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"Love suffers long and is kind . . ." - 1 Corinthians 13:4
Love is not premeditated— it is spontaneous; that is, it bursts forth in
extraordinary ways. There is nothing of precise certainty in Paul’s description
of love. We cannot predetermine our thoughts and actions by saying, “Now I will
never think any evil thoughts, and I will believe everything that Jesus would
have me to believe.” No, the characteristic of love is spontaneity. We don’t
deliberately set the statements of Jesus before us as our standard, but when His
Spirit is having His way with us, we live according to His standard without even
realizing it. And when we look back, we are amazed at how unconcerned we have
been over our emotions, which is the very evidence that real spontaneous love
was there. The nature of everything involved in the life of God in us is only
discerned when we have been through it and it is in our past.
The fountains from which love flows are in God, not in us. It is absurd to think
that the love of God is naturally in our hearts, as a result of our own nature.
His love is there only because it “has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy
Spirit . . .” ( Romans 5:5 ).
If we try to prove to God how much we love Him, it is a sure sign that we really
don’t love Him. The evidence of our love for Him is the absolute spontaneity of
our love, which flows naturally from His nature within us. And when we look
back, we will not be able to determine why we did certain things, but we can
know that we did them according to the spontaneous nature of His love in us. The
life of God exhibits itself in this spontaneous way because the fountains of His
love are in the Holy Spirit.
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Daily Morning and Evening Devotionals by Spurgeon
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Daily Devotional with Oswald Chambers Archives
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