Living In Love: Changing Our World

By Joie Froelich

We are living in a profoundly broken and troubled world. People from all walks of life are facing challenges, hardships, and heartaches. Many feel lost, lonely, and afraid. Others have given up on life altogether as evidenced by rising suicide rates. We are forced to contend with an ever-increasing economic crisis, the steady deterioration of mo

• Language: English
• Publisher: AgapeDeo Publishing
• Release date: Mar 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733584319

Joie Froelich

Joie Froelich is an outreach minister, writer, speaker, and founder of Living in Love Ministry. A wife, mother, and grandmother, Joie and her family live in Minnesota and South Carolina.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

THE IMPORTANCE OF LOVE

THERE IS NOTHING MORE ESSENTIAL TO life than love. It is love that gives purpose and meaning to our lives. Love encourages us, enables us, gives us hope, strengthens us, builds us up, sustains us, heals us, and restores us. Love moves us to acts of great courage and extraordinary sacrifice. Love lifts us up in the face of overwhelming fear and makes it possible to endure otherwise unbearable pain. Love brings us exquisite joy and unsurpassed peace. Love fulfills us and is our true reason for living. We could not survive without love – because love is the very essence of life.

There is rarely a day that goes by we don’t hear one of the many and varied stories of love’s powerful impact on life. Beautiful and colorful love stories abound. We delight in stories of people falling in love, of deep, lifelong friendships, and of those who overcome tremendous obstacles and enormous odds for love. We feel a mixture of sorrow, pride, and awe when we hear the profoundly moving stories of those who make incomparable sacrifices for love. Such accounts include people who gave up their own life to save the life of a cherished loved one or friend; or as in the many heart-rending stories of 9/11, those who selflessly sacrificed their lives for the lives of people they had never even met.

Unfortunately, as we know only too well, not all the stories we hear are about people who feel the love of someone special in their lives, or perhaps of anyone at all. We have all seen the heartache, despair, and loneliness that affect so many people in our world today. The daily news is full of tragic stories of those who feel unwanted, unloved, and hopeless. Too many people have taken their own lives or have taken the lives of others. In virtually every one of these circumstances, the root cause of these painful tragedies stems from love, or more specifically, the loss or lack thereof. When love is absent in someone’s life, it can have devastating, if not deadly, consequences.

Few stories convey with more startling clarity just how critical love’s impact on life is than the early 1990s news reports that revealed a heartbreaking look at why infants and children were dying in Romanian orphanages. Journalists found that the children in these orphanages were fed and clothed, but spent their young lives in cold, stark cribs without receiving any form of affection, tenderness, or nurturing. No one held them close or cuddled them. There were no hugs, no tender kisses on their small soft cheeks, and no gentle hand to wipe away their tears. There was no loving human touch at all. As a result, these helpless children became lethargic, unresponsive, and their tiny bodies systematically shut down until they died. This senseless loss of life is known as nonorganic Failure to Thrive syndrome, or simply stated, the lack of human love and affection. While this story brought to light the harsh realities of this syndrome, it is not exclusive to these orphanages in Romania. It occurs right here where we live, taking the lives of children, as well as adults, who have no love in their lives. In varying circumstances, for various reasons, there are people who quite literally are dying for love, or more specifically, the lack of it, every day.

We cannot live without love because it is a fundamental need within every human heart to both love and be loved. It is this inherent need within us that makes love so essential to life. It is, very simply, the way every one of us is created.

CREATED TO LOVE

In Genesis, the first book in the Bible, it states, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27). What is this image of God in which we have all been made? The apostle John’s answer is unequivocal: God is love (1 John 4:16). Humankind, then, was created in the likeness of God – who is love. We are created out of love, by the Creator who is love, to be creatures of love. We are, therefore, created with the inherent need and desire both to love and be loved. By God’s own design we are meant to live in loving relationship with Him and with one another.

