life in love

Life "in love" surely makes all the difference in the world. We read that Jacob served Laban seven years for Rachel, but that they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. To know the love of God in Jesus can help us to endure much. And this love needs to carry over to God's loved ones, and even, as we learn from Jesus, to our enemies.

None of us are loveable all the time, maybe not much of the time. Of course it's a gift when we are loved, and when we can and do love. God is love, and our lives need to be lived in that love. A love which will lay down one's life if need be for the beloved, and gladly. But a love which also lives a lifetime of love for the beloved. And that when it's all said and done, they would be like just a few days, because of love. The greatest love being the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. A love which remains when all else may and will falter.

For me this is important, and a great blessing in life, though so little known in comparison to what is available for us in Jesus. The great blessing is to be coming to know more and more God's love in Jesus, and to return something of that to God and to others.

What might you like to share with us about "life in love"?

the love of God in Jesus

How great is the love of God in Jesus. If only we could just begin to understand. But it's more than just to try to understand, but to begin to experience.

I love this prayer of Paul:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's 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.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

To live in this love every day, the love that in Jesus we will live in forever. How wonderful. A challenge oftentimes, and of course we never measure up to the fullness of the maturity of that love in Jesus in this life. We can be filled with it, but God wants ever to enlarge our capacity for it. We want ever to grow and keep growing in that love. God will do it, as we keep trusting him and entrusting ourselves to his grace to us in Jesus.