Because of Love

We know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

God is love, and God’s love is the best kind of love you can have in your heart. The beautiful thing about God’s love is that it is a giving love—a love that flows in abundance with kindness, generosity, and goodness. It is a love that embraces and does not push away. It is a love that restores, mends, and heals. It is a love of compassion, good will, and tender care.

The love that God has poured into you is also the love that the Holy Spirit wants to pour out through you. Today is your best day because you have the awesome privilege and opportunity to give God’s love away to other people. The love that you are able to give to others is not something that you make up or pretend to have. You are not the source of the love you can give away; God is the source. God’s love is not received into your life through study or good works. His love is yours because the Holy Spirit has come to live in your heart.

The Holy Spirit has come to live in you like a river, not like a pond. A river flows and moves freely. A pond sits and goes nowhere. A river reaches out to new places and nourishes new ground. A pond is self-contained and can become stagnant. The love of God in you first comes to bless and enrich your life, but its course is to flow out from within you to touch and enrich other hearts.

Lord, help me to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading in my life today. Show me when and where to express love—whether it be through a word I need to speak, through an embrace I need to extend, through a kindness I need to perform, or even through a smile I need to give. In Jesus’ name, amen.