| Allow yourself time for this moment with God |
Make it special. Will you make a cup of tea? Do you want to sit in a special place? Will you light a candle? Take five deep breaths. Check-in with how you are feeling – in body, in mind, in spirit. Take five more deep breaths and ask God to abide with you in this moment.
| Bible reading for today |
1 JOHN 4:7-19
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and all who love are fathered by God and know God. The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. This is how God’s love has appeared among us: God sent his only son into the world, so that we should live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the sacrifice that would atone for our sins. Beloved, if that’s how God loved us, we ought to love one another in the same way. Nobody has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is completed in us. That is how we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he has given us a portion of his spirit. And we have seen and bear witness that the father sent the son to be the world’s saviour. Anyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s son, God abides in them and they abide in God. And we have known and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love; those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. This is what makes love complete for us, so that we may have boldness and confidence on the day of judgment, because just as he is, so are we within this world. There is no fear in love; complete love drives out fear. Fear has to do with punishment, and anyone who is afraid has not been completed in love. We love, because he first loved us.
| Imagine this |
We can say I love you in plenty of ways. We have our own preferred ways of giving and receiving love. Some call these The Five Languages of Love. You can read more about this here. And you can try the self-assessment for your own preferred mode of loving. The launch page is here.
Take some time to ponder these five, exploring whether you feel contentment or a yearning in each one of them.
| Describe your feelings to God |
Be honest with God about how loved you feel today. You might like to think about what you want to say to him (and maybe to others) in terms PLEASE, THANK YOU and SORRY.
| Enjoy the Bible reading a second time |
Take some time to read the Bible passage again slowly, and out loud if you can.