Transformed // Week 4 // Generous Loving

Generous Loving
Various Passages February 16, 2020
I. Introduction:
A. Every ingredient in food adds a different and distinct flavor to the food!
1. My wife has the ability to taste a piece of food then discern and savor the
different ingredients that make up that particular food.
2. I cannot do that as I just taste a piece of food and enjoy it but am unable to
distinguish the different ingredients that make it up.
B. Did you know there are different ingredients that make up love? The better you
can understand and distinguish the ingredients of love the better chance we have
to fine tune those ingredients and make our love even better and better!
C. During our 75th year as a church, we have stated we want to excel still the more as
a disciple making church and thus be a greater blessing to each other and those
outside these walls!
D. Actually, the badge that we wear that communicates to the world that we are
disciples of Jesus Christ is our love. Just like the policeman wears a badge that
identifies who he is so we who are Christians have a badge that identifies who we
are. Love is the badge that identifies us as a disciple of Jesus Christ
1. Listen to John 13:35
2. Did you realize that being a better disciple means you will be a better lover
and thus a better blessing to those around us – our mate, children, others in
the church family, neighbors, friends, classmates, co-workers etc.
E. So to excel as a disciple making church means we will excel in love for one
another and those beyond the walls.
1. To excel in love means we will better understand the ingredients that make
up love so we can better fine-tune our love!
F. So as we look particularly at one ingredient in our love today we are going to be
both intentional as a church to do our due diligence to grow in it but also deeply
depend upon the Lord that we would excel still the more in our love.
1. The ingredient of love that I want to talk about today, the one we want to fine
tune and increase in is generosity.
G. We are so used to thinking of generosity in the realm of money only and it can be
hard to pull our minds back from that but that is my task today as I want to talk
about generosity as a key ingredient in the love of a believer.
• Today my focus is on a generous heart, a generous life, a generous love apart from
money. So let’s talk about a
II. Generous Love
A. So if the badge of a disciple is love and we have already learned many times that
the goal of a disciple is to become more like Jesus, then where we want to go is to
love as Jesus loved.
B. Look back at John 13:35
1. Reread v35 – our badge as a disciple of Jesus Christ is our love
2. But the verse before describes to us what this badge of love looks like. Read
v34
3. Jesus has raised the bar here because the old commandment they had was to
love your neighbor as yourself, now Jesus is saying you are to love one
another even as I have loved you.
a) That means in the same manner in the same way that Jesus has loved us
we are to love one another.
b) When we answer the question how Jesus loved us, we are starting to
fine-tune the ingredients of love!
C. Since we are here turn over to John 15:13. In verse 12 Jesus reminds us again it is
a command to love like He loves but in the next verse rather than telling us it is
our badge He is sharing with us a main ingredient in love.
1. Read v13
2. Laying down our life, our agenda, our time, our schedule, our energy, our
resources for someone else’s benefit is the heart of love, it is the heart of
being a disciple, it is the heart of blessing others, it is the heart of where we
want to go as a church!
D. You might be thinking at this time – what does that have to do with generosity?
Well let’s stop for a minute and define generosity. Generosity has four
ingredients of its own!
1. Generosity always involves giving or sharing of something we have with
someone else.
2. Generosity is about giving more than what is needed. It is an abundant
amount and usually cost us something to do it
3. Generosity is about doing things freely – it is giving freely without restraint
4. Generosity involves giving something of value to you – generosity is not
about giving people left overs or your throw aways but rather something that
is special to you.
5. So this ingredient of love makes us love others by the lavish, extravagant,
excessive, and freely without restraint giving of ourselves, our time, our
talents, and our resources, something that is significant and special to you to
bless and benefit others!
E. We see all of this displayed for us in John 3:16
1. Read
2. “So loved” that talks about the degree of love – this was an extravagant
excessive love that God had for us
3. “That He gave” – there is the giving part of generosity, the cost of love – the
laying down of the life
4. Now listen to the value and significance of the gift – “His only begotten son”
5. God has a generous love towards us, an extravagant love as He so loved, a
costly and giving love as He gave His son, it was a love that gave the one
who was most precious and valuable to Him - His only begotten son.
F. The manner which God loved us and which He calls us to love one another is a
generous love – freely giving away in abundance that which we value to bless and
help someone else.
G. I love these definitions of generous living that I read in my study for this sermon.
1. “A generous lifestyle is where I realize just how greatly I have been blessed
by God is so many areas that, in return, I seek to be just as great a blessing in
His name to others.”
Rev Kevin Barren
2. “Living generously is living gratefully, offering from one’s abundance
without thought of recompense or expectation of return in order to enhance
and enrich the lives of others.” David Bowman
H. Generosity is what God wants us to grow in and this is what we want to grow in!
Listen to these verses
1. 1 Peter 1:22 do not just love another but fervently love. That means there is
an intensity in your love! Read
2. 1 Thessalonians 2:7,8 – not only giving the gospel to people but our whole
lives, with the same kind of care a nursing mother gives her baby. Read
3. 1 Thessalonians 3:12 – God wants and is the cause of our love increasing and
abounding (that is generous love) not only for other believers but for
everyone – lost and saved. Read
4. 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 God wants us to excel still the more in our love.
Read
5. Listen to Paul pray in Philippians 1:9 that their love would abound still more
and more. Read
• So generosity is not just something that happens with our money but is something that
should be a part of our entire life! So what can that look like for me this week if I
was to love with generosity?
III. Application
A. We have been learning from Ron Ovitt on Tuesday nights in the Emotional
Resilience class that there are two sides to the brain –
1. The left side which is the logical and rational side that works with words
2. The right side is the relational side of the brain – it is the non-verbal side of
the brain, which responds to eye contact, facial expressions, tone of voice –
not words but the tone of those words, sincere touch even sensing if someone
is happy to be with you.
B. What studies have shown are that people who connect with other people heart to
heart and are fully present in the moment and are truly happy to be with the other
person and listens with non-judgmental attitudes or words – have the ability to
heal a person’s damaged soul!
1. Parents are you listening? Husbands and wives are you listening? Friends
are you listening? - repeat (b)again
2. Neurological studies not only show us that but Scripture teaches us the
importance of community and we have seen and felt this in ourselves when
we have experienced that kind of relationship
C. Now here is the problem as I see it, we live in a culture that is busy and
preoccupied and carries its cell phones with them into conversations. Thus
constantly being disrupted by texts and calls or constantly having the TV going!
1. So people have very little time or interest to give, give, give – that is
generously give of themselves to others for deep connection. When they do
give the time they are usually preoccupied in their minds and hearts from all
the busyness of their lives and their internal to do list that never shuts off.
a) So our connections are superficial and seldom reach the kind that brings
healing to soul.
2. Add to that that very few people today genuinely listen to others but rather
dominate the floor of discussion with their own multitude of words. They
dominate 90% of the conversation while giving others only 10%.
D. So here is an application of generous love since we are in a day and age where we
value our time as much as we value our money! Generously give of your time
and full attention to listen to two people this week in order to bless them!
1. Be intentional to invite someone to coffee with the intention of letting them
know you are happy to be with them not so much with your words but by
your full attention, non-judgmental, empathic listening that is truly interested
in what is going on in their life! Listen for their heart and emotions and not
just their words. Finish that time by praying for them.
2. Try it this week and you will not only bless someone and maybe begin a
healing in their soul but you will begin to exercise and stretch your heart in
generous love, a spiritual muscle we all need to develop.