Until we are filled with the Spirit of The Living God, until we let His Great and Sacrificial Love fill our hearts to the brim, we grasp and wail at the insufficiency of mere human love. It was never intended for broken, imperfect love to satisfy our eternal longing souls. As long as we insist that it must, we will inflict undue own-ness on those we profess to love. We will insist that their love meet our expectations or it be worthless. We will be empty regardless of how much is poured into our pitiful life. This needy love leaves all parties wounded and left wanting...
Rather we were meant to seek an eternal love, a love so great no void can not be filled.
Christ's love is perfect and His Word sets the standard for an eternal perfect love:
Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great,and you will be children of the Most High,because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
John 15:12-13 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues,they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Who, who can achieve loving like this? How do we receive a love like this?
Only in Christ, the Lover who lay down His life, Who paid the great bride price for us, Who daily intercedes for us, whose love is not only perfect but perfecting, only in HIM are we satisfied & fulfilled. Severing the chains of expectations we bind others with and freeing us both to receive the fullness of perfect love. Then, and only then, can we love rightly. Not out of selfish neediness but with a love that flows through us, straight from the throne room of God, straight from our Saviors heart. His love, flowing through us, into another's heart, all the while washing us, healing us along the way...
“So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV
Knowing just how greatly we are loved should change us, grow us up from an infant wailing in want to one "rooted" in His love - becoming unmovable in the knowledge of it! Filled to the brim so that the Love of Christ spills over, flows over, cascades like a waterfall, rushing through us, eagerly seeking an object of affection! And being so filled in the process, we need no thing else. All other imperfect love becomes icing on the cake, becomes simply abundance because the fullness of the Love of Christ is enough.
He is sufficient, therefore His Love is sufficient to fill the great void of our mortal hearts seeking an eternal fullness.
Liquid love spilling over, tainting all strokes brushed upon the canvas of our life, changing everything.....
Amen!! When we find all we need in Jesus.....
ReplyDeleteBeautiful truth!
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