Love

I am reading the word of God from 1 John chapter 4, beginning at verse 7 and concluding with verse 21. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.

And everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.

Herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time.

If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

We love him because he first loved us. If a man says, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.

May God help us to appropriate this gift of love. If you read again very carefully the gospel records of the birth of Christ, you will discover an amazing fact. Nowhere in those chapters do you find the word love.

In fact, if you take the hymn book and page through the section given to the Advent hymns, you will find that most of them don't mention the word love. Silent Night talks about love's pure light. We find joy and peace, grace, mercy, but you don't find the word love.

Now, this doesn't mean that love is not there. Mercy is God's love in not giving us what we do deserve, and grace is God's love in giving us what we don't deserve. And there can't be peace without love, and there can't be joy without love.

So love is the motive behind it, and love is the atmosphere that pervades it. But interestingly enough, in these records, the word love is not found. The Apostle John is conceded to be the apostle of love.

There was a time when John was not that kind of a person. Jesus gave him a nickname, Sons of Thunder, James and John. One day they wanted to call fire down from heaven to burn up some people, a marvelous way to show love.

But something happened to John, and John has become the apostle of love. And in 1 John 4, beginning at verse 7, he talks to us about love in the coming of our Lord Jesus. He hits the keynote of the Advent when he says in verse 9, In this was manifested the love of God toward us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

This is another reference to manifested. Back in chapter 1 of 1 John, verse 2, the life was manifested. In the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, he brought life.

In chapter 3 and verse 5, he was manifested to take away our sins. Chapter 3 and verse 8, he was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Now here in chapter 4 and verse 9, our Lord Jesus Christ was manifested that he might prove to us the love of God.

The apostle John makes it very clear that love is the theme of the coming of our Lord. In fact, from verse 7 to the end of this chapter, verse 21, the word love is used 29 times. This is the whole thrust and the whole heartbeat of the coming of our Lord, the expression of God's love.

I think it would be good for us to grow in our experience of the love of God. Life is a school, and among the many lessons that we have to learn in this school of life as Christians is growing in our love, our experience of God's love. I think every mother and dad longs to see the children grow up in love.

Whatever else they may not get, parents are anxious that their children grow up in love, to love the right things, and to love in the right way, and to experience and grow in this thing called love. Of course, when the Bible talks about love, it's not talking about shallow romance. This is a love that comes from heaven, not from Hollywood.

He's talking about this deep God-like love. It's not erotic love. It's not even brotherly love.

It is agape love. It is love that is deep and sacrificing, love that is spontaneous, love that is God. I think that John is teaching us here four basic lessons about love.

If you and I will learn these lessons, oh, what a difference it will make in our lives. How many people there are going around in fear when they could be living in love? How many people there are living in hatred when they could be living in love? 1 John 4, verses 7 to 21 give to us four basic lessons on love that can be ours if we'll just yield to the Lord Jesus Christ. Verses 7 and 8, he teaches us what God is.

God is love. Then in verses 9 and 10, he teaches us what God did. He sent his Son.

In verses 11 through 18, he teaches us what God is now doing, perfecting our love. Then in verses 19 through 21, he teaches us what God wants us to do, love one another. Four very simple, very basic lessons that explain to us why Jesus came.

Lesson number one, he teaches us in verses 7 and 8 what God is. God is love. Now, he repeats this down in verse 16.

God is love. There are four statements in the Bible that define God for us. Jesus says in John 4, in verse 24, God is spirit.

That means that God is not limited by a human body, that God is uncreated. You and I are created. We have a beginning.

God has no beginning. God is spirit. Jesus said God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

God is spirit. Then in 1 John, chapter 1, verse 5, tells us that God is light. This is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you that God is light.

This means God is holy. God is spirit and God is light. God is holy.

God is not contaminated. God is not polluted. God does not sin.

There are no shadows with God's light. God hates sin. Over in Hebrews 12, verse 29, you have a rather awesome statement about God.

