1 John 3:11-24

1 John 3:11-24
¹¹ For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

Did the Holy Spirit just bring someone to you mind that you do not even like? Love them too.

  ¹² Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.

Growing up I remember hating my sister at times.  Looking back I will admit part of it was because I wanted to tear her down because she was trying to do it right.

¹³ Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.

Have you looked around here in America?  We are hated.  Every religion is equal with the exception of evangelical Christians.  Every day we are losing the freedoms that the church here in America has squandered.  Persecution has come to the church here.  It will get worse for those of us who are real while those who play church will fall away.

¹⁴ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

Here is a good measuring stick of you spiritual temperature.  Do you love?  Notice here that God equates hate with murder.  Let's be realistic.  Murder, at it's root, starts with hate.  Just like when Jesus said if you look with lust you commit adultery in you heart.  God cares about what is inside us not just what we let out for the world to see.

¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? ¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
  
Let's take a moment to meditate on the standard by which our love will be judged.  

Some of us think we love someone just because we allow them to keep breathing.  I read a pithy saying on facebook,  "How many of us know someone who is alive today only because it is illegal to kill them?"  I laughed and immediately thought of people it applied to.  

Now when I measure that thought and laughter with the standard by which God will measure my love and I find myself a murderer in my heart.  I realize, that in this area, the world's standard has not just established a foothold, but a stronghold.  It's time to let word of God transform my heart and tear down this stronghold.

¹⁹ This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰ If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹ Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²² and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. ²³ And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴ The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 

My heart does not condemn me.  However I have been convicted and there are things that need to change.

God Bless.