If I had to identify what humanity needs more than anything else in this life, I would have to say our greatest need is love. Real love. Not the manufactured, conditional type of love or even the romantic type of love, but the love of God. The love that emanates from the One Who, even while we were sinners and rebelling against Him, loved us anyway and made a way for us to be reinstated to fellowship with Him. And no one is left out except by their own choice.
I believe love to be the most needed element of life because
God is love, and we cannot experience true life, life in the kingdom of God,
without Him. All we have to look forward to is eternal death and punishment
without the love of God.
Love has been defined as
“affectionate concern for the well-being of others.” We cannot love a stranger
for their actions, their disposition, their temperament, personality, or
nature. That would be impossible because they are strangers to us. We don’t have
any knowledge of their attributes or characteristics. Yet we can still be
concerned for their well-being, both spiritual and physical.
My husband and I receive numerous
pleas by mail asking us to help people all over the world. You probably get
them, too. They are pleas to help people that we have never met. But we are
moved by the need. And the love of Christ within us compels us to do what we
can to help. We can’t help everyone. We cannot answer every request. That would
be impossible, but we can help some. That is part of loving our neighbor. We
can show them Jesus by the Spirit of God in action through us.
Many of you probably get a lot of prayer requests on
social media. We do, too. Some of the people we don’t know personally. But we
can still reach out in prayer on their behalf because we care about their
difficulties. We have compassion and a concern for the well-being of others.
I opened the mail one day while my grandson was with me.
We saw a picture of a young boy who was bent in a terrible position, making it
impossible for him to stand and walk. My grandson’s heart was immediately
touched. He wanted to help. Feeling sorry for the boy was not enough. Something
needed to be done to change his situation.
That is how God’s love works. It is a love of compassion
that compels us to do something, to act. While I was in the process of writing
this article, my grandson came over wearing a shirt that said, “Love Out Loud”.
That is what true love does. It makes itself known in compassionate ways. We
can look back to the “Good Samaritan” and see love in action. He loved out
loud. Allow me to give you my paraphrase of this story. A man who had been
beaten and robbed lay by the roadside, left for dead. Two members of the Jewish
‘clergy’ saw him and passed him by. They couldn’t be late for ‘church’. Later a
Samaritan, who was hated by the Jews, came along and saw this man who needed
help. We are told he had compassion on the man. So, he stopped and helped him.
Then he took the man to an inn and paid for him to be taken care of until he got
back from his business.
Too often we forget that love is an action word. If love
is never seen in action, if we don’t love out loud, it is no more than a
feeling within a person that only they know anything about. The religious
leaders may have felt sorry for the beaten man, but they did not have
compassion. They were not concerned for his well-being.
Romans 5:7-8 tells us, “For scarcely for a righteous man
will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to
die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we
were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Again we can read How God’s love took action in John
3:16. “For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” This is the love
of God. It is the love that we have received. It is the love we are to give to
others so they, too, can see Jesus, and they can only see Him through those who allow His love to flow
through them. We can love people by extending charity and benevolence to them. Will
we?
Imagine living in a place where you cannot support
yourself or your family. Then someone comes to you and tells you there are people
on the other side of the world who have sent money, food, clean water, or
instruments so you can begin to farm and take care of your family again. When
these are given in Jesus’ name, we show them Jesus in His compassion and love.
Even greater than relieving the physical maladies and
deprivation of others is relieving their spiritual maladies and deprivation.
Every person needs to hear about Jesus Christ. Every person needs the
opportunity to know Him. Jesus said that is up to you and me – those of us who
know Him. Yet so many are preoccupied with the things of this world. Not
necessarily evil things, but things that take the place of God in our hearts.
The Apostle John says those things are idols. Anything that gets in the way of
our serving Jesus Christ and sharing the gospel with others on a regular basis
is an idol.
With all the social media and other electronic devices we
have now there are so many opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
How are we using them? What is important to us? What are our priorities? Are we
majoring on ourselves and our positions in this world? Or is our focus on Jesus
and living in the kingdom of God here and now?
People need to know about Jesus. They need to understand
that they can be free from the bondage of sin and live freely in the kingdom of
God even while they are still in this world.
The Apostle Paul endured years of persecution so he could
take the gospel message to as many places and people as he could. His whole
Christian life was spent spreading the gospel. He traveled. He wrote. He
preached. He used up every bit of himself for the glory of God’s kingdom and
the salvation of souls. As God’s children, we have received the same call.
Matthew 28:18-20 says, “And Jesus came and spoke to
them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on
earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and
lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen.”
Every person is
not called to ‘go’ in the same way or the same place. But if we name the name
of Christ, we are called to make disciples. It may be one-on-one. It may be
preaching. It may be writing. It may be going to another country. It may be
ministering to those around us. But we are all called.
We are not called to do our own
business, but to do God’s business. And when we step out to do God’s business,
we are not alone. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments. And
I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He
may abide with you forever - the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot
receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He
dwells with you and will be in you... He who has My
commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be
loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
We show God that we love Him by following His commandments. And He
will baptize us with the Holy Spirit to enable us to love others as He loves us.
Jesus said, “You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with
all your mind.’ This is the first
and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.”
Again, Jesus said, “Greater
love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” Laying
down our lives for others doesn’t always mean dying. It may mean putting self
aside to show this world Jesus in action through us. We show our love for
others by showing compassion and meeting their physical and spiritual needs in
the name of Jesus Christ.
If we don’t see
the result of someone’s love, we don’t know it exists. God understands that. So
He proved His unfailing love for us. God’s love has no limits. It reaches to
everyone and it never ends. The power of His love causes us to feel the wind of
His Spirit blowing and to experience the transformation He works in us. The
fact of God’s love is undeniable, because the proof of God’s love can be seen
in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and it can be felt in our hearts when we open
them to Him.
God loves out
loud!
So loud that it
echoes throughout time and space!
