Love is—Much More than Meets the Eye

He has told you, mortal one, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 NASB

 Do we really know what love is? Love is mentioned in the Bible over 700 times. I would say that this four-letter word is important to God. I believe this word is much more than what we can comprehend. What does love mean to you? Some see it as that warm fuzzy feeling inside when you connect with another, while others may see it as a rush of uncontrollable/unexplainable feelings that overwhelm you and make your heart skip a beat. These are the physical traits of love. Have you ever heard of that expression of “being on cloud nine?” While all these things are great and feel great, I believe what God expresses through His written word about love has an even greater depth and goes beyond the call to love. He wants us to love for a purpose because love covers a multitude of things.

God knows our hearts and the core inner being of who we are. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). I love this scripture. You cannot love God if you cannot love the one in front of you. God tells us that if we love Him, we therefore must love our brother (1 John 4:20). He has always loved us. Even His commandments are all bound together by His love for us. God is always showing us how to love, to be love, to show love, to receive and to give love. In the New Testament there are over twenty five love commands. We are called to love but to also understand that this call is what transforms us from the inside out. When we learn what love is, what it does for us, and how to love, it is a game changer!

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:8 NKJV

 God is love. When we have the love that God has, we will be full of love. We will worship Him in love. This type of love is not one that lies on the surface but is engrained within our total being. This is the kind of love that we strive for our whole lives. This love is not temporal, but it is eternal, and it radiates outward to the world. We can’t search for this love. It is by the grace of God that we inherit it­­­­­­­—Gods saving grace, the grace that He gave by giving His Son to die for us so that we can receive eternal life and love (Hebrews 2).  We must put all our faith in Him and learn to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. The Bible is full of hidden keys for us to find and as we hunger more, more is given. Hunger, I believe is a heart aligned with the will of God that craves more. It is getting a glimpse of something fantastic and needing more of it…except it is not temporary, it lasts forever. Love is opened to us throughout the scriptures, and it is the truth revealed for us to take hold of. Understanding this kind of love allows for truth to come in and open our hearts to complete understanding. We can’t understand truth until we understand love because truth has always been here waiting to be revealed through love. Love is what makes us one with God. We are called to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, becoming a mirror image. Jesus was love in human form on the earth.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16 NKJV

 When we accept Jesus as our Savior, we get the Holy Spirit within us because God loved us so much that He gave His Son for us to live and have eternal life. This is how we know what love is. The Beatitudes express His love for us. They speak of how God works in and through us. We cannot fulfill our destinies—the assignments that God has for us or put them into practice—if we do not seek out what God has for us through these attitudes. These attitudes are love. I believe this is a greater depth of love, the kind that draws us in through hunger for more knowledge of who God is. This love is uncontainable. This is the kind of love that bursts forth from us. Even if we tried, we would not even want to hide it. It is a fiery-flame kind of love, meant for the world. I believe that this is the kind of love that is not experienced in this life, and I relate this to the oil of bliss. It is the joy that is meant for all of God’s sons and daughters. That’s you and me! We must dig deeper and hunger for more. You can’t measure this love because it is infinite. It surpasses earthly knowledge; it is engrained in us, our spirit. When we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life, it becomes an involuntary hunger within us to continually feel the effects.

Father, I ask for increase now in the name of Jesus for all who are reading this blog. Give us more, Father. We want to know you at a greater depth. Pour Your love into us and make us hunger. Come Holy Spirit.

These effects are eternal and as we learn more about our Father, we learn how to keep, give and release love. We can essentially live in two worlds at once when we fully comprehend who we are. We become love because the Father is love and we are His.  The stories of the evil in the world and what He called the prophets to do express His love for us and to turn back to Him. May God bless the prophets of old who had to deliver the not-so-good news to the ones who made God angry. I pray that we stop following in the steps of the wicked and turn our hearts back to our Father. He tells us over and over throughout scripture that we will know Him and turn back to Him with all our hearts. Turning from our ways, allows love to enter and go to work in us. If you have read about the prophets, then you know that they went through a lot. All these valiant men had one thing in common. They knew what love was; they loved the Lord and they had faith in the unseen next step they were taking. Their minds were open so that the truth of love could flow in. Do you want this kind of love? I know I do!

As we pass through all the ways of life, we pursue being right with God and in this all is love.  The carnal nature sees love as physical traits, but God sees love as much more. Love is spiritual. It is the invisible cord that ties us to the Father. To know Christ is to know love. Christ is the healing balm we need to become eternally whole. Receiving the Holy Spirit is love at work in us. God created us to be in union with Him. The closer we get through our transformation process, the more we begin to become love, and our short comings dissipate. This is a process and does not occur overnight. We were placed in a world of sin, and we allowed sin to move in. God brought a Savior to help us unite with Him and start the purification process. This process is what makes us right with God. He is loving and patient with us. There is nothing greater than what God did for us through His Son, but we can choose to live our lives for the One who lost His for us! We must keep striving to follow our hearts in this quest. We don’t need to lie dormant—we can choose to hunger for this love that has been placed within us. It is time to move and take action. For we who belong to Christ are a light for the world and love lives inside us!

May God place a hunger within us to go deeper and to experience this higher love!