Relationships

October 7, 2017

Devotions:

          Life is about relationships and relationships are based on love, the God kind of love.  Our first relationship is with God. He is the source of love.  The Old Testament saints were required to love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, but they could not. We cannot generate the God kind of love. The God kind of love comes out of our hearts and is created in response to our understanding His love for us. The more we understand His love for us the more His love is shed abroad in our hearts. In no other religion is there a demonstration of the Creator's love for His creation, the kind of love that selflessly sacrifices Himself for His creation.

        In 1 John 4:20,21 John tells us that we demonstrate our love for God by loving our brother. Jesus said in Matthew 5 that to be like God we must love the unloveable.  We can only do this with God's love in us. Our flesh does not want to love with this kind of love. Our flesh wants to retaliate and get revenge when attacked physically or verbally. It takes the love of God in our hearts to respond to an attack with, Father forgive them.  This was Jesus' response and He dwells in us.  As we walk in the love of God we are walking in the fullness of God and are then doing the work of God. 

        We are not to condemn nor condone but to demonstrate God's love to our brothers and to the world.  Sin will steal, kill and destroy.  We are to be the light to their freedom and the path is love.  Love humbles itself for the sake of the object loved.  Only in this relationship with each other can we come into the fullness of our salvation.

        “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”

‭‭1 Peter‬ ‭4:8‬ ‭ESV‬‬