Have you ever felt that the divine concept of love is an elusive force, just beyond your grasp? This episode ventures deep into the heart of 1st John, chapter 4, to unearth the transformative power of God's love. As your host, I open up about the complexities of reconciling the biblical definition of love with our worldly views, sharing my personal wrestling with the fear of vulnerability that comes with sacrificial affection. Together, we confront the stark contrast between the self-focused love we often encounter and the giving, selfless nature of the love exhibited by Jesus Christ. It's a candid reflection on the courage required to love without holding back, and a reminder that accepting God's love for us is a prerequisite to sharing that same love with others.
This conversation is not just theoretical; it's an actionable guide to loving as Jesus did, marked by sacrifice and boundless generosity. If you've ever questioned your capacity to love selflessly or wondered how to authentically represent God's love in an all-too-often selfish world, this dialogue will speak to your heart. We recognize that without embracing the depth of God's love fully, our efforts to love others can fall short. By examining the life and teachings of Christ, we discover that knowing God is inseparable from demonstrating love to those around us, and it is within this divine relationship that we find the blueprint for a love that is truly life-giving. Join us for a profound exploration of how to embody the love that defines our faith and how to let it reshape our interactions with every soul we meet.
Have you ever felt that the divine concept of love is an elusive force, just beyond your grasp? This episode ventures deep into the heart of 1st John, chapter 4, to unearth the transformative power of God's love. As your host, I open up about the complexities of reconciling the biblical definition of love with our worldly views, sharing my personal wrestling with the fear of vulnerability that comes with sacrificial affection. Together, we confront the stark contrast between the self-focused love we often encounter and the giving, selfless nature of the love exhibited by Jesus Christ. It's a candid reflection on the courage required to love without holding back, and a reminder that accepting God's love for us is a prerequisite to sharing that same love with others.
This conversation is not just theoretical; it's an actionable guide to loving as Jesus did, marked by sacrifice and boundless generosity. If you've ever questioned your capacity to love selflessly or wondered how to authentically represent God's love in an all-too-often selfish world, this dialogue will speak to your heart. We recognize that without embracing the depth of God's love fully, our efforts to love others can fall short. By examining the life and teachings of Christ, we discover that knowing God is inseparable from demonstrating love to those around us, and it is within this divine relationship that we find the blueprint for a love that is truly life-giving. Join us for a profound exploration of how to embody the love that defines our faith and how to let it reshape our interactions with every soul we meet.
Today I want to share with you guys something from my heart and I want to be honest with you guys I don't think including myself and you can relate to this most of us as believers, I mean, I know we say to ourselves that God loves me. God is love. I mean we know that at a shallow level. You know. We know that at a basic level, not because God just wants us to know that he loves us at a basic or a shallow level. God, I believe, wants us to know the depth, the width, the height, the length of the love that he has for us. When you read the scripture carefully, you will see the emphasis of God declaring and expressing to understand his love in a deeper way, intimately, and today I came across during my Bible study. Let's go to the book of 1st John, chapter 4. 1st John, chapter 4. We're gonna start reading from verse 7. It says beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world and that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Powerful, plain and profound verses. We have read, verses we have read.
Speaker 1:
I personally, to be honest with you guys, I've asked the Lord that I don't know how to love in His way of loving. I don't know how to love, how he defines or describes what love is. You and I, our view of love is based on culture, it's based on society, it's based on our upbringing, it's based on our experiences, and sometimes all of these things culture, background, upbringing, experiences differ to how God views how God describes love, to how God views how God describes love. And I've come to the point in my life where I'm trying to be honest with myself, be honest with God, be honest with people. I don't have that kind of love that is described in the Bible and only God has that love. And I know the Bible requires us, as believers, to walk in that type of love and to live out that type of love that is described in the Bible. I cannot do it without God. You know I cannot truly you know love people without God helping me out to love people. According to the Bible, I can only love people. Based on what I know about love, and what I know about love is I can say it's wrong.
Speaker 1:
We don't have the right conception of what love is according to the Bible and there's so much misconception. Sometimes we can easily love people that love us back. I think that's where the challenge is In my case. The reason why I'm afraid to love the way God wants us to love each other is because I'm afraid to be used. I'm afraid to be abused. I'm afraid to be misused because of my experience in loving somebody in a deeper way and I felt like I was used, abused and misused, and I'm afraid to try to love the way.
Speaker 1:
God describes what love is Love that is sacrificial, love that is given, love that does not expect anything in return. But do you know that, child of God, in order for us to really know this type of love and express it to others, we have to know that true love is of God. You know God is the origin of love and God is love. That is his attribute. You and I, we have read that we don't just see a declaration of God's love for us, but we see the manifestation of God's love for us, and that manifestation of his love for us is through Jesus Christ. The Bible says that he manifested his love for us by sending his only begotten son you know, his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. So God expresses love by saying it to us. God expresses love by acting on it giving, sending his son, his only begotten son, his son that he loves so much, and into the world for him to die for us so that you and I, we might live.
Speaker 1:
So the takeaway from this is that love is sacrificial. Love is life. You know and we see that in the life of Jesus Christ he will sacrifice for us because God loves us. Jesus states that he has come to give you and I life and life in abundance, and Jesus describes himself as the bread of life, the fountain of life, which means that God expresses his love for us through his son's sacrifice. God expresses his love for us through his son giving us life. He died so that you and I, we can leave, and Jesus himself states in the gospel that there's no greater love than this for one, for a friend to lay down his life for another, and he perfectly met the requirement of true love. He's the perfect example of what true godly love is, and I believe this is the love that god wants you and I to possess to to express with one another.
Speaker 1:
And to be honest with you, I mean, I cannot do it humanly speaking. I cannot love like that and it really takes the grace of god for me to really to love people the way Christ sacrificially. But I know that with God all things are possible. But with my own human limitations, my lack of love, I won't be able to give what I don't have. That is why my goal is what I want to share with you guys is really for you to understand the depth, the height, width and the breadth of God's love for you. And I believe when you understand that, expressing Jesus Christ being the personification of God's love for you, and then you will also have compassion, you will also be able to express that love for one another, because Jesus Christ is the basis of God's love for you in a deeper level, and that will radicalize and change your view of love. And that's for me that. That's where I am right now.
Speaker 1:
It's a journey for God to really take away that selfish love in my heart, that selfish social view of love in my heart, to a scriptural, his expression of love through his son, sacrificial love, and I believe that's what God wants us to to to have. And because God is love, he will give that to us, and the test of us knowing that we know God is true love. And you cannot say you know God if you don't love your brother you know. So for us to claim that we know God, we have to express love for one another. And by expressing love for one another, not just any type of love, not just a social definition of love, not just your own self-seeking, selfish love, but that sacrificial love that he's talking about through his son Jesus Christ, that love that gives life. That's the type of love that he wants us about through his son Jesus Christ. That love that gives life. That's the type of love that he wants us to love one another, especially our brothers in the faith, so that the world will know that we are of God.
