Love Flowing from a Loving Heart:

I have been reading the devotional book from The Voice of the Martyrs.  This has been a really good book to read stories and devotions from Christians who are giving their whole heart, soul, and body into spreading God’s love and goodness to everyone.  These are the Christians that are willing to risk it all in order to spread the good news of Christ.  

“‘It’s not a matter of keeping a commandment,’ Richard replied gently.  ‘When I became a Christian it was as if I had been reborn, with a new character full of love.  Just as only water can flow from a spring, only love can come from a loving heart.’” (Extreme Devotion, The Voice of the Martyrs, pg. 71.)  This comment from Richard really struck me.  There are many times I don’t necessarily have a heart that is just so filled with love where I am willing to forgive even those who are torturing me.  

There are times I am filled with a great love, like when I am with my husband, with my friends, or with my family.  Then there are other times I am definitely not filled with love.  These are typically the times I am driving.  I often get very frustrated with the other drivers going down the road, whether they are going too slow or too fast or driving too close to me.  I also have times when I am filled with frustration when I am at work and there are people who are maybe not easy to work with.  While my job is awesome and I absolutely love my coworkers, there are some people outside of our organization who make the job a little more difficult.  

I also am not very loving when people are straight up mean to me.  When people are not very nice to me, especially strangers I meet down on the street, I will probably not be nice to them.  I also feel this way when there are others who are cruel to the ones I love.  I find I am very judgemental when someone is mean to those who are my friends and family.  

In order to really love others with all my heart, I have to really be filled with love of the Lord.  I need to make sure I am filled with the love of Christ before I start to head into conversations with others.  I need to make sure before I am really about to talk about Christ that I also am properly filled with God’s love.  I should be spending more time soaking up God’s love and really putting it into my heart.  On a daily basis, I spend some time with God in devotion.  However, there are many times, I don’t take all the words as fully as I should.  I need to make sure to really soak up all of what He is trying to teach me and how he is trying to shape me.  

There are many verses about love.  One example of a verse about love is 1 John 4:7, which says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”   This is a reminder for us to love one another.  This verse doesn’t get specific about who we need to love.  The church leaders had already been told we need to love everyone.  We need to love all those who are in the world.  Now this verse is a reminder to love from the heart, but this heart needs to be changed from God, not from ourselves.  

This devotional book does a very good job of showing how the love these Christians have is shown to even their enemies.  This is really the big motivator to big anti-Christians to turn their life to Christ.  There are many ways to plant the seeds of Christ into someone’s life.  However, those who have a very hardened hearts to Christ, the best way to win them over is those who are willing to love and be kind to those who have hurt them, those who are beating them, those who are mocking them, and those who are hurting their loved ones.  

The challenge for this week is to spend time diagnosing your heart. How do you feel about people, even including every person, even those people who are not always that kind to you.  I need to remember this with those who have been unkind to me, who have sometimes patronized me, or who have even mocked me.  Go this week in God’s love and show that love to many others.