Episode 80: What Is Love And Where Does It Come From?

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mack. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Well, dad, I I love to talk about love.

John McLarty: God is love. Going to be a great subject.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. I think that when we’re one of the things we’re going to talk about today is, first of all, we’re talking about what is love? And then the second thing we’re talking about is where does it come from?

John McLarty: Good topic. I love it.

Kimberly Faith: Have talked about love a lot and, in the context of real love. And and I think the reason that it’s so important to understand, what love is and where does where it comes from is because in our very core of our being, we long for every human longs for connection, acceptance, and this thing called love. You know, our our culture completely promotes to the tune of trillions of dollars this thing that we call apocalyptic love or romance, right? And yet, it’s the thing that crushes

John McLarty: What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. But so often, our hope is crushed through betrayal, rejection, heartbreak. And the pain is devastating. It produces tragic results. I think it’s probably and there are statistics out there that show that millions struggle with anxiety and depression triggered by failed relationships.

And so I think, first, when we talk about this topic of what is love, I think it’s important to distinguish between what the world culture calls love and what God calls love.

John McLarty: That would be, yes, a good discernment.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I think it’s a good place to start because and I’d love to start with one of the best known tragic romance stories, romantic stories about Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

John McLarty: Well, why don’t you tell us a story, Kim? Are you gonna take the the voice parts of all the roles? Dad. How can you stay?

Kimberly Faith: No. We’re not going to go back to the hippie days.

John McLarty: Back in your childhood days.

Kimberly Faith: No. No. I just I think it’s everybody well, I say everybody. Most people have heard of the tragic romance of between Cleopatra and Mark Antony, which unfolded right before the birth of Christ. And, you know, it it kinda was the backdrop was the the political background of the late Roman Empire following the assassination of Julius Caesar in about forty four BC.

And, you know, at that point, Rome was being governed by Mark Anthony, Octavian, and Marcus Lepidus. I’m probably not saying that right. But anyway, what happened, Cleopatra, who was the last pharaoh of Potomac Egypt, had allied herself and loved Caesar for basically political and personal gain to secure Egypt’s independence. And then after Caesar’s death, she met Antony, Mark Antony.

John McLarty: Mark Antony. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And in order to secure Egyptian resources and support, he summons her, right? And of course, she appeared quite dramatically, and there was this deep romance and political partnership that was sparked. They became lovers, had three children, and basically and he was actually married to Octavia at the time, who was, you know, was also a political I think a political marriage. But what ended up happening was that the Roman Empire basically became leery of this alliance, so to speak. Political intrigue.

Yes.

John McLarty: Who would have thought it?

Kimberly Faith: And so, Octavian used basically propaganda, imagine that, to declare war on Cleopatra in thirty two BC. Well, that conflict culminated in the battle of Actium. Know, Antony and Cleopatra’s combined forces were defeated. They fled to Alexandria. And Antony heard a false report that Cleopatra had died and he fell on his sword.

And so then he was carried to her arms where he died. And then Cleopatra, unwilling to face capture and humiliation, and the end of her dynasty took her life. Traditional traditionally, it’s said to be by asp bite, like, within days of his But, I mean, this story is a great illustration of of how the loss of human love can shatter, you know, really empires. And not just lives, but empires. And, you know, this is an example really of how radically we ache for this thing called love.

Their story is a historical illustration, obviously.

John McLarty: And this I’ve never put together that this was so close to the time of the coming of Christ.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: Thirty one BC. So Christ, setting the stage for Christ. For God so loved the world. Right, right. That he gave his only begotten son.

Kimberly Faith: When I was studying this, and actually this whole idea for this podcast came about just because I mean, it’s such a common human dilemma, is we long for human love. We long for love in unconditional love. And we often seek it in the form of from other humans, I mean, we seek that from our children, from our parents, from somebody, a lover or a spouse. And, know, we’ve seen that happen in the loss. I, of course, almost every week see people in my office who’ve lost their spouse of sixty years or lost a child or have back when I used to practice divorce law, just had been betrayed by a spouse.

