Day 341- Seeing Love
📖Daily Reading
1 John 4
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
1 John 4: 11-21
'Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.
God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.
Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first. If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.’
This has to be one of my favorite sections of all the scripture. John building the case for perfect love and that is casts out all fear. Not just some fear or most of our fear but all fear! We can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus, aka ‘the way’. Jesus did not come to set up a religion or a specific church, he came to show us the way. How do you show something. Typically we thing of sight and seeing.
God is not something we can see. He is a force, an energy, a spirit, the is-ness of everything, consciousness, the creator the alpha and omega. There is no language that we have to fully explain what he is. Our minds can’t even comprehend his fullness. Love and light are the closest things that we have to even come close, at least that we know. Love is in us and all around. Light helps us see and helps illuminate things for us literally and metaphorically. Love also helps us see.
Love helps us see ourselves and each other in a new light. I think John has a great point and a great question for us to consider; if we can’t love each other, those who we can actually see, what hope do we have to love God who we can’t see? He goes on to say that if we are afraid, we fear punishment and if this is the case then we have not fully experienced his perfect love.
God is love, he becomes seen in and through us, because he is in us and we are in him. The ‘catch’ is that we have to believe it, we have to experience it to see it. One of my favorite ministry leaders Bro Harrell Riley that I had the pleasure of working with for a few years could always be heard saying; ‘If you don’t see it before you see it you will never see it’. We have to believe and have faith. We must see things in our minds and hearts, this energy begins to renew our minds and create a new experience of reality. The same is true with love and with God. You have to see him and see love first in your heart, you do this by believing, receiving his unconditional love. You practice it by loving others. Seeing them as God’s children just as you are God’s child.
God’s unconditional love; you can’t earn it, it can’t be taken away, you are loved. But if you don’t know it, feel it, see it, experience it, believe it you can’t see it and you will be afraid. You will keep ‘trying’ to earn it, deserve it, strive to be worthy - this blocks seeing the love. We have blinders on. But just because we have blinders on does not mean it is not there. We have to take our own blinders off.
I think I have finally seen it and experienced flashes of it, but I am still practicing. I definitely still have some fear and don’t love people the way I think I can and hope to one day. So I will keep practicing. I know my love sight will improve with practice, patience and abiding in God’s love. Continually renewing my mind with Grace.
My friend and client, Mary Mayfield, loves to remind me of the Strongs Concordance definition of Grace; the divine influence upon the heart and its reflection in the life. Reflection is what can be seen in the life of believers. We receive grace and the fullness of God’s love and then we can reflect this to others. We know that we are loved and that they are as well, and have God’s grace, so who are we to deny it to them as well? This would be like a mirror with no reflecting power, no power to see or show.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
Love helps us see ourselves and each other in a new light. I think John has a great point and a great question for us to consider; if we can’t love each other, those who we can actually see, what hope do we have to love God who we can’t see? Can you accept this kind of unconditional overwhelming love? Do you see how his love can be brought to full expression through his precious creations, you and me?
📖Tomorrows Reading
1 John 5
Coaching Opportunity
My inaugural OWN IT! For Good! group & 1:1 coaching is well underway and it is amazing. The participants are absolutely loving it and experiencing major aha's, break throughs and life changing mindset shifts. Please let me know if you are interested in experiencing this as well, I am considering kicking off another group in January of 2023. Let's make 2023 the year of YOU by laying a solid foundational mind set! The world needs what only you have to offer! Give yourself the best gift ever, the best version of you is ready to rise & shine!
Book your free📞Wake Up Call today to learn if this is what you have been waiting for!
If you have stuck with me this far, then you are not reading this by accident, I believe God has a plan for you and is calling you forward!😉🤩
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