God is Love

You will find me quoting Beth Moore quite often on my blog because she is my favorite Bible teacher! Here are some thoughts from her on how we can love difficult people that I find to be absolutely profound:

Proverbs 19:22 "What a man desires is unfailing love."

We have a need built into us to be loved. It's part of being human. The best thing we can do is let people off the hook for failing to be God to us. Only God can love like God because GOD IS LOVE! Love is not something God feels or something He does, it is something that He is. It is His essence, His very DNA. He can't not love us. He just can't help himself because it is who He is. There is nothing we can do to make God not be love. Therefore, as believers in Jesus Christ, we are completely secure in God's unfailing love for us. Very reassuring, isn't it?

1 John 4:19 "We love because He first loved us."

What this verse really translates into is, "I can love __________ because God first loved me." Just fill in the blank with anyone. The reason we can love others is because God first loved us. We can love those who give us back nothing because God has given us everything!

In our human nature, we want to love those who love us back. But, as Christians, we are not mere men. We actually have the very spirit of God living inside of us. We are freed up to love those who do not love us back because we've already been loved by God. The love of God is in us.

Romans 5:5 "And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

The only reason we would be able to love those people who are so irritating, so frustrating, so unloving to us is because we have the love of God (the Holy Spirit) living inside of us. If we try to love others with our own natural hearts, it will fail. Our natural hearts are very self-serving and we will always protect ourselves from those people who do not love us. That is why we can only truly love, with God's love in us.

If someone hurts us and does something that would normally send us into an absolute tailspin, leaving us completely undone; we can actually walk away still whole because they cannot touch that love of God that has been poured into us by the Holy Spirit. God will guard our hearts! We are His! When someone hurts you, tell God all about it, empty that hurt out on God and watch how He will fill your heart right back up with His love!

God's love is Agape love. Agape is "others" centered. With it, we can love others, not how they want to be loved, but how they need to be loved; love them in a way that is in their best interest.

I hope you have been blessed by these truths from the word of God today!

Love,
Brandi