The Christian's Experience in Love, Joy, and Peace and Healing the Broken Heart

By Sandee Kaye, MA

Sandee offers hope for the brokenhearted through Scripture and insights gleaned from experiencing her own struggles and shortcomings throughout her life as a Christian. Sandee shares this vital hope through the lens of the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22--23. The Christian's Experience in Love is the first in a nine-part series consisting of each component of the Fruit of the Spirit including Love, Joy, Peace, Patience (Long Suffering), Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. This series is a personal testimony of God's Grace and Mercy and is designed to share His Goodness with the hurting and brokenhearted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098037994

Book preview

Chapter 1

Love Eternal

My soul is deeply kept in Him.

…who will also confirm you to the end,

that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son,

Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:8–9)

In order to understand just how much we are loved, we must know more about love, like where it came from in the first place. We have likely experienced romantic love and love of one another, and if we are Christians, we know something about God’s agape love.

Yet understanding the root and depth of God’s love takes a deeper look into His Word. As noted earlier, the Gospel of Christ explains much. The topic is so very rich and massive that we cannot cover it to the depth needed here, but at the end of the book, I will provide wonderful resources for more information about the Gospel. At the same time, this chapter on His love will likely be the longest of all the chapters on the Fruit of the Spirit because it is so foundational to understanding the other fruit and how the Spirit of the Lord operates through them. But just so we can be on the same page, let’s go into God’s love a little more definitively and learn where God’s love comes from and what it is or isn’t, compared to the other forms of love we experience.

In his book, Hope for the Troubled Heart, Billy Graham stated, God’s love did not begin at the cross. It began in eternity before the world was established, before the time clock of civilization began to move. The concept stretches our minds to their utmost limits.

I find it odd that most don’t even consider where love originated. But as Reverend Graham said, love began in eternity. The Scripture above proclaims that same love will keep us firm until the end. God’s agape love is eternal, unlike any other love defined.

We will develop the definition of agape love as we go along, but for now, here is a brief synopsis of each of the four Biblical forms of love:

Eros: This type of love generally refers to romantic, erotic, or sexual love.

Storge: This type of love describes natural affection between family members.

Phila: This type of love means to be a friend to or have affection for.

Agape: This type of love appears most frequently in the New Testament. It is God’s love, initiated by God and manifested first through the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ and then through God’s people. In both cases, agape love means offering God’s unmerited love, either directly from God Himself or from God through His people despite the disappointment, hurt, and rejection we might experience throughout life.

Agape love and the healing that can come from it can never be achieved without first believing in Christ Jesus for salvation. In the Christian’s view, agape love is the most important because we believe it is not only the genesis of all love that exists, but it is the form of love that provides healing and is the ultimate guide for all we do. 1 John 4:19, We love Him because He first loved us, explains that we are only able to love Him because He taught us how to love by demonstrating His perfect love to us through the sacrifice of His only Son for our