1 John 5:1-6
5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
Stress, something I deal with from time to time, I don't enjoy it, but I understand that it is a part of my life and I must figure out ways to deal with it. How do I know I am getting stressed? Sometimes I eat, probably too much, I get short with people, speaking in a very direct manner. My neck gets tense, I hurt my next a few years back, went through physical therapy for it, but even though I recovered, whenever I get tense, I feel it there first. The fact that I know this about my body allows me to pay attention to it and take a step back when I feel it, do some stretches, take a walk, watch something enjoyable.
We all get stressed; I have someone I know that tells me they do not get stressed. They may play it off, but I also know that person will have blood pressure issues from time to time and get migraines. I say that they may not get stressed, but their body does. We all do especially in the United States and especially during these times.
Even before this pandemic, over the last several decades, the United States has become the leader when it comes to stress. According to the American Institute of Stress, stress-related illnesses cost the American economy $300 billion in medical bills and lost productivity every year. Forty-four percent of Americans feel more stress than they did five years ago, and one in five people experience "extreme stress," which includes symptoms like heart palpitations, shaking, and depression. Three out of every four visits to the doctor are for stress-related ailments.
A lot of that stress is hitting us earlier in life as well. In the early 2000s, psychologist Robert Leahy said "The average high school kid today has the same level of stress and anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s." I can only imagine what reports will come out later as we move on.
According to the CDC Stress can cause:
• Feelings of fear, anger, sadness, worry, numbness, or frustration
• Changes in appetite, energy, desires, and interests
• Difficulty concentrating and making decisions
• Difficulty sleeping or nightmares
• Physical reactions, such as headaches, body pains, stomach problems, and skin rashes
• Worsening of chronic health problems
• Worsening of mental health conditions
• Increased use of tobacco, alcohol, and other substances
People will do many things to reduce stress, some good, some not so good. Yoga, mindfulness, seeing a therapist, changing diets, cutting out toxic people, possibly changing companies or careers. All those things may be good, they may even be needed in certain situations. I don't want someone to think I don't believe in those things. I practice some of them myself. I realize though that they are all temporary, they don't eliminate stress and they don't put my life on easy mode. They are things that make me happy, but they don't give me peace. The truth is, however, that, despite the billions of dollars we're spending on this stuff, you just can't buy peace. In a world that feels out of control, no amount of time or money spent on these things will give me peace. The world is still out there, and we will still have to deal with it.
The people to whom John was writing had every reason to be stressed. While the author's audience isn't identified at the beginning of the letter, the early Christian churches of John's day were harassed and persecuted. People were losing their livelihoods and their lives because they were connected to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At a minimum, they would have been ostracized by their communities for believing someone who was executed like a common criminal was the Lord of the world. With such turmoil and stress surrounding the new believers, it would have been very easy for them to stop believing in Christ.
However, the early Christians thrived during stress and persecution. The first few centuries of Christianity saw it explode in numbers and influence so much that, by the early fourth century, it was the dominant faith of the Romans who tried to destroy it earlier. The early Christians thrived because they held on to some major points that gave them peace.
Peace that we are children of God, and that God loves us.
We are all God's children because God loves us, and because God loves us we are his children. The two are intertwined, love makes us family. That is not something that someone else can take away.
Belief in Jesus as the Christ is evidence that we are children of God, the parent (v. 2).
Love of God and love of the children of God are intertwined and linked. One cannot love one and not the other (v. 2). We are all in this thing called life together, and in the body of believers, we must love God and love God's children. We are all God's children because God loves us, not because of any task we completed, any position we hold, it is as I have said before the love that makes us family.
Peace in obedience to God
Evidence of the depth of our love of God is the level of our obedience to the will of God (v. 3). We cannot just say we love God we have to act like it, we must do what God says. If we want what God wants for us in our lives, we have to do what God told us to do in his word. That may sound like a burden but obedience to God's word is not burdensome, we just have to spend more time practicing it. I made a career out of technology but the first time I got around it, I had no idea how to turn most of the stuff on. We can spend more time practicing doing what God says instead of expecting everything to be perfect on the first try. If at first, you don't succeed, try, and try again. With the love of God and obedience to God's word, we can do more than we ever imagined. We can become world-beaters when we do so, that is what the text is talking about in verse four, that love and that obedience give us the power to conquer the world, gives us the boldness to speak truth to power, and walk in our authority. It is a lot harder to be stressed when you know you have the victory. The children of God are winners, world-conquerors (v. 4). We have faith as our weapons, a belief in God, and a belief that Jesus is the Son of God.
We are connected by water and by blood, by water when Jesus was baptized, and when we are baptized, we reject the power of sin and begin our path as disciples in Christ Jesus. That is one reason the UMC baptismal vows ask if you reject the spiritual forces of wickedness and reject the evil powers of this world. We are connected to new life in Christ, connected by water and connected by blood. Jesus willingly laid down his life for us so that we could have life and have it more abundantly.
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains:
Peace to know that I am, you are, we all are connected to the one who was, is, and is to come. We are connected in Christ Jesus.
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