BIBLICAL ELEMENTS FOR DAILY
LIVING-06
TEXT: "We love him,
because he first loved us." (1 John
4:19)
I. HE
LOVED US FIRST
A.
The "We" in this verse is us, every believer. Every believer is to love Him. I cannot explain to you why you love Him and
why someone else doesn't. But I do know
that you will love Him if you are His child.
B.
The more you see yourself as a child of God and loved by Him, the more
you will love Him. I am not saying that
you will not at times doubt your love for Him and maybe His love for you, but
one thing is sure, our doubt does not change His love for us, "Because He
first loved us."
C. I
am not saying that we all fell an equal love.
Some have grown to love Him more intensely. But, this is His desire toward us, that we
grow to love Him more and more. Not His
gifts or presents, but His presence, in the stillness and quietness of the
moment.
D.
Loving God because He first loved us is sufficient evidence of grace in
our soul. If you are loving Him it is
because you are loved of Him.
E.
If you are loving God it is because you are loved by God. True love could not come into our hearts in
any other conceivable way. How does the
heart that the Bible calls desperately wicked begin to love God?
F.
If your desires have been aroused to love God, meditate on His great
love, and then trust yourself to that love.
Doing this we by faith then trust our souls to His love. Often times we do not really trust God with
our life. We may sing songs and confess with our mouth our trust in God, but
when the real test comes, the trust in God is far away from our lips and
hearts.
G.
But that's okay, faith and trust in God is a learning process He takes
us through. It is His vast love which
sets before us God's way of salvation.
We realize what God requires of us.
He requires that we be nothing but instead trust Him to be everything.
H. We begin to see that the plan of
salvation is all love. he loves us first
and we respond to His great love. If we
forget then our souls are cast down and needs to be restored to the truth of
His great love for us.
I. No
matter who we are in Christ there are times when our souls are cast down. (despondent, heavy, downcast) Remember what
David did when his soul was cast down?
He spoke to it.
"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art
thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the
help of his countenance." (Psalms
42:5)
Notice he told his soul what
he was going to do, "I shall yet praise him for the help of his
countenance."
Then he talked to the Lord,
"O my God, my soul is cast down
within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the
Hermonites, from the hill Mizar."
(Psalms 42:6)
II.
PARTING THOUGHTS
A.
God's love for us is the birthplace of our love for Him. Love comes by contemplation. It flows and grows out of a sense of the love
of Christ. Feed on His love like you
would a sweet honeycomb. The honey of
His love will make our whole nature become sweet as His.
B.
Feed, feed, feed, ponder, ponder, ponder, magnify, magnify,
magnify. We are changed into His same
image. We can be mirrors that brightly
reflect the glory and changed into the image of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18)
and love is the tool that engraves us into His image
