Devotional for Monday, January 17, 2017
“Let Us Be Real”
by Dona Hake
1 John 3:18-19 (ERV)
“My children, our love should not be only words and talk.
No, our love must be real.
We must show our love by the things we do.
That’s how we know we belong to the way of truth.”
Today let us meditate on the word real. This is a word that should mean something to us as believers. The Lord is calling on us to be real with Him, real with ourselves, and real with others. What does that word mean to you as a believer? Real defined is
genuine; not counterfeit, artificial, or imitation; authentic:
As a teenager I can remember looking desperately to justify not giving my life to Christ. My main reason I was able to justify the many (and I mean many) arguments was that I observed so much hypocrisy in Christians. That was until the day the Lord began to bring the real Christians into my life for me to observe. They lived in truth and they kept their word. If they said they would pray… they meant it. If they said they would be there for me…they were there. Real began to touch my heart and draw me to Christ.
It is important that we know we are being honest with God, honest with ourselves, and therefore we will be in a position to show God’s love in a very real way. As we grow in His love we will walk away from selfishness, the very thing that inhibits us from giving our all for Him. God’s love positions us to be totally real and honest with those around us. The more we come to know God, His love and His ways, we will walk as the Lord walked. This world is looking for those that are walking in the God kind of love. My friend the world desires to see the real. God desires that we not just talk the talk, but rather walk the talk.
It is so easy to say what we want to do for Him but we need to know in our hearts that we will be willing to put feet to our words. There will be times that God may call upon us to help people, and it may make us have to go one more mile than what we had intended. Many times His love will stretch us and that is a very good thing. It is in those times that His love will be shown and we will grow as we give of ourselves. I think it is a good thing for all of us to be pulled away from our comfort zone and put in a place we have to rely on Him to help us to do things for Him that we never thought we were capable of. God’s love is so much bigger than we can imagine, and He desires to do great things through each one of us!