Love and be loved
There may be a time in your life, and it may even be now, when you find yourself not feeling very loving. You may feel like there is no love in your heart left to give. You have given it all away and it has been corrupted by the pigs of this world, by the pains and disappointments you have encountered in life. You may feel far away from love today...
But I have to remind you, that if you don't feel very loving, maybe you are not letting yourself be loved. Are you lovable? Are you being loved by Jesus? Because friend, he wants to love you and when God loves you, his love transforms your life- it rewrites your character, personality, everything about it.
We can only love others.. as much as we accept the love of Jesus. We can only be as loving as much as our love for God. And that is because friends, God is the ultimate source of love, the ultimate lover. We learn what it means to truly love from Him: a giving, self-sacrificing, you-first, kind of love. His love is transformative. His love is chain breaking, it's freedom giving, it's anxiety-crushing, it's hope producing, it is a good, deep, and plentiful kind of love.
When you experience love, especially His love- the real love, it changes you.
There are many counterfeit lovers and loves in this world. Love of sexual gratification. Love of lust. Love of impulsivity. Love of adrenaline. Love of self. Love of self gratification. Love of the body. Love of intelligence, money, popularity, achievement, productivity.
These fake loves can make it hard to experience God's love when we are filling our hearts with them. The Bible writes that His people have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water and exchanged them for God's wells of the living water (Jeremiah 2). He invites us to experience His love instead of the loves of this world. "To taste and see that the Lord is good." (Psalm 34:8).
As Max Lucado writes "God loves you. Personally. Powerfully. Passionately. Others have promised and failed. But God has promised and succeeded. He loves you with an unfailing love. And his love- if you will let it-can fill you and leave you with a love worth giving."
"By this, all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:15