Monday

We Love Because God Loves Us

We were created in God's image to do two things on earth: Learn to love God and learn to love other people; life is all about love.

But love all started with God. He loved us first and that gives us the ability to love others. (1 John 4:19) The only reason you can love God or love anybody else is because God first loved you. And he showed that love by sending Jesus Christ to earth to die for you. He showed that love by creating you. He showed that love by everything you have in life; it's all a gift of God's love.

In order to love others and to become great lovers, we first need to understand and feel how much God loves us. We don't want to just talk about love, read about love, or discuss about love; our need is to experience the love of God.

We need to reach a day when we finally, fully understand how God loves us completely and unconditionally. We need to become secure in the truth that we cannot make God stop loving us.

Once we're secure inside God's unconditional love, we'll start cutting people a lot of slack. We won't be as angry as we've been. We'll be more patient. We'll be more forgiving. We'll be more merciful. We'll give others grace.

I feel like this verse focuses on accepting God's love more so than glorifying it per se. When it comes to anything concerning God, we have to realize that it's holy to a point where we could not illustrate it with our mental capacity. There's a limit to how many neurons float around in your brain, and there's a given capacity on how much data each neuron can really handle. Add those 2 together and we get that personally and collectively, we can't quantify God's love for us. It's weird to come from me, but there's definitely a few things out there that humans should not even bother to attempt to quantify, and anything related to God goes under that list.

What I get: don't bother to understand how much or how he loves us, just understand that this agape love exists, and learn to live with it.

Yeah that last paragraph really doesn't sound like me... Im very irritable around people I'm comfortable with who bother me even slightly. On the main topic here: Gods love. I dont know how to even begin understanding how much God loves us. I guess I take advantage of the fact that he loves me unconditionally by sinning over and over again and then coming back to him, knowing he'll accept me no matter what. Although I do this, I still dont understand his love because if I did I would have a burning desire to not make him sad by carelessly sinning and ignoring him. I think its really hard to understand the love of a supernatural being who never directly shows himself or speaks to you (by this I mean speaking with a voice, as in a conversation).

Throughout my Christian life, I have known for a while that God is the god of love, and we Christians were created to love him and others. God has loved us unconditionally for as long as we live, and we have to recognize that love he gave us. He loves us so much, that he made many sacrifices for us, mainly the death of his own son. Now, God wants us to share that love to others. Not only to our friends and families, but to our enemies as well. And we cannot complain that we can't love people who we dislike, because God loved us no matter how many sins we committed and the severity they were. So, we should open up to others around us so we can start sharing the love of God. That way, we can truly understand what love is one day.

sigh... what a horrible day to start off the week... anyways..
This devo talks about how much God loves us, and how it is through His love that we are able to love Him and others. Love is a very strong word that all of us have felt and/or still feel for certain people in our lives. It is definitely not easy for us to love EVERYONE. Of course it is a lot easier to love close ones that we spend a lot of time with, like our parents, siblings etc. But its not as easy when it comes to people that you do not see as often that you just do not like. I personally have a few people that I generally dislike because of various reasons, and realize that this is very bad. I don't know about you guys, but I just have a few people I do not like, and whenever I hear them, see them, communicate with them, whatever to do with them, it just aggravates me. This is terrible to say, but its the truth. And some of these people have done things to hurt me a lot so it is just very hard for me to forgive them, and like them for that matter. But yes, I should really try to work on getting along with everyone, and loving everyone as my brothers and sisters of Christ. After all, it is because of God that we have the privilege to love others, and it pleases God for us to love one another, so we should do it, for Him.
                         

The importance of love is so immense that it is the focus of the first two, and the greatest commandments:

1 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength
2 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

God shows us unconditional, perfect love that we do not deserve, and we should not take it for granted. That saying in order for us to show others love, we have to first realize the magnitude of God's love for us that He would even send His own Son to die for us, while we are undeserving sinners. God being holy and perfect and caring for us is the ultimate example of love. In turn it is our job to love people as ourselves just as God loved us first. I like the end of the devo especially where it explains the positives of simple showing others love. So because God loves us, we love Him back and also love others

Today was a terrible day for me at school....I'm actually really stressed right now.

