Verse: 1 John 5:1-2
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.
Devotion
Not to be upstaged by Dave quoting Foreigner yesterday, do you remember the song “More Than Words” by Extreme? It was released in 1990, and somehow when I started working on this devotion that song popped into my head. Now, Extreme had a VERY different message than John in this verse. It seems whoever wrote the song was trying to convince his girlfriend to stop saying “I love you” and prove her love by, well, you know.
John’s point is…similar? Obviously we are only looking at two verses, and they are building to a larger picture in the following paragraph, but even in these two verses we can see a main point: belief in Jesus should result in action. We need “more than words” in our faith.
Belief in Jesus is the start, not the end. The fruit of believing that Jesus is the Christ should be a life of loving God. And then the fruit of loving God, should result in two more things in our lives: obedience to God’s commands, and loving others.
The devotional point for me this morning personally is continue to ask the Lord to turn my faith into life change. I don’t want my faith to just be a personal belief, or even something that just personally helps me and strengthens me. My belief in Jesus should overflow into how I love and treat others, and how I live my life (in obedience to his commands). And his commands aren’t there to crush me, they are there to lead me to the most full and meaningful life. I want my faith to grow and mature so I that I naturally am loving others, even those I find hard to love. And that I’m naturally serving others, even when it’s inconvenient. And that my heart to drawn to prayer, even when I feel I’m too busy. And so on.
I pray that God would continue to shape me, change me, and mold me. I have much to learn, and still so much growth in faith ahead of me. Good for us, our God is patient, loving and kind.
Author: Christian Dunn
Christian, this devotional message and your reflection on it are totally on point and exactly what I want to discuss with you on Tuesday during our zoom session! Putting my faith into action, trusting and obeying God’s “commands,” and loving and serving others as Jesus loved us, I feel, will be jaw-dropping and I can’t wait to discuss it with you! Thank you for your words and insight! —Lisa D.
Christian, I believe this “More Than Words” was a great song reference and that God put it on your heart for this reason. God needs us to not just say the words but to show our love for Him with action. Not that He needs us to perform anything in order to receive His love, but perhaps as a confirmation to ourselves and others that we’re not just sitting still but are actually moving and evolving in our faith with trust, love and service. As we all know, faith without works is dead. There needs to be fruit!
As an artist, my observation and experience is that even if and when an artist may create a work that is intended for a specific individual or audience, as perhaps this song was, God moves through the artist in order to make that work so much bigger than what we realize at the time.
For such a time as this,
I believe that song was indeed meant for you to share for God’s message to come through.