This post is one of a feature I am calling Words for TODAY. Here I bring my own collected words from Scripture, ones that have spoken to my heart TODAY, in hopes that as you consider them you too will find encouragement and renewed trust in our living, speaking God! –LS

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.–Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
—‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’

Then a poor widow…dropped in two pennies...’this poor widow has given more than all the others have given…she has given everything she has’–If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.–”Love your neighbor as yourself.”

I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life.–In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.

Oh, that my actions would consistently reflect your decrees! Then I will not be ashamed when I compare my life with your commands.–So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus…And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.–We love because he first loved us.

Jn.17:3ESV; I Jn.4:8ESV; Mar 12:30 NLT; Mark 12:42,44 NLT;  I Cor.13:3 ESV; Mark 12:31 NLT;Deut.30:19,20 ESV; I Jn.5:3 NIV; Ps.119;5,6 NLT; Rom.8:1,38 NLT; I Jn.4:19

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It would seem that Life, the real kind, the eternal kind,  consists in loving God with all my life’s energies and earnings, my heart open gladly to His bidding.  It’s a paradox: Life doesn’t begin until I give mine away out of love.  But I won’t love well till I know I am loved well; only then will it spill over to others.  And then it will be clear I have begun to know God.  

In commanding us to love Him with all we are and have God is showing us the way to life as He intended it to be, a life of living loved.  Perhaps, as the saying goes, it is love that makes the world go round.  It all starts with God’s love:

God is love.  To know Him is to love Him….To love Him is to love my neighbor….To love my neighbor is to know the life of God at work in me, for God is love. 

May He grant us the power to believe the measureless dimensions of His love for us that we might live forever loved and loving. 
—LS