Do They Really See Him In Us?

[hldude]

“Do They Really See Him In Us?”

1 John 4:11-12 NLT

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

I have to really wonder how often unbelievers really see God in and through us. As I consider all the ways we tend to live our lives each day as proclaimed followers of God, I just have to question whether or not we are striving for others to see Him in us? It seems like we get so focused not only on how we want things, but also on how we want others to know how we feel about certain things.

I just have to wonder with all the different opinions that we feel we need to share and get others to hear from us, how often are we really concerned how much God is showing through? In all of my years of experience with secular work and working in ministry, it breaks my heart how so often His love is not expressed through how we treat one another.

Think about this passage and read it over and over again, pondering what it is saying. God loved us way more than we’ll ever understand. He came to die for us and that is the greatest act of love anyone has ever expressed. What does that mean to us? Does it overwhelm us? Does it move us to the point where we stop focusing so much on what we want and what we think and focus on loving others as He commanded us to?

I go to work each day and I just so often wonder if others are seeing God in me in some way. I wonder if they notice something different in the ways that I treat others. Sometimes, I don’t know if they see God at all in me as there are times that I don’t handle things well at all and say things I should keep to myself. Working in the secular world for so many years has taught me so much and it has challenged me to think more about how I am around non-believers.

Loving each other is probably one of the biggest challenges we face in being the church God wants us to be. Why is that so hard? Sure, we have differences, but why can we not just love each other as He has called us to do? That’s been a prayer and cry of my heart for years. I’m sure it has been for many of you as well.

I hope that you and I will deeply desire for others to see God’s love in and through us. We need to work a lot hard on loving each other, especially when challenges arise. We need to love others as best as we can, even if we don’t get along. If we really want others to see God in us, we will obey His command with a passion in our hearts to sincerely love one another.

 

[Who Me]

Do They Really See Him In Us?”

A great challenge and reminder of how we should be living.

I wonder whether our non Christian family, friends, neighbours, and work colleagues would recognise Christ like behaviour and whether they would want to know more?

Jesus upset the ' nice ' respectable people's idea of what Godly behaviour was.
So the question arises just how challenging is our behaviour to the ' nice ' respectable people we live and work with.

An example.
Duncan Campbell, used in the 1950 Lewes revival. Was studying at a Christian college, there they helped with chores and the students had a habit of helping themselves to a biscuit as they passed through the kitchen.
Durring a prayer time the Spirit of God moved among those students, showing them something of the Glory and Holiness of God.
A consequence of that movement was they realized that the helping themselves to a biscuit was stealing, was sin. They stopped doing it.

A little story, that shows us what sin is. The challenge is do we know and live in the light of that knowledge?
Do others see that in us?

 

[LovethroughDove]

It should be obvious to the world who is Christian and who isn't, but it is not. I'm speaking for the church worldwide. Sometimes you get those people who definitely exude Christ's love. My prayer would be for this to happen to the church worldwide.