It says our God is a consuming fire. God judges. God is spirit.

God is light. He hates sin. God is a consuming fire.

He has to judge sin, which leaves us without any defense except for 1 John, chapter 4, verse 8. God is love. The amazing thing is that God, in his wisdom and in his love, found a way to remain holy and still forgive sinners. John uses that word propitiation.

God is love. John is teaching us what God is. We have to know what God is if we are going to relate to him.

If our lives are filled with hatred and God is love, then we can't have any relationship with God. If you and I are murderers at heart and God is love, then we can't have any relationship with God. Something has to happen to us for us to be able to experience this love of God.

God loves even if we don't love him back. Here in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us. There was a time in our lives when we were unsaved when we were hateful.

We didn't think about God. Our thought was not to glorify God, to love God, to put God first in our lives. We thought only of number one, ourselves.

We weren't too concerned about other people. We did love our families and we did love our friends. There is a human love even among thieves.

Jesus said to his disciples, if you were of the world, the world would love his own. The world has love. Unsaved people have love, but not this deep, spiritual, agape, sacrificing, spontaneous, self-giving kind of love that is God.

John's first lesson leaves me with my mouth open and my head bowed, saying, I just can't make it. If God is love, how am I ever going to get through to him? Which leads us to the second lesson that John teaches us in verses 9 and 10. It's not that we got through to God, God got through to us.

Lesson number one, what God is. God is love. God by his very nature is love.

All that God says, he says in love. All that God does, he does in love. Even when he judges, he judges in love.

Lesson number two, John teaches us what God did. He sent his Son. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

Here in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Let's go back to John's day. Let's go back to the days of the early church.

Let's go back to Palestine. Let's walk the streets that Jesus walked. Let's stop a Greek.

Here comes a Greek fellow going down the street, perhaps a merchant or a philosopher. We say, excuse me, sir, are you Greek? Yes. Do you worship gods and goddesses? Yes, we do.

How do you know when your gods love you? How can you tell whether or not the gods that you worship love you? Our Greek friend would say, there's not a great deal in our holy books about the gods loving us, judging us, giving us wisdom sometimes, occasionally fighting our battles, but there's not much in our religion about the love of God. Thank you. So you stop a Roman.

Here comes a Roman centurion, the very highest of the Roman soldiers, who would say, excuse me, sir, are you a Roman? Yes. Do you worship the gods? Well, we have our religious traditions. How do you know when your God loves you? Oh, when we win our battles.

When the Roman legions go forth and we win our battles, then we know that our gods love us. Thank you. Here comes a Jewish merchant.

Let's stop and ask him, excuse me, sir, how do you know when your Jehovah God loves you? You believe in Jehovah God? Oh, yes. Yes. Three times a year I come to Jerusalem to worship and celebrate the feast.

How do you know when your God loves you, sir? Oh, it's easy. It tells us in the law. When our crops are increasing, when our flocks and our herds are increasing, when the land is wealthy, when our wives bear many sons and daughters, then we know that our God loves us.

Suppose you went down to Staten, Madison and you stopped someone and said, do you believe in God? Yes. How do you know your God loves you? You see, if winning the battles is an evidence of God's love, then there are a lot of people that God doesn't love, because in every war somebody wins and somebody loses. And if being wealthy and having your goods increase is an evidence of love, then there are a lot of people God doesn't love because they're poor.

You and I may look at the possessions that we have and think, well, we're average people with average possessions. I tell you, most of the people in the world today, if they saw what you have and what I have, they would consider us to be tremendously wealthy. There are millions of people who go to bed every night hungry.

How do we know God loves us? Oh, if God loves you, you'll never be sick. Then when you get sick, God has ceased to love you. If God loves you, you'll never go through difficulty, but then when we go through difficulty, God doesn't love us.

My Bible teaches me that God loves me in a very special way when I'm going through difficulty. What's the problem here? The problem is this. People are judging the love of God on human levels.

