Receiving and giving love

With Valentine's Day approaching, it's a good time to reflect upon all types of love in our lives, and on how we ourselves are receiving and giving love. After all, that's really what our mission is in life: to be loved and then to love.

Some of the words that have had and continue to have the most profound impact on the way I think about and live out love are found in 1 John 4:7-21 (NAB). These words comfort and challenge, and have the power to transform our lives and world.

It all starts from what 1 John 4:8 tells us: "God is love." John understood God's deep, tender, compassionate love. The beautiful thing about it is that this love is our reality as children of God and followers of Christ. Once we experience -- or perhaps recognize -- God as love, everything changes. The way we view ourself, others, the world and even God opens up, deepening and freeing us to be who we were created to be and to love people the world tells us not to love. It allows us to help others become who they were created to be, too.

At youth group, I am always reminding our students -- and myself -- that we don't perform our own love and actions in order to receive God's love; it is the other way around. We receive God's love and then are free to live it out and give it to others around us. God always loves us; we don't have to earn it. It is through our experience of God's love affirming who we are in God that we can then love others as ourselves, free in the mission God asks of us: to be who we are and love those around us in ways only we can. As 1 John 4:19 says, "We love because he first loved us." It comes in that order, receiving the gift of love and then giving it away. We can spend time in prayer daily with God, asking God to help us let him love us and realize his love for us so we can then give it to others.

Which brings us to the fact that when we look at ourselves, love doesn't work as well. It is through keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus that we can forget ourselves and know how to love in a way that is self-sacrificial, receiving the courage to love in this way. It is through looking at Jesus that we can remember the punishment has already been taken for us so that we are set free. It is through looking at Jesus that we can believe 1 John 4:18: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love."

Let us pray this Valentine's Day and always that God will perfect God's love in us, driving out the fear that would keep us from being loved and loving fully, deeply and truly. God wants to transform the world through us; let us receive God's love and let his will be done.