Love is a Process and a Product (May 12, 2024)

The speaker expresses gratitude for their mother and other influential women in their life. They reflect on the qualities of these women and how they taught them to love God, others, and themselves. They also mention celebrating Mother's Day and their wedding anniversary. The speaker then discusses a Bible passage about running the race of life with patience and looking to Jesus. They emphasize the importance of laying aside weights and sins and seeking to conform to the image of Christ. They praise the resilience and determination of their mothers and other mothers who faced adversity. The speaker compares love to soul food, emphasizing that it is a process and a product. They encourage mothers to continue teaching love through their actions and remind others that love is more than just words. This morning, as we celebrate on this Mother's Day, and as we magnify the Lord and say to Jesus Christ, again, we are grateful to pause, to cherish, and to honor our mothers, those who are part of this fellowship, those who we remember and we reflect upon. And I'm grateful, certainly, that my mother, Mama Delia, as we would call her affectionately, I'm grateful that I was surrounded by a great cloud of matriarchs, within and without the Church of God by faith. I thank God for my mom's best friend that we affectionately called Aunt Maude. And I'm equally thankful to have known great women growing up in Gainesville who have gone on to be with the Lord like Mama Delia. And as I, Sister Annette, along with you and Sister Wilma, were out of Copeland and cleaning the gravesides, that I was thinking about some of the great mothers like Mother Catfish, Mother Gore, and Mother Barron, and Mother Glovene Isaac, and Mother Thelma McKnight, and Mother Middleton, and Mother Monuil, and Sister Lee, and Sister Odessa, and Mother Burner, Mother Thomas, Sister Minifield, Mother Washington, Sister Berry, Sister Rember, and Mother Bessett, and even Sister Vivian McKnight. And all of these women, they were women of great intellect, and great wit, and great charm. They were women of impeccable resilience, and strong determination, and solid character. They had an amazing and a great imagination. They could make you laugh, and make you feel good, and all at the same time, they could make you think and envision the future. And they taught me, and I think their legacy, I believe, lives within me as I do what I do, but they taught me that it was okay to love God, to love others. And really importantly for me today, they taught me that it was okay to love me. That's what they taught us. Regardless of how we were born, they knew that we were created to do greater works in Christ Jesus, and that's the direction that they were pointing to us. Not only by their words, but also by their works. And for the great women, for the great women who are on the line, including my lovely bride, I know for a fact that you all possess these qualities, too, and as a servant leader, I'm so fortunate and humbled to have the opportunity to even know you, to learn from you, and amazingly have this opportunity to share with you the glorious gospel of Christ Jesus. I know some of you don't know this, but I'll share it now, that in fact today, family, not only are we celebrating in my house, in our house, Mother's Day, but Chiquita and I have a twofer, because we're also celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary, and honey, I love you, I love you, I love you. I thank God for the body that is not an adversity, it's not an adversary, but it is an anniversary, and God is good, God is good, and I'm so glad that the Father brought me even further into his presence when he led me to her office at the bank, thank you, Jesus, I'm so blown away that God would allow me to find the love of my life by attempting to facilitate a financial transaction just to get some money to a family member in need, and while I'm trying to do that, thank God that he was also seeing my need, and he let me find a good thing. Oh, the word says that whosoever finds a wife finds a good thing, I thank God, hallelujah, for being good, and he allowed me to find my good thing. So again, we're having a twofer today, and I promise not to hold you one, so we can continue on with our celebration, and this morning, we're gonna go back basically where we left off last week, and we're gonna reflect upon chapter 12, Hebrews, verses one and two, and I read, wherefore seeing we also are compassed about, with so great a cloud of witnesses, and as a parenthetical, so great a cloud of patriarchs and matriarchs, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let's run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. We pray that God will, through his word and through his will, will amplify the essence and the principles of what he desires for us to know in this time, so we will conform to the image of his son, Jesus Christ, amen. Family, just like me, I am sure that you have your own personal reflections and personal accounts of a great cloud of witnesses, and indeed, because it is Mother's Day, a great cloud of mothers and matriarchs who live lives reflective of what it really means to lay aside every weight and sin which can so easily beset us in a country that has systematically created often a hostile environment for so many who look like us. It is obvious to me that my mother and the other mothers around me while I was growing up, that they persevered, not because of