Monday 2 Apr 2012

Monday Reading: 1 John 3:18-21

Key Verse: 1 John 3:18
18  My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

Devotion:
I think one of the hardest things that I had to learn was to love in deed and in truth rather than just saying so. It is easy to say that you love something or someone after you have said it a few times, but to really love someone and to be able to show it is not as easy as that. Love is something that my mother showed me in the beginning and something that she made sure that I grew up with. Taking that love and expanding on it as I learned about God’s love was then the next logical step. Unfortunately for me I took a few too many wrong steps along the way before I figured that out!

Just because God has given us the truth and shown us what we should be doing, does not mean that we are going to get things right the first time round unless we are willing to take time out and spend it with Him. But, just like Adam and Eve, many of us want to take the fast route to find out about love and we seek out the short cuts so that we can get there sooner than the others around us.

But love does not work like that because love, as I have said before, is not something that can be rushed; we must be patient. God continues to show us that we do need to listen to Him and that we have to have patience in our listening. If we try to jump ahead of ourselves we may well find that we fall flat on our faces as we try to shortcut things that God has laid down for us to follow. God wants us to be able to understand why we should love Him and not just to say that we love Him. He wants us to know it in our hearts and not just to say that we believe it.

Love needs to be real. Jesus displayed a very real and very personal love towards us in what He did for us; it was no small thing that He laid down His life on that cross so that we would understand just how much He does love us. If He had not completed His task of going through with that, then we would have never been able to understand His love and therefore His grace and mercy too. Can you imagine knowing that you would have to go and do something terrible by the end of the week just so that others would get to know that you cared about them? Could you imagine throwing away everything that you had in the world just to show someone that you loved them? Could you imagine emptying your bank account just to say “yes, I do love you”? If you can begin to imagine that, then you can begin to imagine just how much God does love us!

Points to Ponder:
Would you be willing to give it all up?

Do you know Jesus has already given it up for you?