You Are Unstoppable

by Thomas Denegre

As a young boy I often heard the family tell the story of my cousin who was killed in Iwo Jima during World War II.  As a Marine he was leading his squad when from behind them a Japanese soldier sprung out of concealed bunker to kill them.  He blocked the shooter by taking the full impact of the bullets and died saving his buddies.  Later my cousin was awarded the Silver Star medal. Jesus once said, “There is no greater love than a love that sacrifices all.”  John 15:13

As a believer I’ve learned this simple rule. Talk is cheap; action is everything. Children are especially good at identifying the hypocrites. People hide behind a mask of righteousness while conducting themselves like a depraved sinner.  It gives Christianity a bad name.   On the other hand, we have experienced a love beyond words that touched us in a magnificent way. This is what makes discipleship extraordinary. This is the action that changes people, cultures, and nations.

I learned no one cares about what you know, rather they want to know you care.

In today’s reading the apostle John teaches how love transforms our hearts into powerful action.

We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children let us not love with word or with tongue, but with deed and truth. 19 We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. 1 John 3:16-20       

As a believer and disciple of Jesus, you are the most powerful person walking on this earth. For the love of God inside you will conquer all, for it is written, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” 1 Cor. 13:7 and his “perfect love casts out all fear.”  1 John 4:18

Jesus said, “if you live in life-union with me and if my words live powerfully within you—then you can ask whatever you desire, and it will be done.” John 15:7(TPT)

As a believer and disciple, you must open your heart to Jesus to allow his love to work in you and through you.  You do this by being transparent with your wounds and grievances.  Give your wounds to the Lord so he can heal your heart from hardness to tenderness. Repent and forgive others for the grievances.  Keep your gunny sack empty of grievances as this will eliminate bitterness and resentment in your heart.

Through this healing process the Holy Spirit can flow its living streams of life through you and onto others.  Knowing you are loved and healed, you will see people as God sees people.  It will become your nature to act out of God’s love. You’ll be able to love the unlovable. Forgive the unpardonable.  Console the brokenhearted.    Just in your tiny section of the world you’ll be able to have a powerful impact with family, friends, and strangers.  The power of God’s love through you will change you, change others, and change the culture.  Just look how the believers conquered and changed the Roman empire!

Open your heart to Jesus and become the unstoppable person God designed you to be, for your fellow disciples and the Most-High God will always be there to support you.

Power Ballad

1 John 3: 16-24

As I began reading today’s scripture, I made it no further than the first eight words This is how we know what love is, then God whispered, “We’re going to take this back to 1984 – a true bible blast from the past.”  

Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is” started playing in my head.

Soon I found myself on Google trying to find the lyrics of a song that played on the radio non-stop during my pre-teen years.

At first, I wasn’t sure how God was going to use what I thought was an obvious ode to physical/human love to mesh with 1 John 3:16-24. No problem, He said “take a look at the lyrics and then check out what John wrote in verse 18,” Dear Children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.

Um...

I want to know what love is, I want you to show me

I want to feel what love is, I know you can show me

SHOW ME, not tell me.  Not with words, but with actions. As The Message translation states, “let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love.”

Then He asked me to dig a little deeper and before long, I was reading an article on a website I’d never heard of before, www.loudersound.com. In it, guitarist and songwriter Mick Jones is quoted as saying, “I don’t know where it came from. I consider it a gift that was sent through me. I think there was something bigger than me behind it. I’d say it was probably written entirely by a higher force.”

“See, I told you,” God said.

I went on to discover that Foreigner invited the New Jersey Mass Choir to record the song with them, but after several attempts, they just weren’t feeling it. UNTIL…they formed a circle and said the Lord’s Prayer together. Divine inspiration struck, and a hit was born.

So what is the answer to the 1984 classic quest to know love...Jesus! No matter the year, Jesus is how we truly know what love is.

To Be Like Scrooge

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. (1 John 3:14)

If there is a greater personal transformation in fiction than that of Ebenezer Scrooge, it doesn’t readily come to mind. For over 150 years, Charles Dickens’ miserly protagonist has served as a metaphor for stinginess and greed, but his story is really one of stunning conviction and response—a realization of wrong, a plea for mercy, an inner renewal, and a newly-found compassion for others. His testimony is the passing from the doom of death to a life of love, for in the end, he was a new man, changed from the inside out.

