Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

So I was reading this morning and something really stuck out to me.


I've been conversing with people recently about Christmas... the holidays.... peace, joy, and cookies... and about showing people about peace and love. Much of the way they discuss showing love and peace is doing good things for people, or a version of, "look at me, and I'll show you what peace/love is."


Not that I'm being judgmental or thinking of myself better than them, but I see some of the same people talk about how much they dislike someone, or treat someone significantly less than the loving-nature they just described. It puzzles me...


Should not genuine love be indiscriminate of a person, whether we like them or not? Should genuine love prefer only people who like you? Should love show itself to people who treat you less than you think you should be treated?


Here are bits of what I read this morning:


Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 


Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 


By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.


So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.


There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.


We love because he first loved us.


If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.


I have a shirt that says: Love is an action, not a word. I'll take it one step further and say: Love is neither an action nor a word, but a lifestyle. 


Until this summer, I didn't know what it meant to abide in God, and I didn't know what it meant to genuinely love someone. I was the person who talked about love and didn't live it out. I'll admit that I knew who God was, but I didn't know Him and I didn't know His love for me. I was afraid of letting God know who I was, and I was afraid of letting everyone else know who I really was. But perfect love casts out fear.  After experiencing His overwhelming love, my everything changed. So I'm learning to abide in love, and to abide in my God who is love.


So going back to the beginning, how do I share the love of God and the peace that He brings? It's quite simple really:
All I have to do is be the person God has made me to be. I am free to be myself. 


God is love --> I abide in God --> God abides in me --> therefore I am love.


My prayer is that you won't have to do things to love people this Christmas. My prayer is that you will be so overwhelmed by the love of God, that you will just be who God created you to be, a soul created for one purpose: to love God, and love His creation. Be yourself, and let God do the loving through you.