When partnering with your family to know, love, and follow Jesus, we strive to create and share content filtered by the Head-Heart-Hands model.
Head: the knowledge of God and His Word | Heart: the personal connection from scripture | Hands: a missional mindset
As we read today’s passage, what really stuck out to me was verse 11, “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” But what does love really look like? If you look at verse 16, it says, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us...”
Who do you think this verse is talking about? That’s right, JESUS. To lay your life down for someone else means to die so they can live. Jesus showed us what it looks like to really love 100% when He died in our place, so we didn’t have to die. Verse 18 tells us the secret of how to love! “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
We weren’t created just to say the words, “I love you,” and this verse tells us how we should love. Deed means something that is done, and action. To love in deed means doing something thoughtful, kind, or caring to someone else because you love them. Truth means real things or facts, the opposite of a lie. To love in truth would be a result of the deeds we do that show someone we really mean we love them.
Prayer: God, thank You for sending Jesus to show us what it really means to love. Help us to show others that we love them in the way we treat them each day. Help us to be thoughtful and kind with our actions just as much as with our words.