By David ReayWednesday 10 Jun 2015LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read 1 John 4:19
19 We love because he first loved us. (NIV)
It is such a challenge to love others. Not so much the lovable people who might inhabit our worlds,but the vast majority of fallible and sometimes muddled or hurtful human beings. We can adopt the method of trying very hard but that doesn’t work consistently. Or we might subtly twist love into a sort of control,so that our ‘love’ for others becomes part of our personal agenda,meeting our own needs rather than the needs of others.
But the real key to loving others is to accept how much we are loved. Loved people will be inclined to love just as forgiven people will be inclined to forgive. Our love for others is always secondary,a response to the love we have received from God. God’s love for us is poured out into us via his Holy Spirit with the intention that it overflow into love for others.
So we do not and cannot manufacture such love. And it follows that our capacity to love others is linked to our capacity to receive God’s love for us. Seeking to enter more deeply into experiencing the love of God (not just asserting its doctrinal truth) is not an exercise in self-indulgence but a necessary preparation for a life of loving others.
The most important thing in life is not our love of others,or even our love of God. It is our being loved by God himself. Without that,all else falls by the wayside.
Blessings
David Reay