Don’t You Want to Know What Love Is?
Affirm:
I choose to follow Jesus’ example of demonstrating love, no matter what!
“Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.’
1 Corinthians 16:13-14 (MSG)
Dear Prosperity Partners and Friends,
Today marks the 16th day of the Lenten Season. Tomorrow, we will experience the 3rd Feast Day. I pray that your sacred moments with Jesus are enriching spiritually and otherwise. As we continue to hold the vision of peace for our world and for each other, let us be firm that peace prevails.
What better time is there than now to ‘Eliminate Negative Thoughts’ and to ‘Embrace New Thinking’? May new experiences of sufficiency, mercy, health, and love bless you and yours. May your intimate and sacred moments of spiritual devotion lift you higher into the consciousness of Christ and draw you into loving kinship with all whom you encounter. May your thoughts of love be big enough to embrace people in your home country, as well as the global family.
Last Sunday’s sermon reminded us that Jesus wants us to know what LOVE Is! He wants us to know that loving God with all we’ve got causes love to spill over on our neighbor even as it floods our own lives. This week Jesus asked us to up level our commitment to love despite hindrances or personal crises that we may face in our own lives.
Our secondary Lenten text, A Closer Walk With Jesus, reminds us of Jesus’ extraordinary expression of love at the time of his arrest by Roman soldiers. He healed the ear of the soldier who was wounded by Jesus’ own disciple. This action serves as a great reminder that ‘Love is not a part-time assignment.’ We don’t get to love based on convenience but based on our personal commitment.
Sunday’s lesson points remind us that:
- When Divine Love is your commitment, you love in impersonal and unconditional ways, NO MATTER WHAT! You are no respecter of persons. You love God and others not because you ‘have to’ but because love is who we are.
Jesus ‘maintained an attitude of love’ in the face of trial after trial, criticism after criticism and when false criminal charges were filed against him. He was able to do so he made a commitment to ‘be love’, no matter what. He learned to love those who taught love but did not express love. He learned to love those who did not love themselves. He learned to see God’s love in the marginalized and in those whom society glorified. We must do the same.
Love has a mighty work to do through us. Jesus doesn’t want us to ‘short change’ the Holy Spirit. He wants us to operate a love’s maximum capacity so that love can perform transforming work through us. He knows that we are capable and wants to see us do great things because God in us is great.
- Life is a school. Relationships are sources of information about ourselves and others. We learn from others and they learn from us. ‘All of our relationships are spiritual in nature for they are the context in which we either grow in the consciousness of God or deny ourselves and others the opportunity to do so.’ M. Williamson’s, Illuminata.
We learn the fuller expression of love when we live in relation to one another. I learn from you, and you learn from me. We all learn from each other. Let us not deprive others of their opportunity to learn life’s lessons. If we do so, we deprive them of their growth opportunity.
Like the caterpillar undergoing its own metamorphosis, its struggle to break free as a butterfly is necessary if it is to become a flying worm. To soar high, it struggles below. Not because it must suffer, but because it must find its own inner strength.
Likewise, our inner strength is often discovered and released in life’s difficult moments. We find that God’s love in us is enough to lift us out of personal challenges. Through our example, others are inspired to find love in themselves.
If you want to know what love is, live a life in relationship with others. Jesus calls us out of selfishness and into harmonious relationships. We walked with him this week and hopefully, we consciously practiced living in harmony with others and ourselves, including the famous taxi drivers in Jamaica. How did you do?
Let’s pray:
God,
Your precious love is taking care of us and teaching us everyone is our kin. In every moment, we affirm that love’s harmonizing power is at work in us producing ever-increasing good. All things unfold for our good and for the good of all concerned. We bless everyone and everyone blesses us. All is well.
And so, it is.
Seeing Tremendous Blessings for You in 2022,
Rev. Sheila
