Love

The more I study love and the more I experience it's up's and downs in my own life, the more I see that it always involves great pain. All love, any love, in it's truest form, requires sacrifice. In first John we find an amazing passage that says

Dear friends, if God loved us that much, they we should love each other.
1 John 4:11

If God loved us "That much" enough to DIE for us. Who would you die for today of your friends and family? No really? Who? Who would you live for? Who's offense would you choose to look over despite the pain it's caused you in order to show a love like Christ? Who do we choose to forgive? (Which is what Jesus was doing on that cross) Who do we choose to show kindness to despite their indifference to our feelings? Who do we love through fire and through rain? Through the storms in life? Who do we SHOW love to through a drought in their compassion?

I want to learn to love like God did. I want to learn through my anger and disappointment. I want to learn to love by way of sacrifice and pain. Jesus did it. God does it every day as we turn our back on Him and pay attention to frivolous things instead of to His kingdom. I want to love my Savior the way I was created to love Him. And I want to love His people the way He did.

Love So Amazing, So Divine
Demands My Soul, My Life, My All

Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye.  Colossians 3:12-13