God is Love

1 John 4:7-21The Message (MSG)

God Is Love

7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!

13-16 This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

To Love, to Be Loved

17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.

19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.

20-21 If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.

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                 This chapter is God's Love and how we should show it to others. These verses are from "The Message". As I was listening to these verses last night at church and writing them down in a notebook earlier today, I was thinking about how these verses would make good wedding verses and/or sermon. The whole book of 1 John would be good for a wedding because it is all about Love. 
             The verses were all about how our relationship with God should be of intimate Love. So intimate that when we love people they see more of God then they see of us. They show us what Real Love looks like. Real Love is all about the sacrifices that we make in our lives. I mean God gave up His only Son to save us from our sins. Isn't that Love? I also like where it says in the NIV version that God is Love. He is also Life and the Light. That means that we can never really know what Love is because it is vast beyond our measures just like God is and that when we love we are full of life. If we don't love, then we aren't full of life. We are just random people walking the streets. 
              We are God's "Beloved". He even says so in the Bible. We must abide in Him and Him in us when we do love each other. When we believe that we are His Beloved then that helps us abide in Him and then we can live out that Love to other people around us. We don't have to fear anything when we have the Love of God in us. Plus we can have confidence on the day of judgement and any other time because we know God loves us. Having that confidence is a big one for me because when I am reminded that I am His Beloved that also reminds that I can do anything with Him by my side. 
              It reminds me that God won't let me down because He loves me enough to help me. It gives me confidence just to live life most days. It should give me and the rest of you the confidence to share the Goof News but I know that I am still working on that one. There is this saying at the end of the sermon last night that the preacher wanted us to write down so here it is:

"Those who Love God abide in Him. Those who abide in Him Loves well."

           We can't love totally until we are disciples of Love, which means: 

-Total Sanctification 
-Complete Love
-Complete Obedience
-Total Surrender.

           Yes, I will admit I used the notes I took from the sermon last night but most of them were in my words up til the quote and past that. :)