There is No Fear in Love

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 1 John 4:18

What do you fear? You’ve heard the axiom that F.E.A.R is False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear is that emotion that can cause issues we face to seem bigger than life and can and has caused us to freeze, fight or flight. Yet today think on 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Phil Jackson from Red Letter Christians

Brilliance

Just when darkness seems to have its way, God’s brilliance bursts through. Time after time He proves His love in His attention to the details of our lives. It’s not in the blanket blessings that fall on us all where intimacy is realized; it’s when we become aware of how much He desires to be a part of every little moment. God’s love for you is absolutely unique as He has never loved someone in the same way He loves you. Look for Him to continually prove it.

If We Love One Another

1John 4:12
…if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.

Perfecting love is not our job, when we take that upon ourselves the result is the exact opposite, we end up in the center. When love is selfless and simple, when its roots are in Him; our love is not perfected, His love is perfected in us. This is the kind of love that touches difficult people, this love allows us to love those that disagree with us, this love puts individuals above issues and this love can change the world again.

Confirmed

I hope the fact that you are amazingly loved was completely confirmed for you today. If not, don’t believe the lie no matter how much evidence piles up.

Still One Thing

I started writing here about a year and a half ago and the first post was titled, “If I could tell you just one thing.” And pretty much every day since I’ve tried to let you know how much God loves you. Sometimes I wonder if the redundancy has a place but each day I’m reminded that for some reason grasping His amazing love for us is a daily endeavor. So, today I want you to know with certainty that your God loves you, not because He made you, not because you believe in Him and certainly not because you’ve earned it. He loves you because you are unique and one of a kind and that’s the only love that truly is enough to fill our hearts.

You Love Me

Lord let the reality of your perfect love for me direct this day. Help me put my insecurities aside by resting in the fact that in You I have all that I need. Help me not look to others for the things I can only get from You and allow me to love out of the wealth of our relationship. The implications of Your love are astonishing, please help me catch a glimpse of them.

Overwhelmed

My prayer for you is that you’re overwhelmed by God’s goodness today. No matter the circumstances of your life at the moment that you are able to see and appreciate how He has proven His perfect love for you. I pray for you to be reminded with glimpses from the past, an awareness of His closeness in the present and the peace of trusting Him with your future.

Pissed Off

Can you say that when talking to The Lord? Hell yes. There is nothing He can’t handle with or from us. Being angry with God should not be an excuse to avoid Him it should draw us closer. We have nothing to fear, we can be completely honest with Him. In fact that’s exactly what He’s looking for in our relationship. I don’t doubt scripture when it says we can count it all joy… but that’s not always our first stop. Sometimes we have to wrestle with Him to get there and wrestling is part of the intimacy we need. Nothing builds trust like being able to take anything to Him and getting His perfect love and understanding back.

The Case of Unbelief

This philosophical argument is also known as divine hiddenness and reasons that if there were a God that wants us to know Him then He would have made it so that everyone would. This line of thinking is very closely related to the problem of evil that we discussed a few days ago and is also best addressed by understanding that love and choice must co-exist. I believe that God has taken steps to draw us to Him and that His utmost desire is for each of us to choose to know Him. I think that if we were honest with ourselves we’d acknowledge that our greatest need is to be perfectly loved and accepted in a completely unique way. This is a need that God placed in us knowing that only He is able to fill. So in a very real sense God has created a situation to influence us into knowing Him but we still get to choose.

Wrath

To whom much is forgiven, much is treasured.

God hates evil, really, really, hates evil. And as with all His attributes, He hates it all the time. We can’t minimize how intensely God feels about wickedness, when we do we diminish the cross. The depth of God’s love for us can only truly be celebrated when we realize what He has chosen to put aside on our behalf. Facing God with an honest awareness of our depravity, understanding how He feels about it and what should be His response, make the love in His eyes and the warmth of His embrace everything that they should be.