THE ESSENCE OF GOD IS "LOVE"

1 John 4:8 - "Whoever does not love does not know God, because GOD IS LOVE."

1 John 4:16-19 - "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. We love Him, because He first loved us."

We should greatly appreciate the strength of when  John says  that "GOD IS LOVE." Here John is saying if you don't know how to love or if you are not a loving person towards others around you then you possibly you don't know God. In implication John says that  God in His very Nature, His very Essence is LOVE and knowing God is always based on a "loving relationship with others."  To extend this LOVE more,  Jesus Christ first brought to men the conception that man loves God only because God has first loved him. In vain we search for such an idea in the philosophies of Greece and Rome. The men who fixed this thought in the literature of mankind were followers of Jesus Christ. Might and majesty were the dominating ideas of B.C., but since A.D., we think of Love enthroned in the Divine Nature.


His LOVE  surpasses all  knowledge. We may closely defines GOD IS LOVE in the masterly arraignment of Psalm 139. LOVE  besets us behind and before. LOVE lays on us its gentle restraining hand. LOVE is high, we cannot attain to it. If we ascend into heaven, LOVE is there; if we make our bed in the grave, LOVE is there to lift us to His heart; if we take the wings of the morning, LOVE shines as sunrise; if we pass into the darkness, LOVE makes the midnight shine as the day. LOVE covered us in our birth, LOVE will tend us in old age. How precious LOVE is, and how multitudinous is LOVE expression, no mortal lips can tell. It might be correct to sum up that this World should be called LOVE.

Even our sin will not lessen LOVE. That Peter sinned deeply, who can doubt, but did it put a screen between him and LOVE? But when LOVE  arose, He sent specially for him. In the garden LOVE  restored him, and at the lakeside LOVE  taught him that His LOVE would be as acceptable as ever
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LOVE will not spare. Jesus (LOVE)  looked on the young man and loved him! But He (LOVE) read him through and through, and mercifully gave the unwelcome verdict: "Go, sell all that thou hast... and follow Me." He went away sad, and LOVE went away sad! But LOVE loves us too well to spare us! God's LOVE is consistent with stern dealings at those things which may cause us to fail of the best.

We believe in God's Love when it seems not so. "We have known, " says the Apostle, that "God is Love, " unutterable and changeless! But there are times when we have to believe and hold on firmly to LOVE , i.e. in the perplexity of dealings with the problems in this life. Often we are facing incidents and providences that strike us as inconsistent with God's Love, but the encouragement that we must believe that the same LOVE is always there.

Lord encourage us not to be satisfied with talking or meditation on Your LOVE, but  Grant us  the grace of manifesting LOVE, not only in great crisis, but in the midst of  petty annoyances and disruptions in our daily lives.....Emeni


In His Love I am convinced life is secured,

Taniela (Daniel) Fonua

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