There it’s the bottom you’re at the bottom of just depression and pain and tragedy, it’s a horrible place to be. But I think we’re so hardwired for love. We’re so hardwired for it that

John McLarty: We have a human need to be accepted and loved and just compassion. And then that attracts others. If we generally love somebody, not even like husband, wife, but just if we care for someone that we just say recently met, they their radar really, screen blindens

Kimberly Faith: up That’s right. At

John McLarty: Somebody cares about me.

Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s so we’re talking about this thing, this what is love, right? Well, first of all, human love is limited. I think it’s important that we understand that although we’re wired for love, God wired us for love because we’re created in his image. And so, thus, in the Bible talks about God is love.

First John four eight. Right? So, if God is love and we were created for his glory and for a relationship with him, should be no surprise to us that the kind of love that we desire is the kind of love God gives. Right? So what is love?

Well, I mean, it’s it’s really easy to look at what first Corinthians 13 says and know that’s the the best definition of of love really given in the Bible. We have John three sixteen, right? Right. God so loved the world that he gave. And what did he give?

The ultimate sacrifice, right? And then Paul, the apostle Paul in one Corinthians thirteen:four-eight, why don’t you read that?

John McLarty: Yeah, that’s the great measuring stick or metric definition of God’s love.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

John McLarty: So, that’s a great I’ll read those verses. Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never fails.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. I mean, if we could camp out on that for days, probably years, because there’s so much there. You think about

John McLarty: Yeah, seeks not its own and is not provoked. Right. So contrary to Even human levels of love can be pretty fleeting when tested.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. Well, and you think about So, I remember the first time that God showed me this thing that but the Bible says in one John four eight, God is love. Right? I was thinking about this, well, the Trinity, because love requires more than one person because love by definition is giving. All these things, suffering, long kind, does not envy, the implication is that more than one person is

John McLarty: involved. Relationship.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And here we have the Trinity. Right? We have God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, who from eternity past has have existed in perfect selfless communion. You know, each of them delighting in, serving, glorifying, giving himself fully to the others in an unending relationship of mutual self giving.

That is so remarkable to think about.

John McLarty: That’s the perfect example. God, son, Jesus submitted to God the Father, humbled himself to the point of the cross.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. God the Father willing to sacrifice and stay the part, the righteousness. And then the Holy Spirit just going to work to carry out the work of Jesus in the lives of us. So, when the Bible says God is love, that by implication means God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, they are love together. And what’s so interesting is that everything is described in one Corinthians thirteen:four through eight is the opposite of selfishness.

Right. And so, experience the real love, which is different than the love that Mark Anthony and Cleopatra experienced, they may be held up as maybe the ultimate of human love without God, right? They gave their lives because they didn’t wanna live any longer without the other. That’s as far That’s the outer limit of what human love can do. Right?

But yet, think about what the consequences of both their actions were in the name of quote love was to leave their children fatherless and motherless, to leave a political disarray. I mean, the things, right, that they did. And again, this isn’t a critique of them, but it’s more of a contrast of what God does. His love is perfect. And when we enter to salvation through by grace through faith and accept the gift of Jesus Christ and our soul and spirit are born again, then we get to enter what I think it was CS Lewis called the great dance of God’s love.

In other words, there’s there were three and now there’s four. Right? And so we get to enter we have the opportunity. We will someday in perfection enter that. But right now, we have the opportunity to subdue our selfishness, subdue our we have the power of the Holy Spirit to subdue our selfish nature and to enter into this selfless relationship where we can suffer long and without retaliation.

We can be kind without expecting anything in return. We can rejoice when something good happens to somebody else and not envy. We don’t have to parade ourselves because we have everything we need in the Trinity.

John McLarty: And that’s interesting because when we’re born again, we’re literally a new creature.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: And that new creation is Christ in us. It’s been made the righteousness of God. So, it’s nothing we’ve just reformed or disciplined ourselves into. It’s the result of God’s nature.

