Sonlight Devotional

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Scripture reading: I John 4:16

Let us turn our Bibles to I John today and let us look at chapter 4 and verse 16, “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

“God is love.” That is just what I want to talk to you about a little bit and pray that His Spirit might help us to really see above the natural.

God made man in His own image and man is the only creature that can love. Yes. You know, love is much more than what we can see or what we believe. We believe in a love that is on such a low plane. It is on a very low plane and we heard that they have carried it even lower by saying, “Men love women.” They even say, “I love this and I love that.” “I love to drink coffee,” and, “I love so and so.” It is the lowest area that we could even consider of love.

“God is love.” Someone asks you, “Who is this God? This great God that made the heavens; this God that reigns and rules within the universe. Who is He?” The best answer you can give is, “He is love.”

But then, what is love? If we start to think about love, we are going to be judging it from ourselves. Yet, the Word says God loves us and anyone that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God. Now, we know then that God is life and God is light (I John 1:5). So, we are talking about energy. We are talking about something that is so vibrant, something that is far beyond what we can think. A life that, when it comes into you, drives away all of death. That is why I believe we should get to the stage where, when our bodies are sick, we just put it before God and let His life come into us and we will be healed. Personally, I have experienced it, I believe it and I would like to see us get there. But that is just the edge of love and life, for when you allow God’s life to heal your bodies, it is basic. Yes, it is basic. It is down to earth, because there is something more. I mean, that is not all. God, this great energy, is Love.

Now, to understand love, let us look at the opposite of love – hate. That is on the other side, far out there. But between love and hate there are shadows. Everything that departs from the light is a shadow and it is hate. So, when we say we love so and so or we love this and that person, we are speaking relatively, consequent upon our capacity to love. We are not saying that we have attained unto agape love (the true love of God), for agape is so much higher than what we have that we can only imagine what it is like.

The Bible said that God so loved the world that He gave Himself (John 3:16). When the scriptures say that he gave “His only begotten Son,” it is only another way of saying that God took out part of Himself and gave it to us. In other words, God has to speak a language that we understand. When God talks about His Son, He is talking about God. He is talking about God coming out of God to enter into you. You cannot understand how hard it was for God to do that; how horrible it was for Jesus Christ to allow demons to take hold of Him and take Him down into hell when He had the power to destroy them all! It is terrible. It is hard to think of. He had the power. If He had spoken one word, He could have destroyed them all. Then the devil sent the people to tempt Him. “We will believe that you are God, if You just come right down off the cross right now” (Matthew 27:42). He was tempted to come down and even to go back up, but that was a temptation and Jesus would not fall for that. Under the pressure of hate, that is the time that love shows forth itself the greatest.

(Excerpt from The Omega Message, July 2005, pg. 33-35)

Thought for today: Someone asks you, “Who is this God? This great God that made the heavens; this God that reigns and rules within the universe. Who is He?” The best answer you can give is, “He is love.”