Priorities part 5
If you want to live... you have to love. Period. Because to live IS to love and to love IS to live. They aren't just connected, they are the same thing. Look at 1 Peter 4:8, "And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins." Above all things... love. For love covers THE multitude of sins. Not "a" multitude. Not most. THE multitude. All. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, right? And that, by the way, was the cross. Before the cross... sin abounded. Then the Lamb of God came and took away the sin of the world. He who believes cannot sin. Sin is unbelief, so how could a believer sin? Jesus took sin (unbelief) away by giving us something (someONE, Himself, Love) to believe in. That's why faith is so important. The good fight of faith--laying hold of the gift of God that we've already been given, which is His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love--is the only fight we should be fighting. And laying hold doesn't mean getting something you haven't got. It means receiving what you have already been given. It means putting on what Jesus has already put on you--in the sense of sinking into it. In the sense of getting comfortable in it. In the sense of BEING who you are by ACCEPTING and EMBRACING who you are. Not trying to be someone you're not in order to get something you think you haven't got... but simply letting God love you and loving Him back by loving the people in your life. That the "above all." That's the priority. God and people. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. Letting God love you (receiving it) and then loving Him back by loving those you come into contact with (releasing it). That's what this life is for and that's how this life is experienced. We experience Jesus's life by letting Him live His own life in us, and through us, and as us. It's not about trying to live Jesus's life. Nobody can live Jesus's life except Jesus. For us--and this is so amazing and so glorious--there is Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Did you catch that? I died... yet I live. Because Christ lives in me. It's not me at all. It's the living God. The God who is love. God lives in me. Which means LOVE lives in me. Love isn't just what I do... it's who I am. And that makes love as a priority easy. Focusing on what's real. Focusing on what matters. Focusing on the only thing that matters. Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, right? The beginning and the end? Which means LOVE is the Alpha and Omega. It started with love and it (as much as something that is eternal CAN end) ends with love. Love is the first word on the subject and the final thing that there is to say. The beginning... the end... and everything in between. It's all about love. So make love your priority. If you want to feel love... love somebody. Love is giving. Don't worry about getting, just give what you've got. Let what's inside come out by knowing and believing that it's in there. Living and loving aren't just connected. They are the same thing!