Hello my friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome back to day six of our series,
How Deep Is Your Love?
As we consider God as love itself through the words of John in the letter of 1 John.
As we begin today,
Just allow yourself to become still.
Feel the gentle movement of your breathing.
As you breathe in,
Just silently pray,
I receive your love.
And as you breathe out,
I rest in your presence.
I receive your love.
I rest in your presence.
Now over these past five days,
John's been leading us into an ever deepening understanding of love.
We've discovered that love is the source of life,
That love is the light by which reality is revealed.
That love becomes visible in the way we live and that love alone endures when everything else passes away.
Yesterday we heard John's invitation to abide.
To make our home in the love of God.
And so today,
John invites us into a deeper question.
If we truly abide in love.
Who do we become?
Let's listen to what John has to say in 1 John chapter 3,
Verses 1 to 3.
John Wrights.
See what love the Father has given us.
That we should be called children of God.
And that.
Is what we are.
The reason the world does not know us.
Is that it did not know God.
Beloved.
We are God's children now.
What we will be has not yet been revealed.
What we do know is this.
When God is revealed.
We will be like God.
For we will see God as God is.
And all who have this hope in God purify themselves,
Just as God is pure.
When I read this,
I imagine John smiling as he writes it.
You can almost hear the wonder in his voice.
See what love.
Or as the older translations put it,
Behold what manner of love.
It's as though John pauses in the middle of the sentence.
He can't simply explain the truth.
He invites us to stop and to marvel and to look at it,
To really look,
To see what love has done.
Sometimes we read too quickly.
We jump straight to the phrase children of God but not John wants us first of all to notice the source of that identity and that source is love.
Our identity begins not with anything we've done,
But in what we've been given.
And to be honest,
This is really counter-cultural because.
.
.
Mostly we're taught.
To build our identity.
To shape it and create it.
To work hard,
Become successful,
To accumulate experience,
Earn respect,
Prove yourself.
Eventually,
Maybe someday you'll become someone,
Right?
But John.
.
.
Says something completely different.
You are all ready.
Someone.
You're already loved,
You already belong.
You're already God's beloved child.
And there's amazing confidence.
In John's words,
He doesn't write,
One day you might become children of God.
He says,
This is what we are.
Present tense,
Now.
Not some time later when you've become more spiritual or pray enough or get over all your weaknesses,
But now.
And let's be honest,
This is difficult for most of us to believe.
And we know it's difficult because we do the opposite.
We spend a lot of our lives defining ourselves by other people's voices.
We've been told.
Whether we're successful or unsuccessful.
Someone else has decided whether we're strong or weak.
Whether we're intelligent,
Ordinary,
Gifted,
Or disappointing.
Productive or not enough.
And over time all of those voices become woven into our identity and we begin to believe them.
But beneath every human label.
There's this beautiful invitation that John points us to.
To return to the place where God's voice quietly says,
You are my God.
Beloved.
And that is where transformation begins.
Remembering.
Now the early Christian teachers spoke a lot about salvation.
As restoration.
So it wasn't about becoming something entirely different.
It was about recovering the image of God that's always been present.
Beneath fear and shame and illusion.
Like the old icon that's been covered.
With centuries of dust.
The image is still there,
But it just needs to be revealed.
Love doesn't create.
Your true self,
It uncovers it.
This changes how we should think about holiness too.
Holiness isn't pretending to be someone else,
It's becoming more deeply yourself,
The self that exists in God,
The self that fear has hidden away,
The self that love patiently is calling out.
And then John says something beautiful.
When God is revealed,
We'll be like God,
For we will see God as God is.
Here he's made this really interesting connection between seeing and becoming we become what we continually behold.
If we constantly behold fear,
Then the fear will begin to shape us.
If it's anger,
The anger will shape us.
If we continually behold success.
As our highest goal,
It's successes that will allow to shape us.
But when we learn to behold Christ.
.
.
Love begins quietly shaping us from within.
And this is why contemplative prayer has always been important because it allows reality to reshape us every time.
We return to silence.
Every time we become attentive to God's presence,
Every time we rest in love,
Something within us is slowly being transformed through communion.
You ever noticed.
How people who spend years caring for others develop this kind of gentleness in their faces.
Maybe how those who carry deep bitterness sometimes look like they've been weighed down by it.
I sometimes wonder whether our inner lives slowly become visible.
And so John's saying that if we spend our lives with Christ,
Christ's life gradually becomes visible in us.
And it's not so much because we're trying to imitate Christ,
But because we're sharing in Christ's life,
Like branches drawing life from the vine or an iron placed into a fire.
Remains the iron,
But it begins to glow with the fire's heat and light.
Maybe.
.
.
That's one of the most beautiful images of the Christian life,
That we remain ourselves,
Our personalities,
Our uniquenesses.
Our stories,
None of those disappear.
But as we abide in love,
Our lives begin to glow with a love that's Not made up.
We don't have to conjure it up,
It's shared.
From Christ to us.
I think this is why John can be so confident.
Because he's not suggesting anybody invents holiness.
He's inviting us to participate in the holiness that's already God's own life.
So today,
I think the invitation that John gives us is beautiful.
Instead of asking,
Who am I trying to become?
Maybe we need to start asking,
Who am I already?
In God's love.
The journey of faith.
It really isn't about constructing a new identity for ourselves,
But it's about awakening to the one that love has already given to us.
So let's take a moment just to be still.
Notice your breathing.
And imagine yourself standing before a calm light.
The surface is perfectly still.
Look into the water and see your own reflection.
And now imagine Christ standing beside you.
No judgement or correction,
Just simply looking at you with perfect love.
And allow yourself to hear these words from Christ.
You are my beloved.
And as you dwell on those words,
I invite you to begin praying as you breathe in.
I am God's beloved.
And as you breathe out.
I belong in love.
I am God's beloved.
I belong.
In love.
Just rest in that truth for a moment.
Loving God,
Thank you for calling us your children.
Thank you that our identity begins with your love.
When other voices tell us who we are,
Help us to remember your voice.
When shame speaks,
Let love speak more deeply.
When fear defines us,
Let your truth gently restore us.
Teach us to behold Christ until His compassion becomes our compassion.
His peace becomes our peace and his love becomes the life we naturally share with others.
May we spend our days remembering who we already are.
Your beloved children.
Held.
9.
Love.
And my grace,
Peace,
And love be with us and be conscious to us today.
And always.
I look forward to you joining me again tomorrow,
My friend,
As we continue to see how deep this love truly is.
Until tomorrow.
Bye for now.
