The Journey of Understanding God’s love

Good morning friends! We’re back with a new series on love. I just feel like love is the single most important thing in our relationship with God but I often find myself unintentionally neglecting it but honestly without love everything and anything is VOID. You see even in 1 Corinthians 13, the bible says we could have the gift of speaking in tongues, or even all of the languages of both the earth and angels but without love it’s literally a pointless exercise. We could have faith as big as mountains but guess what, without love???? It’s completely pointless. You could be the most PROPHETIC of the prophetic but this means absolutely nothing if you have an incapability to love. Essentially if we don’t have love our actions are devoid of meaning, it’s even referred to as “clanging cymbals”. What am I trying to say? Love is apparently VERYYYY important to God, so I think it’s worth me really trying to decipher what exactly the weird abstract word love means to God.

I hope I didn’t scare you😭, but man that word from 1 Corinthians 13 is so so profound. When I came across it, I was taken aback I definitely had to re-read it & I was honestly like wow you know this love thing must mean a lot to God. Which genuinely makes sense because he’s the author of love - he knows everything about it. So I thought, Grace let’s go back to basics and back to the beginning - Genesis. Surely, this will give you an insight into what exactly Gods plan was for humanity. So yeah, LETSS GOoooo

When writing this book, Moses wants us to understand our very roots and wants us to understand the heart of God. So going back to Gen 1:26. God said Let us make man in our image according to our likeness”. If you’re confused about the tenses of “us” and “our”, this just establishes the trinity ( I was thinking, this is actually so profound because it just highlights how Jesus was ALWAYS there). Anyway, back to Gen 1:26 this to me is the 1st expression of Gods love. He loved us enough to create us, but not just that but to create us in his image. Not that we’d share his glory but that we’d share his light. He gave us this beautiful privilege and we fell short, even then pretty much he begun to actualise the master plan of redemption! The stand alone moment for me, is that God’s plan A was love but so was his plan B. He had a choice to make the moment Adam and Eve chose to separate humanity from God. This is the moment God showcased even more love. He introduced us to “agape” love. It’s deemed the highest expression of love, by definition it’s “ sacrificial, pure unconditional love.” It’s the love that is selfless enough to put away all pride and anger but instead to welcome us in!! It’s the love that didn’t instantly kill us when we disobeyed the one thing he told us not to do ( we really only had one job!!😭😭😭) it’s the love that initiated the master plan from this point onwards.

I’m no love expert ( hence why I’m trying to understand more of it). But from what I can gather, love is a journey, as we feed our minds with the things of God and we renew our minds we learn more about his love for us. We recognise his love in all what we do. That there’s so much to attribute to God’s love. His intentionality is his love. His grace is his love. His mercy can only be his love. His faithfulness is his love. He IS LOVE personified. We can’t know love if we don’t know God!! It sounds so basic, but let’s think of it like the bible is an expression of Gods own love story of redemption for humanity! The GREATEST love story ever told!!!

But yeah I’m excited to embark on this journey together!!

Today’s encouragement:

1. Love lays the foundation of our relationship with God

2. We can’t access the full fruits of our relationship with God without showcasing love

But yeah I urge us to read 1 Corinthians 13, as this is where we will pick up on for the next devotional which is again exploring the love of God but with something I like to call the love cycle. Anyway praying you have a blessed day!! I pray that as we embark on this love journey together that God will give us individual revelations of his love! Amen💓

ALSO I’m starting to use my insta page @livinglifegracefullyx. We’re posting bible verses, worship videos & much more! So go follow that for some daily encouragement!