One of the greatest joys of being a parent is watching your children come through childhood, with all its arguments and competitiveness and jealousies, grow up, forgive each other, and become good friends.
To see your children making plans to get together, to sit and have a conversation, laughing and enjoying each other’s company, there’s just nothing like it. Seeing the love between them fills a parent with a delightful contentment.
I imagine this is a tiny fraction of the joy the Lord has when He sees His children maturing and growing in His love and then loving one another, forgiving and accepting one another in the spirit of godly brother and sisterhood.
The apostle Paul, along with Timothy, wrote to brothers and sisters in Philippi, sounding almost as a father writing to his children:
“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
Philippians 2:1-4
There is nothing so easy to fall back into when surrounded by the world than a worldly, fleshly, prideful, egotistical, argumentative attitude. Kind of like children, right? And the very antithesis of love.
But we don’t need to live that way.
We are filled with the Holy Spirit, the One who makes known to us God’s love.
And daily we have a choice: we can walk in the Spirit, or suffer in the flesh.
When we walk in the flesh, not only do we rob God the joy of an unbroken abiding relationship with us, made complete by seeing His children love one another, we rob ourselves of the joy and the peace we all so desperately want and need.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…”
Galatians 5:22a
Love is the first fruit of walking in the Spirit, and all others depend on it. Love brings joy, and joy brings peace.
“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
Galatians 5:16
As we walk in the Spirit, we won’t be held hostage by our fleshly attitudes. Yield ourselves to the life God’s given us, day by day, moment by moment, and the Father’s love will flow through the Spirit to us, and through us to others.
What an amazing privilege.
To know God’s love, a love far deeper than any the world can ever know, and to allow ourselves to be a conduit of that love for our brothers and sisters, and even for our enemies who so greatly need Him, glorifying and magnifying the Name of Jesus.
“It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.”
2 John 1:4-6
In His Love,
