True love

Yeah, yeah when I say true love you're probably thinking about the Priest from Princess Bride saying, "Twew wuv"

or a fairytale ending from a Disney Princess movie 

But that's not the true love that has been plaguing my thoughts for the past week and a half. 

The kind of love that I've been struck by lately looks more like this

and this.

Which makes perfect sense when you think about the word-painted pictures we have for Jesus, the embodiment of love, who is painted in the Bible as being like this

and this.

This is this Scripture that God brought me to after watching the Christian documentary called Furious Love that God used to quake my idea of love:

1 John 3:11-24 NIV

"11For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. 

16This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be that person? 18Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 

19This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us" 

So I've been asking God because now He's shown true love to me through His Son, He's shown me where the Word confirms what true love is, and so I wanted to see what it could look like in my life--and what a ride this past week and a half has been! 

I keep asking God and He keeps showing me: true love looks like loving people where they're at, true love looks like taking time to express to people your appreciation for them and how God loves them, true love looks like physically sitting down on the pavement and talking to the homeless woman and her dog.

I hear it all the time from teenagers, young adults, and well-aged adults: what could I do? I'm too.... Or I don't have enough....

Love. 

You want to call that pointless or too general or already completed in your life? Then tell me why when I see true love that comes from God in my life I erupt in tears of gratitude? And if true love is already done, already there, then why is it that I am only able to see it once or twice every day? 

God can use you. God wants to use you. To love Him and to love His people. 

True love is rocking my world, so try asking God today, tomorrow, this week, this month: what could true love look like in my life? 

Be obedient to do and go and say what He tells you and you'll see it too and see why it's powerful enough to bring you to release thick tears of gratitude. 

Prayer: God, allow us to be Your hands, Your feet, Your heart today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day. We hunger for You Lord, we thirst for You--fill us with Your presence and Your Holy Spirit that we may be capable of experiencing and reproducing Your love, Your true, pure, perfect love. Amen.