Love Never Fails

Love Never Fails

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8, NIV)

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love” (Galations 5:13, NIV)

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2, NIV).

“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22, NIV)

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7, NIV)

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, NIV).

Above are just some examples of the plethora of verses regarding love found in the bible. Love is something we should all embrace and live for, for others and for Jesus for He loved us and gave His life for us on the cross for our sins so if we believe in His life and resurrection we can spend eternity with Him in heaven.

I will admit before I was saved I didn’t love as the Bible says to love. I mean, I have always loved my family and friends and life, but not in the sense of what the Bible says. I lived life for myself, my selfish ways, always looking out for number one: myself. I wasn’t patient, I wasn’t necessarily kind, and I had bitterness in my heart for the wrongs done to me by what I thought was punishment from God, a toy He played with to make my life miserable for His own pleasure of watching me struggle.

I used to live completely in the world and fulfilled and fell for the temptations of the world that were best for me and that I felt like doing, regardless of the consequences. I partied, I slept around, and I didn’t love others. I looked out for myself only and fulfilled my own desires of pleasure without a second thought to the plight I was heading for: hell. 

Only once I was saved did I realize all the wrongs I did to others, to myself, and how much I let God down by my actions, words, and the life I had led from a teenager until I was saved. Did I mature in my ways as I got older, yes, but I was still reckless in my younger years and did all the wrong things I thought were right, for me and no one else.  I was on the wide path to destruction and I didn’t know it and didn’t care at the time. 

Once I found Jesus, once I was saved and began my walk with Him, I realized how bad a life I had lived and thanked God that I made it to salvation before it was too late for me. Only as I delved into the Word and walked along with Jesus did I realize what love truly is and what it means for me, others, and my salvation. I realized how I used to live was not in love but in selfishness filled with fulfilling my own desires without second thought to the repercussions that occurred. How many people did I hurt? How did my selfishness affect other’s lives? How bad of a person was I really? 

If I met some of the people I hurt and affected negatively, they would not recognize me and would say I am a different person. Why? Because I have the love of Jesus in me now and emulate that love to the best of my abilities. Do I fail sometimes? Of course I do. I’m not perfect. I’m not holier than thou, and mostly I am a human in a fallen world full of sin. Yet I strive to live for love and portray that love to others in the way that Jesus wants me to.

For me, it’s about attitude and demeanor. If I keep love and compassion in the forefront of my mind, I emulate that love of Jesus to others and myself, reminding myself that it is my duty to love myself, love others, and most importantly, to love Jesus. If I keep that attitude of love at the forefront of my mind, I’m a happier person and feel good and closer to the Lord. When I slip, when I fail to love, when I get angry or frustrated I feel guilty. I feel separated from God and I do my best to make amends and pray for forgiveness.

What about you? How is your love attitude? Do you just love yourself and not others? Do you look out for number one (you) or do you look out for others and show love towards others? At first I found this hard to do in the beginning of my walk with Jesus. It was not an automatic magical change in attitude but it took work and time through prayer and reading and taking to heart the words in the Bible about love and caring for others.  As time passed and I learned more about love, I began working on my love attitude towards others. I failed a lot at first, but now, even though I still slip sometimes, I can say that I show love towards others a majority of the time.  I urge you to emulate the love of Christ to others. 

It’s a great feeling to have the love of Jesus in your heart. Looking back on my walk and my life before knowing Jesus, I can’t believe the amount of love there is from Jesus; it is never ending and fulfills me more each day in my walk with him. I have a compassion for people I never had before and a love for others I never imagined I could have before I was saved.  Retrospect gives you 20/20 vision of your past life and I can testify that the love I had before Christ was an empty love, not nearly as full of love as I now feel in my heart and soul.

Jesus makes love complete, for He is love and all He has for us is compassion and love. He wants us to love others as He has loved us. To emulate that love in our life to reflect His love for others to show compassion, empathy, sympathy, and the care for others that can’t be offered or shown without the love of Christ in our hearts. To deny Christ’s love is to deny God’s perfect love for us and separates us from the Lord.

