Go to the gospel of St. John chapter number 3 verse 14 through 17.
There you will find my assignment for this morning.
standing to your feet as is our custom, we will approach the word of god respectfully understanding that he that had an ear let him hear what the spirit is saying to the church.
Are you with me? Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, So the son of man must be lifted up.
That everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. Watch this.
For god so love the world. for god. So loud.
The world. that he gave his only his 1 and only son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have ever eternal life.
I’m having a terrible time because I know the Bible in King James, and I’m reading it in NIV.
And my I keep going back and forth with my For god did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, he did not send his son into the world.
We misrepresented him. Because we act like god hates the world.
For god did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.
My fascination is for god so loved the world. Say that with me.
For god so loved the word. This morning, I wanna talk to you about bruised love.
My subject is bruised love. Brewised love.
Let’s pray. father in the name of Jesus, I thank you for everything you’ve whispered to me this week.
to feed the flock of god.
And I believe you to bless it and to increase it and to strengthen me in such a way that I lead nothing out that you want said and include everything, even if I didn’t prepare it and you wanna add it, I’m open to you.
to spontaneously combust on this stage to do what you would have me to do in Jesus’ name.
Amen. You may be seated.
Uh, Elvira.
Elvira. Uh-uh.
Nah.
I know that’s not a true soul.
And he knows that it’s not a true song, but it is a starting point for what I want to talk to you about today.
Elvira is not in the Bible.
As far as I know, But when I was about six years old, uh, the street we lived on was a dirt road that had just gotten paved.
My sister remembers everything I’m about to say.
And at the top of the street, There was a family named the Dorcas.
Reverend Dorcas had been the pastor of First Baptist Church of Vandellia, He wasn’t currently at the time I was born, but before in the early age that she was, and he had a little girl up there a daughter named Elvira.
I hope she’s not watching because I I don’t want her to know that I still remember her, but I do.
Uh, she was my first experience with love outside of my house.
She was fine. No.
It’s I ain’t ain’t gonna tell them that she was likely.
That’s love.
See what light brown in with long Indian like hair running down her back. She was fine. She was cute.
And I had this crush on her that was I had a crush on her that was crazy.
You remember that? I had such a crush on Elvira.
I hate to tell you this this long time ago, I mean, this long before we got married.
Long before we got married. Long before we got married. That’s long time ago, long time ago.
long, long time ago. Maybe almost a century ago. I ain’t sure it’s been a long time.
Long time ago. But, anyway, I took my mother’s jewelry.
I know. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but, you know, I just wanna contrast.
I took my mother’s jewelry and took it up there and gave it to Elvira.
Cause my heart My heart was on fire, don’t you see?
for Elvira. And I was cool with it, till I found out that Elvira had dumped me for why it’s gullible.
These are real names. These are real people.
The names have not been changed to protect the innocent.
I still remember everybody’s name because I’m still kinda hot about the new, but She dumped me for Wyatt Oliver.
I had an attitude.
I ran up the street And they was all in the front yard playing because back when we grew up, nobody had air conditioning.
You had to play outside. It was hot. It had no trouble getting your kids outside because it was hot.
It was just which hot you wanted to pick the hot inside and all outside.
So they was outside playing. I took a brick and I threw it.
And I couldn’t go, so don’t worry about it.
Well, this is not domestic violence. Do not arrest me police officers in the building. This would not depend.
I threw it at Elvira because she had hurt my heart.
It only went about 5 or 6 feet, but I threw it in.
I wanted her to know that I was militant. Take this tough laying down.
And I ran as fast as I could back down the hill, which made my brother.
All he could see, my brother could see the back of my head, and my brother and my sisters started calling me up to head.
And I ran back home. Mama was at work.
when mama got out of work, Miss Dorkins called Miss Jake’s.
and I was really concerned.
Had behind the door as my mother talked to Elvira’s mama on the phone.
And mama was laughing. She said, Oh, that’s so cute. And I thought, oh, thank you, Jesus.
She not mad. She was laughing until she hung up.
She went from laughing to the exorcist.
Her head turned completely around on her head, like, on her neck, like something I have never seen.
And she said, your heart may be on fire, but When I get through with the worst flipping I ever got in all What about life?
I want I mean, one of the old school ribbons. one of them.
I mean, oh, this is not a spanking. This is not time out.
