Love is our first fruit of the Spirit that we will focus on. (Please check out the right hand side of my blog to see the verse we are using for this.)
Love is listed first in the order of the different fruits of the Spirit that Paul gives. I do not think this is by chance that love appears first in line here. 1 John 4:8 says, "God is love." Love is the very essence of God. When you consider all that God has done for us there is no doubt that He loves us. God sent his own Son, Jesus, to die for us. That is serious love.
I think that we try to compare the love that God is to our own concept of love. The different types of love that we experience in a human sense are not comparable to the love that God has for us. Our finite minds try to connect God's love to our own and it is just not happening.
However, once we are born again and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, only then can we begin to understand the spiritual love of God. (Confused about being "born again"? Read John 3 of the New Testament and check out what Jesus himself has to say about it.) When the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us we are gifted with the Spiritual fruit of love. This doesn't mean that we did not love before, it means that we didn't have the spiritual love that the Holy Spirit provides.
But here is the kicker: Once we have the Spiritual fruit of love it is not going to instantly take over and work for us! Spiritual gifts have to be cultivated through prayer, Bible reading and practice! This is kind of the hard part because it is in us but it is not working through us until we make the effort for it to shine!
Go show someone God's love in you!
No comments:
Post a Comment