In the book of John love is listed 39 times. It is mentioned over 200 times throughout the Bible. Love is the key to living out your salvation, but it is the right kind of love that matters. Jesus calls us to have pure and holy love. We need to ask ourselves do I love genuinely? And how do I show my love throughout life? How do I express love?
To be a Christian you should be able to love and display love. However, it does not guarantee that you will feel loved in return. That does not mean that you are not loved because you are. You just may not feel loved. To follow Jesus can be lonely at times. It is normally a season where He is strengthening you. God loves you no matter what. You don't have to feel it for His love to be true. The truth is different from feelings. You have to know it and believe it even when you can't feel it.
When you feel unloved, you feel displaced. It is hard to fit in when you feel unloved. You feel an absence where ever you go. It is lonely and isolating. That is why you can't allow those feelings to take over. They shadow the truth and those feelings can be powerful. They can cause you to do things that mask the fact that you are Christian. It can cause you to act out to get attention instead of giving the attention to God.
You can be popular, good looking, and wealthy and still feel lonely. You can be surrounded by people and feel completely alone in the world. These are feelings that you have to work through with God before you can be there for other people. If you are not being replenished, then you can't give love to other people in a sustainable way. You have to be replenish by God's love everyday. It is not something you can ignore or pretend everything is okay when it is not. If you do, then you will only have negative repercussions for yourself.
Love is necessary in life. It is as vital as food, water, and air. It is what gives life to your life. Phelio love is a feeling. It makes you feel good or it makes you feel wretched for the lack of it. Agape love is a special, all consuming love that comes from God. It is what gives love power.
Agape love shows us God's capacity of what love can actually be. It is pure, righteous, holy, and powerful. He is the only one who can love like this. We strive for it because we know how it changed our lives and we want to love in the same way.
When we try agape, we want what is best for other people. We are able to give to them freely without thinking what we might get in return or if we may need what we are giving. It comes from a pure place. It also means we are able to forgive without strings attached. The saddest thing in the world is a heart that can't forgive.
If you can't find love in your heart, then you will never be complete. It is agape love that fills all the whole and gaping wounds in your heart. At the moment of salvation all heart wounds are healed, but the scars remain. It takes times for the scares to heal. That means you still have triggers for negative reactions that you have to learn how to deal with. It means you are still able to be hurt, but you have found a way to be complete.
To learn agape love, we have to forgive those that hurt us. We need to learn how to be generous. We have to serve one another and not become stagnant or lazy. Love is powerful because it changes you. Your love can show others how to find Jesus and that is the only way your love can change other people. Love requires commitment. That means you don't give up when it gets hard. It allows you to smile when feelings may want to do something else. True love helps you control your feelings.
We all need other people even if it feels like life is easier without people. That is why we need to pray about love and how we love people. We need to realize that we are relational beings. We will never be content and happy without relationships.
We need to protect our heart, so that we can love. It is precious. We never need to take love for granted. True love frees you from lies. It is barrier free. It protects your heart. Love in action is when you protect and serve other people. It avoid situations that can cause issues.
Jesus taught us how to love through service. He showed us what sacrificial love is. We have to be willing and open to other people. That means we have to risk being hurt to really love. Jesus showed us how to love those who do not "deserve" our love.
We need to do more than love people. We need to tell people that we love them. To hear that someone loves you and believe it is powerful. It can break through heart barriers. We have walls for a reason. We need help tearing them down. They will not come down on their own. It is only when the walls are coming down that we can start to feel the love that other people have for us.
Jesus taught us how to change the way we love and how we receive it. It is hard to pray for people that make your life harder, hurt you, betrayed you, or caused walls to come up in some other manner. It is hard to pray for those that hate you. It is easy to become defensive instead of investing into the hater. It takes strength to forgive those that will probably hurt you again. If they feel no guilt, right, or even happy for hurting you, then it is a safe bet to believe that they will do it again. That is why we have to take the emotion out of our decision to forgive and pray over our own hearts.
Love is personal. It is in your home. It is in your workplace. It is in your community. It comes from God, so it is everywhere. It gives you the capacity to do so much more than you think you can do. However, betrayal can stop you, trip you up, or overshadow love for a while. Betrayal is hard to accept and comprehend. That is why we need prayer to be able to move on and not allow it to have power over you.
Love is a decision. You have to be willing to love no matter what. Christians have the Holy Spirit in us. He can decipher the different kinds of love on our behalf. He will defend you from hate. He loves you enough to give you discernment. You just need to use it. For if you cannot love, then you are not a follower of Jesus.
John 13:31-38, Colossians 3:11-13, 1 John 4:7-12
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