Perhaps it was high school or summertime, maybe not until college. Regardless of when, it has its very own scent, its own drumroll, its carefully preserved spot in our memory vault.
God wants to be our first love. Why?
He created love and our capacity for it. He is love and wants to bring himself so largely into our lives that we become lovers of others. He knows love heals and expands and treats well his universe, and brings it closer to its original design, even before his someday restoration.
Whatever your first love taught you is seared into your heart. What if God as our first love was seared into ours? We would live out of that experience and understand and portray love of a caliber untainted by love this world sells.
First love with God...begets love toward others, the kind that moves and forgives and extravagantly gives and accepts and heals and renders abundant, healthy relationships.
Ephesians 5:1-2:
Watch what God does, and then you do it...Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.We would be undeniably changed. People would be drawn to our kindness and forgiveness and acceptance. We would be extending the hope that they, too, might discover first love.
Forever changed. Forever seared with love that changes our world and the world.
Tomorrow: Life-Reckoning Forgiveness.
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