Loved part 5
Love. It's the most important thing in life. Because it IS life. To live is to love and to love is to live. According to 1 John 3:14, "...He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." No love... no life. It's that simple. But here's the tricky part: You can't give what you don't have. And you can't earn a gift. So if you're trying to "get" love you're doomed to fail. The only way TO love is to know that you ARE loved. To receive and release the gift you've been given. To let the Holy Spirit--the Spirit of truth, our love receptor--lead and guide us into all truth. To let ourselves BE loved by God. Because that's where it comes from. It comes from God. It comes from inside. We love, because He first loved us. The circumcision made without hands--the circumcision of the HEART--cut away the flesh of human effort (of trying to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow) and revealed God's heart beating with love in our chests. When we understand our true identity, that we are Jesus--God in the flesh, love in a body--then we will stop looking for love in all the wrong places and we will start looking within. Filling ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with. We will stop trying to get something and we will start experiencing, and enjoying, what we've got. We will stop abiding in death and we will begin to truly live! But here's the question: How do we make that switch? From trying to get... to giving what we've got. Well, we have to KNOW what we've got. We have to BELIEVE it. And then we can receive it and release it. Receive it BY releasing it. Look at Isaiah 12:3, "Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation." And connect it to John 7:38 in the NLT, "Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, 'Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.'" The wells of salvation are WITHIN. Within our HEARTS. Where else could love comes from? And knowing and believing that love is in our hearts--knowing and believing that we ARE loved--produces joy. What else could it produce? Love is the desire of our heart. And when we delight ourselves in Him we "get" (or experience) that desire. Because, again, He IS love. Delighting ourselves in love allows us to enjoy and experience it. And the way to delight in it--the point of drawing it out of the well of your heart--is to give it away. To share it. To live by loving. To love by living. To be Christ-centered, which means to be people-centered. To love God, with the love that He loves us with, by loving each other. To pass from death unto life by letting love in, and out. To walk in newness of life by walking by faith. Faith, which comes from hearing. And hearing from the Word (Jesus, love) of God. A life of love is a life of faith. Because hurting people hurt people, but loved people love people. You can't give what you don't have. And you can only give what you do have. Guarding your heart isn't about closing it down because you've been hurt, and you don't want to be hurt again. Guarding your heart is about keeping it open. To love. So that in being loved, you can be LOVE. You can let what's inside come out. You can experience it, and enjoy it, by giving it away. By sharing it. By letting your light shine. By loving others with the love of God that you already have inside!