This is today’s post, again, from the library, but hey! I’m still getting them out there to you!!! I’m trying to anyway. I love you guys!

1 John 1:1-5:21

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the Day of Judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world. 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.” 1 John 4:16-19

Boy! These last few days home from the conference have been rough! The majority of the battle has been to figure out the internet connectivity issues I’m having but it certainly hasn’t been the only battle I’ve been fighting since I got home. I’ve been fighting to keep the ground I gained at the conference.

But you want to know how I’ve been fighting them? I just keep saying, “Jesus loves ME”, over and over and over and over. And this verse from today’s Word of the Day is the perfect example of why that statement of faith is so important. It’s not enough to just believe in the love that God has for us, we have to KNOW it. That word “know” in the Greek goes a lot deeper than just your brain.

And the best definition I can give you for this Greek word “ginosko” is to take you all the way back to Genesis 4:1.

“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.'”

Ginosko is a head knowledge that goes to an intimate level, deeper than just knowing a friend. It’s the “knowing” of a spouse. (I hope this makes sense to you without me getting any more graphic.)

There’s a special kind of connectedness between spouses that you don’t get from any other relationship in the world. And that’s the way we need to know the love that God has for us. There is a place deep deep inside us that only Jesus can touch, it’s a place that only Jesus knows is there. And that’s the place He fills up with His love in order to cast out our fears.

At the end of the verse where it says, “whoever fears has not been perfected in love,” that word “perfected” is from the Greek “telios” which means perfected, but in the sense that something is full grown, brought to an end, finished or filled up.

The best way I can describe it is if you think about a ping pong ball, with the word “Fear” written on it, sitting on the bottom of a glass. Now picture a pitcher, labeled “God’s love for ME”, and pouring water into the glass. What happens to the ping pong ball once that glass is filled to overflowing (because God’s love for you doesn’t stop flowing just because your cup is full, it never stops)? The ping pong ball falls out right? That’s the best way I can describe the meaning of this verse.

We love others because He first loved us, and that love can fill our cup to overflowing and cast out all our fears giving us the ability to sit at the same table as our Enemy and smile. His love empowers us to laugh when we should be crying. It causes us to hope when there is nothing left to hope in except Him. Because through God all things are possible my friend! God’s love for you is an all consuming fire that will drown out any and all fears that you may have if you are to only yield them up to Him. Let go and hand them over to His care and He will perform exceedingly abundantly above all that you could hope or imagine. Although it may not be in the way you expect, He often does that. But even then you can guarantee that whatever way He uses to solve the problem it is the BEST way to solve the problem. He’s good like that.

Today, may His Amazing Love for YOU, FILL the cup of your heart past overflowing to running down the table, onto the floor and out the door! In Jesus’ name! Amen!