If you don’t love as Christ loved you, what are you doing with your life? You need to question your standing with the Lord and ask yourself what you are really doing. Are you emulating the love of Christ in your life to others? Are you showing and feeling overwhelming love for others that hurts your heart when they are in trouble or need support? If you don’t you need to reevaluate your attitude. This love should be towards believers in Christ and more importantly to unbelievers who don’t know Jesus.

By having love in your heart of that comes from Jesus, you can’t help but have love for others and concern for their eternity and well being. Showing love isn’t going through the motions at church by helping with the food bank or kitchen to feed the poor, it is the attitude you have when helping others. If you feel compelled to help people out of motives other than love then you are wrong. If you go through the motions of church and your Christian life without the attitude of love at the forefront of your existence, then you are wrong. Reevaluate yourself and test yourself to see where you stand with love for others and your love for Jesus.

Having the love of Christ in your heart will truly change your being. If you have love in your heart, you know what I mean and what I’m talking about. Yet, if you don’t know the love of Christ in your heart, you’re missing out on a huge part of your walk with Christ.  The love of Christ in your heart is so overwhelming it is hard to put into words. It is a feeling of great love and compassion. The love of Christ in your heart will fulfill you with an endless fountain of love and compassion for others that will bring you to tears at times. 

If you are saved and don’t have that feeling of the love of Christ in your heart, you need to pray for it. You also need to read the Bible to discover how Christ showed His love and compassion to others. Once you are filled with that love and it grows in your heart as you walk with Jesus and study His ways in the Bible, you will not regret it. You will feel real fullness of love that you haven’t experienced before and a compassion and care for others that you hadn’t had before. Your soul and heart will change and you will want more and more of that love every day. The love of Christ and His fullness in your heart is ever growing and you will want to seek more of it day to day.

When you have that love and compassion of Christ in your heart, you can’t help but love others as God loves you. You will radiate that love to others and people will see that love in you and the compassion you have for them. They will appreciate it and they will know you are a true Christian who has God’s love in your heart. This in its self can lead others to Christ for they will feel and see your love and compassion and will want that for themselves.

You see, love never fails. If you love you can’t ever go wrong with your actions and attitude towards yourself and others.  If people still shun you, that’s okay, because with love you can look beyond that and still show them love by your words, actions, and attitudes.

Have you ever met a bitter person who hates the world, hates people and just has a sour disposition about them? When you talk to them with love and compassion, sometimes it softens their heart. If you show them love and compassion in your interactions with them, they change, just a little bit, but enough to know what you stand for and what you radiate to others. You never know, that bitter person’s heart can be softened by your showing of love and compassion that eventually leads them to the Lord.

We as Christians need to always strive to show the love of Christ towards others. Many Christians don’t and it makes me questions their standing with God. If you go to church or meet other Christians, you can usually discern their true intentions and their love of God by their words and actions. There are a lot of bitter Christians out there that don’t emulate the love of Jesus. By their actions, they show the world that Christianity is not what Christianity is about. It’s about love and compassion through Christ.  By their negative words and bitterness they show the world and others that they truly don’t have the love of Christ in their hearts and turn people off to find Jesus.

By showing the love of Christ to others, people may want that love and want to know how and why you have it. Christians in the best of times and the hard times should always show the love of Christ through them so that others can see that we trust in the Lord and know that He is in control.  Many times when there is a crisis at home or work, it can be easy to get angry or bitter. I’ve seen it at my workplace. When a crisis occurs, when a deadline isn’t met, people get angry at others and show bitterness in their heart. Me, I stay calm and collective in my demeanor and actions for I have the love of Christ in my heart and by showing them that love, it usually calms the situation down and the bitterness dissolves and the anger goes away, for how can someone be angry with me when I don’t fight back but show love and encouragement of Christ through my words and actions. Love is very disarming to those that don’t have it.

If you want this kind of love you need Jesus. If you want to be filled with love and compassion for others, you need Jesus in your life and in your heart. If you are a Christian and lack this love and compassion in your heart it is time to change that through honest and humble pray to Jesus. Get that Bible out and open the word to read about the love of Christ, not just on Sunday’s but every day.

