“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.
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