Everybody talks about love but when is it real?
"Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth" 1 John 3:18.
DEAR CHILDREN
The Apostle John uses the affection of a father beseeching his children to correct actions. It is not an insult for the apostle to refer to the church as children. Jesus himself said unless we turn and become as a "little child we will not see the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3.LET US NOT
The instruction starts with the negative, "do not." Sometimes we have to approach change in the negative first and decide to stop doing this or that. There is a way that we should not love and we should resolve to not love in the wrong ways.LOVE
The love illustrated in the Bible is not simply emotional, like affection, but it is always sacrificial and giving. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son..." John 3:16.
WORD OR SPEECH
This is the kind of love we are not to practice. They say talk is cheap. God's love for us was not only talk but actions. He saw our need for a savior and sent his Son to die to take our sin's punishment.You can have kind loving words and you may mean them but if you fail to follow through with them or make them real by your actions then the lie of your actions outweighs your words.
There is another idea of loving in your speech that is even worse; they are loving words that were never true to begin with, these words of love were never meant to be more than words.
BUT WITH ACTIONS
We need to live out our words and be doers of love not just talkers of love. This is real love. We are each one of us surrounded by people with all kinds of needs; we need to engage them and become those who meet the needs we see around us.
AND IN TRUTH
This may be the hardest part since our hearts are so deceptive, we find ourselves second-guessing our motives. We must be sincere and honest.
If God so loves people so much that he gave his son for their sins then we must also love others the same way. We must love people in a real way of meaningful actions; the world needs it more than ever, and our fulfillment depends on it too.
If you do not have God in your life then you are missing the essential relationship that empowers us to truly love; to find out more about having the love of God in your life see my other blog.
