““So I give you now a new commandment: Love each other just as much as I have loved you. For when you demonstrate the same love I have for you by loving one another, everyone will know that you’re my true followers.””
God is Love all the rest is the packaging around that beautiful gift.
The Father wants us to know that we are loved and that we have a purpose that He rejoices over us.
Issues arise when we forget that we are loved and that all of us are equally loved by Him.
The beauty in Jesus was that He too saw everybody and knew them and loved them and held them to be worthy.
We all have need of love and many of us have been left to feel excluded for some reason until we realise that to be a lie and that nothing excludes us from being fully seen and fully loved by Him.
Jesus brings that love and with it brings peace right into the centre of our chaos. His desire is for us to live in the knowledge of our creator, our purpose and our identity.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
To be effective in His work we must know first His love.
Only that which we know we possess can we pass on to others and therefore live out His love.
We too will love and see people as He does. That is what we were born for.
Right now coming out of a global pandemic and with wars and rumours of wars and economic knock ons, we are mindful of even greater disparities between divisions of having and not. The richest and the poorest.
All around we see pain, suffering, fragmentation and struggle
The world is crying out for the love of God.
We are increasingly finding ourselves burdened by the love of the Father for these people.
We are made aware that so many other gifts pale into insignificance besides that of Love.
“If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value. Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honour. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.”
His Love within us brings the complete opposite spirit for most than that of the world.
Love is a way of life. “Most excellent way of life”.
We have opportunities to bless others when we see them and love them . We can meet the desire to know and be known.
We are created to see others and love them just as He and we have thousands of opportunities to do just that in every moment.
Love is the true marker of God’s people.
The world cries out for love. We have all known His love and we are in a community that is starved of it. We are the potential to bring change.
We must not have a reputation and be known for what we stand against as much as what, or rather Who, we stand for.
Those who meet us must not feel more condemned but rather more loved because love constantly, lavishly pours out of us.
Jesus replicated what He saw in His Father. We replicate what we see in Christ.
Parts we want to shut doors on and hide from have to die as we become honest and vulnerable and share with each other and become real neighbours.
CS.Lewis imparted much wisdom in his words one recalled being something like: Don’t waste time bothering whether you love your neighbour just act as if you do and you will come to love them. And another: If you injure another you will come to love them less.
Our spirituality is not a sphere of life it is our life style.
It is what we live out and what better way to live out our lives than to be known and to be love.
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
We have to not be so bothered with ourselves that we do not stop and see the one in front of us.
We have to take time to know, see and love. Loving is the bonding glue holding together our faith, hope and charity.
“For now we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror, but one day we will see face-to-face. My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully understood. Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.”
We go and love.
The illustration shows Love bringing love to us and us to others. The Holy Spirit overcoming the spirit of evil in the world. Light emanating to push back the darkness.
Five Scriptures that come to mind:
““So I give you now a new commandment: Love each other just as much as I have loved you. For when you demonstrate the same love I have for you by loving one another, everyone will know that you’re my true followers.”” John 13:34-35 TPT
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”Ephesians 2:10 ESV
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8. ESV
“For now we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror, but one day we will see face-to-face. My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully understood. Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.” 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 TPT
“If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value. Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 TPT
The song A Love That Remains Bryan McCleery
Lessisgreater 