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PROGRAM D-7745
Would you like to become known as a person of extraordinary love? It is possible for you and me to become really good at loving other people, the way God wants us to. But it won’t just happen. We have to learn how to practice love in our everyday lives.
So, my challenge to you as we begin this New Year is to make “love” your word for the year, and truly focus on loving like Jesus loves. I developed a 30-day plan to learn to practice love, which is based on the description of love found in 1 Corinthians 13. God’s kind of love is an action, not a feeling, so we can learn to be a true lover as we learn to practice those attributes of love found in this wonderful chapter.
This plan could be absolutely life-changing for you, because as that famous chapter reminds us, love never fails. It never fails to transform us as we learn how to love better and better, and it transforms those to whom we extend God’s love.
Our motivation and power for learning to practice love has to come from God’s love for us. John wrote: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1) In his Gospel, John identifies himself as “the one Jesus loves.” That was his identity, his motivation, his inspiration—Jesus loved him, and he lived in that love.
As you and I more and more live in the truth that we are loved by the eternal God, that nothing can ever separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus, and that God’s love for us will never change, the more we are capable of loving others. Then we will have the love of God to give to others, and we can truly practice love on a daily basis, and become really powerful transmitters of God’s love to our worlds.
I hope you will join me in 2017 and make loving God and loving people your primary focus. I believe my simple plan will help you, but however you do it, make love your life’s goal this year. Pray that you will be more and more rooted and grounded in love.
