If you don’t know yet, you’ve been marked and you’re being watched. People pay attention to women of faith because they want to see if women of faith really walk out what they profess.
Are we any different from the next person? Do we display patience? Humility? Grace? Forgiveness?
We make up the body of Christ – the hands and feet of Jesus. We’re in this world to display and glorify Him. We’re called to this! To love others, build others up in the faith, and share the good news of Jesus Christ.
We’re not meant to be on the sidelines of our faith. There’s great adventure when we join God in sharing His hope with others!
But, if we claim to be women of faith and judge others, refuse forgiveness, gossip without conviction, and have disregard for walking out our faith, we’re surely breaking God’s heart.
Women of Faith, Step Up.
If we claim to be Women of Faith, we are claiming to be God’s representatives. We need to walk this out.
And when we don’t and mess up, because we certainly will, we need to be honest with each other, seek forgiveness, and help hold each other accountable.
Related: Women of Grace in Friendships
Mark 12:30-31 says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.”
Women of Faith Love
We are to love God and love others. If we get nothing else right, do this: love God and love others. You can never go wrong pursuing this.
We tend to distort this though. Somehow we find ways to complicate it and put parameters on it.
Why do we declare some unworthy of our love? Who are we to claim the stakes and standards? The world loves others by the way it is right in its own eyes: 100% conditional and filtered through a distorted lens.
Women of Faith, let’s stop being a part of this world! When we put our own conditions on love, it’s so wretchedly ugly and is not representing God well. Don’t distort and disease love by putting restrictions and personal conditions on it.
God does not do that. His love never ceases. (Lamentations 3:22 NIV) His love is for the entire world. (John 3:16) HE is Love. (1 John 4)
Who would stand a chance if God used our conditional human standards for others on ourselves?
The sad reality is there are women of faith that do this. We’ve fallen into a bad habit of putting ourselves on a pedestal and frowning at anyone that isn’t like us.
We get puffed up and proud of our halos, look through a distorted lens that we’ve hodgepodged together, and take our eyes off of what we claim to be pursuing.
Let’s join together and turn our eyes back on Jesus.
Related: How To Surrender To God – Tearing Down My Kingdom
God’s love does not discriminate – a love that causes His sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and His rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike (Matthew 5:45).
We’re all equally desperate. Love was lavishly poured for all of us.
I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, more loved and welcomed than I ever dared hope. ~ Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
If we claim to be Women of Faith and do not love others or only love those we’ve deemed worthy, how could we possibly hope to share God with the world? Why would they care to know Him if what we are displaying is just like the world?
Women of Faith Pursue God
The best way to display God’s love is to pursue God with our whole hearts. The more we grow to know Him, the better we can share His love.
Our pursuit of God’s heart goes hand in hand with how well we love others.
We need to spend time with Him and time in His word.
The bible says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” John 15:12 NIV.
God loves us with a relentless, radical, never-ending love. I love how Rich Mullins described it, “ A reckless raging fury they call the love of God.”
This reckless raging fury they call the love of God:
- Sent His only Son for us.
- Leaves the ninety-nine to find us.
- Fights for us.
- Rescues us.
- Paid it all for us.
- Saves us.
- Pours His grace and mercy over us.
He doesn’t just profess to love. He proves it over and over. God’s love is active. Since the beginning of time He pursued our hearts and continues to do so today.
How easy it is to say we love people or to say we love others. Words are easy. Action is much more difficult.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (The Message Bible)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
If we are pursuing the heart of God, then our lives will begin to reflect this.
Women of Faith, Love Well.
This side of heaven, we’re going to get it wrong, lose our patience, skirt kindness when we’re in a hurry sometimes, and struggle to actively love others. If (when) we’ve realized we’ve done this, seek forgiveness and ask for God’s help to better model His love to others.
The expectation is not perfection. He wants us to be obedient. He lavishes His grace upon us.
Thankfully, we’re not left to ourselves to try to muster up love for others. He supplies it! We have to rely on Him for it though and relinquish our tight grip of our own standards and parameters.
What if we loved others so radically they wondered why?
Imagine this world with Women of Faith stepping up and leading the charge? Holding each other accountable. Loving others well. Being proud to lock arms with each other because we’re fighting to share the same unconditional love that we’ve received.
Our hearts beat the same as anyone else’s. There is no reason for us to think we should guard love that’s been freely extended to all of us.
Represent Him well, Women of Faith.
Let today be the day we step up together.
Related Post: God’s Love: What You Need to Know
Call to Action:
Today, put God’s love into action without conditions. Read 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13 NIV below:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
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