God’s Love Empowers Us to Love Others

God’s Love Empowers Us to Love

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” I John 4:16 NKJV

 

Walking in love did not come naturally to me at all. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at loving those who loved me back. I simply didn’t “waste” time and emotions on the difficult people in my life.

 

After I became born again, God started plowing my heart and I matriculated into the “University of the God-kind of love.” In His infinite wisdom and patience, God repeatedly positioned me in proximity to people who tripped me up. In hindsight, I now know He was training me to exercise my love muscles so that I could grow and mature in love.

 

I failed so many of those love tests that I lost count. Although I intended to obey God’s command to love others, I kept yielding to my selfishness and losing my patience with impunity. At a point, I stopped trying. Once God brought someone unloving my way, I subconsciously graded myself as a failure immediately. I decided there was no point engaging since I was going to fail anyway.

 

Finally, through the Holy Spirit’s leading, it dawned on me that I couldn’t express love in difficult situations because I had not received the love of God for myself. My identity was based on all sorts of things but not on who I was in Christ. I didn’t see myself as “the disciple who Jesus loved” (John 13:23). I didn’t have the revelation of abiding in the love of God. Therefore, my life was not built and sustained on the foundation of God’s love for me.

 

How could I give what I didn’t have?

 

God’s Love in Us

Truth be told, I did have God’s love in me. The Word makes it clear in Romans 5:5 that all believers have the love of God in their hearts. The problem was that I wasn’t tapping into His love. Instead, I was preventing it from flowing through me to others.

 

You can’t love people out of a vacuum. God is love! Love is who He is. Therefore, your love for people flows out of the overflow of God’s love for you. You have to know Him intimately and know His love for you before you can give love to others. 1 John 4:8 puts it this way: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” God has shown you His love so that you can love others the same way He loves you.

 

3 Crucial Questions

So, I have three questions for you: Do you…

• believe God loves you personally and intimately?
• love Him back?
• love others with the same love you have received from God?

 

The rest of this post focuses on God’s love for us. In my next post, we will discuss what the Word teaches on obeying God’s command to walk in the fruit of love.

 

I pray that as we consistently meditate on these Scriptures, our revelation of God’s love towards us will deepen and flourish, resulting in an outpouring of His love for others and a demonstration of His power and presence in our daily lives. Amen.

 

10 Scriptural Ways God’s Love Empowers Us to Love Others

1. God is Love

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” I John 4:16 NKJV

“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” I John 4:8

God is synonymous with love. When we abide in Him, we are abiding in love, getting to know Him more intimately, and allowing His love to thaw our cold hearts. The more we abide in Him, the more we understand His love for us.

Therefore, when you read His Word, read it as a love letter from Him. He speaks in love, encourages through love, corrects, disciplines, and empowers in love. Everything He does, including His judgment of sin and disobedience, is built on the foundation of His love for the whole world.

Prayer: Lord, knowing that You are love, gives me peace and confidence to trust in Your promises and approach You without fear. Amen.

 

2. God Loved Us First

“In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” I John 4:9-11

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

The primary way in which God has demonstrated His love for us is by sending Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. Jesus was crucified for unlovable, undeserving sinners. We were all doomed for eternal damnation, but God took the form of a man and came to earth to reconcile us to a peaceful relationship to Himself (Philippians 2:6-8). He didn’t need us, but He chose to relate intimately with us. 

God loved you first. You need to let this truth marinade in your spirit consistently. Your love for God and others flows out of God’s love for you.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for loving me first while I was still Your enemy. Help me draw from Your love daily to love myself and others, even the difficult people You place in my path. Amen.

 

3. God Expressed His Love By Giving us the Best Gift

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” 1 John 3:16

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 1 John 4:9

God loves us so much that He gave His Son to save us from sin and death. Jesus Christ laid down his life to show us what unrestrained love is. He died on the cross and shed his blood to wash our sins away (Revelation 1:5). Since God already willingly gave us the ultimate gift of all, there’s no reason for Him to withhold anything from us (Romans 8:32).

As we yield to God’s love, the power of Christ, who lives in us, enables and empowers us to show love to others.

Prayer: Thank you, Jesus, for loving me so much that you gave your life to save me from the penalty of my sins. Amen.

