Valentine’s Day is coming and all minds turn to LOVE. While planning a Ladies’ Craft Night for church, I was asked to present a talk/lesson with the theme of love. There are many scriptures that mention the word “love.” Depending on the translation you are using, Love is mentioned between 310 and 898 times in the Bible! However, not every meaning of the word love is the same. I know you don’t love french fries in the same way you love your spouse! With so many different ways to go with the theme of love, I decided to focus on living a life you love! I read a book by Joyce Meyer (Living a Life you Love) that helped me come up with ideas and examples of what can be done to live a life you love.
In a nutshell, to live a life you love, you need to love God, love yourself, and love others. Easy peasy….or is it. How do we do that?
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ — Matthew 22:37
Some practical ways to love God? First off, you need to spend time with Him, talk to Him, ask Him what He wants. Then you can show you love Him by obeying what He tells you, serving others in His name, and choosing to do everything out of love for Him. This may mean setting your alarm early to spend time in prayer and Bible study or it may mean serving in a soup kitchen. It may be as simple as obeying His prompt to keep your mouth shut or as complex as creating a ministry to serve folks in your community. Keep asking Him what He wants you to do and you will show your love by doing it.
We love because he first loved us. –1 John 4:19
Secondly, love yourself. If you have ever heard the acronym JOY to mean Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last, the order of the steps needed in living a life you love seems to contradict that because before you focus your love on others, you need to recognize how much you are loved and learn to love yourself.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. –John 15:12
We are to love others as we are loved by God. That’s a big ask because God loves us so much. But oftentimes, we forget that we are loved and we forget that we are lovable. We think about our flaws, our mistakes, and our struggles and we forget about who we are in Christ. We need to take action steps to love ourselves.
There are many ways to love yourself. You can begin by saying something nice about yourself. The Bible gives us many examples and says we are blessed, loved, precious, understood, forgiven, and free. We are complete, chosen, wonderfully made, and strong. We are children of God and we are redeemed. Scripture says we are loved and we should love ourselves so we can love others. You can’t pour from an empty cup and so you need to fill your cup with the truth that you are loved so you can pour that love on others.
Another way to love yourself is to do something for yourself. Like taking a craft class, learning something new, sipping a special cup of tea, or just relaxing. Treat yourself the way you wish others would treat you…with loving-kindness.
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. –Matt 22:39
When you are firmly grounded and aware of the love of God and you love yourself, you are in the proper place to love others. The more you love others, the happier you will be. As you explore living a life you love, you need to recognize that scripture says that God is Love (1 John 4:8) so when you make love the primary focus of your life, you are making God your number one priority.
When dealing with others you need to make a decision to love. It’s easy to love some people and a little harder to love others, but you can make a decision to do just that. You can’t change others and their annoying habits but you can turn your focus from the things they do that you don’t like and you can choose to demonstrate love to them every day. The more you love others the happier you will be. Every time you make a decision to love someone who mistreats you, it will give you joy because Jesus loved those who mistreated him and if we respond similarly in our situations, we are acting like Jesus and that is the goal…to be more like Him. This kind of love will require sacrifice, but sacrifice doesn’t have to feel like a bad thing. We often think of sacrifice as not getting something we want or doing without, but really when we sacrifice for others we are actually receiving more than we are giving because the Lord will bless our efforts. You will never regret loving someone if you recognize that by loving them you are loving God.
And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. — Hebrews 13:16
When I mentioned the 3 things you needed to do to live a life you love, it seemed like a step-by-step approach with 3 distinct steps. But as I studied it more, I realized that they all flow together and the lines are blurry. Is it step number 3, loving others when you bake them a cake or is that step number 2, loving you because you will get to feel so good when you bless them? Or is delivering the cake, step number 1, loving God, by loving others? See how this all goes together? Since God is love if you want to live a life you love you simply need to make love the central theme of it.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. –John 15:12
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