and there was like those two different tenses in there, and it kind of threw me off, but I began to read it, and I saw that God is speaking to the prophet about vision.

Now, God’s vision isn’t like a vision we have in this world, like I have a vision of what my life could be. No, that’s like a possibility. That’s like a desire. That’s not what God’s vision is about. God’s vision is to say, “Look, this is what I’m doing. This is what’s going to happen. You better get on board. This is what’s going to happen, and I’m giving you an opportunity right now to have your eyes open so that you might get a glimpse and see what I am doing, that you might have the end goal in mind so that your heart might be invested.”

I think this takes a special type of person. I’m not a visionary. I’m gonna be honest with you. One body, I’m gonna be vulnerable to you guys. One flesh altogether. I am not a visionary. Like I have a struggle with vision. This is something that God constantly is working with me on.

My wife is definitely a person of vision. She can see the end result and know steps 1 through 100 on how to get to that end result, and God opens her eyes to it. That is her. That is where she excels.

Me, if I don’t have in my Google calendar to go to work the next day, I’m not gonna go. It’s just how I am. And it’s happened, you know? Or if I don’t put my vacation days in, I showed up at work like two weeks ago and they’re like, “What are you doing here?” And I was like, “What do you mean? It’s our work day.” He’s like, “You’ve had a vacation day in for like two months.” And I was like, “Oh, guess I’ll leave.” So that’s me. I struggle with thinking beyond today. I do.

But God is about vision. So this is where we kind of—He’s here and I’m here—and I have to meet Him over where He is. God has to do that because God is about vision.

And I began to think about this, and I began to read this verse, and I thought, you know what? I want to read about what the church’s vision is. And I went on the website. By the way, if you haven’t been on the website, I did a deep dive the other day and really got into it. I was reading about why we believe what we believe and what our doctrine is and I was really blessed. I’ve got to say, it’s awesome. It’s next level.

But that being said, I started to read about the church vision. Can you put it up? This is off the website: United Faith Church has a vision to raise and educate youth and the young at heart to love and follow the Lord Jesus Christ, leaving a legacy that will impact generations to come. We do this through a focus on personal restoration to God, dynamic and intentional discipleship, and establishment of strong biblical foundations. Amen. Hallelujah.

So I read that and I think: why is God’s love expressed through His vision? You can’t be on board with God’s vision unless that has been accomplished in you first. It is our hearts that prompt us to get on board with the vision. It is the love of God that has transformed us, that has come in and done something inside of the heart of a man or woman that says, “God, what You have done in me can’t stop here. It can’t stop here. It can’t be just for me.”

And it begins to take form and bubble up and open, open, open, and have that mother’s love that just bubbles until you are saying, “God, what You say for the future, I’m gonna be on board with that. What You’re calling for, what’s going to happen in the future, God, I’m going to invest in that, because it can’t stop here.”

It says that you need to be young at heart, or young. You can’t be stubborn, stuck in your own, if you want to embrace this vision over God’s church. The young at heart, they’re willing to love. They’re willing to open themselves up. For what? That’s when it comes up. You say, “God, I’m going to be young at heart. I’m going to open myself up. I’m going to go out there and put myself on the line because I want Your church to succeed.”

It says, “I’m going to leave a legacy.” The truth is we invest in a lot of nonsense. It was talked about last week, right? His shoes and going about and cleaning them all the time. You realize you spend more time on the shoes than you do on wearing them. You know, that’s true. We spend a lot of time on wasteful things. But when you say, “I want to be in a legacy,” you’re saying, “God, I don’t want to invest in wasteful things that are going to just be nothing.” So much we’ve invested in wasteful things. But He’s saying to live a legacy—a legacy, something that will go on—and it says to impact generations that will reverberate, that will say, “God, what You have done in me, it’s not going to be wasteful. I’m not going to waste myself on all these things of the world, but Lord, let these things that You have touched me with, let Your love come on and begin to grow so much that it goes and touches generations.”

It takes love to accomplish that. It takes love to get on board with the vision of the church. It takes love to invest yourself into something.

That love is not of your own. Let me tell you, that love that touched me was not of my own. It was God. It was God. It is a gift from God that comes in and touches a man. It has to be done in you first before you can have vision for anything on the outside. If you’re going to believe that the children of God are going to return, how can that be if God hasn’t invested? You haven’t invested yourself. God hasn’t touched your heart first.

This will never happen without love because love is the only thing that will see us through. And I tell you, in some of my darkest times, when the Word was offensive to my carnal mind, when I was confused, when I didn’t understand, it was God’s love that kept me. It was love for my pastors that all of a sudden did something inside my heart that wouldn’t let me rebel against what they were saying to me. It was love for my family that said, “listen, I can’t turn away and go do my own thing.” That love kept me.

And eventually that love began to be transformed and it began to be invested back into God. That is the point: that the love that God has for you would not be wasteful, but that it would be reinvested back into God. You’re not just meant to sit there and get fat; you’re meant to all take that love and it’s meant to do and transform in your heart to be invested back into God.

