Text: 1 John 4.7-12
This weekend, guest speaker Matt Heard introduced the concept of “Plumbing Theology.” Instead of being “buckets” that collect and store the love of God for ourselves, we are commanded to be “pipes,” allowing the love we’ve received from God to flow through us to those around us. And according to the Bible, letting his love flow through us will be our defining characteristic as Christians. In fact, it’s by loving each other that the outside world will know who we belong to: Jesus.This sounds simple, but rarely is. Loving like Christ loved is often complicated, inconvenient, and costly. Being so difficult, there’s really only one way we can actually love each other like this—we must first experience the love of Christ ourselves. We can only give that which we’ve received.
Jesus’ love for us was not nebulous or even overly sentimental. Instead, Jesus saw our needs and leveraged all of his resources to meet them. It’s this model we look to as we love one another. While we certainly don’t have the capacity to meet the needs of everyone around us, we always have the opportunity to show selfless and costly love to somebody.This leads to this week’s One Big Question. . . Am I willingly experiencing God’s love to the point where I can give love away? Discuss this in your circle: your small group, a trusted friend, or use it to begin a family conversation at the dinner table.
