Love as He did. But how? It won’t happen by accident.

And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. 2 Peter 1:7

Charity is love

Love is indefinite to most of us, we do not know,

what we mean when we talk about love. Love is

the sovereign preference of one person for another;

(it is wanting the better good for another.)

and spiritually Jesus demands that that preference

be for Himself

(Luke 14:26). If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

When we allow the love of God to live in our hearts by the Holy

Ghost, Jesus Christ is easily first; then we must

practise the working out of these things mentioned

by Peter.

The first thing God does is to knock self-deception

and the hypocrisy out of me. The Holy

Spirit reveals that God loved me not because I

was lovable, but because it was His nature to do

so. Now, He says to me, show the same love to

others—“Love as I have loved you.” “I will bring

any number of people around you that are hard to respect, and you must demonstrate My love to them

as I have shown it to you.” You won’t reach it

on your tiptoes. Some of us have tried to, but we were

soon tired.

“The Lord suffereth long... .” Self examine to see where God is working. The knowledge that God has loved me to the uttermost, to the

end of all my sin and meanness and selfishness and

wrong, will send me into the world to love in

the same way. God’s love to me is inexhaustible,

and I must love others from the bedrock of God’s

love to me. Growth in grace stops the moment l

get irritated or off tilt. I get cranky because I have a peculiar

person to deal with.

Just think how disagreeable

I have been to God! Am I prepared to be so iden-

tified with the Lord Jesus that His life and His

sweetness are being poured out all the time?

Natural love or Divine love will not remain

unless it is cultivated. Love is spontaneous,

And it has to be maintained by discipline.