This Week’s Scripture Passage:

This is the message that you heard from the beginning: love each other. Don’t behave like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he kill him? He killed him because his own works were evil, but the works of his brother were righteous.

Don’t be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have transferred from death to life, because we love the brothers and sisters. The person who does not love remains in death. Everyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know love: Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. But if a person has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need and that person doesn’t care—how can the love of God remain in him?

Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. This is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence. Even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things. Dear friends, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence in relationship to God. We receive whatever we ask from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love each other as he commanded us. The person who keeps his commandments remains in God and God remains in him; and this is how we know that he remains in us, because of the Spirit that he has given to us.

1 John 3:11-24 (Common English Bible)

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

In 2009, Gustavo Dudamel, at age 28, became the youngest person ever to be named the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He’s also the music director of the Gutenberg Symphony and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela.

Coming out of the Venezuelan music system that engages children from impoverished areas, he had burst on the classical music scene as “a conducting animal.” While rehearsing the renowned Vienna Philharmonic as a guest conductor, he challenged them at one point to “play with more blood.” He told the musicians that blood should be splashing on their faces as they attacked the piece.

Incredibly talented and hard-working, there is one word that describes him best: passionate.

He is passionate for music.

But he is more passionate for people.

His passion changes everyone around him.

Passionate is not a word we often associate with God. God’s too dignified, too holy, too preoccupied with correct beliefs and proper behavior.

Well, to understand what I will be teaching this Sunday at the Gathering Church, you’ll need to know how passionate God is.

Passionate for what?

For you.

In 1 John 2:28-3:10, God’s passion is unmistakable. And the impact of that passion is unmistakable. People live well, like children of God, like people who will stand with Jesus one day.

This Sunday – Loved: The Way to Know Ourselves.

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

And now, little children, remain in relationship to Jesus, so that when he appears we can have confidence and not be ashamed in front of him when he comes.  If you know that he is righteous, you also know that every person who practices righteousness is born from him.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us in that we should be called God’s children, and that is what we are! Because the world didn’t recognize him, it doesn’t recognize us.

Dear friends, now we are God’s children, and it hasn’t yet appeared what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we’ll see him as he is.  And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure.  Every person who practices sin commits an act of rebellion, and sin is rebellion.  You know that he appeared to take away sins, and there is no sin in him.  Every person who remains in relationship to him does not sin. Any person who sins has not seen him or known him.

Little children, make sure no one deceives you. The person who practices righteousness is righteous, in the same way that Jesus is righteous.  The person who practices sin belongs to the devil, because the devil has been sinning since the beginning.  God’s Son appeared for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil.  Those born from God don’t practice sin because God’s DNA remains in them. They can’t sin because they are born from God.  This is how God’s children and the devil’s children are apparent: everyone who doesn’t practice righteousness is not from God, including the person who doesn’t love a brother or sister.

1 John 2:28-3:10 (Common English Bible)

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

The soul being so precious, and salvation being so glorious, it is the highest point of prudence to make preparations for another world. Thomas Watson, 1666

I was tired and more than empty from the busy demands of life and ministry when I discovered in a bookstore this volume written by a seventeenth-century English Puritan.

Perhaps it was the different language, but I was instantly both pierced and freed by a moment of clarity.

My life is incredibly valuable. God made it that way. What God has done through Jesus Christ to restore life is amazing. The only sensible thing is to devote my life to things that will last forever in the life that God gives us.

A transcendent sense of eternity . . . immediately renewing. Immediately focusing me on what matters most.

But why is that sense of meaning so elusive? So easily lost?

This Sunday at the Gathering Church I continue a study of 1 John, a letter that teaches how to know and experience life with God now and forever. 1 John 2:12-27 gives a great picture of what that life is like, but it also clearly identifies what makes God seem unreal to us.

Bottom line: to truly know and experience God means always swimming upstream. Currents in this world will take us away from God.

For instance, the current of achievement produces anything but serenity and trust in God’s presence and purpose.

What other currents, do you think, may be taking people away from God?

This Week’s Scripture Passage:

Little children, I’m writing to you because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus’ name.

 

Parents, I’m writing to you because you have known the one who has existed from the beginning.

 

Young people, I’m writing to you because you have conquered the evil one.

 

Little children, I write to you because you know the Father.

 

Parents, I write to you because you have known the one who has existed from the beginning.

 

Young people, I write to you because you are strong, the word of God remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.

 

Don’t love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them.  Everything that is in the world—the craving for whatever the body feels, the craving for whatever the eyes see and the arrogant pride in one’s possessions—is not of the Father but is of the world.  And the world and its cravings are passing away, but the person who does the will of God remains forever.

 

Little children, it is the last hour. Just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really part of us. If they had been part of us, they would have stayed with us. But by going out from us, they showed they all are not part of us. But you have an anointing from the holy one, and all of you know the truth. I don’t write to you because you don’t know the truth but because you know it. You know that no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? Isn’t it the person who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This person is the antichrist: the one who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father, but the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

 

As for you, what you heard from the beginning must remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you will also remain in relationship to the Son and in the Father.  This is the promise that he himself gave us: eternal life.  I write these things to you about those who are attempting to deceive you.  As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains on you, and you don’t need anyone to teach you the truth. But since his anointing teaches you about all things (it’s true and not a lie), remain in relationship to him just as he taught you.

1 John 2:12-27 (Common English Bible)

View the .pdf of Songs & Announcements.

Gathering Church Sermon Podcast

1 John 2:3-11

Mark Acuff

Click to play Gathering Church Podcast.

Obedience.

What impressions, thoughts or feelings does that word prompt in you?

Are you instantly inspired? Are your passions suddenly elevated to a higher level of devotion?

I wish mine were.

Instead I tend to think of restriction, control, of having to do something that you would prefer not to do. Obligation. Conformity instead of free expression. The school to which you take your dog so you can manage it better.

Perhaps I’m the only one who distorts such an essential spiritual concept.

At the Gathering Church I’m doing a message series, Included: Participating in the Life of God. It is based on 1 John, a letter written fifty to sixty years after Jesus’ resurrection. Its purpose is to help people be sure about what it means to experience God’s life.

And guess what?

After honesty, obedience is the next factor that describes how God works in our lives.

The outcome is anything but controlled, restricted people gritting their teeth to live up to some impossible standards.

See for yourself in 1 John 2:3-11.

Am I the only one who doesn’t have an immediately positive reaction to the concept of obedience?

What’s your reaction?