LOVE is one of the most used words in the English dictionary. It is the one word that every man in this world would have said. It is both the most used and abused word in English. We all tend to say this a lot in our lives but how often do we really mean the word LOVE? In the King James Version of the Bible, love is mentioned 310 times, 131 times in the Old Testament and 179 times in the New Testament. Although we hear the word love in every Sunday sermon we don’t really understand the true meaning of this word. In this blog, I will be talking about 1. God’s love 2. Your love
God’s Love
The God we serve, Jehovah is full of love and in fact we can call himself as love for he sent his one and only son JESUS who is the complete representation of LOVE. When Jesus was on this world he showed love and only love. He preached and walked a life of love. He was and is the perfect example of love in flesh. All of us are very familiar with the blockbuster movie, Avengers: Endgame. The whole marvel Avengers infinity war and endgame is based on the concept of the five stones that hold in them the most powerful forms of energy. The movie clearly explains how the one with the stone becomes the most powerful being in the whole of universe. As you are reading this you would probably wondering why I am talking about the avengers and the stones, well it is for you must know that every person in this world has one form of energy that’s way more powerful than all those 5 stones combined and that is; THE LOVE OF GOD Many- a-times we fail to realize the fact that we hold in us the key to every problem we face. The love god is so powerful that it can shake anybody, any situation, any problem and crush it down to powders. It is this “love of God” that saved you and me and billions like us in this world for generations and generations to come. The power in the love of god is not like financial or man power but it so much different. It changes the whole state of the person who accepts the love of God and lets it operate in his or her life. Let me explain the power in the love of God with the classic parable that Jesus says about the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32. Let me move to the part where the son comes back to the father and asks of him to be a servant and not his son.
The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. Luke 15:21-24
Here we see how the son says to the father to just take him as his servant. But the most important part is how the father responds to the son’s request. The father does not even care about what the son has to say, he is just overjoyed of the fact that his son has returned and the father says to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. We see the heart of the father and how much love he carries in his heart that is unconditional and does not care about where he was or what he did. In the same way our God is so much more loving and is just waiting to change your present state as you come to him for his love. He just longs to share his love with you. His love has the power to change you completely and just transform you in a moment. The prodigal son was just rags and pieces when he came to the father but the love of the father transformed him to be like a king on the throne. Similarly our God is waiting to change your state and lift you up to heights you would have never seen. For all this to happen all you have to do is surrender to his love and just let his love take over in your life. You will see the change the LOVE OF GOD does to your life.
Your Love
When we talk about love from the bible it is mostly about the love of GOD. Very rarely do we talk about the love that we are to show to the father for all that he has done in our lives and for who he is in our lives. This blog is about the love that we are to show to the king of kings and lord of lords of the universe. Why I stress so much on the love we show to God is because of the fact that one of the 2 laws of the New testament plainly is to love God.
This is the greatest command, but how do we actually follow it ? Well the answer lies in two verses in the bible – John 14:15 and 21 –
If you love me , you will keep my commandments. & Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.
These two verses tell us the same thing. The two verses say that if we love god we will obey his commandments and if we keep his commandments that means we love him. It’s the same thing told in two different ways. This means that LOVE & OBEDIENCE are hand in hand. This means that we cannot separate love and obedience. If we love God we will automatically obey God and if we obey God we will automatically love God. From these two verses we get the answer to ”how to love God?” its pretty simple- just keep obeying all that is written in his word as he is the word so all that is written in the word I equivalent to the words that come from the mouth of God.
But what we truly have to ponder into is the sentence after that-“and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”. We would have heard some people say to us “you say that you love God but see what you do”. Well it is in those situations that we make the mistake of letting God down through our actions. Here we see Jesus saying that if we really love God and keep his commandments then He will manifest himself in the one who loves him. Most of the times we fail to manifest Jesus in all that we do. But we still say that we love God like the example that I quoted earlier. But Jesus says,
The checkpoint to the assurance of your love towards God is whether you manifest Jesus in all that you do.
As you are reading this, can I encourage you to check yourself and see whether you manifest God in things you do and ask God to help you love him for who he is and for what he has done. your love towards him decides your love towards others. As His love increases in. You will automatically start showing love to others. You don’t have to push it. It will just flow out of you if you have it in you.
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