Love - It's More Than A Feeling

⁷ Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. ⁸ But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. ¹⁰ This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. ¹² No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

(1 John 4:7-12)

Every single person on this earth wants to be loved. It's a desire that is ingrained into our very being by the one who created us to love. Real love is an action, not a feeling based on selfish intentions or motives. Romans 5:8 says; "God DEMONSTRATED his love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ DIED for us." "God SHOWED how much he loved us by SENDING his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him." (1 John 4:9) Those are actions. God fully demonstrated his love for us by choosing to send his son to live and die in place of us. God sent his son, perfect and blameless, and without fault to die for people who would deny him, hate him, spit in his face, torture him and kill him. Why? So we wouldn't have to suffer the penalty for our sins and so we would have a chance at living the abundant life that God desires for us. Real love is a choice, not something you fall into or out of. God is our source of love and Jesus is the example we should live by. Everything in Jesus' life showed his love for others. The fact that he was willing to die in place of each and every one of us is the biggest example of sacrificial love. Jesus was willing to pay the penalty for your sins and my sins. Why? Because he loves us. Real love requires sacrifice and death. As Christians, we need to die to ourselves. This means we lay aside our selfish agenda; our life of choosing to follow our fleshly desires and allow Christ to rule and reign in our hearts. Then his love will spill over into our lives and into the lives of people around us. It is impossible to love as God loves without surrendering to the helper that Christ gave us, the Holy Spirit. He gives us the power to love others. He changes us and transforms us little by little and we become more and more like Christ. Choosing to love others is difficult, but the Holy Spirit enables us to do so. Are there people in your life that others deem "unloveable?" Are there people in your life that YOU deem "unloveable?" To be honest, up until about a year ago, there is no way I would ever take the time to interact with people who were addicts - current or former. "Those people" were just not the kind of people I wanted to be seen with. That is the honest truth. I purposely avoided people that I didn't want to associate with. People that in my heart and through my actions I was deeming "unloveable" I was choosing not to love them because I was being selfish. It is easy to love someone we think is loveable. It is not easy to love someone that the whole world (and ourselves) deems unloveable. God has been changing my heart over the past year. I have had the opportunity to spend some time with people the world has essentially pushed aside and forgotten. People that I had previously pushed aside have been teaching me some ugly things about myself and I have been given the opportunity to choose to love them and show them this through my actions. Since I have been involved with Celebrate Recovery, I have seen how judgemental and ridiculously unloving I was. I have heard some amazing stories of God's rescuing and unconditional love through the lives of the very same people I chose to ignore. I have heard the stories of how people loved them when they felt unloveable. I have lived stories of how people have loved me when I felt unloveable. The common thread that each and every one of us has with one another is our need for love. For someone to consciously choose to love us not based on what they can get from loving us, but on loving us without reward and without worrying about what others may think. We are all looking for someone to show they love us by what they do, not merely by what they say. Is there someone in your life that you can choose today to love? God will help you love them. Is there someone you can show God's love to through your actions? God can help you show his love to them. I am reminded of this old hymn...

"They will know we are Christians, by our love, by our love. Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love."