This is not go to your room. this is I’m gonna kill you and tell god you died.
I got one of them kind of whippens. I tell you what, I ain’t stole nothing else.
I’m sixty five years old. And you can’t pay me to steal nothing.
When mama got through, We’ve I got her jewelry back, and and my heart was not on fire.
but everything else had gone up in smoke. I mean, everything.
She got everything at the bottom of my feet on up to the crown of my head.
she anointed it. And, and that was my first experience with heartbreak.
Uh, you know, the the the the funny thing about us.
All of us have a story like that. It might not be that crazy.
But, you know, I was gonna be an exceptional person, so I had to start earning it.
Uh, everybody has a moment where you had an experience, maybe it was puppy love like that, or maybe it was more serious love that did not end up the way you thought.
and you paid a price for love that was painful.
I heard somebody say, and I understood the context in which they meant it.
They said that that love doesn’t hurt that they were they’re talking about domestic violence.
And I agree uh, with them totally about that.
But but I don’t like the statement out of context because love does hurt.
Love hurts. It hurts to care.
Love hurts so bad that that that that it’s a funny thing we have the artist relationship with it.
We We all want it, and we all need it.
And yet we try to dodge it. Maybe it’s because it’s so expensive.
Yeah. Love is expensive. Not just with checks and dinner and stuff.
I’m not talking about cards and flowers and stuff.
Loving love is expensive because love requires an openness that is unsettling.
a a transparency that is difficult.
And so while we love to be loved, We love to be loved.
But when it comes time for us to fall in love, We don’t know where it’s gonna go.
Wow. And it starts out with your heart on fire.
but often it doesn’t always end up like it starts.
And I’m not just talking about romantic love, uh, love for anything, anyone. Uh, it could be a pet.
And you can load the pet, and then something happens to the pet.
and you crush.
And you can be crushed so bad that you don’t even want another pet for a while because you don’t want to invest that much and and lose it again.
If if if you can cry over a pet, Then before it’s when you have the baby, the baby is crying.
Yeah. Before it’s over, you gonna cry.
Don’t think that the tears are just for the child.
before you finish, little boo boo, little hopscotch, little humpyhead.
will break your heart.
And that’s part of the process.
And it determines how tough your love is, how you respond, tough being strong, to the challenging times of love, to the rejection of love, to the isolation of love, to the expense of love, All of that is, is, is difficult.
And and because we, we want to protect ourselves from the pain and the bruise that comes from the impact and the trauma and the pain, often we lock out the pain not realizing that the same mechanism that locks out.
The pain locks out the pleasure.
So while you have insulated yourself to the point that that you can’t feel the pain, you will eventually notice that you can’t feel the pleasure either.
Because a wall is a wall.
And without discrimination, once you put it up, It locks everything out, and you go numb.
And it is so difficult to get the courage to dismantle the wall. Yeah.
Because the wall protects you from the pain, but it didn’t present you without the pleasure.
Love is a complicated thing. It’s a very difficult thing.
a whole chapter Paul wrote about love alone.
It endures all things, hope with all things He talks about the endurance of love.
It seek is not its own.
He said, now about a faith, hope, and charity, but the greatest of the 3 is always love.
The greatness of anything is always in the 3rd dimension. Faith hope and love.
The greatest of these is love.
The greatness is always in the 3rd dimension, outer court, inner court, holies of holies.
Bodies soul spirit. The greatest is always in the 3rd dimension.
Father’s son, Holy the greatness is always in the 3rd dimension.
And while you can get faith good and you can get hope good, the sometimes we have trouble with the love.
So you could be strong in faith and full of hope and locked up about love.
That’s why some of the most annoying gift to dance and all over the church people can also be rude in the parking lot.
I knew you could appreciate that illustration.
because as they honking their horn at you and giving you sign language and you’re not deaf, you wonder, well, she’s the same person that had a word in all in the church and you were singing that song in the choir and you hit that note and I got goose pimples and now you screaming at me in the parking lot.
Johnny Cash’s son wrote a book, and I pulled a quote out of it.
for you to hear. I thought it was profrown. He said true love is many things.
true love is many things.
and can serve and can survive the strongest and most painful of times.
Tula. I’m talking about fake love, Tula.
When love comes out on the other side of a fire, it may be scarred forever.
But this bruised love is somehow only greater for having survived the pay.
