Welcome to Day 176 of the “Manna for the Mind” devotional! This series is about finding nourishment in the Word of God to get us through the day. In each devotional, I take a variety of scripture passages (typically 1-3 verses each) and build our understanding of what they teach via their context and connecting scripture. My goal is to help you understand how to be the type of human God created you to be. Today’s passage is 1 John 4:11-12.

1 John 4:11-12

NASB	NLT	VOICE
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.	11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much we surely out to love each other.	11 So, my loved ones, if God loved us so sacrificially, surely we should love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us.	12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.	12 No one has ever seen God with human eyes; but if we love one another, God truly lives in us. Consequently God’s love has accomplished its mission among us.

In John’s Gospel, he stated that “the unique One, is himself God, is nearer to the Father’s heart.” He has revealed God to us. Jesus is the complete expression of God in a human form, and he has revealed God to us. Jesus stated before that “no one can come to the Father except through me.” We also know that Jesus, as the Son, is an extension of God through the Trinitarian perspective. God sent Jesus to the world to reflect and teach humanity how to live a life that looks like God, focusing on love, compassion, and mercy. When we love our neighbor and community, the God that we can’t tangibly see today is revealed to the world.

Some people enjoy being in communities with others. They can make friends with strangers with ease and are always surrounded by people that they can get along with. Others are quiet and reserved. (often me until I feel comfortable) They have a small number of friends, but they are frequently uncomfortable in crowds of people that they do not know.

John isn’t telling us how many people to love or what type of people to love, but how much to love the people God puts in our path. Our job, as a follower of Christ, is to faithfully love the people that God has given us to love, regardless of how many they are. If God sees that we are ready to love others, he will bring them to us. Remember the command Jesus gave his followers: “Love other as you love yourself.” You rarely hear me quote this command, but this one signifies when this is ready to begin. You are ready to love others, when you are able to love yourself. When you are able to not bully yourself with the guilt and shame of your past and your sins, and realize that there is a Heavenly Creator that has forgiven and forgave your past and wants you to live the best life that he created you to live.

John 1:18

NASB	NLT	VOICE
18 No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him.	18 No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.	18 God, unseen until now, is revealed in the voice, God’s only Son, straight from the Father’s heart.

God often communication through various people in the Old Testament, typically the prophets that were told to give specific messages to specific audiences. None of them ever saw God, though. They saw his glory, the radiance of energy and power, but never his form. Jesus came as both God and the Father’s Son. Through Jesus, God was revealed. God’s nature and essence was shown to the world in a way that could be both seen and touched. God became a man that lived on earth. It makes it easier to believe in something when we can see it, right? However, not seeing it physically but believing it anyways is a sign of our faith. The more we believe by faith in who God is and the sacrifice that was made through Jesus, the more we strengthen our relationship with God and establish our place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

1 Timothy 6:6

NASB	NLT	VOICE
6 But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment.	6 Yet true godliness with content is itself great wealth.	6 This is ironic because godliness, along with contentment, does put us ahead but not in the ways some imagine.

We should honor God and align the desires we have on him, and we should be content with what he is doing in our lives. We should use our lives to reflect God and honor what he represents through what we say and do. We should align our desires and plans for life according to both his plans and teachings that were affecting our lives as he created. We should be content, happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish through him, and not jealous of what others are able to do with and/or without him.

Next slice of Manna: Manna for the Mind #177