Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 5: 1 - 5 - Faith Conquers the World

When I think about the life of faith, what speaks to me most is how simple it really is. Not easy, but simple. So much of it comes back to Love, trust, and learning how to live from the One who first loved us.

I sometimes see His ways like the way loving parents teach their children. It is only an analogy, but it helps. Parents don’t give rules to make life heavy. They teach us how to live so we are not swallowed up by everything around us. God’s ways feel the same. They only seem burdensome when we are pulled toward the very things He is trying to protect us from. But when Love is behind what we do, the things that once felt like duty become natural. If we love someone, we don’t want to harm them. That isn’t a burden. That’s just love being love.

When His Love starts to shape us from within, something in us begins to shift. Comparison fades. Jealousy finds no place to stand. We stop wanting what others have or trying to stand above them. Love takes away the need to measure our worth against someone else. And when we truly love, we don’t mistreat people or even creation itself. Trusting His way slowly becomes our way. Obedience stops feeling like rule-keeping and becomes the way we show Love in return.

There is also this quiet truth that whatever God births in us has the strength to rise above the world around us. It isn’t that life becomes smooth. It’s that His life inside us becomes stronger than whatever comes against us. Faith becomes our victory. Faith in His Love. Faith that His way brings peace. Faith that walking with Him is the safest place for our hearts.

Nothing can truly harm us when our life is grounded in that trust. Not the pressures, not the fears, not the noise. His life in us is what carries us through. This is how we overcome the world – not by fighting it outside, but by living from what He has planted deep inside.

And to me, this is the simple heart of it all. Love God. Love His children. Trust His ways. Let His life grow in you. Everything else grows from there.

 

Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 4: 7 - 21 - LOVE PERFECTED

How divine love transforms fear into compassion.

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.” (1 John 4:20)

This is where it begins - truth confronting illusion. We can’t love God and hate another at the same time. It’s a lie we tell ourselves, and it hides the fear and pain that live beneath our anger.

“He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

There are people who seem unable to love, not because they are evil, but because their behaviour appears frighteningly evil. In truth, many have been hurt so deeply that love no longer feels safe. These are the ones God longs for most, to bring them life, and if He abides in us, we’re called to reach them.

It’s easy to move toward those whose kindness we can already see - the ones society calls broken: the thief, the addict, the prostitute, the outcast. Yet many of them already understand love in ways that surprise us. It’s the cruel, the bitter, the hateful that are often hardest to love, and yet they are the ones who most need to meet God through us.

Love doesn’t begin with perfection - it begins with courage, with stepping past our fear of the darkness we see in others.

“If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:11)

That’s the measure. Hate feels easier - it lets us run away and call it justified. But love asks more. It asks us to reach through the wall, to stay open even when it hurts. Real love will always involve some suffering, because it breaks through the part of us that still wants to protect itself. But whatever we offer, God takes and perfects.

“If we love one another, God abides in us. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.” (1 John 4:12,18)

Fear is what drives us to punish and to push away. But when we invite God into the places that fear controls, He fills them with His presence, and love begins to grow there. Soon the need to punish fades, replaced by compassion - not only for others, but for the frightened parts of ourselves.

This is how love becomes perfected - not by our effort, but by letting God love through us.

Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 4: 1- 6 - Testing the spirits.

When I read 1 John 4:1-6, I remember that these words were written in another time, to people facing different challenges. So I ask - how does this speak to me now, in this moment? At first it can seem almost a pointless conversation with God. Who around me denies that Jesus came in the flesh, except those who do not believe at all? And even they are not mine to challenge - only to witness to. Their disbelief doesn’t shake my faith. Even among those who differ with me in matters of doctrine, most still confess that He came in the flesh. So what is relevant for me today in these verses?

The wonder of contemplative prayer is that I can simply sit with God. Though I’m most often distracted and rarely sense His presence, somehow He still reaches me - quietly, with what He knows is needed in that moment for His purpose. Through this, my direction and faith become clearer.

I’ve come to see that the “spirits” John speaks of are not the people around me who fail to believe, but the inner movements within my own being that resist Christ’s life in me. In prayer, I try to keep all else outside the surface of my awareness - anything beyond the outer layer of my skin, holding to a few simple words that help me stay present to Him. The distractions that draw me away are, in a sense, the denials of Christ. And when I am still, I sometimes sense subtler forces - those inner voices that question love, hope, and trust. What else could they be but the very spirits that deny Him?

These, I think, are the spirits of the antichrist that the scripture warns about - the ones truly relevant today. The testing of spirits begins not in the outer world, but in the inner one - the kingdom within. There lies both the danger and the path to truth.

Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 3: 11-24 - Hate

A Love Letter to Those I Would Love to Hate.

It is easy to look at fellow Christians and feel the weight of judgment - their words, their attitudes, the way they treat others - and it stirs something sharp in me. I call it hate when I see it in them - yet I see it in myself as well. I measure them against God’s word - but perhaps they do the same with me. Some would call me “woke” - as if that alone made me unfaithful. I cannot find such a thing in Scripture - but still I know this much: if hate rises in me, it does not come from God but from the world. And I cannot know their hearts - that belongs to God alone. Who am I to judge?