If you aren’t a Christian and want this heart fulfilling love, you can have it. Pray to Jesus to forgive your sins and believe that He died for your sins and was resurrected. Ask Him to begin to work in your heart. Ask Him to give you compassion and love for others as He did for others. Get a Bible and start reading about the life of Jesus and you will begin to have a changed heart. Will this happen immediately? For some yes, for others it will take time as you walk and build your relationship with Christ.

Remember that love never fails. With love anything is possible and can overcome everything thrown your way. Have hope in love and have hope for compassion. Not only will you bless others with your love, but you will be blessed by the love you have and give to others. Trust in the Lord to give you this love and the hope of eternal life and blessings.

Life is Short

The other day I opened my email and a spam email wasn’t directed to my spam folder automatically but was in my regular inbox and the title of the email was “Life is short, have an affair.” Dang.  Check the box next to the email. Push the delete button and it was gone. I didn’t even bother to open it and read it, because I knew it was of satan and would only tell me things I don’t believe in. Life is short, have an affair-ha- how about “Life is short, find Jesus!” 

 

I usually open my spam folder to ensure regular emails didn’t get directed to the spam folder, but I can say that most of the spam I seem to get talk about the things of the world like porn, affairs, secret encounters, sex pills, prescription drugs without prescriptions, etc: bad things of this world.

 

It got me thinking about how many people live this way of life and how lost they really are in regards to their salvation.  I was pretty disheartened thinking about this and was troubled by the fact that a large proportion of the population is without Jesus. 

 

The world is full of temptations designed to get us off our walk with the Lord. In front of us, behind us, to the left and to the right, there is always temptation. Do we fall for temptations of this world? Yes some of us do and it makes us feel lost and disheartens us in our walk with Jesus: it makes us feel like we are not worthy of the Lord. When this happens, satan has succeeded in what he wants from us, to take us off our walk with Jesus. Yet, we have no fear of this, because we are sinners, we are prone to make mistakes and because we are saved and can’t taken from the Lord once we have Him and He has us, we can get back in our relationship with Jesus by asking for forgiveness and moving forward again in our walk with Him.

 

“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28, KJV)

 

For unbelievers, temptation surrounds them as well, but they don’t see it or feel it the same way as we do. It is just part of life for them. It is fun and do they feel guilty for their improprieties?  I’m sure they do and satan has won. He uses temptations of this world to ensure unbelievers remain unbelievers by making them feel guilty and hopeless in life.  It is up to us who are saved to witness and live our lives as the light of the world to attract these unbelievers to us and eventually lead them to Jesus.   

 

As an unbeliever at one time I can testify that I fell for the temptations of the world on a regular basis and felt hopeless and guilty, but mostly I felt empty.  What I believe is that the biggest issues for unbelievers is the emptiness they feel inside that they try to fill with the world has to offer, like I felt. Thanks be to God that I found Him! Yet there are those that haven’t found Jesus yet and they walk and stumble through life trying to fill that void in their soul that they don’t know can be filled with Jesus.

 

Remember how you felt before you were saved? That hole in your heart you felt? The things you did to try to fill that emptiness? Put yourself back in those shoes in your mind to remind yourself of those that aren’t saved and how they feel, the emptiness in their heart, the feeling of hopelessness.  This will give you the understanding of where they are and how they feel, it gives you sympathy and empathy to their situation.

 

Remember the feeling you had when you were introduced to Jesus? Remember that feeling of awe when you were saved and felt the presence of the Lord in your heart and the Spirit of God fall on you? Remember the zeal you had when you were first saved for Jesus, the love you had in your heart, that fullness of love and hope? Now it is our job to do our best to bring this to unbelievers by the gifts given to you by the Lord and by the path He has laid out for you. 

 

Admittedly, there are some unsaved people that don’t realize they have a hole in their heart. Satan has successfully filled them with lies and worldly things that will make it hard for us to break through to them, but with the Lord all things are possible. Prayer is our weapon to soften their heart to be receptive to the message of Jesus and His saving grace.  We must be warriors in this fight for the souls of the lost with Jesus as our commander in chief to lead us and help us lead others to Him.

 

Is this hard? Of course it is, we are fighting against an enemy that has had a lot of experience and tools at hand to deceive many to stay away from Jesus, but we can overcome this with our actions, words, and demeanors around the unsaved. We are surrounded by the unsaved and through us living our lives for Jesus, we can’t help but radiate His love and it makes unsaved people curious about us and what we stand for and what we live for.

