BIBLE READING: I Thessalonians 3
12 And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:
I know. We get tired of always being told how we are supposed to love one another. Yada, yada, yada. we know!
Jesus said that by loving each other is how people would know that we were His disciples. I don’t know about you, but it’s not that I don’t know it, it’s just that I find it hard to do sometimes. I think we are all good at loving those that are easy to love, but it is the other ones that make it difficult. Unfortunately, we find it hard to love each other at church, or even in our own families, let alone “all men”. In fact, I think sometimes it is easier to love a stranger than to love those that you are close to and know well.
The point of this whole passage is the phrase “the Lord make you to increase and abound in love”. Let’s quickly look at these:
1. THE LORD MAKE YOU TO INCREASE … IN LOVE
God is the one that’s going to have to do this for you. This does not come natural to us, so we need God’s supernatural power to place that love for others in our hearts. To increase in love needs to learn to love more. To genuinely have love in your heart towards others and each other. While the world wants to simply increase, God wants his children to increase in love. God must place that love in us and that love must be allowed to grow.
2. THE LORD MAKE YOU TO …. ABOUND IN LOVE
This means not to just have love “grow” in us, this means for that love to “show” in us. To abound in love means that it is visibly coming out of us towards others. People can see it. It is obvious. That not only are we full of love, but it is coming forth towards others. God must do that. God always does the work in us, then He does the work through us, and then He displays the work with us. What goes in must come out. The Lord will have to make our love grow, and the Lord will have to make our love show toward others.