The people that are clapping have survived the pain.
We have this polarized relationship with love where we we wanted, and yet we’re a friend of it.
we we we we draw it and get close to it and we entertain it, but don’t stay over.
You can have coffee and we can do brunch, but but don’t get lodged in my heart because Love will bring a strong man to his knees.
Love will make a tough guy. crying this pillow.
Love will take a rough, resilient woman and bring her to her knees.
Love will make you do things that you said You would never do.
Love will make you take things that you thought.
You would never take.
Love will make you ignore things that you thought you would never ignore be be because love has a way of surviving pain.
It seems like an oxymoron that you would bring love and pain up in the same sentence because love is so romantic after all.
It is so sincere, a mother holding a baby in her arms, nursing at her breasts, taking its nourishment out of her body, is as intimate as you could possibly be.
You would never think that that child could grow up and cuss you out.
punch you, slap you in the face, or steal your car.
and leave you in pain.
But if you live long enough if you live long enough, or if you let them live long enough.
There will be moments where love goes on trial.
There will be tough times that you you you will have to deal with.
The problem with heartbreak, with with with with with the bruised love, is if I have a bruised arm, you can treat it.
If if I have a bruised shin, there’s something you can do about it.
But if my love is bruised, there is no surgery for broken heart.
not the kind of heart I’m talking about. There is no surgery for a broken heart.
There is no pain medicine. for a broken heart.
You don’t you you don’t believe me.
If somebody breaks your heart, take Tylenol, See see if it’ll do you any good.
The the vulnerability of the heart is hinted at in the human body itself.
The human body itself hints at the vulnerability of the heart because the heart is surrounded by rib cage, the physical heart.
It’s surrounded by rib cage to protect the physical heart because the physical heart is powerful, keeping you alive, pumping blood to the further most part of your body, Miles and miles of arteries and veins and circulatory systems are at the mercy of the power of the muscle of the heart to pump blood.
And any place it doesn’t reach, you’re gonna have a problem, even if it’s your toe.
And how could a heart be so powerful and yet so sensitive.
Just a few weeks ago, football player playing on the field and and impacted his chest had too heart attack before they could get into the hospital be because because the heart is powerful.
but vulnerable. Surrounded by the rib case.
The ribs are connected to the sternum with strong, somewhat flexible material called cartilage.
It’s designed in such a way that the rear cage helps to protect the organs in the chest, such as the heart, the lungs from damage.
God knew to protect the physical heart.
Even though the heart is strong, it is vulnerable.
I wanna dwell on that, even though the heart is strong, it is vulnerable.
If I am to become the heart of god, that means I must be as strong as I am vulnerable.
If I lose either one of them, I cease to represent the heart of god.
If I go for the strong and let go of the vulnerable, I don’t reflect the heart of god.
I mistake it up under the false identity of being a strong woman. I’m a strong man. Yeah.
But you hard. And if you are hard, you are not like god.
because god gives us a hint in the physical heart that you must be strong enough to keep pumping.
and vulnerable enough that you have to be protected.
Are you hearing what I’m saying to you?
In the spirit realm, now I went from from from the physical, uh, to to the the the physical to the emotional, and now I’m gonna go to the spiritual.
In the spirit realm, god wants us to card your heart.
for out of your heart flows the issues of life.
And what he’s talking about is guard your spirit.
And he says, I don’t have a rib cage around your spirit.
So you got to stand guard over your heart, who you let in, who you let out, what you let flow out of your heart, because out of your heart flows and issues of life.
That’s where your creativity comes from. That’s where your endurance comes from.
That’s where the power to fulfill your vision comes from. When you stop feeling, you stop being creative.
When you stop feeling, you stop dreaming. When you stop feeling, you stop believing.
When you stop feeling, you stop functioning, you become a machine, a robot, a mannequin, you become a iPad, you become a laptop, you become just functional but not relational because you’ve lost your ability to invest emotion.
And god said, guard your heart. Stand on a night and pay.
night and day carding your heart because out of your heart, not your head, not your intellect, not your degrees, not your vocabulary out of your heart flows and issues of life.
If you got more in your head than you have in your heart, you’ll go bankrupt.
You’ll be a walking encyclopedia, but if you’ve lost your empathy, you’ll lose all of connection with humanity because we don’t care how much you know until we know.
How much you care?
