Live to Love part 1
I think, if anything, this is the main thrust of my ministry. The connection between living and loving. And how you can't do one without the other because they are not just connected... they are, in fact, the same thing. It's kind of like how love is giving, right? You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. Well, in an even more excellent way, you CAN'T live without loving because to live IS to love. And to love is to live. Look at Luke 4:3-4, "And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." And, let's be real, do you think Jesus COULDN'T turn the stone into bread? Of course He could. He had no problem turning water in wine, right? That wasn't the point. The point was that the devil was missing the point. Like we saw in our last Rant series, the mind controls the body, not the other way around. Heaven affects earth. You need bread, sure, but that by itself won't get it done. We live by every word of God. And what, pray tell, is the Word of God? Jesus. Love. We live because He lives in us. We live because He loves us. And we live BY loving each other. By receiving and releasing the love of God. Letting what God has put into us come out, by knowing and believing that it's in there. By breathing it in and breathing it out. By filling ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with. What I'm trying to say is--and this is a lyric from a song-- "What you got if you ain't got love? The kind that you just want to give away..." What are you doing with your life if you're not loving people? To me, that's not "living." There are a lot of people out there just going through the motions. Just barely surviving. And, listen, sometimes that's about all you can do. I get that. But God is always with us. Which means love is always with us. We live by His Word. And when we let His Word be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path... that's when we go from merely surviving... to thriving! That's when we begin to enjoy the ride. That's when things get real. And real exciting. Real good. Real happy. In a rather unfortunate turn of events, it seems as though the religious world has turned "happy" into a four letter word. "Oh, he preaches a happy gospel, you can't trust him." The gospel is the good news! The ultimate truth of the universe that God is love and He loves you! If that doesn't make you happy, I don't know what will! God's love for us is everything. We literally can't live without it. Remember the verse about being crucified with Christ? We died when He died... and we live BECAUSE He lives. In us, and through us, and as us. We live because of His live. If you want to experience Jesus's abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love to the fullest... it comes from letting HIM live His own life in us (one more time), and through us, and as us. Letting God love us and then loving Him back by loving each other. That's what it means to truly live. If you want to live, you have to love. Because to live IS to love, and to love is to live. They aren't just connected. They are the same thing!