God Is Love

ByJim Stephens

Scripture: 1 John 4 TPT

7 Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him. 8 The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love. 9 The light of God’s love shined within us when he sent his matchless Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours. He proved it by sending his Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins. (1 John 4:7-10 TPT)

God is love. Love originates in God. Wherever there is love: Mother for child, man for woman, friend for friend, brother for brother, person for pet, love for beauty, love for truth, that love originates in God. The human love we experience may be distorted, imperfect, and mixed, but it originates in God because God is love.

If you’ve got this working for you and in you and you know God loves you, then let love pour from you. Let it flow out of you. Express it in words, in serving, in giving, in providing, in protecting, in self-sacrifice, in any way you can! Love originates in God and is received by us by faith and there it is! Love is in us, and we can think of a thousand ways and do a thousand things to let it flow out of us to others. And the most amazing thing is to be part of a community of God-loved people who are all doing this—receiving love from God and passing it along to others!

The more we relax into the Dear Children and Loving Father relationship, the more the love flows. And the more the love flows, the more we know God and the more we become like him.

God’s love broke into the world like the light of a thousand suns when he sent his Son to redeem us and give us eternal God-life and light. Sadly, if we don’t love we haven’t connected yet, we haven’t received the new birth, we haven’t opened up to the flow that brings life and love.

This Is Love: God loved us before we loved him. It’s God’s love, not ours. He proved it when he sent his Son to be our Savior and to take away our sins and the sins of the world. When we receive his love, it becomes our love, and it starts to flow from us to others.

Prayer:

Father, Thank you for loving us. May your love fill us, flow out from us, and may that love create a loving community of peace and safety and caring and belonging. Amen!