Let Love Abide
We live in a world where people find it very hard to believe in a God they’ve never seen.
But what if people could see God?
Hang on to that question, we’ll come back to it in a moment.
Over-Packed Suitcases
Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner. I know, that’s hard to believe. But many of us will probably travel somewhere at some point in the next few weeks for the holidays.
My family lives in Alabama and Alisha’s family is in Mississippi. So that means we’re going to be packing some suitcases as we prepare to make those trips halfway across the country.
How many of you have ever over-packed a suitcase? With more clothes than can actually fit in said suitcase. If so, then you have a couple of choices. You could take some clothes out. You could remove some items and make room for what needs to go in the suitcase. Or you could do what my wife does and sit on it while I zip it up!
Ronald Rolheiser once wrote,
“Our lives are often like over-packed suitcases.”
– Ronald Rolheiser
Prayer, Our Deepest Longing, p24
Does that idea resonate with you at all?
We all know that our lives aren’t just full, for many of us our lives are over full.
And this is normal in North America.
I’ll give you three quick examples.
Storage Units, Netflix, and iPhones
Did you know, in the United States storage units are a $38 billion industry. Storage units take up 2.3 billion square feet which means there is enough space for every single American to have over seven square feet to themselves!
Did you know, Netflix reports that its average user watches a series in five days. They say millions binge watch twelve-hour seasons in one day. When asked about the competition from Amazon Prime and other up-and-coming streaming services, Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, said their biggest competition is sleep.
Our lives are overflowing with THINGS, with things to WATCH, things to DO, and…
We haven’t even talked about those devices we carry in our hands 24/7. But they say the average iPhone user touches his or her phone 2,617 times a day.
(These 3 examples are taken from John Mark Comer’s book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry)
And then we wonder why we struggle with anxiety and depression. We wonder why we don’t have time for our most important relationships. We wonder why we’re lonely. Why our marriage is on life support. Why our kids are unhappy. Why we don’t feel close to God.
And then you hear people say things like, “It’s hard to believe in a God they’ve never seen.”
What we often try to do is to take our already stuffed suitcase and stuff God in there too. Read a scripture here. Say a prayer there. Go to church once or twice a month.
But I would suggest God isn’t looking to get stuffed into our already over-filled lives.
No One Has Ever Seen God, But…
Let me take some of your guilt and shame away.
If this is you, if your life is overflowing like an over-packed suitcase and you know it, if you feel far from God and maybe until now you really didn’t know why, if you’ve wondered, “Where are you God?” and you find it hard to believe in a God no one has ever seen, you are not the only one.
This has been a problem for at least a couple of thousand years!
1 John was probably written 60 or 70 years after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So more than likely those on the receiving end of this message are either older first generation Christians or younger second generation Christians who probably didn’t see Jesus and would say that they have never seen God.
So in 1 John 4.12, we see this problem identified.
“No one has ever seen God.”
How do we believe in a God we’ve never seen? This is a question the early church was asking, wrestling with, just a few decades after Jesus was resurrected from the grave and ascended to Heaven. And, it’s certainly a question people are asking today.
The writer of 1 John acknowledges this problem. How do we believe in a God we have never seen? Especially when life is hard?!
Maybe this is why we are so drawn to filling our suitcases with things we CAN SEE.
Perhaps this is why we’re so drawn to filling storage units with all the things that won’t fit into our houses. Maybe this is why we’re drawn to filling our schedules with things that keep us hyper-active. This might be why we can’t stop touching our phones because we can hold them, touch them, feel them, and stay distracted from what our souls are actually yearning for.
Maybe this is why we are drawn to… what’s the word for it? There’s a name for all of these kinds of things…. O yea, idols.
Here’s the reality: We are DRAWN TO what we FIX our EYES TO.
The writer of 1 John says we live in a world where…
“No one has ever seen God.”
But John doesn’t stop there. Here’s the rest of that verse. Here’s the good news…
“But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”
If… Then…
There are universal laws in the natural world. You know this without even thinking about it. Like the Universal Law of Gravity. Anywhere you go on planet Earth, at least as far as I know, the law of gravity is at work. And the law of gravity is built as a conditional statement. IF this, THEN this.
IF I throw a ball up into the air, THEN it will fall down to the ground. This is the universal law of gravity.
There are also universal laws in the supernatural world. These may not be as obvious to you, but you will probably recognize this supernatural law as soon as I point it out. Actually, John already pointed it out.
IF we love each other, THEN God lives in us.
