Connect with Skip - Skip Heitzig

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is connect with Skip. Heizig, thanks for joining us today.
Here it connect with Skip. Our mission is to help
you know God's Word and apply it to your life
through clear, practical Bible teaching and real encouragement every day.
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(00:24):
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join the list today. That's connect with Skip dot Com.
Now let's dive into today's teaching from pastors Skip Heightzig.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Philippians Chapter one, where we get into the substance and
the sum of Paul's prayer for them. Most people never
associate prayer with pop music, but there is an interesting
country song that's been around for a few years by
a guy named Jared Lowenstein. He goes by Jaron and

(01:03):
it's a song called I Pray for You. It's a
song based upon the bitter breakup that he had with
his girlfriend, and he puts an interesting twist on prayer.
He said, I haven't been to church since I don't
remember when things were going great till they fell apart again.
So I listened to the preacher. He told me what

(01:24):
to do. He said, you can't go hateen others who
have done wrong to you. Sometimes we get angry, but
we must not condemn. Let the good Lord do his job,
and you just pray for them. So his chorus is,
I pray your breaks go out running down a hill.

(01:45):
I pray a flower pot falls from a windowsill and
knocks you in the head like I'd like to. I
pray your birthday comes and nobody calls. I pray you're
flying high when your engine stalls. I pray all your
dreams never come true. Just know wherever you are, honey,
I pray for you. I think we can do much

(02:06):
better than that. And Paul does better than that. In
the Book of Philippians, you'll notice in chapter one, verse four,
that he mentions that he prays for them. In verse three,
he says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you,
always in every prayer of mine, making request for you

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all with joy. Now, if you know anything about Paul,
you know that in many of his letters he includes
his prayer for his audience. When he writes the Book
of Ephesians, he includes a prayer. When he writes the
Book of Philippians, When he writes the Book of Colossians,
he includes a prayer. When he writes the Book of Thessalonians,

(02:49):
he includes a prayer in First Thessalonians. When he writes
to Timothy, he includes a prayer. To find Lehman, he
includes a prayer. That is a part of Paul's life.
He prayed for people, and he did it regularly, and
he told them what he prayed for. And I think
it's safe to say that nothing really defines a person's

(03:10):
spiritual life more so than that person's prayer life, and
Paul had a deep and abiding one. Now, just an
interesting note about that. Whenever you read Paul's prayers for people,
he never wants praise for anything physical. I'm not saying
he never did, it's just never recorded that he did.

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What he prays for are things that he thought were
much more important than just a general blessing for the
church or a physical ailment. But what he wrote down
were there really heart issues that matter the most. And
in this case we find out that he prays for love.
In verse nine, he says, and this I pray. So

(03:56):
here's the main request. This I pray that your love
may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment,
that you may approve the things that are excellent, that
you may be sincere and without offense, until the day
of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which

(04:18):
are by Jesus Christ to the glory and the praise
of God. Now Paul has one thing that he's praying for,
one specific thing above all else, and that is love.
That is the sum of his prayer. He's praying for
their love. All of the other phrases beyond that in

(04:41):
verse nine, ten, and eleven support that one main thought. Now,
why would Paul pray for their love? Well, because that
is the hallmark of their faith. Right, he said, Now
abide faith, hope, and love, And the greatest of these
is love. Jesus said, by this all men will know

(05:02):
you're my disciples by the love you have for one another.
So he prays for the most important expression of their
Christian faith, and that is the expression of love. By
the way, Paul also mentions the idea of love not
only here, but also in those other books that I

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just mentioned, Colossians, Ephesians, Thessalonians, and others. We're not surprised
because faith is important and hope is vital, but love
is the culminating hallmark. Now, Dwight L. Moody once said

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something interesting. He said, you know, a man can be
a good doctor without loving his patience, or a good
lawyer without loving his clients, or a good geologist without
loving rocks or science. But a man cannot be a
good Christian without love. And I'm really glad it's Mother's
Day because of all the people that I think set

(06:06):
the standard for self less living and unselfish love, it's
a mother at least, I can say that. In my family.
You've heard the old saying he has a face only
a mother can love. That says more about a mother
than a face. It says that a mom's love is

