Category Archives: 1 John

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

1 John 4:7-10

Dear God, what is it about having children that brings out a different kind of love in the parent than they’ve ever known before? I mean, it’s completely psychological. There is just something in me that, when my child is on stage or out on the playing field along with several other children, fixes my eyes on them. I watch their every move. My video camera follows them everywhere they go. I’ve even consciously considered it in really time while I’m watching them.

And then there’s the forgiveness angle. They are so easy to forgive. Sometimes too easy, I fear. I say too easy because I had to really fight myself against spoiling them when they were young and I didn’t always find the right line for that. Even now, they are grown and out of the house, living in different cities, and they are still different to me than anyone else in the world.

I remember when they were little, thinking about my love and forgiveness for them and considering that I didn’t begin to understand your grace and love for me until I was a father myself. Your willingness to pursue us through Jesus’ sacrifices started to make sense. I am only one of billions, but it doesn’t matter. I’m still yours.

Father, help me to really accept that love and grace from you and to learn more and more how to return that love to you. Let that love for you be my guide and I make my daily decisions and determine how best to live my life.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

1 John 4:11-12

Dear God, I really used to enjoy Facebook. Now, it seems to have become an outlet through which anger and frustration is channeled into a vortex that recycles and intensifies it. I’d say that, if anything, it has revealed to me just how many people out there say they love you, but just can’t help themselves and spew their anger. The scary thing is that I don’t think they can see it in themselves. If I were to talk to one of them about it right now they would probably agree that Facebook/Twitter/etc. has gotten out of hand and they hate it.

So that makes me wonder what kind of darkness is coming out of me that I cannot see. How are my actions keeping me from representing your love to others? Am I doing all that I can for all that your are? Am I dying to my own rights and embracing your cross?

Father, the message of this passage is pretty clear, but I can certainly be blind to my own sin. Please give me eyes to see and ears to hear. Give me the words you needs me to have so that I might show love to others. Be glorified in my own eyes and in others’ eyes through me.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.

1 John 2:15-16

Dear God, so what does the world offer me? I was watching an interview with the singer/songwriter James Taylor recently and the interviewer asked him about this addictions. He had a unique answer about what gives an addiction its power over you: The key for an addict is how much of a relief the addict felt when they first discovered their drug of choice. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put that way before. What pain did the alcohol, meth, weed, cocaine, food, pornography, etc. mask when the addict first experienced it, and how good effective was the experience in taking the pain away (albeit temporarily)?

In this context, I think that a lot of what the world offers is designed to mask pain/fear. We pursue money because we don’t want to have to worry about our needs and we want to indulge our wants. As for me, my comfort is found in food. Somewhere along the way, I found comfort in treating myself to the kinds of food that I like. Ironically, the time in my life that I had the most pain was a time that I actually dove into exercise and hyper controlling my eating. I think I felt so powerless in some areas that I actually went the other way and grabbed control of something I could. As I understand it, that is the motivation behind most eating disorders.

Father, I am an amateur in all of this in terms of knowledge, but I know enough to know that you didn’t design us to live pain-free lives in this fallen world. We are to bring our pain to you, trust you in it, and then ask what you would have us do to live you and live others. Help me to do that today.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

1 John 2:1-2 My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world. 

Dear God, I wish I had the kind of relationship with you where I could KNOW if some of the thoughts I have are of you or not. I woke up this morning with a sad, maybe you could even call it an alarming, thought about a relative. It was a new interpretation of something they told me a couple of weeks ago. Was our conversation a secret message that they needed help and I missed it? My wife says you tend to speak to me in my dreams. Is that what you did this morning? Were you nudging me?

Look at all of the question marks in that last sentence. This is what I’m talking about when it comes to wishing I could hear directly from you in audible, unmistakable words. I’m assuming that you don’t give us that ability on a regular basis because we can’t handle it (yes, I believe there are people who have the gift of prophesy which would be hearing directly from you, but even that isn’t 24/7, and they don’t have 100% accuracy in how they interpret what you say in their lives), but I wish there was a way that made things more obvious for me. 

I say all of this in relation to this verse because I fear something happened to this person where they made a mistake that needs your redemption, but they don’t know how to seek it or ask for it. So that is my prayer right now. Father, I pray that a couple of people about whom I am thinking right now will embrace the sacrifice you made, let go of their sins, receive your forgiveness, live in your redemption and freedom, and embrace your commands. I pray that your power would flow through them and that you would transform them into people who are worshippers of you, letting go of their burdens and embracing the yoke that you have for them to carry. And I pray the same thing for myself. I am sorry for the hundreds of times I fail you in my thoughts and in my words–in what I have done and what I have failed to do. Thank you for your death and resurrection through Jesus Christ, my Lord. I will worship you as best I can. 

By the power that his shed and resurrected blood I pray,

Amen