Kimberly Faith: That’s such a good observation. Becoming

John McLarty: a part

Kimberly Faith: of us. That’s such a good observation because we can’t do it in our old nature. Our old nature’s incapable.

John McLarty: Can’t do it.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. We’re incapable of any modicum of exercising God’s love because our soul and spirit are dead to God and before we’re born again. And here’s, you know, it’s so important. We’re talking about this thing, what is love? It’s so important for us to recognize that humanly speaking, to have God’s love is absolutely impossible without God.

Right.

John McLarty: Must be born again.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And our sworn enemies, which are Satan, our flesh, and the world culture, pulls us constantly towards selfishness and self gratification because the enemy does not want us to experience the fullness of God’s love even after we’re born again. I mean, he knows. He’s not stupid. Know because at one point, he knows what that experience was like before he fell.

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: Right? And he knows that if we ever experience the fullness of God’s love, it will become our greatest addiction.

John McLarty: And one of the results of love, it’s just in husband, wife, is fruitfulness. And Satan does not want us to be fruitful as Christians.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, we produce the fruit of the spirit.

John McLarty: Fruit of the spirit and other people entering into salvation, to witness Yeah. And

Kimberly Faith: And that top ingredient in the fruit of spirit is love. Yeah, And Jesus also talked about how, well, I’m gonna paraphrase, I don’t remember the actual words. Pears don’t grow on apple trees. And when we are engaged in the love of Christ, then we are going to produce fruit that reflects his nature. It’s, you know, Paul we talk about it all the time, but Paul the apostle captures the struggle.

And he in Romans seven nineteen, he says, for the good that I will do, I do not, but the evil I will not to do that I practice. In other words, our flesh is going to has declared war on our desire to love as God loves. It wants what it wants and it doesn’t care if even if it hurts us to satisfy what it wants. But, you know, we have so much hope in Christ. We have so much hope.

And I don’t know, do you have you experienced this, just as a born again believer, this contrast of knowing that you are walking in the love of God and knowing when you’re walking in the flesh?

John McLarty: Yes. I think that can only be understood if you distinguish between the soul and the body. Yes. Because the soul is born again. So then that’s the part of us that can love with God’s love.

Right. Apart from being born again, it can’t. But then as Paul is saying here, it’s like the definition of which I. So, the I is, For the good I will do, I do not, but the evil I will do that I practice. So, you have to distinguish that one of these eyes is his soul, his born again soul.

And then another one is eye is the flesh. So, there’s this warfare. So, yeah, I think as a Christian, that’s part of growth is you begin to distinguish which part of you is in control through walking in the spirit. That’s being led of Christ through your born again souls. And he gets all the credit.

But we can either yield to that or not. But yeah, when the flesh takes over, just if something just offends us, I can feel the wrongness of, Well, you said that, so I’m going to say And

Kimberly Faith: that’s the flesh. And

John McLarty: I’d say just after fifty years of being a Christian, yeah, you’ve got the voice of the soul, born again, and then you’ve got the voice of the flesh, which is always can be easily provoked. And it’s interesting. That’s a good kind of measure. Love is not easily provoked.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, that’s good.

John McLarty: But the flesh

Kimberly Faith: Is provoked

John McLarty: all It the is easily provoked. I’ve thought about that. Just think of our temperament. Somebody says something that rude or offends us or whatever, or even arbitrarily, don’t even know it, but we take offense.

Kimberly Faith: So

John McLarty: interesting. And if we can recognize that, I think you’ve got some stories where you recognize it like, Oh, wait, that’s a reaction of the flesh.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, you lose your peace.

John McLarty: Yeah, you lose your peace.

