Perfect Love - Week 10: “Perfect Love Gives Us Confidence” - Full Service

And so here's the question that this whole series in first John, last ten weeks, this is what this has been building towards, this question. Have you given the true Jesus your whole heart? Have you given the true Jesus your whole heart? Not do you know about him, but do you truly know the real Jesus? Because when you do, everything changes. Everything about your life, you step into true life, you grow, and you love like Christ. You have confidence not just in the hereafter, but confidence for today. [00:54:06] (42 seconds)  #KnowTheRealJesus

You see, so many of us, we go to God, and it's good for us to take petitions to God. It's good for us to take our request to God. Then when we abide in Christ, it tunes our heart to the heart of God and helps us to understand what it is that God has for us, and it builds confidence in us. I love what bible commentator William Barclay says. He says, we are so apt to think that prayer is asking God for what we want, whereas true prayer is asking God for what he wants. [00:40:54] (29 seconds)  #PrayForGodsWill

think about how we act when someone that we care about is sick. What do we do? Well, if you truly care about that person, you don't just go, hope you get better, and then walk away. No. You take care of that person. You bring that person food. You love them. You pray for them. You check on them. We get involved because we love them. And John says here in our passage that we should think about spiritual sickness, which is sin. We should think about spiritual sickness in the same way. When someone is drifting away from God, when they are caught up in sin, when they're walking away from the father, true love, John says, doesn't just ignore that. [00:43:33] (39 seconds)  #LoveTheSpirituallySick

And over and over and over again in this letter, John is writing to us so that we would know the difference between the counterfeit Jesus and the real Jesus. The fake Jesus that these false teachers were trying to tell folks was real versus what is actually real and true about Jesus. And notice what John says in verse 20. He says, through Jesus, we have been given understanding so that we may know him who is true and so that we may be in him who is true, and that person is Jesus. [00:49:47] (30 seconds)  #KnowTrueJesusNotCounterfeit

If you've been with us all this way, you have made it all the way through the epistle of first John. You are crossing that finish line today. So congrats to everyone who has made it this far. You did it. But as we cross that finish line, we're gonna read some of John's last words in this epistle. And I've heard it said before that last words are lasting words. They are words that stick with us. And as John wraps up this letter, he's going to talk to us about how we can have confidence both as we run the race and as we seek to finish the race and live it well. [00:32:14] (32 seconds)  #CrossTheFinishLine

Not that we would hope, not that we would guess, not that we would just assume. He writes so that we can know and so that we can have confidence. If you have your notes page, pull that out. I want you to jotch a few things down. First is this, that perfect love gives us confidence of true life. Perfect love gives us confidence of true life. So John ends this letter with a statement of why he's writing. It has to do with the very essence of the Christian life, which is eternal life. [00:37:19] (35 seconds)  #PerfectLoveGivesLife

And that guardian is none other than the son of God, Jesus Christ himself. Remember, it's not about perfection. It's about progress. Following Jesus doesn't mean that you'll never fall, but it means that Jesus keeps you from falling back into who you used to be. [00:47:27] (17 seconds)  #ProgressNotPerfection