And yet here is the dilemma we all carry. I see these things in others - and I want to push back, even to hate. But I also long to help them see - without condemning. How do I speak truth in a way that is love? How do I reach others as Jesus would - when my own heart is tangled with fear, frustration, and pride? Perhaps you feel this too - the urge to condemn, the struggle to love, the weight of wanting to be faithful but stumbling all the same. It is hard to be a Christian.

Still, the truth whispers - love is not in words alone. Love is not even in indignation or anger. Love is in truth and in action - and it calls us back to humility. Our hearts may condemn us - showing the failures we cannot hide - yet even here God is greater. He is love - holding us, holding you, holding me - even in our blindness, even in our struggle.

And so - to those I am tempted to hate, and to anyone who reads this - we are not so different. We are caught in the same search for truth, the same longing to love, the same stumbling toward faithfulness. Let us not condemn each other. Let us allow love itself to do the work in us. And in the quiet that follows - perhaps we can feel God’s presence between us - not as a solution we control, but as the still point where judgment falls away and love simply abides.

Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 3: 1-10 - Mirror

He is the Way. He is our Hope. To fully realise Him – to become like Him – is not instant, but a lifelong process. It is a path of humility, where pride is stripped away and the heart is purified. In that purifying, we are sanctified. This is our hope: that as we walk in Him, His likeness slowly takes shape in us. It is never by our own striving, but by yielding, by being made low, that His life becomes clearer within us.

When He is revealed, we will be like Him. Even now there is a glimpse of that reality. Every moment, every encounter, is a mirror. What we see in others, in nature, in words, in art, in the small events of daily life – from atoms to our own backyard vegetable patch – can reflect something of Him in us. If the eye is clouded, the reflection is distorted. But as we are made pure, as humility clears our sight, what we see becomes clearer. Then all creation becomes a mirror of Christ – not because it changes, but because our seeing does and we do (1 Cor 13: 12).

Yet the reverse is also true. Those who do not know Him can only see themselves. Everything becomes a mirror, but not of Christ – only of their own desires and fears. Possessions become extensions of who they think they are - cars, houses, careers, even their families. Other people are weighed as assets, obstacles, or threats. The world is measured by what it adds or takes away from the self. Nothing is received as gift, nothing is joy, except what they can grasp and claim.

So, the choice is before us - to walk in humility and be purified, seeing Christ in all things and letting His reflection form within us, or to remain bound to the self, seeing only our own desires mirrored back in the world.

 

Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 2: 18-23 Secessionists

John warns us that deceivers will come. They leave the fellowship and return with teachings that do not build up but tear down, seeking to divide us from one another and weaken the body of Christ. But John reminds us we are not left helpless. We have the anointing of God. The Holy Spirit lives within us, and because the Spirit knows all things, we can see through the lies. Our safety is not in strong leaders or clever arguments but in abiding - abiding in Jesus, in the Father, and in the Spirit.

When I look at the Church today, I see the marks of two thousand years of deception. Forty-five thousand churches, split apart, sometimes violently. But I also see forty-five thousand churches that, in their own way, are still clinging to God. They hold on to something of what they heard at the beginning - that Jesus is Lord. Even if it looks like ashes, there is still a spark of the truth that was always there.

That is our hope. Not that the church has been free of deception, but that that the anointing still abides - what we have known from the beginning. The Spirit still guides. The truth has not been lost. Anyone who calls on the name of Jesus carries it, even if the divisions have blurred it.

So, the task is not to despair. The divisions are real, but they are not final. Our work is to let go of the lies that keep us apart, to see through deception, and to hold to the truth of Christ. In God’s time the Body will be whole again. The Spirit will help us 're–member' - not just recall, but bring back together, the Body of Christ. And once more, we will all abide in Him - whole.

Desire 1 John 2 12 - 17

Desires are a tool. The desire to eat, to escape the cold, to love, for security, to protect love ones – these are given so we may live in this world. But when desire stretches beyond this, it ceases to be holy. No longer prompted by the Spirit, it turns to the desires of the flesh, which soon rule over the Spirit.

The Father loves all His children, yet not all walk in step with Him. Only those who are overcoming the world, whose hearts are rooted in His Word, are truly aligned with Him. The fruits of the world cannot sustain the life that endures forever; like their father, they slowly decay. The Spirit within us, however, does not decay – it is life from God, eternal and unshaken.

 

Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 2:7- 11

Whoever hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. But what about when we do not hate, and yet find a brother or sister difficult? When something about them irritates us, rubs us the wrong way? That is not hatred, but it unsettles us. Irritation is not yet sin, but it brings us to a crossroads - will we remain in the darkness of self, or let the Spirit lead us into the light of love?

