For more in depth study:
I believe the biggest challenge for an individual in this life is to learn how to love outside of one’s self. It’s clear in the bible that this is how each of our lives is evaluated at the end when we stand before The Lord, and in fact that evaluation (which is not done by us) determines our eternal destiny. Love God and love your neighbor! Jesus said all of the law and the prophets hang on these two simple commandments.
The very foundations of love in this life begin with family relationships. What should be the most simple ways given to love outside of one’s self is in the context of our family. The very design of a family from the marriage outward to parent/child and brother/sister relationship, is designed to be love at it’s deepest potential. I think it’s striking to see how many people grow up in dysfunctional and even devastated families and often times never develop love where the opportunity to love should be so easy and accessible even innate.
Fortunately God, by His nature, gives hope for the seemingly hopeless and even pandemic disease of loveless living in society. Central to understanding family and family relationships; the how to’s of marriage, and having children, the relationship of brother and sisters, is the amazing revelation that our Creator is both a Father and a Husband and that He created us through His Son. The only way to truly walk in the earthly love relationships rightly, is to have understanding and even revelation (some sort of personal experience) of God in these identities of Father, Son, and Bridegroom. Jesus came as the Son to reveal the very nature and love of the Father. We are each the creative idea of the Father, exist by His will, and we are made in the image of the Father. Because we can have a relationship with Jesus the Son and thus become children of the Father, being adopted into the family of God, we can also become Sons of God and know the Father directly.
The journey of getting to know God as the Father, through His Son and know Jesus as Bridegroom and become His Bride is the great provision of understanding for our earthly family relationships as well as the only way to come in to true love. We can see the turn around of families and communities if we will enter in to the relational knowledge of the Father, the Son, and the Bridegroom. Beloved, let us come to truly know God as Father so that we can truly love Him and one another!
