Panera Bread...

It's odd, but I think my brother, Matthew, has subconciously tricked me into liking Panera Bread.

Up to this point I always thought of Panera as one of those trendy places to eat "healthy food" (which it is), but suddenly I have been here to eat like 3 days in a row!!

I have to admit, half the reason that I enjoy the place is the free internet. You have to pay like $2 for a cup of coffee, but there are free refills... they don't say there are, but it's right out in the open for you to help yourself.

So as I sit in Panera typing away on my newly launched Blog, I have nothing really profound to speak of... but then I started thinking about how impacted I have been over the past few days about the love of God.

Let me explain...

You know, as Christians, we spend a lot of time looking for God's love. We long for it. We sing about how badly we want Him to pour it out on us. We pray that He will show Himself to us. We beg and plead for it... GOD!! SHOW US YOUR LOVE!!

This past Sunday, something that I am really starting to understand was taught on at my church, Relevant Church. Mike Beardslee, one of the dudes from our church community, talked about a passage in 1 John... God's Love and Ours (1 John 4:7 - 12).

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

The big idea that we talked about was something that I think we gloss over quite often and it's found in verse 12. "No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." Now, the thing is, John, who wrote this book (hence the name), walked with Jesus on this earth. He had seen God's Son, Jesus Christ, do amazing things. He experienced Jesus' love for him. Which is where the "ah-ha!" comes in.

How can we experience God's love? How can others experience God's love? Really, truly experience God's authentic, amazingly awesome love? Listen up, this is big... if we love one another, God LIVES IN US and his love is MADE COMPLETE IN US...

Wow! All we have to do is look around us and love each other!! That is how we experience God's love... by loving each other. By helping one another. By caring about each other... Seems pretty simple when you say it, but we all know hard it can truly be.

I knew I had to write this down today, because Aaron and I were sitting here in Panera and God spoke these same words to him this weekend. Confirmation dear brothers and sisters! We are doing a weak job of loving each other. God wants to pour out his love on us, but we need to start looking around at each other to really experience it. We need to open ourselves to spreading his love and experiencing it through one another. We need to be willing to give out his love to those who need it. Those who are in need. Those who look like they have everything. Since we all need practice on loving, why not start with one another, the Church?