Be Loved, and Love

Over the past few months, God has been teaching me about love, specifically His love and how I should love others. His love is amazing, unending, and unchanging. And He wants me to love the people around me with HIS love. In our society we seem to think that first we must love others, and then we will be loved. “Love and be loved.”

 

God, however, is the opposite. He beckons to us to come to Him and drink in His love. First be loved, and then love others. We can’t truly love others until we have the love of God in us. Trying to love others from within ourselves is like trying to pour water out of an empty pitcher. You might get a drop or two, but not enough to fill a glass and not even close enough to quench your thirst. We can’t love the way God wants us to, not on our own. We have to soak in God’s love, knowing and remembering that His love is deep and perfect, before we can begin to love others.

 

I read this in a devotional called Daughters of the King a few days ago, and it caught my attention:

“The love of God is deep. His love is wide. His love is high and it is long. God’s love is not far-fetched or something that you cannot totally wrap your heart around. It is not incomprehensible or unable to be fully received. Rather, it is something that God intended for us to comprehend, to eagerly take, to seize, and possess as our very own. We receive it into our lives, so that we can freely give it away. If you’re not full of the knowledge that God loves you, you won’t have anything to pour out into others. If you only believe God loves you when you perform well, and only when you live right, you won’t have anything to pour out on those who aren’t performing well or those who aren’t living right. What you receive for yourself is what you will ultimately give away. In a world that struggles with the idea of a loving God, amid all of the destruction and evil, you must have a firm understanding of God’s love. You must be rooted and grounded in it, so that you can effectively share His love with others.”

 

“I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.” Colossians 1:12-14 (AMP)”

 

We must be ROOTED in God’s love. It must be our foundation. If it is, then and only then will we be able to effectively share God’s love with the people around us.

 

To be totally honest, I have a hard time loving people sometimes. Some days it is just really hard, and it’s easier to go through the day in my own little world. I tend to have a “grit my teeth and love” type of mentality. But God is slowly and surely chipping away at that tendency in my life, reminding me and teaching me that I can’t effectively love others without Him. God used a book by Max Lucado, A Love Worth Giving: Living in the Overflow of God’s Love, to really start whispering to me about His love for me, and to show me that the way I love others needs to change.

 

Lucado writes:

“Could it be we are missing a step? Could it be that the first step of love is not toward them [the people in our lives] but toward Him? Could it be that the secret to loving is receiving? You give love by first receiving it. ‘We love, because He first loved us’ (1 John 4:19 NASB). Long to be more loving? Begin by accepting your place as a dearly loved child. ‘Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us’ (Eph. 5:1-2 NIV).” (Lucado, p. 9)

 "God loves you. Personally. Powerfully. Passionately. Others have promised and failed. But God has promised and succeeded. He loves you with an unfailing love. And His love—if you will let it—can fill you and leave you with a love worth giving. So come. Come thirsty and drink deeply.” (Lucado, p. 14)

 God loves me. And He loves you. Deeply. Greatly. In a way that no one else has or ever will.

 Drink in His love.

Be drenched in the downpour of it.

Soak it in.

And then, give His love away.

 

Because God’s love is the only love worth giving.