l.o.v.e.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:13

I saw a post by Elizabeth Esther a while back. She grew up in an abusive, legalistic, fundamentalist church. She was saying how when she was little, she thought she was going to go to hell because she loved her mom more than God.

Her blog is one that I stumbled upon, and spent a whole bunch of time reading. It's hard to imagine some of what she grew up in, but some of it struck a chord with me. I was not raised in an abusive, legalistic, fundamentalist church. Thank God. But I think every church and every believer is in danger of becoming sidetracked. We can easily narrow our scope to include only the pieces and parts of Scripture that pertain to our pet issues.

There are many times I want to stand up in my own church and scream to my fellow congregates, "LOVE! What about the love??!!"

How many things would snap into focus if we would focus on loving? Not loving sin, but loving sinners?

Not being in love with myself, but being in love with Jesus?

And that's where the chord was struck reading Elizabeth's post. I remember when I was young feeling bad because I didn't love Jesus more than my parents. When I met my husband in high school, it seemed like I loved him more....and I felt guilty. I didn't worry about hell, but I knew that my love priority wasn't in the right order.

But how do you correct that?

How do you make your heart love?

I've been mulling this over for a while. And it's seems so simple. The real questions is, how can you love someone you don't know?

It's hard. But once you know what this person has done for you, once you begin spending some time with Him, and once you read His love letter to you....He corrects the order.

He makes your heart love.