Please add the following: One of the things I do in almost every premarital counseling session I have is we go over a couple books. One of them is a book that just walks through and looks at different areas. Some of them are trouble areas, some of them are areas that, you know, people need to think about that they might not think about before they’re married, like finances and in-laws and those kind of things and how those new relationships will work in a marriage.
But one thing that I have started that I started doing from the first time I did premarital counseling was also include this book called The Five Love Languages. Who’s read this book? It’s a very popular book and so there’s a part of me that wants to shy away from something that’s popular, but it’s easy to read and once you get the point it really does help out. I mean when Holly and I are having communication troubles sometimes we’ve pulled this book out that we were given during premarital counseling to see what our love languages are and the key of this book is that there are five different love languages.
What the languages are, and each of us has love languages that are more prominent within us, that mean more to us than others. Words of affirmation, these are words that lift someone up, that say positive things about someone else. People like to hear that.
Some, the love language is quality time, spending that time with each other, watching football, I mean whatever that time may be. Spending that time with each other that really helps you get to know one another better, that helps you build a life together. And then he’s gone on to write these about you know love languages for children, love languages for teens, love languages for different types of relationship that these all fit, not just for a marriage relationship.
Quality time, receiving gifts, some people feel loved when they receive gifts, acts of service, how you help each other out, and physical touch. It’s not always just about romantic kind of touch, it’s a touch that is maybe a back rub until your hands cramp. It’s just letting someone know you’re there.
Maybe it’s just holding hands, maybe it’s just that peace of knowing that you know touching someone on the shoulder that says, hey I’m here. You don’t even need words sometimes for that. And the transition that we forget, and when I say we I say me too, is that what this is is our love language.
And we each have all those five love languages, but some of them are more prominent than others. And it’s about how we give love, not just necessarily how we receive it, but how we give it when you’re thinking about someone else and what their most special love languages are. How are you giving that love? Like my top love language is quality time.
And I like to spend that time together and do that. And if I forget that Holly likes words of affirmation, then I’m only giving her what I want back. Does that make sense? The love language says I give love as somebody I know wants to receive it, and I think I’m thinking about them and how they receive love.
And it talks in that book about how when you do that, you fill someone’s tank. And then as you do not receive love, as you like to receive love, the tank drains. So we can help fill one another’s tank with love.
The one in our house who understands this book the least, as you would have guessed, it is our dog. Our puppy assumes that when she is, sometimes you can be gone for 15, 20 minutes and you come back in and it’s like you were gone a lifetime, which is kind of fun. But when her main go-to language is physical touch, sometimes it comes out with licking you, and you want to make sure if she gets anywhere near you, you keep your mouth closed.
Sometimes it comes out with that playful aggression that puppies have, and she comes at you with those jaws, and you go to block it, and she just locks onto your wrist. And the worst is when she doesn’t get the whole mouth around you, and it’s just that little pinch with the teeth. That is so painful.
And then other times, what she just does is, one, she can pounce like no other dog. I mean, just yesterday I was asking Holly if she wants to be a circus dog. She can get back on her paws, and she’s waiting, and it’s like a kangaroo.
She’s boxing her hands out there going, come on, let’s go. Ready to play. And once in a while, she’ll hit you in places that hurt.
And Colin’s always going, she just slapped me in the face. So physical touch is one that some people like, some people don’t like as much. As we have been talking about our current series, Hello God, How Can I Really Know It’s You? How Can We Know It’s God? We started off talking about testing the spirits on how not every spirit is God, and we have to be able to discern what is God and what is not of God.
We’ve also talked about love. Last week we talked about love, and the next few weeks we’re pretty much going to be talking about love. Love is the standard and the basis for how we know it’s God, and John repeats it over and over.
Verse 8 says, the one who does not love does not know God, for God is, oh man, you guys got the whole Bible memorized. For God is love, and the point of love is so important. It’s not just love between a husband and a wife.
It’s not just love between a parent and a child. It’s not just love between two BFFs. It’s love that says we as a church are called to love one another.
Love one another because love comes from God, and God has given us this love. God has shown us this love, is what we talked about last week, and the main thing he said is he showed us this love by giving us Jesus for the appropriation of our sins so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be in the presence of God. Now, when you’re thinking about being in the presence of God, we all have different pictures of it, and I think some of that is based on our love language.
Being in the presence of God, we want to feel God based on our love language. Are we feeling God when we’re serving and feeling like we’re doing something for one another, serving God? Are we feeling God when we’re having that quality time with our devotions and we know God is right there? Are we feeling like we are in the presence of God when we give a gift to God? All those things we do also, when we’re talking about the five love languages, they impact our relationship with God. Now, if you’re thinking, okay, what’s God’s main love language? I think it’s all of the above, and as I was thinking about this, looking at those five love languages and thinking, okay, how does each one fit together on how we give love to God? If we look at the love languages again, words of affirmation, what words of affirmation, how does that fit with who God is and how God receives love? How we praise God, how we lift God up.
