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Love

“God is love!’

(1 John 4:7,8,16 in the Holy Bible)

“Love one another’

(1 John 4:7,11,12; John 13:34 in the Holy Bible)

To love is radical!

It is the most profound thing you can do in life.

Should you accomplish the greatest thing you can think of and be honored and exalted as the best or the greatest but have not love, you have nothing. All your life has been in vain.

The Bible says it is impossible to love one person and hate another.

Love and hate cannot fill the same heart. Don’t let any other person rob you of love.

Saint Francis of Assisi grew up in a rich family in Italy. He lived in the wealth of the world until he was a young man. Then he committed his life to Jesus. He was deeply repulsed with the poor lepers that were in the streets. He liked the clean, the beautiful and the lovely. However now as a follower of Jesus he was to love everyone. He struggled with this until one day as he was walking in the street he met a poor leper covered in pus and sores. With all the strength he could muster he ran to the leper and hugged him and then kissed his cheek. In that moment Saint Francis was free! His life changed forever! He is known in history as one of the world’s greatest lovers of God and mankind.

I challenge you to love. To love even the worst person you know or know of. Love does not mean you have to agree with everything a person does or how they live but it does mean you step past every barrier and choose to love, as God is love. Just love, leave judgment and everything else to God.

I can truly say that I seek to live my life in love. My passion is to care for others and lift then up to God. Life becomes a beautiful journey as we live in love. I am not perfect in this yet it is my desire.

The peace, the joy, the beauty that flows from love makes you truly rich! Love is a gift available to all. Only Satan can rob you of this treasure.

How thrilling to see couples in love. They look at each other with ‘that look’ that is indescribable. The way they touch and bump and find ways to be together. Life hardly exists without thoughts of each other. Day and night they want only to be together. There is a passion and thrill and dreams. Love is evident and wonderful. It can begin that way ‘and’ stay that way.

I urge you not to lose the ‘first’ love you experienced. You do not need too.

True love is action. God so loved that He gave’¦ Jesus.

When we love others we must also put it into action. The way we treat others is the way we treat God. (That will be in another column)

I will just let the Word of God in the Bible finish this column.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

Jesus said to him,

“‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

(Matthew 22:36-40 in the Holy Bible)

“Which is the first commandment of all?”

Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is:

‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’

This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

There is no other commandment greater than these.”

(Mark 12:28-31 in the Holy Bible)

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’

(1 Corinthians 13 in the Holy Bible)

Now be free!

LOVE

Pilgrim followers of Jesus,

Arthur and Denise Blessitt

Luke 18:1