I tell you today, I would not be here today without God’s love—not my love. My love’s tainted—my love’s jacked up. My love comes from a life of heartache. God’s love—God’s love that makes you lower your carnality, that makes you lower yourself and see someone else as higher, see something else greater than what you are. So we understand how love makes you overcome and persevere.

So we understand this verse. It says, “make every effort to add to your faith goodness, goodness knowledge, knowledge self-control, self-control perseverance, perseverance godliness, godliness mutual affection, and mutual affection, love.” Love is always the end result.

You look at what God has done for you. You look at His goodness. You look at everything He has tithed into you, He has invested into you. You are not here on your own. God has done something to call you in and draw you in. That love is meant to open up your hearts and lower yourself and take something on that is greater than yourself.

I tell you, if love is not the basis for our evangelism, then we are falling short. If love is not the basis of every one of our prayers, then they are going to fall flat.

"If love is not the basis for our evangelism, then we are falling short."

What is the result of somebody who has taken on that love and come out the other side? Well, this is where we talk about it. Someone who’s displaying the motherly love—it’s someone who’s coming on a free Saturday morning to clean the floors or pull some weeds. It’s someone who is staying up to pray when the church is in need. It’s someone that can grab onto the vision of the church when we look at it and say, “God, I believe in that because of what You have done in me. And I’m going to take those things from Heaven and I’m going to grab onto them, and as of love, I’m going to persevere and I’m going to pull those things down into reality, because God, You have loved me and You will love someone else this day.”

So I come to getting close to the end of the sermon, going back to the beginning. What has love done inside of your heart? Where is your heart today? Are you the one that is investing into the kingdom—that love has transformed you and you’re pouring it back out?

Some of you today might be like me all those years ago, and I hope your heart is opened up today—that you would feel and know God’s love.

We can understand 1 Corinthians 13 now, where it says, “if I speak in tongues, what does it matter? It’s all babble without love. If I’m super smart, I can hear God’s voice. What good is it if God’s love is not prompting me to move? If I had faith, all the faith in the world, but no love to put it into action, what good is it?” If I give everything I have to the poor, all my possessions, but it’s not prompted by love, then you might as well put it on Facebook and have everybody tell you how awesome you are because you’re going to receive your reward. Because it was not about love. It was about you.

I know so many of you here have been transformed by God’s love. You can relate to some of the things I’m talking about, and I want to tell you today that God sees it. God sees your investment. God sees your heart. And I’m telling you, just as a mother looks at the child and their joy is complete when the child succeeds, I tell you today that God is going to fill this place. God is going to fill your hearts. Your joy is going to be complete because God is doing a new thing.

For others, maybe you’re just coming to understand it today. I tell you, do not throw away God’s love. Don’t just walk away from God’s love. Open up. Lower yourself. Say, “carnal self, you will be lowered because I feel the love of God, and I’m gonna put it down before Him, and I’m gonna lower myself and say, ‘God, no longer about me, but it’s about You.’”

What am I leaving? What is it that God has done in me that’s going to be left behind? The Bible says you can take three things with you: faith, hope, and love. Faith for the faith that you profess, hope for what you’re going to see on the other side, and love—the love of God, not your own love, not how good of a job you did loving your spouse or your kids—God’s love.

God’s love that comes in and transforms a man, that does a new thing, that can come in and transform somebody to put down themselves like me in high school. I put down myself to put on, bring on new things. God is looking for you to put down yourself to do new things, to bring on new things, to feel God’s presence and His goodness, to lower your carnal self and say, “God, life can end so fast, but it doesn’t matter, for I will have You for eternity.”

The question today: is love prompting you? Is it moving you? I watched that video and you know what it gave me? Perspective. What is motivating me? What is moving me? Is my heart burdened? Am I of one flesh, one body with the church? Am I about my own things or am I about the kingdom things? Is my heart being invested because I’m being prompted by love to pray and to move and to do all the things that really matter—to be of one flesh, to be of one body?

Has God shown you what He has done, His sacrifice? Is it bubbling up today and causing you to display and replicate the same type of motherly love that we have received?

God has loved you. God has invested in you. God is doing something awesome and He wants you to take it in. I pray that you would be drawn in like I was all those years ago, that you would be drawn in by God’s love and that work would not be in vain.

He didn’t die to bring you to church, let me tell you that. He didn’t die to bring you to church. He didn’t suffer and go to the cross so that you would have something to do on Sunday morning. He went and tithed into you. He invested into you by His love so that you would succeed—not in this world, although, you know, God does that. Not in your job, but in the kingdom. That you would be blessed in the kingdom.

That song said, “He is the blessing.” He is the blessing. Not having a lot of money, not having a boat—He is the blessing. Not our jobs—no, He is the blessing. Not a nice house—no, He is the blessing.

God is looking for motherly love over His church, and He’s looking to invest into you that you might succeed, that you might be blessed, that you might be thriving, that God’s love would overtake you, and that you would be a new creation. Amen.