GODLY LOVE, NO FEAR

 

GODLY LOVE, NO FEAR

I John 4:17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we are like Christ here in this world. NLT

Notice that as we live in fellowship with God, changes take place in our lives. Our hearts change in such a way that the character of love that flows through it changes. Love is that part of us that produces goodness. It is the desire within us that defines who we are and determines what we do. The character of our souls is determined by the objects of our love.

Living in God produces godly love. God is absolute love and He changes imperfect love into His love. The more we live in fellowship with God, the more like Him in love we become. It is a natural process and we cannot avoid it happening. If God is not the object of your love, you are not a child of God. If you are not becoming more like God in His ability to love, you are not a child of God. God is love and those who live in God will too become like God in love.

We should be consistently growing in our love relationship with God. In order to do that, we must be consistently in fellowship with God. We must be reading the Word of God faithfully and meeting with Him in our prayer closets. You will never grow in love with God if you take lightly the necessary disciplines of the faith. Spiritual progression produces spiritual fruit which produces spiritual service which pleases God.

Living in God calms our fears of facing God on Judgment Day. Our hearts are full of His love and we rest in that love. We approach God with confidence knowing that we are His and He is ours.

Because we are His, we are like Christ here on earth. We act like Christ commands us to. We think about life in a way that reflects the life of Christ in us. We reflect the presence of Christ in all we do. We produce the fruit of the Spirit and we are known as a child of God. There is no fear in our souls because His perfect love casts out all of our fears. We know there is nothing to condemn us before God because all is well between Christ and us. We live in His love and act out His love in all we do.