There is an advantage to being in my life stage. I described it years ago as the Golden Years or the Finishing Years. Now I am in it! For those of us in this generation, life itself has been tested, tried, proven, and refined until its essence is clearly seen. So now, I want to pass on to you a simple truth: “It’s All About Love.” All of life . . . everything we do . . . the purpose, the intent, the test is love.
God created us with a purpose. That purpose is to love.
We know God loved the world so much that he sent his son. He gave us his son, Jesus, so whoever believes in him would live with him forever in a committed love relationship. Today, God's plan for love continues, and it includes you.
You are God’s creative expression and a vessel of his love to the people in your world.
God created you with his purpose in mind. You have a unique personality, body type, passions, talents, abilities, giftings, and life experiences (and the wisdom and discernment from them). You have personal ways that you naturally express love. You have a love language.
When you believe the truth of John 3:16 and commit your heart and life to God, he creates something new. You become a new creation, and you will never be the same again. His Spirit penetrates your heart and ignites life and love within your human body and soul. You become his born-again child. He has a work prepared for you to do (Ephesians 2:10), and it is the work of love.
There will never be anyone else like you. No one can be, do, and love like you! Yes, God's plan continues today through you. As God's child, you’ve been deposited in this world, at this time, in this place as an expression of God’s creativity AND his love! His love is given—passed on—through you.
What is the love God has given us to pass on?
So, what is the love God has given us to pass on? It isn’t our human love. Human love can reach its end. It can give up. It can let go. It can become a distorted love given with selfish motives or strings attached. The word love can simply mean "feeling passion," and in our culture, we "love" everything - food, music, good times, people, you name it.
The Greeks had a word, agape, to describe true love. It was seen as divine love, love that is an affection involving a choice, selection, and action.
Love is choosing to do something for someone else’s good, often at a cost to ourselves. That’s the love God wants passed on. True love. God’s love. It starts with him.
True love is always a gift of grace. It is always unearned. True love is undeserved. It chooses to set aside personal comfort or personal rights for the sake of another. It is done for the other person’s good, whether they know or acknowledge it.
Love is work. It is a compelling labor. Some works of love come easily to us. They are almost natural to our personality or training. They may fit within our giftings. Other works of love stretch us. They seem beyond our ability or understanding, but we try anyway.
Love isn’t always soft and embracing. It may need to take a stand or resist. It requires getting to know people and understanding them to find the fitting act of love. It may take watching or listening to someone who loves well to find examples of loving in fitting ways. Nothing is more satisfying than loving in a way that fits a need.
Love confronts what is damaging, hurtful, or dangerous in another’s behavior. That confrontation must be done for that person’s good. It’s finding the way and the words to speak the truth in love. Sometimes, others need to hear what is damaging or hurtful to a relationship so they, too, can grow in love.
Love confesses when confronted with the truth. It means that we agree with God when he shows us behavior that is anti-love for him or others. He may speak from his Word or through another person. Love listens to rebuke or correction. It confesses and repents.
Love engages our hearts, minds, and bodies working together. Emotional, mental, and physical energy are required to love well. We are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength (Luke 10:27).
Nothing is more satisfying here on earth than loving God with every fiber of our being by loving others the same.
Have you experienced this? Do specific faces of people come to mind whom you love? Does that love engage your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength?
Love is messy. It is constantly being tested. It tests our character and creativity. There isn’t a checklist or one-size-fits-all when it comes to love. Some acts of love stand the test. We learn to repeat them because they are successful. Other acts of love fall short, and we continue in the labor of it by trying something different. We gain wisdom and understanding of agape love with Jesus as our example. From him, we know that love is sacrificial and selfless. Love gives up its rights. Love obeys the Father. His help is only a prayer away when we need to love someone in the moment, especially a difficult moment!
We love because God first loved us.
In his Golden Years (his Finishing Years), the Apostle John described himself as the disciple Jesus loved. I don’t believe this was a boastful claim. I think he understood that Jesus did everything motivated by love. Love for the Father. Love for individuals. Love for him personally. He knew Jesus loved him! It seems John understood that all life and faith can be summed up in one word—one calling—love.
John’s letters, written in old age, give us insight into understanding God’s love. John describes the love God pours into us when we receive it. In 1 John 3, John addresses the reader as "beloved"—beloved by him personally, but more than that, personally loved by God—beloved of God. God lavishly loves us as his children!
John says that we recognize and know love because of this:
Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for each other. We have experienced the sacrifice of love, so we must offer the sacrifice of love ourselves.
John adds, “Let us not love in word or tongue, but let us love with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18). Here, we learn that it isn’t enough to feel love for someone, think loving thoughts about them, or even say, “I love you.” The truth is that true love will work its way out into acts of love consistent with the words of love.
