Love Looks Like Something by Chris Leeper

 

GOD Note   Love Looks like Something “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16) Love looks like something! It looks like GOD hanging on a tree. It looks like an ocean of acceptance and peace, inviting people to jump in. It looks like sacrifice for others; compassion for the needy; mercy for those who deserve judgment; fathering for the orphan; dying for a friend; kindness for the destitute and broken; the strong carrying the burdens of the weak; preferring others over yourself; doing unto others as you would want done to you; it lifts up others and covers their mistakes, and it finds life in purity and calls others into it. Love is free to all who want it because love pays the price so it can be free to the receiver. Love looks like GOD doing what HE does every day. And, if GOD abides in you, then you will look like love too. Love spends time with people; clears its calendar, listens and sees value in everyone because GOD values them (it is GOD that imparts value, not man’s condition or behavior); love is based on the heart of GOD, not man, thus making it unconditional love towards man; it gives and keeps on giving even when it is rejected, abused, and criticized; love shares salvation because it wants all people to be saved, and warns of the coming judgment because it doesn’t want anyone to face it; love sincerely cares, is humble, prefers others over itself, yields it opinion, and allows others to receive benefits above itself.   Will you practice letting GOD love people through you? It is not our love that the world needs, but GOD’s love, and as we yield to our CREATOR, LORD, and FATHER, HE will gladly use our lives to love the world. This is what HE is after, yielded vessels HE can show HIS strong love through. Let’s be that vessel. “FATHER, help us set aside our desires, to prefer others above ourselves. Prepare our hearts to allow YOUR love to flow through us, and please make an impact in our lives, families, and region so all will know YOUR love and glorify YOUR great Name.”

Chris Leeper Director of 40 Days of HOPE CA