God Really Loves

The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and (that You) loved them, even as You have loved Me. (John 17:22-23)

Again I believe I am catching a glimpse of the very core essence of the gospel which is the good news about God in this passage. Jesus came to this world to reveal the real truth about how God feels about us. In His prayer to His Father here, He is sharing that He intends for all those who embrace this truth about His Father to become similar reflectors of the good news about God just as Jesus did. That good news is spelled out here in Jesus' words. The world – not just those who believe – needs to know that the Father loves them just as much as He loved Jesus. If one really begins to see this it is stunning.

The glory referred to here as having been given to His disciples (which He also said includes all of us who believe) is for the purpose of making us one in unity of love just as the godhead is in perfect unity of love and purpose. As we are perfected in love (and this only happens as we receive the glory of God and allow His reflection to be increasingly incorporated into our own character), the world becomes more and more convicted and convinced that indeed the Father does love all of us including them.

By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

Why is it important that all men know we are disciples of Jesus? This verse tells us how that will happen, but it doesn't explain why it needs to happen. That is what is seen in the previously quoted verses. The purpose for men coming to know we are disciples of Jesus by observing our love for one another, is to elicit an awareness of God's love directly for them even while they are yet His enemies.

That raises serious implications as to what is involved in the love we display for one another. If this love is a love that is reflective of God's agape love emanating from those in which He dwells richly, then it will not be just a love between disciples who love Jesus but will include the enemy-love that was demonstrated by Jesus all throughout His life and particularly during His last torturous hours going to the cross. It is this enemy-love that has power to transform sinners into saints and that must be seen in the lives of His followers if the world is to again catch a clear view of the true gospel.

The concept or definition of the term gospel has nearly lost all of its original power because it has been stripped of the potent elements that made it so effusive during the first two centuries after Christ returned to heaven. I believe that not until we take seriously these truths exposed in Jesus' teachings and example can the irresistible power of the gospel again break into the world as His children experience and demonstrate the kind of irrational, irrepressible love that flows from the heart of God through Jesus then through all who believe in Him to all those who still resist this truth about Him.

I still feel extremely frustrated that I am beginning to see all these incredible truths in theory but still am so devoid of living and experiencing them from my own heart. My heart has become calloused from a very early age to these potentially life-transforming truths because of misinterpretations and misrepresentations of God by those around me, and it is taking a very long time to become softened as I learn about them. But it must happen, and I increasingly desire to experience all that I am starting to see as the real power of the gospel, not just become conscious of it. I want to experience it personally and become an experiment of God's grace as He turns me into a more effective channel of His love to those around me. I want to be part of what allows the world to again see that God really loves His enemies just as much as He loves His own Son.

So That...

I just finished reading the whole chapter of John 17, the famous prayer of Jesus for all who were or would become His true disciples. If I am serious about following Jesus then that includes me and I need to pay very close attention to the words Jesus used that likely are the expressions of the intense desires of His heart more than any other passage. These are the sentiments of Jesus, the passionate desires and plans of Jesus that are to be the defining articulation of what His body on earth is to become.

As I read this prayer this morning with an increased awareness and appreciation for the real truth about God as He has been revealing it over the past few years, the implications of things in what He says here is greatly enhanced. There are so many new things jumping out at me as I read that I keep wanting to stop and pursue them in writing. Yet something else inside keeps prompting me to keep on reading quietly and not interrupt what God is seeking to share with me personally right now.

One thing that occurred to my heart as I chose to do this is that too often when I come across a startling new insight I am too eager to jump on it and run with it immediately. I am always eager to explore things much deeper; I want to tell others about it; I want to see all the glorious connections emerging with many other things I have read or learned in the Word. And all of that may not be necessarily bad, but now I wonder if at times it can also shortcut God's desire to give me a more complete picture. Maybe my penchant for wanting to immediately plug in the latest update for the software God has installed in me makes God's plan take much longer to accomplish. Maybe I just talk too much, whether out loud to others or internally in my discussions with God. There are certainly plenty who would confirm that who know me very well.

