God is love.
What is your definition of love? Is it based on your feelings, your emotions, your mind, your intelligence, your flesh, and/or your strength? If God is love, are not mercy, grace, and justice part of what we know to be His amazing character? In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul defines in maturity order the attributes and characteristics of love.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
I believe the main reason we don’t understand God, is that we do not fully understand love. God’s image of love is first pictured to us as children through our parents. For example, the discipline (justice) love of our father and the merciful love of our mother. As we mature, we get another glimpse of God’s image of love through our relationships. Later, God continues to grow us in His image when we become parents and see another side of His accessible, unfailing, ubiquitous, everlasting love. Sadly, I believe that is where most of us stop pursuing love.
Love is a life-long, daily, second-by-second, heartbeat-by-heartbeat pursuit. It should be our passion in life. Jesus said in John 17 “3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” To know true love is an eternal pursuit of seeking God and His Son through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit that lives in everyone who has received Jesus Christ.
We can not limit our love to just relatives and friends. We must mature our love to reach out and accept what we do not understand. We can not limit our love to conform to the world’s definition. We must learn to give grace and love to our enemies so that they might see the image of God in us.
There is an old adage “The Devil works with idle hands.” Boredom and slothfulness are enemies to our faith. They allow our minds to wander in directions that usually require repentance and cleansing to get back to the grace of God. I believe there’s always someone who needs prayer, there’s always someone who needs help, there’s always someone who needs love, there’s always someone who needs Jesus. A lot of the time — it is us. I believe that the blessing of ministering comes more to the minister than those being ministered too.
