How Love is perfected in us
I hope that I have begun to convey to you just how incredible the love of God is, and just how staggering it can be for God to love other human beings through us.
The love of God alone is powerful enough to break down barriers that human logic, wisdom, money, or power can never penetrate.
But what if we are gazing at the world through a lens that is incompatible with this love?
What if we are trying to mix our own perspectives with God's?
From birth, selfishness reigns.
We love ourselves too much to care about others.
We fight for the best things. We cry when our needs aren't met, or our wants aren't given.
We only think of ourselves -and others are barely on our radar unless we can gain something from them.
When it comes right down to it, we will save our own skin before laying down our own lives for someone else.
We will save our own time instead of giving it up for someone who needs it.
We will save our own strength instead of spending it on a needy soul.
We will reserve our own resources instead of lavishing them on one who needs them more.
We will keep the best for ourselves and give everyone else our second best, if that.
Selfishness and love are incompatible... How can this be changed?
I am going to tell you how.
But it is so simple, most will overlook it. Most will move right past this and not even realize how important it is.
It happens through keeping God's word.
"But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him..." (1 John 2: 5a)
That word "keep" in the Greek means this: "To attend to carefully, to guard by keeping the eye upon."
What is the word of God to you, my dear reader?
I'm not just talking about the Book. I'm talking about what is within that Book.
Is it something you keep close to you like a treasure?
This is the key to being perfected in love. But why don't we spend more time in it?
Maybe we are looking at it wrong...
Maybe we see it as a mere book on our shelf to be read.
Maybe we see it as God's to-do list for our lives.
Maybe we think of it as a textbook to be studied.
Maybe we wonder if it will find out everything that's wrong with us and make us feel bad about ourselves.
But what if it's a treasure to be wondered at?
What is it's alive and is pointing us to Jesus?
What if it's a sword in the hand of the Spirit that chases away all that plagues us?
What if it is ointment in the hand of the Physician to heal our brokenness?
What if it is a solid rock for us to plant our feet on in every battle and storm?
What if it's a window into the very heart of God?
What if it's the perspective God wants us to have of the world around us?
What if it is the glasses by which we see the glory of God?
What if it is His means of giving us more of Himself?
...And what if this is how the One who is Love perfects His love in us?
"But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him...." (1 John 1:5a)
Whoever -This is not limited to the spiritually elite. Anyone can do it.
Anyone can guard His word like a treasure in his heart.
Anyone can hold up His word like a diamond of many facets in the light and be enthralled with its beauty.
Anyone can ponder its meaning and allow it to take over his thinking.
Anyone can let it permeate every part of his soul.
Anyone can keep this Word close to his heart, ready to be pulled out in the times when it is most needed as a means of grace in his life.
It is what is in the heart that comes out in the most inopportune moments, so what if we intentionally put the Word of God there?
What if we planted it in our hearts through reading it often?
What if we watered this seed by studying it and meditating on it day and night?
What if we let it become a permanent part of us by running it through our minds and hearts like a refreshing river over parched soil over and over again until we are changed by it?
You see, it's not going to change you very much if you just glance at it every once in a while.
It takes intentional, on-purpose "keeping."
Love -that laying-down-your-life sort of love- is perfected in us this way.
Everything that opposes it is washed away as the current of His Word flows over the barren land of our hearts.
"...By this we know that we are in Him." (1 John 2:5b)
This is how we know in experience what it is to be in Him, my friends.
Something happens in you when the Living Word is allowed to live within you, at home in your heart.
Things will be different for you when this Word is given the freedom to move things around inside of you and change you.
You'll start to look like Jesus. His love will take over and make Christ in you more obvious.
"He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked." (1 John 2:6)
When Jesus is allowed to take over our thinking and our hearts, what comes out of our lives in those "inopportune" moments is His life instead of our own.
The steps we take look like His steps.
The service we do for others looks like His service.
The words we say sound like His words.
The emotions we feel start to look like His emotions.
The desires we have look like His desires.
The responses we have to those around us -even the most hostile- look like His responses.
Why? Because His Word is alive in us, making changes that we could never make.
His Word is a sword in the hand of the Spirit, violently opposing all that holds us back from true freedom in Christ.
His Word in us is a light that helps us see when darkness overtakes us.
His Word in us is good news to all onlookers, powerful enough to reach them through our very lives.
No, I am not talking about just words on a page. I am talking about the Living Word.
And you, my friend, are not exempt from "whoever".
You see, the living Word in us will change everything about us if we let it.
But it's not through an "it says it so I must go do it" mentality.
Change happens through letting His living word meddle with the heart behind all of our actions and words.
Why do we not respond lovingly to our "enemies"?
Why do we not care about what God cares about?
Why do we not see people as God sees them?
Maybe we need to discipline our hearts to listen to His heart.
Maybe we need to spend time- much time- on those verses that oppose our way of thinking and doing things.
Maybe we need to accept His thoughts as right and confess our own as wrong.
Does that make you uncomfortable?
It is through the discomfort of pruning that we become a branch that is able to bear the weight of "more fruit." (John 15)
Do you want the love of Jesus to spill out of your life?
Do you want joy in the most joyless of circumstances?
Do you want peace to guard your heart even when all around you is chaos?
Then start with "keeping" His Word and see if He does not change you.
"For the Word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)
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To find all of my previous posts on the love of God, click here.
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