Monthly Archives: March 2018

What is Love Part 5

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I am writing a series on love.  This next post is appears to be counter intuitive to love and God.  It is going to be hard to explain so please be patient.  An essential aspect for loving others and loving God is to love yourself.  This is not the attitude most of themselves when we are told that we are sinners and from this are made to feel bad about our self.   We should feel bad but after we repent we should change our opinion about our self.  After all Christ died on the cross for our sins and for us to be overcomers.

What does that love looks like.  We are all afraid to be too self involved or feel like we are enamored with our self.  This makes many people uncomfortable.  We need to see our self the way God sees us.   He loves us even with the sins we perform or sin when we don’t perform the actions that we are supposed to do.  He loves us so much that when we behave badly, He always gives us a solution to get back to the correct path.  Sometimes we feel so badly, we feel we don’t deserve it.  This is our self destructive nature is coming through.  Nothing good is exhibited when one is debasing himself.  We have a God with open arms ready to receive us.

Another reason to love our self is that people tend to judge other people based on our own outlook.  If we feel bad about our self, it makes it hard to feel good about other people.  If we love our self in a correct manner, then it makes it easier to love others.

What does it feel like to love our self in a correct way.  One way is the way we feel after we help another person out.  Another way is what we feel after we come out of an inspiring worship service or a great sermon.  Still another way is that feeling that we have when we think or do things with our good friends or our relatives that we feel close to.  These are examples.  To summarize, we feel good about our self is when we perform action that we were created for no matter how uncomfortable it may feel at the time.

As I said in my other posts on love, I don’t have the whole story.  I don’t know about your relationship with God.  After reading this you might have corrections to what I said or more information to add to what I said.  I never what to come between you and God and that is what is what would happen if this information is some how complete.  You need to enjoy God your self by talking to Him about these issues.  This will show you how much He loves you.

What is Love – Part 4

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Mat 22:40  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Jesus said this immediately after he said the two most important commandments was to love God and to love others.  This statement completes what was said.  The Bible contains the law and is completely written by Prophets.  So if somebody is trying to tell you something based on the Bible and it doesn’t contain love, then the person telling you this is a false teacher.  If you hear a sermon without love, then he is a false preacher.  Love has to be the basis for all activities centered around the Bible.

This should be a test indicating that it is a true message or not.  The other dimension of this statement is that you need to know what love is and what it is not.  Examples of this is

  1.  Accountability could either be an act of love or a means of controlling people.
  2. Criticism can either be an act of love or be frustrating to the other person.
  3.  There are other examples where the person you are associating with might have good intentions but results are harmful.

This is a short list on where using love with the right motives may be This part of the commandments require a special discernment from God to truly understand what this part of the commandment means.  When people try to teach you something or with your interactions with other people one needs direction and discernment from God.  The God of truth and love will tell you how true the message is.  He gives you discernment or place someone around you that can discern.

That is the final concept that I want to look at.  It is our interactions with other people which demonstrates our capacity to love.  To love God and to love others is hard to do.  It is especially hard to put on paper.  How do we do this when you can’t see him.  How do you love others when you see so much is wrong with them and they just irritate you.  Reading scripture and following  their advice is a good start.  Praying so be able to see is what God sees and to get God thoughts in you is a great start.  Reading God’s word is another part of the process.  Our interaction with people is the activity which requires the most repentance.

Just like every other part of this discussion of what love is, my mind is limited.  I don’t have all the answers or even all the questions.  It is important for each person to meditate on the different aspects of God’s love with respect to yourself.  Each person needs to spend time establishing your own relationship with God and with each other.  I would like to do that, but I can’t.  Whoops, I need to repent of that.