Last week we talked about how we have God living on the inside of us. How Papa God lives in us through His Spirit. Did you know that every time you hear Holy Spirit speaking to you, that is your Papa God speaking to you? John 16:13 says, “But when the truth-giving Spirit comes, He will unveil the reality of every truth within you. He won’t speak on His own, but only what He hears from the Father, and He will reveal prophetically to you what is to come.” Papa God is closer than you think.
Last week we also talked about compartmentalising our Christianity. How there are people in your world who have never met the church version of you. We finished on this question: Why is it that we are surrounded by people who need God but never get to experience Him even though He is in us and we are in Him? I think the answer is in 1 John 4:16 which says, “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.”
Do we know how much God loves us? Because if not, we have been given Holy Spirit who is here to “unveil the reality of every truth within us”. That is not to say He is here to unveil our truth. No, He is here to unveil the only truth there is, and that is the truth of God’s word. Including how we are God’s children and that we have a heavenly Father. So if we are having trouble with the first part of 1 John 4:16, it is then difficult to put our trust in God’s love because we are unsure about His love for us. When we cannot do that, it makes it difficult to live in love. Our love is confined and restricted and its not free and all encompassing like the love God has for us.
Let’s be honest, if we truly loved people the way the Bible commands us to, we would care about them on a much deeper level than we currently do. We would be telling the people in our world about Jesus. We would be praying for them. We would be seeing many more miracles, signs and wonders happening in our workplaces, in our cities, in our shopping malls, in our streets and wherever God has placed us.
The enemy has done a good job at making us question and doubt Papa God’s love for us. When we do that, the love that lives in us is limited. We limit God in us and what He can do through us. So how do we fix this? We lean into Holy Spirit. We refuse to let external circumstances be the standard by which we measure the love of our Papa God for us. Because if we are honest, when we get a pay rise at work, we are so quick to say we are blessed and highly favoured. Which is a way of saying we feel the love of God flowing to us. We don’t tend to say that when we get laid off.
We are loved, blessed and highly favoured regardless of external circumstances. Just ask Joseph from the Bible. Whether he was wearing the coat of many colours, being sold to slavery, in a dungeon, or second in command to Pharoah, he was always loved. His circumstances changed but his position was always the same. He was always his father’s son and he was deeply loved and treasured.
So what can we do for God’s love to become a reality in our hearts? 1 John 4:17-18 says, “And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”
We need to live in God and live like Jesus. That is, we live our lives in Him and we, like Jesus, do not do anything on our own unless Holy Spirit prompts us to. The more we lean into Holy Spirit and listen to Him, the more we grow in our understanding and acceptance of God’s love. As we live this way, our love grows more perfect (matures). That is, we begin to understand and experience the depths of God’s love for us and we, in turn, are able to love and care for others deeply.
There are people in your world who need to hear from Papa God and Papa God wants to speak to them through you. There are also people in your world that Papa God wants to touch and heal through you. This has nothing to do with a pulpit, Instagram or anything public. It is about living our lives so surrendered to God that Holy Spirit can tap our shoulder and we spring to action without questioning. When we are secure in God’s love, we trust Him to come through when He asks us to step out in faith.
It is one thing to receive the love of our Father, but we were never meant to hoard it and keep it in a box, we are supposed to let it flow out of us. Because 1 John 4:19-20 says this, “We love each other because he loved us first. 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?”
Love and blessings,
Melissa Tsingano.
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