“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7 NLT).
Love is a skill. If you struggle to love well, here’s some good news: Love is learned! That means the more you practice, the better you will become at it. No matter how you’ve loved or been loved in the past, you can become amazing at loving others. In fact, God wants you to be become a master at this skill. He wouldn’t tell you to love others if he wasn’t going to help you to do just that. Yet many people never learn how to love. Do you want to be known as a person of extraordinary love? When people speak of how you love others, do you want them to say, “He loves you regardless of where you’ve been,” or “She loves you no matter what you’ve done”? Do you want to be remembered for how much you owned or accomplished, or do you want to be remembered for how well you loved? God’s Word and the Holy Spirit will teach and enable you to love others. But to become extraordinary at it, you need to practice it over and over again. It may feel awkward at first as you learn to love with a greater capacity than is humanly possible, relying on the powerful and supernatural love of God to work through you. But the more you love like this, the better you will become at loving unconditionally. The Bible says in 1 John 4:7 that love comes from God. When you practice and commit to loving others like Jesus loves you, they will take notice and will be drawn to God.
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“Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” (1 Timothy 6:6-7 NIV).
God is far more interested in your character than your comfort. He wants you to grow up and become more like Jesus. His focus is on your attitude, not on making your life easy. He’s watching to see if you think having more will make you happier or if you’ve learned to be content with what he has provided for you. The Bible says, “Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” (1 Timothy 6:6-7 NIV). When you learn to be content, you are believing that God knows what you need better than you do and trusting that he will give you the necessary wisdom to make good financial decisions. Most people get caught into “when” thinking: “When I get this, then I’ll be happy.” When you get a certain job, when you retire, when you get the house paid off, when all the bills are paid—and on and on. But God knows that if you aren’t content already, you’ll always want something else when you get there. Somebody supposedly once asked billionaire Howard Hughes how much it takes to be happy, and he said, “Just a little more.” You can spend your entire life focused on money—trying to make it, earn it, save it, spend it, and use it. So God uses finances as the acid test of how much you trust him. When you have a need, he wants you to ask and learn to be content so that your happiness doesn’t depend on how much or how little you’ve got. Contentment is not something that comes naturally for anyone. It’s something you have to practice every day. You have to remind yourself that God is taking care of you and will provide everything you need. You have to choose to love and appreciate what you already have. If you don’t learn contentment, you’ll always want more. But once you learn to be content, you’ll find joy greater than anything on earth could provide. |
AuthorTaken from Daily Hope by Rick Warren. Categories
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