Radical Love

Mercy Culture Church exists to take people from corporate encounters with God to daily personal encounters with God. Each year we pray and ask God for His heart and His mind over that next year. This year, we heard the Lord say 2025 will be a year of Radical Love! Join us over the next 5 days to learn what it means to radically love God with everything you have.Mercy Culture Church

Day 1

Scriptures: Job 1:8-9, Job 13:15, Matthew 22:37, Micah 6:8

A Year Of Radical Love 

RADICAL LOVE IS LOVE FOR NO REASON

Mercy Culture Church exists to take people from corporate encounters with God to daily personal encounters with God. Each year we take time to pray and ask God for His heart and His mind for that next year. This year, we heard the Lord say 2025 will be a year of Radical Love!

In the Job 1, Satan approaches God, proposing the only reason Job serves God and fears Him is because of the blessings God has given him. God then permits Satan to take everything away from Job, except his life. Throughout the book, we see Job suffer loss after loss, but still steadfast His faith in God. Through testing and tribulation, Job showed His love for God was not built on what God blessed Him with. Rather, Job loved God radically, because He loved God for no reason at all. When you love God for no reason, no reason can take that love!

When you catch this revelation of radical love, you will grow to love God with everything you have. Jesus in Matthew 22:37 teaches the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Over the next 5 days, you will learn what it means to love God with everything you have. Once you radically love God, you can begin to radically love the people around you with His heart. 

PRAYER

Father, thank you for loving me radically! Replace the ideas of love I have with Your love. Help me to love You with everything I have. Highlight what doesn’t please you in me and give me Your heart for this year. Amen. 

APPLICATION

  • Prepare your heart, soul, and mind to receive God’s heart for the word of the year. 
  • Write down the reasons you love God. 
  • Evaluate which reasons reflect the character of God and which reflect the blessings He’s given you.
Day 2

Scriptures: Matthew 22:37, Proverbs 4:23, Matthew 6:21, Psalms 139:23-24

Love With All Your Heart 

EVERYTHING YOU DO FLOWS FROM THIS

Love with all your heart (Matthew 22:37). The term “love” used here is the word “agape.” This word is one of four used to describe the feeling of love in Greek. The first three types of love all have to do with how you would feel towards family, friends, or even spouses. Agape love, on the other hand, is the highest and deepest form of love.You may have heard this type of love only used in relation to God’s love for you, but Jesus chooses the same word to dictate the type of love He wants from you. 1 John 4:19 also teaches, “We love because he first loved us.” Before you can love any thing else properly, you must understand His great love for you. 

The word for heart in Matthew 22:37 translates to “the center of your physical and spiritual life.” Proverbs 4:23 teaches us to guard our hearts, for everything we do flows from it. Physically, we also know this to be true, as from our heart flows blood, which is transported to every cell of our bodies. What’s flowing from your heart? Is it love, purity, devotion to God? Or is pain, wounding, or offense flowing? Take time to evaluate this in yourself by praying the prayer David prayed in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” 

Know that loving God with all of your heart means to love Him unconditionally with everything you have. First receive His love for you, then give it right back to Him! As He highlights impurities in your heart, repent and give more of your heart to the Father. As you radically love God, you are loving Him the same way He loves you, which impacts everything you do! 

PRAYER

Father, thank you for loving me. Search me and know my heart. Keep offense far from me. I desire to please you. Give me your heart. Amen. 

APPLICATION

  • What area in your life needs to be touched by the love of God today? 
  • What’s hindering you from loving God today? 
  • Bring those areas to God and ask Him to teach you how to love Him through this. 
Day 3

Scriptures: Matthew 22:37, Genesis 2:7, Psalms 42:1-2, Colossians 1:16, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Luke 22:42, John 14:15

Love With All Your Soul 

NOT MY WILL BUT YOURS BE DONE

Love God with all your soul (Matthew 22:37). The first time “soul” is used in the Bible is in Genesis 2:7 when God is breathed into man the breath of life, from which man was made alive. Your soul was made by the breath of God, giving you inherent value! You don’t exist for yourself, but for God because He gave you life (Colossians 1:16). Therefore, loving God with all your soul is a reverence, knowing you exist because of Him and for Him. Psalm 42:1-2 reads, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God…” Your ultimate soul satisfaction is found in living for God. He is your life’s greatest purpose and without Him, you will always come up empty. 

Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:6 teaches, there is “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” If He is your life’s greatest purpose, then to love God with all your soul is to make Him the true Lord of your life! “**Lord” means “master” or “he who has the power of deciding.” Many people have prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer,” but haven’t obtained the full gift of salvation found in making Jesus the Lord of their life. Making Jesus the Lord of your life is submitting to Him, yielding deciding power over your life to God. 

Jesus modeled this for us in the Garden of Gethsemane saying, “not my will, but yours, be done” to the Father, moments before being arrested, and eventually crucified (Luke 22:42). Jesus traded His will for the Father’s in that moment because He loved Him radically and because He loved you radically. We must follow Jesus’ example by preferring His will over our own. If you radically love Him with all your soul, you will obey Him (John 14:15)! 

PRAYER

Father, I exist because of You. Thank You for Your breath of life. I choose to live for You alone. Not my will, but yours be done in my life, Lord. I choose to give You all the glory. Amen. 

APPLICATION

  • What ares of your life have you not submitted to God? 
  • Take time to repent for this and submit yourself completely to The Father! 
Day 4

Scriptures: Matthew 22:37, Romans 12:1-2, Philippians 4:8, 2 Corinthians 10:4-6, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16

Love With All Your Mind 

SURRENDER YOUR THOUGHTS

Love God with all your mind (Matthew 22:37). Radically loving God with your mind is taking every thought captive. When you take thoughts captive, you are asking God to remove every thought that isn’t from Him and replace them with only what pleases Him. You surrender your thoughts and give them to Him! Paul in Romans 12:1-2 teaches us this concept. As you commit to worshiping God as a living sacrifice, you are surrendering all you’ve ever known to Him and choosing to renew your mind to God, His Word, and His Spirit. Loving God with your mind commands transformation! 

What we experience can shape our worldview, but as we are born again, remember we are given the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). We are given wisdom and insight to understand the deep things of God.This includes your thoughts! You can think the thoughts of God because you have the Spirit of God living in you! Paul in Philippians 4:8 teaches us, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” 

As you take your thoughts captive, make them obedient to God, and think the thoughts of God, you are loving God radically with your mind. Trust God in this process. As you radically love God with your mind, you are being transformed into His image! 

PRAYER

Lord, thank you for giving me the mind of Christ! Teach me to love you with all of my mind. I choose to meditate on your ways alone. Amen. 

APPLICATION

  • Take your thoughts captive today by writing them down—the good and the bad. 
  • Surrender these thoughts to God and renew your mind to His truth. 
  • Ask God how to show you how love Him with all of your mind. 
Day 5

Scriptures: Micah 6:8, Romans 5:6-11, Matthew 5:43-48, Matthew 18:21-35, Luke 7:47-50

Love Mercy 

LOVING MERCY IS LOVING LIKE GOD LOVES

God gave you mercy when you deserved judgement—this is His invitation into radical love! 

A simple definition of mercy is “undeserved kindness.” Throughout the Bible, you see God giving mercy to those who least deserved it. Romans 5 describes this character of God perfectly saying, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Even when you were an enemy of God, He radically loved you by sending His Son to die for you. You didn’t do a single thing to deserve this gift, yet God gave it freely and mercifully. In the same way that God extends this mercy to us, He commands us to do the same to others. God in Micah 6:8 says, “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Loving mercy is radically loving those who least deserve it!

In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus shares a parable on the unforgiving servant, who after being forgiven a great debt refuses to extend mercy to the one who owed him a little debt. This unforgiving servant loved mercy only when it benefitted him! He refused to give what was given to him because he didn’t have a revelation of the great debt he was forgiven. When you understand how much you have been forgiven, you will show mercy as God commands—even for those who don’t deserve it. In this year of Radical Love, God will teach you how to love your enemies. There are situations in your life that seem impossible, but will only be healed by the love and mercy of God! 

PRAYER

Father, thank you for your mercy. You have forgiven me, so I choose to forgive those who have wronged me. Teach me your ways of loving mercy. Amen. 

APPLICATION

  • Ask God to search your heart for any areas of unforgiveness. 
  • Forgiveness isn’t a one time thing, but often something you have to do over and over again. Take time to forgive by blessing those who have wronged you. 
  • Ask God to teach you how to radically love and show mercy.