Been thinking about prayer and love

Seems like they do go together.

 

• John 15: 12-13 This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
• Gal. 6:2 Bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ.
• James 6: Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

 Last night in class, we were talking about passions, what constituted a passion and what our own particular passions were. As I mused over the answers our students came up with I was challenged as to my own passion....and it suddenly became very clear: I want people to know what it means to be loved by God and to live out that knowing.

  

It all seemed to come together: the last few weeks I have spent in the gospel of John, reading over and over again the words of Christ ( I do appreciate my red letter Bible), and as I reviewed His words, the conviction that rose about what it meant to love like Jesus.

 

I have also spent my "before bed" time reading about prayer, and this morning it all came together in the above three passages. God simply wants us to love one another. That's how we show Him and the world that we love God; it is the evidence of that love. Then that love for others will manifest itself by our own desire to bear other's burdens, to see what we can do to help others, to lighten their load. And finally, real love will manifest itself in our prayer life. If we love someone, God will hear from us about that person.

 

And I wonder if the measure of our love for God is most clearly seen in or heard in our prayer life. The prayer life that is limited to our own personal concerns seems to reflect a self-centered life. Could it also be that the greater the world encircled in one's prayer life, the greater the love demonstrated, and the more intimate our relationship with the Father? Just thinking out loud.