redeemed: Camp Blessing

I can’t love without Jesus.

I have said it over and over again when people have asked me about camp this past week. (For those of who who don’t know where I was, I have been at Camp Blessing for the past week, which is a special needs camp, LOOK IT UP! Give your summer to serve there, I promise, your life will be changed, and your love for Jesus will EXPLODE!)

I can’t even love the most lovable people without Jesus.

“ For you were called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Galatians 5:13

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for GOD IS LOVE. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In THIS LOVE, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; 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 His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the 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. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. GOD IS LOVE, and the one who abides in him. BY THIS, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in 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, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is NOT perfected in love. We love, BECAUSE He FIRST loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, CANNOT love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.”

1 John 4:7-21

Read it again.

And again.

He is saying, that without Him, love doesn’t even exist, without Jesus, we can’t love, I mean REALLY love, without Jesus. He came to be the savior of the world, so that we could love people with Jesus. That we could be loved.

So do we really know God?

His Beloved, are we abiding in this love?

Listen to that IF…IF we love one another, THEN God abides in us.

How can we but love one another, if we REALLY let Jesus love us, naturally we would be over flown and overwhelmed by the power and magnitude of His love. That the SAVIOR of the world, would even care to love us.

Are we ready to be perfected?

We cannot fear. For if we fear, we cannot love.