Good evening everyone! Hope everyone’s settling in well at the resort. We really want this weekend to be restful and life giving to you. We intend for everyone to experience physical, mental and spiritual rest along with the community.
As most of you might be aware – we do have a theme for the retreat this year and it’s called iCrave. It’s a catchy way of leading us into a conversation on the cravings, longings and desires of our hearts.
This theme is inspired from this verse from 1 Pet 2:2:
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
I remember reading this verse when Hannah was just born, and it spoke to me in such a fresh way. Until her birth, I didn’t realize the extent of the hunger cravings that newborns had. I was surprised by the frequency and the intensity by which my newborn was feeding on milk. Let me tell you – handling a hungry newborn baby is not an easy task.
But would you say that craving to be fed is a bad thing for babies? No, it’s a good thing so that they could be fed and satisfied. So the craving in itself isn’t a bad thing, the question is how is the craving being satisfied? Is the craving being satisfied with milk or something else which is unhealthy?
Similarly when it comes to our hearts, what are we satisfying our cravings with? Is it with the “pure spiritual milk” which is God’s Word or is it by worldly knowledge or life experiences or feelings? And what we want to do through the entire retreat is anchor our conversations around God’s Word – and the reason we’re doing that is to feed our cravings with what is healthy – what will truly satisfy and not leave us empty and dry.
And even as we’re talking through this, we want to be genuine and honest ourselves. We’re not talking here as experts. Like all of you, we are students and need help from God to enable us to feed our cravings with what is healthy and pure and good.
So we will kick off our sessions with the topic iCrave love. And our bible passage will be from 1 John 4:16-21
16 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. 17 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. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot[a] love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Have you ever wondered why romance as a genre never gets old? Be it movies or TV shows or books – romance as a genre never goes out of fashion. Why is that the case? And it’s not just popular among the singles, it’s true among the married as well? Some might say it’s because it’s relatable entertainment, but could it be coming from a deeper heart craving to be fully known and also fully loved? There’s this innate desire and longing in all of us to be fully known and also fully loved by someone.
And if we are not searching for it in movies, we’re looking for someone to love us that way (fully know us and love us) – maybe we’re looking for it in our spouse, maybe we’re looking for it in our partner or someone who would marry us, maybe we’re looking for it in our children or maybe we’re looking for it from our parents. Someone who can fully know us and fully love us.
The unfortunate part is that there is no one on the face of the earth who is able to carry that burden of expectation.There’s no one who can perfectly love us that way. Because this requires a perfect, a complete, a relentless love which none of us sadly have the inbuilt capacity to offer.
Which is why today’s passage is so apt because it was written to a people who were unsettled in their faith. And this passage was written to remind of the rock solid assurance they can find in God’s love.
What is this kind of love which completes us and assures us?
1. Unconditional love (v16)
16 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.
As we read this verse, the immediate question which comes to our minds is “what is the love that God has for us?” Unconditional, yes but what does unconditional love actually mean? What does it look like?
Apostle John who wrote this letter helps us define that a few verses earlier in verses 9 and 10.
[9] 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. [10] 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.
There seems to be at least 3 things we can understand about unconditional love.
Sacrificial (v9)
[9] 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.
It’s a love which involved great sacrifice. He didn’t just send something or someone who didn’t matter much to Him. He didn’t send a proxy or his secretary into the world. He sent his “only” Son into the world to give us life.
Think about how big a deal that is. What was most dear and precious to God the Father was His own Son – the apple of His eye, His favored and loved Son in whom He was fully pleased. And that was the One whom He chose to send into the world.
As parents we would think twice before sending our children in an area which is risky, and here God sent His Son into the world not only knowing the full risk but also knowing what would eventually happen to Him. That was major sacrifice.
Not transactional
[10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us
God didn’t wait for us to love Him first – as a precondition to loving us back. It wasn’t a love that was dependent on how we loved God. It wasn’t transactional. It wasn’t “matlabi” love which says I will love you only as long as you treat me and love me as I expect you to.
No, it’s a love where God took the initiative to love us way before we even realized it.
Costly
V10….and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
What does propitiation mean? It’s basically a big word that tells us that a sacrifice had to be made to quench / satisfy the holy anger of God and turn His anger into favor toward us.
