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Colin Smith: Drawing from what John says here, I want then to offer by way of application, six practical strategies for growing in love.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller. Glad you're with us today. And Colin, how is what we're going to hear today different from self-help?

Colin Smith: Well, self-help, of course, by definition, is about trying to find something in yourself and bring it out. And the problem with it, of course, is that there are some things that we don't have in ourselves and therefore we can't bring out. And we're talking today about growing in love, and the key to it is that God is love. And that as his love is poured into our hearts, so it becomes possible for us to grow in something that we would not otherwise have.

We're able to give as we receive. And that's the key. It's coming into the knowledge of God himself, who is love, and his work in our hearts.

Steve Hiller: Well, let's look at this from the book of 1 John. Grab your Bible and meet us there in chapter 4 as we continue our message, "Love Comes from God". Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Friends, these really are life-changing truths. God loves us. God sent his son for us. God abides in us by his Holy Spirit. If you're a believer, you can personalize these truths. You can say God loves me. God sent his son for me. God's spirit lives in me.

Now, there are, as it were, the three strands that we can pull out from what John is saying of what God has done. What about the strands of what we do? What about our part? Well, first our part is that we love. Notice he says in verse 19, "We love because he first loved us." Verse 7, "Let us love one another, for love comes from God." Or verse 11, "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Or verse 12, "If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."

So God calls us to actively love one another in the way that he has loved us. That is, we are to give what we have first received. And John says here very beautifully that God's love is perfected in us. And what that means very simply is it's made complete. It fulfills its own ultimate purpose. In other words, God did not intend that his love should end with you.

The purpose of God is that his love should flow into you in order that it should flow out from you into the lives of others. And God's love fulfills its ultimate purpose, that is, it is perfected when we give what we have received in loving one another.

We love, and then John tells us we believe. Verse 15, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God." Or verse 16, "So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us." To believe is to be fully persuaded that God loves you, that God's son gave himself for you, and that God's spirit lives within you. And believing these truths—you do actually have to believe them—believing these truths of the gospel will enable you to love. And the more deeply you believe these life-changing truths, the more deeply you're going to be able to love.

Then John has a third strand of what we do, and that is that we abide. Verse 16, "God is love, and whoever abides in love—" so there we are, we're abiding in love—"whatever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." Or verse 15, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God." Or verse 13, "By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit."

To abide simply means to live or to dwell. Abide is what you do in your home. So you can get the meaning from that analogy. At home, you rest. You eat. You find joy. That's the place where you're more yourself than any other place. And John says we abide in God. That means that we rest in God. We find joy in God. We're at home with God. We walk with God. We nourish ourselves on God. We have a living heart-to-heart communion with God.

So now, here are three things that God does and three things that we do. God loves us. God sent his son for us. And God's spirit lives in us, abides in us. And as a result of these things that God does, we are able to love and to believe and to abide.

So now you have six major themes, three that are God's part, three that are our part, and I've tried to draw them out like individual strands of spaghetti so that we can see the different elements that are here in what John is saying to us. But of course, no one serves spaghetti with individual pieces laid out straight on a plate. The way you serve and the way you eat spaghetti is it's all mixed up and it's beautifully heaped together on the plate.

And that's the point. That while each of these elements is so important to the whole, you cannot pull them apart. To change the analogy and put it another way, think of these six as being like individual threads, each of a different beautiful color. And what John is doing is he's weaving these threads together into one fabric. If you were to try and pull one of the threads out, you'd destroy the whole fabric. Each of them is interconnected. Each of them are interdependent.

So let me just show you this from the passage, you'll quickly get the idea and then you can work it out with regards to all of the other verses. Each verse is connecting different elements of God's love for us, God sending his son, God abiding in us by his spirit, us loving, us believing, and us abiding.

For example, verse 7: "Love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." So what we have here is the connection between God's love for us and our ability to love. Love, as we saw, is not something that we have to work up from within. Love is from God. And the reason that you can love is that God himself has entered into and taken possession of your soul. "Whoever loves has been born of God." That's the connection.

If you look at verse 11: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." And when he says, "If God so loved us," he's referring back to verse 10 where he says that God sent his son. That's how we know that God loved us. And so what he's doing here is he's making the connection between God sending his son for us and our calling to love.

