Love is Everything

"Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love"

Madeleine L'Engle

When I look through the Bible, I see one common theme, Love. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, from creation to new creation, through all the ups and terrible downs lived in this world, love flows through them all. Sometimes it's harder to see then others; sometimes it looks like everything is falling apart and there is no evident love visible; and sometimes love is present abundantly, but I'm convinced love has always and will always be there to save, comfort, forgive, and give hope. So many times we lose sight of the love that was given to us. I know I do. I get so apathetic, distracted, and frustrated that I seem to begin not learning anything. And then I realize that I have forgotten about love, I go back to communion with my Lord, and my heart is completely changed. In this all-encompassing post, I am going to go through 3 basic points about how love is everything to us and should be everything from us.

God loved us!
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life"

John 3:16

This verse is the most popular verse in and out of Christianity and yet all too often it becomes skipped over. For God so loved the world, the sinners, You and me, everyone! That he gave his only Son. He separated Himself from His son as He took the sins of the world upon himself taking my death penalty that I deserved. THAT IS LOVE. I have to constantly come back to that because it is all too often to skip over that due to it's over use. But everything hinges on that act of love. Even now as I think about it, my mind is blown. I don't deserve that. I definitely don't comprehend it. All those stars in the sky: yeah, He created them out of His love for me to see His glory and majesty; All those microscopic molecules holding everything together, He created them out of His love for me to show me His power and perfection; All those laws He gave to govern were created out of His love for me to show me His grace and holiness; That one act of dying on the cross was for me to see His amazing love and forgiveness and for me to fall on my knees and worship Him for everything!

We love Him
"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment"

Mark 12:30

I touched on this a little in the last part because as I sat their looking at God's love for me, I couldn't contain bursting out my love for Him. And that's exactly as it should be. When you grasp that God loves you, you love God. David loved the Lord as he searched out for God in every moment. You can see it over and over throughout his psalms that he constantly searched and found God's love in everything and then reciprocally shouted out in love for God. This is the most important thing we can do! It is the first commandment for a reason because without a love for God, all other love becomes futile. It becomes an act of work. Without love for Him, everything we do is nothing, but with love for Him, everything we do seems like nothing in the scope of all He did for us.

We love others
"And the second, like it, is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, There is no other commandment greater than these."

Mark 12:31

"By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another"

John 13:35

As we live our lives, we are to take the love we are given and give it out. Love our neighbors, Love one another, Love our friends, Love our enemies. As 1 Corinthians 13 point out, everything we do should be out of love. Talking to friends or strangers about the gospel is to love them enough to want them to know the love we have. I heard this quote from my roommate that convicted me a lot: "When we die and become a part of Christ's Kingdom in Heaven, I don't think we're going to miss worldly obsessions like college football and video games and sex and money. I think we're going to feel the absence of those who we loved, just not enough to tell them about the truth of Jesus." We love because we want them to know the truth, because we don't want to feel their absence after this life. Every serving act of humility and anonymity, every word spoken in grace and truth, every rebuke given in caring, should be with this motivation, based off of our love for God, which is based off how much God loves us!

Let us realize God's infinite love for us, Let us glorify Him out of our thankful hearts that love Him, and let everything we do while on this earth be an act of loving Him and loving others.

Love is everything!