Clear Focus, Part 4: Love Others (#961)

Clear Focus, Part 4: Love Others (#961)
Good morning. We’re going to continue this series we’ve done for the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 on what we call clear focus; what should we focus on?  There are so many things in life, so many topics in the scriptures, so many things going on in society, so many things in each of our individual lives; sometimes we have a hard time figuring out where we should put our attention. So, to help with that, we have a series of teachings we’re part way through, and we’ll continue for a number of more sessions, called Clear Focus. Where God tells us specific things to focus on. And last week we focused on the topic that God loves us and we read many wonderful scriptures talking about God’s tremendous love and care for us and realizing that is always there. Other things may come and go in life, hopefully we want the good things to stay and the bad things to go, but no matter what we do things change in life. And, sometimes we can do something to help it sometimes we can’t. But, we always know that God loves us; that is a constant in our lives that we should focus on. And I know I’ve had a great couple of weeks thinking about that, during the day as I pray, thinking about life, just remembering just how much God loves us. Now, today we’re going to sort of look at the other side of the same coin, on the importance to us to love others. As you know when the Pharisees challenged Jesus Christ about what was the most important law in the Old Testament law, he said that simply ‘Love God and love your neighbor.’ Those were the two focuses. And last time we read about God loving us, now we’re going to talk about how we should love others. And this is such a great point in life. I can just think of so many times in my life where this has been critical. I remember I had a job once where the office politics were just killing me. Everybody was making my life difficult, and I just wanted to go screaming down the hall the boss and make noise and cause a raucous, but instead I just prayed and asked God what to do and He just said: “walk in love.” So instead of spending all day being mad at my coworkers and my supervisors, I just decided to be a kind as I could to everybody. And I don’t even remember what the problem was at work, but whatever it was it went away in like two days. It had been bugging me for weeks. And that still happens to me today, I read the Bible in the morning and I pray for a lot of people; so many times I’m praying for someone and God just says: “love them.” Love them, you know it’s not that I have to do some big complicated thing, I just have to walk in love. And it is such a big part of life. The more we can just walk in love; that just solves so many things. There is a verse that I don’t think is in the list of verse we are going to read today, but it says somewhere in I think the epistles it says ‘love covers a multitude of sins,’ it really does. You can do all kinds of things wrong and we all do, we are not perfect, but when we walk in love; that love just covers a multitude of sins. People don’t worry so much about this, that, and the other thing if they know that they are loved. And, it is just the greatest thing in the world. So, there are many, many things that we’ll focus on as we go through these sessions in the weeks to come. But, knowing that God loves you and knowing that you should love others are two very big ones. So, we’ll start in Proverbs 15…
As taught by Bruce Mahone, 20190127.  All Rights Reserved.
Verse Listing and Notes
Proverbs 15:17          Better is a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox
Proverbs 17:9            He that covereth a transgression seeketh love
Proverbs 17:17          A friend loveth at all times
Matthew 5:43-46       Bless them that curse you
Matthew 18:21-22     Forgive seventy times seven
Matthew 22:37-40     Love thy neighbor as thyself
Mark 12:28-34            More than all whole burnt offerings
Luke 6:27-38               Be ye therefore mericful, as your Father also
Luke 7:36-50               To whom little is forgiven, loveth little
John 13:34-35             By this shall all know that ye are my disciples
John 15:9-13 (-19)      If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love – greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends
Teaching
Clear Focus, Part 4: Love Others (#961)

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