Or verse 12: "If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." Now, you see this verse begins with us loving. And John tells us that if we love one another, then God abides in us. So he's making a connection now between our actively growing in love and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit within us.

Or verse 15: "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God." And now John is telling us that there is a direct connection between our believing, our confessing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit within us. Not going to be a great work of the Holy Spirit going on in you apart from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. These are connected.

Or verse 16: "God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." So now John is making the connection between us walking with God, abiding in God, and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. If you never open the Bible and don't pray very much, don't expect a thriving work of the spirit in your soul.

Verse 19: "We love because he first loved us." You see here John is showing the connection between our ability to love and God's great love for us. Now you can work this out on other verses as well. But what I want you to see big picture is that these are all beautiful threads that are interwoven together. If you were to pull any one of them out, you would destroy the whole fabric. How can we grow in love? That's the question.

Steve Hiller: That is the question, and we'll take a look at the answer to that question coming up in just a moment. You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and our message is called "Love Comes from God". It's part of a larger series called Grow in Love. Well, Open the Bible is a listener supported program. It's your generosity that keeps this program on this station, and as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Pastor Colin's brand new 30-day devotional book.

It's based on this series currently right now on the radio called Grow in Love, and it's our thank you for your financial support. You can find out more or give online at openthebible.org or call 1-877-OPEN-365. That might be easier to remember as 1-877-673-6365. Or again our website is openthebible.org. Back to the message. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: How can we grow in love? That's the question. We can grow in love because God loves us. Because he sent his son for us. Because his spirit abides in us. And we will grow in love in as much as we believe and abide in these wonderful realities.

Drawing from what John says here, I want then to offer by way of application, six practical strategies for growing in love. Six practical strategies for growing in love, and the first is reflect often then on how much God loves you. Reflect often on how he loves you. We love because he first loved us. God loved us first.

In any relationship, someone makes the first move and the other person responds. You sometimes see this at a wedding reception when the couple are embarrassed by being asked questions like who was the first to say I love you and this sort of thing. Who went first? And how long did it take the other person to get the idea?

Someone said I love you and then someone else said I love you too. But there's always someone who went first. And God is the one who said I love you first. God loved us when we were his enemies and he sent his son even then to save us. So you see when you love first, that is when you show patience and kindness to a person who doesn't show patience and kindness to you, you are reflecting the love of God. And you are giving evidence that in fact you are born of God, that something of the life of God, the spirit of God, the love of God is actually in you because how else would you be in a position of loving first, which is the way that God loves?

Second, remember that love is God's command. You can't avoid this here. Look at verse 21: "And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." As we think about how we can grow in love, it is helpful and important for us to keep in our minds that love is not an option. This is not something that we hope we'll get around to someday. It is our central calling from God.

Jesus died to redeem us from the curse of the law, that is, the condemnation that the law would have brought because we had not kept it. But remember that the New Testament tells us that God gives us his Holy Spirit so that the righteous requirements of the law will be fully met in us. So that we will fulfill the purpose of God, which is summed up in this one word: love.

That's Romans chapter 8 and verse 4. Or 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 24: "He bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." This is the life to which we're called. Our new life in Jesus Christ is a gift. And praise God, it is freely given. But never forget that our new life in Jesus Christ is also a calling. And the heart of that calling is to live a life of love.

Third strategy for growing in love. Very practical. Ask God that you may grow in love. Again and again in the New Testament we have the apostle Paul praying that this will happen. So that's clearly something that we should do. "It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God." Ask God to help you grow in love. Ask him.

Tell him this is what you want. Bring the faces and the situations of particular people, perhaps those you find it hard to love, into your prayers. Pray that God will help you to love that person, these people more. Growing in love is an effect of the work of the Holy Spirit in you. So ask him. And ask him to reveal anything that is hindering your growth in love. And deal with it so that nothing within you grieves the Holy Spirit in this regard.

Then strategy number four: be intentional in your pursuit of love. The New Testament regularly speaks to Christian believers in a way that you couldn't speak to anyone else because a Christian believer has the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit within them. And it's for that reason you see that in the New Testament we can read very simple, plain, straightforward language like this: "Above all these, put on love." Or just, "Husbands, love your wives." Just do it.

