Category: Love

Love Lives

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Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 1 John 2:9

14-03 Sunset 3

God’s instruction for us is really pretty simple. We make it complicated. His message is straightforward – Love one another. Love God.

As Paul said, we can have faith to move mountains, but if we do not have love, we are empty. If we do not have love, there is no benefit to us. If we do not have love, we do not have God. Faith, hope and love are the measure, and the greatest of these is love.

Is love evident in your life? If we know God, love will be evident in our lives. We know God if we keep his commands. (1 John 2:3) The greatest commandment is to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Love is not measured by the number of church services we attend, the amount of money we put in the collection plate or the number of church committees we are on. Love lives in the moment, every moment, of our lives. “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” (1 John 2:6)

There is a great book by Bob Goff called, “Love Does“. I think John is telling us that Love also lives.

John lived with Love. He lived with Jesus. He talked and slept and ate and walked with Jesus. Jesus lived among people – and not just church people. His followers were not “church people” when you get right down to it. Jesus lived love, and we are told to do the same.

Love is kind, love is patient, love is long suffering, love keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not boast love does not envy, love is not proud, love does not dishonor others, love is not self-seeking. Love always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

If we give everything we own to the poor, but do not love, we have nothing. (1 Corin. 13:3) I believe that “love does”, as Bob Goff says, but love is something more than what we do. Love is who we are. Love lives.

Stepping Into the Light

If we step into the light, our condition is exposed. But, that is where we find truth; that is where we find God

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Psalm 139 is a favorite of mine. It can be very comforting knowing that God is intimately familiar with me. He knows my struggles, my good intentions, what I long for and what I need.

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.

(Psalm 139:1-4) On the other hand, God knows my demons, my sinful thoughts, my envious, hateful, spiteful and selfish thoughts. He not only sees the good things I do and think (that I want others to know); He sees the bad things I do and think (that I want no one to see). The idea that God knows me so well – even better than I know myself – is both a wonderful and a fearful thing!

The amazing thing is that He loves me. He knows me intimately – better than I know myself. and He loves me.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence

(Psalm 139:7) King David’s question is rhetorical of course. The answer is clearly nowhere. Nowhere can I go that God is not present. David takes comfort in that thought.

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.

(Psalm 139:8-10) That knowledge is as unnerving as it is comforting. Nowhere can I go that God is not present and nothing can I do, or even think, that God does not know it. David knew this full well. He learned it intimately through experience.

After he was tempted and succumbed to that temptation, seeing Bathsheba from his roof top, inviting her into his home and lying with her, and then plotting to send her husband to his death to cover up the misdeed, David was called to account by God in dramatic fashion. David’s sin was laid bare. He was completely undone by it. So, David knew well these words:

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

(Psalm 139:11-12) When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden, their first reaction was to hide themselves from God. People have been hiding from God ever since to this day. Hiding from God is as futile an exercise as it is foolish. God knows every hair on our heads and every thought that runs through our heads. He surely knows every action that we take. There is nothing hidden from God.

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