DEVOTIONS: Choose to Love

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. – Romans 12:10

Love is a choice.

Four simple words that hold a lot of truth and conviction. Love is a choice, and it is a choice only we can make. As I think about that statement, I start to think about my actions. When it comes to loving people, do I choose to do it? I find myself asking, do I love people well? Do I love like Jesus? Well, let me just say that there is room for improvement. A lot of improvement.

More than a feeling.

We often hear about the feeling of love. We read it in books and see it in movies. Or we grow up being told that you must love your family because you are family. I’ve grown up hearing so many guidelines around love but one thing that I was never taught as a child was that I had to make the choice to love people; that I had the choice to genuinely love people. And that goes beyond just being nice to someone or saying sorry to someone because you were asked to. It’s genuinely loving people enough to accept their flaws and mistakes. It’s loving them beyond their differences of opinion. It is loving someone enough to forgive them. And it’s loving both them and you enough to forgive them when they won’t acknowledge it or apologise for it.

Love is an action.

Love requires a response of some sort from us. Let me just say that I am not talking about responding in love to abuse, or to having your freewill taken away from you, because that is an entirely different conversation. I am talking about those of us who have a choice and the choice we make. When faced with loving someone, what will our action be? If we are face to face with someone who has a different opinion to ours, or a different belief, or a different lifestyle, what will our action be? When we are face to face with people that hurt and betrayed us, what will our action be? Will we choose to act in love?

Love is Jesus.

Jesus had a choice to not go to the Cross. He could have very easily said no. But He didn’t. [bctt tweet=”He chose to go to the Cross out of love for us. That was His choice. That was love in action. #ACW #LArsmtrong” username=”acwriters”]  He chose to put His own pain aside to see us reconciled with our Heavenly Father.  That goes well beyond any feelings of love, but it was His act of love. And that’s how we love.

Jesus isn’t asking us to literally lay our life down for others (although some have been called to that), He is asking us to love like Him; to look to Him as the perfect example of love and to love like Him. Showing grace and kindness in the face of hostility. Extending love to those around us that we may not believe deserve it. Forgiving people. These can be hard things to do sometimes. Real hard.

But we need to try.

Love like Jesus.

The love we freely receive from God should be just as freely poured out to others around us. Again, easier said than done, but with His help, it can be done. And that’s the only way we can do it, with Jesus. We do it by allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us and to soften our hearts. By spending time with Jesus, learning about Him and worshipping him and opening our hearts to Him, He can start to do the work in us needed to change. He will start to refine us and make us more like Him. And we every shift and change and softening of our hearts that He makes, our posture towards others will change. Loving people will become more natural. Being gracious in the face of negativity or hostility will become easier. And forgiving others will become quicker.

Today, as you spend time with Jesus, I encourage you to ask Him to help you love like Him. Because we all need to be more like Jesus.