BE REVIVED IN '25: REJUVENATING LOVE

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching!  Don’t worry, you still have one week to get that special person something or plan that special event for someone you love!  It is estimated that Americans will spend 27.5 billion on this single day to celebrate the one they love!  This is roughly $181.00 per person!  It is amazing how love motivates us.  Who doesn’t want to be loved?  We spend a lot of energy and effort to maintain relationships, to show love but also to receive it in return.  Love has great power to change our lives.  The message of the Gospel is that we are loved, completely and unconditionally.  In our series Be Revived in ‘25 the sermon is Rejuvenating Love.  Most of us understand the power of love to change us but God’s unconditional love can truly transform our lives.  We need to be revived in experiencing God’s love, but also responding to God’s love. Love can give us new energy and vigor when we are willing to do both!  This week we turn to a familiar passage John 3:14-21.  It contains perhaps one of the most well-known scripture verses, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It is clear that God’s plan was to love us through his Son, Jesus.  But how can we be revived by this love?  These words of Jesus help us find the path to experience God’s love and to be transformed by its power.  Our most sincere and hopeful prayer is that you will experience a renewal of God’s love and sense that God has claimed you as his very own child as you read John 3:14-21.

John 3:14-16: Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (NIV)