How God’s Love is Essential in Loving Others Well
In this episode, Daron discusses the concept of love and how it relates to Christmas. He emphasizes that love is a choice and that experiencing God’s love is essential in order to love others. Daron encourages listeners to believe that God loves them and to rely on that love in their relationships.
He also highlights the importance of giving and receiving gifts out of love rather than obligation.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️Love is a choice and experiencing God’s love is crucial in order to love others.
⚡️Christmas is a gift from God that demonstrates His love for humanity.
⚡️Trusting and relying on God’s love enables us to love others in a transformative way.
Quotes:
- Christmas is a gift that was given to us because God loves us so much.”
- “Love is a choice. You choose to love someone, and I think one of the greatest struggles that I know I’ve had in my relationship with Jesus, and maybe you can relate to this, I’ve struggled in my life, and I’m on the other side of this now, but I still find myself sometimes battling it is to really believe that God really does love me.”
- “God is for you. He loves you, he likes you, he’s near you, not because he has to be, but because he loves. In fact, he created you for the joy of the relationship. And above and beyond all of that, he took the time, the creativity and the genius to create you on purpose and for a purpose. That’s everything.”
- “Christmas is a choice, most famous scripture in all of the Bible. For God so loved the world that he gave.”
- “The reason this is, is because we’ve said this a ton of times. Once again, stealing the quote from Gary Smalley. Life is relationships. Everything else is just the details. Your life is relationships. And so what Christ has shown us is like, listen, if you want to live life, and you want to live it to the full, the example is to be and do and have the attitude of Christ Jesus, who chose to love, to humble himself, and to give his life as a gift.”
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
I’ve experienced that. So now I’m going to trust and rely on that. That when I’m mad at my wife, or I’m mad at my boss, or I’m mad at my dad, or I’m mad at a best friend, I’m going to choose the attitude of Christ and rely and trust that choosing to love them the way I’ve experienced God’s love is going to bring about life. And guess what? It does.
Tagline: Created on purpose and for purpose.
Welcome back to the Daron Earlewine podcast. And let me just say ho ho ho to you.
If you’re watching on YouTube right now, you’re like, Daron, this is episode 140 something or other, and it’s releasing after Christmas. Why do you have on the Santa coat? Because I’m not giving up, my friends. I’m not giving up. And let me tell you why. One, because I love Jesus. We’re just going to start there. That wasn’t what I was thinking, but it felt like a more spiritual answer. Two, I love Christmas.
Three, my birthday’s in two days. Okay. Four days after Christmas. You’re asking yourself, Daron, was that difficult? Yes, it was difficult. You want to know why? Because I always got the short end of the stick on the birthday. I think we talked about this before, but I got to bring it up because the world needs to know, especially if you have a child that has a birthday anywhere near Christmas. I would get the. Hey, that gift there’s for both.
I know what you’re thinking. If you have a birthday around Christmas, that makes logical sense. But if you have. I have three boys. Two of them have birthdays in July. Can you imagine with my July birthday kids, if I hit them with that? 1 July 15. My youngest son Knox’s birthday. Hey, Knox, we didn’t get you anything this year for your birthday because you remember six months ago, seven months ago, when we had Christmas? Yeah.
That was a two-for-one, right? You didn’t understand. I get it. But that PlayStation game, I was a two-for-one. So appreciate it. Happy birthday. That was my life. Now you understand my insanity. That’s where it all goes to. So, jacket. Also celebrating my birthday. This is a Double whammy. This is Christmas and a birthday jacket. And finally, I live in Indiana. I grew up in Arizona. In Arizona, you’d have Christmas, and then January would come and you would have baseball.
We would really start practicing baseball outside in January. You had to wear a three-quarter sleeve because it was a little nippy outside. Right. A three-quarter thin three-quarter sleeve because it was 68, maybe. Joy to the world. It was great. It was never cold. It was never gray. It was wonderful. I live in Indiana, so what I know is, in the next couple of days, the Christmas season is behind us. My birthday will be done, and then, you know what? I’ll have January, February, and March, which there’ll be a two-week stretch in there. Well, it won’t get over ten degrees.
At least a seven day stretch. Happens every year. It’s going to be cold. It’s going to be gray. You’re going to have snow. Snow is great when it falls. Then after it falls and you plow it a few times and drive on, it just becomes brown grossness. And I’m going to live in that for months. So this jacket is me standing against all of that sadness and trying to suck every last ounce of joy out of the Christmas season. If you listen to the podcast and you’ve never watched it on YouTube, you’re like, what’s he talking about? I don’t even know what Daron looks like, let alone that he’s got a red jacket on. Well, that’s an amazing commercial to say. Head over to YouTube and check out the podcast. It looks amazing.