Kimberly Faith: And your joy. You know, actually, And I feel like it happens every week in my office, you know, where I’m dealing with some attorney, maybe that is just more of a roughshod kind of style of practice, or has a more roughshod style of dealing with people. And we’ll send just a Either say something extremely demeaning and rude to basically to posture for their client, because we’re having a meeting with their client. And I love the way that you delineated how love is not easily provoked because my soul is not If my soul is in charge, when Jesus Christ reigns in my soul, then I’m going to have compassion instead of And being the key to that, the key to being led by the spirit instead of the flesh is to continue to develop the mind and attitudes of Christ because we cannot do it on our own. We have to have we’ve talked about this so much in these podcasts is developing the mind of Christ requires us to daily and hourly renew our mind in the word with believers, you know, to because we have these very deeply cut grooves in our brain that our knee jerk reactions are never any better than the day we were born again.

John McLarty: Yeah. Kind of the renewing of the mind, but it is something you develop the mind and attitudes of Christ. They’re there, but it’s like you cultivate them.

Kimberly Faith: That’s a good

John McLarty: way to If have put a garden out here and you can just let the weeds grow back up, or you can cultivate it and nurture it. And then the plants you want become bigger than the weeds and you keep the weeds pulled out. But it’s an effort. That’s intentional.

Kimberly Faith: That’s an excellent example, dad. Because I’ve shared this several times in this podcast where for a long time in my walk with the Lord, I walked away and I let the weeds grow. And pretty soon, I couldn’t even remember if I was born again. I mean, had no sense of the presence of God. I knew I had made a profession It of was intellectually present, but it wasn’t experientially present.

And that is a huge, huge difference. And I think, and I’ve said this many times, it’s because I didn’t when I was born again, I didn’t cultivate my relationship with God. I was playing by the rules, but I didn’t let him cultivate the desire for himself in me. That part of me was shut off. And so the rules get pretty old after a while because we’re we’re we’re living with a one foot in the in the world culture

John McLarty: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And the desires, and then and we’re living kind of one foot in the Christian the church, so to speak. And that’s never satisfying. Matter of fact, Jesus said he’d rather just vomit us out So than have us developing the mind, and then of course, we’ve talked about the beatitudes, the attitudes of Christ. This is so key and it’s so easy to lose it. Meaning not our salvation, but just I can spend a week just neglecting my quiet time in prayer and feel like I’m adrift.

John McLarty: I’m gonna use the gardening analogy. So I have these little tomato plants and you go off, say, you just neglect it, whatever. You’re just neglecting it. Or you’ve gone off to a vacation, you come back. You don’t even see the tomato plants.

That’s unattractive. If my garden is grown up, I don’t even want to look at it. But if I go out there and take all the weeds away, and then I see there are tomato plants still there, and I’ve taken all the weeds out, then it’s very attractive.

Kimberly Faith: It’s motivating too.

John McLarty: Yeah. And it’s like, Oh, the tomato plants are still there. And it looks so much better cultivated. Well, I’m just making this analogy on the spot. We as Christians look so much better to others in terms of our ministry when Christ is not hidden.

Kimberly Faith: And we look better to ourselves as well.

John McLarty: It feels better.

Kimberly Faith: It’s like coming home. It’s like, oh, I know when I tend to drift. And I tell everybody this, my New Year’s resolution for this year was to never use the busy word to associate myself with being busy. I call it the b word, but I have to explain because some people think it’s something else. And and and the the the reason I was convicted about that was because God is never too busy for me ever.

So, why would I ever be too busy for you?

John McLarty: That’s a good idea.

Kimberly Faith: Or for anyone else?

John McLarty: Good point.

Kimberly Faith: And that is what and I also can see how being too busy is what often, and I may be busy about God’s work, you know, without really adding Him personally into the equation. Okay, that’s very easy to do. But when I start to feel the experiential part of the relationship devolving is when I recognize, wait a minute, I’m not doing God’s work without God. So, what am I doing with myself right now? And I miss the experience.

I miss his the experience of love, of joy, of peace. And what I I can also tell because the second thing that happens and sometimes the second thing happens first is the way I interact with others. I’m not loving. I’m not I’m not having a presence of peace when I come into the room. And the works of the flesh start manifesting themselves as opposed to the fruit of the spirit.

