Love

1 John 4:7-8 (TPT)

“Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him.  The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love.“

Love is an abstract concept. We use the word to describe many different levels of emotion. We love that new coffee shop on the corner. We love our pets. We love our favorite TV show. We love our family or our spouse. Love can mean anything from “we really enjoy” to actual love. Some of us will readily admit that we don’t even know what love really is. If you’ve never experienced love, it’s hard to have any concept of what it is.

But the Bible makes it very clear what love means. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul spells out all the characteristics of agape love. This is God’s love. It is unconditional and all-consuming love. It’s a love that will go any distance, pay any price, just for the chance to be near us and have a relationship with us. It’s a love that is far beyond anything we as humans can ever hope to feel or understand. So the truth is that we only really know anything at all about love because of our experience with God. If we keep God at a distance and treat Him as a nebulous possible higher power somewhere out there, then our experience with love is going to be very superficial and flawed. If we don’t believe in God at all, we would not know love except for what has been shown to us by other, broken humans. We know a love of limits, but we don’t know real love.

The only way to know real love is to know God. When we have an intimate, personal relationship with God, we come to know love in a way that we never experienced before because love is who God is. Our experience of God’s love in our own lives changes the way we express love to others. We have a deeper understanding of what it means to love and what it means to be loved, and we can’t help but pass that deeper awareness on to those around us. God’s love fills us up to overflowing and pours out of us onto the world around us. It’s God’s love pouring out of us that draws others to Him.

Father, I thank you that your love is not like mine. It isn’t fragile. It doesn’t break. It isn’t conditioned on what I can do for you. Your love, Father, is something else entirely. It is strong. It is deep. It is unconditional and never ending. There is nothing I could do to make you love me more than you love me right now. There is nothing I could do to make you love me any less. Your love is sacrificial, agape love. Father, today I pray for a deeper, clearer understanding of your love and your character. Give me a bigger picture of who you are. Pour your agape love into me until I overflow onto the people around me. It is your love and your kindness and your grace that draws men to repentance. Thank you for such a wonderful gift! In Jesus’ Name, Amen.