Producer Coop and our creative director, or email director, what’s PJ saying? PJ? He’s a genius. Amazing beard. I mean, they made the studio look this good. The lights, the Christmas backdrop, those string lights look like they’re really there. I mean, this is not a virtual reality situation, but it’s so good. If you’ve not gone to YouTube, go check it out. Just go to YouTube. Search Daron Earlewine. And then if you never want to watch an episode again, like I’ve told you before, just subscribe to the channel.
It helps it grow, helps us reach more people. You know how all the algorithms. Algorithms? Algorithms in YouTube work? We need more subscribers. Helps people know about. We’re doing. So you can subscribe to the channel and say to yourself, I’ve done something for the Lord today just by subscribing to Daron’s channel. And it’ll be great. Hey, we’re ending this season talking about love. So we’ve had peace, we’ve had joy, we’ve had hope.
And the last we’re talking about here is that Jesus is love around Christmas. And let’s start with this. Have you ever had to give a Christmas present to someone because you had to? You know what I’m talking about. You didn’t really want to give this person a Christmas present, but you had to. Maybe you have a big family. And you guys do the thing where you just draw names. Maybe you have like that one cousin that you just can’t stand them, but you have to be around them because they’re your family.
And you draw the names and you get them. You got cousin Bill and you just can’t stand cousin Bill. He’s your least favorite cousin. But you have to get him a present because it’s Christmas and you drew his name. If you’ve been there before or somebody else in your life, giving a gift that you have to give is not a great experience. I know you’ve had that. The reason that that’s not great is because that is an obligation in duty.
And even though there is great character strength to doing things that you have to do as a duty and that you have to do as an obligation, there’s character development there. There’s not a lot of joy in that. And there’s very little love. Now think about this. Think about the times that you get to give a gift to someone that you absolutely love. Think about the first Christmas if you’re married. Think about the first Christmas you had with your spouse.
Like the first year you got to give them a gift. And you thought about, you’re like, I’m going to be the best husband, best wife ever with this gift. They’re going to cry. It’s going to blow their mind. Think about that. Or you come up with the best gift you could ever think of to give to your mom and dad. If you’ve got a great relationship, great relationship with them. Or this. I thought about this recently.
You remember I have older kids. They’re 19, 1713 now. And I kind of, kind of feel jealous with producer Coop because he’s got little kids and I have boys. And so I’m guessing this is the same for women when they have girls. But I loved buying my boys Christmas gifts when they were little. I was walking through Target the other day and I walked past the toy aisle and I was so excited looking at the toy aisle because as a man, I got to live a childhood again through all my kids’ Christmas presents like Nerf guns, remote control cars.
I’ve video games, so many fun toys that we got to buy them that I was just selfishly excited that I was going to get to play with as well. The amount of times, the hours that I spent playing monster trucks with my boys, it was so much fun. We used to take diaper boxes when they were little and we’d take all the diapers out and you could make a diaper box into the perfect monster truck ramp, and we would play monster trucks all the time.
When you think about, you get to give your son or your daughter a gift, you know they’re going to love. You’re going to love it. That is a completely different emotional experience than giving somebody a gift that you’re obligated and you have to give. And the delineation there is love. When you love someone, you are so excited to give them a gift. And when we’re talking about Christmas and the fact that Jesus is love, we realize this is that Christmas is a gift.
Christmas is a gift that was given to us because God loves us so much. And it comes down to the reality that love is a choice, right? You choose to love someone, and I think one of the greatest struggles that I know I’ve had in my relationship with Jesus, and maybe you can relate to this, I’ve struggled in my life, and I’m on the other side of this now, but I still find myself sometimes battling it is to really believe that God really does love me.
And sometimes that emotion feels like believing that God likes me, too. He doesn’t love me just because he’s obligated to, because he’s God, and God is love. So God does things in my life because it’s his duty, or God does things in my life because he’s obligated to. That’s how I used to feel that, like, on the list of family members, that sometimes God draws my name and I’m kind of like cousin Bill, Uncle Bill.
Like, God has these people where he’s like, man, I really, really love to know Patricia gifts because I love her. She’s awesome. But this year I drew Daron’s name, and I don’t really like him, but I have to love him because I’m God. So I guess I’ll do something good in his life. And so when I receive a gift from God with that kind of mindset, I miss the joy and the love of it because I think he begrudgingly gave it to me.
