“We know and we rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them… There’s no fear in love. God’s perfect love drives out fear.” 1John 4:16-18
Heavenly Father, my love for this passage is impossible to exaggerate—for many reasons, a main one being Jack Miller (my spiritual dad) was always quoting this verse to me.
“Is it reliable?”—a question we ask when choosing an insurance company or home pest service, or when we buy a used car, new refrigerator—and especially a parachute. Dependability and trustworthiness are essential categories of life—especially when it comes to knowing you, and risking full confidence in your love.
So thank you for doubling-down on affirming the knowability and reliability of your love for us. You know how weak, fickle, and doubting we are; and you know that our need for your love is eternally greater than our need for oxygen, blood, and water. So when and how can we rely on your love?
- For our salvation: From beginning to end, knowing you and your love are by grace alone—the currency of your love spent on the bankruptcy and deadness in our hearts.
- In our brokenness and sin: You don’t love us more when we are neat, tidy, and intact. You give us daily mercies because we need them. Thank you Abba.
- When we share the Gospel: It’s not our smarts but your heart that is most at work in evangelism. None of us can raise the dead.
- In our difficult and messy relationships: We can rely on your love when the call to forgive is greater than our desire to forgive. And when it’d be easier to give someone “a piece of our mind” rather than the peace of your grace.
- As we face growing weakness and death: Your love, Abba, expels—drives and casts out all kinds of fears—the fear of death being a “biggie.” You will never leave or forsake us. You will hold us fast, all the way Home. So Very
