You being here today is an amazing thing. You have created an intersection, a meeting, and opportunity between you and Cold Spring Church. We are better because you’re here. You’re better because you’re here. You and us go together like, peanut butter and jelly. God’s love for us goes together with us perfectly too, like peanut butter and jelly. God’s love for us. Our love for others. It just goes together! Enjoy the peanut butter and jelly I have for you… and remember, God’s love for us, and our love for others goes together like… Yep. You got it!
We know figs are remain a very popular fruit in the United States, but did you know that it was the abundant vitamins found in figs that motivated a Philadelphia baker in 1851 to produce a machine that could stuff the nutrient rich fig jam into pastry dough.
Do you like Fig Newtons? Well, as a kid, they were my very favorite cookie, er, nutritional snack! Delivering what the community needed led a baking company to buy the machine and the cookies were a huge success. The town they were first produced was, you guessed it, Newton, Massachusetts! God wants us to nourish our mind, body, and spirit. This week, let’s read more, exercise more, and eat nutritious foods. And to feed our spirit, read God’s word where we can know that Jesus loves you and wants to fill your life with joy!
How big is God’s love? Some people have used pretty big words to describe God’s big love, like supererogation. Can you repeat that?! Supererogation is so much love, it is extravagant. Amazing. Overwhelming and super abundant. Because God’s love is beyond measure. In the Bible, God’s love letter to us, Jesus-follower, the Apostle Paul, tried to describe God’s love when he wrote, “And I ask God that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:14-10). That’s a whole lotta love!
God’s overboard love is like Skittles. Pouring a bag of Skittles, it overflows, more and more. God’s love won’t stop! Goes everywhere. Can’t be stopped. It goes on, and on, and on!
Remember that God’s love is available to you. It will never run out. You can count on God being with you always. God’s love is for ever, and its for you!
“Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that” (Ephesians 5:1-2).