It has been said that grief is the price we pay for love.
And what that simply means is people who don’t love much don’t grieve much.
You have to be a lover to have great grief.
And most people won’t invest enough because they don’t wanna go through the tragedy of the law of losing because great lovers are great grievers I’m talking about capacity.
Some people sitting beside you don’t have the capacity.
to care enough, to work enough, to grieve enough, to feel enough, to meet your need.
Because if you if they have a paint size capacity, and you have a gallon size capacity.
And and you keep saying, I need more and they keep saying, I’m giving you all I got, neither one of you are lying.
You’re just unequally yoked because you have yoked yourself to somebody who doesn’t have the capacity to give you what you need.
And I can’t help how much you need it. If I don’t have it, you can’t get it.
So when you’re dating and stood at as of what kind of car you drive and where you work, you need to check out their capacity who’s in your life that’s been in your life a long time that you still love?
What have you endured and came out loving on the other side?
who who did you give up and why did you give them up and why did you cut them off?
And how do you feel about it?
Because some people can cut you off and absolutely nothing about it because they don’t have capacity.
They were never invested in you in the first place.
Quin John, the writer writes here about god.
He says that god so loved It would be enough to say that god love because god is love.
But he says that god’s so love.
He had to put an adjective in front of it to modify the noun to make you understand the magnitude of the infinity capacity of god to sow love.
The infinite capacity, Paul said, Peter said, I pray that you might know the love of god with passive all understanding.
The breath, the height, the death of the love of god. is is is incomparable.
You can only try to come up with anthropomorphic terms to describe the infinite capacity for god to love.
God said, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I loved you when you were drunk.
I loved you when you were high. I loved you when you were nasty.
I loved you when you were wicked. I loved you when you were evil. I loved you when you fornicating.
I loved you when you were stealing. I loved you when you were down and out.
I loved you when you were in a homeless shelter. I loved you when you were in a jail cell.
I loved you when you didn’t have food tea. I loved you when you was rich.
I loved it when you were turning tricks. I loved it when you were strung out on cocaine.
I loved it when you were on cry. God, solar.
God so loved.
God so low. God so love. God. So love. Can I want you to drink that.
That’s hard for you to drink. But if you drink that, that will heal you. God so loved you.
If you drink that, you won’t need people as much as you need them.
If you drink that, you won’t be as lonely as you are.
If you drink that, you won’t be as desperate as you are. You don’t need somebody to love you.
God so loud. And don’t buy what the church people say.
It didn’t say that god so loved the church.
It didn’t say that god so loved the Christians.
It didn’t say that god so loved the believers. It said that god so love.
And most of us who preach about him and teach about him can’t express it because we are so self righteous and judgmental that we wanna pick who god loves, but you cannot build a wall.
enough, that god’s love will not scale it. It will climb over top of it.
It will put a ladder up and reach it. I don’t care what you say. You might not like them.
You might not like them. You might lock them out. You might lock them out.
There are people that god loves your enemies. God loves the people that did you wrong.
God loves the people that you wanna get even with.
I know you don’t wanna hear that because you want god to destroy them.
But that person is god child too. And god loves him.
The crazy one, the foolish one, the spiteful one, sufficient one. God’s solo. The world.
The world. The world. The world.
The world. The world. God has fallen in love with the fool.
god has fallen in love with a fool.
God has fallen in love with the world, who he says, its heart is continually wicked and every imagination in it is evil and still I fallen in love with the world that doesn’t come home at night.
I fallen in love with the world as drunken officer says I’ve fallen in love with the world that’s narcissistic.
I’ve fallen in love with the world that doesn’t communicate with me.
I’ve fallen in love with the world that will not praise me.
I’ve fallen in love with the world that’s locked up in a strip club.
I’ve fallen in love with the world this practice in witchcraft.
I’ve fallen in love with the world, not the church god. Slow down.
The world. He’s so loved.
He’s so loved. The world, stop thinking that you earned it. Yeah.
Stop thinking that you earned it. Stop thinking that god loves you because you’re smart.
Stop thinking that god loves you because you’re talented. Stop thinking that god loves you because you can sing.
Stop thinking that god loves you before you because you can preach.
God told Jeremiah before I formed the in the belly, I knew the I obtained the and I sanctified D to be a prophet unto the nation before you opened your mouth for cried, your first cry, or hit your first note, or learn your first scripture I loved you.
