You are created by God to receive love and give love. This
article explores different aspects of this purpose of God.
You can Experience God’s Love
God is love. He loves us with His everlasting love
(Jer.31.3). God’s love manifested to us when Jesus died for sinners. God’s love
is self-sacrificing, self-giving, unconditional and unchanging. God’s love for
you is portrayed in Luke 15 in the story of a loving Father who ran to his homecoming
son with compassion, embraced him, kissed him, gave him a new dress and
prepared a great meal for him. He forgave his son’s sin and accepted him
unconditionally. God is full of love, mercy and grace which He shows to the undeserved.
To nurture the love of God in your heart, Paul encourages us
to pray that God’s love may increase in your heart (Eph. 3.14-19). God has been
pouring this great love into your heart through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5.5). You
can feel it, experience it, know it and grow in it. Being open and sensitive to
the Holy Spirit will help you to allow Holy Spirit to pour more of God’s love
in you. Nurture a heart that is filled with God’s love.
Love God
The greatest and the first commandment of God is that “you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Jesus asked Peter
three times that “Do you love me?” This is the heart of God for everyone – you
should love God. Intensity of this intimacy and love is revealed when God calls
you as His son, friend, bride and brother. You are expected to be a lover of God.
To love God, nurture a heart that longs for God like the
Psalmist (Ps.42) – a heart that is passionately seeking, longing and thirsting
for a face to face experience with God (v.2). As you develop such a heart, you
choose to find time to sit at the feet of Jesus like Mary (Luke 10:39).
Spending time with Jesus in private becomes more enjoyable and the best part of
your life. Further, you will give your precious things to Jesus wholeheartedly
like Mary who anointed Jesus with the costly oil (John 11:2). For Mary, Jesus
was her supreme value.
As you grow in loving
Jesus, you develop a strong intimacy with God. Jesus becomes everything in your
life. You value Jesus more than his blessing, your ministry or anything else.
As you grow in intimacy with God, your life will be saturated with the thick
presence of God. The presence of God becomes an experiential reality in your
life. As you encounter God’s presence so intimately, your heart will be continuously
renewed and transformed. You become more like Jesus and the fruits of the Holy
Spirt manifest in you greatly. You do not need to strive for it, they just
manifest.
God is interested in a loving relationship with you, not in
a religion. Religion is all about doing spiritual things without a heart to heart
relationship with God or a face to face experience with God. David reflected
about this in Ps. 51.16-17: “you will not delight in sacrifice...you will not
be pleased with a burnt offering. The
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart…” Jews searched
for the eternal life in scriptures but they did not search for Jesus, the source
of eternal life (John 5:39-40). Likewise, do not replace a heartfelt intimacy
with God and the love of God with performance-legalism oriented spiritual
activities.
Love Others
The second greatest commandment of God to us is to love
others. We must love one another (1Jn. 4.7). If you do not love, you do not
know God who is love (John 4.8). As you abide in love, you abide in God (1Jn.
4.16). God asks you to love your wife, children, parents, enemies and everyone.
God wants love as the foundation of all our relationships.
To nurture love for others, firstly, fill your heart with God’s
love and intimacy with God. This brings tenderness to your heart. It increases
your capacity to love others and build an intimate relationship with others. Secondly,
keep switching on love and stop switching off love. Bitterness, hurts and unforgiveness
can switch off love in you and destroy your capacity to love and develop
intimacy. The path to switch on love especially in hurting situations: “Love is
patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It
does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not
rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor.13:4-8).
Without love, what you have is not a gain (1Cor. 13.3). Love
is eternal and greatest of all. Love is the bottom line of everything. God
calls us to build a kingdom of love – families, churches and relationships filled
with love. Let us nurture a life that is consumed by love.
Note: I had written this article for The Aurora magazine which is published by NLF, Kochi. It has published in The Aurora, Issue 2, October, 2018.
Further Readings:
A book about love that I like:
Other further resources (not endorsing):