4SpiritualSecrets

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us…  God is love.” (1 John 4:12, 16)

When the Apostle John wrote the fourth Gospel he made it clear that no one has ever seen God, but the only Son of God, who was in intimate fellowship with God the Father, has fully revealed God (John 1:18).  In the verses quoted above John connects the dots for us.  He writes that God is love and when we love in the ways His love is being expressed in and through us, we show the God that cannot be seen to this world.

The greatest revelation of truth this world has ever or ever will see was the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.  Everything He was, everything He did, and everything He said was part of that revelation.  According to John, that revelation is continuing in and through those of us who are His authentic followers in this world today.

The peak of that revelation is love.  Not everything that claims to be love, but the quality of love revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.  We must love one another with this quality of love because as we do, all the lives we intersect will see God – and the greatest revelation this world has ever known will continue through us. This adds to John’s list another reason we must love.

Are you willing to be part of that continuing revelation of the God Who can only be seen in the lives of those who know Him and are by His grace conduits of His love? Then ask Him to do that on whatever candlestick He has placed you.

“…He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.… By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God…” (1 John 3:24; 4:2)

In the closing verse of the third chapter of his letter, the Apostle of Love writes that we know God lives in us by the Spirit He has given us.  He then begins his fourth chapter by telling us everything that is spiritual is not the Spirit God has given us.  He then challenges us to test spirits.  This is his method for testing spirits: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God and every spirit that does not confess that fact is not of God.

This raises the question “How does a spirit confess?” The Greek word John uses here for confess is a compound word.  It is the word for speaking and the word for sameness.  It literally means to say the same thing God says or to agree with God.  As we observed in our fourth reason we must love, the outstanding dynamic of Jesus when He lived here in the flesh was love.  That’s how a spirit confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.  It is when Christ is obviously living in their flesh.  Their life could then be described as love incarnate.

The Apostle of Love has now given us six reasons we must love.  He wrote in his Gospel that God is a Spirit and we must worship Him in spirit if we want to truly worship Him (4: 24).  He is now amplifying that same truth.  Are you willing to let this world see the love of Christ in your flesh?

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” .                (1 John 4:11)

The Apostle John points to Jesus dying on the cross and writes: “This is love… that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).  He follows that with the words quoted above – that if God SO loved us we ought also to love one another.

Hours before He was arrested and crucified, Jesus challenged the men He had been apprenticing 24/7 for three years to love one another as He had loved them.  He then prophesied that by this the whole world would know they were His disciples.  Peter wrote that by His death on the cross He had given us an example and a calling that we should follow in His steps (1 Peter 2:21).

The Apostle John is in alignment with Jesus and Peter when he gives us yet another reason we are to love one another.  In principle Jesus was instructing the apostles that the best way to reach out is to reach in. Essentially, Jesus was saying that we have a message of love to communicate to the world.  The best way to do that is to love one another and show the world a community of love.

If our churches were the colonies of love Jesus desires them to be, the love-starved people of this world would be beating our doors down to be part of our spiritual communities because everyone has a need to be loved and to belong.  The love John is profiling is the greatest evangelistic tool our Lord has given to His Church.  Are you willing to reach in that you might reach out for His glory?

“…because as He is, so are we in this world…” (1 John 4: 17)

As the Apostle of love continues to give us reasons why we must love, having told us twice that God is love (verses 8 and 16), he writes the words quoted above that as He is, so are we in this world. He also told us in verse 16 that God lives in us.  If God is love and God lives in us, then it follows that as God is (love), so are we (to be love) in this world.  This is yet another reason why we must love.

The perfect example of this was Jesus Christ when He was God in human flesh for 33 years.  The greatest dynamic of His personality was love.  If you had met with Him for a day like Zacchaeus, the Chief of the Publicans (Luke 19), or for an hour like the Samaritan woman (John 4), or briefly like the young man we call the rich young ruler, you would have known that you had been loved as you had never been loved before.  We’re told that Jesus, looking intently at the rich young ruler, loved him (Mark 10:21).

The Apostle John, the author of the fourth Gospel, lived with Jesus 24/7 for three years.  He refers to himself in his Gospel many times with these words: “I am the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Sixty years after he was loved by Jesus, he dedicated the last book of the Bible to Jesus with the words “… unto the faithful Witness Who loved us…”

When people meet with us today do they feel that they have been loved as never before because we are God (love) with skin on in this world?

“…  Everyone who loves has been born of God…” (1 John 4: 7 NIV)

The apostle of love continues to tell us why we must love one another with a third reason – because love is the credential that identifies an authentic disciple of Jesus Christ.

One of the great challenges of our day is that if we were determined to shoot all the authentic followers of Jesus Christ, how in the world would we know precisely who to shoot? According to the author of the verse quoted above we should shoot those who love with a unique quality of love.  It is those who love in this special way that have experienced what Jesus described as being “born again.”

Based upon His greatest discourse, The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus taught that this unique love will resist no evil and love their enemy, the one who is persecuting them, the adversary or competitor, the neighbor and especially the brother and spiritual family members.

The Apostle Paul gives us a great “cross section” of this quality of love in the middle of his so-called love chapter (1 Corinthians 13).  In verses four through seven of that chapter, Paul passes this concept of love through the “prism” of his Holy Spirit inspired mind and it comes out on the other side as a cluster of fifteen virtues that analyze and describe this love.

Consider the way Jesus, John and Paul profile this love and then decide if you are an authentic disciple of Jesus Christ because you love in these ways.  John will tell you in the real love chapter of the Bible (1 John 4) that this love comes from God and He gives it to those who are born again.

