Pursue love

Feb 09, 2014 01:13


So I said that 2014 is a year of love. Imagine my pleasure when I was somehow reminded of Jon Bloom last night and went to find his posts on desiring God and found these lovely encouragement:

Your most courageous resolution for 2014

Let this be the year that we pursue love. Let this be the year that we stop talking about love, that we do less regretful moaning about how little we love and how much we need to grow in love and actually be determined to love more the way Jesus loved (John 15:12). Let this be the year we actually put into place some strategies to help us love.

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But let’s also be clear: making love our aim in 2014 will demand more courage and faith than any other resolution we can make. Nothing exposes the depth of our sin like really seeking to love God with our entire being and loving our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:27).

So we must let our pursuit of love drive us to the gospel. None of us has ever perfectly kept either of the two great commandments. Ever. Our very best efforts have been polluted by our prideful sin. And we have rarely been at our very best.

We can only love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19) and sent his Son to become sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ has kept the greatest commandments (and the rest) perfectly for us! So we are forgiven of our constant failure to love as we ought and are given grace to grow in the grace of love. And because of Jesus, someday we will love perfectly just as we have been loved.

So let’s make our resolution to pursue love this year more than we ever have, knowing that we have been loved with an everlasting love (Psalm 103:17).

Love is not a verb

Love is not merely the action of meeting others’ needs; it includes the motive of the action. True love cherishes God supremely as the supreme Treasure and therefore wants others to also cherish the supreme Treasure and be eternally happy.

God is love, and love is from God. Therefore, loving others is doing whatever it takes for them to have as much of God as they can.

This has huge implications. It means that true love can’t flourish apart from God.

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It makes you catch your breath, doesn’t it? How often is your “love” sin? O how wonderful is the precious gospel! Jesus fulfilled the greatest commandments for us sinful lovers! There is therefore now no condemnation for us if we are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

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And the remedy is far more than us trying to do more verbs - to produce more actions. We need a deeper transformation, a profound reordering of our souls’ affections. And this only happens by looking at the glory of the great Noun until we delight in him more than anything else.

So that’s where pursuing love begins: look at the Noun - gaze at God in his love. Dive into the greatest commandment before getting consumed in the second. In the long run, because of the actions it will produce, this is the most loving thing we can do this year.

Jesus must increase: a prayer for the new year

SUPER AWESOME prayer.

Same sex attraction and the wait for change

I found this really encouraging and applicable to any transformation to Jesus' likeness.  holiness is the ultimate goal. (edit: not by Jon Bloom but still worth sharing)

Six benefits of ordinary daily devotions

musing, blessed, quotational, love, christianity

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