Perfect Love

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1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.

God IS love, but love is not God. Not every movement claiming to be loving is in agreement with God. This is a very important distinction to make. Many have come in the name of love. The 60's were the epitome of "love" apart from God. The decay of the fabric of our society resulted in ways we still pay dearly for.

Often times, what we call love is outside, or separate from, obedience to God. But God is love. He is the author, and the finisher, of love. Love apart from God is simply unsustainable. God is the light of love that shines on this planet. Attempting to shine love while shading it from God and all the truth that comes with Him is simply doomed to fail.

Every attempt at large scale humanitarian-based love, whether by the church or state, has ended in mass murder or genocide. Every time utopian love has been attempted..."love" that ignores truth, as the Bible defines it... the opposite of love has occurred. This isn't conjecture, it is easily researched fact. Mao, Hitler, the Crusades, Stalin...the list is so long and tragic. Many have come in the name of love, but denied that God, and His definition of truth and obedience, were essential to love.

There are some basic ways to identify a movement of love apart from God. Anytime God's clear and simple Word is explained away by complex logic, chances are "love" is being attempted apart from God. Any time voices of truth are silenced as "intolerant," empty and impossible love is being foisted upon you. If the source of Godless love is threatening you with hate for not submitting to its brand of love...that is a dead give away.

If you want to know what love is 1 Corinthians 13 is your perfect Standard of God-centered love:

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I want to evaluate love, and those claiming to care and love for others, by this standard today! May God bless us as we work for love with our votes today.

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