When I became a follower of Jesus I learned about our Creator’s commandments to “ love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-37)
That sure sounded hard! How do people love God, someone you don’t physically see?
For that matter, how do we genuinely love anyone? Sure we love those who love us, but generally people have a tendency to hurt each other.
We talk about love, but where does it come from?
I am on a journey to find it. Not with a suitcase and an airplane, but there is baggage and a path. It is the life long path of learning to believe that God is good and that he loves us, no matter what.
1 John 4:19 tells us that we love because God first loved us. Really? Too many experiences, if left to my own interpretation, tell me love is fleeting at best.
But then I dared to trust the promises of our Maker from the Bible. On the outside I had a sassy, “You say it’s true. . .so show me!!!,” attitude. But deep down inside I was truly hungry. The underlying cry of my heart was, “I am desperate and I need to know this love you promised, or life is not worth it!”
Then it began. I met Jesus. When I did, pounds of baggage full of my emotional and spiritual wounds, left me. The path has often been three steps forward and a step or two back, but I am still learning to drop my baggage of wounds, learning to trust the promises, experiencing the genuineness of the love of God.
I find myself increasingly at peace and increasingly able to love family, friends, neighbors and strangers. Even enemies who do the unthinkable like Orlando experienced last week. I find I have compassion that can only be explained by the supernatural presence of the genuine love of God.
As we grow on this path we begin to be people who others are attracted to. Friends and strangers alike sense we have found a source of peace and love that they too have been hungering for.
Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35
This is how the Kingdom of God grows. We let God love us so we can love others. As we introduce them to our source of infinite love they too are able to love others and more people come into the Kingdom.
It takes the pressure off us to be or do something we do not have the power to do. And it is a lot more fun than trying to do what we can never succeed at on our own! We open up and let God’s love saturate us to overflowing.
Abba, saturate me to overflowing with your supernatural love, for your glory!
God’s love. Pure. Simple. Adoring. Embracing. Forever.