Love, Sweet Love

I pulled my coffee mug that I bought at Refugio in Peru last month down from the cabinet and filled it with delicious Starbucks coffee my husband made for me before he left to go coach his Upward team this morning. I was heading for my home office when I heard my cellphone, that ringtone I get when someone is sending me a text message. It was a friend sending me something she read in her Bible study this morning. It was obviously from whatever Bible study material she is using and I don't know the author but here it is, "Genuine love is a love for others that finds its source in your desire to love God even more." That so reminds me of what the Apostle John wrote in his epistle 1 John. In 5 chapters he used the word love more than 30 times. He wrote things like: don't love the world or things in the world, love God; don't just say you love - DO love; love one another because love is from God; God revealed His love in His Son, Jesus.

I am thinking hard on that this morning because I leave one week from today for India. I readily admit that I am reluctant to go. It will be my 4th time in India and it's a hard place to go. The trip over is near torture, it's always hot and dirty, you have to be careful about every single thing you eat and drink, getting back and readjusting to life in Mansfield is always physically hard on me for some reason. And, it seems like I just got back from overseas and it is senior year, by the way.

However, I do think that my growing (and I hope my status is always growing) relationship with God compels me to go where I do not necessarily want to go. My love of the people of India or my ability to go there is not something that comes from my natural woman. I was listening to David Platt, author of the book Radical, preach on the internet and he said, "Can I believe in the gospel and turn a deaf ear to the unreached and starving in the world?" If I know for sure that I can do something then I must do it, I am compelled to do it.

So, it is my love for God that calls me to love others and to serve others whenever and however I can. But, that love is not something that I thought up or made up myself. It is because God first loved me, He first loved me. His expression of love was to send His Son Jesus so that we might know Him. First we know, then we do - the source, inspiration, and power is Love, sweet Love.

Serving the King,

Jeanette