Last week lain kicked off our current series where we are looking at perhaps the most famous verse in the bible, John 3:16
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
How Big is your God, How Great the Gospel?
Iain challenged us to have a bigger understanding of God. To understand that God’s goodness, kindness, creativity, mercy, and love are so vast, his glory so great that the whole earth is His temple. That the Gospel is so wonderful it is bigger than just being about you and me, but God’s love and salvation includes and encompasses the whole of creation.
This Week
Building on Iain’s thoughts (and if you missed lain you can catch his message HERE), this week we want to explore further what it means to proclaim that God loves the world when this world is firmly in the grip of an ecological crisis and a climate emergency.
What’s love got to do with it?
God’s love for this world was not, and is not some romantic idea or gesture, but took on human form in Jesus. How God loves this world has not changed, His love continues to take human form through this church, through you and me.
Loving our sisters and brothers.
God’s love for this hurting world, and our love for God, is expressed and demonstrated through our actions. The new testament highlights three recipients of our love; our brothers and sisters in Christ, our neighbour, and our enemies.
John on love.
Using 1 John 4: 7- 12, and 20-21 I want to explore what loving our sisters and brothers might mean and look like in the midst of our environmental and climate emergencies. In particular, I want to think about our sisters and brothers in Ethiopia.
Questions.
Channel 4 news recently did a feature on the people of the Afar region of Ethiopia. It is an important if sobering watch and you can view it HERE. I’d love to know your thoughts on what it might practically look like to love our brothers and sisters in Afar and other areas and countries struggling in our environmental and climate crisis.
One of the many joys of being a community of Christ-followers is the sharing of testimony. What story/testimony can you share of demonstrating God’s love through changes you have made, or are making, around how you are living so God’s love for this world is demonstrated? I’m sure there are great examples which we can learn from and with which we can encourage each other.
Until Sunday
You can send your thought to me brodie@qpbc.org or share them in the live chat on Sunday.
Until then, may you know the love of God so abundantly that it overflows from your life and blesses those around you.
Brodie.