Living For Jesus (1 John: Chapter 1)

When you read 1 John chapter 1, what do you hear?

I hear God speaking right to me. If I am going to claim that I live in Him and He in me then I should act like it. If I am going to go around bragging about God and how good he is and bragging about how He's changed my life, then I better represent Him well. If the same mouth that I proclaim that He is the King of the world and He loves everyone, also says that person over there is weird, then how does that look on God? If the same mouth that says Jesus loves you just the way you are, also says, that person over there is loud and annoying, then how does that look on Christians? How does that make the church look? How does that make me look as a representative for Jesus Christ? If that's the case, if I came across myself in the street I would turn myself away from God. I would say absolutely not to Christianity. To say I belong to God and that He lives in me would be a lie! I would be lying to myself if that's the way I was going to live.

1 John says this - "If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin".

I want to get one thing straight, I am not perfect. You are not perfect. No living man or woman on this earth is perfect and we never will be. Salvation does not come from perfection. It comes from knowing God and allowing God to know you. Salvation is the free gift God has given us through His son dying on the cross on our behalf so that whoever believes in Him should have eternal life with Him. But to say I hate it when people steal and then turn around and steal candy at the store checkout lane is just hypocritical and a lie! In the same way, we can't say I live for God and I belong to Him and then go and murder someone. I can't say I live for Jesus and then intentionally go disobey Him. Again, we are not perfect and never will be. But it is the effort that we put in that God sees. It's our heart posture that He looks at. We are not defined by our mistakes. God calls us by our name and the devil calls us by our mistakes. But when your heart is turned away from God, He sees that and so does everyone else.

The relationship we have with God should not be that of a master and a slave or of an employer and employee. The relationship we have with God should be that of a Father and son or daughter. When you're employer asks you to do something you do it in fear of losing your job or getting written up at work. When a master tells a slave to do something, they do it out of fear of harsh punishment. When a father asks their child to do something, they don't do it out of fear, they do it out of love. If your dad asked you to help him go work on the family car, do you do it out of fear that he is not going to love you anymore or do you do it out of love for your father? That is how we should live for God. Allow Him to be our father. God tells us not to lie. So do we not lie out of fear of being sent to hell? No. We do it because we love Him and He loves us. It becomes much easier to live for Him when it becomes less of instruction and rules and instead more of a relationship between us and God. Changing our heart posture towards God will strengthen our relationship so much with Him.

So, in summary, if we are going to claim we walk with him, then we also need to walk in the light. We need to be intentional to point our heart, mind, mouth, and actions towards God. To help with that, we have to realize that God is our father. He wants that relationship with us. We don't have to live for Him because of fear of any repercussions, we do it because He loves us and we love Him. Living for Jesus is a big commitment. It is not an easy one. It's a commitment that will change your life. I'll tell you what though, it is the best commitment you will ever make. The love that God has for us is a gift no worldly thing can give. To be able to share that gift with others through the way you live your life is such a huge blessing. Let God change your life. Let Him work through you so that everyone around you can see that He lives in you and you belong to Him.

Thank you for reading. I hope this spoke to you in some way. Jesus loves you. We love you. Remember to love others because He first loved us.