Let’s Celebrate!

1 John 4:7-17 ESV
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world

PERSONAL COMMENTARY
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Let’s Celebrate! Let’s Love each other!

It’s time to celebrate our Savior’s birth. Oh how we want everyone to see Christ in the love that we show them!

If we do not have love, we do not know God, because God is love.

There is one true God, and He is the God that through His Holy Spirit bears fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

There is hoeever, an enemy spirit that produces hate, depression, fear, impatience, selfishness, evil, doubt, aggression, disobedience and rebellion – these things are not of God but reflect a separation from God – a vacuum where there is a separation from God’s will and nature.
That enemy spirit also tries to trick us by offering us counterfeits of the real fruits. These counterfeits fall short, and their flavor does not last, leaving us trapped in the death of our sin – out willful decision to live separated from the one true God – in lives devoid of His fruits, instead choosing these sad substitutes instead.
False fruits are things like lust, physical pleasures, denying others’ needs to fulfill our wants, immediate gratification without concern for consequences, manipulating others through false acts of kindness to get what we want from them, acting good in front of others with the purpose of receiving their praise and honor, practicing religion in the effort to earn a ticket into heaven, judging ourselves worthy of pointing out the speck in others’ eyes, the lie that accepting Christ so we can go to heaven allows one to continue being slaves to our old sinful nature (no repentance).

God doesn’t desire disobedient children that are “using” Him for His forgiveness – He wants obedient children that He knows are grateful and trying, but that will stumble at times.

Sin is the disease in us, the reaction of our flesh to this disease of evil, producing things like sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these are evidence of the death and disease that leads to death.

So let us test the spirits. Let us be sure that we are celebrating the one true God, and that we are loving and filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit – not mislead or lacking in understanding of this God that we serve.

He sent His Son for us. This is the depth of His love. Hear His voice. Feel His touch.

Please don’t let me be a noisy gong, I want to love so much more in my daily actions than these words that I share occasionally. Let my actions speak, and my words back it up – not the other way around.