29.11 | Choose Love
1 John 2:18-3:24
‘Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.’
1 John 3:18
There is a simple premise that will help you with the Scriptures. It is this:
Every command invites a choice.
If it is commanded in the Scriptures, you are not able to force yourself to be it, or feel it, or experience it; rather you are invited to choose it.
The choice—the will—is among the most underestimated governors of our life direction in the contemporary age. We live in a world where we are urged, from childhood onwards, to be true to our feelings, true to our desires, true to our impulses. We are a feelings-led culture, a world that slavishly obeys the mantras of hedonism and dopamine pursuits. We live under the illusion that authenticity is equivalent to acting upon every desire, expressing externally what we feel internally.
This fallacy greatly infects the spiritual life. It has blocked the song of many a depressed on downcast Christian—feeling that a loud declaration that is contrary to our inner feelings is inauthentic and false, and thus stripping us of the very act wherein we may find prophetic liberty. It has stifled the gifting of many a Spirit-filled believer—guarding our inner sense of fragility in the illusion that inactivity will bring us more life than Spirit-filled courage. It has frozen the Church of the feelings-led Global West, reducing our activity to undulate with our emotions, and letting the fragile transitions of these undulating emotions become the dictator of what we believe to be most real.
And it leads us on a collision course with Scriptures like that which we have read today. For John urges us to recognise that there is one great marker of the children of God:
Love.
There is a danger here, for this word, in our culture, can shake our confidence. For if love is most truly a feeling that we feel, then we can view the absence of loving feelings as evidence that we are not truly His children. We can believe that our feelings—which can be cold and hard or warm and loving, variable with things as superficial as how much sleep we had or when we had our last meal—dictate the reality of our truest selves. When we feel impatient, critical, fearful, angry, or lustful, we can take this as evidence that therefore we must not truly be God’s children.
And yet, my friends,
Every command invites a choice.
If we are commanded to love, it is not a command that we feel loving. It is a command that we act with love. It is a command to choose the activity and words that are loving. It is an invitation to swat our changeable feelings to one side, no longer allowing them to be the arbitrary dictator of our reality, and to let our will set us on the path again of who the Father says that we are. For the feelings of joy and gratitude and affection and delight that we experience in love are not all that love is. Rather, love, in these words of John, is the daily decision to act in accordance with who we already are. It is the outcome of a life that reminds itself continually that we begin every day, and every moment, abiding in—living in, moving in, breathing in, remaining in—the love of the Father. For we are called to love in this truth and to love from this truth.
Activate your will, child of God. When partnered by the Spirit of God who works continually in you, it is more mighty a power than you realise. For every choice of love—and often most especially those that run contrary to our darkest feelings—is a mighty agent in the liberation of your soul.
Reflect:
Where do I not feel love? What would choosing a deed of love look like here?
Rest your heart again in the Father. Abide afresh in Him. Ask for His strength. And resolve to choose that love.
Pray:
Heavenly Father,
My feelings are so changeable,
And yet are so strong.
They pull me this way, and then that—
From what feels like love and generosity and gratitude
To what feels like bitterness is criticism and fear.
And so, Father,
Teach me the higher ways.
I abide afresh in You, and so,
Remind this soul daily
That I begin as one beloved.
From this place,
I choose to act in accord with love,
For Love is who You are.
And as I do so,
Loving Father,
Heal this soul,
That my feelings may catch up to my reality
As a beloved, loving,
Child of the Father.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Daniel 7-8 | Proverbs 29:1-11