The Decision!

Isn’t it funny how you can begin to think on a certain subject and then find significance on that subject in almost everything around you?  That has been happening for me since my early study time yesterday.  It was another one of those days where I wasn’t quite sure where to start but after I prayed was led to continue with where I had been for the last few days in Ephesians chapter four.  So that was cool!  I didn’t even have to turn the page in the various bibles I had laying open across my desk area!

Once I glanced at verse two, I knew where this was going and it looked like I was about to learn some more aspects of God’s love.  Since I already had some familiarity with the passage, I could also recall how it was stated in a few different translations.  It was the Contemporary English Version that seemed to have the best spin for what I needed to learn!  It relates Ephesians 4:2 by bluntly telling us to “Always be humble and gentle. Patiently put up with each other and love each other.”  The NKJV is a little gentler in its approach as it simply instructs us to act by “bearing with one another in love.”

What almost instantly came to my mind is that this isn’t talking about a natural love that responds to feelings and/or emotions, but it is describing God’s agape love.  It is the kind of love that works independent of the feelings of the moment or by what the senses see in any given situation.  An article I recently read on cbn.com seemed to best define God’s agape love by stating:

“Agape love is a decision to consider the needs of others ahead of your own needs… to live sacrificially… to give without demanding a return… to overlook an offense.  Most of all, agape love is a decision to receive and respond to (and in) God’s love.”  (http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/CBNTeachingSheets/keys-love.aspx  Parenthesis mine)

I like that… It is a decision that each of us has to make!  It is something that you decide to do before you walk out the door of your home each day.  It is like being on a diet and needing to decide ahead of time what you’re going to order before walking into a restaurant or walking down the bakery section in the grocery store!  (I just started a new diet and things like that are foremost on my mind right now!)

It quickly reminded me of the times over the last few years that I had an opportunity to say something to “get back” to those who had made some derogatory comments about me, but suddenly thought against it.  It was like an unseen force was holding me back.  Now I can see that it was the Holy Spirit working in me to help me in the decision to walk in love that I had made… despite what my senses were literally SCREAMING to me!

Have you ever been there?  It doesn’t always make sense in the heat of the moment, but I can assure you that responding in God’s love is ALWAYS the best thing to calm any situation!  The Message Bible puts it as “steadily pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.”  Acting in and by God’s love according to His Word isn’t just a band-aid either.  Proverbs 17:22 says it acts like a medicine that cures the ills that the situation has produced.

So what will you DECIDE today?  To abandon your cares and throw your trust into the hands of the Lord and His agape love which neither demands nor needs any return favor, or to respond according to your immediate senses and live to regret the negative results?  Just think about it…  Have a great week!  Stay in tune to His Word, and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”  (What you DECIDE above could give you the answer to that question and make or break your day…)