There is Only Room For One Love

The other day I had the shame of feeling an old anger burning within me. I did not want it, I wanted to be rid of it---as I thought I had lost it some time ago.
Old wounds sting deeply, heal slowly. Part of the issue with that is that we hang onto those old wounds. We enjoy holding onto the anger, the "self-righteousness" of pulling the scab off of the wound and airing the wrongs done against us. Making the wound deeper, deeper, deeper. 
So, I made a different choice for me---rather than pulling off the scab and reopening a wound, I went to Him immediately. 

I must say I had the most remarkable experience, one I have never had before. 

As I asked Him to take the rage from me, the rage that I knew was not from Him for such as this is never from Him...I felt a sense of relaxation. The anger began to leave me. That I have had before. What was different was that I asked for His love for this person. There is where a big change happened. 

This happened Sunday, so I am sitting in service (no one was there I was angry at, in case my readers are from my church), and suddenly I am being filled with such love for these people. All of these people. Not just the ones I know, the ones I love already as family or dear friends, but the people in all the rows who I have never even met. I would have jumped up and grabbed any of them to tell them I loved them----and sincerely meant it.

As I explained this to my mother on the drive back, I cried the whole way. Tears of great joy. For I felt then, as I do now, that it was a powerful answer to prayer; an example of asking Him for something that is in line with His wishes! I asked to have an unholy anger taken from me, to love, and love is what happened---love as I have never felt. Glory and honor to God!

I think I got to see the tiniest of the smallest examples of what God's love for His people really is. How much He loves His children. I probably would have been prostrate on the floor sobbing with the joy of it all had it been any more intense---tears poured from me as it was! So if what I felt that day in church for those about me really was the smallest of smallest examples of His great love, His love is indeed great! We should never feel that we are alone, unloved, despised. His love is beyond all description, for our minds and hearts cannot fully put into words even the beginnings of His love. Let us all pray for His love to be with us, that we might love those in the body, that petty things might not matter, that all corrections would be completed with love. If the love we felt, as in the great commandment, towards others came as fully as those moments I was blessed to feel, we would stand out as shining beacons towards those lost.
The book of 1 John, having just been studied, talks a great deal on loving one another in the body. We may "act" on such love, fulfilling the letter of the law...but I think we should pray on being filled with love for those with us. That we might be overwhelmed with the love of Christ for those with us. Hypocrisy is one of the main things I hear against Christians...yet if our love for the body was to its fullest extent, our corrections made in love, there could be little hypocrisy. For with the fullness of God's love in us, there is no room for Satan's meddling, as he cannot stand the glory of God's love. There is only room for one love: God's or the evil one's. Which do you want? Raging anger of "self righteousness" or an overwhelming love for those with you and a sorrow for those lost?