LOVE IS ESSENTIAL- Open Heavens devotional by Pastor E. A Adeboye

BIBLE IN A YEAR: Ps 100 – 102
LOVE IS ESSENTIAL Saturday, November 06, 2010
MEMORIZE: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:10) READ: Jeremiah 3:12-14 Love is a must in every marriage relationship. No relationship will last if love is absent. Where present, love turns challenges into testimonies, problems into victories. It is common to hear God compare His relationship with Israel to a marriage relationship as done in today’s passage.  Love is the oil in the wheel of marital progress, the wine in a toast. Even when Israel was unfaithful to Jehovah, His love for them made Him to overlook their sins and asked their return. Love is one of the greatest forces of good on earth. It overcomes errors. If you truly love someone, you will not become disenchanted by his or her errors. Anytime you find it difficult to overlook your partner’s error, you can be sure that something had happened to your bottle  of love. If you keep a black book mentally, which has a record of wrongs - deliberate or otherwise, it is because you don’t love.  Whenever you reel out offences of an individual citing dates, times and location of the offences, you have been overcome with hatred! True love never wants to end a relationship.  It is absence of it that causes people to part from those they would rather have lived with until death. Some people beat their wives with the excuse that they love them. That is not true. Wife-beaters engage in wife-beating out of impatience and deficiency of the presence of the fruit of the Spirit. Wife-beating is done out of a lack of self control.  Women sometimes think or act rashly yet, they deserve love, not beating. Any minister of God who engages in wife-beating is not qualified to minister from the altar. Do you want to preach what you do not possess? God hates every act of wickedness done to your spouse and He will judge between husband and wife one day.  Do you love your spouse? Where love is present, it is possible to grow in it. Some people do not feel any iota of love for their spouse even after confirming that such a spouse is God’s choice for them. What should be done therefore is to take time to ask God for love for that spouse because no marriage will work without it. Do you still love your spouse? Or have you become a wife-beater or husband-fighter? Repent and resolve to make your marriage work. ACTION POINT: God gave you somebody to empty your love upon. The measure of love you show to your spouse is the real content of love in you. N.B Love your neighbour as yourself, support www.10millionexercisebooks.com project today. God bless you.