It impressed me that unless I am willing to rest in His presence, lay aside all my preconceived ideas, opinions, beliefs, previous insights, etc., I may at times miss something even more important that God wants me to receive from Him. Advanced knowledge of truth may actually be a potential liability at times if it becomes a hindrance to receiving even more truth from God. I have observed both in myself and in other people's experience that believing we have the right version of the truth can actually sometimes prevent us from being open to new insights. If I am too insistent that everything must pass through the filter of my own previous conclusions about things, I may be found to be resisting something God wants to reveal that appears at first to contradict what I have already concluded.

What is it that makes us so afraid of laying aside our preconceptions, opinions, beliefs and scenarios we have worked out from the Word of God or even possibly received from the Holy Spirit? Are we afraid that if we meditate in the presence of God, immersed in His Word, that somehow we will still be a sitting duck for the deceptions of Satan? How much trust in God's power to keep us from the evil one does that exhibit? Are we actually still operating in a spirit of fear and resisting having a spirit of intimacy with the mighty God who's protection alone can keep us from heading off on the wrong rabbit trails? Do we really think it is up to us to shield ourselves from Satan's subtle deceptions by constantly making sure every new idea fits perfectly with all the other conclusions we have come to in the past? These motives sound like subtle deceptions themselves as I am starting to see. Satan can use even advanced insights about God's character as ways to deceive us into thinking we are capable of keeping ourselves from being deceived as long as we force every new thing to fit into our own views of truth.

One thing I have been coming to see as the core issue involved in sin more than any other is the gut-level belief of whether God can be fully trusted or not. In my understanding at this point, I believe there is no clearer definition of sin than this. Through the most ingenious manipulation of brilliant minds, Lucifer was able to insinuate ideas about God that aroused doubts and eventually fear in the hearts of many when he originally developed his rebellion in heaven. He continues the same tactics today leading us to rely on the wrong things, particularly our own mental abilities, to think we can be secure in the truth. But this has long been proven to be a very unreliable defense. God does not expect anyone, fallen sinner or loyal exalted angel in heaven, to rely on their own mental capacities to figure out all the answers as the way to live. It is only in learning to rely on Him, depend on His wisdom which can only be accessed by listening to and being led by His Spirit that we can ever be safe from deception.

What impressed me again more clearly this morning is my need to rest with His spirit of peace in my heart as I allow Him to speak directly to my heart and mind whatever He wants to show me. While He is doing this I must be willing to trust Him enough to not be drawn away from my focus on Him into tangents that might result in sin. If the very essence of sin is distrusting God, then it only amplifies my need to rest and trust Him in His presence and put away my fears. If I am unwilling to fully trust God to communicate with me through His Spirit during my most intimate times with Him in His Word, then I am not trusting Him authentically at all. Rather, I am most likely making my own opinions, beliefs and conclusions the criteria by which I determine what has to be right or wrong instead of allowing the Spirit of God to lead me into all truth as Jesus promised He would do

I must not allow a spirit of fear subtly masquerading as defense of 'the truth' I have already received to hold me back from entering deeper into the restful presence of God. While it is can be very useful to take into account what God has already taught me and compare new ideas to see how congruent they are with new revelations, I must be careful to avoid thinking it is up to me to keep from being deceived. It is the height of arrogance to think I can pit my puny little mind against a vast array of brilliant intellects and think I am any match for them, whether human or supernatural. What I need is a close connection and a deeper trust in God's love for me as my protection. Then as I rest trustfully in His protection I can also feel free to lay my own defenses and opinions aside while I am spending quiet times humbly learning even more from Him.

Another danger I have observed is that it is also easy to mistake strong opinions as impressions from God while we are studying His Word. There are many who are confident that they are hearing from the Spirit of God, expounding new truths to them during their study times when in reality it may be only their own active minds urgently piecing together arguments that seem to reinforce what they already want to see. This is an ever-present danger and especially for those seeking to grow in a knowledge of truth. How can we avoid this pitfall if we honestly desire to experience the truth as it is in Jesus?

