How can we grow in loving God and our neighbors? The place to start is in understanding God’s love and then starting to love others that way. Today’s excerpt from The Kingdom Turn is found on pages 152 and 153:
“To love, in other words, is to relate to other beings as God does. We know from our Lord Jesus that, in the divine Godhead, the Father, Son, and Spirit relate to one another in love, in such a way that they share fully and without interruption in glory together. The Father loves the Son and so gives Him the world and a people for His own possession, whom He loves, saves, sanctifies, and brings into His glory with the Father. The Son loves the Father and so set aside, for a season, certain of His divine prerogatives in order to do the Father’s bidding in destroying death and Satan and saving from the destructive power of sin a people for God’s own possession. The Spirit loves the Father and the Son by being the motive power of the Kingdom for making God’s plan and the Son’s work come to fruition. And the Father and Son love the Spirit by giving Him such a central role in accomplishing the New Covenant.
“But most of all the three Persons of the Godhead love one another and take pleasure in one another by their continuous, open, free, and full communion with one another, in love.
“If only we could learn to practice love like that!
“The Apostle Paul captured the essence of God’s love when he wrote, ‘Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.’ This love is what God is like. To treasure love is to treasure God. Make knowing God your supreme passion, seek Him, know Him, follow Him, and serve Him, and you will live in love.”
For reflection or discussion
1. How would you describe the state of your love for God at this time? How might you begin to improve that love?
2. Today, whom will you help to know more of God’s love? More of His kindness, gentleness, patience, and care?
Being a Christian comes down to loving God and our neighbors. The more we work at this, starting in prayer and offering every aspect of our day to the Lord for His glory, the more the love of Jesus will consistently grow in and through us, day by day. Share today’s podcast with a friend, then get together to discuss it. Your copy of The Kingdom Turn is waiting for you in The Ailbe Bookstore.
T. M. Moore
