Our Response

How do we respond to God's love?

I once heard a powerful story that goes like this:

A lady in Spain made the news when she chose a unique way to test her husband's love. With the help of a friend, she manipulated her own kidnapping and sent a ransom notice to her husband. When the police discovered the kidnapping was a hoax, they asked the lady why she did it. "I wanted to find out what my husband would do for me," she replied.

Don't we all have that secret desire?

If I was in a crisis, what value would others place on me? What would they do to rescue me?

I think we're all asking that question.

And what I hope you will do in light of this study is to consider what God would do for you.

If you don't know God, I invite you to respond to God's love and receive his love. Tell God you want him to be your First Love.

What does this look like? It means you renounce all other loves and that you trust God to deliver you from your sin and make you his beloved. You tell God that you want to be united with him and live with him forever - starting now. It changes the purpose of your life: to love God and love your neighbor.

If you do know God, bring the emptiness of your life to him. Tell him about all your hurts. In his loving presence, open about your shame. Talk with him about the guilt. The lack. The need. The sorrows. The grief.

As 1 John 3:1 says, "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are."

We also respond to God's love by being transformed inside.

As we read in 1 John 4:

"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."

James Smith, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College argues that our identities are best defined by what we love. He writes:

"Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the day, gives us a sense of meaning, purpose, understanding, and orientation to our being-in-the-world."

Love goes deep. Love creates identity, purpose, and meaning. It shapes the habits and routines of our lives.

Your identity is beloved. Your purpose is to love.

But many do not know the Triune God as their First Love. And so in love - not in guilt or shame or pressure to perform - let us tell our family and friends about our First Love.

Heavenly Father, as we consider the good news of your love, displayed in the gospel, we bow before you. Father, we know every family in heaven and on earth is named after you. Father, according to the riches of your glory, grant that we may be strengthened with power through your Spirit in our inner beings, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. We want to be rooted and grounded in love. We ask that you would give us strength to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of your love, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fullness of you, Triune God. Triune God, you are able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. According to the power that is within us, we glorify you. May you be glorified in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

(Based on Ephesians 3)

Share the love of God with someone this week—not out of guilt or pressure, but out of the overflow of being loved by your First Love.