Living Loved

Have you ever found it hard to love? Is someone in your world hard to forgive? Is patience an endangered species? Is kindness a forgotten virtue? If so, let me remind you of a step - an essential first step. Living loved. 

Loving people isn't always easy. The vow breakers, truth benders. the money grabbers and backstabbers we meet, work with and marry. How do you love someone who is hard to love? Our typical strategy is to try harder. Conventional wisdom says that a lack of love implies a lack of effort, so we dig deeper, strain more. 

Could it be we are missing a step? Could it be that the first step of love is not toward them but toward Him? After all, you can't give what you don't have. You give love by first receiving it. "We love, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Long to be more loving? Begin by accepting your place as a dearly loved child of God. Want to learn to forgive? Then consider how you've been forgiven. Finding it hard to put others first? Think of the way Christ put you first. Need more patience? Drink from the patience of God.

Can't we love like this? Not without God's help we can't. A marriage saving love is not within us. Friendship preserving devotion cannot be found in our hearts. We need help from an outside source. A transfusion. Are you low on love? Down to your last dose of forgiveness? Scraping the bottom of the barrel of patience? You may be trying to give what you've never received. Remember, 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 let it - can fill you and leave you with a love worth giving. 

Ptr. Joseph Jo (PJ)

Calvary Chapel Dumaguete