25 Minutes
Let the word of the One who is love tell us what love is. As God guides me
in this writing, I so want you to know that I so want to love you as God wants
us to love one another...and so I lay my love down at your feet as I attempt
to show us what love is. Just the idea of love makes it the most powerful
word of creation. It is an ideal that we must strive toward. It literally,
emotionally, ideally, and spiritually commands intimate faithfulness. Love
has no conflict because it is an enduring choice. It requires understanding of
and being for the other person more than for ourselves. The challenge to all
of us is to love others as part of our love of God and for God. “Of”, relates to
something coming from the original, from the cause. “For”, shows a purpose.
To bear the weight of this great word is critical in that we cannot ignore the
sheer scale by which we fine it difficult to grasp God’s love for us.
Love is a deep understanding of God which betokens an ultimate
togetherness of our commitments and directions. We lose the inner meaning
of love when we think about our feelings and feel about our thoughts. Love
is not all feeling nor is emotion its core. Emotions are basic drives that often
summarize areas of reflection and judgment which we crystallize in a certain
way that lessens the written word. Emotions locate feelings in the
subconscious, out of which it comes to conscious life. Feelings reflect our
past, our views, our motives, faith, our understanding of ourselves which
makes recognizing love a complicated task. What love does is remove such
contradictions as good or ill, truth or lie, in our thinking and atttitudes. Love
is to be bound up to thought and action as the whole response to truth. Any
falsity in any relationship, human to human, human to divine, is deviation
from principle. Love is a powerful experience of dependance upon God. It is
a powerful motive to examine yourself and to search the openness and
transparency of a spiritual relationship with others. The fulness of our
humanness unites to the divine sharing of ourselves without fear.
Love can look anything in the face and respond with care, hope and faith.
We live in God’s creation as He has created us. Love is the wonder of being
face to face with God and seeing the awe-filled beauty of who we are. We
are not alone. Love is conditionally responsive...”if you love me keep”...”he
who loveth God love his brother also”. God’s love is central to the bigger
truth. And that bigger truth is that love gives significant consequence to the
life of every person and their relationships. Love has its origin with God and
goes beyond our weaknesses and is the underlying reality of all our lives.
Love is the norm by which God commands us to live in our relationships with
one another and with Him.
Here is the hard side of the truth of love. The reliability of the words by which
it is expressed must be insistent on the need for uprightness before God
meaning that this love does not die on our failings. It outlasts our pettiness
and comes through our failures. This point is completely basic...love is given
by God, reflects the character of God, is written in the creation of God and is
exemplified by the conquering commitment of love in Jesus’ life despite the
sorrow that we subjected him to. Love, and I pray you know what it is, can
move us beyond fallible human relationships. It is evident that love has power
to image us not as objects of worship, but as an exclusive creation of God.
Psalms 82:6
John 10:34
We are to have the kind of love that we can trust. The kind that recognizes
and abides through our weaknesses, through our sin. That love cannot be
disillusioned, because in principle it has no weakness, no sin. The prime
conception of love is as our duty. Our duty to obedience to every word of
God. Our duty to faithfulness to every way of God, in all circumstances. Our
duty to doing the will of God as reasoned and guided by His Word. This duty
dissociates us from emotion, from feelings. It means giving priority to others,
putting the needs and problems of others before our own, whereby we
receive innner strength. Know of what source this inner strength is derived.
Remember when Martha chided Mary. Jesus’ love commended Mary for her
commitment to learning and at the same time allowed Martha to cool down.
Jesus refused to allow his disciples to be censored for picking grain on
Sabbath. Jesus loved people where they were. Even those he rebuked. He
loved a prostitute. He loved a leper. He loved a thief on a cross. His love was
tested in straightforward ways. Jesus is our central truth in God and is always
able to relativize our performance to our circumstances and situations. As
we seek an open loving heart and sincere commitment to one another in
Jesus, God so loves us. Love is a matter of knowledge, of understanding, of
reasoning, of wisdom, love is a matter of will, to do that which is the
determination of God. Love is founded in having a right conduct and carrying
it out as an act of the mind. Love is the power contained within, that is only
relevant when it is given as our whole self.
Deep within this meaning of love is the idea of being good enough to be
loved. This vulnerability is because the measurement standard is not Jesus
Christ. Too many are aware of things about themselves which they “feel”
make them unworthy of love. God treats the past as justified in Christ. Let
nothing paralyse the ability that God gives you to love and to be loved. The
things you cannot talk about to anybody, talk about with God. Your love is of
such value to God that He gave His only Son who was willing to come as
you are. You are inestimably valuable. You will not fail in your love. And in
Christ, you will learn to love better. Ask God to give you a new heart. Do not
ration out love. Give, as was given you. Love is not to have an agenda
separate from the fulfillment of the law.