Because God is Holy and Just, He can’t simply overlook sin and say “chalta hai”. The Bible refers to God as “a consuming fire”. Imagine a piece of paper or wood that falls into a blazing furnace, it gets burnt up within seconds. And now imagine people like us who are sinful coming into contact with God, we will be burnt up. We can’t survive. We will be destroyed.
The beauty of the Gospel is that not only did God send His Son sacrificially without any transaction or condition, but that He offered His Son to be burnt up instead of us. And it wasn’t a lack of love for His Son. It was His Son Jesus after all – His most precious one. He did that because He knew that was the Only way to satisfy His Holy anger over our sin and be able to show favor instead of anger toward us. It came at the highest cost to save us. The treasure of heaven was emptied and spent so that you and I could be saved. It didn’t come cheap.
That’s the unconditional love of God. But not only that, it is also a
2. Secure love (v17-18)
17 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. 18
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
These verses are basically saying that through the love God showed us in Jesus, He has removed every single reason for us to approach Him with guilty fear.
In fact verse 18 says that God’s love and guilty fear do not go hand in hand. And the argument is this – guilty fear is ultimately a fear of punishment. It’s a fear of facing the punishment that we rightly deserve.
But because of the unconditional love of God – sacrificial, non-transactional and costly love of God in Jesus, as people who have trusted in that love, we don’t need to fear punishment because Jesus already bore that punishment for us.
And because Jesus already bore that punishment for us, God looks on us with great favor and love and because He does that we don’t have to ever fear approaching God.
There is immense security and safety that we experience because of God’s love. Now does that mean that God is pleased with us when we sin? No, off course it displeases Him. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t make us feel insecure about how God’s going to respond to us. Because of God’s unconditional love in Jesus, we can still experience security and that security actually drives us to repentance. True security and safety actually helps us repent.
I’ve always been encouraged by Angie’s relationship with my mom in law. She would often tell me that growing up, she couldn’t keep a secret from her mom because of the security and safety they enjoyed in their relationship. She knew she couldn’t break the immense trust that her mom had on her. And even in days when she would mess up, knowing that her mom loves her, is for her, knowing that their relationship is safe and secure, would help her to go and confess that to her mom.
Similarly in much more greater ways, the secure love of God not just removes fear but enables us to repent and come to him.
But not only is this an unconditional and a secure love, it is also a
3. Transforming love (v19-21)
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot[a] love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
It’s a love that transforms us – it changes the way we love God and love each other. V19 starts by telling us that “we love because he first loved us”.
When we realize that God shows His unconditional and secure love in spite of knowing everything about us, that does something to us. It changes our hearts to respond to him in love.
Although we don’t have the inbuilt capacity to love God, God’s unconditional and secure love enables us to love him in trust, joy and obedience.
I mean how else can we respond to someone who has been so loving to us? And that’s why week after week during our Sunday Gatherings, GCs and DNA groups we aren’t demanding and questioning people on why they aren’t loving God as they should. “Why are you not obeying God, why are you not living a life as you should, why are you not trusting Him”…that’s not what we spend most of our time on. We know that the only way to make us love God is by reminding each other of the love that God has for us in Jesus.
In the same way, V20 and 21 says this – if you’ve understood and experienced God’s unconditional and secure love, then that should enable you to love those around you in the same way – without conditions and without insecurity. And a lack of love with each other, reveals a forgetfulness of what God has done for us.
When me and Angie analyze almost all of our arguments and fights that we’ve had, we’ve come to this conclusion that the root was demanding and expecting love from each other that only God can provide. And so through hard lessons in our marriage, God has taught us how important it is to daily remember and receive His love for us in Jesus. The moment we forget that, we’re going to be left with just laying down conditions on each other, and also creating an insecure relationship that is constantly filled with fear. Fear of messing up and the consequences for messing up.
And that’s why this love is a transforming love. It changes you, changes the way you love God and also the way you will love the people in your life.
What are looking toward for love? What or who are you looking to fully love you and fully know you? Here’s the thing – your spouse will fail you. Your partner with whom you’re hoping to get married will fail you. Your children will fail you. Your parents will fail you. Except for God’s love – that will never fail you because it’s an Unconditional love, it’s a Secure Love and it’s a Transforming Love.
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