A woman was reading a book but soon decided it was too dull to
continue reading. She laid it aside. Some time later she met a man who she came to love deeply. As their love grew they became engaged to be married. Then she remembered the book. She said to her fiance, “I have a book written by a man with the same name as yours. Isn’t that a coincidence?” He replied, “No, that’s not a coincidence. I wrote the book!”
The woman stayed up almost all night reading the book, which she now
considered to be the most thrilling and interesting book she had ever read.
Love had changed her heart. She was now in love with the author.
Is the Bible a dull book to you? Do you find it’s pages dry and it’s
message irrelevant to your life? Maybe you need to fall in love with the
Author. When you come to know God and love Him with your whole heart,
the contents become a thrilling story of His amazing work in history and His precious gift to you.
Love always changes hearts. It changes the way we live, how we treat
others, and what we count to be important. Love changes our priorities. We
desperately try to please the one we love. We subjugate our interests and our needs to those of that person.
Our love for God turns our hearts toward Him. To please Him. To
adore Him. To deny our selfish interests in favor of His universal interests. To accept His will without question and to trust His Word implicitly. Love makes the heart give its best. To give without counting the cost, or holding back. Nothing is too costly. No amount of time is too much. No request is too demanding. Our hearts are changed by His love.
When God gave the Law He gave Ten Commandments to guide the lives
of His people. Over time religious leaders broadened those ten to 613. When Jesus came He reduced those to only two commandments. The first and greatest is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength”. The second is “to love your neighbor as yourself”.
Love is at the center of our relationship with God and our relationship
with others. It is the “love of Christ (that) controls us” (2 Corinthians 5:14).
And, after giving us a long list of character traits for the Christian, the apostle Paul tells us “above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:14).
Truly, love changes our hearts and our lives.
-Al Behel
Leave a Reply