It’s About Love-Part 2

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It’s About Love
Part 2-Our Love for Others

(tune into the podcast about this post here at this link: CTFaith Quick: An “AHA” Moment About Love)

(download the It’s About Love bookmark here)

Have you ever been frustrated and not “felt a lot of love?”

I know I have…plenty of times.

I want to share a quick, but important lesson that I learned about how we are called to love others the way God loves us.

For several months, I have been reading out loud every day Psalm 145. As I read it, I often intermingle various prayers. A friend of mine recently introduced me to The Passion Translation (TPT) of the Bible, and that is what I have been using for Psalm 145.

On one particular day, I was praying for an extra dose of patience for an upcoming challenging day I was facing, as I got to verse 8:

You’re kind and tenderhearted to those who don’t deserve it
and very patient with people who fail you. Your love is like a flooding river
overflowing its banks with kindness.
(Psalm 145: 8 TPT)

This is an awesome verse about the amazing love we get to experience from God. But we need to realize that it’s not just other people that “fail God” or “don’t deserve it;” it’s us too! But God still loves each of us with overflowing love. (See the previous post in this series, It’s About Love, Part 1-God’s Love for Us.)

As I was reading Psalm 145:8, and appreciating God’s love for me, God prompted me to “flip it” and realize that I need to not just enjoy His love for myself, but I need to love others like He loves me. I immediately thought:

I say I want to be more like God, be more like His character.

If I want to be more like God, then:

I need to be kind and tenderhearted to those who don’t deserve it and I have to be very patient with people who fail me. My love needs to be like a flooding river overflowing its banks with kindness.

It really helped to hold me accountable in the situation I was in, to have this type of love and patience in my challenging circumstance even though I didn’t “feel like it.” What may have been a time of frustration and anger, ended up being a time of calm and peace because I was reminded to love and have patience like God does with me.

We are called to love others the way God loves us.

As we go through this life as followers of Christ, we are called to be imitators of Christ and His love for us:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love,
as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
(Ephesians 5:1-2 ESV)

As we wrap up this two-part series (see the previous post in this series, It’s About Love, Part 1-God’s Love for Us), let’s remember that It’s About Love: God’s love for us and our love for God and others.

The It’s About Love bookmark is available at this link if you would like to print it out on some cardstock to use.