John McLarty: And so interesting because you could actually be maybe preparing for Bible study that night, doing something that looks and is okay and spiritual. If somebody calls or walks into your office and you need to It’s kind of a loving obedience. It’s God’s directing you know. You need to Stop

Kimberly Faith: preparing for that Bible study.

John McLarty: Here’s a real person

Kimberly Faith: that

John McLarty: needs to talk.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. Right in front of you. Even today, we were planning to do this podcast and we had an interruption that involved people and people that needed ministry. And I was sitting there for a minute thinking about the things I could go and do while the people were in the And I thought And the Lord’s like, No, this is your ministry right now. Do not miss this opportunity.

John McLarty: That’s a perfect example.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Happens every day.

John McLarty: A training of the mind or a discipline of the mind. Right. And it’s interesting you said that because just because you know that and we know that, you could have just not done it.

Kimberly Faith: Oh yeah.

John McLarty: You could have gone and done some

Kimberly Faith: errands. Could

John McLarty: have. It’s like we’re on that bubble, so to speak, every day to make these decisions.

Kimberly Faith: Right. And every decision matters for eternity. In the last podcast, we talked about how God works extraordinary things through ordinary people. Well, those are the opportunities. It’s in that bubble, as you say, where, you know, minute by minute, hour by hour, God interrupts our day with important things, extraordinary opportunities.

And it’s when we have the mind and attitudes of Christ that we actually get to enter into this experience of this thing called love. Real love that comes from God. You know, to experience the fullness of God, I love one John four:seven. You wanna read one John four:seven?

John McLarty: Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

Kimberly Faith: Love doesn’t start with us.

John McLarty: No, it does.

Kimberly Faith: It starts with God. And that’s the second question in this podcast is where does love come from? What is love? We define that as complete unselfishness, right? It’s complete emptying of self.

And where does it come from? It comes from God.

John McLarty: I’ll just repeat this. And everyone who loves is born of God. That’s everyone who has the love of God within them is born of

Kimberly Faith: God. So,

John McLarty: it’s not something we’ve reformed or disciplined ourselves It’s because God’s love’s in us.

Kimberly Faith: Is born of God and knows God. So, it’s important not to forget that to know God, that like I was born of God back when I was 23 years old, but then I had this very dry period where I never took the time to know God. And I’ll never forget that Your

John McLarty: weeds were growing up.

Kimberly Faith: I’ll never That’s

John McLarty: what happens.

Kimberly Faith: I’ll never forget when I was at the bottom, and I’ve told this story lots of times, but God blessed me with something I had thought, Wow, I’d love to have that. It was a big deal. It was a big thing. And when he did that, it was like a light came on and I was like, I don’t think I know God. I know I’m born again, but I don’t really think if God did this for me when I didn’t deserve it, I know I didn’t deserve it.

And he answered so precisely the desire of my heart. And it was a physical thing I wanted, but it was so precise and so miraculous. It was then I recognized that it was indeed the goodness of God that was leading me to turn around, do a 180 degree repent and come back to Him.

John McLarty: You saw the love of God, which God is love, rather than you maybe had been anticipating a God of retribution.

Kimberly Faith: Yes, yes.

John McLarty: Or a God that’s pressing against you. Yes. And God just flipped the script. He did. Your thinking of me is not really me.

Here’s who I am.

Kimberly Faith: Here’s who I am. Not that there’s

John McLarty: not chastening in our life, but it’s even for our good. When God does like, Okay, you need to get a little swat here or swat there.

Kimberly Faith: Well, and a lot of our punishment is self induced. Some of it’s not. But I wanna point out something else too, that when God through His goodness and His complete unmerited love, I I was did not merit his love, showed me, hey, this is who I am. It was like, wow, I really wanna know you better.

John McLarty: And

Kimberly Faith: what’s amazing is when in this first John four seven, he said, let us love one another. It’s through we get the opportunity to be God’s love for others because that’s how God’s love is often most most opportunities to manifest God’s love is through our own lives. Right. And to bring others to a rich relationship with Christ. And and that doesn’t happen by accident.