How many little children will say, if you really loved me, you'd give this to me? Mother and dad say, but we're not going to give it to you because we do love you. If you really loved me, you'd do this or you'd do that. Oh, no.

You see, the childish level of love is, oh, you love me when you give to me. The adult level of love is, you love me when you won't give to me. How do we know God loves us? Because he sent his Son to this earth to die for our sins.

The next time you're going through sorrow and you can't see anything or anybody, you can't even read your Bible because the tears are so heavy in your heart and in your eyes, you'll remember God loves you. The next time that phone rings and you get news that just goes through your heart like a sword and something near and dear or someone near and dear is just snatched away from you and Satan says, oh, I thought your God loved you. You look Satan right straight in the face and say, he does love me.

How do you know he loves you? He sent his Son to die for me. This is Romans 5.8. But God proved, God proved his love toward us. Not by making us rich, but by making his Son poor.

Not by giving us victory in battle, but by making his Son a defeated, as it were, criminal. God proved his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't wait until we improved to die for us.

He didn't say, if you will do better, I will do this. He said, you'll never do better until I do this, and he died for us. What God did, he sent his Son.

The cross is the proof of God's love. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, and my Savior laid down his life for his enemies. John uses a word that the theologians like to play with, propitiation.

He used it back in chapter 2, verse 2. And he is the propitiation for our sins. What is propitiation? John makes two marvelous statements about the Lord. He says God is love and God is light.

Now most people see one of these two, but not the other. There are those who say God is light, he hates sin, and therefore he must judge sin, there's no hope. There are those who say God is love, and he puts up with anything, therefore live any way you please.

John doesn't make that mistake. John does not make our God up in heaven a doting, senile grandfather who says to the children and grandchildren, just live any way you please, I'll close my eyes to it. Nor does John make God a heavenly dictator, a stern judge who frowns upon us and looks for ways to make us miserable.

John builds a bridge between God is love and God is light, and that bridge is propitiation. The word propitiation has to do with meeting the just demands of God's law. Now God is light, and God does have a law, and that law is unchanging.

God is not going to bend his law for us. God is not going to turn his back on his own law. God has a law, and that law says, the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

So what does God do? God looks at lost sinners like us and says, I love you and I want to save you. God looks at his law and says, I cannot break my own law. So God sends his Son, who pays the price for our sin, who takes upon his body the punishment that we deserve, and this frees God to be true to his law and true to his love.

He can reach out and save lost sinners and not violate his own holiness. That's propitiation. Now if you stopped a Greek back in John's day and said, do you ever propitiate your gods? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. We bring sacrifices and we try to placate the anger of our God. That's not what John's talking about.

Never get the idea that God the Father is angry at you, but God the Son loves you, and he keeps saying, oh, Father, don't do anything, please. That's not the picture of salvation at all. Our salvation is the result of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit lovingly working together.

Propitiation is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby he met the just and holy demands of God's law and, as it were, freed the hands of God. He now could be holy and loving. He could be judge and savior.

He could be just and the justifier of those who believe in Christ. What did God do? He sent his Son. Now, because of his death in verse 9 and verse 10, we have a birth in verse 7. Because Jesus died, I can be born again.

Because he tasted the holy wrath of God, I can experience the holy love of God by being born into God's family. John goes right down the line in verse 7. He that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. What is salvation? Jesus tells us, and this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

Getting to know God personally, being born into God's family. What God is? God is love. You say, well, I know that.

Let's move to lesson number 2. What God did, he sent his Son. You say, I know that. What have you done about it? Have you come to Jesus Christ by faith and said, O Lamb of God, I come.

O Lamb of God, save me. You say, well, I've done that. Well, then you should move to lesson number 3. In verses 11 through 18, he tells us what God is now doing.

And the key word in 11 through 18 is the word dwell. Five times he uses it. Verse 12, if we love one another, God dwelleth in us.

Verse 13, by this we know that we dwell in him. Verse 15, God dwelleth in him and he in God. Verse 16, he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God.

