Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.     1 John 4:11-12

If you look at the world around you today, you will find that love seems to be lacking. Instead, it has been replaced by evil. We see evil all around us.

Many of us will shake our heads, talk about what a shame this is, and go on with our lives. We will say what a sad shape the world is in. We will talk about how it has gone too far, and nothing can be done about it.

I believe this to be true. This world has gone so far, there is nothing you or I can do about it. I can’t fix the world, but I can fix myself. I can show God’s love. I can adhere to Romans 12:21 which says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”.

God created us to be in a loving relationship with Him. He loves us no matter what we do. The problem is we often fail to love Him back. In John 14:15 Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep my commandments.” We also fail to show God’s love to others.

We are happy to be recipients of God’s love especially when we are going through hard times. We want to pray to God and have Him make things all better. Once the crisis is averted or handled, we move on. I know this from personal experience.

As we go through life, we experience heartaches and heartbreaks. This hardens us and makes us cynical. It tends to wear us down. We should never allow the hard times in our lives to cause us to not love or to lose faith. The Bible tells us we will go through hard times. If we trust in God and stick close to Him during these hard times it builds our faith. It strengthens us and builds endurance.

If we harden our hearts lose faith and decide not to be loving to others, we just melt into an already evil world. We please the devil instead of pleasing God.

I often ask you to check yourself and I’m asking you to do this today. Are you showing God’s love to those around you? Are you imitating Christ as we are told to do in Ephesians 5:1? Would those closest to you say that you are loving, kind, and selfless?

God gave His only Son, Jesus, to die for our sins. There is no greater love (John 15:13). If you truly believe in Him and have faith in Him, you will die to yourself and show His love to those around you. People will know you are a follower of Christ by your love (John 13:35).

If God didn’t love us so much, we would all be headed to hell. We need to think about this. Because He loves us this much, we should love one another. You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself and perhaps in doing so, change those around you.

Loving others as Christ has loved us, brings peace and joy to our lives. I know this from personal experience. No matter how much hatred and evil we see around us, know that we can shine the light of God’s love.

I Corinthians chapter 13 is called the love chapter. I hope you will take a minute to read it. Verse 2 tells us we can have all kinds of spiritual gifts but without love we have nothing. It describes the kind of love we should have for others. Verses 4-7 describe the characteristics of true love. Verse 8 tells us that love never fails. It ends with verse 13 which tells us to abide in faith, hope, and love and that the greatest of these is love.

God loved us and showed us unconditional love because He wants us to love others. Don’t let Him down. Loving others also gives us the added bonus of peace and joy. Couldn’t we all use more of that in our lives?

Have a great day!