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always there, It's always steadfast. No matter who you are,
what you've done, you can always count on a mother's love.
And I found that to be very, very true in
my own situation. The Jews used to have a saying
that God couldn't be everywhere, and so he created mothers.
I think it's more of a statement rather than an
absolute theological statement. It's a way of saying. The way

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God expresses his presence is so often through the life
of a godly mother. We're so thankful today that it's
Mother's Day, and we can express that to you. Well,
what I want to show you in Philippians one Versus nine, ten,
and eleven in Paul's prayer are four attributes of mature love.
Four attributes of mature love. Now, as we go through

(07:15):
these four attributes, what I'd like you to do is
to be comparing your own expressions of love to what
Paul prays for theirs ought to be. Four attitudes, four
attributes of mature love. The first is this our love
should be plentiful. Look at verse nine and notice and

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this I pray that your love may abound still more
and more. The word abound means to super abound or
to exceed a fixed number or a fixed measure. Now
it's evident that they already loved one another. Paul felt

(07:58):
their love, and Paul makes a note of it in
this book. You'll notice in verse nine, I pray that
your love may abound. Notice is still more and more.
In other words, that implies they already do it. He
just doesn't want them to do it less. He wants
them to continue to do it, and to do it more,

(08:19):
that your love would have bound still more and more. Now,
how do you increase something that's already overflowing. Oh, it's
pretty easy. You just turn on the hose and walk away.
Let it run. This is a mistake I've made in
my own yard. I have inadvertently watered my neighbor's yards

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from time to time by trying to fill a little
pond or water an area of my grass or a tree,
and I forgot, and two hours later it's like, oh,
there's water everywhere. Now, when Paul says I'm praying for
your love to abound, what is he speaking of specifically?

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It's possible that he is praying that their love would
be the kind of love that goes out of the
boundaries of loving just the church and loving different kinds
of people in the world. That certainly would be in
line with what Jesus was all about. He said, for
God so loved the world that he gave his only

(09:22):
begotten son. A few years ago, when I went to
Iraq for the first time, I've told you that I
brought shoeboxes with me, twenty thousand shoeboxes that many of
you packed, and we brought them into Baghdad. The most
striking thing about that trip is what one of the
Iraqi officials said to me. He made a statement that

(09:45):
was shocking. He said, up to this point in my mind,
he said, I always thought, we always thought that it
was the Christian West that hated us. But I can
see by this token of your love that it's the
Christians that love us. Your simple shoe box expressions were

(10:08):
like overflowing love into another culture that never experienced something
like that before. However, I believe that Paul is referring
to the specific demonstration of love to one another within
the Church. I don't think he's speaking of loving God.
I don't think he's speaking of loving God's world. I

(10:29):
think he is specifically speaking of loving God's people, the church.
Why do I say this because he writes the same
thing almost in First Thessalonians, chapter three, verse twelve. Let
me read it to you. May the Lord make your
love increase and overflow for each other. Why is that important?

(10:54):
I think it's important because sometimes it's easier to love
people you never see than people you see every day.
The easiest thing is talking about I love the world.
Oh I love the world. But the people in your
own home or in your own work space, it's sometimes

(11:16):
more difficult. It's like a cartoon I once saw and
the main character said, oh I love the world, it's
just the people I can't stand. It's easy to say
I love people I never see, But people you do
see and work with and live with, it's different. So
I think he is praying that their love for one
another would overflow, would abound more and more, that that

(11:38):
hose of love would keep on running. Interesting. One of
the church historians named Tertullian made mention in his writings
that when the church started growing rapidly in the Roman Empire,
that the government sent spies into different congregations because they
were afraid that this new group of citizens, these Christians,

(12:00):
would be very disloyal to the Roman government.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
You're listening to connect with skip Heitzig as twenty twenty
five comes to a close. Generous support from friends like
you is vital to keep connect with skip Heitzig strong
in the year ahead, so more people can hear God's
word and find real hope in Jesus. Your year end
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(12:24):
To thank you for your generous gift of fifty dollars
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Daily God Book. These resources will help you align your
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(12:48):
or call eight hundred and ninety two to two eighteen
eighty eight. Now let's get back to today's teaching.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
So one of the spies went into a church, came
back and wrote this, reports are very strange people. They
speak of one by the name of Jesus, who is absent,
but whom they seem to be expecting at any time.
And my how they love him, and my how they

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love one another. Interesting that an unbelieving spy in a
Christian congregation made note of the fact that they loved
one another so intensely. So take that little test in
your mind right now and ask yourself this, does your
own love abound? Would that be a word that describes

(13:39):
the expression of your love? Think about your marriage. Is
your love toward your spouse an abounding love? Or in
your home toward your children, or toward your parents, or
among your friends. Would you say that that is a
good description of your own love experience in your life?