I loved you. I loved you. While you were learning your ABCs, I loved you.
While you were trying to stand up and learning how to hold your head up.
I loved you while you were bobbing your head, and your mama had to hold your neck.
I loved you while you were playing with pornography. I loved you.
While you were living in sin, I loved you while you were in the gutter.
How could you get saved and then think that I don’t love you? I love you when you were blasted.
I love you when, oh, god. Don’t don’t, uh, see, we don’t preach about love.
We don’t preach about the love of god. the love of god.
And because we don’t preach about it, it does not manifest in our character because anything that’s not preached about is not planted in our character.
So what we have is a situational love I love you if I like you.
I love you if I agree with you. I love you if you have vote like me.
I had a woman hit me up on Instagram the other day, said, I used to love you. Hallelujah.
I thought, oh, god, didn’t you never did in the first place?
Did somebody if somebody said could kill your love that cricket wasn’t real love because love suffered long and is not puffed up.
How can you be broken hearted? You don’t even know me. You never met me.
Have you lost your mind?
I want you to see the inequity of this statement not that god so loved the righteous or the church.
The inequity of the statement is that god so love the fool.
Have you ever fallen in love with somebody that was crazy?
And all of your family tried to tell you they was crazy.
And even though you defended them deep down inside you knew they were crazy, But some kind of way you fought for this, and you told all people that you do love and that love you to defend somebody That was crazy.
I don’t mean crazy car crazy. And god so loved the world.
that he told one prophet, I want you to go out and marry a harlot.
And I want you to marry her and watch her turn trick Sydney Street, and watch her have children by John’s, and watch her begin on an enslaved table, buck naked, and buy her back just so you can understand how I feel loving you.
You’re the slut I’m married. You’re the ramp I took home.
You’re the whole I put my ring on your finger.
And even though you keep turning tricks with idol gods, I still redeemed you.
I bought you off the slave table.
And I just want somebody to understand how I feel loving you.
With your moody so with your stubborn self, with your hateful self, with your judgmental self.
I want you judge other people for stuff that I know, and you know that I know that you did too.
And now you’re sitting up trying to kill somebody else for their weakness while you enjoy your all.
God Ah, so low. I loved you while you were in idolry.
I loved you while you were in idolatry. I loved you while you were watching a bit of bail.
I would love you while you were worshiping the goddess of lust and for on occasion, I watch you bow at her altar I watch you as you worship, Astroall.
I watch you as you bow before the gods of the heathens, but I so loved you.
I chastened you, but I love you. I challenged you, but I love you. I corrected you.
but I love you. Do not think that my chastening means I don’t love you because whom the lord love it.
He chastened it, And the reason I got after you is because I was in love with you.
I knew you were a slut, but I left you anyway.
Can I go deeper?
God god has the prophet to marry a harlot so that the prophet can understand what god is going through loving humanity.
What is god what god is going through loving you when god is going through loving me.
How can I be so arrogant when I consider the inequity of our relationship?
that he who is perfect has married that, which is flawed.
That he who is infinite has fallen in love with that, which is finite, that he that is above reproach has married something that is filthy.
Your righteousness is as filthy rags, menstrual rags is what it literally means.
He said, that’s what your righteousness looks like me. It’s discarded rags from a cycle.
That’s what I think of your morality.
Look at the inequity of the love. God, so love.
The world is a bodacious statement It is the heartbeat of the gospel.
If you don’t understand this, then you’ve got legs and arms and feet and toes and eyes.
in hand, but no heart. The heart of the gospel itself is in John 316. God.
so loved. The world.
I put the rainbow in the sky because I love the world.
after the flood was over and the waters subsided, I made a promise in the covenant with Noah that I would never do that again.
I’ll never chasing you that hard again because I so loved the world.
Let us go back and understand that Satan Lucifer, I’ll call him by his angelic name.
Lucifer knew the love of god.
So when he was cast down out of heaven, he wanted to get even with god.
because he knew that god loved man and hated sin.
And as long as what god loved, which is man, was separate from what that which god hated, which is sin god had no problem in his own emotions.
But if he could get man to sin then man would be filled with what god hated and put god in a dilemma that if he reacted to what he hated, he would kill what he loved.
If he reacted to what he loved, then he would have to love what he hated That’s why salvation is not about you.
