Day 3
Love is not an emotion, students at Smithville Christian High School were told in chapel today.
“Love is an action,” said chapel speaker Craig Danielson, pastor at Calvary Church in St. Catharines.
Unlike the messages communicated on television or movies, love is not about passion or about sex, he said.
“It’s familial love. It’s ‘I want to have a relationship with you.’”
Danielson read 1 Timothy 6:18 – “They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.”
“If you truly want to love someone, you have to share,” he said.
Danielson challenged the students to think of things they have that they can share with others: with other students, other people, or family members.
He gave the students an example of a single father who had been saving up to take his children on a vacation, but who ended up giving his savings away because someone else needed the money more.
“It’s not just about money,” Danielson said. “It’s time and energy.”
He said it’s easy to make excuses about why we are not generous, showing students a video called “The Christian’s Guide to Excuses.”
He read 1 John 3: 11-29, which calls us to love, not murder, and said “murder” can be what we do with our words.
“If you are at home or at school and something (harsh) comes out of your mouth, that’s murder,” he said. “We can murder people with words.”
Instead, as Christ-followers, we are to be a light “to the world, to our school, to our family,” he said.
Danielson said students could do practical random acts of kindness, like thank their bus drivers or their teachers, or pay for the person in line behind them at Tim Hortons.
But the best kind of love is knowing the need of the person beside us “and loving unconditionally for their betterment,” he said.
“Don’t wait until you are 20 or 30 or 40 to start living out loud intentionally and with passion,” he said. “You are brothers and sisters in Christ, and you need to pour love into one another with generosity.”
Today’s questions for discussion:
1. What does Romans 5:5 mean to you?
2. How did thanking God for all his gifts give you a new appreciation for what you have?
3. What are some of the benefits of comparing what you have with others? What are the dangers?
4. What is the difference between “wanting” to share and “having” to share?
5. Why do you think it’s so difficult to share our stuff?
6. Do you have a cool story about how it made you feel to share something with someone in need?
Here's the link to the Brandon Heath song: Give Me Your Eyes
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