Loving Relationships – our goal at South London

For the past two years we had been focusing on one specific aspect of eight necessary values of church life – Loving Relationships. Everything else was put on the “backburner” – evangelism, leadership development, groups, ministries, worship, structures. We did not neglect things, we simply did not emphasize them as much as we talked about love. The Gospel of Love – Gospel of John was our focus for six month through preaching, then another three months – preaching about love. For almost two whole years we had been celebrating the Cultural diversity. Today we are taking third evaluation of our church family, for a snapshot of our current “health”. Are we balanced? Have we covered all there is to understand about love and loving relationships?

This week a provocative advertisement stunt in Chicago attracted media attention. A law firm placed a 20-feet-wide banner “Life’s to short. Get a divorce.” between two pictures – that of a sexy cleavage and a washboard “six-pack” abs. Some scandalous interviews were given revealing how shallow our society is becoming, where love is reduced to carnality. Turning on any TV shows one gets a direct illustration of Jesus’ prophetic words that “love of many will grow cold…” (Matthew 24:12)

What is love for you?

For Apostle Paul Love was completeness of perfection. That is how he expressed himself in a letter to Colossians (3:14). Just stop and think about the deep meaning of this.

Different translators labored to translate this passage:

“…crown above all is love which is the bond of perfectness

“…which binds together and completes the whole

“…the girdle which makes all complete

“…link of the perfect life

“….that which bind everything together in perfect harmony

“…golden chain of all virtues

And the list goes on, trying to express inexpressible… Love is a mystery. For God is Love. And God is Perfect, God, Eternal. We love because He loved us with His Everlasting Love. And that’s a mystery to us.

This process of becoming loving, of learning to love will never end, will never come to a halt or arrive, just as our growing in Christ. And for this we come together, to provoke each other into love (Hebrews 10:24, KJV) Call it whatever you want – incite, stimulate, encourage – the bottom line I get from Paul, do whatever it takes to get Love going among you, if you want to be healthy, as a church and as individuals.