Advent Week Four: Love

John 5:1-9

How to choose the love of the Savior, over the love of stirred water.

1- To man love is what you can offer me, to God love is what can I offer you. In a world in which we trample each other if it means our benefit, Jesus stops to show you proximity to him and his power is the only blessing worth having in this world. Our souls are fatigued trying to find a place to be healed and restored, and the only place your soul can be healed and restored is in the hands of Jesus. If we will drink deep of the living water, our life eventually finds what we looked for first in the stirred water.

2- To man belonging is based on appearance, to God belonging is faith and obedience. You do not have a category to God, you are not stereotyped in his eyes. You must fight to keep your eyes upward, because what you're surrounded by is not your condition. Your condition is what you will accept as truth over your life that then you adapt behaviors from. Just because you may feel you're surrounded by the sick, blind, lame, and withered, does not make you sick, blind, lame, and withered. Keep your eyes on the healer, not on whatever it is you think can heal you.

3- You cannot be the love you need, the acceptance you need, the healing you need, and the restoration you need. No promise of ‘stirred waters’ can either.. This is the love of Jesus in this story; for 38 years a man trying but failing to get what he wanted most, and then discovering what he needed most is just a person, who walks right up to him, and brings healing. If our eyes, even if they are weak and defeated, will look towards him and away from what we think brings whatever we think we need, he responds to the needs of our souls, he responds to the needs of his beloved.