God so loved who?

I was reading one of my class texts this morning (Radical by David Platt) and it made me rethink one of our most fundamental scriptures. Many of us have a tendency to define Christianity as "God loves me." Emphasis on the me. (I know I've been guilty of this.) We attend church and we receive the message that day, but do we share it with anyone else? We pray, but are we praying for ourselves or others? We go to church on Sunday, but do we think about serving God and his people the rest of the week? These are all questions posed by a chapter in my text book.

At first the accusation offended me. Of course I'm not selfish with God's love! I have taught Sunday school and Vacation Bible School. I have gone on annual mission trips to teach others about Jesus. Surely I am not guilty of keeping God's love centered on myself. However, as I let go my inner struggle, I realized some of the truths of this chapter. I serve on a mission trip once a year. What do I do the rest of the year? I work, go to school, serve my church. That's about it. I teach Sunday school in my church, but do I teach others that are not in the church?

I had to confess that to some extent I do keep Christ to myself. I do not often evangelize in my every day life. I am being selfish. But John 3:16 does not say that God so love you, it says "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16 NKJV emphasis mine)

Are we living up to that scripture by sharing his love with the rest of the world or are we keeping it to ourselves? I can see that in my life it is time for a change.

Absenteeism

My apologies for being gone from this blog for so long. In essence, I had ended this blog several years ago as I was not able to keep up with it. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), Google would not enable me to delete it. So today I am going to try to revive it, though slightly differently. Rather than an organized and planned Bible study, this blog is now focused on spreading understanding of the Bible as I find new things to share. I hope you will enjoy the new format.