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[Music] Amen. Amen. I will love thee, O Lord, my strength.

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Psalm 18.1, subject of the message. Lord, I love you. I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. As we consider this particular psalm, we notice that it has 50 verses. It seems to me that all

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all of these verses may be summed up in this single line, "I will love thee, O Lord, my strength." The sweetest words of human lips are, "I love you."

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to love is the most wonderful thing that can happen to a person. There are numerous ways of speaking of love. We talk about being in love, we speak of falling in love. But the language we like to hear is "I love you." The psalmist considers the entire sweep of his personal existence. He considers all that has happened, the good

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in the bed and exclaims with poetic beauty, "Lord, I love you." Now to say I love you is a statement, it's a declaration, it's a proclamation, it's a strong and positive sentence. It's not a question. It's not an element of uncertainty or doubt here. The statement says it all. I love you. Because this is

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such a powerful statement, because it is so meaningful, it is not to be used lightly, it is to be taken seriously. Love is an emotion and we use the word love to express the way we feel. You must bear in mind that love is not just a sentimental feeling, it is used to express the highest and best that is within. It is the integrated self focused on life.

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Love in the deepest sense then is not just a feeling, our feelings vary. We're sometimes up and sometimes down. If love is dependent altogether on how we feel, we can turn it off like a faucet. Love is an expression of feeling, but it is more than feeling. Love involves more than our emotions. Love includes the rational, the mind. So it includes more than the heart. We ordinarily

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find that there's a great deal of association of love and love-making dealing with the body. But love involves not only the body, it involves the feelings, it involves the heart, it involves the mind, it involves the soul. It includes all. This is why it is said in that great commandment, "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with

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all thy mind, with all thy body and soul." All of me. So if I am to be together, if you are to be together and function as we ought, then first of all if I'm to be together I must love me. Every person must love himself or herself. You ought to love yourself. There's nothing wrong with loving yourself. Every individual

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ought to be able to feel good about yourself. We need a positive self-image. I need to love myself, you need to love yourself. I need to be in tune with myself if I am to have myself all together. I sent myself through the invisible some mystery of the afterlife to spell, my soul returned and answered I

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myself am heaven or hell. There's nothing wrong with an individual being in love with himself. I love me, I'm in love with me, nothing wrong with that, that's all right. In fact that may be a rather healthy situation but we must not stop there, we must not stop with self. If I stop there, if I'm only in love with

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myself, then I become self-centered. I become selfish and egotistical. When I only love myself, I am incomplete. I need to reach out to others because when one just love self then one is shut up in self and when one is shut up just with self and shuts out all others you shut out more than you shut in. And so when

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one says I love you that's reaching out to others we are made to love. That expresses not only an emotion but it expresses a relationship. Love is that which unites persons. There's a union when you say I love you. A union between you and me. That's what love is. A union. I love you. I am concerned about you. I

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I care about you because there is a quality of life that unites us. I love you. There are ties, blessed ties that bind us together. Martin Luther King based his participation and leadership in the civil rights movement on love, agape love. And I think what makes his life so significant is he infused in his

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leadership contribution that quality of love that somewhat sets apart what we find in a lot of civil rights leaders. A lot of times we fight for what's right with hate, with ill will toward others, but he based his participation in his leadership upon love of neighbor. Jesus said thou shall

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love thy neighbor as thyself. That's important, sometimes we overlook that. Love thy neighbor as thyself. In other words, love yourself, but love neighbor as thyself. And unless we really love ourselves, we cannot love our neighbor. They go together. Love thy neighbor. So a healthy self-interest, a healthy, I say,

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self-interest, to be healthy in your concern about yourself. That's important that you have that, that each of us would have it. That's good for us, but life has significance for us when we reach out, when we love neighbor. I was in a sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta two months before his

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assassination that Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of his death and his funeral and he said that he wanted one day when his funeral on that day he said would be conducted not that he was a Nobel Prize winner but to say that Martin Luther King tried to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit those in prison, and

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to love, to love, to love and to serve humanity as a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness. To love, to love. And when we look back at the Montgomery Buscott and all of the crusades for social justice in which he was engaged, he instructed his followers in the necessity to love all people. To love. And

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I think as we look at what love is, it's the sumum bonum of life. It's the greatest virtue. It's the thing that we need most. What the world needs now is love, love. Friedrich Nietzsche, that great German philosopher said that love was a sign of weakness. A lot of people really believe what this philosopher

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totally. It's a sign of weakness. That when you turn the other cheek, when you really love enemies, people who mistreating you, that's a sign of weakness. And when we talk about what the Christian standard is and how we should love those who persecute us, who speak all manner of evil against us falsely, to

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love them you'll hear somebody say you know I'll never be that weak because the way the world looks at it is a sign of weakness but Agape says I love you because you are you. Because you are made in the image of God I love you because I I believe in the sacredness of human personality.

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I love you because God made you. I made you because God made you. I love you. I love you not because of what you do to me or for me,

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but I love you in spite of what you do. I love you. And that was what the movement was based on. Turn on the fire hoses, bring on the dogs, put me in jail, but in spite of what you do, I love you, I accept you, I recognize that you are made in the image of God, and I care about you, I'm concerned about you, I love you.

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It's a sign of strength. So strength to love is what we all need. Strength to love. Love of self and love of neighbor.

