[God’s kind of] Love is as strong as death; its jealousy unyielding as the grave.  It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.  Many waters cannot quench [His] love.  Rivers cannot wash it away (Song of Songs 8:6-7).

May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love… (2 Thessalonians 3:5)

What a man desires is unfailing love… (Proverbs 19:22)

Though He brings grief, He will show compassion – so great is His unfailing love (Lamentations 3:32).

For the Lord disciplines those whom He loves, and chastises every child whom He accepts (Hebrews 12:6).

Those whom I love I reprove and discipline… (Revelation 3:19)

For whom the Lord loves He reproves, even as a father the son in whom he delights (Proverbs 3:12).

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge… (Proverbs 12:1)

Now as to the love of the brothers… you are taught by God to love one another (1 Thessalonians 4:9).

God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us (Romans 5:5).

For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7).

Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life (Jude 1:21).

We know love by this: He laid down His life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  But whoever has the world’s goods and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?  Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in both deed and truth (1 John 3:16-18).

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.  Love is patient.  Love is kind.  It does not envy.  It does not boast.  It is not proud.  It is not rude.  It is not self-seeking.  It is not easily angered.  It keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails…  Now these three things remain – faith, hope and love.  But the greatest is love (1 Corinthians 13:1-8, 13).

That through faith Christ may dwell in your hearts in love. With deep roots and firm foundations may you, in company with all God’s people, be strong to grasp what is the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love, and to know it, though it is beyond knowledge. So may you be filled with the very fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19).

What does the Lord require of you but to act justly; love mercy, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you this day for your own good? (Deuteronomy 10:12-13)

You shall therefore love the Lord your God and always keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments (Deuteronomy 11:1).

That you may love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live! (Deuteronomy 30:6)

To love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees, laws; then you will live… (Deuteronomy 30:16)

Love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul (Deuteronomy 11:13).

Love the Lord your God, walk in all His ways and hold fast to Him (Deuteronomy 11:22).

Love the Lord your God and … walk always in His ways… (Deuteronomy 19:9)

Take careful heed … to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to keep His commandments, to hold fast to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul (Joshua 22:5).

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Now choose life so you and your children may live and you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him… (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

So be very careful to love the Lord your God (Joshua 23:11).

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap the fruit of unfailing love (Hosea 10:12).

But the world must learn that I love the Father and I do exactly what My Father commands Me (John 14:31).

If you love Me, you will obey what I command (John 14:15).

Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me.  He who loves Me will be loved by My Father.  And I too will love him and show Myself to him (John 14:21).

As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in My love.  If you obey My commands you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commands and remain in His love (John 15:9-10).

This I command you: that you love one another (John 15:17).

This is My commandment: that you love one another; just as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this: that one lay down his life for his friends (John 15:12-13).

A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know you are My disciples if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35).

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: that we should love one another (1 John 3:11).

And this is His command: that we believe in the name of His Son – Jesus Christ – and love one another just as He commanded us (1 John 3:23).

That we love one another.  And this is love: that we walk according to His commandments.  This is the commandment: (Just as you have heard from the beginning) that you should walk in it (2 John 1:5-6).

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.  And everyone who loves the Father loves His child as well.  This is how we know we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands.  This is love for God: to obey His commands; and His commands are not burdensome (1 John 5:1-3).

Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another.  For he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law.  The commandments… are summed up in this one rule: Love your neighbor as yourself.  Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:8-10).

To love [God] with all your heart, with all your understanding, and with all your strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself – is more important that all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mark 12:33).

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:5).

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 12:30-31).

Love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord (Leviticus 19:18).

The stranger who resides with you… you shall love as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.  I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:34).

Also foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve Him, to love the name of the Lord and to worship Him… Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer (Isaiah 56:6-7).

If, however, you are fulfilling the Royal Law (according to scripture) – you shall love your neighbor as yourself – you are doing well (James 2:8).

Do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word; in the statement “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. (Galatians 5:13-14)

The goal of this commandment [actually all His commandments] is love, which comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:5).

Well, we climbed the ladder of Fruits of the Spirit. We made it to the top: Love. There are many, many verses of love in God’s Word, and many, many, many quotes on what love is and what love can be and what love means to creatures as well as to the Creator. But I believe the most important one to meditate on is that God’s kind of love – Agape or Hesed – is not about a feeling but about a willful action.

This is God’s love – in and for me, without which I am nothing.  It cannot be merited, earned or deserved.   And we cannot do anything bad enough to chase God away!  We have to change our mindset on what love is. According to God’s Word, love is strong affection, charity, benevolence, a giving to others; any kind of deliverance from selfishness.

No love is more powerful, more intense, more continuous, more pure, or more full-of-delight in the beloved than the love of God the Father for God the Son!  It is an energy of joy that makes atom bombs look like fire crackers.

And Jesus tells us, “As the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you” (John 15:9). Then He continues on to say, “…love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Love needs an object to whom it can give itself away, in whom it can lose itself, with whom it can make itself one.  The nature of love is always one, however different the object.

Love feeds on truth and when our hearts begin to know the truth of how God loves and desires us all, and who we are in Him, we are transformed from being weak in heart to bold in love!  We are renewed by the knowledge of what we look like to Him. 

Until you have a proper sense of self-love, a healthy and wholesome self-esteem, you are not able to freely and fully love someone else.  You don’t give yourself to others or consider them valuable if you don’t first of all consider yourself worthy.  Meditate on this: Love draws upon the resourcefulness of one’s own esteem in order to have sufficient supply to release it to someone else.  It takes personal security to do this.

We succumb to society’s false judgment of our worth.  As a result, a large segment of the population is plagued by feelings of worthlessness, inferiority, and self-condemnation.  God has not equally distributed gifts, talents, and intellect, but He has equally distributed Himself.  Our sense of worth must come from knowing who we are as children of the Great King.  Something happens to us when we become convinced that our Heavenly Father is aware of and involved in our activities, and is, in fact, applauding our lives.

It is tempting for us to want to be like someone else, to be dissatisfied with who we are and what we can do.  Yet God made us to be what He wanted us to be – what we are now.  We should be content with who we are – it is only a work in progress anyway.  It is so liberating to accept yourself!

I learned early on to respond to people who ask “Who do you think you are?” with a slew of scripture verses: “I’m more than a conqueror; I’m a chosen generation; I’m a royal priesthood, a peculiar person; God is for me, so who can be against me?  I am a child of the One True King…

The Word of God is full of verses that tell us we are worthy to receive God’s promises.  But remember that you can say all the right verses you want, yet if your heart doesn’t believe you are what you say you are, your promise will stay in lay-away until you are ready to claim it.

The depth of God’s love:

[You have shown] the wonder of Your great love (Psalm 17:7).

God demonstrates His own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believed in Him shall not die but have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him (John 3:16-17).

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called Sons of God! (1 John 3:1)

Heirs of the Kingdom – which He promised to those who love Him (James 2:5).

God, our Father, who loved us (2 Thessalonians 2:16).

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  … We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that… nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35-39).

For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight – in love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons… in accordance with His pleasure and will (Ephesians 1:4-5).

But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions (Ephesians 2:4-5).

I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:20).

I in them and You in Me.  May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me (John 17:23).

That the love You have for Me may be in them and that I Myself may be in them (John 17:26).

For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed I came from the Father (John 16:27).

What wonderful things God has ready for those who love Him! (1 Corinthians 2:9)