Transcript from the video above.
Well, the Lord has been teaching me some remarkable truths about love. And my goodness, I can’t keep it to myself. So it occurred to me that my whole life and probably your whole life, everyone is searching for love. But the fact is, we prefer counterfeit love over God’s real love. I wrote a devotional about this and it just was so powerful. I thought, I’m gonna share this in a video.
So first of all, think about all the things that you’ve done, and I’ll just list some of the things I’ve done trying to find love. So I earned a pile of money over my lifetime. I’ve made millions, spent millions, all because I thought it would buy me love. I tried to make myself strong, beautiful, and healthy. I became a slave to this just so I could be more lovable. I worked hard to have this glamorous career so that I could basically attract better love. I prostrated myself in relationships, trying to find love, becoming a chameleon to the needs of other people so that I could be loved by them. I had children so I could find someone who loved me unconditionally. I thought that I would find love in all these ways and did not realize that the whole time I was on the periphery of real love. It was like a counterfeit masquerading as a shadow.
So, what is the love that God really wants me to experience? I’m not saying that any of these things are wrong in and of themselves, but the problem is they can’t handle our need for love. No one else can handle our deep and abiding need for love. There’s only one person who in fact is love and can love to the extent to fill this gaping hole that we have this need for love. I mean, I would wager there are more songs about love than anything else in the world. There’s no question that our society, our culture is starved for love. And you know, I think about the song by Johnny Lee, the lyrics, looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces, searching their eyes, looking for traces of what I’m dreaming of, hoping to find a lover, right? And so we searched for it, there’s no doubt about it. And I searched for love in all the wrong places without God.
In fact, even after I was born again, I decided I wanted to live by my own rules instead of his rules. But what I didn’t realize is that by finding love my own way, I was actually finding a counterfeit love and missing the real and genuine love that God has planned for me. The more I drifted from God’s word, the more I drifted from his presence, the deeper and deeper I went into sin because I was never satisfied. But some of you all know my story. It’s on my website. It’s like when God found me in that deep, dark place where the counterfeit love had crushed me, his goodness was shown forth like a wondrous ray of sun, a burst of sunlight in a tumultuous storm of my life. And his goodness drew me back to him. You know, the Bible says that the goodness of God leads us to repentance. And believe it or not, his goodness is one of the manifestations of his love, good things that we enjoy.
So what is this real love? What does it look like to have real love? What is this love that we desperately seek? And what is it? We know it’s not all the things I’ve just described, right? Because we’ve all had those things and they’ve never satisfied. They’re never enough, right? So is real love to be the center of someone else’s world, is it to have someone know our every flaw, but love us anyway?
You know, the problem is we can’t experience the ultimate gift of love with another human when God is left out of the picture. Because First John 4:7 says that God is love. Think about that. Kim is not love. You are not love. Your mother’s not love. Your child’s not love. Your boyfriend’s not love. Only God is love. And here’s the beautiful thing, because God is love and because he is infinite, he will never run out of love because he will never run out of himself. No one can love us like he does. Think about that again, because God is love. He will never run out of love because he will never run out of himself. Doesn’t that make you want to know what God’s love looks like? Yeah.
So, this is what I studied because I was like, okay God, clearly I haven’t found it in the world. And after we’re born again, after we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, He makes us part of his forever family. Some of y’all know my law practice. I do a lot of adoptions, and it’s always, oh, this child has found and become part of their forever family, and it’s beautiful. Well, the Bible says in the Book of Romans that we are adopted. We are adopted in his family, our soul and spirit are made alive in Christ, and we enter into this remarkable love relationship in a family way. You know, my children are more special to me than your children because they’re in my family. And that’s the way it is with God. When we become part of God’s family, we have entered into a special relationship with him. The problem is that most people who are born again, and most Christians never experience the remarkable love relationship of God, that’s described in First Corinthians 13.
And so it’s funny because when First Corinthians 13 actually describes what love is, first it describes what love isn’t. And I think what love isn’t is what most Christians experience instead of what is God’s love. The Bible says in First Corinthians 13, though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Sounds like a lot of Christians that I know, in fact sounds like me for many years in my Christian life. It goes on to say, though I have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries, have all knowledge and have all faith so I can move mountains and have not love, I am nothing. I can be doing miracles, teaching the best Bible studies, but if I don’t know the love of God and am not experiencing the love of God, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned, but have not love it profits me nothing. See, all those good works without experiencing the deep and abiding love of God will never satisfy us. They are nothing. And most Christians walk around experiencing this works-based relationship with God without the love of God. It’s like living in a marriage without love. That is not what God has for us.