My daily prayer is basically just the Acts prayer, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, adoration and praise. Every day I switch to this because I wanted to start with this because normally when I would pray, I would pray, God, I need you to do this and this and this and this and this. And that’s the way it is.
Amen. When I start with adoration, then what I do is I work through in Isaiah 9, 6, where it talks about God, the Messiah coming, and that he is wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And I pray through all of those, thanking God for recognizing and worshiping him and praising him for being all those things in my life and recognizing those things.
Now, when I thought about this, I was especially thinking about our study in the book of 1 John, where there are a couple of other things that might not be specifically listed in those five love languages that we know are connected to love because we see them in the Bible very clearly. In the Gospel of John, in 1 John, one is listening. Listening to God is a an act of love is what the Bible says.
And obeying God, you know, Jesus says, how do I know you love me? Because you obey my commandments. And we shy away from that these days sometimes because we think it’s just all a warm, fuzzy kind of love. But when we obey God, but I think that fits into all of these, listening to God and obeying God, then we give God words of affirmation.
We give God our quality time. We give gifts to God. We serve for God.
And then with all of that, we also have this physical touch with God. And this is something some people don’t want to talk about. Maybe we talk about it a little bit Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit, but physical touch as we’re talking about, hello, God, how can I know it’s you? That God gives us this peace with his presence in our lives that we can physically know that God is there.
That it’s not just a concept in our minds or a feeling, but to physically know the presence of God. John, in his continual talk about love, is going to connect that with the presence of God in our lives. Will you stand as you are able? We continue in 1 John 4, and we’ll do 12 through 15.
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 of his spirit.
We have seen and testified 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. The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated.
In John 12, 1 John 4, 12, he starts off by saying this strange thing. No one has seen God at any time. Now, there’s a lot that plays into that that you have to know a little bit about the Bible.
If you go back to the book of Exodus, and in the book of Exodus, it’s a constant battle of God coming back to the people, wanting the people to get to know him better. Then, once they get out of Egypt and they’re at Mount Sinai, and Moses goes up to the mountain, and they see the thunder and the lightning and the smoke and everything that comes with the presence of God, they tell Moses, hey, that was pretty creepy. That was scary.
Why don’t you go take care of being in the presence of God? You be our priest. You be our go-between between us and God. So, if anything happens, it happens to you, Moses, because you’re our buffer.
And God said, that wasn’t my plan, but if that’s what they want, then that’s what they’re going to get. So, God manifested himself to Moses, and Moses would go out beyond the camp into what was called the tent of meaning, which would eventually be built into the tabernacle, which would then be built into the final temple, which is an earthly image of what it is like in the throne room of God to be in the presence of God. And Moses would be in the tent of meaning, and it says, God would speak to him like a friend, face to face.
But it also says that if anyone sees God face to face, they’ll what? Die. So, when God was speaking to Moses face to face, it wasn’t the full manifestation of God, because we would die. Thus, John says, no one has seen God face to face.
Now, how can John say this when he’s told us that Jesus is who? God. And who has seen Jesus more than the disciples? And John is saying, no one has seen God. But Jesus said, if you know me, you know my father.
If you have seen me, you have seen my father. That through Jesus, who was, as we talked about this a couple weeks ago, fully God and fully man. Fully God, fully man, both of those, that in that we could see God through Jesus.
And we could see God in the Old Testament. There are things they called theophanies, which are manifestations of God. They weren’t God in God’s full presence.
Do you remember when God was revealing himself to Abraham or Abraham at that time? And they sacrificed the animals and put them on each side and Moses, or Abraham was to walk through that path. And it said, I will go through first and you can see me from behind because you can’t see me in my full glory. But you get a glimpse of the glory.
The disciples got a glimpse of the glory when they went up and Jesus before them turned white. It’s called the transfiguration. And Jesus before them turned white and they saw all of a sudden Moses representing the law and Isaiah representing the prophets or Elijah representing the prophets came down and they were talking to Moses, talking Moses, Elijah, Jesus talking, and Jesus turned white.
Kind of the same picture we get of Jesus in the book of Revelation where he has the shoes of bronze, the eyes of fire, and in Jesus’ full glory. And they got to see that. John says no one has ever seen God.
I mean, no one, but no human has ever seen God in God’s full glory. So when we are trying to answer the question, how can I really know it’s you? How do you really know it’s your friend when you see your friend? You recognize them. Now, sometimes at class reunions, that’s a little tough after it’s been a few years, but you recognize your friend.
So how do we recognize God? That’s kind of the culmination of this whole series. Although this series isn’t going to culminate today, we have several weeks left. How do we recognize God? One is to test the spirits.
Two is loving like God. And today we’re going to talk about being in the presence of God. No one has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. So let’s look at those three things. No one has seen God.