(13:59):
You're the kind of a person that love just keeps
growing and growing and abounding more and more. You say,
is that even possible? Well, yes, it is possible. It
is possible because in Romans chapter five, Paul said, the
love of God has been poured out in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit. The love of God has been

(14:22):
poured out, or literally it gushes out. It implies there
is no limit to it at all. What that means, then,
is that we have an unlimited capacity to love. If
you're one of those type of people, and I've met
a few who say, I'm just fresh out of love.

(14:44):
I've loved all the love out, I've got no more
love to give. It's all gone now, I'd say, well,
you need a better connection, because the love of God
gushes out, is poured out by the Holy Spirit. Last
time I checked, he never ran out So what this
implies is is if God's love flows into your life

(15:05):
in atawa flow out of your life. If God flows in,
it must flow true to others. Malcolm Muggridge, a British journalist,
once wrote, the biggest disease today is not leprosy or
tuberculosis or any other disease, but rather the feeling of
being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. The greatest

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evil is the lack of love, that terrible indifference toward
one's neighbor who lives at the roadside, assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty,
and disease. Now, what all of this tells me is
that if I have such a capacity that the Bible

(15:49):
tells me that I have to love people, that nobody
around me should ever feel love starved. They should never
feel love starved. They should feel love saturated, love soaked,
but not love starved. Because if the love of God
is poured out by His Holy Spirit into me, then
it can then be poured out through me. I have

(16:10):
to receive it so that I can give it. Our
love then should be plentiful. That's the first attribute of
a mature love. Second, our love should be perceptive. Now
watch what he does. You know, Paul could have just
said in this I pray that your love may abound
still more and more period. But he doesn't do that.

(16:31):
He says that your love may have bound still more
and more in knowledge and all discernment. Now this is
important because now Paul is qualifying what overflowing love is
to look like by adding these parameters of knowledge and discernment.

(16:51):
You see, Paul is not naive. He's not throwing out
love like some cliche is tolerate anything except everything kind
of love. He says, No, the overflowing love that I
am speaking about to one another needs banks, just like
a river has banks, and one bank is called knowledge
and the other bank is called discernment, and your love

(17:12):
needs to flow within those banks to be safe. You see,
overflowing love sounds really great, but it is like a river,
and if that water has free flow without any direction
or discretion, it can kill people. A few years ago,
I was in Honduras. They had just had a flood,

(17:32):
and I was in the helicopter going over these villages.
The homes were washed out, schools, hospitals were gone. People
were huddled in masses in the jungles trying to find
a place for shelter, and it was all because of
a river that over flowed its banks. Water is a blessing,
but that much water that just flows wherever it wants

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to can destroy people's lives. And so too with love.
If our love is just pure emotion, without discretion or direction,
it can bring devastation. It needs those banks in which
to flow. So let's look at them. Let's look at
them one by one. The first bank is called knowledge,

(18:17):
that your love may still abound more and more in knowledge.
What does that mean? The word epinosis, the Greek word
for knowledge, here means an expert knowledge, a mature knowledge
brought on by experience. If you know anything about Paul's writing,
you know that Paul will often take love and knowledge

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and combine them. Sometimes he'll oppose them, he'll show the
difference between them. For example, in First Corinthians chapter eight,
he says knowledge puss up, but love builds up. He's
contrasting love and knowledge. Or First Corinthians chapter thirteen. Though
I speak with a tongue of men or of angels,

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but I have not love. I've become like a clanging symbol,
sounding brass. And though I can understand all mysteries and
have all knowledge, but I have not love. I have
become nothing. So he says knowledge needs love, but he
also says love needs knowledge for that love to be

