A Methodist Loves God

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

on Five Marks of a Methodist, by Steve Harper

Mark #1 of 5, A Methodist Loves God

1 John 4:7-12     (CEB)

⁷ Dear friends, let us love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. ⁸ The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how the love of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: it is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.

¹¹ Dear friends, since God loved us this way, we also ought to love each other. ¹² No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God remains in us and his love is made perfect in us.

• “Five Marks of a Methodist” by Steve Harper (a UM pastor and seminary professor from Texas, now retired) is based on an essay written by John Wesley in 1742 (age 39) called The Character of a Methodist. JW wrote it for the strengthening of believers.
For the same reason I write a MidWeek Shout Out.
And for the same reason I offer daily Bible readings.
And the first point of the essay and of the book: A Methodist Loves God.

“The quality of love is based in the lover, not in the one being loved.” – p. 6

• Loving God is about God loving US.
God’s love for us is complete, unconditional. It is the love of the shepherd who will search and search and search for us.
It is Romans 5:8, God demonstrates his love for us in this:
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

• Have you ever felt like God rejected you?
Like you’re not worthy of God’s love?

• Story of Maria searching for Christina (accessed online)

Story in a Max Lucado book: (not in this Steve Harper / John Wesley book)

Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, 15-yo Christina wanted to see the world. Discontent with a home having only a mattress on the floor, a washbasin, and a wood-burning stove, she dreamed of a better life in the city. One morning she slipped away, breaking her mother’s heart. Knowing what life on the streets would be like for her young, attractive daughter, Maria hurriedly packed to go find her. On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janiero. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her own picture—taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note.

Maria didn’t find Christina, and it wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village. It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended a set of hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure mattress on the floor. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother! Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.”
And she did.

Max Lucado, No Wonder They Call Him the Savior, Multnomah Press, 1986, pp. 158-9.

“Whatever you have done,
whatever you have become,
it doesn’t matter.
Please come home.”

Such is God’s love for us.

God’s love for us is not based on what we’ve done – good or bad – but on who we are and who God is, and God is good. Nothing we can do can separate us from God’s love for us.

•Today’s scriptures are about US loving God,
but this first chapter  and indeed this first point is that God loves us First.
God loves you first. God chooses you.

You hear me say it: “I love you and there’s nothing you can do about it,”
but my saying it is a mere sliver of God’s BEING it.

GOD loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it!

•The first step in loving the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength
is receiving God’s love.

• God is the joy of our heart, and the desire of our soul,
which is constantly crying out,
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
   and there is none upon the earth that I desire but you!”
My God and my all!
You are the strength of my heart, and my portion forever!    -- John Wesley

• Into Hymn 408 The Gift of Love