Devo: "The Goal is Love"
The Goal is Love
“But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Timothy 1:5)
Establishing goals are a very helpful tool in establishing the direction of our lives. Most importantly, goals help us to know whether we are headed in the right direction with our actions and the expenditure of our resources. If a goal has been reached, the establisher of the goal knows whether or not he or she’s efforts were successful or not.
Our introductory passage tells us that love was one of the main goals for the Word of God to be written. Every time we pick up the Bible to read from it or to speak it to someone else, the end result should be that we or the other person knows and experiences the love of God.
Unfortunately, the Word of God has been used for purposes other than love. It has been used as a tool in theological arguments. The Word of God has been used by people as a sword to verbally cut others up and put them in a “place”. Passages of scripture were used to enslave other races. For centuries, the Word of God was used to keep women out of their place in the church. The Bible has been used by cult leaders to control and manipulate its followers. The Bible has been used by hate groups and criminals to justify their ungodly actions. The devil even used the Words from God to deceive Adam and Eve. I believe that all of these horrific actions could have been avoided if the goal of the Word of God was clearly known and achieved.
The devil used the Word of God to tempt Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to compromise. The reason why the devil efforts were fruitless with Jesus, was because Jesus knew that the purpose of God’s Word was a loving relationship with God and others.
The Word of God is designed to impart the DNA of the love of God. If we read or speak the Word of God and we or others are not empowered to love God and other people, then the Word of God was used for the wrong purpose.
There are places in the Word of God that were written to help us lay aside the things that would hinder our love from being received and expressed. For example, in Matthew 24:12 we read, “Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.” This passage tells how sin and lawlessness can affect our love. 2 Timothy 3:1-4, tells us that our love can be distracted. Those passages may not evoke our hearts into the love of God, but they tell us the things that would distract our hearts from receiving love from God and/or expressing the love of God to others.
If we put on sunglasses, whatever we look at will have the tint of the sunglasses. The Word of God is one of the main verbalizations of God the Father’s love to us. Allow love to be the tint of our glasses. Put on the “loveglasses” of God, so that whenever we see, hear or speak any from God, it is going to be tinted with the shades of love. “Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.” (Colossians 3:14) .