And maybe that’s just my head trash. And if it is, that’s my journey. And if you don’t battle that, then I’m happy for you. But I’m going to go out in a limb and draw on the experience I’ve had being able to be a pastor, kind of a spiritual guide and advisor to people for a lot of years and say that I think probably you’re somewhere in that same camp. The God is obligated by his duty as a loving God to give you gifts.
My prayer for you this Christmas is that you could get on the other side of that hill and really believe that God is love and he finds great joy in giving good gifts to your life. That’s really the foundation and the bedrock of everything that we try to teach here on the podcast and that we do through our mission, a blackbird mission, right? To awaken you, to become who you’re born to be. The bedrock of that is God is for you.
He loves you, he likes you, he’s near you, not because he has to be, but because he loves. In fact, he created you for the joy of the relationship. And above and beyond all of that, he took the time, the creativity and the genius to create you on purpose and for a purpose. That’s everything. And I think there’s maybe no clearer example of that than Christmas. Christmas was a choice, most famous scripture in all of the Bible.
For God so loved the world that he gave. For God so loved the world, which includes you. Insert your name. He gave the gift of Christmas. He gave his one and only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. So good. It makes me think of the old poem around Christmas. Right towards the night before Christmas, right? All through the house, not a creature whispering, not even a mouse.
Think about this. Think about the night before Christmas in heaven, right? Jesus is in heaven. He’s been. He’s eternal. John, chapter one, says, right in the beginning was God. In the beginning was the word. The word was God, and the word was with God. In the beginning, Jesus had all of the glory, all of the peace, all of the, everything that he had in heaven. And the night before Christmas, he knew, I have to leave all of this.
I have to leave this. I have to empty myself of portions of my glory. There’s a massive theological conversation and debate we could have about that we’re not going to in this episode. But the night before Christmas, it wasn’t like Jesus was like stressed out, sweating, sad, like all the angels, like, oh, man, Jesus has to leave because we’ve got to go do this for all these stupid human beings. But we know God is love, so he’s got to give his one and only son. And there wasn’t like some sad obligation party that happened the night before Christmas.
How do we know? Because when we get a peek behind the curtain of what the angels were doing on Christmas, right, the sky is full of the angels of the heavenly hosts with great joy, right? Proclaiming glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to all human beings in whom his favor and his love rests. It wasn’t an obligation. It wasn’t a duty. It was an amazing, joy-filled, love-filled gift. We get a picture of that in Philippians chapter two.
We’re encouraged to live our lives just like that. Philippians two, starting with verse five. In your lives you must think and act like Christ. Jesus Christ himself was like God in everything, but he did not think that being equal with God was something to be used for his own benefit. But he gave up his place with God and made himself nothing. He was born as a man and became like a servant. And when he was living as a man, he humbled himself and was fully obedient to God, even when that caused his death.
Death on a cross. So God raised him to the highest place. God made his name greater than every other name, so that every knee will bow to the name of Jesus. Everyone in heaven and our earth and under the earth, and everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and bring glory to God the father. Philippians two, five through eleven in the new century version. What caused Jesus to make this choice?
One word, love. Right? It’s all over the scriptures. One, John 316. This is how we know what love is. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. One, John four seven. Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God in one. John 416. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him. Wow. Is it time for you to take your next step towards discovering your purpose, but you’re not sure what to do?
Maybe jumping into the entire Spiritual DNA course seems just like a little too much for you right now. No problem at all. That’s why I want you to know about the five-day jump start to purpose. It’s totally free and it’s a five day audio course you’re going to listen to. Just, it’s really short, like five, six minutes a day. But it’s going to help you. Just, let’s call it an appetizer, right? To help you jumpstart this process towards purpose. It’s free. All you got to do is go to daronearlewine.com/jumpstart. It looks like this right behind me on the screen. You’re going to go there and we’re going to send you the course for free. And I’ll help you take your next step because, hey, we say it every week. I don’t want you forget about it. Right? God’s created you on purpose. And for purpose, let’s jumpstart that purpose. Now, let’s get back to the podcast.
Back to verse five, right? It says, in your lives, you must think and act like Christ Jesus.
The reason this is, is because we’ve said this a ton of times. Once again, stealing the quote from Gary Smalley. Life is relationships. Everything else is just the details. Your life is relationships. And so what Christ has shown us is like, listen, if you want to live life, and you want to live it to the full, the example is to be and do and have the attitude of Christ Jesus, who chose to love, to humble himself, and to give his life as a gift.
And so what we do in this is, it’s twofold. We experience that love, and then we rely on that love. You experience it, and then you rely, going back to what we talked about a couple of episodes ago, God’s doing something in you so he could do something through you. It starts with the in you part. The in you part is that you experience that love for yourself. And so looking at you, just be honest, you get a little compassionately curious with yourself and say, do I see the gift of Christmas as an absolute joy filled gift from God who loves me?
