February 2018 Steve's Desk

​Do you remember your first love?  Whether it was a boyfriend or a girlfriend or even a pet, you will probably not forget the first time you felt love for someone outside of your family.  Love is a gift and God is the giver of that gift.  He created us for love – with the need to be loved and with the ability to give love.  Why?  There are many reasons why God gifted us with love.  He wanted us to connect with each other in friendship, families and in marriage.  He also wanted us to know His love for us and give Him our love.  You’ve heard the phrase, “Love makes the world go round.”  Love, as God intended it, is crucial to our lives, we can’t live without it because we were created for it.
 
I Corinthians 13:13 says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”  Love is the greatest and it was love that lead God to give Jesus, his only son, to save us.   It was also the reason Jesus gave his life for us.   What great love God has for us.  The love that God has shown to us was expressed in action.  No one and nobody has ever given us so much love and sacrificed so much because of it.  What then should be our response to Him?
 
Love!  Because God loved and continues to love us, we then should return love to Him. 
How do we express our love for God and to God?  Praise? Yes! Acceptance? Yes! Obedience? Yes! Action? Yes!  Our love for God can and should be expressed to Him in every way and anyway we can as our love leads.  Jesus stated how our love for him can be shown:  feed my sheep in John 21:17; obey my commands in John 14:15; and love God and your neighbor in Mark 12:33.
 
When we love someone, we show them.  We eagerly want do what we can for them to show this love to make them happy.  Receiving and accepting God’s love for us should result then in our giving our love to Him in action - praise, obedience and action. I John 3:18 says, “ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
 
Have your accepted and received His love for you?  If so, freely give it back!