{"id":10155,"date":"2022-05-21T05:37:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-21T10:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-1-john-4\/"},"modified":"2022-04-29T14:01:32","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T19:01:32","slug":"devotional-on-1-john-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-1-john-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on 1 John"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_16343\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16343\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/PHOTO_20140903_125150.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-16343\" src=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/PHOTO_20140903_125150-1024x578.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"542\" srcset=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/PHOTO_20140903_125150-1024x578.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/PHOTO_20140903_125150-300x169.jpg 300w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/PHOTO_20140903_125150-768x433.jpg 768w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/PHOTO_20140903_125150-1536x866.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/PHOTO_20140903_125150.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16343\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Yosemite National Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Feelings, nothing more than feelings\u2026naw!<\/p>\n<p>1John 4: That is the kind of love we are talking about.<\/p>\n<p>Now I find myself at the heart of John\u2019s letter. It\u2019s here that I find the repeated declaration that \u201cGod is love.\u201d The Apostle hammers his point home: God is love therefore to be in God is to be in love. If love doesn\u2019t dominate my life then God doesn\u2019t dominate me. If I don\u2019t love people then God\u2019s love is missing from my life and therefore God, himself, is missing. This \u201clove business\u201d demands some serious thought. What does it mean to love as God loves? If I\u2019m not careful I wind up on the \u201cemotions side\u201d of love. I get the feeling that God is all about warm fuzzy feelings. Once there, I\u2019m left with the idea that loving like God loves is to always \u201cfeel\u201d a particular way about people whether they&#8217;re good or bad. However, I\u2019ve taken the wrong fork in the road. John carefully describes what it means for God to be love. We know God is love, John says, because of what he does: he \u201csent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.\u201d Love, then, isn\u2019t how God feels about us. Rather it\u2019s the action he takes in our behalf. The Lord doesn\u2019t \u201cso love the world that he\u201d feels all warm and tingly toward us. Instead, he \u201cso loves the world that he gives his only begotten Son.\u201d Love is, then, an action word. To love is to take action, even personally painful action, on the behalf of the one loved\u2026even if that one is absolutely unlovable. If I love as God loves I too will take action. John reminds me that there\u2019s no way I can do that unless the Lord lives in me. On the other hand, if the Lord lives in me, I can\u2019t help but act in love.<\/p>\n<p>Take Away: Love isn\u2019t how I feel as much as it is what I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Feelings, nothing more than feelings\u2026naw! 1John 4: That is the kind of love we are talking about. Now I find myself at the heart of John\u2019s letter. It\u2019s here that I find the repeated declaration that \u201cGod is love.\u201d The Apostle hammers his point home: God is love therefore to be in God is to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1470,1428],"tags":[1366,1373,473,691],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10155"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10155"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16345,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10155\/revisions\/16345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}