A Love to Live By

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We're glad you're here. We're glad you're here. Fellowship is sweeter, knowing you're near.

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We're glad you're here. Welcome to Mark & Friends. I'm your host, Donna Leland.

So glad you could join us today. We're going to be talking about the idea of agape love. We've heard it in sermons seemingly forever.

We know it means God's love. But today, Winfred Neely from the Moody Bible Institute. He has been a pastor and teacher there for many, many years.

He's going to be sharing with us his thoughts concerning agape love, God's love. Welcome, Dr. Neely to Mark & Friends. Well, Donna Leland, thank you so very, very much for having me.

I think this may be the first time that I've actually been on the air with you. I think it is. Your wonderful legacy has gone before you.

And now we get a chance to chat and to connect. Let's think about this. Why did you pick this whole topic of agape to help the body of Christ understand it in a deeper way? I have been thinking about this topic for many, many years now.

I have, by the grace of God, wanted to live it out. And so it actually grew out of my ministry of the word of God through the years. I was a missionary in Senegal, West Africa, and I was doing a series of studies on First John.

And I came across that section of scripture that deals with why we should love one another. And that was the beginning of my journey in earnest into God's call on the church corporately and to me individually to practice agape love. So this is the genesis of was my study of the scripture.

And I was able just to see the power in life transformation of the practice of agape that took place in my own life and my own marriage and then how I related to people. And this is a thing that flows throughout the Bible and in particular, the New Testament. So it's really central to Christian living.

So those were some of the, it's kind of the base, the origin, the genesis of God putting this in my heart to communicate to his people. Well, if we're going to practice it, we better know what it is. So give us a working definition.

What is agape love? What are we looking at? Well, agape love takes its meaning from God. The term agape was used in classical Greek, but it really didn't have a really a definitive meaning. There were other words that were more precise in Greek language.

But the spirit of God takes up agape to use it to describe, to communicate the love of God. So it's God himself who gives meaning to agape and not agape giving meaning to God. It's its use of the love of God.

Hence, it's the strongest term for love in the Bible because it's used for God's love. So in short, a quick, well, I don't want to say a quick definition, but a working definition is agape love is love that gives. It's love that serves and loves that sacrifices for the highest good and kingdom flourishing of the other without looking for anything in return.

Although agape love will give birth to love and others, but its goal is focused on serving, giving and sacrificing for the highest good and kingdom flourishing of the other. See right there and expecting nothing in return. I mean, right there, it was just like a gut punch because that is the kind of love that only God can give.

You know, in my own flesh, I'm not, I'm not able to do that in Donna's flesh. So it has to be an external love given, empowered to us by God. Wow.

I mean, just to move through my day, loving people and not expecting anything in return. I don't know. How does that work out? Well, I mean, you're right, Donna, when you say that we cannot do this in our own strength.

Agape love does not go grow naturally in the soil of the human heart. This is an implant from the spirit of God himself who allows, who empowers us and who enables us to say yes to the Holy Spirit and to move out in love toward other people. It is, and this is why it's so powerful because we don't do this naturally.

Right. The spirit of the living God is calling us to love other people. I feel like that really is the crux of the issue in all relationships that go bad is that, you know, we do things for other people and they don't do it in return because we're expecting a payback.

How do we move away from that, expecting that payback and then being disappointed when we don't get it? Well, you know, it's hard. It is hard. It's hard.

And here is the thing. There is, there may be and often is pain in loving other people because the love is not reciprocated. It's not returned.

And in some instances, it may even take years before a person would even admit or acknowledge. I want to thank you for the love you expressed me when I was in that bad place. Sometimes that takes a long time.

That takes a long time to happen. I think it was one counselor calls love moving toward the other without self-protection. And we're not talking about abuse here.

We're not talking about becoming a doormat for abuse. What we are saying is that we move out and love toward the other and the power of the spirit because this is what God is calling us to do. It is fundamentally, it is fundamentally our relationship and fellowship with God that's central to this.

And so in order to, I want to, we want to walk with him. We want to obey him. We want to serve him.

And he's calling us to serve others. So in obedience to God, we step out in faith. And when we are hurt in the process, someone is still intransigent.

Someone is still unkind. We take that to God in prayer. We talk to God about that.

And in the process of talking to God about these matters, he listens, but he sympathizes with us. He encourages us and he gives us the strength to carry on. And we become better people in the process of moving out toward others without that self-protection.

Think about how God loved us. He loved us while we were still sinners. I mean, that right there is the motivation for this agape love that we're talking about.

He loved us when we did not love him, but he was consistent. He kept at it and he never gave up. It just to me, thinking about how much God loves me unconditionally, constantly, 24-7, never stopping, is never going to stop loving me.

Then that is my motivation to think about loving other people. That's right. 1 Corinthians 13 says, Now, abide, these are faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.

And it seems to me that love is greater than faith and love is greater than hope. Because, as you noted, love will continue for all eternity. When we see Jesus face-to-face, faith will have given place to sight.

We will see him as he is. When we see Jesus face-to-face, our hope will have been realized. But agape love and the experience of God's love for us and for one another will continue forever.

We will have been in heaven for a billion upon billions of eternities. And love will still be in operation. And this is why it is so vitally important for the church, the body of Christ, to pray and ask God to give us a revival and renewal of agape love.

I am convinced, Donna. I am convinced before the Lord that if there is a revival and renewal of agape love in the power of the Spirit, in the lived experiences of the people of God, we will see a revival in the church and a consequent movement of the Spirit of God, what we call in the revival language, great awakenings among lost people. I believe that we would have a spiritual revolution on our hand if we actually fell on our knees and repented for our lovelessness and rose up in the power of the Spirit to be committed to agape love.

