Love From the Father
Loving like Jesus loved is a high ideal. And some of you are listening this week going – I am not capable of loving this way. How can I ever get this right?
They say you can’t pour from an empty cup, and generally that phrase means that you can’t do much when your energy levels are depleted. But I think it applies equally well to love: You can’t pour out love when you aren’t filled with love yourself.
Jesus could love because He was filled to the brim with the love of the Father! He said “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9). Jesus’ love was an overflow of the love the Father had given Him. Maybe if we flip this around, we will be able to understand it more clearly: most people who are filled with hatred have not experienced the love of God the Father. Sadly, many of them call themselves Christians, but they have no love to give because they don’t know that they themselves are loved.
Transformation through Love: The Journey of Paul and the Message of 1 John
The apostle Paul learned this, eventually. Before he met God, he was a hater. Deeply religious, but a hater. No love in him. An ‘empty cup’ – no love in his heart! He thought the Christians were vile, horrible people who were ruining all that he knew to be good. And as the church began to get stronger, he came at them with all his might. Arrested them. Hurt them. Watched in glee as they were killed.
But then everything changed when he met Jesus. Everything changed because his heart was filled with love! And in an early letter he wrote this: “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
When Paul discovered that he was loved, everything changed for him. I’ll say again, if we want to love like Jesus, we need to know that we are loved!
Do you look at yourself and say, “God must despise me”? Or do you look at yourself and say, “God loves me and gave Himself up for me”?
Jesus knew He was loved by the Father; Paul knew he was loved by God; John, Jesus’ own dear friend, wrote this in his famous first letter: “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:11)
Receiving and Radiating God's Love: The Key to Loving Like Jesus
If you want to love people with a real, Jesus-like love, receive the love of the Father. Revel in the love of the Father. Rejoice in the love of the Father. Because oh my, He loves you. He loves you as a precious child…
I pray that you will know His love today. I pray that you will receive it today. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you’ve prayed or been to church. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve strayed. Come to God today and find love.
He loves you like a precious child in spite of your sin and shortcomings. He offers you grace and mercy and forgiveness if you’ll only trust in Him.
And when our love is an overflow of the Father’s love, we find we have what it takes. We have what it takes to love like Jesus.
Jesus loved because He knew that the Father loved Him. And with His heart full of the Father’s love, how He loved!
How we will love when we allow God’s love to fill our hearts first.
