Crossroads Community Church

I was curious; I’ve never investigated the amount of money spent on Valentine’s Day. While this newsletter will reach you the day after, in recent years in one day people spent over 24 billion dollars on expressing love. The average amount spent is $175 with men spending more than women. Jewelry is the winner of the most gifted at $6.2 billion. Another $2.3 billion is spent on flowers and $2.2 billion dished out on candy. People even shell out bucks on their pets for Valentine's day! They will spend an average of $31. We love our pets!

While February 14th is a day set aside to express our love, as Jesus followers we should be gifting love all year long. In this series on Loving Well, we’ve come to understand that love is first of all who we are, then what we do. Since God is love when we get Him, He gets us and we become like Him. Since He is love, we become love as well! The agape love we receive from Him is expressed through what we do!

A number of years ago Bob Goff promoted his book called: Love Does. He revealed all the outlandish things he did or was involved in to show love to someone. For example, there was a shut in his neighborhood who loved parades. Because she could not get out, the neighbors all got together and provided a parade for her where she sat at her window and watched it pass by. In another expression of love, a young man walked by Bob’s house, stopped, and stared because it was so nice. Bob walked out and met him; come to find out the young man was getting married. So Bob invited him to have his wedding on his lawn - the young man graciously accepted and was elated! If you need a love boost get his book and read it!

My son Joshua and his family recently moved to Nashville. He told me about a church they found, so I checked it out. The pastor’s wife spoke so I listened to catch the flavor of the church. Her topic was evangelism. She spoke about taking teams going out to knock on doors and asking people if they wanted to know Jesus. It did not work well. Many people were not interested, the team got discouraged, and this amazing built-up engagement quickly became a downer.

She went back and processed her experience with someone at church and they simply said, “Your evangelism is void of love!” That hit her, so they reassembled with a new emphasis. This time they asked people one question: “What is one thing that if it happened today would change your life?” She said, suddenly they had all kinds of engagement. In one incident a woman had a baby crying and couldn’t get the groceries out of the car because she needed to care for the baby. They said, “We’ll bring your groceries in for you!” That act was a transforming moment of love for the distraught mother. When the outreach team changed the question and went forth desiring to love, people engaged. Some even attended church later as a result of this mindset change.

This Sunday we’ll conclude with the Victory of Love. The goal is to finish up I Corinthians 13 this Sunday. If you read the passage you will find that Paul says love needs maturing. I’m sure we can all improve the way we love others. With God’s grace, I’m sure we will.

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Feb 15, 2023

Spending on a Day of Love

Marriage investment Day

Live Stream Starts at 10:30 am

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