My name is Charlotte Thomas. I am in sixth grade and I go to Venetian Middle School. I'm going to be reading 1 John chapter 4, verses 7 through 21. Beloved, let us one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. In this love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propagation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent his son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. So now so we have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and whoever God abides in him by this is the day of judgment because he is also because as he is, so also are we in this world has to do are we in this world? This there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates their brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has not seen God, and this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. This is the word of the Lord.

She just knocked out 14 verses. Uh, for those of you who haven't been here um before, um, what we're doing is we're going verse by verse, we're teaching through the Bible. Specifically, right now, we've been going through these three letters in the back of the New Testament called first, second, and third John. John actually wrote a big book, we'll call it the Gospels earlier um in the New Testament, but that's where we're hanging out. I'm gonna wrap up chapter four today. Um, Charlotte just did a great job. So that was awesome. See you guys next week. Um, but before I jump in um to that, just a quick reminder announcement. This coming Saturday, we got a really big event. Some of you guys may even got a mailer from it in the mail. Um, we're asking everyone to play, like it's an all-skate. For those of you who remember the skating rink days, this is like an everyone participate. So it's called like fall family flannel festival, something like that. But you can put them in any order, they all work. It's a family festival, it's a fall flannel thing. But what we're doing is we're coming together for a couple hours this next Saturday, and we're gonna represent this place in this community, and we're gonna show the love of Christ. But it's a good first, like easy entry because maybe you've come here and then it's easier to have a conversation about coming to uh to Christmas because you saw where the bathrooms are at, you saw where to park, you saw that the walls didn't fall down, all of that good stuff. There's great weather. But here's where we also need you to skate. We would love your help. Um, we have some QR codes out in the lobby. Um, whether it's like helping people park, whether it's like making sure people find their way out of the giant hay maze. If you've seen hay out there, we're building a big maze for you get lost in. It's gonna be awesome. We'll have races. I don't know. Uh, there's pumpkin catapults, there's like bounce houses, there's face painting. I'm a face painter this year, and this is what it's just my hand. It's just my right there. I was like all day, I got this on people's faces. Let's go. That's not actually true. Anyways, if you're better than that, we need you. So uh this next weekend, don't just come. You can invite someone, but also come and um work it. Just represent this place and show it off and love the community in this next season. So let's hop in. Let me start with a question that I think is bigger than it looks, honestly. It's this how do you know love when you see it? Like, not the like I sent you a heart emoji kind of love, or like the we share a Spotify account or networks password kind of love. Or I got this one for you. Brad, you're gonna love this. Like the socks that you can wear that hold hands, right? Hold on. That's for you, buddy. Yeah, Amazon just made money. Not that kind of quit looking at my feet. You guys are like, what's happening? I mean the kind of love that actually like carries weight. Um, our our world runs like a non-stop seminar on love. Uh, your feeds dish out hot takes, uh, your group chats, they all have opinions, your favorite shows give you case studies every single week. And we're still left asking constantly, okay, but like what is it? And how do I get to the real thing? And John, as we've been reading through the last living apostle, answers with clarity that slices through every trend. He says, This, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God because here's right, this is the big one. God is love, not love is God, like some mystical thing we worship. No, no, no. God is love, meaning love has a name, it has a character, it has a crucified risen face attached to it. And John doesn't keep it just theoretical here. He grounds love in history, just jumping right to verse 9 and 10. He says, In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his son, his only son, into the world, so that we might live through him. He loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation of our sins. Now, some of you guys are like, propitiation sounds like a scramble power move. It's not, by the way, but it is a 10-point move if you get a triple letter score for those nerds in the room. But propitiation, it simply means this that Jesus stepped into the courtroom where you and I stood guilty, absorbed the sentence that you and I deserved, and then paid the debt which we couldn't touch. And if love never costs you anything, it probably isn't love, friends. It's just branding. And God's love isn't just this vibe, it's a verdict that He's letting us know that it's declared over you because of the cross. And John says, if that is the kind of love that you and I have received, then that's the kind that we're actually called to live into. Let me frame the journey that we're on today. If you're one of my younger friends in the room today, chances are you're navigating identity stuff at a high speed. Uh, whether it's