Something caught my attention as I noted the markings in my Bible I put there years ago in this prayer of Jesus. I noticed how often the word 'that' appears in this chapter. Being a former computer programmer I am familiar with what is called 'if-then statements'. In computer school God helped me see the importance of thinking very carefully from cause to effect. Assumptions are fatal when it comes to programming a computer, and likewise I am learning that assumptions can be just as problematic in life and often are the cause of many of our malfunctions.

What I see emerging in this prayer of Jesus is a long list of cause and effect concepts. Each time Jesus said 'that' or 'so that', I notice something significant that I need to be alerted to. I also see Him using these phrases to place priority parameters in place by which we can better appreciate how to view reality from God's perspective instead of using our own assumptions that usually create confusion.

I don't want to take the time to explore all of these here this time. What I do want to share is what Jesus impressed on my heart after I chose to listen to Him all the way to the end instead of jumping away to capture some of the exciting things I was seeing in writing. I decided to stay in His presence; listen more intentionally with an open heart and with my spirit to simply receive whatever it was He wanted to share with me and suppress my urge to jump in and tell Him what I was thinking.

What came clear to me is found in the very last verse of this chapter. It is both a strong encouragement for me but also a clear warning that I must not ignore. It is a reminder that just because many of us may be excited about the wonderful things we are learning about God's true character, we are still not exempt from being deceived any more than those who resist what we are seeking to share with them from our discoveries about God. In fact, the closer we come to knowing the truth, the more subtle and diabolical will be the ways in which Satan can seduce us with pride, self-importance and arrogance because we feel more exalted in our knowledge of 'the truth'. We are in even greater danger of being sucked into the very problems that we see so readily in the lives of those who hold opposing opinions to us and that causes them to resist what we seek to share with them.

Consider these compelling words of Jesus as He finished up His passionate prayer to His Father on behalf of all of us who are being drawn to follow Him fully.

"O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." (John 17:25-26)

Is there really much that can be added to this without potential of detracting from it? I feel particularly compelled that those of us who are coming to know the real beauty of the truth about God must guard against becoming infected by any spirit foreign to what Jesus describes here that would dim the glory that God is seeking to reveal in our lives. If we take the position that speaking 'clear truth' is an excuse to cover over a lack of true love; that speaking 'the truth' may wound and offend others but we have no responsibility to consider the effects our expressions might have on other hearts, I fear that we may already be deceived as to what it means to really know the truth about the nature of God's glory.

God's kingdom is firmly based on His fundamental principles of cause and effect in contrast to the counterfeit kingdom that relies on artificial reward and punishments. When we come to appreciate this more distinctly it will become evident of our need for humility and true love in the way we treat each other. Then we will see that our so-called 'truths' and wonderful 'insights,' no matter how factually accurate they may be, are useless if not presented in the context of a right spirit, the spirit that Jesus came to reveal and impart to us.

It is the spirit that emanates from us and that is present in our dealings with each other that determines how effective our witness will be in favor of God's character far more than the accuracy of our arguments or logic. If we are not willing to be filled with overflowing compassion, solicitous love, tenderness and humility like what marked the life of Jesus as described in Philippians 2, then we may be secret agents of darkness even while convinced that we are champions of righteousness and light and truth.

I must confess that I am too far from knowing and exhibiting this kind of love in my own life. I come under strong conviction many times over the way in which I selfishly act and feel toward those who resist my ideas or cross my path. God has a lot of healing and repairing and rewiring to do in me and all I can do is trust Him to continue what He started and try to be as cooperative as I can while I learn His ways. I need much prayer, much mentoring, much grace and much more of God's sweet presence in my own life as I seek to become more like the amazing person that I am finding Jesus to be in these passages.

"By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:35)