When we accept Christ, we open ourselves to be filled with God’s power and guidance. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that anyone who belongs to Christ, meaning anyone who accepted Jesus as the Lord and Savior of their lives, has become a new person! When we are born again, we receive God’s nature in us. The old life is gone, and a new life has begun! Therefore, we receive the power and ability to break with old habits, making us able to live in a new way. A Godly way! The same happens with love and relationships! When we are connected to God, we are filled with His love, and we become enabled to love others the way God loves them. We become able to see others the way God sees them!
The Bible says, in Mark 12:30-31, that, with Jesus, we received two commandments from God. Ordinances we must follow if we want to live a Godly life. They are: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. No other commandment is greater than these”. Let’s see what they mean!
The first commandment refers to loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. That means that we should love God with everything that we are and with everything we do! When we are born again, our hearts become changed; our spirits get renewed! Your heart, which was previously walking apart from God, gets connected to Him again. The book of Genesis states that man was created to have a divine connection with God; so, man would be inspired by Him in everything he would do, think or feel – in other words, strength, mind, soul and heart.
When we let ourselves be inspired by God, we give Him praise; we show that we love Him. When you are connected to Him through your spirit, opening your heart to Him, letting Him guide you through your thoughts (that is your mind), through your feelings (that is your soul) and your actions (that is your strength), you give to Him the most important position in your life.
And, because you allow yourself to be inspired by Him, you follow the second commandment: love your neighbour as yourself. When we accept Jesus into our hearts, we are also accepting His love inside of us. Therefore, if we open our hearts for the guidance and inspiration of God to work inside of us, we also open our hearts for the love of God to guide us through our relationships. The love of God has the power of restoring relationships; however, it does not mean that we will just sit and wait for the love of God to restore them. It will require actions and decisions from us towards others.
In 1 John 3:1-2, the Bible says that we are called God’s children. God loved us so much that He gave us the possibility of being His sons and daughters. We could not do anything to deserve the honor of being called sons or daughters of the Almighty God, creator of the universe; however, because of His love and of who He is, He gave us this opportunity, not mattering what we had done in the past. We are born again with a new nature (the nature of God in us) and in a new family (as part the family of God). The Bible says that, when man and woman were created by God, they were created as His own likeness and image; therefore, if we receive the nature of God when we are born again and if the nature of God is love, we also become sons and daughters of love. If we were made as God’s own likeness and image, we can also shape our thoughts, feelings and actions towards other people according to this love of God.
If you already accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you already have His love inside of you; you need to let the nature of God and His love to rule over you. As it is written in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, the love of God is patient and kind. His love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. The love of God does not demand its own way. It is not irritable and it keeps no record of being wronged. The love of God does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. It never gives up and never loses faith on others. His love endures through every circumstance. That is the love of God, but it also has to be your kind of love! We were commanded to love others as we love yourselves. So, we have to also think: “How the things I want to say or do will affect this person?” “Is the way I am thinking about that person rude or jealous?” The love of God does not do evil and, because you have received this love inside of you, your love also does not do evil to others!
If we become more focused on raising people up and on motivating people instead of competing with others, life will become much simpler. Life is not a competition! You do not need to look to people around you, in your job or in your school, as they were competing with you; we should live our lives in a way that reflects the nature of God in us. As I said previously, we should live in a way that we praise God with our actions, feelings and thoughts. If someone is sad or in need of any help we should help them; if someone is happy, we should rejoice with them. We should be a support to others. Since God is love, the only way of reflecting His nature is through love.
The love of God is also forgiveness towards others. God says, in Hebrews 8:12: “And I will forgive their wickedness and I will never again remember their sins”. That means that, when we decide to accept Jesus inside of our hearts, God forgives and forgets everything we have done wrong before that moment. God is not saying that He will always remind you of what you have done wrong; He is saying that He will NEVER remember your sins again. That is what forgiveness means: if God said that He forgives our sins and that He forgets about them, we should do the same with people around us.
And you may ask me: “Why do I have to forgive and forget something that I know was done on purpose?” When you decide to keep the remembrance of something that someone did against you, you open space inside of you to nurture bad feelings in relation to that person. Every time you think about or see that person, those bad feelings will come to you, because you will always remember what she/ he had done to you. However, the love of God does not think badly about others. It is not irritable and it keeps no record of being wronged. His love is much stronger than evil!
Love, forgiveness and faith walk together; so, you cannot have a good life without one of them. You cannot even produce one of them without the others! Love, forgiveness and faith are deeply connected! If you decide to be guided by the love of God in your life, you will not find space inside of you to keep those bad feelings in relation to others. As the Bible says in 1 Peter 4:8: “Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins”. No relationship can endure if one of the parts keeps constantly reminding the other about their mistakes and faults. Take a married couple as an example! Their relationship will wear out if both of them start to point out all the time every mistake that was made. If you really love someone, you cannot and will not remind yourself constantly of the moments this person failed with you. That is the reason why the love of God does not keep records of being wronged!
However, you may ask me: “But this love seems so hard to be achieved! It is so hard to completely forget when someone does something wrong to us! I do not know if I can forgive and forget or if I can love the way God loves”. Yes, you can, because that love is already inside of you! The love of God is poured into our hearts the moment we accept Jesus! How can we activate that love? It is a decision! It is not a feeling! The dramas we watch on TV want to show us that love is a feeling, but it is not! Love is a decision that we make! We can decide we will be guided by God’s love! We can decide we will love others as it is written in 1 Corinthians 13.
The love of God is already inside of you; so, you already have the capacity of loving and of helping others! And, once our spirit is connected to the Spirit of God, He can show us strategies about how to help others. He can guide us in relation to what to do! And, through that, we can exercise the love of God in us!