1 John 4:7 --- Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Monday was a busy day, but a good day. I cooked dinner for the family and used a new seasoning called Kick'n Chicken. I thought it tasted great, but only my son Josh agreed. Even my dad who will eat anything said, "It wasn't horrible, but I don’t want seconds.". Needless to say, Kick'n Chicken has been retired. LOL.
Today's verse starts off in an amazing way, especially when you see it in the Greek. So, "Beloved, let us love" is agapetoi agapomen so in other words:
Dearly loved one, let us selflessly love
What a way to start off! I am dearly loved with a powerful selfless, sacrificial love, so if I'm really plugged into Him daily in relationship, then I should be able to start selflessly loving my brothers/sisters in Christ, not because of my love, but because of being loved by Him.
I'm so fired up over this at 6:26 AM this morning. What's even more awesome is, as we keep going in this verse the very next thing is, "for love is from God". Again, just reconfirming the source of this selfless love is God Himself. It's not something I have to produce, I have the eternal power source of selfless love available to meet with, to get to know, to walk through life with, to grow in relationship with!
I don't have to dig down deep inside to find selfless love and it wouldn't be there anyway.
There came a point where I realized I couldn't love my wife, Amanda, the way she deserved. I didn't have it in me. I had studied Ephesians 5, word by word for a few months and when I was done, I had a deep desire to love her exactly how God tells us husbands to love their wives, AS CHRIST LOVED THE CHURCH AND GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR HER. It was burning inside me.
Now, I knew my love for her could stretch pretty far but Christ's love for us, was far beyond just dying on a cross. He gave up everything, to come for us. He lived perfectly, loved perfectly, healed, fed, taught perfectly, and was still rejected. There's so much more to His love for us. This was the level of love my wife deserved, a perfect, selfless, and sacrificial love, which had to come from Jesus.
So, you better believe my prayers and talking with the Lord shifted from asking to help me love her more/better, to asking Him to fill me with His selfless love, so that I might overflow it into my precious wife. The beauty of it is, she is His daughter already so you better believe He didn't hold back, He lavished His love onto/into me, and I couldn't help but overflow it to her. He transformed our marriage. His love and Word are the basis of our marriage. We still stumble and argue and disagree from time to time, but He is the foundation of it, and we've learned the closer we each draw to Him, the closer we are to one another in our marriage.
Okay so I'm sitting here a bit teary eyed, fired up and filled up with Him and His love right now. Didn't mean this to turn into a discourse about my marriage. LOL.
So, here is something God has challenged me with, loving my brothers and sisters in Christ with that same level of intensity, passion, and selfless love. Even in the beginning of my study in 1 John way back on March 2nd, he really called me out on this.
What's amazing is in the end all I must do is choose to plug into Him daily, walk with Him in relationship, trust Him, set aside my understanding, follow Him, and receive from Him exactly what is needed, to do exactly what He's told me to. Mind blowing that he calls me to do something, then He is the one who is doing it, I just have to choose to trust, obey and follow Him into love.
Just as we've already seen in today's verse "for love is from God". There's the source!
Will you ignore it?
Will you run from it?
Will you be so busy you don't even know it's there?
What will you do with the eternal power source of endless, selfless, sacrificial love today?
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