Basic Christianity: The World

Today’s post is part of a series to help us take what we learn on Sunday into the rest of the week. These posts summarize the main points from the week’s sermon and include questions for continued reflection and prayer. The posts in this series are written by members of our church’s Adult Christian Formation team.

 

This past Sunday our service theme was “God Rescues Us.” Pastor Bobby’s sermon explored the idea that we are what we love. Based on 1 John 2:12-17, we should live in our identity as those who have been rescued by God. When we know whose we are, then we are able to live lives wholly abandoned to God, in which he is our ultimate love.

Love defines us: Love has the power to shape and constrain us. What we love reflects where we draw our value. If we love things that will ultimately pass away, then our identity in those things will also pass away. If we seek value or glory from anything other than God (careers, relationships, money, good works), then we show ourselves to be of this world, rather than of God.

Desires are signs of love: We can know what we truly love by recognizing our desires. In 1 John 2:16, the word “lust” really refers to desires which have gone off course, desires which have gone outside the bounds set for them. We are created to desire good things. But in our brokenness, our desires for good things are distorted and become “super-desires.” Our super-desires are harmful and show that our loves are disordered. God has created us to desire him wholly.

Jesus desired us to the point of death. His desire was an all-out, fully abandoned desire to rescue his people. We need to live in this knowledge so that we can seek to order our loves with God at the center. Only when we know whose we are can we seek to desire him the most.

Questions for prayer and reflection:

  1. What or who do you love?
  2. What are the things that irritate you most and why? Knowing this can help you get to the heart of what you really love and long for.
  3. What good things in your life have been distorted by an over desire for them?
  4. How would a community with love of God at its center be shaped and changed?
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