Teach Me How To Love
2 John 1:5-6 Amplified Bible (AMP)
5And now I beg you, lady (Cyria), not as if I were issuing a new charge (injunction or command), but [simply recalling to your mind] the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. 6And what this love consists in is this: that we live and walk in accordance with and guided by His commandments (His orders, ordinances, precepts, teaching). This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you continue to walk in love [guided by it and following it].
It has always been interesting to me that people can say I love you and be impatient, quick to give up, hurtful, mean, inconsiderate, and suspicious and in some cases just hateful. During those times, I have said to within myself if this is what love feels like I don’t want people to love me. I have found that human love can be one of the most hurtful, harmful and painful experiences of one’s life. I guess when these behaviors have been exhibited I have asked is this really love at all? I guess that would depend on who has taught us to love, or whose definition of love we have learned and choose to exhibit. We love according to what we rely upon and what is the biggest entity within our lives. The way we love depends upon who our teacher is; who has become the one who instructs our lives and educates us in the art of loving.
Human love is however is different from the love of God. God’s love is sacrificial and it believes the best even when it sees the worse. Human love is a love that is self-centered and self-serving; it will often see the worse even when the best is presented. We are quick to claim love, but we are not really loving as God has commanded us to. We are applying human love even when we are in Christ. In more than a few cases it is hard to see a difference in the love given by a Christian, and one given by someone who does not confess or believe in Christ. We are supposed to love one another in a way that is guided by the commandments of God; it is supposed to be evident in our living and in the manner in which we treat and respond to others. Our love should be a reflection of who our Father is. But instead of making it clear who we belong to by the way we love, we confuse not only people we encounter but many of us are confusing close friends, family and even God. We say with a loud voice that we belong to Christ, but yet our attitude towards loving people is far from a reflection of God. We are determined to hold on to our old nature and the nature to which we were born naturally. But when we are in Christ, we should love from the place that connects us to God, which is our spirit, but many of us cannot do that because our flesh is stronger than our spirit. When we submit ourselves to God and He really becomes our Lord and truly our Savior we will allow Him to guide our loving and the way in which we express love and represent Him through our loving.
Many of us need to be retaught; many of us need to switch teachers and switch who is the authority in our lives. If we love God, our love for people should exhibit the love that we share with God. It should be
clear that God is in us and the authority to which we defer as it concerns loving. Allowing God to teach us how to love will always result in us having to put our flesh, emotions and opinions under subjection to the Word and Will of God. When we allow God to teach us, we will face our test and love will be the answer to every question on that test. What is the lesson we are supposed to learn concerning love, that as God loves us we are supposed to love others, we are supposed to be the walking testament that tells the story of God’s unfailing love here in the earth!
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