Mark talked about three major points: God is love, how we love God, and how we are to Love thy neighbor with God's love. 1 John 4:7-21 Here are some short points from his talk.
God is Love- 1 Cor. 13: 4-8- most people know this Bible Verse but it is explaining everything that God is because God IS LOVE! Why do we continually turn away from this Love? It is so amazing! God is NEVER finished which means LOVE is never finished. Love (God) is self-giving. He literally gave himself to us through Jesus. Shouldn't we do the same and give completely of ourselves?
Love of God- Be obedient and take up your cross. "Love is uniting of our will to God's" St. Therese...the closer we grow to Him, the more we desire to do His will and begin to loose our fears of what His plan may hold. This is exactly where I am in my journey with falling more deeply in love with Him. I am surrendering to His plans for my life and fear is no longer taking over. I am at peace with His control of my life because I am convicted of His love for me.
Love of thy neighbor- We cannot love our neighbor without loving God first. If you hate your neighbor then you hate God because God is in your neighbor. Choose to LOVE them because all people long to be noticed, accepted, and loved. It is also important to recognize that we can not love each other without first spending time with Jesus because otherwise we do not know what real love is (importance of my morning prayer). We can not create the feeling of love because it is a gift from God. I see so many people around me who think that they are in "love" but they think of love as just a feeling and when that feeling fades then they leave. But Love is so much more and greater than just a feeling that the world describes it as(Read Heaven Song). God longs for us to experience with each other the Love He shares with us. Accept His love and your ideas of Love with change. I have been convicted of such a truth in knowing His love that I love people in a completely different way. I look at my brothers and sisters souls and see how God desires them and so I long for them to grow closer to Him. I Love them where they are at with God's love pouring out from me because I do not have love to give them except through Christ. When we don't rely on God, we rely on humans who are not big enough to fill our needs. Love is not always easy. It comes with sufferings and hardships also know as the cross where we truly witness the difficulties of choosing to Love people even when we don't seem worthy. We must choose this love though. Jesus chose to wash Judas' feet even though He knew what Judas was going to do. Loving people gives them dignity. This idea reminds me of Stephen and Erik who are in Haiti right now. They went there with the sole purpose to love people and in loving them there are giving the people dignity.
"What really matters in life is that we are loved by Christ and that we love Him in return. In comparison to the love of Jesus, everything else is secondary. And, without the love of Jesus, everything is useless." Pope John Paul II
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