Anyways, I think we often forget how much God loves us. We hear it so often, it's hard to really feel how amazing it is.
I've been trying these last few days to reflect and think about what amazing things God has blessed me with in life. One of the greatest gifts he has given us forgiveness through Jesus Christ. This thought came to my head yesterday at church.
Jesus, someone perfect, did not deserve any suffering paid the ultimate price to clear all our names and grant us eternal life.
All the sins summed up in this world is brought to him and even the most sinful can he forgiven.
He sacrificed himself because he loves each and everyone of us. So he asks of us simply to love one another. But was we all know, that's not easy. There's always going to be at least one person that you just can't seem to get along with.
God died for that person and you. He loves that person as well. I once felt God tell me that.

As hard as it is, be merciful and loving as God has shown you.
~Audrey~

This upcoming week is gonna be terrible. The upcomings weeks until christmas break for me is gonn abe terrible... ONLY 16 SCHOOLS DAYS LEFT TILL BREAK!!!!!!!

anyways moving on to the devos, I think the most important we should take out of this devotional is that God ALWAYS LOVES US. This may seem obvious and what not but its really important like when were facing struggles or were having a hard time or know that hard times will be coming up. Instead of us, trying to do everything by ourselves, rememebr that God is always with you and your never alone.

Also this devo talked about us being great lovers and i personally struggle with this because i get close to a group of people and then i pretty much just shut myself off from everyone else. Its something i need to work on. What this reminds me of is the past retreat when people were comparing the prevous grade 12s to fruits. I think that im like a pineapple or a coconut because i believe ima funny and sweeet and kind person. But to be able to reach that part of me, you have to get past the hard shell that covers my personality. I do get along with everyone, but i struggle to LOVE everyone.

hahaha... its been a while.. hi guys.... haha...

anywho, God's love, mannn what a great thing. I think it's crazy to think that our God, as great and mighty as he is, loves us so unconditionally that he would even give up his dearest son for us. Oh yea, and sidenote: I was talking to my dad about the trinity after that one bible study and an interesting point he raised was that God couldn't be the perfect love his is without the trinity. Basically what the point was that how can a singular entity represent love all by himself. Love was always meant to be an interpersonal thing and without the concept of the trinity, a perfect love could not exist. Just thought it was interesting. Back on topic, God loved us, therefore we should love others. I think there really is no better way to be like Christ than to love. Unconditional love is a difficult thing to have. Even our closest friends and family, that love is not perfectly unconditional. But starting with friends and family, we can learn to love in the closest way we can to the example that God set. Work it up in small steps; loving others is always easier said than done.

Acts 2:38 Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 3:19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.
2 Timothy 4:8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day - and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

This is a great reminder as we just learned about how to pray and achieve that intimate connection with God. Repenting and calling out each and everyone of our sins makes us feel humble and it tells God that we've done wrong in His presence. As we repent, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit which convicts us when we do wrong. It keeps us in check, making sure that we don't drift away from that relationship. This is very important to acknowledge because if our church didn't possess the Holy Spirit, we'd be doing nothing but socializing. Our worship wouldn't matter as our hearts without be in the right place, restricting the Holy Spirit from entering our sinful bodies. It's like getting into an argument with a close friend; both parties wouldn't get along with each other unless you were right with each other. Verse 19 says that we must turn to God so that our sins could be wiped away. Just like how you shouldn't ignore a fight, you shouldn't ignore the fact that something came across between you and God. This barrier restricts us from progressing forward in our walk of faith. Within 2 Timothy 4:8, Paul mentioned that he fought the good fight, he includes that the crown of righteousness will be given to him. All in all, he shares with Timothy that it's worth struggling for. He has something greater in store for us, sin isn't worth it.

This brought me back to Sam's sermon past Sunday: God goes by a lot of names such as Yahweh.
And then, there's the Hebrew thing about 'yahweh' having no vowels, rendering it impossible to pronounce it, to
symbolize how much God is above us, and how holy he is.

God is also known as Love.
God repeatedly reminds us in his Word: we are made in his likeness and image.
We should strive to be godly and holy, set apart from the world.
However, if God is Love, we should be the prime examples of love, shouldn't we?
Love should be ingrained in every action, every word. That doesn't necessarily mean that we should be overflowing and brimming with love.
Putting that aside, personally, I think it's impossible to love like God has loved us. He DID sacrifice his son for us, and I think we hear it too often
to fully appreciate the love we receive from God.