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From the Illustrations of Faith

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Drawing from what John says here,

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I want then to offer by way of application

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six practical strategies for growing in Love.

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Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith.

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I’m glad you could be with us today.

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Colin, how are these strategies different from self-help?

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Well, self-help, of course, by definition is about trying

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to find something in yourself and bring it out.

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And the problem with it, of course,

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is that there are some things that we don’t have in ourselves

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and therefore we can’t bring out.

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And we are talking today about growing in Love.

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And the key to it is that God is love

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and that as his love is poured into our hearts,

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so it becomes possible for us to grow in something

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that we would not otherwise have.

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We’re able to give as we receive and that’s the key.

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It’s coming into the knowledge of God himself who is love

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and His work in our hearts.

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Well, let’s do that by looking at the 1st Book of John chapter 4.

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So join us there, if you can, as we continue the message

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Love Comes from God.

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Here’s Colin.

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Friends, these really are life-changing truths.

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God loves us.

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God sent His son for us.

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God abides in us by His Holy Spirit.

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If you’re a believer, you can personalise these truths.

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You can say, God loves me.

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God sent His son for me.

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God’s Spirit lives in me.

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Now, there are, as it were, the three strands that we can pull out from what John is saying

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of what God has done.

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What about the strands of what we do?

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What about our part?

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Well, first, our part is that we love.

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Notice he says in verse 19, we love because He first loved us.

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Verse 7, let us love one another for love comes from God.

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Or verse 11, if God so loved us we also ought to love one another.

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Or verse 12, if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.

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So God calls us to actively love one another in the way that He has loved us.

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That is, we are to give what we have first received.

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And John says here very beautifully that God’s love is perfected in us and what that means

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very simply is, it’s made complete, it fulfills its own ultimate purpose.

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In other words, God did not intend that His love should end with you.

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The purpose of God is that His love should flow into you in order that it should flow

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out from you into the lives of others and God’s love fulfills its ultimate purpose

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that it is perfected when we give what we have received in loving one another.

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We love and then John tells us we believe.

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Verse 15, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in

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verse 16, so we have come know and to believe the love that God has for us.

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So to believe is to be fully persuaded that God loves you, that God’s Son gave himself

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for you, and the God Spirit lives within you.

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And believing these truths, we do actually have to believe them, believing these truths

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of the gospel will enable you to love, and the more deeply you believe these life-changing

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truths, the more deeply you are going to be able to love.

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And then John has a third strand of what we do, and that is that we abide.

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Verse 16, God is love, and whoever abides in love.

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So there we are, we are abiding in love.

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Whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

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Or verse 15, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he

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in God.

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Or verse 13, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us

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of his spirit.

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Now to abide simply means to live or to dwell.

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Abide is what you do in your home, so you can get the meaning from that analogy.

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At home you rest, you eat, you find joy.

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That’s the place where you’re more yourself than any other place.

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John says, we abide in God.

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That means that we rest in God, we find joy in God, we’re at home with God.

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We walk with God, we nourish ourselves on God, we have a living heart-to-heart communion

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with God.

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So now, here are three things that God does

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and three things that we do.

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God loves us, God sent his Son for us and God’s Spirit lives in us, abides in us.

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And as a result of these things that God does, we are able to love, and to believe, and to abide.

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So, now you have six major themes, three that are God’s part, three that are our part,

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and I’ve tried to draw them out, like individual strands of spaghetti so that we can see the

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different elements that are here in what John is saying to us.

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But, of course, no-one serves spaghetti with individual pieces laid out straight on a plate.

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The way you serve and the way you eat spaghetti is it’s all mixed up and it’s beautifully

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heaped together on the plate, and that’s the point.

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That while each of these elements is so important to the whole, you cannot pull them apart.

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To change the analogy and put it another way, think of these six as being like individual

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threads, each of a different beautiful color, and what John is doing is he’s weaving these

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threads together into one fabric.

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If you were to try and pull one of the threads out, you’d destroy the whole thing.

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Each of them is interconnected.

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Each of them are interdependent.

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So, let me just show you this from the passage.

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You’ll quickly get the idea, and then you can work it out with regards to all of the

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other verses, each verse is connecting different elements of God’s love for us, God sending

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his son, God abiding in us by his spirit.

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Us loving, us believing, and us abiding.

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So, for example verse 7, love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and

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knows God.

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So what we have here is the connection between God’s love for us and our ability to love.

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Love, as we saw, is not something that we have to work up from within, love is from

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God and the reason that you can love is that God himself has entered into and taken possession

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of your soul.

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Whoever loves has been born of God, that’s the connection.

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If you look at verse 11, beloved, if God so loved us we also ought to love one another

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And when he says if God so loved us, he’s referring back to verse 10 where he says that

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God sent his Son.

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That’s how we know that God loved us and so what he’s doing here is he’s making the connection

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between God sending his Son for us and our calling to love.

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Or verse 12, if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

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You see, this verse begins with us loving and John tells us that if we love one

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another then God abides in us.