new cities, new roommates, new majors, new bosses, relationship statuses with punctuation you didn't even know existed, right? And in the chaos, it's easy to mistake reactive feelings for love and also strategic niceness for love. And John here won't let us do that. He actually gives us a definition, a diagnostic, and then a direction. The definition is the cross shows you what love is ultimately. The diagnostic is your love for people is actual evidence that you actually know God. And the direction is moving toward others, the way God moved towards you first, sacrificially for their good. You could sum up this whole passage like this today. Loved by God, we love like God. So, first, verse seven, John looks us straight in the eyes, and this is what he says. Beloved, let us love one another. Now notice right off the bat, notice the order of this. He calls you beloved before he calls you to love, identity, your beloved comes before then your activity of loving. That you aren't just sent to this like relational gym to grind out love so God will then notice you. God, no, because he already loves you, then he sends you to the gym so you can let this love flow through you. And if love is from God, then when you love, you're not just being a good person. What you're doing is you're actually demonstrating the family resemblance. John says, beloved, let us love one another. And whoever loves, they've been born of God and God and knows God. Essentially, what this is saying is that love that's born from God, think of it like the 23 in me of faith, right? Instead, you swab the heart instead of the cheek. Because here's the deal you can have knowledge about God, but you can't fake a life steadily shaped by cross-shaped love. A quick reality check. A lot of us in here maybe grew up hearing like, God is love. But that was kind of in a way that meant like God approves of whatever I currently feel. And that sounds comfy, but honestly, it's upside down. If love is God, then love gets defined by trending feelings and popular opinion, and that's dangerous. But John says, no, no, no, God is love. So therefore, love is defined by God's holy, self-giving character. And that means some of what we call love today, frankly, isn't love. I mean, think about some circumstances. Are you ghosting somebody to avoid an awkward, honest conversation? That's not love. Are you flirting to harvest the tension that you actually never intend to commit to? That's not love. Are you dragging somebody in your group chat uh so you can score points with the squad? That's not love. And John could have written to us, I think, thou shalt not subtweet. That is not love. Real love is more than kindness, it's cruciform, shaped like a cross. Uh, let me give you a story real quick that might sound uncomfortably familiar. Uh, I have a friend who did like a full identity change, like a reboot online. New aesthetic, new handle, new hot ticks, like all this stuff. And on the timeline, it felt like he was bold and funny and you know, free. But in real life, he was lonely, brittle, and he was actually terrified of being seen because being truly known meant someone might bump up into the parts that he couldn't filter. So he built a brand of love that really was applause. And then when people agreed with him, you know, he called that support. And when they didn't agree with him, he called that hate. Basically, his love language at this time was like likes and retreats. And the cross says, love isn't the applause that you win, it's actually the price that you and I pay. That God didn't send a statement to us, he sent his son. God didn't double tap your post, he carried your cross. And that's why John says in verse 10, and this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us. Notice that the subject here in this verse is God. The verb in this verse is loved, and the object is who? Us. Even while we were still a mess. You weren't a consumer choosing a product, you were spiritually dead, and get this love himself actually came for you. And so, if that's true, then this sentence, we also ought to love one another, is not guilt. Frankly, it's gravity. It's the most natural thing in the world for forgiven people to become forgiving people. John says something breathtaking next. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, though, God abides in us and his love is made perfect in us. Here's really what this means the invisible God becomes visible through the visible love of his people. Let me say that again. The invisible God becomes visible through the visible love of his people. Students, your campuses can't see the Trinity. But they can see how you were refusing to gossip about someone. Your coworkers can see you give credit a way that you could have hoarded. Your roommates can see that you do dishes and you didn't use the hard conversation against them that you didn't want to have. Yes, even the one of who keeps all the hair in the sink, that gross one that talk, right? Friends, the God no one can see becomes seeable when the church loves like Jesus. Now, let me just pause for a second. Who's the church? Hello. Welcome to church. It's you and I. It's you and I. Frankly, that's why we're doing what we're doing this next Saturday. And that's why we're saying we need you. We need you to partner up. We need you to wear your weird socks and hold hands and do this together. Because the God no one can see becomes seeable, becomes seeable when you love like Jesus. You're not just talking about God. We have this big word out there. What you're doing is you're representing him when you love. Let's talk about power for a second. He says this in verse 13. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit. Now it's really important to understand the spirit is not this vague, you know, uh spiritual caffeine shot. It's this personal presence of God, making the power, making the love of God real in your bones and then practical in our behavior as this evidence. The spirit is the one who, frankly, it's the one that nudges you when you're about to send that really petty text. Y'all know what I'm talking about right now? He's the one who opens your mouth to confess that Jesus is the Son of God when you'd rather talk about literally anything else. When someone's like, You do church, you Jesus person? Right? He's the one who whispers to you, don't quit on them when your patience is literally running on fumes. Uh, to help some of you with the idea of the Trinity, because I know it sounds like this foreign language, I want you to maybe think of it like this. The Trinity is made up of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. So the Father sent the Son. This is mission. The Son saved, this is atonement or covering for Uranized sins. And the Spirit assures it's this indwelling that we actually have in us. Love in you. Literally, the a Trinitarian electricity. And so, if that's the case, here's what this means for confidence. John says, by this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. So, what does he do? Whoa, what are you talking about here? Well, he's talking about a future appointment that frankly none of us can reschedule. Standing before God. It's gonna happen, right? And most of us probably relate to that day, like we would relate a week, you know, getting ready for a finals or some big project to do date thing. And then what do we do the night before? We panic, right? We're like, oh my gosh, I wasn't ready for this. And John says here, matured love, God's love, having its full effect in you, actually evicts panic. Why? Because this is how love is perfected, right? You have been united with Christ, which means you share his status. And that means that the judge is also the one who bled for you. And when you see love that deep, the punishment fear begins to lose its grip. Says there is no fear. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, which means God is basically the world's best addiction notice. And fear has to do, frankly, with punishment for most of us. John says that whoever has fear has not been perfected in love here. Here, he's not saying that you can't have like adrenaline and nerves and things that take place. What he's saying is if your view of God is of this like cosmic probation officer just waiting to bust you, then you haven't stared at the cross long enough. You haven't actually accepted what that even means. And the one who took your punishment is the one who now holds you. That kind of security doesn't make you reckless. What it does is it actually makes you fearless and fearless enough to actually love. Okay, let's bring us down to the floor where we actually live right now. John ends with this kind of like gut level test. Says, we love because he first loved us. And if anyone says, I love God, but hates his brother, he is a liar. Now we've heard this a lot from John. These are strong words because a lot of us are going, geez, I might have done some of that, right? And John's not being cranky here, some old guy. He's being kind, actually. He's refusing you and I to like live in this contradiction where we sing vertical love songs on Sunday, and then we practice hostile, hostile, horizontal hostility on Monday and Wednesday, right? Uh verse 20 says, Whoever does not love their brother, whom they have seen, cannot love God, who they have not seen. And if that stings, this week it did for me a little bit. I say good, right? Why? Because a wound is where much of the healing can actually get in. And God loves you too much to let you protect resentment in his name. Just uh to show you a couple case studies, you know, with this example. So, first, like the roommate standoff, those of you guys who've experienced that. You know the one is like four days of passive aggressive clanging in the kitchen and a mount effort of laundry in places around the shared spaces or those weird Vimmo requests for a dollar and eighty-three cents. And you're like, who even does that?$1.83? Like you're just not in a good place, right? What does love do? It moves first, right? If God loved us, we also ought to love one another. Now, does moving first mean being a doormat? No. It means that you start with a confession, not an accusation. Like maybe, like, hey, I've been really petty. I've been keeping a mental spreadsheet and a physical one of every dish you didn't wash, and that's not fair or loving. Can we reset? The spirit empowers you with that kind of grown-up courage. Uh, another case study for you, the relationship DTR. For those of you who don't know a DTR, it stands for define the relationship, right? The relational DTR that never quite happens. What does that mean? Like, have you ever been there, you're stuck in a situationship, right? Because clarity actually costs, and ambiguity feels cheaper. And in love is not the thrill of flirting without commitment. What love is, is it's actually seeking the good of another, even if it costs you the comfort of the undefined. So love says, hey, we need to talk. I care about you as a person, not just a vibe. If we continue, I want to be with you with clarity and honor. And if we can't, I want to release you well. And that for so many of us feels really risky. Because love, perfect love though, casts out fear that keeps us from using people as like emotional snack bars. Because JFK, nobody wants to be or deserves to be your 1 a.m. DoorDash craving. Case study number three. This is a whopper. Church conflict. Oh, yeah, we're gonna go there. You ready, church? Somebody said something, right? Then somebody else reposted something, and now your whole small group has a fracture line