This week’s devotions are based on “The Key” Week 6: “Pursue Your Future with Grace!” (WATCH HERE)
Perhaps when we first hear the phrase, “pursue love,” our initial reaction is to go after those things that make you feel loved. Our society around us promotes chasing after individuals or experiences that make you feel loved. To be sure, feeling loved is a very important aspect of human nature.
But here’s the refocus that God gives us in regard to a future filled with his grace. We are ALREADY loved! We don’t have to pursue love as it has already been given to us. We are loved so much that Jesus came to this earth to live, die and rise again for YOU, for me! We are loved so much that all we have and need is provided as a gift of grace for our enjoyment of this earth. We are loved so much that we have been promised an eternity of joy and bliss around the throne of God forever!
The love God has given to us will never let us down.
Human love, as much as it is a blessing, can let us down. Ask any married couple, even ones who say, “I married the love of my life.” Sometimes that love lets us down. We still value it, appreciate it and are blessed by it, but it is a shadow of God’s perfect love for us.
So, we don’t have to pursue being loved, so what does it mean to pursue love as Paul writes to Timothy, (our verse of the week) “But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, LOVE, endurance and gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:11).
The pursuit of love is the desire to reflect the love we have been shown to the people around us. As the Apostle John wrote, “We love because he first loved us.”
The great thing about the love that God has shown to us, is it becomes the model of what it looks like to love others. The Apostle Paul captures the characteristics of this giving, sacrificial love in 1 Corinthians 13, “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails.
This is what we are pursuing, a love like this.
But it’s tough, because our sinful nature doesn’t want to be loving. It wants to be selfish and really pursue love of others for personal needs and desires. Our sinful nature wants to do just the opposite of love and pursue what is personally beneficial rather than doing what is a blessing to others.
So pursuing love is a spiritual battle between the Spirit of God at work in us and the sinful nature of self that seeks to pursue self over love.
How does our heart and life pursue love?
We also pursue a stronger connection to God’s love for us. It is the only strength we can find that will allow us to better live out love in the relationships around us. It is the only way we can pursue love to show God’s love to others rather than simply pursue love for the gratification of one’s self.
Apply: Where do you see the spiritual battle waging in your life between pursuing love for your personal motives or pursuing the ability to love as you have been loved?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for your selfless love that you have shown to us. We are grateful we did not have to pursue it but it was given to us. Help us win the battle over our sinful nature and show your love to others each and every day…including today! AMEN.