And I’m so grateful that Paul was inspired in the book of Corinthians to tell us what love is so we can experience it. He says: and love suffers long and is kind, does not envy, 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 truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. And when we have all these things flowing through us through the power of God, my friend, love never fails.
Oh, can you imagine being engaged in that kind of love when we have the love of God in us? It’s not a feeling. It’s not just a feeling. No, that’s just the frosting. Okay? And it’s an action that’s fueled by the love of God within us. We are not able to do real love without the real presence of God. Without God, love is impossibly exhausting. But when we’re in him, when we are in the presence of God, then we are long suffering and kind towards each other. We don’t envy each other. We want the best for each other. We are led to be humble. We are selfless with our time and resources. We don’t get easily angered towards each other. We’re not judging and thinking evil of each other. We’re rejoicing in the goodness of God for each other. If somebody has a blessing that’s better than maybe our blessing, we are so excited for them. It’s almost like it’s our own blessing. Because in truth, when we are one in Christ, it is our blessing to see others blessed. And we’re not judging each other. We’re not thinking evil of each other. Matter of fact, we are saddened by the scourge of sin on each other. We’re not happy about that. We’re willing to bear each other’s burdens, even if it’s at great cost to ourselves. We’re willing to believe in each other to the extent that even if what we believe for another person is better than what we have ourselves, we want to support it. We’re willing to endure horrible hardship with each other and walk through those valleys with each other because God’s love is pouring into us from him and pouring out of us into each other.
You may say at this point, well, it sounds like real love’s more about giving, giving and giving, and there’s not much getting for me involved. And, yeah, no, that’s not what I’m really looking for. Well, if all you do is want to get love, then you’re stuck in the mindset. You’ve been basically snagged into that counterfeit love because the definition of real love is selflessness. You know, the opposite of God’s love is not hate, it’s selfishness. And if you think about John 3:16, people know for God so loved the world that he gave it all. He gave it all. And that is a manifestation of love. The problem is when we have the world’s thinking and we’re snared by the counterfeit God of this world, into thinking that love is what we get, then we’ll never have enough. But when we understand the real love that comes from God, we always have enough because he never runs out of himself. Isn’t that great?
And so we have to be constantly filled with the presence of God to experience this love that can flow through us. This remarkable love. The love that we want is the love that we get from God. And then we give it to others. You know, Jesus made it very clear that we can’t experience God’s love any way other than his way. And if we want to experience God’s love and be in the middle of God’s love and be a part of the flow of God’s love, then there’s one thing that we have to do. Jesus told us in John 14:21, he said, he who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. You see, when we experience the manifestation of God’s love in us through obedience to him, heart obedience, because we want to, it never stays inside of us. We never keep it to ourselves. It has to flow out because that is the essence of God’s love.
The essence of God’s love is giving, not taking. We long for others to be blessed and to experience the manifold benefits of the goodness of God’s love. We long for that. We desire for others to have what we have and even more than we have. Because this is the way that God’s love transforms us. If you are looking for love, and you have settled for counterfeit love, for the lies of God’s enemies, that it’s all about what you get and how people make you feel and in the the empty promises, that you’re going to find that in some other person, another flawed human, then turn around, turn around, turn back to his goodness. This is what God did for me. He turned me back to his goodness by his goodness. And what I found, what I discovered, is a love that never fails. A love that keeps giving, a love that never runs out. A love that always satisfies. Oh my goodness.
Friend, if you have questions about how to come to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, go to our website, gofaithstrong.com and look for the gift. There is a gift waiting for you, that Jesus paid the ultimate price to redeem you, to reconcile you to him. He who is!!
We would love to hear your thoughts about this devotional. Did God speak to you or challenge your daily walk with him? Or is there a topic that you would like Kimberly to cover or expound on? Please share with us in the comments below.
To learn more about Kimberly Faith and the mission of Faith Strong, click HERE.
Out Now – Essential Faith, Volume II. Find it on Amazon by clicking HERE.
To learn more about Kimberly Faith’s ministry Fostering By Faith, click HERE.
