"God's Love Is Made Complete"

1 John 4:7-12 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

John points out the most obvious thing in Christianity: If we love God and know Him, it ought to show up in the way that we love others! John then points out that no one has seen God, but when God lives in us and we choose to love one another, His love is made complete!

A visual image I get out of this passage is of two very important wires that are both absolutely necessary to carry the current of God's love to a broken and dying world. The first section of this wire extends from heaven and from God. Our lives are the second section to this wire. The first section of wire extending from God carries the current of God's love. We cannot begin to know how to truly love until our lives are connected with His love. The second section of wire is your life and mine.

We are God's plan A to love the world to Jesus. We are His hands, His feet, His eyes, His ears! When our hearts are connected to God's heart and we are choosing to love others, the current of God's love and physical presence in the world is made complete! God defines love. Without His love in your heart and without learning what it means to love as God loves you, you and I will be hopelessly lost in understanding how to really love.

Yet without your obedience to put God's love into action, the current of His love cannot be completed into the world. Have you truly come to know what God's kind of love is all about? Are you seeking to align your life with God in such a way that your love truly connects people to the love of their heavenly Father? Are you just talking about God's love or do people actually see you demonstrate it with your actions? There is no more true way to help people see the unseen God than when we demonstrate His love with our lives!

Heavenly Father, may Your presence be seen and experienced in this world through the way I express Your love in my living! Amen.

Jerry Sweat is Lead Pastor at Beach Church in
Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

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