Perhaps such irritations are given for us to ponder. Like the lowly oyster, who endures the intrusion of a grain of sand, unwelcomed, yet from the irritation it forms a pearl - so too can we. What the oyster bears in silence becomes a beautiful and prized gift to someone. Can we turn our irritations into such a pearl - a child of wisdom? For as Scripture says, wisdom is known by her children. And what is wisdom, if not the Holy Spirit, understood and carried in us to bring healing to ourselves and others?

Maybe the irritation is not only about the other, but about us. I think it is both. Perhaps it is the Spirit shining her light upon a hidden place within, revealing where healing is needed. The irritation is then an invitation, a chance to let the Spirit transform our darkness into light.

Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light. To turn our pains of irritation into an opportunity to love - rather than to follow the feelings that rise within us - is our goal. This is the way of the Cross. As it is written - "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things". If that is our choice, what else could the fruit be but our healing?

So in the case of not hating, but struggling with difficulty, the way of love is to build a bridge. For, “whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go.”

May we allow the Spirit to take even our small irritations and shape them into pearls of love. Then, when we place them in God’s hands, they become treasures not only for our own healing, but for the healing of the world.

1 John 2: 1-6

Keep returning.

We stumble, and we rise. We fall again, and still we rise. Not in our own strength, but because we have an advocate — Jesus Christ — who lifts us, restores us, and draws us back into the light.

Where we once fell but now stand, we carry reminders of grace. The warmth of that light becomes strength to keep walking, even when the path is hard. In those places, we see His love taking root, shaping us, drawing us nearer to His way.

Yet there are still places where we falter, where obedience has not yet settled deep. Our walk reveals it. To abide in Him is to walk as He walked — slowly, steadily, gently. Where we keep His word, we know Him. Where we turn away, we do not yet see clearly.

And still, He keeps drawing us back.
Step by step, His light becomes our way, and our walk begins to look a little more like His.

1 John 1: 1-10 Journaling - used for communion talk.

 

Divine Intervention at the Table - Encountering Christ in Communion

In a meditation, on these words from John’s letter, what follows is more or less how they relate to me personally - or, perhaps better said, what I believe God sees I need to know in this moment. Over the past few days, I’ve found myself returning again and again to these words from John’s letter:

“If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:4-5

There is something about this passage that captures the heart of why we gather on the Lord’s Day. We don’t come together merely out of routine or obligation. We come because there is a reality deeper than ourselves at work - a divine intervention breaking into ordinary time.

When we gather, we come as brothers and sisters in Christ, sharing in Him and with Him. At the centre of our worship is the table - communion - where we remember His sacrifice and share the bread and the wine, symbols of His body and His blood. It is by His blood, as John reminds us, that we are cleansed from all sin.

Everything else we do when we come together has value - the songs of worship, the sermons, the prayers, the announcements, the testimonies. They are good and necessary. But they are not the centre. They are like the glass of a lens, gathering and focusing and intensifying the light. All of the service draws us to one point of convergence: Christ Himself as the bread and wine – Communion.

It is here that we meet in the light of God, reflected ine the community - the light in which there is no darkness at all. It is here that we encounter the fire of the Refiner, who purges and purifies, not through our striving but through His mercy. At this table, divine intervention becomes tangible. Eternity touches time.

In communion, we are reminded of who we are and whose we are. We come not as individuals with our own achievements, failures, and divisions, but as the Body of Christ, one people joined by one bread and one cup. Here, we are united not by tradition, denomination, or understanding, but by Him — the One who gave Himself for us.

This is why we gather.

This is why we come.

Because at this table, God meets us.

And here, in His light, all else fades away

Part 2

Communion is more than remembering that He died for us. It is more than anticipating the great wedding feast to come. It is belonging - right here, right now - to Christ and to one another.

We come to this table as different people, carrying different stories, wounds, and traditions. And yet, here, something remarkable happens: we lay those differences down. As Henri Nouwen once wrote, it is at this table that we discover our unity, because there is only one bread. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”In breaking this bread, we are reminded that we are one body.

The Body of Christ is so much bigger than our labels or denominations. It reaches beyond the walls we’ve built, beyond the lines we’ve drawn, and beyond the limits of our understanding. It’s the Baptist down the street, the Anglican across the road, the Pentecostal we meet at work, and yes - even the Catholic we may have been taught to despise.

This table stretches across time and space. It connects us not only with those present here today but also with those who came before us and those yet to come. When we gather for Communion, we are joined to the disciples in the Upper Room, to the martyrs in Rome, to those who endured the Inquisition and the Reformation, to the first evangelicals, and even to believers who have not yet been born.

Communion is not just a moment in time. It is eternity touching us here and now. When we break the bread, we are not only remembering Him - we are recognising Him. We see Him in the bread. Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognised Jesus in the breaking of bread (Luke 24), we too encounter Him in this sacred act.

The bread is holy because Christ is present in our remembrance, and it is complete because we, His body, are present too. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus sat at tables and broke bread. He welcomed the outsider. He invited the sinner. He made room for everyone - and still does. God and humanity together at table: this has always been His heart.

So today, we do not simply remember Him. We encounter Him. We belong - to Christ and to each other.

This is His table. And at His table, all are welcome.