LOVE

You can say you love me but can you show me?

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8

A true testament of our love is how we treat someone who is nothing like us, thinks nothing like us, looks nothing like us, or has wronged us in someway. How do we love those who are especially the hardest to love? Sometimes that person may be ourself.

“Everyone’s greatest need is to be accepted just as they are and right where they are. This is unconditional love.”

Love is a lot like the wind. We can’t see the wind but we can feel it and see it moving the trees. That’s how we see and feel God ~ when His love and Spirit moves through His people. His presence and love is always present even when we don’t feel it. That doesn’t make it any less of a reality or fact. Sometimes the wind is still. God is love and God is all around even when we can’t feel Him.

This subject is something that God has laid on my heart. I am in no way perfect in this area. In fact, very far from it, which is why He is showing me and I am sharing with you. He wants us to know more about love because He is love and love is His first command. We can’t please Him without it. It’s why He sent His Son for us. Jesus came and died for us even in our sin, when we least deserved it. We all need more love and we all need to give more love. It’s the one thing we can never have enough of and that He can never run out of. It’s the very thing that keeps us connected to God. It’s His heart. It’s Who He is.

“The more that we know about His love and attributes; Who He is, the more we know Him. The more we know Him, the closer we are to Him.”

I didn’t really feel led to a particular scripture this morning so after my Bible reading, I opened up a little book by Ann White called, “She is strong and courageous”. The title read “choose to love”. 🤔 Hmmmm, after all, love is a choice right? It’s not a feeling or otherwise we’d all be all over the place in our relationships because we all fall short. How will we treat people when the new wears off and we really know them? How will they love us when they really know us?

The devotion stated that “Love is an attitude of the heart - it’s choosing to love in spite of faults and failures, hurts and hardships.” The writer referred to Corrie Ten Booms experience in the Nazi Holocaust of World War 2. It became Corrie Ten Booms life’s pursuit to share Gods unconditional love and forgiveness. She shared what she had learned from her experiences in sheltering Jews from the Nazi’s, being imprisoned, and put into a woman’s camp. We too can courageously choose to love but there are some steps that we have to take. “It takes courage to love in spite of how we’ve been hurt, thinking about others hardships, choosing to forgive and learning how to love again.”

True love is unconditional. To know God is to know love and to know love is to know God. To love Him is to keep His commands and He commands us to love. He said, “If you love Me, Keep My commands.” The first command is to love God, the second is to love ourselves, and then to love others as our very own self. We must learn to see ourselves and each other the same way that God sees us in order to love like Him. We wouldn’t be able to naturally do this on our own. We need to know God in order to know His love because, God is love. His thoughts and ways aren’t ours so if we want to see things from God’s point of view, we must seek to see what He sees. All the other commands hang on this one, love. So unless we are walking in love, we aren’t walking in full obedience.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Love is therefore an action, not just a word. God is more concerned with our behavior than our speech. Both are important but they must align. So, we can say we love but do we prove it by the way we live and love? The good samaritan proved his love by his behavior and actions in helping the man on the side of the road who had been robbed and stripped. He didn’t just wish him well, he stopped and helped the man to get back on his feet. Jesus proved His love by laying His life down for us. Just before the parable of the good samaritan, Jesus was explaining to a lawyer how to inherit eternal life. The man asked what he must do and recited the scripture.

He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” Luke 10:27-28

All the other men passed by this stricken man and passed up the opportunity that was right in front of them to extend and show love him. I mean he was right there and front of them but yet they chose to ignore the need. The good Samaritan used what he had to give; his time, his ability, and his money. He left him at the inn until he could get better and left a way for him to get back on his feet. We may not have all the resources another needs but we can use what we do have and that is to show love. That’s all God expects. He doesn’t expect us to give what we do not have but He does expect us to give what we can. This man showed love in action. He went the extra mile and he didn’t hold back. We have an example to follow after and an obligation as followers of Christ to love. Jesus was our perfect example and His word and Spirit is our guide. I don’t always feel like loving for sure but one thing is for sure, unless I am walking in love, I am not walking in power.

God loves and adores us even when we fall short. The person often the hardest to love and forgive is ourselves because we do not always believe or comprehend the way that He loves and adores us.

After all, we don’t always feel adorable and that’s why we can’t rely on feelings. His love for us doesn’t change and His feelings for us doesn’t change. We can walk away from God but He doesn’t walk away from us. Even if we do walk away, nothing could ever separate us from His love, even though it can separate us from His will and blessings. We can’t please Him without it because love is Who He is. God hates sin but God loves the sinner. He loves us so much that He wills for us not to continue in our sin because it is sin that separates us from God but never His love. John 3:16-21

It’s impossible to give away what one doesn’t first have. We often portray that we love but do we really? We shouldn’t just be going through the motions or we miss out on real love and real life.

We can love even when we don’t feel like it if we first understand that the depth, the width, and height of Gods love is unmeasurable. We can gift it only after we have truly ‘received’ it. He gave it to us long before He created us but its up to us to receive it. He doesn’t give it because we deserve it and that’s why it is so often hard to accept it. Freely we have received and freely we must give without a cost. He paid it all.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

“That’s true love. Not just a mere confession. Jesus proved it. No greater love than a man lay down his life for his friends.”

I am in not in anyway insinuating that anyone should go stay in dangerous or toxic relationships and situations, I am just simply stating that without the love of God, we can’t even love ourselves or make good decisions based on what love really is in the first place.

We don’t have to stay in unhealthy atmospheres to prove our love. We prove our love to God and self by not allowing something we love to be violated. Boundaries is love and they prove that by protecting that which we love. If we love ourselves, we protect ourselves by guarding our heart. We only let in what God would approve. That’s our job, to guard our hearts above all else, for everything we do flows out of it. We shouldn’t just let anything in, that’s sin. What we do let into our hearts and minds determines what will eventually come out. We must rid ourselves of anything that doesn’t promote love.

What we protect, we love.

In this world we will suffer persecution just as Jesus did but that doesn’t mean we give up on love. I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work. We love in-spite of. To turn the other cheek is not to suffer abuse, it is to not handle something the same way that the world or offender does.

We are all learning. It is a life long process. So, be patient with yourself. God is faithful and He’s still working on all of us. As long as breath, life, and as long as we live, He’s giving us chances to accept truth. He got it right because we couldn’t. We must learn to rely on Him.

I’m learning to lean towards God’s love, learning more about Him, learning how to receive love, learning how to love, learning how see myself as He does, and learning how to give it away. Learning to say yes to what God does and no to what He doesn’t.

Nothing is perfect except for God and His love, yet it is being perfected in us more and more everyday when we learn to receive it in and give it away. The more we use it, the more it reproduces. Don’t worry that it’s not perfected. Do worry the day that you stop learning, receiving and giving. 

“The most He could do was die for me, the least I can do is live for Him. I owe Him my life and I choose His love.”

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19