Integrity- People of God

God’s love for us is greater than we could ever imagine. It is hard for us to believe that God who is so great, so awesome and so holy could love us in our depraved and fallen state. No matter how much we try to clean ourselves or make ourselves good on the outside, we all remember who we were before God saved us. Our past choices which lead to disappointments, failures and disgraces are things we regret and yet God knows them all and He still loves us.
We sometimes find it hard to forgive ourselves so we think it is impossible for God to forgive us and love us. Yet, God does, He loves us so much that He gave His most treasured possession, His Son Jesus, to redeem us and place us back into the family of God. No greater love can anyone have than a love that gives its life for a loved one. This is a love that is so rarely understood in this day and age because we have been taught and trained that love is about self. We tend to become self-absorbed and self-centered.

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. NIV

There was a time when people took their commitment to their families and friends seriously, because the Bible was taught to them in their schools, homes, churches and community. Now the moral compass of most societies has lost its sense of true north or the true meaning of truth, love and commitment. It has been replaced with a self-preservation mentality, the thought of getting all one can get because everyone is for themselves.

Love is the highest command we have been given. It is also the most valued possession we have to give, the gift of love. Jesus is love personified, incarnate, and living in the flesh. There is no greater love than a love that will lay down its life for the one they love. This is the love Jesus expressed and set as an example for us to follow, to love others as He has loved us. Love transforms us from being preoccupied with self, being self-centered and self-focused, to being concerned for others. Love allows us to die to self and become focused on the one we love. True love or God like love causes us to be willing to sacrifice our self for the good of others.

We live in a time where the true meaning of love has been usurped, misappropriated and stolen by this world system to be associated with a temporary feeling of self-gratification or a fuzzy emotion that can be turned on and off at will. Loves’ true meaning is obedience to the supreme call of God to love others well no matter the cost to us. This is a true self-sacrifice. God so loved every person that would be born into this world that God gave His best, His Beloved Son, to redeem us and bring us back to Himself. While we were still in the rebellious act of treason against God and in the very state of sin, God’s love for us would not leave us in our depravity.

John 3:16 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. NIV

Jesus became the Supreme Sacrifice for all mankind forever so that we may have access to the love of God as an act of our will through faith in the completed work of Christ Jesus. God’s love saw our need for a Saviour and knew we could not do it on our own so He sent Jesus to save us from ourselves and this fallen world system. God’s love for us as created individuals would still give us the choice to come to Him or reject Him. Forced obedience is not true love. God could have made us robots and demanded our obedience but true love allows the freedom of choice. This is God’s love magnified, in allowing us to choose to love Him or walk away. Though His love is forever and His hand is out stretched to receive us it is our choice and God will respect our individual will.

Many of us go desperately looking for love in all the wrong places trying to satisfy fallen and false perceptions of love. Love is not something we go looking for it is something we are. We are created to be the reflection of God’s love on the earth. It is not something we seek after it is who we are when we have the Holy Spirit living in us. The highest expression of love is giving one’s self away for the ones we love by putting others before self. Just as Jesus gave Himself as a ransom for many that we may experience the love of God and His abundant life. We too can be an expression of God’s love when we pray for others and experience His love.

True love does not ask what it will receive as an expression of love but seeks to give so to express its best to the one that is love. True love gives its best for the one they love. True love is an act of one’s will as a decision to spend one’s self for the one they love. Love is an act of kindness and generosity to those who are loved.