And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. (Ephesians 3:18-19)

You are His delight, His beloved, what He desires forever and ever. And His amazing affection is the reason why you should feel successful and important (not your performance and achievements). Colours may print differently than viewed on your screen. That's simply the nature of working with digital prints.When we love each other, it gives people a glimpse of God because God is love. It can be difficult for people to understand God, but when we love others in His name, they experience a taste of His love. As Topjian brought Jesus Loves You to a close, she skillfully gave the message of Jesus continuing love through the good and bad in our lives. She highlighted his one desire's to share our experiences by giving us support and love. Jesus never leaves us alone. He is always by our side. This is a message every child and adult should hear. A friend of mine once wrote a blog post about what is - in her opinion - the “hardest thing” that can happen to a Believer in Christ. That thing is that he or she wastes their whole life full of gifts, talents and potential and only realizes it when it’s too late. They waste it by pursuing earthly accomplishments and successes. I fear that may have been the story of the man in this book.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) Passionate affection and burning desire flow from the Father’s heart to the Son, the same transcendent flame that one day would break the heavens to confess: The beauty of God’s love is that He offers it freely. He wants to have a loving relationship with you forever. God will not come down from heaven to encourage you; He sends people to achieve this purpose for Him in your life. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete (he wants this relationship to be fully yours). 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.Just imagine the joy of our heavenly Father when one day he’s able to gather all of us together again. I wonder if he’s going to cry? You know how happy he’s going to be. The Big Idea here today is this: Jesus wants a relationship with you that mirrors His relationship with the Father. And the joy of that friendship is supposed to be yours by abiding in Christ. Some of you are coming to the Bible Study and you’re not quite sure about whether to embrace this Jesus, this love of Christ. So you come to the Bible Study to learn, but maybe today is the day you realize that you need to make this personal, that you need to become the Christian, not just be a Christian in waiting. Kind of like the grandparents to be, as it were. It’s time to go ahead and give this faith birth, to really release yourself to this loving Christ who wants to remain and abide in you, so you can abide in him. We’re going to close now with a prayer, and I’m going to offer a prayer. If you are among those men, whether here or online, who have not yet received Jesus Christ into your life, I’m going to give you an opportunity to do that. So let’s close in prayer.

That's would not be overly meaningful in either challenge or response, except, that most people do NOT respond to this standard salutation at all, so any response at all is more likely to be noticed. Even if you are in the midst of a difficult time or are grieving a great loss, there is still reason for hope. Everything around you may feel like it’s falling apart. Everything inside of you may feel like it’s falling apart. But God’s love and mercy will never fail you. Then verse 16, the fourth item, you will be productive. You did not choose me but I chose you to go and bear much fruit, lasting fruit. Who doesn’t want to make a contribution? Who doesn’t want to experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit? When we abide in Jesus, we will bear much fruit.While Christianity is on the decline; anxiety, depression and loneliness are on the increase. As people turn away from God what replaces the hole left from faith? Who is there to guide us? Though this passage is often read at weddings, humans cannot love perfectly as God does because we are imperfect. But it makes sense that people strive to have their love for one another reflect these qualities. God sees all things, including your future and the needs of your life—before they happen (see Psalm 139:1-6). Today, we can be the hands and feet of Jesus. He fills us with His love and He sends us out into the world to deliver it. We see Jesus in missionaries, evangelists, teachers, pastors, parents, friends, siblings and intercessors. We can make change happen in our world when we love like Jesus. We all have been given spiritual gifts. I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning. (Lamentations 3:20-23)

So there is no greater love than this love that Jesus has for us, and the way he wants us to respond is by abiding in him. He wants us to remain in him, to live in him. He is the vine we are the branch, he wants us to remain grafted into the vine, and all the nourishment that we need, everything for life, everything to produce fruit, will come through the trunk of the vine into us. Basically, how Jesus wants you to respond is to receive his love. Then, when you are filled with love and because of the gratitude that we feel for it in response to that, we will want to obey him. We will find ourselves obeying his commands. He says my command is this, love each other. In Romans 13 it says that all of the commands are summed up in this one. If you keep this one command, you will find that you are keeping all of the others. Love each other! Washing someone’s dirty feet may seem like a gross enough task today, but during that day, people wore sandals and walked most places. So their feet were much, much dirtier. Washing feet was usually the job of a lowly servant. Jesus is our only way to Heaven and he has prepared a special place for us. He wants us to experience His unconditional love. He desires for all of us to humbly come to Him and surrender our lives. Now this is a verse of scripture that I meditate on almost every day! The reason I’m doing it for myself is because this is the area where I most need to experience the reality of God, that he actually does love me. One of my big problems that I’ve always had to overcome, and I find that many men try to overcome, is that I just have a hard time believing that God really cares about me personally! So by meditating on this one verse and a few others like it, God has really changed my heart and I think that I am actually experiencing the love that’s being discussed in this text and I want you to know more about it as well. My child, don’t reject the LORD’s discipline, and don’t be upset when He corrects you. For the LORD corrects those He loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom He delights. (Proverbs 3:11-12)

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If you’ve been in doubt of God’s love for you, below are eleven signs God loves and cares about you more than you think: 11 Signs God Loves You More Than You Think Have you ever had someone in your life you loved so much that you wanted to be with them all the time? God feels that way about you. Not only does God love you and want a relationship with you, but He wants to be present in every moment of your life. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands (and that might read better as by keeping my commands), you will remain in my love (in the English language this sounds like a conditional statement. It is not meant to be in the original language. So by keeping my commands you will abide in my love), just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. Amazing as it sounds, Jesus assures to feel the identical passionate affection for us. That’s right, Jesus loves us in the same way the Father loves Him. And NO… He’s not exaggerating—He would never lie to us. Good morning, men! Welcome to Man in the Mirror Men’s Bible Study, where we always have room for one more man! Let’s go ahead and do a shout out. This is going to be a lot of fun this morning because we’re going to go overseas! Today’s shout out goes to 6 men who are meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe. I guess that’s the capital city. They meet on Mondays at Ron’s place using the Video Bible Study. Stan Flowers is the one who sent this in for a shout out, and there’s a picture of the guys. I also put a P.S. there; guys, we don’t have a country Director, yet, for Zimbabwe. Actually, we don’t have any country directors yet, but over the next 24 months, we’re going to begin doing some experiments and the best place to do an experiment would be where there’s somebody who might be interested in doing it with you. So just think about that in Zimbabwe! I wonder if you would join me in giving a very warm welcome to these 6 men this morning? One, two, three, hoorah! Welcome guys, we’re really glad to have you with us!