It begins with us living the bible calls it abiding. Jesus called it abiding in him through loving obedience. He said in John fifteen ten, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in what? My love. Just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love.

There’s that trinity again. And we get invited. We’re invited to the dance. We’re invited to come in and and engage in this this perfect triune love that God says, hey, you can you’re invited. And then when we become rooted and grounded in Christ’s love, then we have this beautiful promise in Ephesians chapter three verses 17 through 19.

It says, we’re able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, and we’re filled with all the fullness of God. That is so amazing.

John McLarty: That is so unfathomable. It really is. Because I think we began to experience that in this life and to different degrees as we abide in him and his love. But I think that’s for eternity. It is.

That to be revealed to us.

Kimberly Faith: Well, that’s right.

John McLarty: To be filled with all the fullness of God.

Kimberly Faith: Yes.

John McLarty: This thing is continuing to unfold. Right. And that’s so exciting. Right. And we get glimpses of it, but it’s going to be even better.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. And it reminds me of that podcast we did on identity. And I think it was the one on identity where we talked about, don’t you want to glimpse as much of the soul that God made you today as you will when your flesh is taken away?

John McLarty: When flesh is taken away, yes.

Kimberly Faith: Mean, we

John McLarty: And who are we really?

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And that’s so exciting to me because, yes, I want to experience as much of this born again person that I truly am, my true my born again soul here and now, because what that’s going to do is that’s going to make everything that is ordinary in my life extraordinary, like we talked about last week in the podcast. Mhmm. And what God’s presence does in our life is it transforms everything we know about love. In other words, instead of seeking love from others, emotional love, sexual love, you know, friendship love.

There’s all these different kinds of love. Right? Of different levels of love. Instead of seeking to fill our quote love cup from others, God’s endless love overflows from us into others and we don’t need it. We aren’t desperately seeking love from others.

John McLarty: And then what’s interesting is this, but then it comes back to us. It’s kind of like he that’ll lose his life, will gain it. He’s just going to gain his life, will lose it.

Kimberly Faith: Cast your bread upon the waters. Right?

John McLarty: Because God blesses us, but rather than pursuing the loves of this world, which is just this downward spiral, but through God’s love, we’re fulfilled.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And you think about love, if love truly is selflessness, then the more we’re giving it away, as quick as we give it away, God’s filling us up. Because He always never lets us run out. I mean, think about that verse we just read in Ephesians three. We can’t even comprehend the height, width, depth, height, right?

Or The well that never runs dry. That’s right. And we love others from a fullness, not a neediness. And what that does is all of our human relationships are enriched, whether that’s marriage, friendship, children, even your social, your work relationships, these imperfect people just like us, we’re able to love them perfectly. And that is so incredibly exciting.

John McLarty: It really is. I think that’s an important point, to develop the love of God. It’s not going off and living in a monastery or a cave or an isolated log cabin, it’s just us and God. I mean, there are times for that. But where it really comes into play is it is with human relations.

Kimberly Faith: Right. That’s where it’s manifested. Friends,

John McLarty: family, people that God has put in our past.

Kimberly Faith: Even people who try to act like our enemies. Yeah. Know? And it’s such a great experience. You know, I think about you know, I’ve been to the Dead Sea, it’s very salty, and it’s very dead.

There’s nothing alive in it. And then I’ve been to the Jordan River, which is brimming with, you know, all kinds of life.

John McLarty: Great contrast.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Flows into the Sea Of Galilee. And, you know, when we are just looking for love in all the wrong places, to quote the song, all we become is a Dead Sea. We can’t sustain any life. But when we’re in the middle of the Jordan River and God is sustaining us with His love and all that He’s giving us is flowing right back out again, our love stays fresh and lovely and pure, right?

It’s That’s the river

John McLarty: I want to be in.

