Do Not Love The World

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. Aloha. Good morning. Welcome to this place and time that God has appointed. That's one thing that I can be absolutely certain is that you are here according to God's will and God's plan and he has a word for you today. If you are expecting Pastor John you are deeply disappointed because this is not Pastor John. I can't take his place. Nobody could take Pastor John's place but I am substituting for him and if I met you last week my name is Carl Galick and I am officially retired and when John heard that he went what and so he's kind of pulled me from that but it's my pleasure to join in the mission that God has given to Thrive and the opportunity that we have to serve together. Welcome all of our online folks too and once again if you're watching Pastor John hit the red button. Go away. I can't get away with anything. Take a break. Have a vacation. Attend St. Lawrence. I heard there's a really big church up in Michigan out there. Thanks be to God for the opportunity to give him a break and do that and so that you can plan your outing one more time. You're gonna give him one more Sunday off here in July and then we'll come opportunity. So this is what we're doing. I noticed that we're sort of a divided congregation this morning. We have some who have been loyal to the Kipuna Aloha and the understanding of the deep love of God and are celebrating with Hawaiian shirts and I think you are my favorite people. Then we have those who are gonna go get the civic sort of minded and celebrate as James said the freedom that we have as a country and as a nation and despite whatever political leanings you have we are in the nation together and have celebrated that and thank you for recognizing and celebrating that and that opportunity. We'll pray for our country and for the freedoms we have here later today doing that so you're good. Some of you decided I couldn't figure out which way to go so you didn't do either where some did both and so there's a third category that it'd be too much to get into. So having said that doing that we're into Kipuna Aloha. I love the theme. Pastor John said we have a liturgical gar plan for the summer and it's from Goodwill. It's my favorite Hawaiian shirt. I love the thought. Kipuna Aloha is from 1st John. We're looking at the first letter of 1st John and it is a weaving. It is a basket weaving of grace and of the power of love and the way in which God loves and the effect it has on us. Last week Kipuna Aloha I took the reins and talked about the nature of how personal God's love is and how personal it is. So to kind of get that is there's a natural reflex that you and I have to kind of create distance with people even with God's truth and God's love. One of the interesting kind of phenomena is that as part of the human nature is that our deepest need is to be known and our deepest fear is to be known. So there's this constant struggle going on inside of our spirits and our minds because that's always the case. It's always present and so we have a God who wants to know us and wants to be known by us. So we took a look at the nature of John himself as a person and it was called the beloved disciple. It's a phrase that I just can't get used to but would translate today into perhaps Jesus BFF best friend forever which would be arguably us as well. But nonetheless all that being said John was in the inner circle and the inner circle of the inner circle was present during Jesus' incredible times and was present at the cross and watched his took care of his mom afterwards and was in the upper room together and and what we can attain from history is that John was probably the youngest disciple to follow Jesus and we can also figure out is that he was also the oldest disciple to live. So he's writing everything from the perspective of an elderly person who's been there, done that. He's read Matthew, Mark and Luke and he writes the Gospel of John which is not chronological at all. It's organized thematically around blessings and miracles and he's written the first John. Now he's probably between 75 and 90 years old when he's writing these letters so he's doing a lot of reflecting and a lot of integrating and does not write in a linear fashion but he weaves everything together in circles and interconnecting lines so that it all kind of this fits to that and that fits to this and figures it all together. So we do some examples that's what I want you to leave you with or who we're going to pick up is that the nature of God's love is personal. We'll use the book that I held up here from C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, which isn't about divorce at all in the regular sense of the words. It's a response to the poet Milton who wrote something called The Great Marriage about that heaven and hell are really one place and we all go to the same place when we die and C.S. L...