The Quality of Love

Dr. Charles Stanley: Suppose God said, "Well, now, when you read the Ten Commandments every day for 30 days, I may start thinking about loving you." There's not a single, solitary thing in all this book, in all these 66 books, the Word of God, not one single verse in here says, "Well, now if you do thus and so, God will love you." God loves us unconditionally. That is, He loves us on the basis that He's God, that it is His very nature to express unconditional love. He doesn't love these, hate the others, He loves us all.
Guest (Male): A lot of people think God is a harsh judge, just waiting to punish anyone who steps out of line. Well, today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley will be reminded that though He does take sin seriously, He also possesses perfect kindness, faithfulness, and patience. Our series, "Liberated to Love," continues.
Dr. Charles Stanley: When is the last time someone looked you square in the eye and said, "I love you"? Many people don't hear that any longer. We just take it for granted that people understand whether we love them or not. But the truth is, that's not true. And when you and I love someone, oftentimes we think that the way we express it is exactly what they need, or the kind of love we have to offer is exactly the kind of love they need. I want to talk about two things: the quality of love that you and I experience and the quality we give, and the way we are able to receive love and the way we give it. And all of us are involved every day in those two areas of our life. What kind of love do we want? What kind do we give? What kind do we feel capable of giving? So, I want you to turn, if you will, to the most emotion-packed chapter I know of in the New Testament apart from the one that deals with the cross, because in this passage of scripture, you're going to find yourself somewhere. That's why they call this one of the greatest stories ever told, because somewhere in this passage, you're going to find yourself. It is the story of the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15, and I want us to read that 11th through the 24th verses together, because every time you read this, you see something you've not seen before. Verse 11: He said, "A certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me,' and He divided his wealth between them." "And not many days later," he says, "the younger son gathered everything together, went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now, when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in the country, and he began to be in need." "And he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine." Now that's the worst thing that could possibly happen to a Jewish young man, and that is to be hired out to be a swine feeder. That was absolutely the lowest, most degrading, humiliating thing he could do. "And so he was longing to be filled, his that is his own stomach, with the pods that the swine were eating. No one was giving him anything to eat. But when he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger? I will get up and go to my father and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men."'" Now listen to this next part. "And he got up and he came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf, kill it. Let us eat and be merry. For this son of mine was dead and he's come to life again. He was lost, and he's been found.' And they began to be merry." What I want you to see in this passage is this: that what Jesus is saying is, "Look at this," He says, "This is the way the Father loves us." And secondly, He's saying to you and to me, "Look at this. This is the way I want you to love other people." And, "Look at this. This is the way I want you to be able to be loved by other people." All three of these are very important, and they're three areas that I want us to get here. Now, there is a certain quality of love that God is looking for in your life and my life. Now when we think about love, we can think about love being a feeling, but love is far more than a feeling. If love is only a feeling, then we are all in trouble. Love isn't just some wheezy feeling we have, because feelings are very fickle. They come and go. Sometimes you feel good, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you may feel God loves you, sometimes you don't feel He loves you. Sometimes you like yourself, and sometimes you don't feel like loving yourself. Love is a decision, not a feeling. God made a decision to love every single one of us. He didn't base that love on anything about us. He based that love on His own attributes, His own nature, and His own character. It is His nature to love people because we're His creations. Secondly, love is not just a decision, love is a commitment. Love says, "Because I love you," and my expression of love to you is, "that I want the best for you, I want you to feel secure, I want you to be happy." That is, if I genuinely love someone, then I am interested in their security, their happiness, and their well-being, and I am committed to that. And if I'm committed to that, then I'm going to live in my relationship to that person or those persons in such a fashion as to express that, that I am interested in your well-being, in your security, and in your happiness. But it's even more than that. It is an affirmation of something that if you love someone, you're going to be continually affirming this. First of all, you belong. Because I love you, you belong. Whether it's in a church, or whether it's an organization, or whether it's your spouse, or your son, or your daughter, or your parent, because I