The Missing Love

2 Peter 1: 5-9, “…faith… moral excellence… knowledge… self-control… perseverance… godliness… brotherly kindness… love. For if these qualities are yours AND INCREASING, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”

My third book, yet to be finished let alone published is on this very passage of scripture. It is called Growing in Christ and discusses how the Holy Spirit works these character traits into us, in this specific order, and how each previous trait is needed to support the following one. For years I was stuck at the trait of godliness, with no subjective experience to relate it to. But today, at forty-seven years old I am finally getting submerged in the Holy Spirit directed lesson on His love. Never before have things been so spiritually clear. Never before have people seemed so beautifully purposed to me. And I know that if love is a river, my toes are the only thing getting wet at the moment, and for that reason I have an invigorated spiritual desire for more. All this time to think I have been missing love. Why didn't God just bring me straight here? Why did I go through life with as many unloving spiritual guides as loving? Why is love not the ONLY topic of every sermon? This is how big the concept has exploded in my spirit.

Yet I am reminded that to find the missing love we must all first find faith, and then find moral excellence, and then find objective knowledge, and then find self-control, and then learn perseverance, and then experience godliness, and then act in brotherly kindness before we can ever truly walk in love. Wow… I feel I have reached a destination. I feel I have climbed a mountain. I feel the transition. (@Jim)

And as I sit here knowing that at least in my mind my book Growing in Christ is nearing completion, I hear God already speaking the name of my forth book. He said it will be called, “Walking in Christ.” What a lifetime of lesson that is going to be. I can only smile.

Then suddenly my smile turns to wonder… I wonder how many people don’t know they are missing love. Don’t our parent’s teach us how to love, and be loved? Don’t we love our children and our spouses? The answer that I see now in my life is a resounding no. Man’s love fails, while God’s love never fails. More on this to come…