This time of year, our hearts are drawn toward love. Whether one celebrates Valentine's Day or not, we can't help but hear about it and see displays in stores.
Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. I love to make cards for my family, prepare a special meal, and bake heart-shaped cupcakes served on festive, heart-covered paper plates. I love receiving cards, flowers, and my favorite candy. I don't often listen to mushy love songs, but I'm more inclined to in February.
As fun as those things are, we know real love goes deeper. It shows up "for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health." Love can feel giddy or warm and fuzzy. But love can also feel like hard work..
Jesus told us to "love one another just as I have loved you" (John 13:34; 15:12). What's more, He told us to go beyond loving those who please us or love us back, but also to love those who persecute us and hate us.
How can we do that? After all, He is God, and we are not. Oswald Chambers said in the April 30 reading from My Utmost for His Highest, "The springs of love are in God, not in us. It is absurd to look for the love of God in our hearts naturally; it is only there when it has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit."
I'm far from perfect in this, but I've found these things to help:
Pray for more love
I was encouraged when I realized there were passages in the Bible about praying to be more loving. That indicates God knows we're not perfectly loving yet and we need to grow in love. I sometimes pray these for myself and need to do so more often.
Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all (1 Thessalonians 3:11-12).
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment (Philippians 1:9).
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:17-19).
May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:5).
Abide in Him
Trying to love as Jesus did will show us soon enough that we can't do it in our own power. "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:4-5).
"We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 John 4:16).
Be Filled with the Spirit
Ephesians 5:5 tells us, "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Part of the fruit of the Spirit is love, so when we're filled with Him, we'll be filled with His love.
Behold Him
It makes sense that to love as Jesus loved, we need to consider how He loved.
He took initiative. God loved us even before we knew Him, before we turned to Him, even before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3-6). "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
He showed grace. "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). He loved us when we were most unlovable and undeserving. He didn't wait for us to "clean up" or get "good enough."
His love was sacrificial. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). God gave not just a pittance, not just a fraction, but rather what was most dear to Him.
His love is active. The Father and Son love not just in word, but in deed. "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers" (1 John 3:16). "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
He gave of Himself. "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:1-2). That giving involved inconvenience, weariness, misunderstandings, false rumors, humiliation, pain, and death. He ministered to others when He was the only One who deserved to be ministered to.
His love is kind. "For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior" (Titus 3:3-6).
He is longsuffering. "The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Numbers 14:18a).
His love corrects us. "My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights" (Proverbs 3:11-12). God's love is not indulgent. Sometimes love involves doing the hard thing of bringing sin to the surface so it can be dealt with.
More than just observing how He loved, we need to observe His glory. 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us, "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." We're changed to be more like Him as we behold Him.
Once a missionary was troubled because she didn't love others the way she knew she should. For years she berated herself with the need to be more loving, but she continually failed, leaving her continually discouraged. Finally she started to meditate on God's love for her. Without realizing it, her life was transformed so much that people asked her husband what had happened to her.
If we just tell ourselves over and over, "I need to be more loving," we're going to get discouraged because we're focusing on ourselves and setting ourselves up for failure. But when we concentrate on His love for us, our hearts will overflow with that same love to others. No wonder Paul prays that we might know the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:19).
He took the first step in loving me, so I should not wait on others to make the first move. His love came at a great sacrifice, so I should not be surprised when love costs me. He loved me at my most unworthy and forgave a multitude of my offenses, so how can I withhold love from others? When I meditate on His love for me, His love flows through me to others.
(Revised from the archives)
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