Let Love Challenge You {Life}

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let love challenge you!  Your love is not limited.  Your love cannot be spoiled, misspent, or wasted.  In preparing to celebrate Valentine’s Day, profess your love to the world.  The funny thing about love is that out on the edges of who we are in Christ, we experience a tension, of sorts.  That tension is the struggle between the reality that our love knows no bounds and the fear and insecurity of not being loved in return.  But the truth is that we are loved.  We are loved by the Father, who perfectly expressed His love for us in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ.  In your expressions of love and compassion, you will find that the tension actually comes from the attempts we make to contain the love that now exists in us.

On Valentine’s Day, as you hear and say and think the word LOVE, move beyond who your fear defines you to be.  Move beyond that tension that exists on your outer edges.  Move to love someone who least expects it; who may need it in the most desperate ways.  Love through presence, service, attention, and compassion.  Love sacrificially and feel yourself being refreshed and refilled by the endless resources of the Holy Spirit.  

Many people dread Valentine’s Day because they do not have a “significant” other.  We are all surrounded by significant people who want to feel our love.  It does not matter your age or your station in life – you can make some handmade cards to brighten the day for a recent widow, someone who is about to spend their tenth Valentine’s Day in a nursing home, a soldier’s wife who’s husband is deployed, someone going through chemo or someone who just celebrated the birth of their first child.  There are so many people in our lives who we can share love with.  Don’t avoid this day.  Embrace it. 

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

{Photos Courtesy of Mary Moment Photography}
{Blog by Heath Ferguson}