Devotional For Daughters Entry 4

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8)

You expect too much, my friend. You desire, quite cerebrally, the love of some who are wholly yet incapable of the reality, for they know not God. Forget the romantic notion that assumes even all who are related to you naturally by blood will love you by default, though we all dream of such a utopia. No, the truth is that there are some, in even your own family, who delight in the idea of misfortune in your life. They can only see lack in your life because it’s all about what they have and what you have not attained. They are spiritual parasites and differ not from other pimps and opportunists in this world. However, having quite foolishly said in their hearts that there is no God, such self-sufficient thinkers are powerless to love anyone outside of themselves with anything but mere affection or the kind of love brought to mind by the great city of Philadelphia. No, agape, the very concept of the God kind of love, does not register upon the scale of knowledge such worldly geniuses, their friends, or their neighbors could possibly comprehend in their present unregenerate state. But, regardless of what is directed at you, you are called to a higher level of virtuosity and commanded to love even as you are loved of God. Neither sticks nor stones nor hateful attitudes nor outright betrayal, shall give us justification to cease bearing all such people, faithfully believing in all such people, hoping in all such people, and enduring all such people. Love never faileth. (1Corinthians 13:4-8) Hath Christ not loved us enough to lay down His life for us when we could not have been more unlovable than we were? “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6) Considering the fullness of grace we have all received in Christ, shouldn’t we be more longsuffering with those whose hearts are yet darkened by the natural tendencies which once plagued us also? Love, after all, is neither a type of song nor something to be manufactured in a bedroom. Love serves (Galatians 5:13), covers (1Peter 4:8), and is born only of God (1 John 4:7-8). Although the counterfeit thereof feels good and satisfies the flesh, its only purpose is deceit. Lord, as you are love, shape us and mold us into a more perfect image of you. In Jesus’ name, “who being the brightness of your glory, and the express image of your person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; Being made so much better than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” (Hebrews 1:3, 4) Be love, beloved daughters, and you shall know the love of your Father who art in Heaven. Amen and amen.


© 2012 Brian L Hunter