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Strength to love. And one of the worst things that has happened, or can happen to a person, is not to love yourself. The next to that is being unable to love neighbor, to love other people, and to be unable to love your enemies. But then love of self and love

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of neighbor is related to love of God because you can't do those without the love of God, love of God, and that's really what the psalmist points up for us here. We said, "Lord, I love you." One cannot really love God without loving neighbor. That's what John reminds us of. If you say that you love your brother

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that lives with you, the one that you are related to in concrete actions day by day if you say you love God and hate your neighbor, so then you are a liar. You cannot love God without love of neighbor. Because it is the love of God in our hearts, it's the love of God that somehow permeates

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our lives. It's the love of God that enables us to have a healthy acceptance of ourself and to have the right relationship to others. And so the psalmist says,

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"Lord, I love you because he knows that he is loved." It's a wonderful thing to know that you're loved. I think the thing that really has changed our lives is that somehow we discovered early in our lives

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that somebody loved us. Somebody cared for us. before we knew who we were. They were caring for us. And so you see what is really expressed in this word is that theology is doxology. Theology is doxology.

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If you really know the Lord, to really know God, and that's what theology is. Theology just means God talk. If you can really know God and really talk about God from an experience of God, if you really know God, to know God is to praise God. So theology is doxology. Someone who doesn't know the Lord, you're not gonna

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hear him say anything much about the Lord, they don't know him. But if you really know him, if you know what God has done in your life, if you can see the hand of God in human history, if you know him, you can praise his name. And the psalmist here in these 50 verses in the 18th number of the psalm has doxology. He praises God. He knows that God is love,

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that he dwelleth in love, and that love dwelleth in God, and God in him. And you see, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear.

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And we love God because he first loved us. And so the eternal word, the word that becomes flesh and dwells among us, eternal word confronts the bold believer saying do you love me that's what Jesus

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says to Peter Peter son of Jonah do you love me Peter say oh Lord you know I love you he says to him feed my lambs Again he says to him, "Peter, Peter, son of Jonah, do you really love me?" "Oh Lord, yes!"

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"Feed my sheep." Again the third time he asked him, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know that I love you. You know everything. You know that I love you." And he says to him, "Feed my sheep."

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That question from the eternal confronts every one of us in our heart of hearts. Do you love me? Do you really love me? And so often when a person is asked that question we, "Oh yes I like you. I like you." It's different between liking and loving. I like it.

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You know, we can tolerate a lot of things. But love goes beyond toleration. Love somehow reaches to the very depths of our existence. Love!

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We are made to love. We need love most of all. If we would pursue the divine dream for all mankind, we must have that strength to love.

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Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart with all thy mind with all thy soul and body love All of me all of you Lord, I love you In other words all of me

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Take all of me So often we want to ration out a little of it That's not that's not what the psalmist is talking about when he when he looks at his life and he recognizes that God has delivered him, he has snatched him from the jaws of

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death, he has healed him, he has driven away his enemies and all that he is and hopes to be, he recognizes it's because of God and he cries out, "Lord, I love you, I love you, I love you." He recognizes that he's made by God. He recognizes the fact that he's molded by God, that God has shaped his life, that God has delivered him and sustained him.

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And so he expresses his relationship to God with doxology. Praise God. Praise God. I love you." And so he's able to say praise God as we say, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Praise God. He's my shield. I love the

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Lord we sing he heard my cries when you really know him you know what he has done for you. I love him, I love him because he heard my cries and pitted every grove. As long as I live and troubles rise I'll hasten to his throne. I love the Lord! He bowed his head and chased my griefs away. Oh let me now no more despair while I have strength to pray. I love the Lord. That's a personal statement. It's a

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personal statement, not a question. But it's a statement that every person has to make for himself. It's personal. I love him. You can say to someone, I love you. You can't do this by proxy. No one else can do it for you. You have to do it for yourself. No one else can have your love, you have to have it for yourself and you have to express it for yourself and hear, hear today I love the Lord.

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You know some people say well some people are just fair weather Christians. But love is like that. Love embraces all, all, all kinds of weather, all kinds of experiences. Be able to say I love the Lord. Sometimes we don't know why the Lord permits certain things to happen in our lives Why certain things occur when they do. We don't really understand all that but nevertheless we can join with the psalmist in saying

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I love the Lord. We come now to our hymn of invitation to the Lord. We extend the privilege of the church Father I stretch my hands to thee. We don't have that in our hymnal but I

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believe most of us know those words and we can sing to this tune. Father I stretch my hands to thee no other help I know thou withdraw thyself from me or with us shall I go. We stand now, this privilege, this time of decision for us to join in making that affirmation by uniting with the people of God here, making a decision for Jesus Christ

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by letter, by Christian experience, or profession of faith. We invite you to come now. [MUSIC PLAYING] (dramatic music) [MUSIC PLAYING]

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(chanting) [Music] ♪ Our love was fresh ♪ ♪ And to me ♪

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♪ More than wine ♪ ♪ I'll go ♪ ♪ If I'll be drawn ♪ ♪ By the swift coming ♪

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] ♪ I will do ♪

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♪ Before I drew my breath ♪ ♪ Before I drew my breath ♪ ♪ One day I'll be free ♪ ♪ I was born secure ♪

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♪ My soul brought in this land ♪ - Let me bow our heads. O gracious God, our Father, the words I love you, the sweetest words that human lips may utter.

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We thank you for that experience related to those words. And we thank you that for those of us who are rightly related to you, that it's not just a statement that rolls off of the lips,

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that it's not just an emotion, but it's more than a statement. It's more than an emotion that manifests our feelings, but it's a relationship, a relationship to ourselves,

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a relationship to each other. Most of all, it's a relationship to you. And we thank you that in our heart of hearts, we can truthfully say, "Lord, I love you."

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And help us to manifest this proclamation in our lives moment by moment, day by day. Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord cause his face to shine upon you

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and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace now and always. Amen.

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[MUSIC PLAYING] [CHOIR SINGING] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]