Last Monday morning at 6:15am our regular “Man-Up” men’s group met as they do every week. What started out as a challenge from Pastor Rob to get together once a month has grown into a once a week gathering of men to build our relationships in Christ and with each other. We started as a table of 8, each one of us has kept inviting others and this Monday we were 18. Can you believe that? 18 men getting up earlier than normal on a work day to meet for coffee and Christ. It’s awesome.
This week he was talking about 1John. In chapter 4, The Apostle John is teaching about God’s love for us. “4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. 4:8 The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Then in 4:11 “Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another.”
What is God’s love? I’m not talking 1Corintians 13… “Love is…” I’m talking about Forgiveness, Grace, Favor, Kindness, Compassion, Accepted, Generous, Helpful, Obedient, and most of all Unconditional.
This is the love from God.
Are we (you and me) loving one another in the same way. Think about it. Or is there, are the people in your life that you are UnForgiving, UnGraceful, Un-Favored, UnKind, UnCompassionate, UnAccepting , UnGenerous, UnHelpful, Non-Obedient to and worst of all loving Conditionaly???
If so, 1John 4 continues with this, 4:20 ” If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
Ouch. That hurt.
Bob Lenz, Youth Pastor, Speaker, Author say in his new book “Grace - For Those Who Think They Don't Measure Up” “People are hurting, and they need hope. They need someone to tell them they are loved, accepted, and forgiven, no matter what they’ve done, no matter what kind of family they come from.”
I have a lot of relations in my life. Folks I’ve met here and there. Some I barely know and some I know really well. Probably thousands upon thousands over my first 55 years so far. What’s the difference between them? Most of them are a relation that has occurred. I’ve met them, said hey, shook hands, we’ve chatted maybe even sat next to each other in church. But really, for some reason have never taken the time to build a relationship with them, really gotten to know them, who they are, their kids, their likes, dislikes, their passions, their dreams, listened to their prayers. Maybe because I applied one of the UNwords to them? Have you ever done that with someone? We are withholding our love from them.
I’ll leave you with the end of 1John 4, “4:21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