Salvation is about god. His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him the victory.
Salvation is of the lord. It’s not about you. It’s not about your doings.
It was god delimmer, and it was Satan’s trick to what god’s love against him.
He said, I’ll put what you hate in what you love and say how you like up now and guarded one man the day you eat of the tree you shall surely die.
And so now god is in a dilemma.
Do I come into the garden and kill him? but I love it.
So the doctrine of substitution is born.
in the dilemma that Satan has placed god in that god paces the flow the voice of the lord walking through the cool of the garden.
God paces the floor, trying to figure out how to save what he loves, and kill what he hates.
And he says, Hey, Adam, where art thou? And Adam is standing wrapped up in feet leaves hiding in trees.
and god is pacing the floor. And god goes back and forth and says, stay right there.
You can’t fix this, This is above your pay grade. You can’t get yourself out of this, sir.
You can’t sew nothing on yourself that will cover you well enough to make you righteous enough.
And if I let you live, uh, I will have lied. And I’m not a man that I should lie.
or the son of man that I should repent.
So if I let you live, I can’t wink at your sin, because if I wink at your sin, then Musa for will have tricked me into lying.
So I gotta do something about it, but I don’t wanna kill you because I love you. Stay right there.
And the Bible said the God went out into the garden, uh, and found an innocent lamb.
Uh, and he took that lamb.
and took the sins of the man and placed it on an innocent animal, and he slayed the lamb and the lamb became a substitute for the man, uh, so that the man might be free.
So, god could go back to Lucifer and say, I did kill Adam in the animal.
And then I took the life of the animal. And covered the wretchedness of Adam.
So that Adam stood there with blood running down his legs.
from the just from the fresh kill body of the animal.
And the life that he now lived in the flesh, he lived by the faith of the animal that died in his stead that he might live.
Justice is satisfied. Mercy is victorious.
God has been glorified, and his word has not been broken. God so loved the world.
But the coats of skin were only placebos.
pacifying the problem, making it possible for god to be able to extend time before he released his ultimate plan.
It pacified the problem because according to Hebrews 10, 3 through 10. Drop that down. Hebrews 10.
3 through 10. I want you to take a look at this. Can I go deeper?
But in those sacrifices, there is a remembrance again made of sin every year.
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, Talking about Jesus, he says sacrifices and offerings, thou wouldest not, but a body has thou prepared for me.
In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, thou has had no pleasure. Then said, ah, Jesus, low.
I come in the volume of the book. It is written of me to do thy will. Oh god.
above when he said sacrifices and offerings and burn offerings and offerings for sins out what is not.
Neither had pleasure they’re in. which are offered by the law.
Then said, he, lo, I come to do thy will, oh, god, He taketh away the first that he may establish the second.
are you feeling me?
By the witch, will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once.
Once.
For some, once for a few, once for black folks, once for brown folks.
Once for white folks. Uh, you don’t have to like me, but you can’t stop the blood from getting to me.
If god wants to reach me with his blood, your walls are not god’s walls. God’s blood will reach me.
I might be in jail, but god’s blood will reach me.
I might be guilty, but by the way, you’re guilty too.
And if the blood got you, it’ll get me too. I’m talking about god’s love.
Oh my god.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
Oh my god. Oh my god.
The price He paid to love you.
When when when when we when we read about the cross in the book of acts, The Bible says, after his passion, he showed himself alive with many infallible proves.
And when I look at calvary, I see pain.
I see execution I see cruelty. I see injustice. I see death. I see abuse.
But when he looks at calvary, he called it passion.
I never will forget the passion of the crisis.
You might see that movie? Yeah. I saw it one time.
I bought a copy, but I never played it again.
It was not a scene I wanted to see again. It was not a movie I could enjoy.
It was not a movie where you ate popcorn and set up and watch it.
It was not entertaining watching somebody beat to death till their skin was hanging out was not my idea of a pleasurable evening.
It is not my idea of a passionate evening.
but god calls it passion because he was giving his body to his bride.
but her body has now prepared for me.
Now I can give her my body.
And all of us, and I have to challenge how I define love.
how I understand passion.
Because when I think of passion, I think of pleasure When god thinks of passion, he thinks of pain.
When I think of love, I think of a wonderful feeling when god thinks of love, he thinks of bruises.
