Love
I could write about love every day for the rest of my life and there would still be words left unwritten. The vast scope of God’s love for us and our love for each other and all of God’s creation is incomprehensible. But for today, let’s just keep it simple.
Love is the foundation for everything I believe. God’s love for me and for you. If we choose to filter our every word, action, and thought through love, we are choosing to be like Christ. However, all of the good intentions of living love will sadly come back void and turn into frustration and disappointment if we do not have Christ as the center of it all. The first step toward truly living love is accepting God’s love through Christ and the salvation He freely offers to us. If you have questions about how to accept Christ and begin a new life in Him, please message or e-mail me. I will spend all the time you need to help you understand this amazing gift of love.
With Christ as our Savior and the Holy Spirit as our teacher and guide, we begin the amazing task of living a life directed by and filled with love. And this is not just any love. This is a love that overflows; a love that goes farther and deeper, filling and fulfilling, outward and inward, joyous and sometimes painful, hopeful, unconditional, indescribable love!
Mark 12:30-31 says this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
“Love the Lord your God”…Study about Him, feel Him, follow His examples, spend time with Him, listen to Him, talk to Him, get to know Him, adore Him, never stop….heart, soul, mind, strength.
“Love your neighbor”…This is where we put feet and hands to our faith. God – showing His love through us to a lost world.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 helps us on our journey as we desire to fulfill the two commandments of the new covenant through Jesus Christ.
“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”
We are nothing without love. Life is empty, void, frustrating, and unfulfilling without love. I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live my life unfulfilled and frustrated. I want to feel and experience all God has in store for me!
“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
*Impatience is unacceptable in God’s plan. His timing is perfect and we must trust His ways.
*We are to be kind in every situation, even when our own understanding tells us that we have every right to be ugly and mean.
*There is no room for jealousy when we are living a life of love. We rejoice over every good thing that comes to others even if we wish it would also happen to us.
*When good does come to us and great accomplishments want to build our own opinion of ourselves, we recognize that all the good things that happen to us in life come because God has chosen to bless us.
*Our lives are a picture of dignity and respect and we allow the presence of God to shine.
*We do not follow the world’s way of self-gratification and looking after number one…ourselves. We put the needs and feelings of others first.
*When we feel ourselves becoming angry, we swallow hard and filter with love. Anger does not bring positive results for a child of God.
*We do not hold onto things that have been done against us that have caused us pain. We forgive the person and let go of the wrongdoing. Difficult – yes. Worth it – absolutely!
*We do not find joy in other people’s failures, even if we think they deserved it. We certainly do not find joy when other people make wrong choices.
*The truth is always on our lips and in our actions. The joy comes in knowing that we have no lies to hide. Our joy also comes in the knowledge that we have a relationship with Jesus…who is “The Way, The Truth, And the Life”.
*We can bear all things because Christ has come alongside us to help us bear our burdens.
Matthew 11:30 “For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Now I have to move to 1st person in my writing. I cannot tell you what to believe or how to respond to God’s love. But, I can tell you what I believe and how I want to respond in love to what I know to be true.
I believe that my God is real and I believe in Jesus Christ in the human flesh and His sacrifice and His resurrection. I believe that the Holy Spirit is with me to teach and guide me. I believe that Jesus is coming back for me and that I will spend eternity with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I believe because I have felt Him in my heart. I believe because I see Him in creation. I believe all of it, every last detail. And because I believe, I live in a constant state of hope. Not hope like the world has, but a confident expectation that everything God has said, He will do! I can endure anything that comes my way because I know that my Savior, the Creator of the Universe loves me. Nothing this world can throw at me compares to the glory that will one day be mine through Christ Jesus.
Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
This world is in desperate need of something that is true, constant, dependable, and never fails.
“Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
I believe the words Jesus spoke with all my being.
I choose love. Will you join me?
KellyLOVE word