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So, he’s making a connection now between our actively growing in love and the

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continuing work of the Holy Spirit within us.

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Or verse 15, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and

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is he in God.

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And now, John is telling us that there is a direct connection between our believing,

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our confessing faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

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There’s going to be a great work of the Holy Spirit going on in you apart from faith

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in the Lord, Jesus Christ.

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These are connected.

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Or verse 16, God is love and whoever abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him.

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So now, John is making the connection between us walking with God, abiding in God and the

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work of the Holy Spirit in us.

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If you’ve never opened the Bible and don’t pray very much, don’t expect a thriving work

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of the spirit in your soul.

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Verse 19, we love because He first loved us.

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You see here, John is showing the connection between our ability to love and God’s great

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love for us.

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Now, you can work this out on other verses as well, but what I want you to see big picture

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is that these are all beautiful threads that are interwoven together.

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If you were to pull any one of them out, you would destroy the whole fabric.

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How can we grow in love?

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That’s the question.

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That is the question, and we’ll look at the answer to that question in just a moment.

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You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called Love Comes

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From God.

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It’s part of our series growing in Faith Hope and Love.

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And if you ever miss one of the series, you can always catch up or go back and listen

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again online.

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Come to our website, that’s openthebible.org.uk, and there you’ll find all the messages which

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have already been broadcast.

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You’ll also find us as a podcast and those are available on all the main podcast sites.

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Search for openthebible.org.uk and subscribe to receive regular updates.

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Open the Bible is supported by our listeners and this month we have an offer for you if

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you’re thinking of setting up a new donation to the work of open the Bible.

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It’s a book called Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges.

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And I’ll be talking to Colin about the book and his thoughts about it later in the programme.

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So I hope you’ll stay for that.

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Back to the message now.

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Here’s Colin.

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How can we grow in love?

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That’s the question.

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Well, we can grow in love because God loves us.

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Because he sent his son for us.

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Because his spirit abides in us and we will grow in love in as much as we believe and

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abide in these wonderful realities.

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Now, drawing from what John says here, I want then to offer, by way of application, six

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practical strategies for growing in love.

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Six practical strategies for growing in love?

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The first is, reflect often then on how much God loves you.

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Reflect often on how he loves you.

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We love because he first loved us.

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God loved us first.

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In any relationship, someone makes the first move and the other person responds.

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You know, you sometimes see this at a wedding reception when the couple are embarrassed

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by being asked questions, like who was the first to say, I love you and this sort of

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thing.

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Who went first?

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And how long did it take the other person to get the idea?

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Someone said I love you, and then someone else said I love you, too.

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But there’s always someone who went first.

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And God is the one who said, I love you first.

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God loved us when we were his enemies.

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And he sent his Son, even then, to save us.

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So, you see, when you love first, that is, when you show patience and kindness to a person

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who doesn’t show patience and kindness to you, you are reflecting the love of God.

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And you’re giving evidence that in fact you are born of God.

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That something of the life of God, the spirit of God, the love of God is actually in you,

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because how else would you be in a position of loving first, which is the way that God loves?

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Second, remember that love is God’s command.

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You can’t avoid this here.

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Look at verse 21, and this commandment we have from him – whoever loves God must also

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love his brother.

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So as we think about how we can grow in love, it is helpful and important for us to keep

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in our minds that love is not an option.

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This is not something that we hope we’ll get around to someday.

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It is our central calling from God.

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Jesus died to redeem us from the curse of the law.

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That is the condemnation that the law would have brought because we had not kept it.

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But remember, the New Testament tells us that God gives us his Holy Spirit so that the righteous

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requirements of the law will be fully met in us so that we will fulfill the purpose

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of God, which is summed up in this one word, love.

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That’s Romans 8, verse 4.

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Or 1 Peter, chapter 2, in verse 24.

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He bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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This is the life of which we’re called.

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So our new life in Jesus Christ is a gift.

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And praise God, it is freely given.

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But never forget that our new life in Jesus Christ is also a calling.

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And the heart of that calling is to live a life of love.

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Third strategy for growing in love, very practical.

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Ask God that you may grow in love.

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Again and again in the New Testament, we have the Apostle Paul praying that this will happen.

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So that’s clearly something that we should do.

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It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more.

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May the Lord make you increase and abound in love.

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May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God.

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Ask God to help you grow in love.

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Ask him, tell him this is what you want.

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Bring the faces and the situations of particular people.

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Perhaps those you find it hard to love.

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Into your prayers.

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Pray that God will help you to love that person, these people more.

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Growing in love is an effect of the work of the Holy Spirit in you, so ask him.

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And ask him to reveal anything that is hindering your growth in love, and deal with it so that

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nothing within you grieves the Holy Spirit in this regard.

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Strategy number four, be intentional in your pursuit of love.

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The New Testament regularly speaks to Christian believers in a way that you couldn’t speak

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to anyone else, because a Christian believer has the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit

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within them.

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And it’s for that reason you see that in the New Testament we can read very simple,

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plain, straightforward language like this, above all these put on love.