If we love one another, if we love, he abides and his love is perfected. John says if we love one another. Remember last week, we talked about how we can know it’s God is because it’s God’s love.
How can we know it’s God in someone else? If we love like God, it’s the greatest testimony of the faith of Jesus Christ. If we love like God, others will see that love and they will know it’s God. So when we love God, when we love one another, God abides in us.
Now the word abide, John uses over and over again. And we can think of abide in many ways. What does the word abide mean to you? Yeah, what’s that? Follow.
Yeah, abide is simply where you reside, where you live. God abides in us. You’ve seen it at the children’s time.
If you haven’t seen anywhere else, that Jesus comes and lives in our heart. Abiding with God is not as simple as one might think because we may think of it as having a roommate. In college or wherever it might be, we have a we might be friends with, but we don’t have a relationship with, but we share space.
With God, it’s so much more than sharing space. With God, the abiding means not that we’re just in the same place, but if we are in the same place, who wears the pants in the household? If it’s the house of our heart, God. That doesn’t mean you’re not wearing pants.
It means God is in charge. It means God is there, and there is a relationship with God. Abide doesn’t just mean we occupy the same space, but we occupy the same space.
We become of the same mind. We become of the same heart. We become of the same spirit, and we trust in God.
And when we trust in God and we allow God to move and live within us, love is perfected among us. Now when we say love is perfected among us, that’s one of the goals of Methodism. That’s what Wesley talked about perfection more than anything else, was to look for the signs of someone who has reached full sanctification, was perfection in love.
And that love, the Greek word for perfect is telos, which when we think of perfect, it’s really telos means it’s complete. It’s full. You reach your end purpose or your goal or your potential.
Like this is who you are supposed to be in the world, and you reach that purpose. This is who you are supposed to be in God, and God brings you to that purpose and that fulfillment. And that love is perfected when we love more like God.
As we keep moving through 1 John, it tells us that by this we know that we abide in him. How do we know that we abide in him? How do we know that we abide in him and he in us? Because he has given us of his spirit. Now when he gives us his spirit, we think of Pentecost, like I mentioned before, when the flame of the Holy Spirit came down and tongues of fire landed on each and every disciple that was in that room.
And it was a powerful experience. Now when I was early in my faith and just trying to figure out who God was, I had some amazing experiences with God. I mean, where I knew he was there.
It was almost like some out-of-body kind of stuff where there was healing, there was strengthening, there was just, I couldn’t see God, but it was more real than even if I’m in the same room with another person. Does that make sense? And in my spiritual life, I lived for those experiences. I wanted another experience and another experience and another experience.
And in between those experiences was dryness where I didn’t know when I was going to experience God again. And eventually, as I started reading the Bible more as a young adult and as I started praying more, as in regularly spending that quality time, which again is my love language, so that’s how, you know, not everybody experiences it the same way and the same things. But as I spent more quality time with God, I felt the presence of God each and every day.
And it might not have been that powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit like at Pentecost over and over, but to know God was with me every single day. And then I’d go through ebbs and flows in my life where that was every day and then I’d get further and further away and further back to God. John tells us in the book of John, in John 14, that I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever.
That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him. But you know him because he abides with you and you and will be with you. I will not leave you as orphans.
I will come to you. And he says the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Now, it’s not just a matter of a feeling of being with God.
It’s when the Holy Spirit comes, he’ll teach you, he’ll guide you, he’ll strengthen you. He will bring you into something even greater. John says this more than once in 1 John where he says, no one has seen God or by this we know we abide in him and he in us.
Now think about those two different things. When we know that God is in us, that’s something we can kind of understand, you know, that God is in our hearts. But how are we in God? That’s kind of the question we need to ask ourselves each and every day in the moment.
How are we in God? I mean, that’s a bigger one that’s harder to see, but it’s a matter of how are we in God? God is doing all this, all this. I’m drawing a bubble, but it’s bigger than that. God is out there doing all this.
Whether it’s in the church, God is doing this. Whether it’s outside the church, God is doing this. Whether it’s outside the United States, it’s all this stuff God is doing.
And God is already at work. And how are we a part of that? How are we stepping into what God has us do? How are we staying with God? How are we living with God? It’s a whole different concept. Instead of saying God is in me, sometimes we think, well, God’s in me, so now I can tell God how it needs to be, because I know better.
But when we think of I’m going to be in God, it’s meaning when God abides in us, then he says, hey, this is what you need to do. This is who you need to love. This is how you need to serve.
This is how you need to spend time with me. And we step out in God to bless others in the world. The presence of God is not just a presence within us.
It’s a presence around us that we go to, and we live by, and we just step into God in what we do in our lives. Does that make sense? God in us, and we in God. I mean, we’re only doing half the stuff if we say, hey, God is in me, I’m good to go.
But when we are in God, that’s when great things happen in the world. That’s when lives are changed. It says, because he has given us his spirit.
We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.