MAKING LOVE A PRIORITY

IOI CHRISTIAN MORNING MEAL

TOPIC: MAKING LOVE A PRIORITY

TEXT : 1COR 13.

The Bible says we are to love one another. Sounds good, but can we do it? Whoever said, "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand," was about right.

People are just irritating. I agree with the guy who said, "To live above with those we love, oh, how that will be glory. To live below with those we know, now that's another story.
Even people at church can be difficult to love. Sometimes we sing a chorus in church: "I'm so glad you're a part of the family of God," and then we look at the person beside us and sing, "I'm surprised you're part of the family of God."
Sometimes it's hard enough to love our own family. One guy told his wife that if she had really loved him she would have married someone else.

How do we make love a dominating characteristic of our lives?

Make love a priority
Indeed loving people is difficult. Yet this is what the Bible commands. "For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another" (1 John 3:11). We spend time on what we deem important. For many of us these choices are valid: time with family and friends, work, prayer, serving the poor, fighting for rights, protesting wrongs. But as the Scripture reminds us, "And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing" (1 Cor. 13:3).

Even though we have the freedom to set our own priorities, Jesus made a point of defining certain ones of them for us: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and most important commandment.
The second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Matt. 22:37-39).

Love, then, is not a gray area the Scriptures. Jesus gave love priority over all other Christian virtues. Every thought, response, and act of goodwill must first pass through the fine filter of love, or it means nothing at all.

In "Strength to Love", Martin Luther King, Jr., encouraged us to realize that "our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives." But why love? What makes it so important?

LET US PRAY,
DEAR LORD JESUS CHRIST, HELP US TO LOVE TRUELY BEYOUND OUR HURT AND HATRED IN JESUS NAME

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Good morning friends