To Love, To Be Loved (1 John 4) The Message

 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

we are free from worry on Judgment Day - our standing in 

the world is identical to 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 fully

formed in love.

We, though, are going to love-love and be loved. First we were

loved, now we love. he loved us first.

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.

Eugene H. Peterson






Turn Up The Volume



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Speak Jesus

Image
 Besides affecting our eternal salvation, Christ's crucifixion affects us every  day of our lives. God's way of being among us is to get down to our level, to enter the humiliation of death, to share the persecution and the pain, to  get into our skin and go through these things with us. It's impossible to take the truth of the gospel and divorce it from the way of the gospel. We're not allowed to pick and choose among the truths of the Bible and not make up a private anthology of comforting sayings. Jesus is the Way as well as the Truth. And the way is crucifixion. Suffering is part of that reality. It's comforting to know I can get beneath God. Wherever I am, however low I get, he has been there and is with me there and longing for fellowship with me there. Eugene H. Peterson Turn Up The Volume
Read more

A David Psalm, when he outwitted Abimelech and got away. (Psalm 34)

Image
I bless God every chance I get; my lungs expand with his praise. I live and breathe God; if things aren't going well, hear this and be happy: Join me in spreading the news; together let's get the word out. God met me more than halfway, and freed me from my anxious fears. Look at him; give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from him. When I was desperate, I called out, and God got me out of a tight spot. God's angels set up a circle of protection around us while we pray. Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him. Worship God if you want the best; Worship opens doors to all his goodness. Eugene H. Peterson, Do you think of the Christian life as something that lifts you out of the realm of the mundane into something more majestic? If so, you're wishing in the wrong direction. The Christian faith draws us deeper into the stuff of creation: bodies, money, emotions,  and relationships. Some of the stuff we
Read more

The Innkeeper’s Wife

Image
 I love this byre. Shadows are kindly here. The light is flecked with travelling stars of dust, So quiet it seems after the inn-clamour, Scraping of fiddles and the stamping feet. Only the cows, each in her patient box, Turn their slow eyes, as we and the sunlight enter, Their slowly rhythmic mouths. ‘That is the stall, Carpenter. You see it’s too far gone For patching or repatching. My husband made it, And he’s been gone these dozen years and more…’ Strange how this lifeless thing, degraded wood Split from the tree and nailed and crucified To make a wall, outlives the mastering hand That struck it down, the warm firm hand That touched my body with its wandering love. ‘No, let the fire take them. Strip every board And make a new beginning. Too many memories lurk Like worms in this old wood. That piece you’re holding – That patch of grain with the giant’s thumbprint – I stared at it a full hour when he died: Its grooves are down my mind. And that board there Baring its knot-hole like a
Read more