No doubt many of the married people reading this article have felt this way at one time or another. Maybe it was after a disagreement, argument or a time of feeling neglected or taken for granted. The Beatles may have thought, “All you need is love”, but sometimes things in real life are much more complicated. We need to feel loved in order to love. Let’s face it. There are many times we simply do not feel loved. Perhaps you grew up in an abusive family (I have been there) and you feel as though you were never loved and feel inadequate to effectively express love because you don’t know that you have ever been loved. We need to look at scripture to find that we have been loved. This will help us to love others.
In 1 John 4:7-19, we are told to love one another. Before you think, “Great! Another Bible verse to make me feel inadequate and guilty!”, read on. In this passage, we are told to love one another because GOD LOVES US! We are not left with a command from a God that sits back uninterestedly looking on our situation issuing capricious or random decrees just to get us to jump through His hoops. He is telling us how to live the life He created us for. While some may try to tell you that you are the maker of your own destiny and you can have your best life now just by self-improvement, God offers so much more. He directs after He provides. He commands after He has already provided the means to carry out that command. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself. Consider the following truths… First, when we have had a profound experience, we want to share it. In this passage, the Apostle John, who refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, is sharing the profound experience he has had with the God of the universe! There is no more profound experience than meeting God through His Son and John is nearly overcome with what he brings from this meeting. He understands profoundly that God truly loves us. It is the same for you and I. God loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us and to provide access to God so that we might also experience that love.
Second, having come to know God, a believer should be nearly overcome with the amount of love God has for us. Not only did He send His Son to die for us, but He also drew us to Himself, convinced us of our need for Him, gave us the faith to believe in Him and entered into relationship with us through our submission to His will. He forgave us for all our sins (past, present and future) and already sees us as having made the journey to sanctification that often frustrates us as we live our lives attempting to catch up with His eternal view.
Third, He holds us close to Him and allows us to hear, see, read about and experience His heart for us and for His world. The closer we live to Him, the more of this we experience, and that experience rubs off on us in such a way that we cannot help but see our love for others increase. Through this love, we see fear eliminated or reduced and the lines that divide us removed. We find ourselves full of His love and, since He is so much bigger than we could ever hope to be, that loves spills out of our hearts onto those around us.
You may be thinking, “Yes, but that is easy to say. You are not married to MY husband. You don’t have MY parents. You don’t work for MY boss.” While this is true, it does not change the fact that we can love them because the love of God fills our hearts. Those of us whom the book of Romans calls “enemies of God” before coming to Him (Romans 5:10) have been loved by Him. That should mean we can love our “enemies”. Even if you feel like your enemy is your spouse, co-worker, boss, child, etc., we serve a God who can fill us up to overflowing onto them. The question is, are you living close enough to God for Him to rub off on you? Maybe the problem is not others, but us. Just a thought.