“Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions” (1 John 3:18 NLT).
Love is more than attraction and more than arousal. It’s also more than sentimentality, like so many pop songs suggest. By this standard, is love dead when the emotion is gone? No, not at all. Because love is an action; love is a behavior.
Over and over again in the Bible, God commands us to love each other. And you can’t command an emotion. If I told you, “Be sad!” you couldn’t be sad on cue. Just like an actor, you can fake it, but you’re not wired for your emotions to change on command. You know that truth if you’ve ever told a little kid, “Be happy!” “I’m trying, daddy!”
If love were just an emotion, God couldn’t command it. But love is something you do. Yes, it can produce emotion, but love is an action.
The Bible says, “Let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions” (1 John 3:18 NLT). We can talk a good act: “I love people.” But do we really love them? Do you really love them? Our love is revealed in how we act toward them.
Talk About It
If someone asked your friends what you really love, how do you think they would respond?
How do your actions reveal the depth of your love for people?
How have other people demonstrated genuine, authentic love for you through their actions?
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This devotional © 2019 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
