Who can tell me the first miracle the Bible says Jesus did?

Jesus and his disciples and mother were invited to a wedding. Some time into the reception, the host ran out of wine. All they had left was water, and that's not very celebrative.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus gave him the look... and said to the hosts, "My Son can fix that." She turns. "Jesus, show them."

Jesus gives her the look back. "Mom, really?"

Mary doesn't answer. She just tells the servants, "You just do whatever Jesus says."

Jesus tells them to fill their vessels with water.

They do that... and what do you think happens?

Jesus turns the water into wine. Very good, very expensive, very fine wine, way better than the average wine used in a wedding.

By going to that wedding, Jesus honored every wedding. He stood with everyone everywhere who has ever made vows of commitment and love. Jesus put his permanent stamp of approval on the beautiful, all-important institution of marriage... and from that, on the institution of family.

All year long we are talking about taking giant steps to get unstuck from our past. As part of that, this summer, we are taking a deep dive into what it means to love... the Summer of Love, Jesus Style.

You know, relationships can be the easiest things we do, and the hardest things we do.

So we're trying to overcome the part of our soul that hurts relationship— the flesh.

And we're learning to build relationships that are close and affectionate and bonded and loving.

The Bible says that, in marriage, love is like a fire that grows stronger when you feed it.

"Many waters cannot quench love, Nor will rivers overflow it; If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, It would be utterly despised." (Song of Solomon 8:7)

Love cannot be bought.

But, by God's grace, love can be created.

And that's what we'll be talking about in this message called...

 

 

Let's look at today's key verse:

"But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection [maturity]." (Colossians 3:14)

When you get your act together, which is the word, maturity, here, or perfection, then you have a kind of love where you build a healthy, solid, beautiful bond.

God says you were fearfully and wonderfully made. God wove into you all kinds of machinery and processes to experience Him, and also to go beyond that. He wants you to experience real love, here, on earth, with actual humans, in person.

One of those little machines deep inside your soul is the part of your being that creates bonds.

You have an internal bonder. It helps you with this thing called bonding.

Bonding is a God-given energy by which your soul creates spiritual, intellectual, psychological, and physiological interconnections with another person, held together by affection, and enabling a genuine experience of love.

God gave you a kind of spiritual glue for your relationships. He gave you the internal energy to help you go deeper into love, deeper into intimacy, deeper into friendship, and deeper into relationships.

God gave you a little engine that keeps you from exploding relationships with the people who matter most.

He gave you the gift of bonding. He gave you your Inner Bonder.

Let me give you a simple way of understanding what this is. When a baby chick or duck hatches, they do this thing called imprinting. The first animal they see — and usually that's their mother hen — they form this attachment to that animal.

They follow their mother hen around, and they copy her.

If she pecks bugs off the ground, they peck bugs off the ground.

If a mother duck waddles into a pond and swims around, the baby ducklings waddle into the pond and swim around.

There's an attachment; it's an emotional and psychological bond.

That drive is so strong that if a baby duckling doesn't see it's mother, but sees a human, and the human tends to the baby duckling... who do you think the duckling imprints upon? Right. It imprints upon the human, and follows the human around, and copies it.

It's a kind of emotional bond that takes place, and it is very strong.

In the same way, humans can create bonds too.

When babies are born, they learn to feel safe, and warm in a loving mother's arms. In a loving father's arms. Babies bond through gentle touch. Through the soothing sound of mom and dad's voices. Through nursing. Through cuddling and hugging.

When you do it right, these bonds create a lot of happiness for you. They make grace real in your heart, real in your psychology, real in your experience.

I hope and pray my message today can give you the wisdom you need for a lifetime of good choices leading to a lifetime of real, lasting, deep-rooted love in your life.

I have taught this before, and I'm going to teach it again. Every generation needs to understand the mechanisms of the human heart.