The Love We Don’t Deserve

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal, how can you hope to find inward peace.  A.W. Tozer

Do you ever think about Jesus’ love for us?  Jesus had one purpose for His life here on earth.  His purpose was to save us.  There is no greater love than Jesus’ love for you and me. 

If you think about us as a society, the majority of us are selfish, self-centered and obsessed with owning stuff and things. 1 John 2:15-17 describes how we should view the world.  “Do not love the world or the things in this world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.  And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

Instead of moving closer to the love that Jesus exhibited for us, we are moving further away from that kind of love.  If we were to describe the kind of love Jesus and God have for us what would that love sound like in words?

1.     It would be a love that never turns away

2.     A love that hears you when you pray

3.     The kind of love that turns your life around

4.     Love that gives all it can give

5.     A forever kind of love

6.     Love that fills every corner of your soul

7.     Grounded in love

8.     A dying for others kind of love

9.     The what hurts God hurts us kind of love

10. Abiding kind of love

11. A sacrificial love

If we are ever to understand the kind of love Jesus had for us when he died on a cross, we are going to no longer live for ourselves.  Our love should be based on living for the one who died for us and on behalf of our sin so that we could live again.  Nothing can take the place of that kind of love.

^“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” 2 Corinthians 5:14-15

  

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, the world we live in has become less about love and more about self.  I am ashamed to admit I often love things of this world more than I love You.  That is a sad testimony.  I need Your help to love as Jesus loved.  When something hurts You it should hurt me too.  Give me the kind of love that loves You above all else and sees when others are hurting and gives love freely as Jesus did.  Help me to do Your will with love. 

             

Scripture: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”  Galatians 2:20-21