love you, I want you to feel that you belong. Secondly, because I love you, I want you to feel worthy. You are worthy of my love and the love of others. You are somebody very, very special. And thirdly, I want you to feel confident. That is, that I believe in you. I believe in your abilities, I believe in your talents, I believe that God has something in life for you, that I'm sure that you can accomplish and achieve whatever God has set out to accomplish in your life. But fourthly, if I really love you, then I'm going to endeavor to build you up in order to help build those qualities in your life that'll make you the kind of person that God wants you to be so that you can become the person that He wants you to be and that you want to be. And last of all, my love, if it is genuine love, is going to be other-centered and not self-centered. If it's self-centered, it's not going to be love. If it's other-centered, that's what love is all about. Just to love someone is very important, but there is a quality of that love that I think is so evident in this passage that I believe God wants us to be able to accept it from Him and to express it to others, and that is unconditional love. Now, what is unconditional love? Unconditional love is simply this: that I love you simply because you're you, and I don't expect anything in return. I just love you. Nowhere in the Word of God does God ever say, imply, or leave any kind of implication that His love for you and me is based on anything except absolutely unconditional love. It is a love that has no strings. It has no rules and regulations. It has no fine print to it whatsoever. There are no footnotes in God's love and no addendum to it. It is just God's wonderful, pure love for us. Unconditional love has nothing to do with deserving. Unconditional love. God expresses that in His grace, which is His goodness and kindness toward us, without regard to merit or worth on our part, and in spite of what we deserve. That's what grace of God's all about. And you see, it is the fact that we are imperfect human beings, that we all fail, we all are weak, we all sin against God at times in our life. But what does He do? He doesn't stop loving us. That's what the grace of God is all about. Knowing before He ever created us that we would not be worthy of His love for us. So, what did He do? He provided His grace through the cross. And what He is not only demonstrating for us, His love, but He's demonstrating the kind of love He wants you and me to express one to the other. Love should never have to be begged for, bartered for, paid for, repayment. That's not what love is all about. So the quality of love is very important, that it's unconditional. Secondly, is the expression of that love. It's one thing to love, but what about expressing it? Now, I want you to look at this passage because it's absolutely fascinating. I want you to jot down about six words. All of us express love in about six ways. One of them is by acceptance. So, if you'll just jot down these six words. One of them is acceptance. One is by touching. One is by quality time. Giving gifts. By words of encouragement. Acts of service. All of these are ways we express love toward each other. Now, I want us to look first of all to see how does God express love toward us? Did you know that every day of your life and mine, we live in the sunlight of God's acceptance of us? Did you know that you can't do anything to get God to reject you? Now, people die and go to hell because they reject God, not because He rejects them. And there is an ultimate rejection on the other side and judgment. You can't get God to reject you, He's accepted you just the way you are. And you see, all of us who are believers, how did He accept us? The Bible says, He accepted us in the beloved, in His Son. That's the way He accepted us. So every day, you and I live in His acceptance. Every day, you say, "Wait a minute, this touching business." Now, wait a minute. He ran, embraced His son. God's never touched me. Yes, He has. How do you think God touches all of us? He touches us in a warm handshake. He touches us through a strong embrace. He touches us. God does touch us. Pity the person who never is touched, never hugged, and never loved. That's the way God is touching us through other people. Likewise, quality time. You say, "Well, what's quality time with God?" Listen, do you realize that the most important thing in your life is that warm, intimate, personal, quiet time you spend with God? Have you ever said, "God, I just want to spend some time with you," and He's said, "Sorry, I'm a little busy this afternoon, can't handle it"? No. God's always sitting on ready for us to spend time with Him, to love Him and to be loved in return. Acts of service. My friend, God is acting in service towards you and me daily. Didn't Jesus say, "I didn't come to be served, I came to serve." That's what the Father's doing all the time. How's He serving us? Giving us direction for our life, protecting us, providing for us. I mean, He's working always ahead of time. And you think about all the things that you've run into in life, and He was there before you got there, working out the details. He was there after you left. He's always serving us, acts of service. Giving, everything you and I have is a gift of God. Every good and perfect gift, He says, comes from the Father above, in whom there is no variableness, there's no changing about Him, always giving to us. Words of encouragement, that's what the Bible's all about. The Bible is a book is God's love letter. It is the story of God's redeeming love. It is His love letter to you