Wednesday, May 11, 2016

What To Do When You've Lost That Loving Feeling

My Utmost For His Highest
 
add to your…brotherly kindness love. —2 Peter 1:5, 7
 
“Love is an indefinite thing to most of us; we don’t know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the loftiest preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that this sovereign preference be for Himself (see Luke 14:26). […] … the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now He commands me to show the same love to others by saying, “…love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). He is saying, “I will bring a number of people around you whom you cannot respect, but you must exhibit My love to them, just as I have exhibited it to you.” This kind of love is not a patronizing love for the unlovable— it is His love, and it will not be evidenced in us overnight. Some of us may have tried to force it, but we were soon tired and frustrated. […]  The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to go into the world to love others in the same way. I may get irritated because I have to live with an unusually difficult person. But just think how disagreeable I have been with God! Am I prepared to be identified so closely with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness will be continually poured out through Me? Neither natural love nor God’s divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is nurtured. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through discipline.”  CHAMBERS
 
In our new life in Christ, part of our new nature is to love others.  We love because God first loved us.  (1 John 4:19)  It’s our old nature that presents the problem.  My struggle with loving others is with my old nature which says I should love me first and then others so long as they bring some benefit to me.  That is why Chambers says love requires discipline.  Not in the sense that you make yourself love others, but love others as a result of your love for God and the pursuit of your faith.  (2 Peter 1:5-9)  “giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,  to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.  For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.”  Be careful not to interpret this to mean that we are to be accepting of the sins of others.  But, God loved us while we were yet sinners. (Romans 5:8) And because of that love, Jesus died for us.  And so, in the same way,  we show love to others in spite of their sin.  The measure of love that we show toward others is directly proportional to the measure of love and devotion we have for God. (Matthew 22:37-39) The Christian trait of love for others should be the greatest attribute in our lives and proves to the world that we are His disciples. (John 13:35).  So come on Christian .. show me the love!  Charley

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