@BabyStarCandy 5 January 2022 more from that month

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.” (1 John‬ ‭4:7) You probably already know this verse, but something that stands out to me today is the idea that our love comes from God; it’s not a quality we possess independent of him, and it identifies us as part of his family. Conversely, the next verse indicates that an absence of love shows the opposite, that we don’t belong to him: “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” These words uncomfortably arrest my attention and make me think about how I see others, how I treat them. It adds a more serious dimension to the command Jesus gave to love my enemies. I was thinking that there are a lot of good people who show a lot of love, but if asked about their relationship with God, they deny him. And they fairly quickly become unfriendly. Unloving, by most definitions. That’s the dividing line. True love, sacrificial love, love without necessarily receiving anything in return—in fact, often earning only hate and rejection—is modeled perfectly only by God. It’s this depth that we develop as his children, this divine quality that he trains into us daily as he works with us to be more like him. As he loves us, even in our spiritual adolescence. Love comes from God. #God #Love #Children