PERFECT LOVE FOR IMPERFECT PEOPLE

Adam and Eve, the first man and woman God created, walked in perfect love with their Creator. Their love was pure, boundless, and full of joy. It knew only goodness, kindness, patience, faithfulness, honesty, and caring. It was flawless. Even so, cunning and full of evil deceit, Satan successfully tempted Adam and Eve into sin. As a result, the perfect love they had known was lost, and their sin led to the sinful, fallen nature of all humankind. No one since Adam and Eve’s fall has been born without a sinful nature. Consequently, instead of an infinite life of perfect love, humankind was now condemned to live in a broken world filled with sin, suffering, and sorrow until ultimately succumbing to death, eternal separation from God, and eternity in hell.

Humankind’s fall, however, did not in any way change the nature of God. God is and always will be love. He will always love us, even while in His perfection He hates our sin. It grieved our Creator’s heart that we should be separated from Him. As a Father who loves His children, God wants to share His love with us for all eternity. Nevertheless, because He is holy, and we are sinful, God cannot bring us to be with Him unless we can be made pure again, unless we are redeemed. Knowing that as sinful human beings, we can never restore ourselves to holiness, God, in His infinite love, sent His own Son to save us. The apostle John tells us, This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).

THE ULTIMATE GIFT OF LOVE

Jesus, the Son of God, who had never sinned, came to earth as a Man and took upon Himself the sins of the world. He endured the punishment that should have belonged to all of us and sacrificed Himself in our place. He suffered brutal torture and died a horrible death nailed to a cross before being raised from the dead and returning to heaven in glory. Because one man’s sin brought sin and death to all humankind, God, in His great love and mercy sent one Man, His own Son, to take away the sins of the world so that we might be restored to perfect love with Him once again. The apostle Paul states, Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone. Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous (Romans 5:18-19 NLT).

The God who is love made His only begotten Son our substitutionary sacrifice not because we earned it or deserved it, but solely because of His unwavering, unalterable love for us. Our loving, gracious, and merciful heavenly Father provided an escape from certain death and eternal damnation for every person who accepts His Son, Jesus Christ, as their Savior. The wages of sin is death, attests the apostle Paul, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23 NKJV). There has never been, nor will there ever be, a greater gift of love!

We receive this priceless gift simply because God loves us. There is nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it; therefore, it is truly a gift of grace. As the apostle Paul explains, God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it (Ephesians 2:4-9 NLT).

THE PLAN FOR ETERNAL LOVE

It has always been God’s plan that we be His sons and daughters and know the unparalleled love that comes from being members of His family. It gives Him great pleasure to shower us with love, kindness, wisdom, and understanding. His heart’s desire is for us to be richly blessed through His Son’s sacrifice. Even before he made the world, writes the apostle Paul, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding (Ephesians 1:4-8 NLT).

Without question, the greatest demonstration of God’s immutable nature and the depth of His unfailing love for us is found in the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. In what is one of the most well-known verses in all of Scripture, Jesus conveys the incomparable depth of His Father’s unconditional love for us when He declares, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Jesus was and is the infinite fullness of God’s love. His sacrifice brings us together with Him into the unfailing grace of God’s perfect love. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, we are bound together with Him in an eternal love relationship with God. As such, we are also bound to live by the commandments of love He gives to us. It is through these commandments, and through God’s Word and Jesus’ example, that we learn how to live in true love and genuine joy. Our Lord and Savior’s greatest desire for us is that we know the joy of remaining in God’s love forever. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you, Jesus tells us. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete (John 15:9-11).

TO LOVE IS THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

So, what are the commands we need to obey to remain in God’s love and to know the joy that Jesus knew? Jesus Himself gives us the answer as He responds to a question in an interview with the Sadducees and Pharisees, the men of His time who were considered experts in the laws of Scripture.

"‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’ [asked one of the teachers of the law.]

The most important one, answered Jesus, "is this: … ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:28-31).

Jesus further defines the importance of these two great commandments when He states, All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matthew 22:40). All the Law (every command given in Scripture) and the words of the prophets, Jesus said, are fulfilled if we keep these two commandments to love. In addition to the Ten Commandments most of