 

4. God’s Love Changed Our Identity

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” 1 John 3:1a

“He brought me to the banqueting house, And his banner over me was love.” Song of Songs 2:4 NKJV

Because of His great love for you, God changed your identity. You were once an oppressed sinner, but now, you are the child of the Most-High God. He placed a banner over you as a signal to every spiritual power that you now belong to His family (and you know that no one jokes around with God’s child).

I encourage you to do whatever it takes to consistently remind yourself that the creator of the universe is your Father. You can repeat this Scripture multiple times. Shout it out, sing it out, or write it out.

Declaration: I am a child of the Most-High God.

 

5. God Loves us the Same Way He Loves Jesus

“I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:23

The Scripture above, spoken by Jesus, is a mind-blowing truth that we must never ignore: the creator of the universe loves us to the same degree as He loves His Son.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for loving me with the depth, height, and breadth of love that You love Jesus. Help me to understand how to walk in the fullness of this revelation. Amen.

 

6. God’s Love is Unquenchable

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:35-39

“For the mountains may move and the hills disappear, but even then my faithful love for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken,” says the Lord, who has mercy on you.” Isaiah 54:10 NLT

The love of God enables us to overcome all barriers: trouble, hardship, suffering, danger, and even death. No demon in hell or power on earth can withstand His love for us. As impossible as it may seem for mountains to move, God’s faithful love for us will remain intact even if they do move.

Prayer: Help me, Lord, to have faith in Your love even when I’m going through an impossible situation. Help me never to forget that You are always for me, defending me and fighting for me. Your love for me never ends. Amen.

 

7. God’s Love is Unconditional

 ^“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” Titus 3:4-5

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” Ephesians 2:4-5

God’s love for us is an expression of His mercy and grace towards us. We don’t deserve it, we can never earn it, but He pours it out anyway.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for loving me unconditionally, not because I deserved it, but because of who You are. Amen.

 

8. God’s Love is Everlasting

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalms 107:1

“The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3

God’s love for us lasts forever. It is consistent, uninterrupted with no expiration date. He does not take a break from loving us. Every morning when we wake up, we are assured of His love.

Prayer: Lord, I am so grateful that Your love for me is dependable and unfailing. Thank you for remaining the same, even when I change. You are a good, good Father.

 

9. God is Excited About Loving Us

“The Lord, your God, is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

God is not mad at His children. He doesn’t keep His love for us a secret. Instead, He showers His love on us, delights over us, and infuses our hearts with joy, gladness, and thanksgiving.

Declaration: God is not out to get me. He is delighted to be in a loving relationship with me.

 

10. God’s Love Overcomes Fear and Condemnation

The revelation of God’s love has empowered me to say NO to the condemnation of the enemy. If Christ died for me while I was stipped in sin, how much more does he love me now? I am God’s elect. Jesus Christ himself speaks for me in the presence of God (Romans 8:32-34).

 

I am no longer petrified if I fail because I know that God’s perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18). He has granted me permission to enter His throne room with my yuckiness and exchange it for His mercy and grace (Hebrews 4:16). Through the Holy Spirit, He counsels, trains, and guides me. His love for me washed my sins away so that His love through me can overlook and forgive the sins of others (1 Peter 4:8).

 

Accepting God’s Love By Faith

I encourage you (and me) to believe and trust fully in God’s love. Accept it by faith, and act as though it is irrevocably true. Meditate on these Scriptures (and many others in the Bible). Let them become imprinted on your subconsciousness until you stop questioning them.

Renew your minds so that your knee jerk reactions to life’s challenges (and people) will consistently be in the direction of God’s love.

 

Conclusions

I have learned and continue to learn that my love walk is an expression of my relationship with God. As I abide in Him and His Word abides in me, the Holy Spirit empowers me to love others. God gave me the Holy Spirit as my Helper, Comforter, Advocate, and Intercessor. The Holy Spirit is not out to get me by failing me on my love tests. When I mess up (and I still do), we talk. He tells me how and when I missed it and encourages me to press on for the prize (Philippians 3:14). I have yielded myself to Him; therefore, I am growing in love from one level of glory to another.

 

I pray for you in the words of Apostle Paul, “that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19). Amen.

 

Except indicated, all Scriptures are from the New International Version (NIV).

Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash

Related Posts:

• Abiding in Christ: The Key to Bearing Fruit
• Unlocking Forgiveness Through God’s Love
• Love: A Key to Spiritual Growth

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© 2020. Chizobam Idahosa @Beautiful in Jesus.