Are You Ready to Experience a Love Letter from God?
Good Morning Friends,
Today’s scripture is a love letter. We are to rejoice in it for it is meant to comfort us as individuals, families, couples and as a church. Friends, when I look out at the pews on Sunday I see families but also widows and widowers in the pews. I also see those who have been divorced. The image brings memories of those who have gone before us, as a witness of our faith, but also a testimony to our brokenness and the hope of our unity. We all matter of course, each and every one from the saints above that we love as well as the saints below that we know and hope to love. To love them all is the challenge. But it cannot be forced. To introduce life changing relationships to those here is the goal. Here we discover that God is not only the source of love…that God is love… but that love is not God. That is where the confusion comes. When we love, we prove that we have God’s love to give. We show we belong to God and that God dwells in us. Here love castes out fear. Here we realize we have been blessed to be a blessing. Here we rejoice because God loves us. Here we learn that we are to let God’s love fill us until it overflows into the lives of others. Are You Ready to Experience a Love Letter from God?
Scripture: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
1 John 4: 7-21 (NRSV)
Message: Jesus is serious about us loving one another… It is a command not an option we might choose to obey… I am to love you and you are to love me…the best way we know how. This manifested love shows that we know God… that we know that God is love…that we can love as He has loved us… We are to know the Jesus of joy so that we can all experience the joy of Jesus. This joy…this love is the distinguishing mark of a child of God. It teaches us that we can’t replace love with spiritual gifts. Faith, preaching, service, nor money can replace love. Nothing replaces obedience to this command. It is essential for the Church as well … the Body of Believers must be connected in this mature love or the spiritual life is gone. It is essential to learn to love….essential to obey the command of God to love.
Pray we show God’s love to those closest to us. Pray that the love letters in the Bible are reflected in our lives. Pray that we realize that the author of true love is the Lord. Pray we accept the charge of love from the creator of love so we might wear the crown of love. Pray we celebrate in love for families and the church but most of all for our love of God. Pray that our love would be a Christ like love. Pray that we live in the way of love… that we give feet and hands to our love. Pray that we be overjoyed in the presence of the Lord showing our love for Him as a way of honoring the love He has given us.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 