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• 🎧 Listen to the message (audio): YouTube Live – Saying Yes to Freedom: Loving Our Neighbors
• 📄 View/Download the full sermon notes (Google Doc): Sermon Notes – “Saying Yes to Freedom”
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At The Gathering in Colorado Springs, we’ve been sitting with Jesus’ command that sums up the whole Law and the Prophets:

Matthew 22
37 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

This raises the big question:
How do we love our neighbor—especially someone who thinks, lives, or believes differently than we do?

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Learning to Love the Differences

It’s easy to love people who agree with us. It’s much harder to love across the lines of difference—whether political, generational, cultural, or personal.

Jesus isn’t calling us to tribalism. He’s calling us into His own life, where love bridges divides. That means:

• Loving the differences.
• Not feeling threatened by the differences.
• Loving in spite of the differences.
• Seeing the other through the eyes of God.

If love is the measure, then union is the foundation. We love not out of scarcity or fear, but from the indwelling life of Christ.

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Standing Into Christ

I once had a dream I call the “Stand Up” dream. I was in a foxhole, crouched in fear. Jesus kept urging me, “Leah, stand up.” But when He stood beside me, His stature was twenty feet tall. I realized—I can’t stand in my own strength. But as I stepped into Him, into His very body, I grew into His full stature.

That’s the invitation: to see through His eyes, to live from His perspective. When we stand into Christ, we begin to see our neighbors not as “others” but as those who share our genesis in God.

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Born From Above

In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus: “Unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

The Mirror Bible paraphrases it like this:
“The very fact that it is possible to perceive that I come from God as a human being confirms that we did not merely begin in our mother’s womb. There is another birth which points to mankind’s joint-genesis from above.”

This changes everything. We don’t begin in Adam. We begin in God. That means every person we meet carries divine origin. To love our neighbor is to honor that shared beginning.

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A Dream of Freedom: “You Don’t Have to Stay Here”

Years ago, I had a dream of hell. Jesus invited me to join Him on the cross. When we died together, He said, “Now we are going to preach in hell.” I protested: “How do you preach the Gospel in hell?”

His answer was simple: “Tell them they don’t have to stay here.”

We walked through catacombs filled with open cells—cells without bars. Inside one, I saw my grandmother and aunt. At first, they couldn’t see Jesus. But as I repeated the words, “You don’t have to stay here,” light filled their faces. Suddenly they could see Him. Together we ran out of the catacombs and into freedom.

This dream has stayed with me. Captivity can look like a stone cell—or like shame, despair, unforgiveness, or fear. The Gospel doesn’t shame the captive. It announces liberty: “You don’t have to stay here.”

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Scripture Echoes of Liberation

• “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives…” (Luke 4:18)
• “Through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death…and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” (Hebrews 2:14–15)
• “Having disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them…” (Colossians 2:15)

This is the Gospel: the light has dawned, the prison doors are open, and Christ is with us even in the depths.

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Loving Our Neighbor Through Empathy

Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That love looks like empathy.

• Cognitive empathy – understanding what someone else is feeling.
• Emotional empathy – feeling with them.
• Compassionate empathy – moving to action to help.

As Brené Brown says, “Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection.”

Paul writes: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15)

And Hebrews 4 reminds us that Jesus Himself is our empathetic High Priest: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are.”

Because Christ has entered our weakness, we are freed to enter the pain of others—not with pity, but with presence.

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Reflection & Response

• Name the cell: Where do I feel stuck behind “no bars”?
• Hear Jesus’ line: What happens in me when I hear, “You don’t have to stay here”?
• Speak the Gospel: Who in my life needs this gentle word of freedom?
• Move with the Light: What is one practical step—confession, conversation, prayer, or help—that looks like running out of the catacombs this week?

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Invitation

If you’re in Colorado Springs and looking for a church family, we’d love to welcome you. At The Gathering, we’re rooted in the Gospel, gathered in prayer, and growing in the Word.

📍 Join us Sundays at 10:00 a.m. (now meeting in our new location on Garden of the Gods Road).
Find directions, listen to past sermons, and download notes here: the-gathering.us

🎧 You can also listen to this week’s message (audio only) on YouTube: Saying Yes to Freedom: Loving Our Neighbors

Together, let’s say yes to freedom—and yes to loving our neighbors as ourselves.