A friend of mine told me that when her grandmother lay on her dying bed, her last words were ‘I have lived well, but love is the key’.
That is a profound statement from a godly woman at the end of her earthly life. It is not a light matter, the Bible repeatedly refers to love throughout the Scriptures. It is our first and second commandment, the whole law is fulfilled in it, and everything we do is worthless when without it, the very God whom we worship, is Love.
The world is seeking to fill a void that only God’s love can fill. We as God’s children, must drink from God’s well of love, drink until our hearts are overflowing, so that it can spill over to everyone around us.
Sometimes we, as Christians, judge and condemn others for not giving us the love that we ‘deserve’. Family who don’t make the effort/judge us, friends who exclude us, employers/co-workers who don’t see our full potential. People are just people, and often their actions follow their own insecurities. The key to changing both our hearts and theirs is love.
We have all suffered wounds, offenses, and judgments at one time or another… letting it go, is vital to moving forward, otherwise we are enslaved by it. One way that has really helped me, has been when I started praying for the people who’ve hurt me. The most amazing miracle happens… He impresses our hearts with His love for them. Before we know it, we are seeing them as He sees them, weeping over their wounds and speaking His healing over their hearts.
Unforgiveness, rejection, judgment, hatred, and revenge will never be the keys to our future.
They are the chains that keep us bound to the past, unable to move forward. We can’t change or erase our past, whatever suffering we’ve endured. But in choosing to let those feelings go, and purposefully choose to pray for and love the ones who ‘don’t deserve it’, we are set free and able to run into our future with a heart of joy, no more weighed down by those heavy chains.
There is no greater weapon in this world than love. We, as children of God, must become one with love. We must breathe it, drink it, eat it, sleep it, live it. For it is everything worth fighting for, worth dying for, worth living for. It is not a feeling, it is a choice.
The more we seek God, the more we’ll find His perfect, unconditional, true love.
Love is the key.
Matthew 5:43-48
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers,i what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Galations 5:14
14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,a but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;b 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 John 4:20,21
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannota love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.