and to me. You can take all six ways that you and I are to express love toward each other, and God's doing that in your life and my life every day. Now what does He want from us? He wants us to do the same for others. Now, watch this now. We say that there are six ways for us to express love. But you see, I need to be sensitive as to how you need me to express it to you. You need to be sensitive as to how I need you to express it to me. Now let's look at these six. I want you to look at your list there for a moment now. If I should ask you, which one of these do you personally feel like that you need the most? That is, when you line up all six of these, and we all want to be loved that way, but what's the one that rings your bell upfront? What's the one that when somebody expresses that to you, that you really and truly feel really loved? Now listen. When you and I express love toward someone, and we're on number six from their number one, you know what they're saying? "You don't love me." Or they're saying, "No, I don't feel love from you." You may be absolutely giving it all you've got, but if your expression of it doesn't touch them where they need it most, they don't feel it. So what I want you to see, and let's think about it this way. Let's say for example, that you are a woman, and if I should ask all of you women today, of all of these six, "What's number one on your list?" Most of you would probably say, what? Quality time. So let's say for example, here you are, and you're a quality time lover. You that's what you want. You just want time. Your husband comes home with his wonderful gift, and he says, "Honey, look what I bought you." And I mean, he has really spent some money. And you take it, and you say, "Well, thank you very much." You're not very excited. Now, he gets his feelings hurt because I mean, he saved, he worked hard at it. And, "Well, thank you very much," and you know, "Well, I certainly appreciate that," a little tap on the cheek, a little hug or so forth, maybe, but that's about it. And you're wondering, "Boy, she's absolutely the most ungrateful thing I've ever seen in my life." Well, the problem is that, you know, she likes the gift, but she she wants quality time. This person wants acts of service. Don't tell me how much you love me, I mean, just do something. Do something, show it. So what happens? You've got people who genuinely love each other, but what they're doing is they're expressing it the way they feel it. And the other person's looking for it the way they need it. And so when you got an expresser and a needer, and the two do not know what it takes to satisfy the other one's love, then you got a problem. And I think there are a lot of people who live their lives, all their marriage, or sons and daughters with their children, and they're expressing love, and so often, parents give, give, give, give, give, gift, gift, gift, gift, gift, gift, gift. And what's the son saying? "Hey, I just want you to spend a little time with me, Dad, that's all I want." Or the daughter says, "Mom, I mean, can't you say I'm pretty? Can't you say my dress is?" In other words, no words, no expression. Just give them gifts. And probably, not everybody, but probably on most, the bottom of most people's love totem pole is giving them something. And somebody else, they're just bowling over the mouth. Just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Now, if the rest of their expressions match their talk, that's fine, but if it doesn't, all the talking in the world is not going to satisfy. And so whether it's giving, encouraging words, quality time, service, it doesn't make any difference what it is. We have to find out what does it take to help the other person. Now, there are those people, no matter what you do, how much you do, and how long you do it, you'll never be able to satisfy them. Because there's something there in their life, some wall that has been built. Maybe something that happened way back in their early days of their life growing up or whatever. Didn't feel loved by the father, didn't feel loved by the mother, whatever it might be. They now they don't even feel worthy of love. And what do they do? They reject you. They shut you out. They turn you off. And they'll do something to drive you away if at all possible, because that's their only safety. "Don't get too close to me trying to love me." Well, does that mean we stop loving them? No. I'm just saying that there are some people that you'll find it very difficult to break through because there's something going on inside of them, they don't know how to accept your kind of love, no matter what you do. You can go through one through six, six through one, start in the middle. Whatever you choose to do, and somehow it doesn't satisfy them. Because no matter how you tried to give yourself, until that person feels worthy, until that person is able to let down the barrier, until that person's willing to pull back the drape and let you in, you can't get in. In this passage of scripture, God probably has crammed as many principles about love as any passage that length anywhere in the Bible. And He's simply saying this: First of all, "Hey, wait a minute, it doesn't make any difference about your past. God loves you unconditionally. And He loves you the same always and forever." And secondly, you don't have to measure up and deserve it. And thirdly, He knows exactly how to express it. Now, let me ask you a question. I want you to think about for just a moment, of those six ways of expressing love, what's number one for you? What's number one for you? I know one thing, God knows what your number