Fear... what do you fear? We all struggle with all kinds of fears. In Christianity, most people seem to relate to God out of fear. We have this kind of fearful relationship with God. It's the way we approach him, the way we look at him... it's almost like we're concerned about our performance so we evaluate our relationship with God based on how well our day went. But God wants us to approach him in a much more powerful and freeing way.

Love is one of those things that we talk about a lot but we really struggle with. There are just some people we have a hard time loving. Are there people you struggle with loving? Who just came to mind? Yes, it is difficult to love people, and yet we read in this passage a pretty straightforward answer to that struggle.

Get ready to unpack some things that might make you feel uncomfortable. We all see in the world ideas, ideologies, concepts, things to believe... it's all swirling in our world. John invites us to take all of these teachings and ideas and to put them to the test. But the test isn't things like: Does it make sense to me? Do other people agree with it? Do I like it? None of those things are how we should test the swirl of conflicting ideas in our world. So what is the test?

Have you ever felt like you just didn't belong? Have you ever been in a place where you absolutely lacked the confidence that you belonged there? Like you were completely out of place? There are moments in our lives where we wonder: am I in with God? Is He on my side? Is He for me? Circumstances in life might make us question Him, and we want some kind of tangible answer. But we don't always get that. So what do we do then?

Don't be that guy. Anyone else ever said that? Anyone else ever been told that? Every culture has that "don't be that guy" guy. Offices, schools, even churches... John tells us exactly this: don't that guy who abides in death, in hate, in fear. So how do we abide in life, in love and in trust?

Why is it in this passage that everything seems so black and white? And it's so against everything we know in our culture. People experience our world today in a very not black and white way. They exist on this spectrum of good and bad, but John says, "No." Actually, in God's reality, there really are only two kinds of people. There are only two sides. Which side are you on?

The idea that there are better ways to God than Christ was just as relevant in the first century Church as it is in our modern day culture. We give lip-service to God and Jesus, but really we think there are better ways to God, and it has infiltrated the Church today. Part of the problem is we all end up thinking that walking with God means walking in perfection—John isn't saying that walking in the light means walking in perfection. It means walking in transparency.

Raise your hand if you have ever failed... is anyone not raising their hand? Most likely, no. That's because at some point in every person's life, they will fail. It's a fact of life. As a human being, it is a given that we will fail in both small and big ways. So the question is: when we come up against failure, how do we survive it?

Ever since the Church has existed—almost 2,000 years ago—there have been false teachers. There was never a time the Church existed without false teachers. But it does seem as though, in the modern Church, the term "false teacher" is just politically incorrect. It's almost like just about anything that simply includes Jesus or the Bible is good enough to be taught in the Church. Even though Scripture talks about heresy, talking about it now makes people uncomfortable. And yet it's so important for us to be acutely aware of it.

Where is your love quotient with God? Where is your sense in your heart, soul, life of your love for God? Is it growing bigger? Or do you feel like it's shrinking? Maybe there was a time when you really did have this love thing going on with God and now you're not experiencing it so much. Or maybe you've never really experienced it at all. Perhaps the whole idea of having a love experience with God is completely outside of the context of your life. Well, if you're not loving God, you're loving something else.