“If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4: 20)

Tradition tells us that the Apostle John escaped from the Isle of Patmos by swimming out to a ship that was bound for the city of Ephesus where he lived to a very old age and was buried.  I have visited his grave there.  With white hair and a long white beard he was so feeble they had to carry him to the meetings.  While at the meetings he would bless those who attended and would cry “Little children, love one another, little children, love one another!”

As we have seen in this chapter, John gives us 10 reasons why we must love one another.  One reason is that God is love and if we plug into the love God is we make contact with God, and as we become a conduit of his love He makes contact with us.  John gives us a second reason that if we say we love God and we hate our brother we are liars.  Because if we do not love the brother we can see how can we love God whom we cannot see?

His point is that it’s not easy to love God, because we cannot hug a Spirit.  There is an inseparable vertical and horizontal dimension of this love that God is.  These two dimensions form a cross. We cannot say we love God if we do not love one another.

Do you love in these two critical dimensions?

“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.” (1John 4:16 NIV)

In this Scripture the apostle John, who is called the Apostle of Love, is giving us ten reasons why we must love one another.  Among those ten reasons is the one expressed above.  We must love one another because God is love and the person who loves in this way is living in God and God is living in that person.

One application of what he is writing is that when we plug into this love that God is we live in God and God lives in us.  In 1955 I made this great discovery.   As a social worker, while responding to a night call at 3:00AM, I prayed a prayer something like this: “God, You say You are a special quality of love.  I believe You are probably doing Your love thing where people are hurting.  I’m now going to where hurting people are.  When I get there pass this love You are through me and address their pain.”

There were times when I prayed that prayer I thought I was being electrocuted with the love of God.  I challenge you to accept the challenge of the Apostle John.  Go where the hurting people are with that prayer on your heart.  When you become a conduit of the love of God, you will discover that the experience is like an addiction.  You will never be satisfied with anything less than having that experience again and again.

This is because as a conduit of the love of God you will have experienced Who, What and Where God is – and where you want to be for the rest of your life!

“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do^£?” (Psalm 11: 3)

Greek is a very precise language.  Hebrew is not.  That’s why we frequently find footnotes that suggest alternate readings in the margins of our Bible when we are reading Old Testament passages of Scripture.  The NIV translation of the verse quoted above has such a footnote.   The alternate reading suggested for this verse is: When the foundations of your life are breaking up, “What is the righteous One doing?”

In a long life I have experienced several periods when it seemed that the foundations of my life were breaking up.  I have found the suggested alternate reading of this verse to be a reliable response that turned many of those crises into very significant spiritual datelines in my journey of faith.

My faith walk began in 1949, and along the way I dropped two words out of my vocabulary: “fortunately” and “coincidentally.”  Because I believe in Divine Providence, I no longer believe in luck.  And I agree with the spiritual “heavyweight” who stated that when a devout believer thinks they have experienced a coincidence that just means God prefers to remain anonymous.

The Chinese characters for “crisis” are the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.”  I believe we should factor into all our crises this knee jerk response: “What is the righteous One doing in my life now?” I find that He is always up to something and ultimately it is always something very good.  It is not primarily for our good but it is what accomplishes His good for His glory.

If you are in a time of crisis right now, or when you find yourself in one, I enthusiastically commend this reliable response to you.

“For if I make you sorrowful, then who is he who makes me glad but the one who is made sorrowful by me?” (2 Corinthians 2:2)

You can’t control the weather or rainy days but you can control the emotional climate that surrounds you. There is a principle of communication in a relationship that tells us communication is a two-way street.  Whatever you send down that street comes back up that street and into your relationship with another person.

That is what the Apostle Paul is teaching when he essentially writes “If I say things that get you down who is going to build me up or pull me up?”  The reality is that you are probably going to pull me down because misery loves company.  This is a negative way of stating a positive truth.  That truth is if I say things to you that build you up, I have equipped you to build me up.

In another place Paul wrote: ^“Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)

In every relationship you have, with your spouse, your children, your parents, those you work with, those you work for, and those who work for you  – make the commitment to say and do things that build them up and minister the grace of God to them.  You will be surprised by joy to discover that what you send down that street will come back up that street and into your relationship with that person.

Jesus gave an unstable man named Simon the nickname Peter, which meant stable like a rock.  After calling Peter a rock for three years Peter was a rock. Try that in your relationships.

“Enlarge the place of your tent… Lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes.” (Isaiah 54:2)

In the day and culture in which Isaiah used this inspired metaphor, many people lived in tents and would have clearly understood what the great “Prince of the Prophets” was preaching.  When a person wanted their tent larger, they had to drive their stakes deeper before they made their cords longer.

By devotional and practical application when we as one of the people of God want to expand the impact boundaries and influence of our life and ministry, we must first drive our stakes deeper.  For example, there is a sense in which we do that when we make the commitment to get more education before we begin to work in our career field.

One of the best definitions of maturity I have ever heard was simply the two words “delayed gratification.” I once asked a very gifted oriental piano teacher why most of her students were oriental.  She responded that she could not find students in this country who were willing to practice six to eight hours a day to become a concert pianist.  When people are willing to accept the discipline of delayed gratification they are driving down their stakes before they lengthen their cords.

If you are experiencing a growing conviction that God wants to use you in a deeper and broader ministry than you have known so far, be aware of the spiritual hard reality that God may want to deepen you before He opens a door of greater and more fruitful opportunity for you.

Are you willing to accept the ways in which God may want to deepen you so He can enlarge the tent of your life and ministry?