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responsible love. Remember when Paul spoke about a zealous group
of religious brethren of his, he said they have a
zeal for God, but it's not according to knowledge, and
he faulted them for that. It's pure emotion but no knowledge. Now,

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if you diminish your need for knowledge, and you place
feeling above knowledge, like so many people do, just do
what's in your heart. Man, whatever you feel like doing.
That is the most dangerous, this irresponsible thing you could
ever do. And you would be a dangerous person to
live that way. Why do I say that, Well, you

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can feel out of love with your spouse and feel
in love with somebody who's not your spouse. A parent
can feel they ought to give something whatever the child
wants to their child. Just I'm gonna give it because
I feel that that's the loving thing to do. Well,
that could be the worst thing to do, to give
them whatever they want. You may feel that love is

(20:33):
letting another Christian do whatever he or she wants to do.
That's where you need knowledge, the knowledge of Matthew chapter eighteen,
where Jesus said, sometimes the most loving thing you can
do is to confront another brother or sister, and that's love.
So mature love is not sentimentality, nor is it emotion.

(20:55):
It has banks. The first bank is knowledge tewod Peter
chapter one. He says, make every effort to add to
your faith goodness and to goodness knowledge. So follow me.
Our love should be growing, but our love should also
be knowing. Knowledge is one of the banks that allows

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the free flow of love. There's another bank I want
you to notice also in verse nine, and that is discernment,
that your love may abound still more and more in
knowledge and all discernment. Discernment means insight, mature insight, or
sensitive moral perception. Allow me to explain, we might have

(21:42):
an affection for somebody else, but that doesn't mean we
have the right to express that affection any way we
see fit. We need to bring discernment into it. See,
there are moral and ethical considerations that are to govern
the overflowing expression of our love to people. To discern

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something is to distinguish, to make a difference and so
every parent knows this that love is expressed in different
ways at different times to the same child. One day
a parent will give a gift to a child. Another
day a parent will spank a child. Both are legitimate

(22:27):
expressions of love. Another example is that of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes he'd heal a person. Another day he would overturn
the tables in the temple and with a whip drive
out the money changers. Both their expressions of love, but
in two different contexts. Or one day Jesus would say
to the crowd, you are blessed. Blessed are you? Another

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day he'd look at another crowd filled with Pharisees and
he say you whitewashed sepulchers. Both their expressions of love
from the one who is the author of love himself.
Now most of us know that the most frequently used
Greek word for love in the New Testament is what
tell me shout it out Agape. Agape is the Greek

(23:12):
word for love that expresses God's love for us. Generally,
love for one another is to be at that supreme superior.
That's what we aspire to. A gope love. Well, make
sure that you're a goapi isn't sloppy. Don't love with
sloppy agapi, and sloppy agapi is is saying you love somebody,

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but it's really a selfish love. I'm going to do
something or say something because I don't want to be
disliked by that person. That's sloppy agapi. First Corinthians, Chapter thirteen,
verse six sums it up. Love does not rejoice in iniquity,
but it rejoices in the truth. So our love should

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be a plentiful love, but it should also be perceptive,
having run within the banks of knowledge and discernment melligabverse ten,
that you may approve the things that are excellent, that
you may be sincere and without offense till the day
of Christ. You see where it begins the sentence with

(24:23):
the word that everything that follows is a purpose clause.
It is called a purpose clause. In other words, it
means sow that, or in order that, or Paul is saying,
here's the reason you need these two riverbanks of knowledge
and discernment. Here's why, here's the purpose for it. It's

(24:46):
so that you can approve the things that are excellent.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Thanks for listening to connect with skip Heitzig. Before you go,
don't miss your opportunity to request the Daily God Journal
along with the companion digital devotional, the Daily God Book.
These resources are our thanks for your generous year end
gift of fifty dollars or more to help connect with
Skip Heitzig finish twenty twenty five strong and reach more
people with the truth of God's word in the year ahead.

(25:15):
Call eight hundred ninety two eighteen eighty eight or go
to connect with Skip dot com slash offer thanks for
spending time with us today and we'll see you next
time on Connect with skift Heidzig.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Make It Connect, Make Connect the Crossing just fsong, make
Conness Next.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Connect with skift Heidzig is a presentation of connection communications
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