(7) “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. (8) Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (9) This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. (10) This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(11) Dear friends since God so love us, we also ought to love one another. (12) No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
A friend of mine put up a banner over a booth at a county fair that read, “Love is God.” I know that he was trying to get attention to foster conversations with people as they walked by his booth. However, unless we embrace and are obedient to the love that comes from God, there is no love in us. We only know the love of God when we place our trust in Jesus Christ, as the atoning sacrifice for our sin. Since God so loved us, God desires that we love one another. Colossians 3:13 reminds us that we are to: ”Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."
The love of God alone binds us together in unity as the body of Christ. We are then able to demonstrate to the world around us in true love. We are to daily live the words of the chorus: “They will know we are Christians by our love.” What one word would the people who observe your life use to describe you?
Prayer
Thank you O God that you have poured out your love into my heart through your only Son, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I desire that the world around me can see a clear testimony of your love in my life by my words and acts of love today. AMEN
Pastor Roger Crites
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1 comment:
I often end up, after reading a devotional or the BIble, by saying, "Yes, but HOW?!" But my other devotional this morning took me to John 4:4-6, and I was struck not by verse 6, but by verse 4 - "AND YOU KNOW THE WAY..." Jesus was really talking about the way to Heaven, but I hear God saying in this that WE ALREADY KNOW HOW (it's by knowing the Who). I want to focus on KNOWING GOD, the author and perfect expresser of Love, and let hte Holy Spirit do His thing in me, so that clammering to "know GOd's will" in detail is not such a big struggle - I just want to BE GOd's will... Lord, do a miracle in me, because I certainly can't do any of this without you working in us to make it happen?! Help us all to learn to LOVE and to live to LOVE. :P
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