Week of Prayer and Fasting - Day 7 Love

Growth - Love

Perhaps this is the most important thing when dealing with growth.  We understand how important it is in our own lives.  Someone that is unloved and uncared for might grow up but how will they grow up?  What will their actions and attitudes be like.  That is why it is so good to know that we have a loving Father who loved us when we were still sinners and that He reached out to us when there was nothing that could make us attractive to Him.  We totally don’t deserve His love, but He offers it to us anyway ... even when we were far from Him.  Separated.

Rom. 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

1John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!

It is because of His love that we have any opportunity for growth and that is a positive thing.  He has given us birth or life, provided food - really everything that we need, He is patient with us, He gives us good things and encourages us in them.  He gives every opportunity.  It is an expression of His love!  We are His children and He wants us to grow as any loving parent wants their children to grow.

Not only that but then Jesus, Himself, gives us the example to follow.

John 15:9 ¶ “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.

John 15:12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

Eph. 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 

Eph. 5:2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God...

When we look at 1 Corinthians 13 we see love in a way that the world doesn’t usually.  In popular talk about love we see these things often turned almost on their head.

1Cor. 13:4 ¶ Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 

1Cor. 13:5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 

1Cor. 13:6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 

1Cor. 13:7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

1Cor. 13:8 ¶ Love never fails.

There are so many things that stand out here but one thing that especially seems to stand out is the statement that “love does not seek its own”!  So often we look at love as something for us.  It is about the way that we feel.  It is about the richness it brings to our lives.  It is about how “happy” we are.  But here we see that love is not focused on self.  It is focused on others and the good of the other.  It is focused out, not focused in!  It causes us to grow beyond ourselves, our needs, our desires, our benefit.

As God’s children He calls us to have His kind of love toward one another.

Col. 3:12 ¶ Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; 

Col. 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

Col. 3:14 But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

In fact, 1 Corinthians 16:14 says

Let all that you do be done with love. 

Basically this is done by letting Jesus fill our hearts and lives with understanding of what He has demonstrated for us and allowing that truth to penetrate every part of our lives.

Eph. 3:17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 

Eph. 3:18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 

Eph. 3:19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Or as the next chapter put it...

Eph. 4:14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 

Eph. 4:15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 

Eph. 4:16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. 

Which leaves us with 2 more verses to think about

Romans 13 says that we have a continuing debt of love to one another because love is the fulfillment of the law.  Hebrews 10 tells us to consider how we can encourage or “stir up” one another to love and good deeds and it tells us that these are among the reasons that we need to keep gathering together.  God wants so much good for us.  It is based in His love toward us and His love then being lived out in us toward others.