The Love Test

Here's a fun little game you can play at home. It's called The Love Test and, if you win it, you will either be incredibly loved....or dead. Probably both.

Step 1: Make up a list of everyone you love (hopefully, this will take a while). Your spouce, your family, your friends, etc.

Step 2: Take your list and put a check mark next to each person you would be willing to die for. Who would you sacrifice your life for in order to save them?

Step 3: Make a list of all of the people you don't like. All your enemies. Hopefully this shouldn't take very long.

Step 4: Of all of the people on your enemies list, would you be willing to die to save any of them? Put a check mark next to those enemies you'd give up your life for.

How did you do? Jesus took a test like this long before you and I were born. He knows the name of everyone who has ever lived AND who is yet to be born. He chose to die for everyone. On your list. On everybody's list!

Extra credit: Read the following verses and think about them this morning.

"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends." - John 15:13

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." - Matthew 5:43-44

"Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:7-8

If we think we care about someone enough to die for them, good. That's wonderful. But there is no beating God in any test of love. He loves us too much.

But God IS just. And "the wages of sin is death." Jesus died for everyone but we have a choice to make. Will we choose life or death?

The last question in The Love Test is this: Are we ourselves on any of those lists we just made? At some point we must be willing to 'die to self' in order to fully come to life.

"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." - Matthew 10:39