Today we are going to take a posture of peace by responding to the love of God.
Posture is a short audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything.
Together we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
So this week we've been talking about love, the love of God, and I encouraged you to
receive the love of God, to rely on the love of God, and today I want to encourage you to
respond to the love of God. We are back today in 1 John chapter 4. This chapter is so rich.
I encourage you to read the whole chapter in its entirety today. We're going to be reading portions
of it together starting in verses 7 through 11, and today I'm reading from the Passion Translation.
It says,
Listen to this language.
Loving one another should be our way of life.
Now I said it before, if you've been a Christian for a while you've probably,
I mean well you hopefully have heard about the love of God many many times. Honestly I think
I've heard of it about it so many times that I had started taking it for granted. I didn't even
realize it, but I think that's why the Holy Spirit has even recently in his kindness tapped me on the
shoulder and brought me back to this truth of God's love so that I can plant myself here and
soak it all up again. And with the Holy Spirit's help, I've been practicing getting this truth
about God's love out of my head and into my heart, so that it's not just head knowledge,
but it's a truth that is informing my emotions and influencing my actions. It's not just a truth
that I know, but that I'm actively participating in. And 1 John chapter 4 makes it very clear.
This is a love that God initiated with us. I didn't make it happen. You didn't start it.
We didn't earn it, but we can respond to it. We are in a relationship with God that he initiated
with us. How cool is that? And now we get to respond to it by receiving his love for us,
loving him in return, and loving everyone we encounter with his love. It flows to us,
it flows in us, so that it can flow through us. Now this is not an easy practice, I won't pretend
that it is, because it is so counterculture to the world that we live in. The world only knows
imperfect forms of love. The world is only participating in and responding to imperfect
forms of love. Now I know this is a silly example, but it's a real life example that kind of just
hits the nail on the head. We see people on social media all the time call for love and
unity. It is a deep, I believe, genuine desire of the hearts of all people. But then we see those
same people moments later turn and do something and say something very unloving with someone that
they disagree with online. For the world, love is just an ideal, it's not a reality.
But for the people of the kingdom of God, like you and me, we have been empowered to bring the
reality of heaven to earth. And I used to view that responsibility as almost in a militant mindset,
like it would only be achieved through grit and self-determination. But then I looked to the life
of Jesus when he was here on earth, and I realized Jesus lived in total response to the Father's
love for him. He knew that he knew that he knew he was loved by the Father. He so deeply trusted
that truth through temptation and testing and trials, through receiving accusations,
being misunderstood when he was misrepresented.
left alone, left behind. He did not waver. He knew that the father loved him and
from that relationship with the father flowed a genuine love for the people
around him and heaven was brought to earth. You know, I used to get angry, be
bitter, live in constant disappointment with this world and their inconsistent,
often contradictory, demonstrations of love. But I realized it's because I
wasn't responding to the perfect love of the father, I was just reacting to the
imperfection of this world. And unfortunately through my participation
in that imperfect flow and my obsession with it really, I ended up looking more
like the world than I looked like my heavenly father. Because where we
participate, we replicate. So what does it look like to respond to God's love?
Well, another great chapter in the Bible, Galatians 5, Paul writes about the
freedom that we have in Christ and he talks about how there's nothing gained
by performing rituals. There's no justification that comes from our own
performance. All of that comes through Christ. And in verse 6, he writes
something very interesting. He says, the only thing that counts is faith
expressing itself through love. A trust demonstrated by love. So here's the
response that I've been practicing. Trusting God so completely, trusting in
his perfect love for me so completely, that I do not feel threatened, diminished,
or depleted by the imperfection of this world. Instead, in the midst of the
imperfection, I'm empowered and free to allow his love to flow in me and through
me. Paul writes later in chapter 5 in verse 13, he says, do not use your freedom
to indulge the flesh. Rather, serve one another humbly in love. Going back to
1st John chapter 4, in verse 19, it says this, we love because he first loved us.
Again, God initiated this, not us. It takes God to love God. It takes God to
love others. His nature is becoming our nature. As we receive and rely on and
respond to his love, we look like him more every day. And what happens in that
transformation process of becoming more like him, being made into his image and
likeness, is the reality of 1st John 4, verse 17, where it says, as he is, so are
we in this world.