Who do you love enough that you would give your life for? Of course our children are probably the first people that come to our mind....our parents, brothers, sisters, spouses...all the people we feel the closest too perhaps? Love is a strong emotion that would allow us to give our very life to save another if we had to. But even our love has a limit. I mean, would you die for your neighbor....or the person you see at the store a few times a week? What about an old friend from school? And then lastly, would you give your own life to save the life of a stranger?
The reason I bring this up is because today God really put love on my heart. If you have fallen in love then you know the feelings that love can create in your heart. If you have close family, then you know the feeling of love that family brings to you. If you have close friends, then you know that even that is a different kind of love. To us, we have degrees of love, and as we step further down our "ladder of love" in our life, the degree in which we would express that love changes. However, could you imagine if it didn't. What if there was no such thing as "degrees of love" and the love you felt for your child was the exact same kind of love you felt for every other person you ever met. Hard to imagine huh? Now take that very thought and put a name to it....It's God. The very idea that God loves you as much as He does me...as much as He does your neighbor...as much as He does the criminal in sitting in a prison somewhere....His love has no end, no limit. Now take my first question and think about it again. We tend to show love based on how we are loved back, but what if we didn't. Would you die for someone who didn't even love you back....or didn't even claim to like you? Would you allow the life of your child to be taken to save the life of that person? Again, this is God. Imagine a love so strong, a love so perfect, a love so deep that you would die, or allow your child to die, for someone who didn't even recognize your existence. For someone who didn't even care that you did this for them.....And this is the world we live in. God the Father sent His son Jesus to die for us just to open the opportunity for us to love Him back...knowing there would be some that wouldn't. I don't know about you, but I can't even wrap my head around a love like that.
Today as you move through your day, if you feel alone, if you feel like your not loved in a way that you would like to be, or if you even feel a sense of disconnect....stop and think about the love that is being offered to you. Jesus felt real pain, Jesus died a real death...And on the day that this took place, YOU were on His mind. If you have ever doubted that then please know that is nothing more than the enemy. The last thing satan wants you to realize is how much you are actually loved. He knows the danger to his existence if this world could actually realize how much God loves them. And today that could start with you! The moment that kind of love sinks in....it also comes out of you. You will begin to see others the way God sees them... and their pain will become more real to you...their need for Him will become more real to you.....and your ability to show them HIS love will become more real to you. Each and every person that crosses your path today was worth dying for to God.....just as much as you and I were.
I want to leave you with 3 powerful pieces of scripture as you allow the message of love to sink in today:
John 15:13 - Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
1 Corinthians 16:14 - Let all that you do be done with love.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 - Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...
Redefine love in your life today. Not as the world would define it, but as God would.
God, thank You for Your love. There has been and never will be anything like that love You offer to us. Today, allow the message of Your love to sink deep into our hearts and be reflected to every person we meet. Heal broken hearts, mend broken relationships and restore people to the wholeness that you created them to be.....all through love. In Jesus name, Amen
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