Joyce Meyer - Love Out Loud: 365 Devotions for Loving God, Loving Yourself and Loving Others

In Love Out Loud, I am asking you to concentrate for one whole year on what is most important to God, and it is love! Loving God, loving yourself, and loving others. I am urging you to make this the main focus of your life and do it loud; be bold about it, pursue it, and seek it eagerly. Learn everything you can about what genuine love is. God is love, and we can never know true love apart from Him. He wants to pour His love into you until you are completely whole and secure in Him.

Whether our pain is spiritual, emotional, mental, or physical, Gods unconditional love is the healing ointment we need. Everyone in the world is searching for unconditional love and acceptance. Sadly, many spend their entire lives looking in all the wrong places, and their pain multiplies instead of diminishes.

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life (see John 3:16). Believing in Jesus as your Savior is the beginning of love received, and without it we can never value and properly love ourselves. If we can believe that God who is perfect loves us, then we can love ourselves, and if we can do that, then we can love others.

Gods desire has always been that we freely receive from Him and freely give out to others. We can never buy the love of God with our own good works or perfection, but we can look to Jesus, the Perfect One, who took our sins upon Himself and died so that we might be free. Love is the greatest thing in the world and must be our focus in life.

Most of us have wondered at some time, How do I love God? What can I do to show love for Him? Jesus told Peter three times that if he loved Him, he should help other people (see John 21:1517). Gods plan is so simple that we often miss it as we look for something more complex as the answer to lifes pain and problems. He said to receive and give love, to abide (live, dwell, and remain) in it, and make the pursuit of it your lifetime goal. As we do this God is pleased, we have more joy than we can imagine, and we are a success because we live to help others.

I tried selfishness and self-centeredness for many years, and I can assure you that it doesnt work. It will never give the satisfaction in life that you seek. Deposit yourself with God, trust Him to meet all your needs, and get busy loving out loud. The spiritual law that rules Gods Kingdom is that we reap what we sow. Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will it be given back to you (Luke 6:38 paraphrased). After wasting much of my life pursuing what did not really matter, I learned to pursue what matters most, and it is love!

Now faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love!

1 CORINTHIANS 13:13 ESV

No man has at any time (yet) seen God. But if we love one another, God abides (lives and remains) in us and His love (that love which is essentially His) is brought to completion (to its full maturity, runs its full course, is perfected) in us!

1 JOHN 4:12

D o you know that love is intended to flow to us and then through us? It begins with Gods love for us and is brought to completion when we learn to love one another. Being able to love is a process that I believe God has put in place, and it involves four steps. First, God gives His love to you. Next, you accept and receive that love. Third, you love God in return. And fourth, you allow Gods love to flow through you to other people. Without all four steps, love is incomplete, so lets look at each one of them a bit more closely.

The first step is Gods love for you. It all starts with Him, and it begins with the fact that He loves you unconditionally.

The second step is for you to respond to Gods love. The only proper response is to receive Gods love, knowing its something He freely gives, not something you can earn or otherwise secure for yourself. His love is in you, it is yours, and you will learn that loving yourself properly is Gods will.

The third step is to give your love to God. This includes worshipping Him with your life, spending time in His presence, studying and honoring His Word, praying, praising Him, and expressing gratitude to Him. Of course, the ultimate way we show God that we love Him, according to His Word, is to obey Him (see John 14:15).

The fourth step in love being perfected in you is to let it flow through your life to the people around you. Throughout this book, there are lots of ideas about ways you can do that. Plus, the spirit of God will lead you and prompt you to do things that will demonstrate love to the people around you.

Love God Today:Receive Gods unconditional love, love yourself, love God, and let love flow through you to other people.