Maybe you’ve never seen God. BUT… listen to what John tells us here. It’s a secret. It’s an open secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people don’t know this, haven’t realized this, because they haven’t experienced this. Not really.
IF we love each other, really love each other, THEN we CAN SEE God because God will LIVE IN US. Another translation says God will ABIDE IN US. And when that happens, His love comes to FULL EXPRESSION in us!
What if people could see God living in you?
The hard truth is people can have a hard time seeing God living in you and in me because, instead of letting God abide in us, instead of letting God dwell in us, live in us, we let frustration abide in us. We let fear reside in us. We allow the desire for more to live in us. We allow lust to dwell in us. We let all of these things and more abide in us and then we wonder, where is God?
Just like storage units are a multi-billion dollar a year industry, decluttering is also a multi-billion dollar industry.
Not long ago, people like Marie Kondo arrived on the scene with new ways to help people declutter their lives. I guess they were new. If you ask me getting rid of stuff is getting rid of stuff. But if you come with an idea like… if it sparks joy you keep it or if it doesn’t you say thank you to it and get rid of it, then you can make a lot of money!?
If you’re looking to declutter your home, call Marie Kondo.
But if you’re looking to declutter your soul, call on the Holy Spirit.
John says that “God has given us his Spirit…” (v13) and that “All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.” (v.15).
What if you made room for the living God to live in you. And what if, when that happens, people see God. Because they can see the living God living in you.
Of course, if we’re honest, this is the problem. Right? This is what most of us try to do most of the time, including me. We try to make room for God, so we take out having lunch with a friend so we can have one lunch a week where we read the Bible and pray. We take out sleeping until the alarm goes off and we get up 30 minutes early for a quiet time. We take out as much sin and sinful behavior as we can and we try to live a life of restraint.
But… it doesn’t work.
And the reason it doesn’t work? Because God doesn’t want to be one more thing to fit into your suitcase. God can’t be one more thing on your to do list.
God wants to empty your suitcase of everything and then He wants to be the only one filling it, abiding in it, dwelling in it, living in it.
You know what’s amazing about this suitcase? Once I emptied it of everything and then invited God and God alone to be in it, it’s incredibly light. Reminds me of something Jesus once said. We talked about it over the summer.
“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
– Jesus, Matthew 11.28-30
You know what else is amazing? Not only do I not have so much stuff weighing me down, but as long as I have God I have everything I need.
You might say… but I’ve still got all these kids to take everywhere, a demanding job, a failing marriage, etc.
Yes… but if you live a life filled first by God, filled to the full by the love of God, everything begins to change.
SLOWING Down Within
In sports they talk about how this happens for the Quarterback, when the game slows down, and they begin to see everything in front of them happening slowly. They see the play develop. Before, it all happened so fast, it all came at them so fast. But over time, with practice and preparation and repetition, everything starts to slow down and when it does, they play the game at a whole new level.
It’s the same thing when you live from a place of love… Life slows down. You live at a slower pace within even if the pace of life outside of you and around you remains up tempo. And as you allow God to live in you, dwell in you, abide in you, as you allow the Holy Spirit of God to cultivate the fruit of His Spirit within you, things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, humility, grace, and the list goes on, you find that a life filled with love slows down.
And here’s why this is so important. It’s important for a thousand reasons, but here’s the one reason I want you to think about today…
When you live a life filled with and by the love of God, and when we love each other with that love, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us, and PEOPLE SEE GOD!
It’s true, no one has ever seen God. UNTIL, they’ve seen your love for them in action. UNTIL, they’ve seen the way we love each other. UNTIL, they see our love for others, our love for people that maybe everyone else has labeled unlovable, or outcast, or unwanted. Jesus loved people like that. And when we love people like Jesus loves people then people SEE GOD!
That’s what happens when we let love win.
Let God Abide
I saw this tweet recently from Scott Sauls. He said,
“Almost everyone you meet is insecure, overwhelmed, and under-encouraged.
Consider taking time off from telling people how disappointed you are in them. Everyone knows already that they fall short.
Instead, show some compassion and be kind. People are starved for this.”
I have a feeling that if we just did THAT, people would see God. If we just showed some compassion, if we were kind, people would see God.
This is our mission, our purpose. To seek and save the lost. To help more and more people come to know about the great love of God we’ve found in Jesus.
God is looking for a place to abide. A soul to dwell. A heart to call home. May the LOVE OF GOD dwell in us, abide in us, so that those around us can come to know and believe in Jesus.
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