Love First

     I can't believe it's already Tuesday again. We're a week into November and I'm still trying to process just how close we are to the end of the year. I see so many people excited about Christmas and pictures of trees up on social media. We've even started a pile of gifts instead of stashing them in our closets for at least two more weeks. I just want to enjoy this autumn season while it lasts without having to drown out Christmas music, but I may not have a choice. Everything seems to speed up in these last two months and I've been trying to slow down all year. Plans keep growing and there's a lot of anticipation for at least my life in the new year. I plan to start pitching my latest book (at last), looking at engagement and marriage, and hopefully being able to travel more. I'm going to the Passion Conference in January and I'm so excited about it! There's so much potential and it's exciting but scary too. I feel like I still have so much growing up to do and that it might happen pretty quickly. I'm looking forward to seeing what God has in store but I'm okay to wait a little longer for it. 

    I don't know if I've mentioned this but in my young adult's group, we've been going over the book of Colossians. Last night, we did chapter three and I knew I wanted to write about it. It talks a lot about the relationships we have with each other, which is arguably the most important part of our society. The past two post I wrote talked about new life, which is what we receive through our salvation and an important theme in Paul's letter to the Colossian church. The first two chapters tell of who Jesus is, what He's done for us, and what that means for our identity. Chapter 3 then gives clear instructions with how to live our new lives.

    First, we are to keep seeking God, putting to death the works of our flesh, aka, our sinful nature. Everything must start and end in Jesus because He was raised to life so that we may yet live. This is why being a Christian is so hard. We're met with the reality and weight of our sins and desires and though we receive grace for those things, we become so much more aware of our wrongdoings. We're called to die to everything that inclines to the world and that is impossible with Jesus in us. Even then, it's easier to listen to those desires and to fall back into second-nature sins. In the beginning, humankind was created in God's image and set apart (Genesis 1:26-31). We were made to be perfect and complete but obviously, that changed. Colossians 3:10 says that we're being renewed to that image. Salvation is development according to God's pattern.

    This means choosing compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. It means forgiving and standing by people. All of this must start in love. If you think about it, none of these other things can really happen if you don't have love. Without it, those virtues become hypocritical and lose their value. Paul goes into further detail about this in 1 Corinthians 13. We must love first. We're made perfect in love. It's what makes our virtues permanent. We have to have a sincere heart. Our job is to love God and to love people but we're not very good at that. It's easier to take offense rather than forgive. It's hard to put others first all the time and harder to surrender but just because something is hard doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Rather, it makes it all the more important. 

    Our walk with God is reflected in how we live and He gives us wisdom and peace to walk it out. Right belief produces right living. We have to lay down our lives, serve the people around us, and submit everything to God. The end of Colossians 3 tells us to work at everything with all our hearts and to do it all for the Lord. We're to go about our lives faithfully, sincerely, and with humility. But above all these things, we must love first. 

Yours Truly,

Rey