Happy Valentines Day!

What is God’s love like? To what does He want us to aspire, to grow into? This love is agape, of Greek origins, and is a selfless love. It is the love that the Bible calls charity, the love that God has for us, and we in turn for God. This love is pure and unpolluted.
God is one hundred percent agape love. Can we wrap our minds around Romans 5:8, “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”? Picture the most vile, evil, rotten, sin-filled person, and imagine them before a court of justice, declared guilty, knowing they will receive the death penalty, and someone stepping in, and saying, “Let this person live. I will die for them, and let their sin and guilt be taken away as if they had never done any sin.” Who in their right mind would do something like that?! Yet, Jesus did that and more for me, for you, for every person in the world. He holds out His love and salvation, and says, “I know how ugly you are. I’ve seen all that you have thought and done. But I want to give my life so you can believe on me and be set free.” That is agape love. It blows our minds and we will never really be able to understand it, until we meet God face to face.
But do you know what is even more amazing? When we look to Jesus, put our belief in Him, and in repentance turn to Him, He plants in us that same ability to love, selflessly and unconditionally.
In fact, He commands us to do this. 1 John 2 talks about how we can know if we know Him, if we keep His commandments. It goes onto say that through our obedience, His love can be made perfect in us. Do you believe He can and will do that in you? Believe it and embrace it! Then John goes on to tell us that we must love our bother. John 13:34-35 looks really good on paper: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” And when I’m feeling very spiritual, with a cup of tea in my hand, a quiet house, and general peace in my relationships, this seems doable. But then real life happens: my tea grows cold, the children start fighting, and there’s that friend that I can’t please, no matter what. What then?
Does God ask anything of us, and not give us the power we need to do it? Read your Bible- He has promised us that He won’t! That power of God in your life, when you have died with Him daily at the foot of the Cross, then you have been raised again- in His likeness. You now have His power within you. It’s not going to be easy- your power of choice is not now taken away from you- but you are attached to a vine that has given you life.
When you know that you’ll never be able to do this on your own, you are right where God can use you. You are at the perfect place to cry out to Him for help. He is able to fill you with love- the selfless, unconditional kind. The kind that says, “I give up myself for you. The kind that gives a cup of water to the toddler for the umpteenth time that day, the kind that reads a story to or plays a game with the squabbling siblings. The kind that searches my own heart about the hard-to-get-along-with friend, and says, “Let’s go out for coffee. Do you have time to get together?”
As we sincerely ask, God delights to give, and what’s more, He does a great work in our heart that makes it easier and easier for us to practice obeying His commandments. Furthermore, we see God’s work in maturing us, delighting to fill us with the love we need, and we are drawn closer in awe of Him. This cycle keeps on repeating, to God’s glory!
Many kinds of love are right and good, when practices withing the boundaries that God gives in His Word. But the one love that will last into eternity is agape love- “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16