"From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in - we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.
We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him.
If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth - we’re not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purges all our sin.
If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins - make a clean breast of them - he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God - make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God."
The Saturday of the beginning of the week for Spring Break - I was seeing all these pictures being posted of people at the beach, Disney World, Colorado, on cruises, in the mountains, and so on....confession, I was extremely jealous. I want to be at the beach, or on a cruise, or some other exotic beautiful place.
But instead, I looked up and I was sitting at the Chopstix on Terry Rd and Ellis Ave with three teenage boys. One was making up rap songs about how he loves burgers and fries. One was buried in a bowl of sesame chicken and shrimp fried rice. One was checking out all the girls that walked in the door. Then I found myself driving down West Capitol Street and in the parking lot of a laundry mat, because the boys saw their cousin there. They were yelling out the window at him, so we did a u-turn in the street to go see him. Then I looked up and there were cops all over the street, probably some kind of drug bust going on.
Sometimes I feel like my life is a TV show. A cross between Saturday Night Live and Cops.
The two most difficult things to get straight in life are love, and God. The basic and Biblical Christian conviction is that the two of these are intricately related. If we want to deal with God the right way, we have to learn to love the right way. If we want to love the right way, we have to deal with God the right way. God and love can't be separated.
John writes beautiful letters with directions on how to do this - love God, love people. Jesus is the way to do that. Jesus - the focus, gives us the full understanding of who God is, and how to love.
While my flesh wanted to be on vacation (like, I really wanted to be on the beach), my joy was doubled on that day, just like John said it would be - and there is no place else my heart would have rather been than with those boys, in the hood, eating Chinese food. Jesus gave me the sweetest, most tangible and real life experience of what loving God and loving people looks like.
My life IS like a movie, or a TV show. But it is the best script that could have ever been written because Jesus is the director, producer, editor, camera man, etc....
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