For whatever reason, we continue to identify the old money-lender with his “Humbug” disposition, as though tethering him with Marley’s chains to his former, self-absorbed way of life. Maybe part of us finds comfort in comparing ourselves against such a low benchmark, as though our goodness lay in being better than someone else. But in so doing, we miss the point, we miss the good news. Our hope is not found in being so different than this Scrooge or that one; quite the opposite, our hope lives in the fact that we can be like him! We, too, can live in mercy and grace! We, too, can pass from death to life! We, too, can become new! For when we live in Christ, we, too, are changed.

What does true transformation of our inside look like on the outside? The grace we receive shines through the grace we give. We take in the words of the apostle John: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18). Then we live them as did our good friend, Ebenezer: “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more . . .  And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”¹

May it be known through our words of truth and acts of love that we, too, live well in Christ.

Father, send your Spirit to shine through me today. May you be glorified—and may others be blessed—because you used this life for your purposes. I pray in the name of the Son you love, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

[Read John’s call to genuine love in 1 John 3:11-20.]

¹ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Enriched Classic (New York: Pocket Books, 2007), 104.

A chip off the ol' block

“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” 1 John 3:1

[Well, good morning to you, too, John! Thanks for the encouragement! You’re welcome to stop by anytime!]

What does life as “children of God” bring to your mind? Is it an eternity of heavenly play, like having the keys to the yellow Lamborghini whenever we want them? Is it a paradise of golf? (Or jousting, perhaps, for those who departed in medieval times?) Will Aunt Ethel be there ten thousand years, bright-shining as the sun, and still playing Bingo? (“What? You won again, Ethel?”)

Is it better for you, or worse, to think of continual worship, thanks and praise? Peering into the future through John’s Revelation, we see a fair amount falling down before the Lamb of God in adoration at the declaration of His glory, honor and power. Are you excited at the thought, or a bit apprehensive?

We come to Christ in childlike faith: we simply believe, and may our faith always be so pure! Yet, while our faith must remain like that of a child, we are called also to mature in our life in Christ – to “purify” ourselves, to be righteous and to stop offering ourselves to sin as weapons of wickedness. Of course, we do none of this in our own strength; we only grow up as we submit ourselves to the Spirit of Christ in us. As we do, the “all about us” desires of life gradually fade away and His brilliance shines ever more brightly into our lives, drawing us away from the things that cannot satisfy and, instead, unto himself.

I suspect that, when we do see God, all thoughts of front-yard football, back-yard frisbee and celestial parlor games will be forgotten. For “we shall see him as he is” and “we shall be like him.” We will have grown up and put childish things behind us. We will be chips off the ol’ block and forever praise him for making us so.

[See the daily devotional reading in 1 John 3:1-10.]

Love One Another - 1 John 3:11-24

Many books of the Bible give us the instruction to love each other and 1 John is no different. "This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another." (1 John 3:11)  Just what does that look like?  How can we love someone we do not even know?  We are also to love our enemies; again, how do we do that?  I can tell you that we cannot on our own, but God can.  When I am in a situation where I am struggling to be civil to someone, only God can change my heart.

For instance, the rude clerk in the store this morning did not conjure up feelings of affection from me.  What should I have done? Pray... "God, you know what is going on in her life, give me a heart to smile at her."

What about the drunk driver who snubbed out the life of a loved one; how can we love them? Again, we can't without God's help. With divorce so prevalent how do we maintain a loving relationship with a former spouse?  Getting the idea?  I believe one reason Scripture addresses the act of loving one another so often is because it is not easy to do and we need the reminder that God is there to help us with our heart attitudes.

We can be confident that God knows our hearts and He can soften them. "And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us." (1 John 3:23).  Remember, love is a choice.

Read the 1 John 3:11-24 text here.

Children of God - 1 John 3:1-10

"Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2)

This verse is comforting and disturbing at the same time.  Comforting because it says we are 'children of God', disturbing because we are still in this world and sin surrounds us.  Disturbing because we have free will and are still susceptible to falling short of what a child of God should act like. There is expectation on my part that I will change and will remember my family name is Christian.

1 John is instructing me to love and cast a good example to the world.  To do this I must stay close to Him who is my strength.  "Come near to God and He will come near to you." (James 4:8)  I cannot be sinless in this world, but "what we will be has not yet been made known."  More comfort here, for the junk I am dragging around daily, the baggage I can't seem to unload, will disappear.

I am a work in progress and as long as I draw near to God, he will bless me and refine me and prepare me for the day he appears for the final time.



Read the 1 John 3:1-10 text here.