Live to Love Scripture Encouragement

John 14:8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."
Have you ever been slow to understand something someone is trying to teach you? I have. Like Philip, we hear, but we don’t understand. We read our Bibles, sit through sermon after sermon, listen to podcast after podcast, and experience the love of God through parents, siblings, pastors, and friends, yet, we want more because what we have seen and experienced wasn’t understood. Philip requested what he thought they lacked. "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." There is probably some “Philip” in each of us that feels like Jesus hasn’t given us enough to live by or to live for? Like Philip, we just don’t understand what God has been doing and revealing to us everyday of our lives. Have you been following Jesus, but still feel something is missing? Get ready, Philip. You are about to come to your pivot point where everything changes!

Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com

John 14:7 If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."
These are strange words. Do they confuse you? Let’s keep them in context. What Jesus is showing and teaching them is pivotal. It’s like a pivot point where you have been going one direction, but then you see something that catches your attention, and you stop, pivot, and go in the direction of a new objective. Up to that moment, the disciples had not known Jesus. I think He meant that they had not known what He came to do. They thought He came to establish an earthly kingdom free from Roman occupation, so they had missed what was happening before their very eyes. He came to reveal the Father! He said, “From now on”. In other words, what Jesus was saying to them from that moment on would reveal not only who Jesus is, but who the Father is. They would realize for the first time in their lives that they had been fellowshipping with and watching God the Father at work in His Son. This was a seismic shift of perspective and worldview that was to become the foundation of the kingdom of God and His church for the rest of history. Is it possible that many, like the disciples, have not known Jesus or the Father because they have the wrong idea of what Jesus came for? They think He came to give them a better life in this world. They love their lives in this world. They wake up each day with no real understanding of where they are going, so any ole way will do as long as it is happy and comfortable to their personal sensibilities. When Jesus reveals Himself, there is a pivot point, where the things of life in this world are replaced by one great and glorious object—the reality of the Father revealed in Jesus Christ. Their hearts are captured. They plant their lead foot, pivot, and change directions because now they know that Jesus and the Father are life indeed. Have you experienced the great pivot?

Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com

John 14:4-6 And you know the way where I am going." Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
If you don’t know where you are going, how can you know the way to where you are going? Sensible reasoning and question from Thomas. Jesus made it clear where He was going. He was going to the Father. This isn’t news to us, but it was for the disciples. John told his readers that Jesus was going back to God in 13:3. Jesus knew it before He washed the disciples’ feet. In fact, returning from this world to His Father was the goal of His life from the moment He left His throne in glory, humbled Himself, and entered into this dark, fallen, realm of death and destruction. He came to bring His people to the Father! Listen to the words from the man who just moments before had been told he would deny Jesus three times. “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18). The way to the Father: revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The truth about the Father: revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Life of the Father: revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is what sinners like Peter—and like us—preach and place our confidence in. We know where we are going. To God, the Father. And we know the way where we are going. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, given to us from God, the Father, that we might go to where He is—forever. That is love: the sustained will of God toward our highest good, that is union with Him, no matter what it cost Him. Abide in His love today.

Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com

John 14:3 If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.
What an amazing, incredible encouragement these words must have been to the disciples —and to us. He told them he was going someplace to which they could not go at that time, but He wasn’t going to be apart from them for good. The place He was going to prepare made it possible for Jesus to come be with them again. And in coming to be with them, He would receive them (us) to Himself. Jesus even gave them the purpose for His going away. The place Jesus was going to prepare was going to make it possible for them to be present with Him wherever He was present. This reality is stunning. For the disciples, Jesus was speaking of something to be done and experienced in the future. But for us, this is a present ongoing reality and experience. Jesus has come to be with us! He is the resurrection and the Life. We have been received by Jesus because everything that could separate us from His love and prevent our union with Him was removed at the cross in His substitutionary death. Wherever Jesus wishes to go in this world to love for the glory God, we may go with Him. At any given moment in history, Jesus is loving people with and through each of His own. Jesus has begun to explain to His disciples and to us how it is possible that they can love one another even as He loves them. He comes into us. We become one with Him. We are as He is in this world. Now that’s a great encouragement to believe in Jesus and not let your heart be troubled today.

Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com

John 14:2 In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.
Our Father has planned ahead! There are many places to abide, dwell, or live in our Father’s household. In this verse, we learn where Jesus was going to which His disciples were not ready to go. Back in John 13:1 and 3, John’s readers were told where Jesus was going, but it wasn’t something that was told them at that point. Perhaps it was from this statement that John, with the Spirit’s help, understood what was in Jesus’ mind—it was time for Him to depart out of this world to the Father. He was going back to God to prepare a place for us. It is interesting that Jesus said there are many dwelling places, but He is preparing one place for all of us. Perhaps Jesus was thinking of preparing a place of right standing before God as Paul wrote of in Romans 5:2 “through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. Or maybe it’s the place where God “raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenlyplaces in Christ Jesus” as Paul wrote to the Ephesians in chapter 2, verse 6. The point is that Jesus has gone to His Father and made a place with God for us to dwell or live forever. Out of that place, the love of God flows. Although it is true that God has prepared a place for us in heaven when we die, what we want to notice from the rest of the chapter is that the abiding place Jesus went to prepare in heaven becomes the fountain out of which our lives are sustained and supplied while we are on the earth. It makes it possible for Jesus to come again to us. His coming to us is the primary line of reason in this chapter, not our going to Him in heaven when we die. Today, be encouraged that Jesus has made a place for us in the presence of God that makes it possible for Jesus’ presence to be with us while we live today on this earth.

Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com