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Love Just Happens

Falling in love with someone often feels out of our control, something that just happens to us. I’ll never forget the first time I met Alicia. It was like a scene from a Hallmark movie when she tripped over my foot and turned around to apologize. We hit it off right away as if we were struck by Cupid’s arrow. 

Similarly, I’ll never forget the birth of our children, especially our firstborn. Reagan (who somehow turns 16 this week!) came via an emergency C-section, so we were in the OR when the nurses handed us this tiny baby that made us parents. I was instantly smitten with a kind of parental love I didn’t know before.

Those things just happen to us. These were not choices we made. Loving my kids was not a wait and see thing where I chose to love them if they were well behaved or made good grades. It was almost out of my control. 

When the New Testament speaks of Christians showing love, it uses that famous word agape that describes a choice we make to put the needs of others ahead of our own. We determine to love other people, regardless of how we feel about them. Agape love doesn’t just happen to us.

Or does it? Agape is a kind of love only real Christians can show because the only ones who understand this love are the ones who have experienced the love of God. Once we feel the unearned, undeserved love of the Father towards us, we cannot help but to extend that same love to others. 

In 1 John 4:7-8 the disciple of Jesus wrote, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 

So this kind of love just happens to us as well. Once we are saved we are transformed, and the Holy Spirit will begin to lead us to love. If you have felt the love of God, you should be extending that love to others. 

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