Have faith in the Lord Jesus and love for all the holy ones
John, Chapter 15, Verse 9-13
9 As the Father loves
me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will
remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and
remain in his love. 11 “I have told you this so that my joy
may be in you and your joy may be complete. 12 This is my
commandment: love one another as I love you. 13 No one has
greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Your prayers are answered in
accordance with your love. This is the natural law of God. For love begins with
the Fathers love of Christ and moves on to Jesus’ love for his friends which is
reciprocated in the disciples’ loving obedience to Christ and radiates out
through their love for one another. It is this love that will be the source of
their joy and the essential condition of their intimate friendship with the
Lord. The model of love for all true discipleship is extreme, and limitless.
Yet, it is precisely for love like this that Jesus has chosen them. They will
bring forth enduring fruit; their prayers will be answered, to the extent that
they love one another.[1] We
see this natural law of love in the world today. If our church has love and
even sacrificial love it will be safe no matter how poor of a church it is but
if it has no love than no matter how rich a church it is it bears no fruit.
Such is the law of love. We can see the same in our own families where there is
love the family is rich even if it has no money and where there is no love
there is not a family. We also see this truth in our country which is now being
ran by Godless unloving people. We do not need climate change but a change of
heart and start loving as Christ does beginning in our homes and going out from
there.
Love does not despair of the
future. Love speaks of the hope of one who knows that others can change, mature
and radiate unexpected beauty and untold potential. This does not mean that
everything will change in this life. It does involve realizing that, though
things may not always turn out as we wish, God may well make crooked lines
straight and draw some good from the evil we endure in this world. Here hope comes most fully into its own, for
it embraces the certainty of life after death. Each person, with all his or her
failings, is called to the fullness of life in heaven. There, fully transformed
by Christ’s resurrection, every weakness, darkness and infirmity will pass
away. There the person’s true being will shine forth in all its goodness and
beauty. This realization helps us, amid the aggravations of this present life,
to see each person from a supernatural perspective, in the light of hope, and
await the fullness that he or she will receive in the heavenly kingdom, even if
it is not yet visible.
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