Tuesday 16 Oct 2012

Tuesday Reading: 1 John 4:18-21

Key Verse: 1 John 4:20
20  If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

Devotion:
If I were to say something like “there is no fear in love” I’m sure I’d see a lot of people jumping up and down; and I would probably be one of them! But there is a big difference between any fear we may have in love and the fear we have of God even if we do say that we love God and we love someone special. If we take the love that we should have for man in general (so God does command us to love our friends and our enemies) and we then apply that to the fear that we have of others, then that fear should dissolve away – how can we fear man when we know that we love them.

Yes it is one of those difficult subjects with so many facets that it will not be covered by a single devotion! When we do depend fully on God and allow Him to protect us then we will no longer have real fear of anyone. Yes we may well be scared that they can do many terrible things to us, especially if they do not believe in God or they are bent on destruction rather than following God’s commandments in truth. But all they will be able to do is to damage our bodies – they can never touch our souls because they are safely in God’s firm grip!

We do say that we love God because He first loved us and we say that we love Him because of all that He has done for us; we even say that we love Him because we follow His commandments. But what happens when we turn round and say that we do not love our brethren? Being able to say that we love others is something that is beginning to be lost in society and something that I fear needs addressing. We love to love those that are good to us and we love to love those that we want to love…

Our love needs to continue on further than that because Christ showed us love even before we loved Him. He showed us love when we were fighting in His face. He showed us love when we were doing everything against Him we possibly could. He showed us love when we did not. That is the love that we need to have for others and we can learn that love through our love for God because when we realise just how much we can love Him we begin to realise just how much we can love others, including our enemies. When we see that love we should not fear it but grab a hold of it firmly and walk with God to experience how much it can do in our lives.

Points to Ponder:
Do you love others?

Are you experiencing God’s love openly?