Love: Epistles of John

(EDITED)
Love is described in different ways, but there’s only one true love. And it’s not the love everybody expected it to be. I’m just so amazed how really God’s word is so different from others. It’s unique and opposite from what the world teaches us.
In a relationship you have to have respect for your partner, you need to know true things and specific things about the person you have relationship with. You have to do what your partner wants or the other way around, you have to do all those things or else your relationship will not work. Love is not just a word we spell but it also involves requirement in order to keep the fire burning how others say it. Same with our relationship with God but the only difference is that no matter what we do He still loves us even if we walk away from Him, but the same as the relationship for others when the relationship is not being taken care of, it fades away. Not because God is not powerful but because we choose to.
In John’s letter love is one of the topics that he focused on. We can see in his letter that he talks about our love for others, our love for God individually and God’s love.

LOVE FOR OTHERS   
We are called to love another. Actually loving others is just the ripple effect when we love God first. It’s a requirement as a Christian but it’s not something we can fake. God knows everything and He knows are heart more than we do. We cannot love God and hate others, our love for others shows that we love God.
 1 John 4:20-21 “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.” I believe that we are all created in His own image and we ought to respect others no matter what their circumstances are. We respect them out of our love for God.

How do we show our love to others if they disagree with what we believe in? We don’t need to change their belief or to agree with their false belief just to have a check on our box for loving others. Now that is something we have to be careful. The danger of loving others is compromising. If they do not accept our love, then let us not push it. As believers, we don’t need to put a little bit of worldliness in our church just to be accepted by others. While Ted Kluck was having his conversation with his friend about emerging church his friend answer “loving people and ministering to the person should always be a priority but I don’t think we need to change church to fit the culture.” It’s not our job to save them but it’s our job to love them and to tell them what the truth is. When man works man works when man prays God works.

LOVE FOR GOD
If we love Him we will obey His commandments. Our love for Him does not end by accepting Him to our heart. Our relationship with Him should be growing. When do we plan to take Him seriously? Is it going to be in the middle of our walk with Him? Many baby Christians fall on this wrong expectation. Why do we even accept Him if we are not ready to commit? What good relationship has only one person giving and laying their heart out for the other person, without them doing the same in return? There is no love that does not require commitment. Not only we are fooling ourselves but we are trying to fool God.
In order to follow Him we need to let go of the things we posses. We will not reach the next level we expect to be in if we still hold on to other things that is really hindering God’s wonderful plan for us. We love God because He loved us first. We all have to go back here because most of the time we fall on being ego centric and God becomes our last priority. Above all else our relationship with Him is the most important thing we should think of.  Our relationship with Him should be right first before we can do ministry, fellowship, evangelism or anything. 
Why do we obey Him? Not just because of the rewards we will receive, not just to have gold stars in our sheet but because we love Him. We love others because we love Him. We do everything because we want to please Him.

GOD’S LOVE
It is the greatest love we could ever have. I like how John always reminds us How God loves us. He sent His Son on earth just to save us. How He longs for our communication from the beginning. We love Him because He first loved us. We have the first two love because we have God’s love. He is the foundation of our love.
It’s one of the uniqueness of Christianity among any other religion –God’s love. Our God is selfless; Our God came to earth and become a humble servant to those who do not deserve any of it. He came to heal the sick. His love can be received by everybody.
What separate us from other religion is that our God is so holy and yet He loved the unholy ones. He sent His Son to fulfill the law and to be the greatest example for us to follow. He have given so much for us not to stumble, that’s How he loved us. But we still fail, we still hurt Him. We choose the other way instead of His way. It’s not that because He’s not so powerful. But because he loved us so much that He gave us the free will to choose. Because He knew that forced love is not love at all.

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Most of the time love is being misused in a Christian life. Love is important in a fellowship but once we love the wrong thing we dig our own hole to fall. We don’t use love for our own excuses to sin. God teaches us how love should be that way we have no excuse.
We fall on taking advantage of God’s love because of our selfishness. We should be watchful with our feelings and our emotions because the devil will try to steal us in any way and even uses our feelings, especially our feelings!
In order for us to be confident in facing Him when He comes, we have to live in this world according to His will. We will only have fear if we do things here in this world that is way out of His plan. Everything that we do here on earth will be examined, if we serve Him for Him or for our own sake. It’s surprising to know that a lot of Christians are afraid to die even if they know that they’re going to heaven. And it’s because they live a selfish life, what is their difference from the world? By that they miss the whole point of God’s love.