And then he mentions the word perfected. Verse 12, his love is perfected in us. Verse 17, our love is made perfect.

What's he talking about? He's talking about what God is now doing in the lives of believers. Before you were saved, the heart was filled with selfishness, greed, hatred. Paul wrote to Titus and said we were hateful, hating one another, fighting one another.

And then when the love of God came, the kindness of God came to us, something happened down inside. What is that something? God gave us his Holy Spirit. Verse 13, by this know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.

Romans chapter 5 puts it this way. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. It comes like a fountain, a beautiful swelling up and welling up of the love of God.

The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us. My spirit is selfish. The Holy Spirit is loving.

My spirit is greedy and hateful. The Holy Spirit is loving. And so when God saves you, he gives you the Holy Spirit.

He gives you a new nature down inside. And that new nature is like God's nature. And God is love.

And therefore, we experience love. Oh, do understand that the love of God is not a doctrine in a systematic theology book. The love of God is an experience down in your own heart.

When the fullness of the time was come, wrote Paul, God sent forth his Son. Then a couple of verses later at Galatians 4, Paul says, And God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. The Christmas event, God sent his Son.

The Christmas experience, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. Now, what is God doing? God is perfecting his love in us. I hear Christians say, Oh, pray that I'll have greater faith.

Oh, pray that I'll have greater wisdom. Oh, pray that I'll have greater strength. When was the last time you heard any saint get up and say, Please pray that I'll have perfect love? We need this.

We're talking here about a maturing of our love. Now, there is a baby kind of love. When you're first born again, there's a baby kind of love that can be selfish.

There's an adolescent kind of love that can be selfish. God wants to mature us into an adult kind of love, his kind of love, whereby his love is perfected in us and our love toward him is perfected. That he is giving to us a greater measure of his love within, and we're giving to him a greater measure of love without.

Love is perfected by abiding. That's why he uses this word dwell five times. The word dwell in verse 12 and 13 and 15 and 16 is the word abide.

Our Lord likes this word abide over and over again in John 15. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, if you abide, if you abide, what is abiding? It is fellowship. Where there's love, there has to be contact.

Where there's love, there has to be communion. Where there's love, there has to be communication. And love means abiding.

And when we're walking with the Lord and talking with the Lord and dwelling with the Lord, there is that experience of his perfecting love in us. Look at chapter 2 of 1 John and verse 5. Whosoever keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected. Did you see that? How do we have God's love perfected, matured in us through the word? It constantly amazes me how many Christians just ignore their Bibles.

They have time for television, time for everything under the sun. No time for the word of God. And yet when you open your Bible, God opens his mouth.

He talks to you. How can we abide in him if he doesn't talk to us? How do we abide in him through his word? How do we abide in him through his spirit? Chapter 4 verse 13. By this know we that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of his spirit.

If we walk in the spirit, we'll not fulfill the desires of the flesh. If we walk in the spirit, let's also live in the spirit. Let's be filled with the spirit.

He's saying that the spirit of God takes the word of God and perfects the love of God in us. And it's a marvelous experience. The greatest need in the Christian life is for mature Christian love.

Love between us and God. Now, God wants to perfect his love in us and he wants to perfect his love through us. You know, there's some very wonderful consequences to all of this.

You say, how can I tell if God is perfecting his love in me? How can I tell if I have a maturing kind of a love? Well, he tells us here. Verse 12. No man hath seen God at any time.

Now, Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the father, but he's not here on earth anymore. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us and people can see God.

Here's one of the glorious results of perfecting love. As we walk with the Lord in his word, God is seen in us. John is saying our Lord is not here anymore.

He's not walking around. We can't see him, but we are here and people can see God in us. If God is love and we are living in love, then they're going to see God for God is love.

That's an awesome thing. We could spend the rest of this time just thinking of the awesomeness of that statement. If we are abiding in him and growing in our love, people will see God in us.

