PHILIPPIANS 1:9-10

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,

TO PONDER

The word Paul uses here for “love” is the Greek word “agape”. Whereas we have the one word “love” with many meanings, Greek, and other languages, have many different words. When we look at the English meanings of the word “love”, we love our food, meaning we get pleasure out of eating our food. We love our pets, often meaning we get a lot of companionship from our pets. We love going on holidays, meaning we enjoy the experiences we have when on holidays. Even when we say we love another person, we may mean that we enjoy spending time with that person and doing things together with that person. All of these ways of loving are perfectly good for us, but they are quite different from the word “agape”. If you consider the “loves” we looked at above, they generally refer to how we benefit from the objects of our love. “Agape” love on the other hand is self-sacrificing and focused on the object of the love. It is not a response to a positive emotional feeling in us.

Agape love is the love God has for us. In our natural state we are repugnant to God, because we fall so far from his standards. But His “agape’ love for us was so strong that Jesus happily took on the role of cleansing us and making us acceptable to God. It cost Jesus much suffering and then death to bring this cleansing about.

Since we have been cleansed by Jesus and now have God living in us through Holy Spirit, God is now teaching us how to live this same “agape” love in our relationships with one another. It won’t come naturally. It is a growing, transforming process produced by Holy Spirit living is us.

Paul says it requires growth in “knowledge and depth of insight”. The Message translation is “You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush”. So we don’t love with “agape” love based on our feelings or attraction to another person. Loving with “agape” love may mean sacrifice on our part; it might include dealing with people who we are not attracted to at all, and even repulsed by; it may include being rejected by the person and possible even attacked in some way.

Now I have to say that God doesn’t want us to be masochists. This is where the “knowledge and depth of insight” comes in. God doesn’t want us to go anywhere that He hasn’t already been working. As we grow in knowing our ‘agape” loving God working in our own lives, we will learn how to hear His voice and His invitations on where He want us to live out his ‘agape” love to others. From a start, we know that this does include our own families. As we go beyond our families, how we express “agape” love really needs to be guided by God – to fit in with what He is doing in people’s lives.

Remember that Jesus didn’t heal every person in Palestine during His three years of ministry. He was guided to whom to minister to by His Father. In the same way, we need to spend time in prayer to our Heavenly Father for His guidance in how to express our “agape” love to people He has already prepared for our engagement.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, thank You for wanting to include us in being Your hands, feet and voice of Your “agape” love to other people. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit living in us to guide us in the way to express that “agape” love to the people You bring into our lives. Please take away my fears and insecurities and grow me in learning to hear and to respond to Your guidance. Amen

Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping