The apostle Paul urges Christians to live a life worthy of the calling of Christ and indicates that part of that worthy life is bearing with one another in love. Sometimes it is hard for us to get along with each other; it can be a real challenge. In order for us to bear with one another we need God's help to make every effort to be humble, gentle, and patient with others. The Christian life is not something we do on our own, rather, it is something that we do together. Paul says that unity in the church is the goal. Are you bearing with people in love?

In Ephesians 4:15, Paul tells us to speak the truth in love to one another, thus helping us to grow spiritually in Christ and uniting the body of Christ, the Church. Today, we will look at the need for us to know the Truth, speak the truth, and speak the truth in love. The signs of spiritually immature people are either a loveless truth or a truthless love. It is so important for Christians to combine truth and love if we are to be more and more like Jesus.

In our fourth message, in our Love More; Love Better series, we look at the Christian's need to love the truth in addition to loving God and loving people as they live out the purpose of God in their lives. Loving the truth is necessary for us to be saved. The truth will overlook how we act. If we love the truth, we will obey it. Today we will examine why the truth matters and how we can become people of the truth.

Jesus taught that the whole law and the prophets were fulfilled in obeying the two greatest commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind and with all of your strength" and to "love your neighbor as yourself." In today's message, the Apostle John writes about loving your neighbor (brother) in
1 John 4:20-21. He states that if we claim to love God, but hate our brother, we are a liar and the love of God is not in us. He also writes that love is an action and is demonstrated by what we do for people.

A teacher of the Law has an interaction with Jesus asking Him, which is the most important commandment in God's Word. Jesus answers with two commandments, which summarizes all of the prophets and the Law. Today, we're going to focus on the first command, which is to love God. In our desire to Love More and Love Better, Jesus points out five specific actions to loving God. We can increase our love for God by applying these five actions. Our love directed towards God is the first and greatest commandment.

We start the New Year by focusing on the purpose and reason why the Crescent City Church of Christ exists: "to love God, love people, and love the truth." This is the first message in the "Love More; Love Better" series, which urges us to love one another more and more. The apostle Paul writes to the Thessalonian Christians in 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 to exhort them to increase their love, to lead a peaceful life, to mind their own business, and not to be idle. By obeying these exhortations the believers would establish a good testimony before their non-Christian neighbors, and they would be reliant on nobody except God.