Posts Tagged ‘love’
We’ve heard the sermons: “Love is a decision”. Really?
Is that the kind of love we experience from God? Okay, I’ll love you if I have to. Just stay out of my face because I really don’t like you very much. Aloof.
Treating someone else with love, especially if they are difficult, may begin with a decision, but that’s not what love IS. It can’t remain in the place of being merely a decision. It’s not agape unless it’s like God: kind, gracious, warm, compassion, free, and showing favor because of the very desire to do so. Tall order? Of course; it requires allowing the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus to have full reign. Christ in us, the hope of glory.
To profess a “decision” to walk in love or to forgive, while remaining aloof reveals a little nasty-nugget of selfishness in the core of the being. Reserving ourselves for ourselves. Not at all like the Lord who gives Himself to us freely.
What we initiate with a decision, we must allow to flow in fulness.
What does true forgiveness look like? I’m mean, the forgiveness that we are to have towards other people who have wronged and hurt us? Let’s try this on for size:
(big smile) “Of course! Jesus took the punishment for all of our failures and shortcomings. I’d be happy…