what they had, but who had this. I'm grateful that God had him in his everlasting arms, and they were not at the time that they were born in the United States of America, they were not born with a silver spoon in their mouths. They were not born with privilege, they were not born with the same opportunities of liberty and wealth and education that I was born in, and that my children are born in. But they did along the way, they had the privilege and the opportunity to be born again. In the face of adversity and hardship, they could have caved in, they could have given in, they could have given up, they could have felt sorry for themselves, they could have conformed to the image, the thoughts, and the words of a hostile country, hallelujah. But the Word and the Wind, hallelujah, the Scriptures and the Spirit were inside of them, and the Word and the Wind, the Scriptures and the Spirit instilled within them a drive and a will to just go ahead, and in their lives they showed us a more excellent way. In the essence of their talk and in their walk, in their own swagger, our mothers declared and demonstrated, I shall not die, but live, hallelujah, live, live, and declare the works of the Lord. On yesterday, again, as we were cleaning the graves, Sister Annette, they were, in my mind, in my spirit, declaring through what we were doing by honoring them at the gravesides, yes, they were declaring, hallelujah, as we were laying the fresh flowers, that the children of God, by faith, shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord, hallelujah. It is often the case that what we need to lay aside is laziness, slothfulness. Our mothers taught us, yes, that faith without works is dead, that gospel singing without works is dead, that church offerings without works is dead, that love without works is dead. Our gospel, our faith, is more than what I'm hearing echoed so many times in the so-called church. It's more than just to declare and to decree. What we have is a relationship that declares and demonstrates, and if I had a subject today, it would be simply that love is a process and a product. Love is a process and a product. That's what good mothers remind us around the dinner table about, that love is, just like good soul food, love is a process and a product. And God would show us through our mothers that when we are eating of what they have prepared for us, that love is what love does. The food on the dinner table, it didn't just materialize through some miraculous manner from heaven. The food got there prepared through a process. Now, Mama, there you would. She would buy the food, and then she would wash the food, and she would prep the food, she would season the food, and then it would seem like she would cook the food all day. She was a person who understood the science of time management, and then she would place the food on the table, and love was all in that food. If you ever had an opportunity to eat at her hands, and love was all in that food because Mama Delia followed the process. The food wasn't microwaved, it was slow-baked. It was prepared well. And like good soul food, once again, love is a product and it's also a process. And I don't know if y'all remember, if you still do it, we do it here in this household, but before we ate the food, we would say the grace. And the grace was a simple prayer, it was a simple blessing over the food, and we would say it something like this, Lord, we thank you for the food that we're about to eat. And the hands that prepared it, and the bodies to receive it, amen, a simple prayer, a simple blessing. And as we're eating that food, the love was all in that food because, you know, at the same time that we're thanking God, we're also thanking God and asking God to bless the hands that prepared it, and the bodies to receive it. And I'm not sure, as a kid, I'm not necessarily picking up on this, but the reason I believe that the food was so good is that every time we said the grace, we were in actuality asking God and praying for a special blessing over our mothers. God, we ask you to just bless the hands that prepared it, hallelujah. We were praying for mama too, right there. Yeah, we're thanking God, but we also, and it's so equally as important to do it now, when we gather around the dinner table, God, bless the hands that prepared it. So every time we said that, we were no doubt asking God to bless mama. Even now we're saying it, bless mama, Lord, bless the hands that prepared it. So this morning as I close out, I just want to encourage our mothers to keep reminding us that love is what love does. Keep drilling it and keep doing it by reminding us that love is a process and a product. Keep showing us that love is more than a declare and a decree. Keep teaching us that faith without love is dead. Praise and worship without love is dead. Giving us offerings and tithes without love is dead. Keep teaching us, not only in what you say, but also in what you do, even when you find us all jacked up, keep reminding us, hallelujah, that love is a process and a product. Love is patience. Love is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not boast. Love is not proud. Love does not dishonor others. Love is not self-seeking. Love is not easily angered. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. The father never fails. Mama never fails. Daddy never fails. Mamas keep teaching us. Keep teaching us that if it ain't love, it ain't God, because God is love, and love never fails. Amen. Amen. Amen.