Manifesting the Love of God

Manifesting the Love of God

By Apostle Felix

4  Love is always patient; love is always kind; love is never envious or arrogant with pride. Nor is she conceited, 
5  and she is never rude; she never thinks just of herself or ever gets annoyed. She never is resentful; 
6  is never glad with sin; she’s always glad to side with truth, and pleased that truth will win. 
7  She bears up under everything; believes the best in all; there is no limit to her hope, and never will she fall. 
8  Love never fails. Now if there are prophecies, they will be done away with. If there are languages, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. 
1 Corinthians 13: 4 – 8

Love is the most talked-about thing in songs and movies, too. However, it is yet the most misunderstood thing in humanity. The world associates love with heroism and sensuality. The Hollywood kind of love is heroic and sensual. The music and movie industries have sold a wrong impression of love to humanity. So, when people hear the word love, they normally associate it with what they have seen in the movies or heard in songs. It is a kind of perverted love. Due to this misinformation about what love is, humanity has been sensitized to a love that is not of God. Hence, we witness people manifesting not the love of God, but the love of the world.

15  Stop loving the world and the things that are in the world. If anyone persists in loving the world, the Father’s love is not in him.
16  For everything that is in the world—the desire for fleshly gratification, the desire for possessions, and worldly arrogance—is not from the Father but is from the world.
17  And the world and its desires are fading away, but the person who does God’s will remains forever.

1 John 2: 15 – 17

The love of God is different from the love of this world. The love of this world is self-centred, and all it desires is to gratify the flesh. But the love of God manifests the characteristics of God that the world may consider as weakness. In the world, patience, kindness, humility, and mercy may be regarded as weakness. But these characteristics define what strength is. Let us look at the composition of love and what is expected to manifest in a loving life.

Patient

You cannot be a loving person and yet impatient with people. Patience, there is also translated as long-suffering. It is the capacity of love to put up with people who are not so easy to get along with. Certain individuals are just hard to love, but patience helps us to endure loving them for a long time. It does not easily give up on people.

Kind

Loving people are kind. Their kindness is not merit-based. They do not show kindness because people had been kind to them. No, they are kind because of the love of God in them. They will even treat well those who mistreat them.  They are not transactional in their expression of kindness. Love reaches to people who have no capacity to repay. Love is kind to all men.

Humble 

Love is humble. It does not think of oneself more highly or better than others. Loving people do not despise or undermine other people. Pride will avoid appreciating others and instead will manifest envy. Love thinks better of others and is ever appreciative of others.

Selfless

Love is selfless. People who claim to be loving are not. How selfless are you? Who is the person you are ever thinking of giving to? Is it your neighbor or yourself? Jesus gave a parable of the Samaritan man, who helped a man found almost dead by the roadside. The religious people, who claimed to be lovers of God, did not attend to him, but a Samaritan traveller. The good Samaritan had his program compromised for the sake of helping another man, whom he did not know. That is selflessness. Love is sacrificial.