Practicing Love

We live in a very confused society when it comes to the topic of love. So many being disconnected from God, who is love, have defined it in ways that neither brings glory to God or reflects Him in any way. In our culture love has developed into a syrupy, sweet, romantic type of affection toward another person.  It’s been perverted, twisted, misused and misdefined. Love has lost it’s true meaning in the world around us!

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Romans 5:8 (NLT)

Even for those of us who know God personally by faith in His Son Jesus Christ, when we use the word love we tend to use it pretty loosely.  When we’re watching a baseball game and the batter gets a good hit, we cry out, “I love that hit”!  When leaving Chick-Fil-A and thinking about the chicken sandwich we just enjoyed, we think, “I love that restaurant”.  When wanting to express deep affection to our spouse or our close family we say, “I love you”.  Surely the word love means different things in different settings.

As Pastor Chuck closes his memoir, he shares with us in the last chapter a series of encouragements and exhortations, his final words to us of things he learned through the entirety of his life.

Pastor Chuck Smith wrote:

Remember the two greatest commandments: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” and “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Mark 12:30-31). Hearing the stories of Jesus while we sit in church can warm our hearts with feelings of love, but it is a much different challenge to love the outsider, the sinner, and the enemy. The first time some of the more conservative Christians in our church had to share their pew with a hippie, they found the challenge of loving and accepting others to be very difficult. Fortunately, all they had to do was share a few words to discover this young person was their prodigal son or daughter returning home. We will always be learning that it is not enough to “love in word, neither in tongue” but to activate our love “in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).

It’s one thing to say you love someone but another to express it.  We will always be learning what it is to grow in our love for God and love for our neighbor. Even though it will grow over a lifetime, we must learn to love today, everyone, friend or foe.

Love someone today in deed and truth.

Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions.  It is by our actions that we know we are living in the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before the Lord, even if our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 1 John 3:18-20 (NLT)