Let’s Talk About Love

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

John 15:9

Jesus is talking about love. He talks about the love that exists within the Trinity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He talks about the love that he has shown to his disciples.

One of the most profound experiences of love that I have had in my life happened when I first became a father, many years ago now. We brought our son Benjamin back from the hospital and my wife went off for a shower and I was sitting there on my own in the living room holding Ben who was asleep in my arms.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I was overwhelmed by a wave of love for my new-born son. To be honest, it shocked me.

I hadn’t expected to love a baby like that. I mean, how can you love a baby? They don’t do anything. They don’t have any discernible personality. I had assumed that a father’s love gradually grew over time. As the child develops, as he becomes a little person, as you start to be able to interact with him, play with him, get to know him. I had thought that it was at that point that you started to love your child. But no, it wasn’t like that at all.

Holding this tiny body in my arms, I was overwhelmed with love for him. I was truly shocked by the experience.

As I was trying to process all of this, I heard God speak. Now, I don’t often hear God speak, it is a very rare occurrence in my life. But at that moment I heard with total clarity, God say this,

“Stephen, if you as an imperfect human father can love your son so much, how much more do you think that I, your perfect heavenly father, love you?”

That stunned me. To think that the overwhelming love I was feeling for my son, was just a tiny fraction of God’s love for me. It stunned me. It turned me inside out. I don’t even have the words to tell you how that made me feel.

And in that moment, I suddenly realised that I had completely misunderstood what it means to be a Christian. I had got everything upside down. I had been a Christian for 20+ years, and yet, until that moment, I had never properly understood what being a Christian actually was. I suppose that just shows you how dense I am!

If you had asked me at the time, “Stephen, do you believe in God?” I would have replied “Yes.” If you had asked me, “Stephen, do you try to obey God?” I could have answered, “Yes.” But if you had asked me, “Stephen, do you love God?” I could not have honestly answered “Yes” to that question.

And yet, I suddenly understood for the first time why Jesus said that the first and most important commandment was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” What God wants is our love.

I had got things completely back to front. I was doing all the right things – praying, reading my Bible, going to church. But they weren’t being done as the expression of my love for God, they were simply acts of duty.

But God didn’t want my duty or my service. When you love someone, what you really want from them is to love you back. God wanted my love.

Now, if you love God you WILL want to speak to him in prayer. You WILL want to try to learn about him and encounter him in the Bible. You WILL want to join with others in worshipping him at Church. But these should be the expression of something much deeper, a love for God at the very centre of our being.

But then I was left with a question, “How can you love God?” We can’t see God, we can’t touch God, we can’t have a conversation with God like we can with a person. So how do we love God?

I realised that I didn’t know how to love God. So, I started what became a 5-year journey of learning how to love God. It involved a lot of prayer, a lot of reading, a lot of seeking out people who could share their experiences with me and help me. And gradually, slowly, I started to be aware of a love for God that was growing inside me. Until I finally got to the place where I could honestly say, “Lord, I love you.”

The ultimate fact of our existence is that we are extravagantly loved by God. What God wants from each one of us is that we love him back. What it means to be a Christian, at its most essential, is someone who is trying to learn how to love God back. Amen.

How to live with God and the difference it makes.

Yesterday I found myself in front of 25 young people who were preparing for confirmation. I was there to witness the difference it had made for me to put God at the centre of my life.

It was a real privilege to be invited to do this and to conclude this time of testimony and sharing God had guided me to the following text. Some words of Jesus that briefly summarize the Christian life.

Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.

My Father will love them,

and we will come to them

and make our home with them. John 14: 23 NIVUK

The first thing to note is the necessity of love for God.

It is not for nothing that Jesus said;

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment. Matthew 22: 37-38 NIVUK

This is the very beginning of the Christian life, we have not even started if we do not love God.

But why is this necessary? How can we love someone who is invisible, untouchable? Why put this difficult thing first? Why not start with something easier, something more basic and within our grasp?

The answer is because the Christian life is impossible unless it is motivated by a love for God, except that it is the expression of that love.

Loving God is the only appropriate answer to an encounter with Him. God is so good, so loving, so merciful, so gracious, so full of love that to know Him is to love Him.

So if we do not love God, it is because we have never actually met Him in any real way.

So every Christian life begins with such an encounter with God that triggers in us, as its natural effect, a love for Him.

Following this Jesus tells us how this love for God is expressed – by obedience.

This is also logical, if I love someone I want to please them, to do what will make them happy and to avoid doing things that will hurt or displease them.

So if we love God, this love is expressed by a desire to know what God wants in terms of the way in which we should live in this world – which brings us directly to the Bible. It is through His Word that God gives us all the necessary clarifications about how we can live in a proper manner, a way that pleases Him.

Our love will express itself, then, in a serious engagement with God’s word and the putting into practice of it in our lives.

Jesus continues by explaining the consequences that follow from this activity – and they are massive!

God the Father will love us! Meditate a little on this sentence. The God of the universe, the one who created everything, who keeps everything in existence by His powerful word, He will love us! Us! Creatures of dust that only last a moment! Certainly, it is not we who love first, rather our response of love to an encounter with God enables us to discover that it is God who has loved us from the beginning. Indeed it is only His love that has brought us to Him.

And more than this, Jesus and his Father will come to us! God – the Father and the Son – expresses His love for us by coming to us. Such is His love that He feels the desire to be with us, reflect on that a little!

And more than this, even, God will dwell in us. The God of the universe will live in us! Such is His love He will not accept to be separated from us, not for a moment.

And if all this happens, imagine the consequences! If God Himself dwells in you, if all His power, His love, His creative energy remains in you, can you imagine that an ‘ordinary’ life would even be possible?!

Isn’t it rather more likely that this divine life, present in you, will be expressed in a powerful, transformative and creative way? Imagine the adventure of a life like that!

For me, this is the Christian life, the true Christian life, a loving relationship with God that expresses itself in our turning towards God, in our obeying Him, which, in turn, triggers the experience of His presence in us, with us, which will express itself through His activity in our lives to advance His project for the redemption of the universe!

That’s the gospel.

If you are not blown away by it,

it is because you haven’t understood it!