February turns the thoughts of many to Valentine’s Day, with See’s chocolates, Sweethearts candies, and Hallmark cards dripping with prose professing true and enduring love. But there is only One who truly loves us forever and will never leave nor forsake us. No one can love us like our heavenly Father.
And we should love the Father like we love no one else. Deuteronomy 6:5 instructs, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
But we cannot love God, nor can we even know what love is, without God dwelling within us. God is the source, the model, and the complete embodiment of love. 1 John 4:7-8 clarifies that, “…love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Since we know God is love, that also lets us read in scripture what God is like:
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends…
(1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ESV)
The greatest expression of love comes in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
May God’s love fill us all and be reflected throughout the entire world.
Lord, teach us to love as You love. Create within us Your heart for others. Let us love them unconditionally and completely, just as You love us. Make us more and more like that image of You, as you make us a new creation in Christ. Amen.
–RG