This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.”

 

Usually on Valentine Day we think of those who are special to us. Family love is the foundation by which God designed marriage, childbirth, and nurture. The environment for growth is more than procreation. It is the socialization of learning independence from childhood to adulthood. Unfortunately, many do not do that well in our society that centers too often on our individua needs wants and not on God and others.  

 

The two greatest emotional needs we have are the needs to love and be loved and to feel worthwhile according to psychologist William Glasser. Families are designed to provide those needs as parents and children grow from generation to generation.

 

The greatest of the Spiritual commandments is to Love God and love others. The love for others should be the same type of true love that is demonstrated in God. It is sacrificial. The pain of Christ is to see many people turn their backs on His offer of love and seek live lives their own ways. It hurts Jesus is to see people claiming fellowship with Him by not living in it. Titus 1 says, "They claim to know God but by their actions they deny him."

 

God's love is so holy He did what He did to make us holy, but if we are unwilling to let His love change us from the inside out, miss out of life most important relationship. When the Holy Spirit does His work of taking over and changing us to be more like his beloved Son. It begins by accepting His invitation to follow Him and invite Him int your life,.

 

 Something must happen in us to help us change. What happens to us is the love of God, what happens in us is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who is making us closer into the image of Christ if we give ourselves as a sacrifice unto him. It is the plan of God to demonstrate and learn of His love through families until children also come to personal faith in Jesus Christ, the greatest model of everlasting love.

 

There are many people that need desperately God love and we're the only ones as Christians that can show them it is a different and greater kind of love that what we hear about in the movies and TV or read about in the novels. It is a love that happens to us, in us and through us by God's power.  May your know the depths of His love this day and forever.

 

Contact me if you wish to know more. 

Dale