ABUNDANT LIFE VISION.
TO LOVE HIM.
1 JOHN 4:16.
“We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” NLT.

Good morning my dear friends, I welcome you once again to another session of Abundant life teaching. I pray that God shall give us the grace to love others as he has loved us in Jesus name. Today, we will look at love. What is love? I know there are lots of things going on in your minds right now. The different types of love that we have is probably flooding your minds and you would end it with agape love which is the purest type of love but we are not going to dwell on that today. We just want to talk about love in general and what God expects from us, his children concerning love. The first thing we need to understand is that love is an action word. 1 John 3:18 “dear children, let’s not merely say that we have each other, let us show the truth by our actions.” NLT. It is not expressed in the mouth only but carried out. Also, love is full of sacrifices. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” KJV. God so much loved us that he demonstrated the love by sacrificing his son for our redemption. On this note, our God is love and he expects his children to show love as their identity wherever they go.

This is because God wants to fellowship with his children and he does this when his children abide in him, but we cannot abide in God without love. 1 John 4:16, we get to live (abide) in God when we love him and carry out his commandment to love others. Therefore, we will look at the condition for loving God, why we should love him and the dos and don’ts of love.

A. THE CONDITION FOR LOVING GOD.
1 John 2:15 “do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.” NLT. Just as James said in James 4:4 that friendship with the world makes one an enemy of God, loving God requires total affection for God and any other thing. You cannot love God and share the love for the things of the world be it money, friends, fame, work and so on. Your relationship with God requires undivided attention.

B. WHY WE SHOULD LOVE HIM.
1. We love him to live in him: 1john 4:16
As it has been said in the introduction. God wants us to have a relationship with him and we cannot have a relationship with him without living in him through his son Jesus Christ. Also, when we do not love one another, we cannot claim the love of God is in us. Therefore, if the love of God is not in us, we do not live (abide) in him. When we love and abide in him, God gives us his spirit as a proof that we live in him. 1john 4:13.

2. We love him to have perfect love: 1 John 4:17a
“And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect.” NLT. God does not like average, what ever he wants us to do, he wants it to be perfect. He is perfect, Matthew 5:48 and he created the world perfectly. Thus, he wants us to be perfect and wants our love to grow to the level of perfection which is his standard.

3. We love to have confidence on judgement day: 1john 4:17b
“So we will not be afraid on the day of judgement, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.” NLT. We have already established the fact that we love to live in him and to have perfect love. On this note, when the aforementioned are present in the lives of believers, it gives us confidence in front of God on judgement day because the love of God made us live like him. Our case will be different to that of Adam and Eve who ran away in fear when they heard the voice of God. Gen 3:8.

4. We love to give expression of who God is to the world: 1john 4:12
“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.” NLT. This is an important reason why we love. No one has ever seen God before, as children of God, we describe God to the world when we live in love among other believers and non believers. By loving people, God will be revealed to the whole world.

C. THE DOS AND DON’TS OF LOVE.
1. You cannot hate and claim to love God: 1 John 4:20-21
“If someone says, “I love God," but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.” NLT. The standard God wants from us as Christians is to love our fellow Christians even if some people are rude, unlovable and difficult, we are instructed to accommodate and show them love.
This extends to non Christians too, Mark 12:31 “The second is equally important: Love your neighbour as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.” NLT.

2. You keep God’s commandments if you love him: 1 John 5:3
“Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.” NLT. One of the dos that comes with loving God is that you keep his commandments. You do not cherry pick which commandment to keep and which one not to keep. Your love for God trumps any thing sinful you may want to indulge in.

3. Anyone who does not love is dead: 1 John 3:14-15
“If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.” NLT. We are to love because people who do not love are dead as the bible puts it and such are murderers who can never have eternal life.

4. The church of God/individual must love: 1 John 3:17
“If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” NLT. God wants individuals as we have seen in the scripture above to love and show love to one another by catering for people’s needs starting from the church. Anyone who has but does not give cannot say s/he has the love of God his/her heart. Remember, we started this teaching that love is an action word which involves lots of sacrifice.

In the same vein, the church of God is expected to show love by giving as seen in James 2:15-17 “suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well"--- but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?” NLT.

Therefore, if you are here and you want to live in God and love as God as commanded but you have not given your life to Christ and you want to do so, say this prayer with me; dear lord, I confess my sins and confess that I don’t have your love in me. Please forgive my sins and wash me clean and I will serve you forever. Amen.