He was bruised for our inequities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes, By his stripes, we are healed We are here.
We are here. Not this hill. We’re made whole.
Like the 10 leopards, 9 of them got healed, but one of them was made whole.
In order to go from heal to hole, you gotta come back.
Tell y’all y’all y’all come to church one time, come to the altar call and go on about your business.
You think you got something. You didn’t get nothing. You got healed, but you’re not whole.
You get hold when you keep coming back.
When you keep coming back to say thank you for what you did for me.
Thank you for how you changed my life. Thank you for how you picked me up.
Thank you for how you looked over my sin. Thank you for how you made a way of escape.
Thank you for how you loved the unlovable touch the untouchable reconcile the unreconcilable redeem the unredeemable.
I owe you the praise. you good little two shoe people who never did anything.
I understand why you don’t praise the lord because you think you’re righteous, sir, but I cannot understand all of you dirty, loud, filthy people that know you was a rep, are done, how you can sit there with your cute dress on and not praise god for his mercy toward you because god took bruises.
He put bruises for you.
And every animal that was ever Lane was just a stand in for him.
When we do movies and the actors are they’re setting up the setting.
They’re getting ready for the scene in the director’s to get the shot right, he has, uh, substitute actors that come in and fill in for the real actors so that the actors won’t spend themselves.
every bullock and goat that was slain until Jesus went to the cross was a substitute actor standing in for the legitimate one who would go to the cross and die for the sins of the world.
They were filling in for bruised. love.
By the way, you can’t have bruises without blood.
a bruise that’s made out of blood.
So the the the the the impact, the bond, the pain, the the the point of impact is over but the bruise remains.
He took my bruises.
He took my bruises so much so that even after he rose from the dead, He still bore the scars in his body.
The scars were still there for the price he paid for you to have a chance.
While you complain about parking places and you complain about coming out in the cold and you complain about driving too far, He carried his cross, a golf gothous heel, and let them inflict him with bruises that even the resurrection couldn’t take away.
He rose from the dead and still didn’t rise from the bruises.
And you should have been talking about when will somebody ever love me?
I’m just wondering how long will I have to go through this before I find somebody who loves me like I need to be loved.
I’m just not being loved like I needed to be loved, and I I refuse to settle for anything less.
If God refused to settle for anything less, you would go to hell.
I’m a say it again for the people in the back If god refused to settle for anything less, you would go to hell.
So you have more right to be loved than god?
God so love the world.
The problem with us is we think more highly of ourselves than we are.
Because we have romanticized love.
That’s why you’re 30 and been married three times.
We have romanticized relationships that the moment it gets uncomfortable, we get out.
And the moment we don’t like what you say.
In the moment, you don’t you lost your job, I’m through with you. Yeah. It’s about the Benjamins, maybe. No.
It’s not about the benjamins with a job, without a job, up or down, sicker well.
dial dialysis kidney machines, oxygen tank. I don’t care what it is. There is a love.
There is a love that endures all things, it may get bruised, but it will never back away.
It is the love of god.
The only way we could do it, and I’m gonna stop here because I see I can’t get through my message.
The only way we can do it is that the Bible says that the Holy Ghost is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy the love of god is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
The only way you can love like god is to be filled with god.
And when you get feel with god. You can love like god.
Until you get filled with god, you can’t love like god. You can’t do it out of your emotions.
You can’t do it out of your You can’t do it because I preached it.
You gotta be filled with god to love like god.
You the love of god is shed abroad in our hearts by the holy ghost.
And if you really got the holy ghost, the real sign of the holy ghost is not speaking in tongues.
The real sign uh, the Holy Ghost is when you love your neighbor.
The real sign of being filled with the Holy Ghost is when you love people who mistreated you.
the real sign of the holy ghost.
And when you love people after they have done you wrong, the real sign of the holy ghost, I’m not done about letting people make a fool out of you.
You may have to love them at a distance, but your skill love them.
The real sign of being filled with the Holy Ghost is that you them with an everlasting love.
And I’m sick and tired of people, preaching about something that they don’t have, teaching about something that they don’t have.
worship it with something that they don’t have.
How can you be a worship leader and can’t be speaking to the people you worship it with?
And yet you wanna bring glory down in the house.
The devil is a lie until the love of god is shed abroad in your heart.
By the holy ghost, there will always be something missing out of your message.