Love is Enough (1 John 4:11-12) by Alex Wilks

Hey there, I’m Alex! As a response to God's faithfulness to me, this year I have been asking Him to teach me how to be more faithful. One of the ways He answered my prayer was to allow me to spend 6 weeks in Thailand this summer loving on these precious babies.

1 John 4:11-12  says, “Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us” (NLT).

Just sit with that verse for a minute. Have you ever fully digested that? For those of us who have been called by God and adopted into his family this verse says that when we love others God is being expressed through us. What a privilege!

I spent this summer in Thailand doing mission work with a family who welcomes girls into their home who have no one to care for them. In a foreign country, language barriers present a unique problem to encouraging and discipling others. Because I don't speak their language, I found myself frustrated that I couldn’t lead a Bible study or ask these sweet kids questions about what they learned in a quiet time. Talking with my community back home, I was constantly encouraged to simply love them with God’s love. “Sometimes that’s enough,” they would say.

 

Then I read 1 John 4.

It is enough. What an amazing truth this scripture exclaims: God is love; He lives in me. When I love others, I am expressing God. I am being the hands and feet of Jesus. I am living the gospel. And if you are in Christ, you are too!

I’ve been back in the states for about a month, and I still have moments when I struggle to believe that loving someone might just be enough. I struggle against the need to always find or be the solution to problems. I fight my pride that says, “It is God that they need, but it might be a little bit of me that they need, too.”

 

So, I am asking God to show me when it is best for me to simply love — and more importantly — what it looks like to love with His love. Pray with me that he will continue to refine us so that when we love, it is purely the love of God we offer and it is only because He loved us first.

I pray that you will have the opportunity to love others today and that when you lay your head on your pillow tonight, you will be able to see how faithful God was to use you as He revealed himself to this world.





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Visit Alex's blog: http://circaeightyeight.wordpress.com/