Echoes of Love

On this snowy morning, I sat up cozy in bed to read the pages of my Pursuit 31 “Seek” devotional, and on this particular day, the heart of God jumped off the pages. The volume on something I keep so low was tuned up so high and all I could say was God, I’m sorry.

It was a passage from Amos 5:24 in the Message – where God simply tells us he can’t stand our religious performances. He cries out,

“I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice – oceans of it.
I want fairness – rivers of it.
That’s what I want.”

The words shocked my heart like taking a gasping of breath from beneath icy cold waters.

I wrote last week about selfishness, and how we approach our relationships with people thinking about us first. Now – it’s vibrating, and echoing in my soul loud and clear – what about God and what He wants?

Am I praying to God and asking Him how I can love Him better? Are my words always about me? And do I take His love for granted?

God was clear here, he wants oceans of justice, and fairness on this earth. This is our way to love Him. By having His heart for other people, seeing them with His compassion, His eyes, and then doing something about it.

“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
John 13:35 (MSG)

As we love others, we are loving our good and gracious God, singing Him a love song and giving Him glory here on earth.

Loving is no small task, it’s a daily surrender, it’s an overflow from a love that we have received, and it will take a lifetime of learning. It may be our greatest adventure.

As we close this month’s theme of love on the blog, I wanted to explore with you some practical ways that we can love better, as we love our Creator through this love for others. If our love was a song to Him, I think the notes would sound a little bit like this:

 

Loving Small

The best kind of love often comes small and soft, not with grandeur but with grace. It’s in the daily acts of love where we learn what love truly is.

Taking out the dishes in the dishwasher for your mom. Sending a friend a text message just when they need encouragement. Putting together a care package for the new girl in town. Whispering “thank you” to God, just because you feel it and you know He is faithful. Driving a widow to pick up her groceries. Asking someone a genuine “how are you” and waiting to hear the answer.

These small spaces are where the grace of heaven meets our dusty earth, and still, sometimes acts of love can seem so trivial. It seems like we’re not doing anything that matters. But every act of love matters. They are service to our God, and He sees us in each one of them. We may never know what loving small does for another person, but we have to trust in God to work in His sovereignty.

When we give love daily, we are giving people constant glimpses of the face of God.

 

Loving Smart

This season, my friend and I had many conversations about how to love others smarter. We often love based on our love language – the way we receive love best, we give it. I’m a words-of-affirmation girl, so I’m very generous with compliments. I’ll make a point to let someone not leave my presence without telling them how much they mean to me, or how much I valued the time we had together, or how I see them growing and becoming. I believe this is loving well. But loving well rests on how the other person needs to be loved. It is them-focused, not me-focused.

Loving smarter takes into account how others receive love best. If acts of service is their thing, then for me to love that person smarter, and better, it will take me getting on my hands and knees and serving them. We have to be willing to leave our comfort zones, from the things we think we do well, to love others from a more vulnerable space.

And smarter also means that not everything we think we’re doing out of love, actually is love. We need to have healthy boundaries and pursue God’s wisdom for our relationships. What would be the most loving thing that would help the other person grow, mature, and flourish?

Loving this way, intelligently, shows others a greater depth to love, a type of love that will transform, challenge, and confront people with Jesus.

 

Loving Free

You just know when a person is loving you free or is holding back. When we are grounded in the extravagant love of God, we have the freedom to not hold back, but to love others whimsically and joyfully. To love anyone in our path simply because we are free, and we can.

True love doesn’t calculate, doesn’t keep a score card – if you do this for me, I’ll do that for you. It is born in our freedom in God because of the great love He poured out on us. We don’t love because of what we’ll receive in return, we love because we’re giving people God. When that spills over from our hearts, a freedom, we’ll love greater and bigger and more generously than we ever have.

 

Girls, as we wrap up this month on the Delight blog, I pray that you grow in love this year. I pray that you know that you are deeply loved and pleasing to God. That you’ll receive God’s love into your hearts, and let Him sweep you into a great adventure with Him. I pray that you will open your hearts to receive love from others. And I pray that we’ll love others smaller, smarter, and with greater freedom.

Every time we choose to love, we’re giving the world the only thing it truly needs – glimpses of our Savior and His extravagant love. The kind of love that transforms us into His image, and the kind that brings the kingdom of heaven down here to earth. And through every act of love, we are singing a song back to our amazing God.  And the echoes of our love song will continue for eternity.

 

This is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1:9-11 MSG