He also tells us in verse 13 that we're going to have assurance by this. We know that we dwell in him and he in us because he's given us of his spirit. When we are growing in our love, then the Holy Spirit of God is able to teach us and guide us and we know what God wants us to do.

In verses 12 and 16, he talks about the love between the saints. There are some Christians who think that the more spiritual you become, the smaller your circle of close acquaintances becomes. Because you're so spiritual, nobody can fellowship with you.

It's just the opposite. The more that the love of God is perfected in us, the more we reach out to other people. And would you please remember that Christian love does not mean we have to agree with everybody.

Christian love does not even mean we have to like everybody. Christian love means we treat other people the way God treats us. God forgives us, we forgive them.

God's patient with us, we're patient with them. God speaks kindly to us, we speak kindly to them. God's not saying that we have to like everybody so that we'd be willing to go on a vacation with them or have them move in with us.

What he's saying is there is an experience of mature love that means we treat other people the way God treats us. What God is, God is love. What God did, God sent his Son.

What God is doing, he's perfecting our love. Have you come to that lesson yet, my friend? Can we look at this past year and say during this last year, God taught me how to love. God perfected my love.

My love was very immature. My love was babyish. I was in the cradle.

But God has perfected my love. The final lesson that John teaches us is in verses 19 through 21. What God wants us to do, share his love.

You see, in verse 18, he's talking about fear. In verses 19 through 21, he's talking about loving others. There are multitudes of people who are living in fear.

Now, there is a proper fear of God. There is a proper reverence for the Lord. But what he's talking about here is punishment, servile fear, fear that cringes, not fear that respects.

And John is telling us as we mature in our love, we don't live in fear. We aren't afraid of tomorrow. God loves us.

He'll take care of tomorrow. We aren't afraid of the day of judgment. As he is, so are we in this world.

We'll stand before him in Jesus Christ's righteousness. We aren't afraid of the day of judgment. He loves us and we love him.

When two people love each other, they aren't afraid of each other. I'm sure I'm speaking to some people right now who are afraid of the past. It might catch up with you.

And you're afraid of the present because you can't handle it. And you're afraid of the future because you don't know what scares you if you don't know what's coming. And so you live in fear.

You wake up in fear and you live in fear and you go to sleep in fear and you dream in fear. And God is saying to us, you don't have to live that way. Don't have to be afraid of life and afraid of death and afraid of judgment and afraid of the past, afraid of the future.

Because you walk in love. If you know Jesus Christ as your savior, if you've experienced the love of God, this love is perfected in our hearts and there's no fear. When you get rid of that fear, my friend, then you can reach out to other people.

Most of the people in the city of Chicago who tell me they are lonely, most of the people in the city of Chicago who tell me they are rejected and unwanted are people who are living in some kind of fear and they have so locked themselves up, nobody can get to them. And my friend, when you're locked up in the chains of fear, you can't reach out and love somebody else. And so after dealing with this matter of growing in our love, John says there's a fourth lesson I want you to learn.

What God wants you to do, love one another. Several times in 1 John, he's talked about this. If you go back and read the entire five chapters of 1 John, you'll find that every once in a while John says, now, let's love one another.

I want to command you to love one another. This is one of the evidences that you're saved, that you love one another. By this, we know that we've passed from death and the life because we love the brethren.

All the way through 1 John, he weaves together three beautiful strands. Truth, love, holiness. Truth, love, holiness.

And he'll talk about God is light. Then he'll talk about love. Then he'll talk about truth.

And he weaves it all together. And what he's saying is simply this, that if we're experiencing this perfecting love that God has in us, we're going to reach out and love other people. We Christians like to talk about love in the abstract.

If you've read the screw tape letters by C.S. Lewis, you'll recall that statement he makes when he says, don't let them love anybody in particular. Try to keep him from loving the person next door or the person down the street. Just let them love people in the abstract.

In the Peanuts comic strip, Linus says something like that. He says, I love mankind. It's people I can't stand.