How do we define love?
We must consider what love is and isn't. Let's look at some contrasts.
Love isn’t a feeling or passion. Love is a choice to take an action. Love isn’t one-sided. Love is two-sided and reciprocal. Love isn’t all about me. Love is all about them for their good. Love doesn’t take in order to meet insatiable needs. Love gives fully without holding back. Love doesn’t try to control. Love gives freedom to choose. Love doesn’t seek to be served. Love seeks to serve. Love isn’t conditional and given only when the other makes you feel good. Love is unconditional, despite what they do. Love isn’t just for a time, and then it ends. Love lasts forever. Even death doesn’t end it.
We love God by loving the people he puts in our lives.
In 1 John 4, we learn that love originates with God. Love literally comes out from God because God is love. All love has its beginning in him. God showed his love by sending his son. He took the initiative to love us first. Since God loved us, we ought to love others. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). It is our fitting response to being loved by him.
Our first act of loving God is to believe in the One he sent. Then, we love him by obeying him. John wrote in his second letter: “I am not writing you a new command but one that we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another, and this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning his command is that you walk in love” (2 John 1:5-6). We express our love for God by obeying him and loving the people he puts in our lives.
Loving others is evidence that we know God intimately.
John points out that loving others is evidence that we have been born of God and know him intimately.
Though no one has ever seen God, they can see him through our love for each other.
His love isn’t complete in us until we love others. It hasn’t accomplished its purpose in us until we pass it on. And, when his love is made complete in us, we are like him in this world. Isn’t that the deep desire of your heart? To be like Jesus in this world! You are God’s vessel of love to the people in your world.
The picture here isn’t that you are like a container holding the love poured into you just to make yourself feel full. Neither are you like a funnel with lots of love poured in, and some of it gets through you and out to others. The picture is that you have a spring of living water, a spring of love that bubbles up and keeps flowing endlessly. His love resides in you.
At Berean, one way we love is through handmade items.
At Berean, there is a group of women and children who are engaged in choosing to do something for someone else’s good at a cost to themselves. They focus on loving God by loving others with intentionality and purpose. They "pass on the love of Jesus through personally handmade items to people in our church, our community, and beyond." They are part of Giving Hands, a Berean Women’s Ministry. Have you heard about them?
These creative women and children do their personal ministries of love by crocheting, sewing, knitting, or quilting in their homes for an expressed need. Each one chooses what to make for a ministry that has touched his/her heart (yes, there are boys, too!).
Together, they make and give hundreds of items each month to twenty-five different ministries and non-profits.
On the fourth Tuesday of each month, they come to our monthly gathering to bring the items they’ve made. From 9 am to 1 pm, they “Come when they can and leave when they must.” They experience fellowship, inspiration, instruction, and support. They hear a short testimony from a leader representing one of the ministries we support. They bring handmade hats, mittens, shawls, blankets, bibs, pillowcase dresses, crocheted dolls and animals, burp cloths, baby sweaters, adult socks, baby and twin quilts, pillowcases, booties, taggies, tote bags, chemo hats, adult clothing protectors, fleece blankets, and a variety of items for prenatal infant loss.
Each item given away has a tag attached. The tag reads, “Please receive this gift as a personal expression of Jesus’ love for you," and is signed with the first name of the one who made the item. On the back of the tag is John 3:16 - the gospel in a nutshell. Sometimes, these tags are even used intentionally to share the gospel message with those receiving the gift!
Giving Hands has passed on handmade gifts to over fourteen thousand people over the last five and a half years. That number astounds and humbles us! Because of those tags, each one who receives a gift knows they are receiving it as a personal expression of Jesus’ love for them. They know the plan of God’s salvation. They know the name of the person who made their gift as their expression of love for Jesus.
How do you love?
What about you? How do you love? Who do you love? Has your love started with God? Do you love God because he first loved you, and now you know what love is? Do you love God by loving others? What has the Lord called you to do for someone else’s good at a cost to yourself? Are you choosing to do it because you love him? If and when you do, you will discover that true love has no end. It satisfies the giver and receiver. It fulfills God’s purpose in you, engaging every part of you.
Some people in your life today will only experience God’s love through you. Will you pass on the love you have been given?
Life is all about love. What amazing things you’ll experience and witness as you simply love the Lord by loving others you encounter day by day. So, live the life of love!
“And this is my prayer that your love abound more and more with knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may discern and choose what is best and be blameless on the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness to the glory of God our Father” (Philippians 1:9-11).
About the Author:
Judy is a member of Berean. She serves as a Mentor Mom for Mom2Mom and is the Coordinator for the Giving Hands Ministry. She and her husband Doug came "home" to Berean six and a half years ago after being gone for 20 years.
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