Do I see the arrival of God in my life as something he’s begrudgingly doing or something that he is so overjoyed that he gets to do because he loves me so much? When you can ask God to help you understand and experience that truth, it begins to transform your life so that you begin to live in your life out of that experience of being loved, and you live loved. Once that happens, then you can begin to rely on that love you’ve experienced to give you the courage, the humility, the gratitude, and the faithfulness to love others the way that you have been loved.
You experience it, then you rely on it. We know, and we rely on the love that God has for us. That’s actually right there in first John four, verse 16. And so we know the love God has for us, and we trust that love. That’s the way the NCV says it, the NIV says it, and we know and rely on the love of God. And so the question I have for you is, is your experience of the love of God? Is it something that falls in the category of rumor for you, hearsay?
Or is it something that you would say, no, this is not a rumor like, I’ve experienced this. Because experience is knowledge. And for you to know that God loves you, you have to experience it. What are some ways you do that? Well, you found it on the word of God, right? The written word of God. And then you continue to lean into the spiritual realities of living life. Loved, indwelt by the actual loving spirit of God.
There’s lots of different ways that shakes out some of the practical steps. Right. It’s reading the word. It’s engaging in spiritual disciplines. It’s prayer, it’s journaling, it’s solitude, it’s fasting, all these things that allow us to experience being loved by God. And that brings a transformational process to us that is slower than we’d like it to be, sometimes incremental, to the point where we almost can’t see that it’s happening.
But the ways that we actually see that it’s happening is the moments we go through life and find ourselves trusting and relying on that love we’ve experienced so that we can love others. What does that look like? That looks like I’m in a situation with a tense family situation, and I go, how does God treat me in these situations? Well, he’s slow to get angry with me. He’s long-suffering. He’s merciful, he’s gracious.
God doesn’t scream and yell at me. He’s not angry with me. I’ve experienced that. That in my lowest of lows. When I go to God in repentance, when I go to God with a broken and contrite spirit, I don’t receive condemnation from God. I receive compassion for God. And in that, I’ve experienced his love. So now I’ve experienced that. So now I’m going to trust and rely on that. That when I’m mad at my wife or I’m mad at my boss, or I’m mad at my dad, or I’m mad at a best friend, I’m going to choose the attitude of Christ and rely and trust that choosing to love them the way I’ve experienced God’s love is going to bring about life.
And guess what? It does. And then the cycle continues. It gains speed. And before you know it, you realize that your interactions on a daily basis with people are not founded and are not forged out of obligation and duty, but out of love. And the cool part about that, coming back to that scripture in Philippians, is then what it says is God then elevated Jesus right to the highest level, where every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.
That’s not going to happen to you because you’re not Jesus and you’re not Lord. But what is going to happen is your life is going to be elevated. Your life is going to be exalted because at your name, people aren’t going to bow, right? You’re not God. But what’s going to happen is at your name, in your presence, people are going to experience peace, love, joy, and hope. And I don’t know about you, but I think at the end of my days, when this life is over, what do I want people to say was the experience of being in relationship with me?
I think I want them to go. It was an absolute gift to be loved by Daron. And I think that’s what you want your spouse and your kids and your parents and your best friends and your neighbors to say about you, to experience through you. And then what’s cool is they start to rely on you. They start to trust you. And then your relationships in your life become a gift, not an obligation. Hmm. That’s good.
That’s good. Not because I’m saying it, that’s good because it’s true. And that’s my Christmas wish for you. And that’s my hope and my prayer for you as we are right on the doorstep of a new year. That 2024 would be a year where you experience and rely on the love of God in greater capacity than you ever have. In 365 days from today, you’re looking back with so much hope and peace and joy and love, and realizing, I now see my life as Jesus did, as my life is a gift to be given away, not an obligation or a duty that I have to do.
I get to do my life, and I get to love others because I’ve been loved in the same way. That’s it. I don’t think I can add any more to that. So, with my nice fuzzy red coat and with a heart full of Christmas cheer, I want to thank you so much for this year and for the times that you’ve downloaded that you’ve shared the podcast. Thank you for taking this journey with me and being part of this podcast community.
It’s an absolute gift, an absolute joy to do this for you and with you every single week. And I do it because I love you, because I’ve been amazingly loved by God. So merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and I can’t wait to see what we learn together over the next year here on the podcast as we continue to discover in greater capacity that God is for us, not against us. He’s near us, not far away, and he’s created us on purpose and for a purpose.
Love you guys. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Thank. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast.