1 John

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I love you.  I love our time together on Sundays.  I love those of you at home or in other towns but on our mailing list.  I want to share moments with each of you, eat meals together, go fishing, study the Bible, and just BE with you.  Each of you reading this has found a place in my heart, and I want so much good for you.  
This month we will be studying the book of 1 John with an investigative overlay of our year’s theme of “bearing fruit.”  One of my favorite and most life impacting segments of Scripture can be found in 1 John 4: 7-21.  This is where John tells us that “God is love.”  See, as a lost teenager looking for truth, I didn’t believe in God because of the Christians around me that claimed to be representatives of God but bore bad fruit (not all of them, but enough to put a bad taste in my mouth).  I DID, however, believe in love.  This passage gave me hope, opened my mind to what the Bible had to say about God, and gave me something to strive for.  
The last verse in this passage is, “And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love each other.”  I have to tell you, in knowing you, that’s the easiest commandment I’ve ever heard.  
But my love aches because we all don’t get to worship together every Sunday.  It pains that we’re all working so hard that we can’t go fishing or share meals as often as I’d like.  And it frustrates me that there’s not even enough time in a week or month to spend the time with ALL of you that it takes to make relationships fully bloom.  There are so many things that keep us apart as time speeds by.  
I am so glad, though, that I am not what unites us - Christ is.  And I’m so encouraged that even though a thousand things may prevent our paths from crossing more frequently, Paul says it best in Romans 8: 38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
And I am overjoyed at the thought that even with the depth of my love for you, it’s hardly a puddle compared to how much God loves you, desires to go fishing with you, dine at your table, study Scripture with you, share moments with you, and just BE with you.  And He can, NOTHING will be able to separate you from God and His love - it’s who He is.  See you at the garden.  SK