But if anyone has the world’s goods (resources for sustaining life) and sees his brother and fellow believer in need, yet closes his heart of compassion against him, how can the love of God live and remain in him? (I John 3:17)
I read this the other day and it impacted me and I wanted you to be touched and impacted like I was. This came from Joyce Meyer’s “Trusting God Day by Day Devotional.
We often think of love as a thing or a feeling, but the word love is also a verb. Love must do something in order to remain what it is. Part of the nature of love is that it requires expression. The Bibles asks, if we see a need and close our hearts of compassion, how can the love of
God live and remain in us?
Love becomes weaker and weaker if it cannot be demonstrated; in fact it may become totally inactive. If we keep it active on purpose as we do things for others, we can keep from being selfish, idle, and unfruitful.
The quintessential act of love is that Jesus laid down His own life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. That sounds extreme doesn’t it? Fortunately, the great majority of us will never be called upon to give up our physical life for someone else.
But we have opportunities every day to “lay down” our life for others. Every time you put aside your own desire or need and replace it with an act of love for someone else, you are laying down your life for a moment, or an hour, or a day.
If we are full of the love of God–and we are because the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with love at the new birth–then we must let love flow out of us. If it becomes stagnant through inactivity, it is good for nothing. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son (John 3:16) Do you get it? God’s love provoked Him to give!
