God is love.
Have you heard those words from John the Apostle lately? God is love (1 John 4.8). Those words make us smile, make us fall silent, make us tremble. They fill us with wonder and draw us with every syllable to search out their meaning. It raises up the praise from our lungs, “Jesus is Lord!” and
God is love.
Deep down many of us know this truth. We know that John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, speaks from a rich personal experience of the Father’s love (1 John 4.9). The Father loved him so much He sent Jesus to find him on the shore while he was mending his nets (Matthew 4.21). And like the Father sent Jesus, He is sending us to all nations (John 20.21). Why? Because
God is love.
We can see it in his every word, every action, every letter. John’s life was forever marked by the love of God. It is in the looking back over this decade and seeing the hand of God leading us through our own ups and downs, highs and lows. In 2009 Elise and I were still healing from the loss of our child through miscarriage and the joys in the birth of our beautiful baby girl, Daphne. In 2019 we are rejoicing in the birth of new churches in a country that a decade ago wasn’t even on our radar! How can we begin to worship and adore Him? There is one clear place to start:
God is love.
His love reminds me of the testimony of a new believer waist deep in a river standing by my father preparing for baptism. Looking up the crowds along the banks with a passion and a purpose he shouted, “I believe! I have seen it! It is true!”
God is love.
Even still there is a danger that when we hear something over and over again, the words begin to lose their meaning. And worse still, when words begin to lose their meaning our application of those words become misguided. If God is love, and we have experienced His love, then surely it will impact our lives and the lives of those He places around us! It will send us out, pressing deeper and deeper into the darkness in search of the lost.
God is love.
And we must let Him define His nature. God’s love is patient and kind, bearing all things, believing all things and hoping in all things (1 Corinthians 13.4-7) His love is patient, something our generation needs to embrace. To love as God loves we must define patience in His terms: being slow to anger and long in suffering. We desperately long for God’s love to be this in our lives, but how much more difficult does it become when we think of others. The people who need our patient love the most deserve it the least! Those others who don’t look the way we look, don’t speak the same language we do or even don’t vote the way we vote! And don’t even get started talking about those who don’t believe as we believe! They strip Jesus of His divinity, like the Roman’s beside His cross and like Peter we violently rise to His defense! How could we even begin to love those that persecute and martyr our spiritual family around the world?! And still those words echo out again and again…
God is love.
We say, “Lord, I’m happy to love my neighbor, but surely that can’t apply to my enemy!” And in his love, his long-suffering, slow-to-anger love, Jesus says to us again, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 5:44-45).
God is love.
Thank you for letting our family serve as your personal link from the local church to the unreached! Thank you for partnering with us in prayer-filled time and generously-given treasure so that we can live among the lost in unreached nations. We rejoice that you have experienced the love of God and have passionately sent us and so many others around the world to proclaim
God is love.