Kimberly Faith: Me too. And it’s really not rocket science, as It’s we like so to much. It’s like, love the Lord your God, all your heart, soul, and mind. That just means put Him in the center. Put Him in the center of this podcast, put Him in the center of the dinner you’re cooking, put Him in the center of your work, put them in the center of everything.

That doesn’t mean you have to, you know, know, have the the gospel blaring at your workstation. It means that your life should exemplify the fruit of the spirit. It means if somebody want And people are attracted to that. One of the most memorable quotes was the lady in my office who said, You know, I never met you, but I get the feeling you love me. And I looked at her, I said, No, I don’t.

But you know what? Jesus in me does. And that’s what you’re seeing.

John McLarty: Yeah. That’s what I was saying. Yeah. When we let that shine, that’s attractive to others.

Kimberly Faith: It is. But in a

John McLarty: way, again, I don’t mean that in a worldly way, but just like that lady saying, I feel like you love me.

Kimberly Faith: And it was so crazy. And I’ve met a guy in our office and of course, we have a very Christian based office and people come in our waiting room and they see my gospel track, my story. They see we have all kinds of pamphlets we’ve written about how to find peace and that sort of thing. There’s Christian music playing. There’s usually, you know, essential oils going.

It’s kinda like, you know, smells really good. And people are like, this office is so peaceful. And we get that as the platform to say, that’s because it belongs to the Lord. And if you you know? And they’re very open, like, well, tell me about that.

You know? What does that mean? That typically, they’ll say something like, well, I’m I’m not religious. I say, well, I’m not either. I don’t know what that really means, but I’m not either.

Mhmm. But I know Jesus, and I wanna know him better. And, you know, if you’re if you’re listening to this podcast and you you feel like you don’t you’re not loved or you’re you’re don’t you’re not experiencing this kind of love we’re talking about, or if maybe you’ve just been brokenhearted, somebody’s disappointed you or wounded you, you know, I would encourage you to do this, And that is to seek God with the same passion or even greater passion than you sought that person who broke your heart.

John McLarty: Amen. So, we’ve kind of defined love is God. God shows us what love is. And if you’re searching for love, start with God.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. God is love and love is unselfishness. Right. And God demonstrated his love toward us in that he sent his only begotten son to die for us. While we were sinners, he died for us, which is the ultimate paid the ultimate sacrifice for his enemies, basically.

And when you are born again, you receive the the gift of salvation by grace through faith. He plants in himself his nature and I’m sorry, he plants in you his nature. Your soul and spirit are enabled to engage in the greatest love that you’ll ever know this side of eternity. Only God, who is the author of true love, can can fully heal your broken heart and fill your well so full that you can love freely, faithfully, and never feel like you’ve run out. That’s an amazing experience.

John McLarty: And

Kimberly Faith: I want to experience that to the nth degree for every day I’m given on this earth.

John McLarty: And it starts with, For God so loved the world.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

John McLarty: That He gave.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. So we would just encourage you, you know, again, dad and I, dad, you and I, we’re walking this walk and just trying to find God’s way every step of the way. And just, I’m so grateful for God’s Word that He shows us these things. Because every one of these podcasts, I feel like is an invitation to me. Right.

You know what I’m saying? Not to be self centered, but God’s Word is that way. It’s always a challenge, do this better.

John McLarty: So, look into the mirror of God’s Word. What God wants for us and then where we are. And it’s always a challenge. And it

Kimberly Faith: should be. Is. I mean, if we’re not being challenged, then we’re either dead or we’re just not paying attention.

John McLarty: But it’s the challenge that leads to fulfillment because God is love.

Kimberly Faith: That’s And

John McLarty: He wants us to have a fulfilled life.

Kimberly Faith: He wants to give us more than we can ask for

John McLarty: Rooted or in a relationship with Him and then expressed towards others.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Yeah. It’s such a great It’s a great challenge. And I’m so grateful for God’s word and for God’s spirit that he allows us to constantly be challenged to be more like Jesus. Amen.

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