We would see something wonderful happen in our own day. Well, let's just get to it, Dr. Neely. What about the difficult people? I've got a reunion coming up and I need some help here because there's an individual who is going to show up and she is going to give it to me.

And she just, you know, zeroes in on me and pokes me and she's going to be saying some stuff that she just wants a reaction. And it is so much fun, actually, to not give it to her and just to keep steady. And it's kind of almost a challenge.

So, yeah, but I want to go beyond just that and I want to love her. And so help us love difficult people, people that are actually out to get us and really are in complete opposition to everything we believe. That is going to require wisdom.

Yeah. You know, I have a chapter, I think it's next to the last chapter of the book, A Love to Live By. I've got discerning love.

And I saved that chapter for the next to the last chapter because I thought I would end there after we've had a significant discussion about agape love in various sections of Scripture. To get to the point where we understand, OK, but we do need to exercise love in ways that are wise, ways and wise and discerning. That may mean that we may have to establish some boundaries.

Yeah. You know, and I say it because, you know, Paul says here in Philippians chapter one, verse nine. And this I pray that your love, your agape love may overflow still more and more.

Listen to this in real knowledge and all discernment so that you may discover the things that are excellent. In other words, we ask ourselves before God in prayer and guided by the knowledge of God's word and discernment. What is the most excellent response that I can give to this difficult person in love? So we think we think about that.

OK, we may have to let people know as lovingly as we possibly can. I love you. I appreciate you, but I'm not going to stand here and allow you to insult me because I care that much about you.

And I walk you walk away from that because sometimes we we enable people because we think that's the loving thing to do. And I want to suggest that enabling someone else's dysfunction, enabling someone else's sin is really not the loving thing to do. It's the easy thing to do.

The loving thing to do is to establish boundaries. And one of the things, Donna, that as you say, you are not going to respond in kind. Well, that's the loving thing to do.

We're just we're just not going to get down there in the mud with people. And I was early in the book. I was in five guys.

I tell the story about this, this issue of love and the spirit of God brought back to my mind some relatives in my family that I needed to love. Now, I was courteous to them. I was kind to them.

I would greet them when we were in the same space at family events, so forth and so on. But the spirit of God reminded me that I had not loved them in the agape sense of the idea. And that may involve just calling them, checking up on them, seeing how they're doing.

They may not be that excited about the fact that I am calling, but that's not the issue. The issue is I love and I care and I'm reaching out for you in love. And, you know, so we've got to know.

And listen, I get it. I get it. And there's some people, frankly, some relatives, we just do not want to be around.

But, you know, we ask God to give us grace and help and strength to navigate those relationships in ways that are helpful. I encourage people to be prayed up before events like that. You know, to give it some careful thought and forethought about how I can handle myself in a way that honors God.

That verse from Philippians is just gold in all wisdom and discernment. And that might look very different to different people. You know, other people, it might be acting one way and then another.

It could be another, you know, depending on the spirit of the living God. It's kind of exciting again to just say, Holy Spirit, show me how this person needs to be loved. And the neat thing is he can tell us special stuff that maybe that person doesn't even know.

And he can give us creative ways to love them in that energy to give them the call. You know, maybe the call that we give them will be at that right moment to remind them God loves them. And isn't that what this whole agape is all about is reminding them God loves them.

Just using us. He's just using our mouth and our phone call to remind them that he loves them. People need to be convinced of the love of God.

They do need to be convinced of that love. And it's very humbling and yet sobering for us to consider that the instruments that God will employ to remind people in our sphere of influence that he loves them is us. Yes.

You know, that's humbling. But I again, it's as we as we grow in the faith and as we mature in Christ. Hopefully our expressions of agape love will become more mature and more accurate expressions of the mind and heart of God.

As we grow in Christ and as we think through the best ways to to show love to people. And it takes a community. We need one another.

I think this is one of the benefits of the intergenerational church where we have people of various ages in the congregation with various levels of experience. And we can come alongside and help one another in determining what is the most effective way to show love in these circumstances. This is why we need we need one another in the church.

It is working together. We need each other. And as we're doing that for others, reminding ourselves, we have to agape one another, don't we? We can help one another.

Now that older person too may not have the same physical or emotional bandwidth of a 30 year old, but they may have something that that 30 year old that does not have that years of life experience. Yeah. And we can tap into that and get some wisdom about how do I show love in these circumstances? Sometimes we need older people to tell us, you know, when parents are raising kids at home to say to a parent, now you realize that your child's brain is not going to be completed forming until they're about 25 or 26.

So there are some things in life that they are not going to understand, even though you love them. Give it some time, because it's not a microwave approach to life transformation. It takes time, years and consistency on your part.

Right. And hopefully one of these days, that person who has experienced your love will come around and at least at least come back and say that I'm sorry. And I've seen that happen.

I've seen that happen where some of these kids have literally walked away from Jesus. They grew up in loving homes where their parents actually, not perfectly, but consistently put in practice agape love toward their children. And they walked away from God.

They walked away from Jesus. And some of them have returned to the Lord and are doing quite well in ministry because the spirit of God used the life, the godly life of those parents to convict those children and bring them back to himself. But sometimes it takes it takes time.

We're talking with Dr. Winfred Neely, and he has just written a book by Moody Publishers, and it's called A Love to Live By, Rediscovering Agape Love in Scripture. Thank you so much, Dr. Neely, for joining us on Mark & Friends. Well, thank you so very much, Donna.

I hope we do it again. And thank you, dear listener, for being a part of Mark & Friends. Coming up tomorrow, it's Mark and his many friends.

They've gathered in the studios, and we're going to get a great Bible study, as always. It's Friday's edition of Mark & Friends. We're a ministry of great news media.

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