“Beloved, love always includes others, since love springs from God; its source is found in the fellowship of the Father, Spirit and Son. Everyone who encounters love immediately knows that they too are born of the same source. It is not possible to fully participate in love without discovering God. To love is to know God; to know God is to love.”
1 John 4:7 (Mirror)
The “knowing” spoken of here is not an intellectual thought about God and his love, but a relational encounter with our Father, our Holy Spirit and our Jesus. It’s an immersion into the deep love they have always shared with one another and have warmly invited us to share with them. Each time you allow your heart to be awakened by Love’s embrace, you soar ever higher into a sweet confidence in their tender affection for you as the Beloved!
Love is not defined by our love for God, but by his love for us. It is not our response to God that attracts his attention; we have always had his undivided affection as declared in the prophetic promise and finally demonstrated in his Son’s commission and work of atonement for our sins.
1 John 4:10
I remember vividly my desire for God that for years and years was marked by an earnest attempt to let God know how much I truly loved him, yet something in me felt like a fraud at times and I was sure God knew it too. My well-meaning attempts at convincing God of my love was rooted in…myself. That was the problem and it took quite a while to be wooed by the Lord to finally see what he knew all along: my deep love for God originated in his love, the only source of love that exists. As I stopped measuring my own attempts at how well I thought I was loving God and simply enjoyed his intense pleasure over me as his treasured son, the love within bubbled up and over in delight for my Father and Lover of my soul!
Loved Ones, if this is true about God’s love for us, it is equally true of his love in us for others.
God was never visible to anyone until Jesus brought him into full view;
now your love does the same.Our love for one another is evidence of God’s
seamless union with mankind as witnessed in his love perfected within us.
1 John 4:11-12
This pure love that originates in and with the Trinity—Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit—is more than sufficient for us to love each other. Friends, our Father has always planned for his kids to be so loved into a blissful joy of belonging to him, that our love for each other becomes the attraction and tangible proof of our Father’s heart is for those who long for genuine love and still need to encounter him. In other words, our genuine love of Jesus within is the first of Jesus they will see until they discover what we already know—that the Origin of Love has made his home right inside of us!
Take a moment to tap into this Living Love. Not by striving to love better, but by immersing yourself in a tender Father and his merciful Son, Jesus and the sweet, eternal Holy Spirit who are all sharing their love and affection and honor and deep joy with you at this very moment!
His own Spirit is the source of this gift of knowing that we are continuously,
seamlessly, and very consciously present in him and he in us.
1 John 4:13 | 
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