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Love is all you need.


All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

It’s almost Christmas – the time of Ultimate Love come down – and here I am with the Beatles stuck in my head. It’s because of something that I read recently in Colossians. I’ve been “stuck” in Colossians this past couple of weeks. While I’m also reading other passages, I just keep coming back, re-reading and pondering it. This is the passage that’s on my mind today (and inspiring the melody that is on repeat in my head):

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Colossians 3:12-14

And……CONVICTION overload.

Thinking about it, I’ve been on the receiving end of this passage and that love a lot lately. Due to life being what it is, even if I have not sought it, I’ve been showered with compassionate hearts, kindness and a lot of patience from my friends and family. For that, I’m incredibly thankful. God has shown Josh and I that he’s not abandoned us. Every night I pray with the kids and thank God that his plans are good because he is good. MY hope is that, if they take nothing else from their childhood, they will grow up knowing just how true that is.

But, as I read this passage again, I wonder how compassionate I am. Do I forgive easily? Or do I hold on to the bitter end? (I know the answer to this question.) Am I humble? Or do I think that my experiences, my trust in God, my “patience” with the harder relationships and the act of keeping-my-mouth-shut-even-if-my-brain-is-going make me superior? Because they don’t.

Here I am, God’s child, holy and much loved by him, forgiven beyond what I could ever deserve or imagine – holding on, tight fists, to my perceived rights and grudges – refusing to “put on” love because I want to wallow.

Sigh.

And so I read it again and again and again.

It’s a tall task, this passage- this instruction to do, to act. As much as I wish it, there’s not going to be a magical morning where I/we wake up to all of these functioning well in me/us and being bound together by love. But, there’s also something incredible to consider.

Christ is in us.

He who loves perfectly, forgives perfectly; who humbled himself to the point of becoming the God Man; who the Bible tells us is “gracious and compassionate”; he is IN US. Check this out:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Galatians 2:20

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
Romans 8:8-10

On our own, we cannot live out this humility, meekness, forbearance and love that Colossians calls for. On our own, we cannot please God. But we are not on our own – we have Christ and his perfect love in us, empowering us. We suffer with him and are alive in him. How exciting is that!!! There is hope yet.

And so it’s true, really, and I’ll keep on humming it:

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

 


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