Love, love, love!

Love, love, love, love, love, I cannot say it enough! It’s just so intensely on my heart today. To love is to live. I’m referring to all kinds of love, friendship, relationship, family and neighbourly love. To love people intensely is such an amazing experience. Yes, you can get hurt sometimes and sometimes you have to say goodbye, but you are still blessed to have loved. God has put something so amazing in each person on earth and if we can see each person through God’s eyes then we would only feel love for them.

The Bible says that God is love and therefore loving is probably the greatest thing you can do. It is not always easy and sometimes it doesn’t come naturally, but if we get God’s perspective on someone our love for them will grow in our hearts, because God looks down on us with love.

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:16-19

Sometimes I feel as if I want to explode with love and the more time I spend with God, the more I feel loved and the more I love. God increases our capacity to love. Loving people didn’t come naturally to me before I met Jesus. I loved my friends and family, but that’s about where it stopped. I even kept my friends at a certain distance, because I felt that I was a private person and I also saw emotions as a sort of weakness. Now I can confidently say that my strength lies in my ability to love. Not with my own love, because my own love expects a return and runs dry, but with God’s love, the love which loves unconditionally without expecting returns. There is a difference between the love of God and the love of this world. Our minds cannot understand the love of God, but our hearts cannot deny it. We are drawn like a moth to a flame. When you are consumed with God’s love there is no space for jealousy, bitterness, unforgiveness, envy and strife. God’s love knows no bounds, it never ends and as the Bible says: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”  1 Peter 4:8 Love covers everything, it wipes the slate clean, it builds up and encourage.

That is what Jesus did for us on the cross. He died for us, because He loved us. He covered us with His love and in that separated us from sin and death and gave us life. If we struggle with negative or destructive thoughts against other people, we should not ask God to remove the thoughts, but ask Him to increase our capacity to love. He is the only one who can fill you with pure love. If you have not yet felt His pure love running through your veins, I ask you to sit with Him and ask Him to fill you with his love. Ask Him for an experience of His love. Ask Him every day until you meet Him in that place of pure love and joy. God delights in us and His desire and love is for us. Don’t settle for anything less.

“and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:5

“so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-21

Amazing song: Be my love

Picture credit: favim