Galatians 5:14
Our hope is to move into the enjoyment of God’s love which is not an
individual act of the will, but encompasses the whole relationship in grace.
This begins with the undeserving commitment of God to us as persons. As
Jesus took his disciple through the many failures to love and give, we too
may take that journey. It validates our response to God to love one another
however pathetic are our present abilities. These relationships penetrate
deep, locking us into individual performance, keeping our focus open instead
of self-regarding. There will be times your love will suffer for good. You will
mourn for the ones you know are troubled in spirit. Your heart pains will drive
you to your very knees. But you have a joy that is God-given. And you hang
on to the God Who gives it, not the joy “itself”. It is those who truly love God
and one another who experience joy. Joy is at God’s disposal as a fruit of
His Spirit working in our lives. It is not a possession we can claim for
ourselves. The big challenge for all of us is therefore whether we work at our
own agenda of happiness, or whether we open up our lives to God and to
the provisions of His love. Then it is that the richness of those with whom we
live becomes evident and blesses us. God knows better what and how to
bless us. Jesus loves us so much that he desires to live with us for life.
Love, as God’s intent for love to be, offers deep communion. Bible truth
shows that we are created, we are born again to grow in relationships which
express who we are. We can be ourselves before God in solitude, but we
are to love one another in communion. This is no illusion. The heart of the
matter is whether in God’s hand we are willing to be shaped to commune
with.
What a most generous act...to give love to another. Christ did this, and in
doing so, God bought us with a price. And he is ours, and we are his. He’s
our Song of Songs. God’s love is the very ground of our existence. This truth
reinterprets us as God’s care invested in His creation. His love is direct,
personal, open and unmanipulative, and can be seen in every way of Jesus.
The sheer transforming vitality of his love is amazing. A woman, kissing and
crying upon his feet and drying them with her hair. One who touched the “him
of his garment”, a rich little man in a tree, a deaf and dumb person whose
friends brought him to Jesus, one at a well who could not contain her joy,
and the children who were made well by him. Let us be encouraged ever to
show love. And to those who know not what they do...Father forgive them.
Love for God opens up our hearts with longings for the revelations of the
patterns of purposes concealed in His truths. In this we come to the
spirituality of love. The recognition that there is something more to being
human than sensory experience, and that the greater whole of which we are
part is divine in nature. In our communion with God, we achieve and manifest
higher levels of development than the ordinary person. The greatest of those
levels is love. We have a surer faith in Christ in knowing to God we have
worth, and a capacity for love and generosity, that opens our hearts to
essential and true spirituality.
God’s word not only reaches spiritual highs but renders the truth that Jesus
was touched with the “feeling” of our infirmities to share with us the human
lows that we encounter. Loving and being loved are not “givens.” Love is not
something we always knew, we do not automatically know how to do it well,
especially when it comes to loving ourselves and feeling worthy of being
loved by another. There are internal conditions that sets the cornerstone for
us to enter into loving relationships with others. Though God places in the
heart the ability to trust, and to have faith, it cannot be assumed that the thing
called “love” will be experienced. It is something learned through conscious
intention with a reasoning and mature mind that permits reflection and
expanded life experiences that make room for a broader social and spiritual
circle, where people are able to observe themselves and others with
curiosity, attention, compassion, and kindness.
I John 4:20, 21
We see beneath the surface to the quiet underneath richness to the core of
sharing self. We elevate our intention to invest mindfully in one another. With
empathy we recognize imperfections made perfect in Christ. We move from
emotional energy to a spiritual momentum fueled by the will of God. We gain
wisdom beyond the illusion of physical vulnerability. With thoughts of peace,
we show nurturant behaviors that acknowledges the consequence that love
is an outward worthwhile truth that honors and give glory to God. This is the
love wherewith we become like Christ. We share our lives to evolve. We, in
truth, navigate our mutual trials and triumphs, and in tribulations we come to
appreciate other’s wisdomed strength and we too grow from them, creating
a unique bond. Our lives show no empty spaces, for our passion for our love
of God in Christ fully engages our faith in our divine existence to be ever
mindful that we are the pleasure of God of whom we each are one. We make
large God’s principle of love.
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