In His Name Devotionals
LOVE NEVER FAILS (2)
In His Name Devotionals
LOVE NEVER FAILS (2)
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and every one who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:7, 8)
In today’s society the word love is probably the most misused word in the English language. We love food, recreation, sports, things, pets and even sometimes people. I realize that in the Greek language, there are several different words for the word love and several different meanings for the word.
When Paul speaks of love in 1 Corinthians 13, he speaks of “these three, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” Without love there is no faith or hope. We know that God is love and to be a part of Him, we must also love. I used to tell my children that we have to love everyone, but we do not have to like their ways. Let’s face it, there are just some people that are hard to like.
How can we speak of loving our neighbors or fellow Christians, if we cannot control our tongue? We don’t love if we gossip or say harsh, critical and hurtful things about others and to others.
We should strive daily to be more Christ-like in all that we do and say. If we do this and try our best to concentrate on the positive characteristics of a person (and we all have some positive points about us) and wipe those negative thoughts out of our minds, we will find that we will start to have a more joyful, peaceful nature about ourselves. It is hard to love others when we do not love ourselves.
When we pray for our enemies daily, with God’s help we can overcome our negative attitude. My prayer to God is that He will give us a loving and forgiving heart and that we will show our love for Him by sharing the Good News with others.
