Jesus' Love!

Good Morning! I just wanted to share with you all this morning my desire to love like God loves us. As my daily reading plan has come to the book of 1 John, I have received so much conviction and have learned so much. I have read these scriptures so many times and have even gotten daily encouragement from a sister of mine that just recently went through a study of 1 John from Good Morning Girls. She shared daily of how God was speaking to her through the study and even encouraged and shared scriptures from it daily, but I didn't receive from it then what I am getting from it now that God has put it in my path. Don't get me wrong, I get something from every devotion, encouragement e-mail, bible reading, etc. that I read or receive but it may not always be the same every time. You know how they say that you can read something a hundred times and get a different point of view or meaning from it every time? Well, God is showing me just how true this statement is.

1 John 3:7-21 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

As I was talking to someone last night on the phone, I was sharing with her of how God says that we are to love our "brothers and sisters" (this means everyone that comes from God) like he loves us. No matter what they do, how they act, our opinion of them, what we don't like about them, etc. If we were only to love those the ones that we thought done no wrong then we wouldn't have anyone to love and wouldn't have anyone to love us. We get so caught up on our opinions about others and how we feel about them that we forget that we are just the same as that person. We may not have the same "issues" or "problems" that they have, but we do have our own. It may be in a different form or way, but according to God it is all the same to him. So why would we not love someone just because we thought they were doing wrong or because we didn't like the way they were living? I was very convicted because I have said so many times that I can love someone but doesn't mean that I have to be there friend or like them. That's not true. What if God told us that he would love us but he didn't have to have a relationship with us because of something we done wrong? We would not like that at all. God says to love just like he does. God loves us even when we do wrong, he forgives and washes it clean and he sees it as it have never happened. Oh how much better the world would be if we could just do this. I want a relationship with God and oh how devastated I would be if God said that he would love me, but wouldn't have a relationship with me because of my actions. Even as I am writing this blog, I am getting more and more convicted as God is speaking to me right now. I say so much that I love someone but in all honesty, I don't love them like God loves us like he commands me to. He loves me so much that he sent his son to die on the cross for my sins. This is the love that we are supposed to have for EVERYONE. So, no I don't love these people like God commands me to do because some of these people, it would be hard to even consider doing what God done to show his love for me.

It is my truest deepest desire to start loving everyone regardless of their actions or my thoughts or opinions about them. After all, God is the only judge and it's not my place to judge them anyway and I am just as wrong as they are if I judge them. Those people that we claim to love but don't have to have a relatioship might be the people that will only see the light of Jesus through us. How do we expect them to change and do better, if they don't see the light of Jesus in christians? This blog is directly to myself this morning, but hoping that you will find encouragement through it.

Striving to love like Jesus,
Becca