“Livin’ Large is experiencing the new life we have in Christ. It is living the Christian life in the power of the Holy Spirit and it is practicing (Ephesians 4-6) our position (Ephesians 1-3).”
1 John 4:10-11
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Livin’ Large means we are living in God’s love. God’s love has been revealed to us in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Christ’s sacrifice was a propitiation for our sins. He made atonement and paid the price for our sins. Christ’s death satisfied God’s holy and righteous wrath toward sin. God is just and His justice has been poured out on the sacrificial Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. This demonstrated both the absolute justice of God and the unbelievable love of God. We are deeply, unconditionally and completely loved by God. Because we are the recipients of God’s love, we are to love one another. We are most like God when we proactively and sacrificially love one another. Living in love is Livin’ Large!
How would you evaluate your experience and expression of God’s love? Are you aware of and receiving into your life God’s unconditional love? Are you positively and proactively demonstrating that love to others? Use 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 as a love litmus test in your life. Take the following qualities of love and use them to evaluate your life. Ask God to build them into you and to flow them out of you to others.
• Love is patient
• Love is kind and is not jealous Love does not brag and is not arrogant
• Love does not act unbecomingly
• Love does not seek its own
• Love is not provoked
• Love does not take into account a wrong suffered
• Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth
• Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things
• Love never fails
Remember, 1 John 4:11 reminds us that if God so loved us, we ought to love one another