Acts of Love
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19 This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20 whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
1 John 3:16-24

Before couples marry, they often say loving words to each other – words like: “I love you”, and “I will love you forever” and “Our love will never end”. So many words about love, and yet the divorce rate is so high. Couples who devoted themselves to each other through words were, a few years later, asking to go their separate ways because they “no longer love each other”.
These couples often make a mistake. They think of love as an emotion, and that words spoken from emotion have a special strength. But if, a few years later, they do not feel the emotion and stop hearing and saying the words, then their love for the other person is gone.
But real love goes beyond feelings and words. Real love has actions, acts that can be seen. And the greatest act of love was the cross. Out of love, Jesus gave His life for us.
This is the type of love that we are to have, not simply a love of feelings that can change so easily, or a love expressed in words that disappear into the air, but a love of solid actions. These actions do not buy us our salvation. Only Jesus work on the cross can do that. But through our actions, we express our love and we grow in love.
Where do we start? Jesus told us in John 14:15: “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” Start by doing that. Do what Jesus commands us to do, and let our loving actions grow as He leads us.

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Prayer:
• How do you show love? Is it just with words and feelings, or is it with solid acts of love? Remembering that salvation is by faith, ask yourself, what acts of love is God calling you to?