People of God Who Stay in Love with God

Because I said so… Ever hear that once or twice? Ever said it more than a few times? Obedience. Discipline. When you think of being a United Methodist, do you think of Discipline? Well, as it so happens, we have an entire book of it.

I admit I don’t like the word discipline. It kinda makes me think of a principal I once had who would walk around on stage with his paddle and put the fear of God in me. Discipline is the result of doing something wrong right? Because I said so.

Perhaps you feel the same way about today’s sermon title. Maybe you could get behind doing no harm. That makes sense. And hopefully we can all get behind doing good. But staying in love with God? Or as it was originally called- attending to the ordinances of God. Attending to the what? Is this a sermon on how we should attend church and pray and read our Bibles because God said so?

If we are going to talk about staying in love with God, it is appropriate that our text is from 1 John because 1 John talks a LOT about love. If you read all five chapters, you may feel like you are going in circles. We know that we love God because we love others. We love others because we love God and obey his commandments. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. Do you feel like you’re going in circles yet?

But maybe that’s the point. Similarly, John Wesley’s three general rules aren’t meant to be separated from each other. You can’t have do no harm without then having the call to do good. And how can you have either if there is no relationship with God. All three are meant to flow in relationship together.

In 1 John 5, the author is connecting our belief in Jesus as the Son of God with our love of one another. Notice how we have everyone who believes is followed by everyone who loves. There is a connection between our believing (what we commit to with our minds- orthodoxy) and our loving (what we commit to with our hands and feet- orthoproaxis). They are meant to work in tandem.

Have you ever known someone and said “to know them is to love them.” That’s how many of us felt about the life of Sylvia Ferguson. I read so many comments and they would say, “to know her was to love her.”

This is how it is meant to be in our life in God. “Stay in love with God,” Wesley says. For the love of God is this: that we obey his commandments. So are we just talking about the big ten? I’m sure those were in mind but in 1 John the focus here is really on faith and love, on knowing God and loving one another. Knowing and loving. This isn’t a before-and after. This is an all-in-one.

And it says these are not burdensome. I once tried to have a Wednesday night Bible study group on Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and guess how many people flocked to that group? Exactly. In our minds, the words celebration and discipline don’t belong together. Well, in the Old Testament, the law was actually not meant to be oppressive. It was meant to be life-giving. Can you imagine that? It was a celebration of what God had done and who God is. Spiritual disciplines aren’t designed to keep us in line, they’re designed to keep us in love.

Wesley refers to these ways we stay in love with God as means of grace. He mentions gathering in worship together, prayer, Holy Communion, reading and studying Scripture, fasting, and so on. This is not a complete list so don’t get hung up on that. The point is what sets you on fire for God, what draws you near, what does your soul thirst for? When I was in seminary, we had to write a rule of life. The content and number of rules were up to us, but the point was to consider each year what commitments, patterns, or rules do you want to govern your life? My professor said that she read a certain book every year. Another wanted to go on a date night with their spouse each month. Some committed to daily devotionals. Some incorporated physical fitness or exploration in nature. Staying in love with God can look a lot of ways. Whatever that is, pay attention to that, lean into whatever allows love to conquer your soul. Wesley says “let love not visit you as a transient guest, but be the constant ruling temper of your soul.”

Here’s the thing: I spent a good deal of time in my life allowing everything other than the love of God to conquer me and sometimes still do. When we don’t determine and set what and more importantly who will rule our lives, something else will. I was ruled by perfectionism, relationships, die-hard habits, grudges, impatience, and fear of rejection.

Staying in love with God isn’t always easy. Maybe this is the part where you think I should tell you that if you just come here enough, read the Bible enough, pray enough, say the right words, serve the right way etc. that it will get easier. That suddenly your Christian walk will be counted all as joy. Maybe we are looking at it all wrong. Stuart Briscoe said that “when I became a Christian I thought it was easy, and discovered I was wrong. Then I thought it was hard, and I genuinely and sincerely worked at it, and I discovered I was wrong again. I discovered that the Christian life is a sheer impossibility. And for the first time I saw the significance in the resurrection. That the only person capable of living the Christian life was Jesus Christ. All I had to do, having accepted what He did, is just let Him be who He is , in me.” When we try to embark on the Christian walk without Christ, it’s like having our faith stuck on a treadmill. We are taking a lot of steps, but we aren’t really moving anywhere.

This is why John is so intent here on saying that we can’t lose hope in Jesus as our resurrected Lord, the Son of God. The power of the resurrection is the content of our faith which is the victory that can conquer the world. It isn’t really about us. It is as Paul says in Colossians 3 that our life is hidden with Christ in God. When we stay in love with God, “our life becomes a place where others experience the presence of God’s love, mercy and grace touching their lives with cleansing, healing and liberating transformation” (Mulholland, 94).Because love says so.

I praise God for people in my life like that, people whose lives have helped me experience the presence of God’s love and transformation, people who bear the light. I think of a man named George who taught me about a passion for God’s word and the spirit of revival. I think of a woman named Donna who showed me the importance of hope and prayer even amid her own intense chronic pain. I think of a pastor named Duncan who when I would pray with him, I heard the love of the Lord. I think of a woman named Toni who showed me what the love of God looked like in song. I think of a young girl named Kathryn who would talk me off the ledge and keep leading me back into a life with God.I think of my husband and children who remind me that staying in love with God should include laughter, wonder, and joy. I think of so many quiet servants who work behind the scene to set the table, give the money, prepare the food, and volunteer on a regular basis. I am wondering, do you have people like that in your life? People who when you are with them you feel that you are in the presence of the love of God. People who when I felt like I had no oil said “here, you can have some of mine.” People who allow God to be who God is in them, day after day after day, because love says so.

In her poem entitled “Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light” Jan Richardson says:

Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times, who testify to its endurance amid the unendurable, who bear witness to its persistence when everything seems in shadow and grief.

Blessed are you in whom the light lives, in whom the brightness blazes— your heart a chapel, an altar where in the deepest night can be seen the fire that shines forth in you in unaccountable faith, in stubborn hope, in love that illumines every broken thing it finds.

Blessed are you friends, who stay in love with God because of what God alone has done, who hold the light, who share the oil, who wipe the tears, who sing the songs, who pray the prayers, who keep on loving, because love says so.