Summer of Love

Has the world ever known real love?
Do we even know how to love?
As Larry Norman so aptly put it in one of his songs..."Beatles said,'all you need is love', then they broke up."
We read in I Timothy 1:5 - But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith."

Wow! Our goal.
What we are aiming for.
The thing that we lack at this moment.
Is to love from a pure heart.
Love those that we really don't want to love.
Love those that we thought we could never really love.
Easy to say, "I love you."
Hard to demonstrate, yet the Apostle Paul says that this is heart of the matter.

Pure heart -  Matthew 5:8 -  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
To allow the Holy Spirit to full access of our hearts. To allow Him to purge, and sift and remove and then replace with the character of God...that is my desire.
I don't want any part of the "old" me to have any place in my heart.
I want to see God.
I want to see Him in the Scripture.
I want to see Him in my every day walking around life.
Pure love from a pure heart, I think would cause me to live my life differently.

This being Easter week, the focus will be on the death and resurrection of Jesus.
God demonstrated His love in that He loved us while we were still sinners.
He loved us even though we cursed His name
He loved us even though we rejected Him.
He loved us when we chased after other things rather than heeding his call not to.
That is why I'm grateful to be saved this morning. Knowing full well that he didn't have to love me.
He could have just chalked my life up to another lost cause, but he didn't.
He saw a value in me that I could not see or understand.
In seeing this value, his heart beat with love for me.
In this love, he climbed upon a cross and took my place.
He took my place and received the full fury and punishment from his own Father for my sin.
Punishment meant for me, He received.
How can I not love when such love has been demonstrated to me.

God on you....
mb