This is the way we are. We sing about love and we hear about love. But when it comes to just getting right down and carrying a burden or drying a tear or getting an arm underneath somebody else's arm and holding them up, we don't have time for that.

The Christian love he's talking about here is not sticky, sentimental kind of feeling. The Christian love he's talking about here is God's kind of love. Active love.

Love that does something. Love that sacrifices. Love that pays a price.

Love that doesn't do it by remote control. Love that doesn't pay a substitute to do it. Love that comes right where we are and gets into the nitty-gritty of life.

Oh, how easy it is for us to sit in our ivory towers and pray for people. How hard it is to get down into the dirty streets and show love to people. Most of us as Saints of God are isolated and insulated.

And not much can get through to us anymore. Too many of us substitute words for deeds. If a man says, I love God, you find this all the way through the first John.

Verse 6 of chapter 1, if we say we have fellowship with him. Verse 8, if we say we have no sin. Verse 10, if we say that we have not sin.

Chapter 2, verse 4, he that saith I know him. Chapter 2, verse 6, he that saith he abideth in him. All the way through here, John is contrasting words and deeds.

I don't have to preach this. Let John preach it. Let me read to you from 1 John chapter 3, verse 16.

We all know John 3, 16, for God so loved the world. How about 1 John 3, 16? By this perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

But whosoever hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassions from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in true. So life is a school, my friend. And the greatest lesson we can learn in this school of life is how to love.

Not to love on the human level. Anybody can do that. To love on the divine level.

Human beings return good for good and evil for evil. They return love for love and hatred for hatred. Saints of God return love even for evil and hatred.

Jesus said, love your enemies. Life is a school, and we better learn these lessons. We better learn what God is.

He's love. And what God did, he sent his Son to die for us. And if we've trusted him as our Savior, the third lesson, what God is doing, perfecting our love, building bridges, not walls.

Sowing seeds of blessing, not hatred. Peacemakers, not troublemakers. And the lesson of what God wants us to do, to love one another.

That's what the Advent's all about. In this was manifested the love of God toward us. That God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

Before he came, we were dead. He's come, we've trusted him, we're alive. Before he came, we didn't know God.

Now we know God. Before he came, our hearts were filled with poison. Now they can be filled with love.

Before he came, we didn't know the lessons of love. But now that he's come, we know them. What shall we do with them? Because one of these days, there's going to be that final examination when God's going to call us up and say, all right, you were in the school of life.

You were learning the lessons of love. What level were you at when you got here? Well, what level are we at? Only through the Lord Jesus Christ, by his Holy Spirit, can we ever experience this kind of love. Constantly amazes me how the saints can hold grudges against one another.

How the saints can take picky, unish, minor, insignificant, little midget things and make big issues out of them. It constantly amazes me how people can sing about love and talk about love and yet promote cliques. Promote disagreements, spread lies.

My brothers and sisters, such things ought not so to be. May God help us today, not just today, but every day, to walk in that kind of love that he showed toward us. That that love might be perfected in us.

That we might walk in openness and honesty and not in fear. That people might be able to look at us and say, you know, that reminds me of God, for God is love. Gracious Father, we have failed.

So often we have worked for you, but our work has not been a work of love. So often, dear Father, we've gone out and fought battles, but it's not been a labor of love. And though our message might be right, and though our mechanics might be right, sometimes our motive has been wrong.

And Father, we confess this sin. Cleanse our hearts of all suspicion and criticism and hatred. Fill our hearts with the kind of perfecting love that makes us more like Christ.

I pray for those who have never been born again, who have never trusted the Savior. Oh God, help them to trust today and be born into the family of love. I pray, Heavenly Father, for those of us who have been saved long enough to know what this is all about.

Forgive us for not being farther along in our lessons. Forgive us for selfishness, for defensiveness. Forgive us, oh God, when we have been a part of the problem instead of the answer.

And help us today so to be filled with love, that we're not afraid. Because you are love. We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.