Remain part 5
All I want to say today is: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18). And specifically all I want to say is, "There is no fear in love." Love is a safe place. And it seems horribly ironic to me that we, as humans, are terrified of being in love even though it the deepest desire that we, as humans, have. Its like we want it so badly that we don't believe we could actually have it. So even though we DO have it, we have a hard time remaining in it. I've been using the illustration of picking flower petals, "He loves me, He loves me not," but really its more like we think someone is going to snatch the whole flower away from us. We think, "There's no way He could possibly love me." When the truth of the matter is... He IS love. Love is not just what God does, it is literally who He is. In order for God to stop loving you, He would have to stop being God. And even if that COULD happen (which I don't think it could) it wouldn't. God loves you so much that He gave His only begotten Son. So that you could experience life AS a Son. He gave you His Spirit--the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth that leads and guides us into all truth--so that you could KNOW and BELIEVE His love. That's what the Holy Spirit is; He is our love receptor. That is the truth that He leads and guides us into; the ultimate truth of the universe that says, "God is love. And He loves you." That's the Gospel, as simply as I can put it. But the tricky part is remaining in that love. Receiving it. And releasing it. The trick, of course, is that we receive it BY releasing it. We remain in God's love... by loving. We love Him by loving each other with the love that He first loved us with. So we have to get past the scary part to get to the perfect part. And that's where faith comes in. But don't mistake faith and hope. Hoping for love is terrifying, because then we're back to, "It might happen... it might not happen." But faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of God. Faith comes from someone (Jesus, love) proving Himself faithful. Jesus TOLD us what love is (laying your life down for your friends) and then He went to the cross and did it. He gave us something (someONE, Himself, love) to believe in. So that we don't have to be afraid. If there's anything in life that you CAN trust... its love. Because love never fails. Because love endures. There is no fear in love because once you're in... you're in. God moved into the neighborhood, and He's never moving out. Because He likes it where He's at. Its like the love slave that has his ear nailed to the door because he knows how good it is in his master's house, and there's nowhere else he'd rather be. That's when love is perfect... when you know who you are, where you are, and why you're here. That's why I wrote the Answer Trilogy, because those are three very important questions. And when you don't know the answers, they are three terrifying questions. So here's the answers: We are Jesus. God in the flesh. Love in a body. God in OUR flesh. Love in OUR body. We are IN the Kingdom, and we ARE the Kingdom. And we are here to be loved and to love each other. When you get down to that most basic level, and you understand that He FIRST loved us (so we have everything we need), there is nothing to fear. There is no fear in love. There is only... love. And that's what its all about!