For a while now, God has impressed upon my heart this statement: REDUCE ME TO LOVE.
‘’ 7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.’’
Without love we are nothing but a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Even if we give all we possess to the poor and surrender our bodies to the flames, but have not love, we gain nothing. Without love we cannot claim we love or know God talk less of loving another.
The love God desires you and I to be reduced to is not emotional but Agape-The God kind of love.
Emotional love is based on conditions –I can love you only if, when, except but God’s love expects nothing in return.
How often do we hear or even say ourselves,” I love you because you are beautiful;’’, "I love you because you take good care of me;" or "I love you just because you are fun to hang out with"?
We must not just love someone because they fulfill a condition we require.
Our measure of love for others determines the depths of our love and relationship with God. How I can I love an unseen God if I cannot first love the person next to me, the one I can see.Rom 5:5 God’s love is shed abroad in our heart so we may in return share it with as many as He places on our way.
God is love and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. We simply do His will when we begin to love. Love is the essence of WHO He is .1 John 4:9-18.
The love we must have is one that shows no partiality (Acts 10:34) because God does not show partiality nor is He a respecter of persons. The way we treat people who are in no position to offer us little or nothing in return shows just how much love there is within us. Love honours and respects everyone equally. It does not favor one above the other.
Love pulls us out of bondage and into freedom and liberty. Have you ever realized that when you hate someone,and are resentful, you are kind of imprisoned within yourself but when you love, such a peace erodes your heart?
Love completes and gives us a sense of fulfillment.Let us live life loving, it is a command. The essence of life is love; I pray you be reduced to love.
MY CONFESSION
Father, my desire is that you reduce me to love; teach me how to share the love You have shed abroad my heart with my neighbor so I can then learn to love you better….
Reduce me to a love not based on emotions or conditions but a love with no strings attached. Reduce me to a love that gives and does not withhold good when I am able to. Reduce me to a love that forgives and remembers no more. Reduce me to the God-kind of love in Jesus’ Name!
‘’Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked’’
Love and blessings!
© November 2009 Aminata A Dibassey.
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