Happy Valentines Day

Love makes you happy.
Love makes you hopeful.
Love makes you grateful.
Love makes you inspired.
Love changes your life.

Mark 12:33 - To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

1st John 4:7 - Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

John 15:13 - There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

John 13:34 - So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.

True Love; the one who never let go of you - not even when he hung on a cross. Is love the most powerful force in the universe – in all of existence, yes it is. To those with teenagers (especially boys), love of food, love of games (Xbox, PSP or other) and maybe more food perhaps trumps other types of love. Love comes and goes; how many of you are divorced, no longer dating, or dating someone else, are you in a different job now vs. five (5) years ago, while I’m not an expert by any means in psychology or dating or advice giving, I think we can all agree on that love comes and goes and we have different types of love.

There is one love that will never let go – the love our (heavenly) Father has for his kids; his love for us gave us free will, his love for us through the life of Jesus gave us grace and through his death and resurrection gave us mercy at the cross. So if Love is the most powerful force, how do we earn it, how do we work hard to get it – what do we do to wrap our hands around it and take it unto ourselves. Well the truth is nothing, we can’t earn it or work towards achieving it, see Jesus did all the lifting for us – it costs us nothing. All our failures, all our past regrets, all our shortcomings – everything we do that doesn’t allow us to measure up to a standard of perfection is meaningless when we can truly say Jesus is our one defense against failures, he is our righteousness against any shortcomings - simply be accepting it.

So by accepting it (his love for us), what do we get out of it? It’s eternal, no time limit, never ending, never pausing, when we accept it we know and our understanding (knowledge and wisdom) changes; it brings us to a point of realization that what we have here and now is temporary – but – we have a non-temporary future. We then come to place of understanding what his true love is for us – what that means for our eternal future.

I wish my actions could reflect a better love towards others than what I show, I’m disobedient, disrespectful, angry, untrusting and mean – and that is before I have my first sip of coffee in the morning.

Love Always……