Let me start out again with our scripture from 1 John 4:16
We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.
Sometimes we get mixed up in this world about what real love is! If we don’t understand real love, we can end up feeling like we are merely a doormat for people to run over and wipe their feet on.
While love is active and we lay down our lives for others, as we will discuss, we need to clarify how God loves, and we must allow Him to love through us in the same way.
You will read in the scripture things like
Jeremiah 31:3
….“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love, I have drawn you to myself.”
But then we read God’s judgments, his sending Israel and then Judah into captivity. How does that seem like God really loves?
Let me ask you a practical question that some of you can relate to very well.
A drug addict comes to you in severe pain; they are asking you for money to buy drugs. Your compassion recognizes their pain and breaks your heart, making you want to relieve their suffering. What do you do?
Our world system, as one mayor in California proposes, advocates providing them with needles and drugs to alleviate their pain. I believe God would choose to allow them to experience more pain to break the addiction, while consistently holding and loving them through their suffering until they find freedom. Providing them with drugs enslaves them; in my opinion, even administering methadone or suboxone for months and years on end keeps them in bondage. God desires for them to be free.
God sent Israel into captivity because of their sin, but while there, they prospered; He kept His hand on them. How do we know? Millions went into captivity, and when they were freed to return to Israel, only tens of thousands came back. In fact, even during Jesus and Peter’s time, one of the largest groups of Jews was still in Babylon, Peter wrote one, possibly both of his letters from there.
Two sides of God’s love
Chesed (chehh-sed)
– loving-kindness – deep unconditional love even to those who don’t deserve it.
– mercy and compassion – giving and empathy. It represents a sense of empathy and a willingness to alleviate suffering, often displayed in moments of need.
– steadfast Love – embodies unwavering loyalty and faithfulness, even in the face of adversity or disloyalty.
BUT….
It is also similar to a contractual obligation, and actually goes beyond that to a type of love- a personal bond that enables you to become who you are designed to be.
God’s love is always unconditional, full of mercy, compassion, and empathy; it is loyal and unwaveringly faithful, but it also will focus us to become who God has designed us to be
We too must love both ways
The way we are called to love is much more than a human emotion or feeling, it is God himself loving through us.
1 John 3:19,20
Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God. 20 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.
We need to always remember that God will never give up on us. He holds us when we need to be held, lifts us when we are down, guides us in all ways, forgives us, and strengthens us when we blow it, and aids us in becoming who He designed us to be, so we become the masterpieces he has planned
His love does all of this through us and for us! We can not produce this kind of love on our own, but it can live through us every day if we choose to allow Him to love through us!
We have to understand that loving God’s way is not our work…..”I’m going to love this person even if it kills me!” It is more of an act of your will to surrender to say, “God, I can’t love the way you want me to. Get me out of the way, and you love them through me!”
Remember these words of Jesus…
John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
And these words from Paul
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Our love for people gets offended; we have expectations that those around us may or may not be aware of. Our love feels rejected if everything doesn’t go our way.
These are things we have gotten used to in our culture as our rights, but are they really? Did Christ demand his own rights?
But pastor, what if I love this way and my spouse doesn’t love me this way in return? First, that is why we marry Christians rather than doing evangelistic dating. But if you are stuck already understand this…Secondly…
God’s love is not automatic…
Many believe, “I am a Christian, I have God’s love, all I need to do is name it and claim it and I’ve got it!” When we come to Christ, we have God’s love in our hearts, but it doesn’t automatically flow out into our lives
All of our fears, all of our hurts, justified by the world’s standards, anything we hold onto and keep, and entertain over and over again will quench God’s love in our hearts.
The first original negative thought of worry, fear, anxiety, is not going to quench God’s love it is simply what we choose to do with it next. It is when we hold onto it that it begins to control what we feel, what we think and what we do. We have to choose to allow that love to grow in us and through us…That is why Paul said
Philippians 4:8, 9
8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
This is the beginning of what I had mentioned last week that Paul was referring to in…1 Timothy 1:5
The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.
Choosing the purity of heart that we recognize the challenges of negative thinking but instead choose to think God’s way battling to overcome a lack of love and giving in to self.
Self is all of our thoughts, emotions, and desires that are contrary to God.
But here is where we can get a little mixed up. As I mentioned at the beginning of this teaching, even though we are killing off, self, it does not mean we are a doormat for others to take advantage of.
The accountability side of love holds those we love to become who they are called to be, not out of our arrogance, pride, or hurt—woundedness, as I had mentioned. It is not self, but instead, it is truth and love that make us strong, not a doormat in our loving of others.
Let’s go back to a scripture I shared earlier and the verse right before it.
1 John 3:18,19
Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. 19 Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.
Our love must always be true, true to God’s purposes. We ask the Lord to help us see people through Jesus’ eyes so that we love them enough to speak the truth to them in a way they can understand. Remember this story: Jesus is telling the disciples that God’s plan is for him to die, and this is Peter’s response.
Matthew 16:22,23
But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”
Jesus loved Peter greatly, but at that moment, rather than having the Spirit of God alive in him, he had Satan controlling his attitude, with Peter acting as if he knew better than God! We must love people enough to prevent them from deceiving themselves into walking in a lie, to even religiously appearing as though they are walking in love and truth when they are not.
How do we do that, how do we know when someone is in deception, Jesus told us..
John 8:31,32
Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. 32 And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Love is not as easy a concept as we may have thought.
– God’s love is active, something we do, something we must choose.
– God’s love is upon all who are born again, but it is not automatic; we must initiate its growth within us.
– To effectively love, we must know God’s word and walk in the truth of His word.
John 14:6
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
Jesus is truth, life, love, and the way. As we surrender, we walk in all of that as well! His word is so needful for us to understand love. Next week we start in the book of First John!