Real Love Wins
Jesus said in John 13:35 (God's Word Translation, GW):
Everyone will know that you are my disciples because of your love for each other.
According to Jesus, the hallmark of a true believer is love for other Christians. And if you look at Matthew 22:39, you'll see we are actually to love all people, not just believers.
Romans 12:9-13 (AMPC) states:
[Let your] love be sincere (a real thing); hate what is evil [loathe all ungodliness, turn in horror from wickedness], but hold fast to that which is good. Love one another with brotherly affection [as members of one family], giving precedence and showing honor to one another. Never lag in zeal and in earnest endeavor; be aglow and burning with the Spirit, serving the Lord. Rejoice and exult in hope; be steadfast and patient in suffering and tribulation; be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of God’s people [sharing in the necessities of the saints]; pursue the practice of hospitality.
We are to demonstrate sincere love to our brothers and sisters in the Lord. And Romans tells us what that love looks like; giving honor to one another, giving to each other's needs, walking in patience, being hospitable. This is Jesus's call to the end-time church: love one another. We cannot continue to gossip about one another because of differences in doctrine. We cannot shun our brethren because their worship is different. We must stop bickering and arguing amongst ourselves as the world plunges further and further into darkness! They need the light of our love, and they need it NOW. We must press into Jesus as never before, allowing His love to invade our hearts and spill out onto others. We can be a mighty end-time army if we will just come together and stop picking each other apart.
Shining the light of Love is the key to the great endtime awakening that we are all anticipating. I implore you, get into God's Word and study the topic of love. Let it penetrate deep into your heart. The Spirit of Love will bring a revelation and a true download of love as you study the Word.
God's love, agape in the Greek, is a selfless love. It is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It is Who God is (I John 4:8), and it requires us to act. We must choose to love. It is an act of the will. And it is urgent that we walk in it and express it now. Do not wait until you feel loving. The enemy lies to us and tells us that we need to have some warm, fuzzy feeling about someone to love them. Real, true, honest-to-goodness love is giving and doing for someone, preferring them, no matter how you feel.
Church, the Lord has issued a command to walk in love. He has placed us here for such a time as this to usher in the end-time harvest and the end of this age. Are we about the Father's business? His business is love, and He expects it to be our business as well. Let's quit worrying about attendance numbers, the size of our sanctuaries, and how we stack up with the church down the street. Let's stop trying to build our ministries and start building relationships. The time is now. We must act now, and we must act in love!
Start now by digging into I Corinthians 13, the "love chapter." To get things rolling, I have included it here in the Passion Translation (TPT). May you become deeply rooted and grounded in love, and may it have a profound and lasting impact on the world around you.
If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. 3 And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value. 4 Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. 5 Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. 6 Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. 7 Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up. 8 Love never stops loving. It extends beyond the gift of prophecy, which eventually fades away. It is more enduring than tongues, which will one day fall silent. Love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten. 9 Our present knowledge and our prophecies are but partial, 10 but when love’s perfection arrives, the partial will fade away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke about childish matters, for I saw things like a child and reasoned like a child. But the day came when I matured, and I set aside my childish ways. 12 For now we see but a faint reflection of riddles and mysteries as though reflected in a mirror, but one day we will see face-to-face. My understanding is incomplete now, but one day I will understand everything, just as everything about me has been fully understood. 13 Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.
