"What's Love?

  How difficult it is for us to grasp the love of God. Yes, it is very difficult. We don't understand His love very well. We make the love of God a sentimental swooning toward us. God's love is so grand and high that words cannot express it. One thing for sure, God's love understands that sin gets in the way between He and us and if we aren't humble in dealing with our sins before Him, His love must deal with us! Sin destroys everything God stands for and He will not tolerate it!

  We come to passages like I John 3:16: "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." That should teach us something, right? Why do we have such difficulty in allowing God's love to shape us? Why are so many of us who have failed over and over afraid of God's love? We continue to read in I John 4:9-10: "By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 

  Something incredible and astonishing has taken place in the coming and the dying of Jesus Christ. We speak of His death each and every week in the Supper but do we really find ourselves partaking, fellowshiping Him in that Supper? You wouldn't know it by the way some treat His love in loving His brethren! Others cannot accept His love because of their personal guilt. They simply cannot get beyond their failures. Love is turned away in our hearts. What are we to do? Maybe we should spend more time listening, LISTENING to the Lord speaking through His word rather than filling our minds, hearts and mouths with religious chatter!!! We seem too well versed in verses we won't let speak to our souls and we end up with a bunch of empty, meaningless talk. It leaves us with little power to grasp hold of and little power in our lives!

  Bottom line, the dying of Jesus is not just an act of dying! It is a redeeming act, an atoning act and a sacrificial death! Let's stop taking the love of God as seen in the death of Jesus and lowering it to some sentimental act. There is too much sugary indulgence that falsely goes under the heading of God's love. Why do you think we are having trouble converting people? Too much talk on love is about our happiness and little on God's holiness!! The cross is the center of God's love and without that, we become a people that is bent on a relationship of personal delight with little care and concern for the needs and wishes of the One showing us His love!