Or 2 Peter, a long list of things that we're to add to our faith. Let me just give the short version from the beginning and the end. For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith—or to supplement your faith—with godliness and brotherly affection and love. You see the point. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, if the Holy Spirit lives in you, if you are walking with him and abiding in him, loving is something you can do. So go out this week and do it.

Stop repeating Satan's lies when he tells you that you can't love. God tells you that you can, and by his grace you will. So make it your daily commitment and intent when you get up in the morning: "Lord, let this be a day when I seek the good of others, when I think more about their interest than I think about my own. Lord, let me bring the blessing of your patient, kind love into the lives of others with whom I interact today."

Then number five: get in touch with your own deepest desire. Here's a wonderful truth stated by Peter in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 8: "Though you have not seen him, you love him." And when you are born of God, you know that is the deepest reality about you. You love him. You really do because you're born of God.

I've been helped here by a comment of Dr. J.I. Packer. Let me read it to you. He says, "Again and again it appears that Christians are not sufficiently in touch with themselves. Because they do not know themselves well enough to realize that because of the way in which their nature has been changed, their hearts are now set against all known sin."

Here's a common problem for Christians, says Packer. We don't know ourselves well enough. We don't realize that because our own hearts and therefore natures have been changed, because we're born of God, our hearts at the deepest level are actually set against all known sin. Packer puts it this way: "The regenerate heart cannot love what it knows God hates." Can't do it. It's not possible.

Now, Satan wants to dupe you into believing that what you really want is to live for yourself. But if you're in Christ, that is not true. When you are born of God, what you really want at the deepest level is to please him. It's to be like him. It is to love. And when you love, you fulfill your own deepest desire. It's beautiful.

The last thing is simply this: find joy in the great privilege of your calling. We are called to a life of love, and what a privilege that is. Notice verse 12 in this last moment: "No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us." We saw earlier that what that means, perfected in us, is that it fulfills its intended purpose, which is that it doesn't end in us, but it flows through us and on into the lives of other people in this world.

And you see John's point. He says, "Look, no one has ever seen God. No one has ever seen him. How then can God's love be seen and known in this world?" And John gives us this amazing answer: that God loves others through us. And when we love others, his presence and his love are seen and made known.

Steve Hiller: Pastor Colin Smith wrapping up our message, "Love Comes from God", looking today at the book of 1 John chapter 4. Our message is part of a larger series called Grow in Love, and if you've missed any of the broadcasts in our series, come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can also listen through the Open the Bible app. You'll find it for free in your app store. Simply look for Open the Bible and that's a great way to listen to Pastor Colin's teaching at your convenience, whenever it fits your schedule.

One last way to listen is to get a copy of this entire series on CD. Ask about Grow in Love when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or again our website is openthebible.org. Open the Bible is a listener supported ministry. That's just what it sounds like. It's your generosity that allows us to continue bringing you Pastor Colin's teaching. And as you give a gift of any amount, we'd love to send you a copy of Pastor Colin's brand new 30-day devotional book called Grow in Love. And Colin, what's one thing that you'd like people to take away from this book?

Colin Smith: Well, I think most of us feel that we need to grow in love, especially when it comes to loving those with whom we deeply disagree. But here's the question: do you think it's possible for you to become a more loving person than you are right now? See, the thing is, if it simply depended on what you can generate from within yourself, the answer would have to be no. Our love would depend on our experience and if we hadn't been well-loved by others, well, we wouldn't be able to give love to others.

But the good news is that love really can be learned. It's possible to grow in love and God's Holy Spirit is given to every Christian believer for this purpose. So the thing I'd want people to take away from this is the wonderful hope that as you experience the love of God poured into your own heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, so you will be better able to love others really well.

Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you, as our way of saying thank you for your financial support, a copy of Pastor Colin's new book, Grow in Love. You can find out more online at openthebible.org or you can give your gift over the phone by calling 1-877-OPEN-365. Again that's openthebible.org or 1-877-673-6365. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. God's word is the food that will nourish your soul. You need it every day. And Open the Bible Daily is a daily devotional that will open the word of God and lead you to Jesus. It's available for free on our website openthebible.org. For more information, visit openthebible.org/daily. That's openthebible.org/daily.