| Beloved
of God,
Last
month, we talked about how God’s Word defines our walk
in love: to know God’s will and to decide to do
it. The love of God is “know & do.” Let’s
consider more facets to His love.Walking in God’s love,
we are acting like our spiritual Daddy acts. We’re
mimicking Papa. Like Father, like son. We’re
taking on the character of Christ. Jesus said, “he
who has seen me has seen the Father.” When people
see the love of God in us, they’ve “seen the Father.”
God is “seen” and experienced by experiencing God’s
love. That’s truly being in love.
Let’s be in love by being in the Word.
At times, people are
careful about who and how they offer human love, because
their “heart might get broken.” But when it comes
to the love of God, our hearts are never “broken.”
To keep our heart from being “broken,” we build the Scripture
into our hearts, because “the Scripture cannot be broken”
(John 10:35).
We are best known
by what we love most. Our love identifies us.
It highlights where our focus is. It displays the
direction of our life. It brings to light the priorities
of our personal intentions. What we love and how
we love makes every individual distinctive. Love
not only shows who God is, but it reveals who we are.
We are children of God’s love. We are a people of
love, set within a family of love. We don’t get
to decide who’s in our family; we simply love the brothers
and sisters that we have!
Jesus was love in sandals.
Because he was the Word in the flesh (John 1:14), he was
love in the flesh. Because he was the image of God
(Col. 1:15), he was the walking image of love. His
every word was a loving word. Every act, a love-deed.
Each thought, love-driven.
The written Word is
a love-book. The true story of redemption is the
ultimate love story. It shows how we can grow up
to become like the Lord of Love, Jesus Christ. Scripture
also gives examples of people who have been both loving
and unloving. Those contrasting lifestyles
serve to better sharpen our knowledge of how to live victoriously
in this life.
If we live to love,
we’ll love to live! If the motive of our life
is to be loving, then we will really enjoy living.
If we want our life to be enjoyable, then we’ll live love.
We can’t “grab” a joyful life; we “give” our way into
it. Loving and giving make life worth living.
Isn’t it great that we can decide to live love, no matter
the circumstances. Walking in our divine nature
(II Peter 1:4) is designed to be a love-walk journey of
giving.
Many personal struggles
and problems will fall by the wayside in love’s wake of
giving and serving. Our passion to bless others
will leave most of our troubles in the dust. Love
focuses ahead, and in doing so, leaves burdens behind.
Walking in love is the secret weapon that destroys our
fear.
1 John 4:18a
There is no fear
in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
In this verse, the two
Greek words for “cast out” mean that love expels
and dispels fear. When we think, speak and
act in a loving way, it also works to throw out what we
are afraid of. It drives it out. Love activates
the “ejector seat” where our fear has tried to settle
in. When the devil tries to take us to fear school,
Love says, “Class dismissed!” and “School’s out!”
Love banishes timidity and trepidation. Life’s two great
motivators, God’s love and fear, can’t occupy the same
thought. They are opposites. We often think
of hatred being the antonym of love, but fear may be more
biblically opposite.
“Casting out” devils
is, at times, a vital necessity to deliverance. But what
about the daily deliverance that we can claim by “casting
out” fear with love? We’re willing to do both, but
we’ll need to cast out fear more often than we need to
cast out devils. In fact, without the former, we’ll
struggle doing the latter.
A certain late night
television talk show host gets great laughs from his “Top
Ten List.” In Matthew 22:35-40, we have Jesus’ “Top
Two List.”
Matthew 22:37-40
(NIV)
… Love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
God’s two greatest
commandments are both commandments of love.
Jesus announced that all the commandments and laws of
the Old Testament are suspended from, based on, and depend
on the love of God. Loving God and loving people
are the fundamental building blocks to every man’s existence.
Love is truly essential to all other principles in life
(I Cor. 13:1-13).
We are not only asked
to love our neighbor as ourselves, but we
are asked to love as Christ loved us!
Think how many relationships will be healed as we treat
people like God treats us!
Ephesians 5:1
(NIV)
Be imitators of God,
therefore, as dearly loved children 2
and live a life of love, just
as Christ loved us…
John 13:34b-35
(NLT)
… Just as I have
loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one
another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
It is a part of our
divine nature, as children, to joyfully imitate and mimic
our Father’s characteristics. Love is the greatest
of “family traits” that’s itching to come to the surface
in our lifestyle!
Do we have enough love
to live this life? Yes! We have the greatest
lover on the inside, Christ. We have Jesus’ own
capacity to love. We carry his reservoir
of compassion, devotion and obedience to the will God.
We can love the unlovable! That includes loving
ourselves when we’ve been
unlovable!
Let’s seek out God’s
will and do it, and, in that, give His much needed love
to our world!
In His love,
Kevin |