 

By living for the Lord and having Jesus in your heart, you can’t help but be radiant in love and affection for those unsaved around us. They are attracted to us for some reason like moths to lights. As we live for Jesus, He will open up opportunities for us to witness to the unsaved and will give us the right words to introduce Christ to them.  For some people, this gift is great and they are very successful, but for others this is hard because of fear of rejection or fear of reprisals from people. We shouldn’t fear though, because God is with us in those times.

 

If we introduce Jesus to others and they reject us, does that mean we give up on them? NO! We must pray for them and continue to live and radiate the love of God to them. Sometimes people may reject you and your words, but the words were given to them and later in life when troubles come, they will remember you and your words and will come back to you or a church for comfort. On the other hand, they may reject us and Jesus completely. If they do this, it is in the Lord’s hand and we have done our job of introducing Christ to them.

 

Personally, I take the approach of talking about my faith when asked about it or approached by someone who has questions. I’m not pushy or demanding, but respond with love and compassion and by my words and actions, Jesus comes through me to them and at that point I can introduce Jesus to them. Do I get scared sometimes? Yes, but once I get talking I feel more confident and with the Holy Spirit as my voice, I say the right words. Do I push Jesus on people, no, but when the opportunity arises, I take advantage of the situation.

 

Most of my witnessing happens online through these articles and on the support group I’m part of for my health issues. I have a verse in my signature block and I get a lot of people that email me asking me more about my faith and at that point I get to witness to them through writing, for I’m a better writer than a speaker when witnessing because I can get my thoughts in order better on “paper” than verbalizing them. One of my gifts of from the Lord is writing and I use that to better his kingdom. Sometimes people write me back and sometimes they don’t but I have at least planted a seed in them.

 

That’s part of our job as Christians, to plant seeds in the field of this world. If we plant the seeds to people they may grow or they may not, but that is our duty, to plant the seeds of faith for others who don’t know Jesus and let Him be the water that nourishes them.  By writing, I can reach more people and touch more people than I can if I verbalize my words. For others out there, your gift may be different but you must use your gifts to plant the seeds of faith for unbelievers. Whether your gift is writing, talking, hospitality, etc, we are charged to use our gifts to spread the word of Christ to others.

 

To any unbelievers reading this far down so far, know that we Christians have nothing but love for you. We want you to join our eternal family with Christ. We want you to feel and know the love of Jesus in your heart as we do. We want you to have the hope of eternity in heaven with Jesus, for He is the only way to heaven. You can’t do it yourself by works or living a good life or having your own views of what it takes to get to heaven. All the good you do, the life you live, and the hope of heaven means nothing unless you have Jesus in your life and heart for salvation.

 

If you want to have eternity in heaven, if you want that emptiness in your heart filled, this moment is for you.  All you have to do is to genuinely pray to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and accept Him as your Lord and Savior. Do this now and you will become a changed person. The Holy Spirit will fill your heart with an unspeakable joy. You will begin to desire to know the Lord more and more and your life will change for the better. You will see the world and your life through God’s eyes. The Holy Spirit will guide you on your walk with Jesus. You won’t regret this decision.

 

If you are scared or hesitant of this decision, don’t be. God is love and if you want that love to fill your empty heart, that emptiness you are feeling right now, He will do so. He will never let you go and will be with you always in your heart and thoughts.  You will be a new creature, God’s child wrapped in His comfort and love. Don’t miss this opportunity. Your eternal destination depends on this decision right now. Choose Jesus.

 

You don’t know when you life will end and it may end today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now, but you don’t really know. If you don’t choose to have Jesus in your life, you will miss the opportunity to spend your eternity with Jesus in heaven. We all want to go to heaven and the only way to heaven is to believe in Jesus and His promise of eternal salvation with Him if you simply believe in Him, His life, and His resurrection. He died for your sins and you will be washed clean and will be blameless at the judgment seat of God if you simply believe. Life is short, choose Jesus.

 

God bless.

 

John Lysaught

John_lysaught@yahoo.com