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The Gift of LOVE
LOVE, a powerful word that is often watered down in our culture today! “I love your Uggs.”, “I love my new IPod.”, and “I love your hair.” This doesn’t sound much like the same LOVE Jesus taught, and I couldn’t find “Uggs” anywhere in my bible. Jesus gave us the gift of LOVE and we should probably be sharing it, too!
It gets me thinking about Tim Tebow. He’s been in the news a lot lately, if you haven’t heard! He openly expresses his love and faith in Jesus Christ. For a short introduction, Tim Tebow is a Denver Bronco who once wore the verse John 3:16 in black under his eyes during football season. He prays openly by bowing on one knee quite often during football games. He’s created quite a stir.
For me, it’s refreshing to see Tebow’s face, his expression of faith and his actions plastered all over the media. He’s professing and exclaiming his love and faith for the Lord our God, as we are told to do in the bible. This type of expression is hard to do in our society, I know that. So we must do it in more subtle ways. Looks like this LOVE journey has just taken me down a new path. So, I looked up LOVE in the back of my student bible, wow, there are many verses and stories that teach us about the word LOVE. I came upon the Fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. “ These character traits were given to us as gifts from Jesus Christ himself! Yes, Jesus gave us nine gifts and one of them is LOVE.
So, maybe we can’t all be “Tebowing” but, can we show our love for Jesus Christ in subtle ways? Yes, we can. It’s our gift to be given away. Treat others as you would want to be treated, do not judge others, talk to the person next to you, you know, the one person you often try to avoid, stop and listen to appreciate nature, accept people for who they are, just to name a few. Did you know that Jesus loves everyone, everyone! Not just you, not just the pretty popular girl, not just the perfect athlete, EVERYONE. Try doing the same; see how your LOVE spreads. Before you know it, others have caught on to LOVE and you taught them how to give it away! Not so subtle anymore is it?
So I have given myself the challenge, to give some of my LOVE away, maybe you can try to do the same. Imagine, if we all challenged ourselves to share LOVE at least once every day, watch your LOVE spread and you’ll be exclaiming your LOVE for Jesus, too!
And, by the way, there’s so much to learn about the other eight gifts of the Spirit….
~Cheryl
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