A Love that God Demands

There are times during my Bible studies I’m uplifted and encouraged and then there are those times my eyes are opened and I’m convicted.   This week I’ve been convicted and inspired.

Courtney from Good Morning Girls started off our study this week by sharing this video:

Here was a 21 year old girl in a foreign country taking care of 13 orphans.  She has sacrificed EVERYTHING to follow Jesus and be his hands and feet.   See how I felt convicted and inspired? I loved Katie’s words “God doesn’t ask us to help others, he demands it.”  So true!  It’s not a request, it’s a commandment!  She makes it seem so simple as she says “I didn’t want to go hungry so I didn’t want them to go hungry.”  In a way it is that simple, it’s our society andus that have made it complicated.

Then yesterday our scripture was from 1 John 4:11-12:

Beloved if God so loved us we ought also to love one another.  No man hath seen God at any time.  If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 

We may not see God but He’s all around us.  I thought about Matthew 25:34-46 where the King rewards those that gave him food, drink, clothes, and visited him. They were confused and asked, Lord, when did we see you?   The King’s response was “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”   In our fleshly eyes, someone may not seem like much but God thought enough of them to send his Son to die for them and he commands us to show that same love. 

 In her book Kisses from Katie, Katie says:

As I read and learned more and more of what Jesus said, I liked the lifestyle around me less and less.  God began to grow in me a desire to live intentionally and different from anyone I had ever known. Slowly and surely I began to realize the truth:  I had loved and admired and worshipped Jesus without doing what he said.

I started this blog because I didn’t like the message society was portraying about a “perfect, ideal life”.  I wanted to slow down, simplify, and live according to my priorities.  Slowly but surely God is showing me more too.  Here in America (or even closer in my own community), we have families living in poverty, dads without jobs, and children without homes all around us.  Yet, I read a statistic that according to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent $310 million on constumes for their pets this Halloween!  I can only imagine the statistic on frivilous spending over Christmas!   Seriously?  Can we not see something wrong with this picture?

Someone once told me “You don’t have to be on foreign soil to be a missionary.”     There are needs all around us no matter where we are.  We can start even in our own homes, churches, communities, wherever the Lord leads us!  I don’t yet know exactly what God wants me to do but I know that it’s more than I’m doing now.   This is the perfect season to notice those needs around us and show God’s love.   However, the only way we are going to notice is if we stop and take the time to really pay attention, listen to others, and listen to God.  Then we can show His love-after all He demands it!

How about you?  Has God been speaking to you to do more?  Are you already doing more?  I'd love to hear about it?

P.S.  I realize the last few weeks I've only posted on Women in the Word Wednesdays.  Hopefully, by the end of the week I'll be able to catch up on other things in my life! :)