Bearing Fruit

I thought it would be beneficial to expand on the question, "How do we know that we are receiving God's love?” True love cannot contain itself and thus is contagious and grows. We hear about this in regards to a married couple having children. Love is contagious, shared, and grows in a marriage usually through the fruit of children. But, as his children, how can the Father's love be fruitful in our own lives? Even more so, love is contagious and shared when we enter into relationship with the Father.

I think there are 2 ways that our Father's love is fruitful: within our own hearts and beyond our own needs. If the Father's love is full, as was mentioned earlier, than our hearts are, in return, filled and stirred up from within. We have found what we have been looking for. So, indeed, our life changes! Instead of looking at what others can do for us or what we can do to be happy to, "How can I make others happy?” Or, "What do others need?”

A parent holding their newborn baby is not concerned with how they feel personally. The main concern, their entire beings are consumed with this child that is in their arms that is quite literally their hearts outside of themselves.The fruit of God's love is love, zeal for sharing what he's given us wanting those around us to know that they are loved...to. such. incredible. degree. For ourselves, we may find peace and joy in sharing this love, though, sometimes it can simply be the fact that we know that this love must be shared. 

Here I would like to point out that all this love sharing can seem fluffy...warm and fuzzy if you will, but it's not. Not everyone wants to be loved. Some people don't know what love is and when we try to share to love, it can be difficult. Complicated. Furthermore, not everyone is lovable... or easy to love. Some people smell or are not very pretty. And, we need the Father's love to be able to love because somedays, we don't feel loving. Allowing God's love to flow through us is not for the faint of heart. However, we still come out somehow richer and better for it because our hearts have grown larger–our capacity to love has been expanded.

This leads me to the 2nd way that God's love is fruitful: it causes our gaze to move beyond ourselves to others. Actually, it allows our gaze to rest on the Beloved. Not all newborns are pretty, but to their parents they're gorgeous beyond words. The Father's love allows us to have wisdom to see with his eyes beyond who is in front of us to Jesus within the other person. To Jesus alone, sweaty, and mutilated on the cross. Or Jesus sitting with prostitutes and tax collectors. Or Jesus helpless in his mother's arms.

The Father's love allows us to bring his children, our brothers and sisters, into his embrace through words that we choose carefully, to sharing what we've been given, to spending time with them. This is how seeds are planted, love grows and is fruitful...thus making us truly alive.