Terri's Wellspring

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Matthew 22:37-40

We are so blessed that God will reveal things to us about what is down inside; the things that are pleasing and the things that need to change in our thinking and our behavior. They may be things that are just under the surface or find themselves down in the crevices of our thinking. I call them the “nooks and crannies” of our living. Our thoughts and deeds should reflect His love and His ways. Some times during our everyday living, we discover a hard place in our attitudes toward others that may not be loving, maybe judgmental or lack mercy or compassion. We may have a tendency to think of others based on race, economics, or even ability. When it happens, we may be tempted to “sweep it under the rug” as commonplace but the Holy Spirit is calling us to a higher ground of love. I am so glad that Jesus loves us enough to show us when we have some work to do to become more like Him. We can ask the Lord for forgiveness and to ask Him to change our hearts and minds toward His love and His compassion then it up to us to follow His lead and change our behavior.

Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”  Matthew 22:37-40 MSG

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love-so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about-not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. I John 4:7-10 Msg

Love comes from our Heavenly Father. As His children, love should be evident in our DNA and the world should be able to identify us because of the love on our faces and the traces we leave with our actions. We should able to spot strong evidence of love in our conversations and our ability to shine encouragement upon others. Just like the strong resemblance of the Jones, Smith or Williams families, people should be able to identify us walking on the street, on ours jobs, at the neighborhood school or in the marketplace.   They will be able to see it in our eyes, hear it in our voices and feel it with kind acts of our helping hands. The peace and love that we bring will transform situations where people will be able to see us as one of His children. Just think about the evidence of His love showing up everywhere His children walk, work and live. It’s powerful to think that love would appear everywhere we go.

4: Love does not give up. Love is kind. Love is not jealous. Love does not put itself up as being important. Love has no pride. 5: Love does not do the wrong thing. Love never thinks of itself. Love does not get angry. Love does not remember the suffering that comes from being hurt by someone. 6: Love is not happy with sin. Love is happy with the truth. 7: Love takes everything that comes without giving up. Love believes all things. Love hopes for all things. Love keeps on in all things.  I Corinthians 13:4:7 NLV

Sometimes the chronic relationship problems of our lives weigh us down. We become weary of the same things arising over and over again. Our attempts to solve the problem come and go with some level of success but only to find that “the problem” is actually still there under the surface to raise its head again. This happens because many times, the change we can make is only cosmetic but real change comes from God. We may need a repaired relationship in our marriages, with our children, with our parents or may be a difficult relationship at work. We may have let judgmental attitudes, lack of forgiveness and even hate to take prominence in the situation but I know a Savior who is greater than any of these obstacles. We may be reaching out in ways to solve the problem but I challenge each of us to reach up to our Heavenly Father. Reach up to His love to come into our hearts and to give us His view of our situations. He is able to renew our relationships with healing from past hurts, wisdom of how to move forward and to provide guidance with the right actions and words to transform our relationships forever.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others,Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back,But keeps going to the end. I Corinthians 13:3-7 MSG