The Way That He Loves
There are many ways to love and I grew up watching a love story between my mother and father. How often I would be embarrassed as a teen watching them hold hands where my peers could see. Their love enveloped us in a childhood of sheltered love. Mother often told me of her dream of a small house with a white picket fence around it. This is precisely the first home I remember as a pre-schooler with three rooms – you could see from the front door through to the back door. I played outside happily in the safe confines of that white picket fence.
If someone could bottle or box love, they would have a corner on the market in today’s world. This world is wearyin’ of the way it is now. So filled with cynicism, lies, hate of all kinds and corruption and the ‘what’s in it for me’ mentality. We are searching for the little white house with a picket fence and hollyhocks in the flowerbed with a rose bush by the front door kind-of-life. Someone wrote and sang these lyrics and it is no less true now: What the world needs now is love, sweet love, It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of, What the world needs now is love, sweet love, No not just for some but for everyone…
How do I love thee, let me count the ways… is the way Elizabeth Barrett Browning began her poem published in 1850. It continues – I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight, and ends…I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
The love of God…. Begins with faith…believing in what we cannot see except with our hearts. We know without a doubt that He is, and He is the one who created the world, the universe and us, soul by soul, year after year. Poets describe love between those who love….
Where does love begin? It comes from God… Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. I John 4:8. When we cut ourselves off from God, we cut ourselves away from the essence of love.
I love the verse that tells how much God loves: It is a forever kind of love. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
God’s love through Jesus Christ is forever – when we choose to respond to His love. This kind of love is not the way we love each other. The ways we love is often filled with deceit, impatience, unforgiveness, anger and moments of questions as to why and asking where and when our first love disappeared.
When we study how God loves and learn why God is love! We are beginning a quest that changes our lives. The immensity of his love is shown by his words: in John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Later in John 8:32, Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.”
When I heard these lyrics – I was captured by the thought, The way that He loves is…The way that He loves is as fair as the day, That blessed my way with love, The way that He loves is as soft as the breeze, Arresting the trees at night.
The way that He loves is as deep as the sea, His spirit shall be my stay, The way that He loves is as pure as a rose, Much sweeter He grows each day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdKCjLDnRw8 and https://www.youtube.com/watchv=CblRS6mLZWo&ebc=ANyPxKoi_jta2NOWn0HDOkeUCOQ7ZoTWMYHOJgFDowpfMhqfD5heZ4ESP-2YcxTldS9lbSqIAnKkvAV4Ee51n3y5–Rtzdyk-g
What is love made up of? Love-learning is like learning a new language and a new way to live. Love is consists of Faithfulness, trust, truth, peace, joy, goodness, gentleness, kindness, patience, forgiveness, faithfulness and self-control, these ways of His love comes from the Holy Spirit. (Galatians 5:22) Consider each of the verses below carefully.
– Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. Micah 7:18-19
– Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:1-5
– What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31
– For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Colossians 2:1-3
– By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. John 15:8-10
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