LSEM > Devotions > The Power of Love

The Power of Love

  • November 5, 2020
  • Posted by: Carolyn Mahal
  • Category: Devotions
No Comments

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. – 1 John 4:9-11

The gospels are four separate accounts of the same story – the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  There are a few stories that get covered twice in the Bible, but four versions of the same story could be considered a great deal of overkill – until you think about it.

When you were in school, you learned that while taking notes in a lecture, if the teacher or professor repeated something more than once, it was an important point that would more than likely come back to you in the form of a test question.  You also learned that a good teacher is unafraid to repeat information and share it in different ways to help reach their students at their level.  Even if you must find three or four ways to say the same thing, a teacher will do so to ensure that the learner has acquired the skill or retained the information.

There is importance in something that is repeated.  God gives us His word, an important message that provides guidance, wisdom, life, and salvation to all who hear and believe it.  Some people will try to dismiss this power, claiming that our words don’t mean that much. I would encourage those naysayers to think about the importance of a simple phrase we have spoken and heard hundreds of times in our lives: “I love you.”

Are those words important?  They certainly are.  Remember back to the time when you first realized that you had fallen in love with someone.  Did you wrestle with telling him or her those words because you knew saying it would forever alter the course of that relationship? Do you remember hearing it for the first time from someone you loved?  It was an amazing feeling, wasn’t it?  Way better than other nice phrases you’ve heard like: “You look nice today,” or “I am proud of you.”  We like to hear comments like that, but they just don’t compete with “the big L.” Is there anyone who tires of hearing that phrase?  Of course not.  When you heard your spouse or your child tell you that for the first time, your heart leapt about a thousand feet into the air.  That is the kind of thing you never forget.  But unlike so many other things in life that grow old over time, you can hear a loved one say it for the 795th time, your heart still shoots toward the heavens.  It’s amazing what those eight letters, arranged in just the right way can do!

God loves us. He is good to us.  He blesses us abundantly.  He sustains us in our faith and directs us through our days.  He gives us what we need for body and spirit and is willing to share His love for us over and over again so that we might understand it and receive it in our hearts.  He is patient and loving to His children through His instruction because He wants us to live our lives according to His good and perfect will.  And if it takes years of instruction and thousands of invitations for us to open our hearts to Him, that is exactly what He’ll do.  Don’t grow weary of the word or become impatient with God when you walk in the wilderness.  Go to Him, listen, learn, repent, forgive, love one another, and then repeat.

 

Devotion by Richard Schumacher

LSEM Director of Programs & Services