What's Your Definition of Love?
Today's Verse
1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world.2By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.4You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.5They are of the world. That is why they speak from the world’s perspective, and the world listens to them.6We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. That is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.7Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.9This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.10And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.1 John 4 · BSB
The Devotion
In our world today, we use the word "love" in many different ways. For example, I love my wife. I love Buc-ee's. I love half-and-half sweet tea. All of those loves mean different things... or they ought to, or I'll be in real bad trouble.
Our culture defines love primarily as a feeling and emotion, something that we fall into or fall out of. Yes, true love is passionate and emotional, but the basis of love is not feeling, but action.
Ask someone to define love, and you'll get many conflicting answers. Here's how I think the word is best defined: "Love is a choice that leads to an action to sacrificially benefit another person."
1 John 4 uses the word "love" an incredible 27 times! 1 John 4:9 says "This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him." The only way we can love other people is by experiencing God's love for us and allowing Him to live through us. Wherever we go today, whether people deserve it or not and whether we feel like it or not, let us demonstrate God's love by loving people. And if you love somebody, you'll tell them about Jesus!
Lord, thank you for loving me when I didn't earn it or deserve it. Thank you for showing me what true love is, defined in the person of Jesus Christ. Thank you for continually loving me and allowing your love to flow through me into other people's lives. Help me be the hands and feet of Jesus and love like Jesus today. In His name, Amen.
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