Monday, November 4, 2024

11-4-2024

Good Morning All,

        1 John 4: 12; “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

     His love is made complete in us.  How we read and understand this has a great bearing on our life.  How we understand the word “complete” affects our understanding.  There are two ways to look at this.  The first is the more common way of looking at it.  If you go to a movie, when the credits run; it’s over or completed.  If you run a race, when you cross the finish line, you have completed the race.  It is done and over. When you have combined the last acre, harvest is complete; it is finished.  This is how we usually use the word complete.

     Yet the word complete can also mean something a little different.  Think for a moment about baking some cookies.  We mix the ingredients, turn on the oven, bake the cookies for the allotted time and then take them out of the oven.  We have completed baking the cookies but then what?  Well in our household, we eat them!  Completion here is not an end but the next step in a process.  Here a better analogy would be to be eating the cookies while you are baking them.  Just as soon as you can pick one up, find that cold glass of milk and have at it.  His love is made complete is like when we are made disciples.  This is a process that will take our whole life to finish.

     This is why we don’t wait for his love to be finished before we enjoy it.  As each little cookie comes out of the oven, eat it and enjoy.  God’s love is continually poured into, onto, and throughout our life and body.  Because of God’s great love and promised mercies, we are able to love others as God loves us.  As we love others, we experience the joy of God’s love in our own life.  We don’t earn God’s love, we experience it.  We can relish in the process of being made complete. 

     Most of us have made cookies with a small child; either a son or a daughter or a grandson or granddaughter.  For that child, at that moment, knows only joy and excitement.  They have this loving anticipation of something wondrous being given to them.  We have that same experience.  God’s love, his undeserved grace and mercy, is something we can experience, we can anticipate the wondrous gift we have, and we live with that loving anticipation of something amazing about to be given to us.  The only thing more enjoyable than baking cookies with a child is when they are encouraged to share them with someone else, someone special in their lives.  The wide eye joy that they have as they share this gift of cookies that they were part of because of the love of a parent or grandparent, is a marvel unto itself.  We too, have that same joy.  God’s love is being completed in us as we love one another. 

Dear Father in heaven, as your love is completed in us, keep us active in your service by showing your love, given to us, to all those that we see.  Help us Father to share that gift of your love especially to those who are in most need of your love and care.  Make our hearts to ache for those who suffer and cause us to use your love to reach to them.  In Jesus precious name we pray, amen.   

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

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