running through it. Now remember the logic of John. The invisible God becomes visible when believers do what? Love one another. What that means, friends, is how we handle conflict is actually part of our worship. Love means that we actually refuse to assassinate each other's character in private while smiling in public, right? It means we actually go to the person and not about the person. It means we seek to understand before we seek to be understood. Verse 12, if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. And what happens really is the spirit turns conflict into a classroom where we begin to learn and understand the language of grace. So now what about boundaries in all of this? That's fair. Maybe uh in your current climate, it's time for a peak boundary talk. And sometimes that's a way of healing, honestly, and sometimes that's a way of hiding. Well, why? Well, because love without boundaries is enablement, and boundaries without love is avoidance. And honestly, Jesus shows us both. He says, Come to me, all who are weary, and then he also disappears to pray. So maybe you need to say no to someone's manipulation while saying yes to praying for their good. And here's the beautiful part is the cross frees you from people pleasing and frees you for people serving. One flows from fear, and the other flows from love. Uh, real quick, back to my friend who reinvented himself online. He told me later um that he didn't actually want love. Uh, he wanted admiration, and and and he wanted that without intimacy. Where I was like, oh, right? Really, what he wanted was followers, not friends. And you and I can understand that real love actually requires presence. John's favorite word about presence was actually this word called abide. We've we've read it a ton: abide, to remain, to dwell, to make room, to make that kind of your home. That's why it's so important that we can't just microwave this, that love grows in the slow cooker of actually abiding, where you learn the voice of the spirit, not by speed running through your different devotionals, but staying, actually sitting there long enough to actually listen and to receive. Abiding forms you into the kind of person for whom love is increasingly the default setting, not the occasional upgrade. And there's actually mission here too. So we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his son to be the savior of the world, that love's not just an introvert's escape or an extrovert's party trick, it's actually our witness. It's our martyrdom. The world's starving for love that doesn't, that doesn't collapse when it's put under pressure. And if all we offer, honestly, is just a slightly nicer version of the same transaction that everyone is already playing, like I'll like you if you feed my brand, we're useless. But if we offer a cruciform, spirit empowered, enemy forgiving, neighbor serving, truth telling love, that gets attention. Now it might feel really weird, but it's different. Oh man, is it holy? And it's the one apologetic Jesus promised would work. He said, by this all people will know that you're my disciples. If you actually have love for one another, let's work on some practices that will pull this out of the clouds and just something we can do this week. Practice one. Move first. Take a deep breath because I'm gonna give you some examples. Think of one strained relationship and take the first step. Not with a sermon, but with a sentence. Like, can we talk? I want to own my part. Practice too. Make love visible, make it seeable. Like put 20 bucks in your next paycheck towards uh someone else's need, or go find someone to babysit for free, or that couple that's in your group that hasn't had a date night for eight months, right? Or here's a really easy one for those of you who work. Leave your noise canceling headphones in your bag while you invite some lonely coworker to lunch and actually have a conversation, right? Practice three. Here you go, buckle up. Pray for some of your hard-to-love person by name for seven days. Ooh, I'm gonna tell you right now, you're gonna be a different person after day five for reels. And you're gonna might maybe actually like it. And here, do this one. Pray for something specific and good to happen to them. Not just like make them a better person, Lord, right? Don't take that out. No, no, no. Pray for something specific and good to happen to them. And don't tell me that praying for them to be a good person is specific and good. Some of you guys are arguing with right now. You're like, that actually is really specific and would be good, right? Practice more. We'll move on. Confess Christ openly in ordinary conversations. And it just some of this is like put you in panic mode, right? You don't have to force it. Can I you can just say this seriously? Honestly, following Jesus has helped me not live from fear like I used to. It's just part of your testimony. What is your thing? Just share it out. Let me speak to fear again because this it's sneaky and it actually is wrapped up in a lot of this. Some of us are not unloving. We're just afraid, right? There's a ton of fear packed into that, right? We're afraid of being rejected. We're afraid of being boring like Lamer, right? We're afraid to be vulnerable or to look weak. We're afraid to set a boundary. We're afraid to keep one, right? The gospel doesn't shame your fear, it invites you into the light where love can do its eviction work. Perfect love doesn't mean that your hands don't shake, right? What it means is that your hands keep moving forward while they shake. And if punishment fear is the soundtrack that keeps playing in your head, keeping you from doing this, like God's disappointed, God feels so distanced, God's got to be done with me. Let the cross, remember that? Linger over the cross, let the cross turn the volume down and hear the louder song. Paul reminds us in Romans 8, verse 1. This one might be just one you need to write down. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Now, here's some wildly practical things for your judgment day confidence that John is talking about as he's wrapping up chapter four. Imagine your future standing, not collapsing, smiling, not sweating, because you're in Christ. Now take that moment and try to reverse engineer that whole thing, the rest of your week from that moment. That if that is truly your end, where you're gonna sit in confidence, how then, feeling that way, would you treat the hardest person in your life today? What text would you send? Who would that person become? What apology would you make? What bitterness would you now finally just put to the curb? And I think you'll find it's actually amazing how future assurance actually creates a lot of present courage in your life. And when the end of the story is secure, you have the bandwidth to love in the messy middle. Let's talk about honesty when it comes to the messy middle just for a second. Love without truth is sentimentality, but truth without love is brutality. You need to be careful. But John holds both of these together by rooting them in God. If God is love, then speaking truth is part of love because truth tells the reality as God sees it. Not as you see it, as God sees it. So, yes, the loving thing might to be have that. Little hard conversation with a friend about the self-destructive choices that they're making. But the cross shapes how you do it. Not as a prosecutor trying to win, but as a brother or a sister trying to rescue. Remember, we ought to love because we've been loved first. You aren't coming from this moral, you know, superiority. You're coming from mercy because you've experienced it. And some of you, maybe you hear all of this and you think, I have failed to love in so many ways. Well, welcome. My name's Lawrence, and I'm in recovery too. Join the club. And the good news is that the whole passage starts with this. Do you remember? Beloved. That's your starting line. It doesn't start with performer. The love John commands is the love that Jesus supplies. And you can't pour out, friends, what you haven't already received yourself. You can't display what you haven't beheld first. So the action step before all other action steps is this. Do you remember? Abide. Just abide. Just wait and sit in the presence of the one who loved you first and loves you still. Maybe a good way for abiding this week is just to sit in the gospels slowly, which again, the gospels is the good news, is what it stands for. The life of Christ. You can find those in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the first four books in the New Testament. Or maybe abiding is just lingering over the cross. Like, what does this actually mean? What does this thing actually mean? And let the spirit preach to your condemnation addiction. He loved you before you improved. He isn't surprised. And get this, he's not moving out. And then John's test slices through. If you cannot love a brother or a sister in front of you, then you can't claim you love the unseen God. And that's not him being mean. That's just scripture being merciful. And honestly, I get this. Some of you carry church hurt because it's made full of people. You're sitting all around them. Or you've seen leaders who use love to control, or you've watched Christians devour one another online in the name of truth. Hear me kindly and gently say, those are violations of 1 John 4, not examples of it. God is not asking you to pretend harm didn't happen in your life. What he's doing is he's inviting you to bring harm over to the cross where justice and mercy actually meet. And then, and I think only then do you have the power to forgive without minimizing, or to set boundaries without bitterness, or to actually begin to re-enter to community without wearing armor 24-7. And I'll tell you this from my own experience the spirit is a better healer than time. So what do we do now? Real fast, three closing moves. First, receive. Just receive it. Before you hustle to fix anything, just sit long enough to let the spirit say, beloved, beloved. And for those of you who are who have never trusted Jesus, this is your moment. Your moment to say, Jesus, I'm done pretending. I'm ready to receive your love, your cross, your life. The second thing is to repent. This is a tough one. Actually, ask the Spirit to put his finger on where your love has been counterfeit, cowardly, and conditional. And then here's the best part: confess it. The blood of Jesus doesn't just forgive guilt, it actually detoxes your shame. And then third, finally, re-engage. Pick one person and move towards this week with cross-shaped love. Not because they deserve it, but because you've actually been loved like that. Loved by God. We love like God. And then the world finally sees what it's been scrolling for all along. I want to pray words over you the way John would with a pastoral heart. If you would join me and bow your heads. Father, thank you. Thank you that love began with you and not actually us. Thank you for sending the Son, not a memo. Thank you for pouring out the Spirit, not leaving us just to muscle this out ourselves. And for every place that fear sits heavy, would you allow perfect love to cast it out? For every relationship knotted with bitterness, give the courage to us this week to move first. And for every heart exhausted by pretending, would you give the freedom of being the beloved? Make us into the people whose everyday lives make the invisible God visible. And we ask this in the power of Jesus Christ's name. You stay with me? Amen. Amen. Well, this morning you guys are going to have a chance to respond.