God Loves His Children

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. So, two weeks ago, just to kind of catch up and kind of put this all together and kind of package it, we talked about the nature of John's letter being very personal. He handles some huge concepts, truth and logos, which is kind of the organizational scheme of everything. Have you ever heard of the theory of everything or evolutionary biology? That is what the logos was, and John takes huge concepts like the truth and philosophical pieces of information and brings it right down and makes it personal to you. All about Jesus. So, his point in his reference to that, remember, John is an old man, John is Jesus' best friend. John is writing from a place in history where he's watching the transition into the second generation of Christianity. He's seen the writings of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and he's organizing a much more integrated and mosaic of truths, and he's handling them incredibly well as an old man. So, we learned then that John would want us to know that it's really personal, that there's a lot of arguments that occur culturally, politically, that kind of keep theology and philosophy out there, and basically it comes down to this question, not who do you think Jesus is, who is Jesus to you? That's the discussion point, that's the phenomenon, and that was Jesus in Matthew 16, and it was Peter who jumped up, we won't get too far aboard there. So, that went on to, last week then, we said, okay, it's personal, said, who are you, and the question that John was asking is, who are you, how do you fight your impulses? And we talked about a number of impulses, we talked about this word agape, which is the word for God's love, and John said last week, don't agape the world, and the world and the stuff in it, and so we kind of took a walk, sort of a catalog, sequential walk through the various elements of the world, like food, and relationships, power, and risk-taking, and all these things which are normal and good, but what happens when we give them agape, when we give them the love of God, this sacred attention, and this sole center of our lives, is they will kill us, it's called addictions, and all the problems that go along with that, that's why he warns us, what's the counterbalance, John said, the counterbalance is anointing, what's anointing, John very specifically chose a word which would link back to the Old Testament, which would be very full of sensuality, if you ever put lotion on your arms or hands, after being sunburned, you know how good that feels, that's an anointing, that's what that's like, and it's a comfort level, that's the way they anointed kings back then, and they would pour oil on their heads, and in that dry desert culture, that felt good to kind of weave in, and push all over the face, and that anointing, very personal again, very sensuous, very tactile, John said last week, is the way those impulses are avoided, is by that anointing of the spirit, it doesn't have to be anything so impersonal, it's a phenomena that feels, and supports wellness, and delight, and he says that's the way it is, let this Holy Spirit anoint you, and you will feel better when you are anointed, it's the way we fight those impulses, because those impulses supply us, this constant seeking of that which will fulfill us, when we know it's only God's anointing that will make that happen anyway, so that kind of catches us up, this week is a little bit different, can we talk about what motivates you, fear or love, what motivates you, fear or love, now that academically placed, and sort of philosophically considered, you would be the first to say, well of course love, but my suspicion is, that if we were to just take a little deeper look at it, and I think we will, I think I would offer to you that fear does more motivating for us than does love, that we often will do things because we are afraid of consequences, rather than acting out of our relationship, our security, or acting out of love and identity, so we are going to cover that and take a look, see what motivates you, and my hope and my prayer is this one thing happens, is when the spirit works within us after we receive his bread and wine, and body and blood, and his words anoints our spirit, and we begin to take his calling personally, my hope and prayer is that you walk out of here today, motivated by love, which is a little bit different, so here is what I was assigned by your pastor John, by the way John if you are listening, you can tune in this week, not the last two, this week you transition back out of Michigan, and back into Florida, so here we go, see what great love the father has left us, lavished on us, that we should be called children of God, that is where we start, and that is going to be the core, everything else from the rest of this flows from John right there, once more by way of repetition, see what ...