one is. What do you think your number one is? And secondly, let me ask you this: your spouse, or your children, or your parents, whatever it might be, or your friends. As you think about them for a moment, what do you think their number one is? It's really my responsibility to find out how to express the love this person needs according to their need, not the way I may want to express it. And I simply want to say to you, no matter where you're coming from in life, God loves you. But you'll never be able to experience that love until first of all, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is His son, when you accept Him as your personal savior by confessing your sins to Him and accepting His death at Calvary as full payment of your sin debt in full and accepting His forgiveness based on not your conduct or behavior or promises, but just because He said, "If you will receive Him by faith, He will accept you as His son or daughter." The moment you receive Him, what do you have? The love of God comes in your heart. Then He will instruct you and teach you and enable you and make you capable of receiving His love, giving love, and receiving love to others. It is a learning process, it's a learning process for all of us, but it begins in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And I want to challenge you that if you have never accepted Christ as your Savior, and you really want to feel the love of God in your life, and all of us need that, if you accept His Son by faith, the love of God comes pouring into your life lavishly. And through the Holy Spirit, you will learn how to receive it, believe it, experience it, and give it. And my friend, when you've learned to accept His love and experience it, and you've learned how to love others and to be loved in return, you are beginning to live life at its very best, because love is what our life is all about.
Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. The teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. The only way to experience God's love is to be adopted by Him through faith in His son, Jesus Christ. Once you receive His gift of forgiveness, the Holy Spirit comes into your life and will teach you how to believe and share the love of God. To listen again, click on Today on Radio at intouch.org, and that's where you can learn more about God's unconditional love for you. Connect to our online bookstore to order a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete message, "The Quality of Love," or order his teaching set, "Liberated to Love." Our web address again is intouch.org. Call or text to 1-800-IN-TOUCH. If you prefer, you can write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357. When we embrace God's perfect love, we're able to genuinely worship Him, and others can more easily see His love through us. Today's moment with Charles Stanley is coming up. In Touch Plus is streaming on Local Now, featuring all the best of Dr. Charles Stanley.
Dr. Charles Stanley: We're to have strong convictions based on the Word of God. He's working out things that you and I would never know about in our future.
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Guest (Female): At times, life can be stormy, and each one of us will face many trials. Questions are asked, and doubt may set in. The answers are found through faith in Jesus. He is within every believer, always ready to offer us comfort, hope, and peace in times of great trial. So you can trust Him with any circumstance. To order Dr. Stanley's book, "How to Let God Solve Your Problems," call 1-800-IN-TOUCH or go to intouch.org/store.
Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch. God's love for you enables you to love Him and others. With encouragement for believers, here's a moment with Charles Stanley.
Dr. Charles Stanley: I think many parents today do not realize how absolutely devastating it is to a son or a daughter to feel unloved by their father, especially. And if you desert your family, you walk away from that son or daughter. You never hug them. You never tell them that you love them. You never put your arms around them. You never encourage them with words. So they grow up and what do they think? And what God wants us to see is that He loves us, and He, when He comes into our life, liberates us and equips us to love other people the same way. But not a conditional loving. It is about us not living up to standards and reaching some kind of plateaus. It is a matter of God lavishly pouring out His unconditional love upon us. What's His motivation? His motivation is to reveal the true nature of Himself. And His motivation is to see that He loves us in order to bring us to accept His son Jesus and therefore Himself, and to bring us into life at its best because He wants what's best for us. And it will bring worship and praise and honor and glory to the Father. Because we will love Him, motivated what? Because He first loved us. Nobody reaches up and loves God first. The Bible says that He loved us first. And you and I always responding to this wonderful, awesome, indescribable, indefinable, infinite love of God. He loves us just the way we are.
Guest (Male): If you haven't responded to God's love by accepting His offer of forgiveness, humbly trust in Jesus to receive this priceless gift. Visit intouch.org to learn more. Are these truths impacting your walk with Jesus? Tell us your story. Looking ahead on In Touch, we'll hear three important lessons of love. Prepare for this message by taking some time to read 1 Corinthians chapter 13, then join us again for In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.