Yesterday on our drive home I was thinking of how blessed I am! I often take time to meditate on the blessings the Lord has given me.
Family, friends, health, joy, peace, confidence…blessed!
One verse kept coming to the forefront of my mind – really it was just a phrase from a verse- “Faith worketh by Love”.
“We are waiting for the hope of being made right with God. This will come through the Holy Spirit and by faith. 6 If we belong to Jesus Christ, it means nothing to have or not to have gone through the religious act of becoming a Jew. But faith working through love is important.” Galatians 5:5-6 NLT
I’ve heard message after message on being built up in faith and how it is impossible to please God without faith and those messages are true but if they are separated from the key element of love – God’s love for us, our love for God and our fellowman -those words are in vain.
If I don’t have a firm understanding of how much the heavenly Father loves me I won’t be able to trust Him, or put my faith in His word. In the natural, we put our faith in friends and family because we know they love us and wouldn’t do anything to knowingly hurt us. Love is the basis for our faith.
God is LOVE! We can trust Him to keep His word.
“For the Lord is good. His loving-kindness lasts forever. And He is faithful to all people and to all their children-to-come.” Psalm 100:4-5 NLV
This is the type of love and faithfulness we should be showing to those around us. When we have faith in God’s love for us we can share it with ours. Displaying a true love, genuine and unconditional, will draw our family and friends close. They will be secure in our presence; they will have faith in our words and actions.
And they will see Jesus in us!
“I give you a new command: Love each other. You must love each other just as I loved you. 35 All people will know that you are my followers if you love each other.” John 13:35 CEV
We can change the world one person at a time by loving the way God does. Faith increases when love is present; hope is unwavering when love is present; the world is changed when love is present.
“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” I Corinthians 13:13 NLT
Happy Valentine’s Day – you’re a world changer!