Godly Love: One of God’s Greatest Gifts!
by Adiel Granados - January 31, 2012
How can we grow in the love that God shows to us?
One very significant gift from God is His eternal love. God loves us more than we can imagine, and He wants us to love Him and show Him that we want to be part of His holy family. God wants His family to be a loving family. As humans, our human nature does not know how to love in this way. Therefore, we need to learn it.
How can we learn this love?
Well, first, we need to ask God to lead us in our learning because we as humans cannot learn godly things by ourselves. It’s like babies trying to teach other babies how to talk. There is no way this can happen if they do not have someone who can already talk to show them how.
To start to learn, we first must ask God for teachable character so He can help us understand and shape ourselves to what His love really is. King Solomon set an example in this. When God asked him in a dream, “What shall I give you?” Solomon asked for an understanding heart to judge God’s people (1 Kings 3:5, 9). In verse 12, we can see that God gave Solomon what he had asked for.
Today, God has asked us, too, what we want. Jesus Christ said, “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it” (John 14:14). Jesus has given us an invitation to ask. This does not mean that God will give us everything we ask for right away, but He surely will provide what we need.
We must try our best to live an acceptable life to God. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Believing is a big thing too; God also wants us to believe in Him because how can we ask someone for something if we do not believe that someone is there? That would make no sense. It is important to believe that God can and will provide what we ask for (Mark 11:24).
Example of the perfect love of God
The sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins shows the unimaginable love that God and His Son have for us. God’s love is perfect and wonderful. In 1 John 4:18, we can see the love of God: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
This love is perfect because it has no fear in it. It has no torment; torment is the result of sin. There is no way to have perfect love if there is sin in it because that would be contradictory to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.
God’s perfect laws are based on love. God’s love is incredible, and with a God like that, we can always be sure to smile and be happy about the future that He has prepared for us when the entire plan for salvation is fulfilled.
The future with God’s love everywhere
Imagine when we are done growing in the love that God is teaching us. Imagine when everyone loves each other the way that God loves us now. When this world and all of its terrible things are gone—that will be a wonderful time to live!
Every time we feel like life is sad, we need to remember that this life is not what we are working toward. Our life and love need to be focused on the Kingdom of God, which is made possible through His immense love.
There is no way we can let this life and its desires take away from what eternity will be like for us. This life is just a blink of an eye compared to eternity. We need to smile and be happy that now we have the opportunity to grow in the love that God wants us to have during this life and for eternity.
This love will always be with us because it is part of godly character, but material things will end once we die. We need to keep going and work hard to not let anything of this world take away the love of God from us.
As Paul tells us in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Those are very inspiring words from Paul. God’s love for us is that strong! We can go out and smile at life because we are able to know and have the invaluable love from God.
Adiel S. Granados, 17, attends the Clarksville, Maryland, congregation of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association.
For more about God’s way of love, see:
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