Love
The essence of our calling is summed up in a single word: Love. In a world that has romanticized and sexualized love, the church has a beautiful opportunity to show the love of God Himself. Yet, each local church must ask, “Have we confused being ‘nice’ or ‘neighborly’ for being truly loving? Do the people of our community see us as a loving people? Are we dependent upon the Spirit to live His loving fruit through us?”
What does Love in our lives look like? What if it looked like a Starbucks coffee shop?
Did you see the love of Christ here?
Here are the scriptures I will be looking at for the next few blogs.
Matt. 22:34–40; Luke 6:27–36; John 13:34–35, 15:9–17; Rom. 5:5–8, 13:8–10; Gal. 5:6, 13–14, 22; Eph. 3:14–19
And hope does not make us ashamed, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. For we yet being without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will with difficulty die for a righteous one, yet perhaps one would even dare to die for a good one. But God commends His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:5-8 MKJV)
Hope, hope in Jesus’ finished works. We know that all things work together for the good to those who love God. Even tribulation, because tribulation works in us to produce patience and patience helps us understand the experience of our tribulation and through the experience we find hope if we keep our minds on Christ while we go through the tribulation. Hope is our basic innate instinct that reaches out in vulnerability through our tribulation. Hope in Jesus is a sure thing. He always has our best in mind. We hold on to His loving kindness through tribulations and the outcome is faith or even a greater faith in Him. Hope, faith, and love… Truly these are the three greatest vulnerabilities that keep us in a positive faith based relationship with God and our neighbors. But we are told that out of these three, love is the greatest.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13 NKJV)
This is why we should not owe anything but love to one another. Love fulfills all the Ten Commandments.
What kind of love to you see in the video above, superficial?
In Christ,
Greg