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Or just, husbands, love your wives.

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Just do it.

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Or 2 Peter, the long list of things that we’re to add to our faith.

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Let me just give the short version from the beginning and the end.

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For this reason make every effort, to add to your faith or to supplement your faith

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with godliness and brotherly affection and love.

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See the point, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if the Holy Spirit lives in

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you, if you are walking with Him and abiding in Him loving is something you can do.

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So, go out this week and do it.

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Stop repeating Satan’s lies, when he tells you that you can’t love.

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God tells you that you can and by His grace, you will.

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So make it your daily commitment and intent when you get up in the morning.

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Lord, let this be a day when I seek the good of others, when I think more about their interest

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than I think about my own.

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Lord, let me bring the blessing of your patient, kind love into the lives of others with whom

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I interact today.

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And then number five get in touch with your own deepest desire.

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Here’s a wonderful truth stated by Peter in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 8.

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You love him.

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And when you are born of God you know that is the deepest reality about you.

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You love him.

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You really do because you’re born of God.

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I’ve been helped here by a comment of Dr. J.I.

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Packer, let me read it to you.

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He says, Again and again it appears that Christians are not sufficiently in touch with themselves

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because they do not know themselves well enough to realize that because of the way in which

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their nature has been changed their hearts are now set against all known sin.

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Here is a common problem for Christians says Packer, we do not know ourselves well enough.

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We don’t realize that because our own hearts and therefore nature’s have been changed

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because we’re born of God our hearts at the deepest level are actually set against

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all known sin.

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Packer puts it this way, the regenerate heart cannot love what it knows God hates.

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Can’t do it.

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It’s not possible.

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Now Satan wants to dupe you into believing that what you really want is to live for yourself.

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But if you’re in Christ, that is not true.

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When you are born of God, what you really want at the deepest level is to please him,

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it’s to be like him.

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It is to love, and when you love, you fulfill your own deepest desire.

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It’s beautiful.

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The last thing is simply this, find joy in the great privilege of your calling.

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We are called to a life of love and what a privilege that is.

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Notice verse 12, in this last moment, no one has ever seen God.

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If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

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We saw earlier that what that means, perfected in us, is that it fulfills its intended purpose,

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which is that it doesn’t end in us, but it flows through us and on into the lives of

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other people in this world.

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You see John’s point, he says, Look.

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No one has ever seen God.

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No one has ever seen him.

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So how then can God’s love be seen and known in this world?

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And John gives us this amazing answer that God loves others through us.

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And when we love others, his presence and his love are seen and made known.

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Pastor Colin Smith here, ending our message LOVE COMES FROM GOD, taken from First Book

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of John chapter 4.

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And if you’ve missed any of the message or previous messages in the serious, serious

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is called growing in faith, hope and love.

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And if you’ve missed any of them, why not come to our website openthebible.org.uk, there

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you’ll find all of the previously broadcast messages.

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Or look for us as a podcast — and those are available on all the main podcast sites.

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Search for Open The Bible UK and subscribe to receive regular updates.

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You can also find Open the Bible Daily, which is our series of short 2-3 minute daily reflections

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based on Pastor Colin’s teaching and read in the UK by Sue McLeish.

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Whether you listen to Open The Bible on the radio, on our website or as a podcast it’s

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your generosity that keeps Pastor Colin’s messages available.

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So, thank you for supporting the ministry.

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If that’s something you’ve thought about doing and you’re able to set up a new direct

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debit to the work of Open the Bible, in the amount of £5 per month or more or a single

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donation of £50, we’d love to say thank you by sending you a copy of Gerry Bridge’s

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book, Respectable Sins.

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Colin, how is this book helpful for you?

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I’ve found it helpful in my own life in three ways.

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The first is that Gerry Bridges identifies some of these sins that can easily hide in

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our hearts as Christian believers and, you know, you can’t fight against what you don’t

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see.

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You can’t confess what you don’t see.

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So the first thing is to be able to see what might be lurking there and that’s the great

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value of this book.

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So when you’re able to identify what you need to be fighting against more strongly, then

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the next thing to do is to confess it, to seek the cleansing of the blood of Christ

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and then to begin to fight against it.

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And Gerry Bridges has a chapter in here that is absolutely worth its weight in gold.

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It’s certainly well worth getting the whole book for.

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Directions for dealing with sins.

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How are you going to deal with the sins that lurk in your heart and in your life?

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He gives seven very practical directions.

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It’s worth its weight in gold, so this is a treasure.

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It really helps us to move forward.

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So we don’t just become an older version of the person we were before,

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but actually become someone who’s more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ,

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which is what every Christian really wants.

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So, Gerry Bridges book Respectable Sins is our gift to you,

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if you’re able to set up a new, direct debit to the work of Open The Bible this month,

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in the amount of £5 per month or more or a single donation of £50.

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Full terms and conditions on our website www.openthebible.org.uk

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For Open The Bible and for Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick,

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and I hope you’ll join us again next time.

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Where does a life of love begin?

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Find out next time on Open The Bible.