The Heart Series

"Game of Hearts: Can You Feel the Love?"
www.newperceptions.tv

• The one-liner
  • Mark 10:21—"Jesus looked at him and him."
  • The testimony of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
  • Philip Yancey: "The uncommitted share many of our core values, but if we do not live out those values in a compelling way, we will not awaken a thirst for their ultimate Source. Christians can do no better than follow the example set by Jesus, who specialized not in techniques and arguments but in spirit and example. He took skeptics seriously, listening to them and responding forthrightly and yet compassionately. The gospel of Mark adds a telling detail to a scene in which a potential wealthy convert rejects Jesus’ message and walks away: ‘Jesus looked at him and him.'" (Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News? 59)
  • An anonymous note
  • The Samaritan woman
  • Philip Yancey: ". . . turn again to the conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman who had found some solace in an alternative religion. What if Jesus had engaged in an argument with her about their differences over where to worship? Instead he summoned up a thirst already evident in her troubled life of five failed marriages. ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,’ he said, referring to the well water she was drawing for him, ‘but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’. . . We dare not disdain the choices others have made, for that would not show . Instead, we should tune in to the underlying thirst.” (Ibid)
  • Jerry Cook: "The minimal guarantee we must make to people is that they will be —always, under every circumstance, with no exception. The second guarantee is that they will be totally accepted, without reservation. The third thing we must guarantee is that no matter how miserably they fail or how blatantly they sin, unreserved forgiveness is theirs for the asking with no bitter taste left in anybody’s mouth.... A church that can make that commitment to every person is a church that’s learning to love and a church that will be a force for God" (Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness 11, 13).
  • Jesus: "'I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven'" (Matthew 18:22).
  • Clearly, God does not intend to attach a statute of to how often we are to love, to accept and to forgive fellow sinners.
  • Remember—love, acceptance and forgiveness are not about granting license to sinners, but rather about showing to sinners like us.
• The fruit
  • #1—The Fruit of the
    • Galatians 5:22-23
    • Jesus: "'I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much ; apart from me you can do nothing'" (John 15:5).
  • #2—The Fruit of
    • 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

• "Morning by morning [Jesus] communicated with his Father in heaven, receiving from him a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Lord awakened him from his slumbers in the early hours of the new day, that his soul and his lips might be anointed with grace [love] which he should impart to others" (Signs of the Times November 21, 1895).
• The two prayers:
• "Pour God’s love into me today, Holy Spirit."
• "Pour God’s love out of me today, Holy Spirit."

"Just like Jesus"