God’s Word tells us, without love no matter what we have or do, we are nothing. Love is the impetus for sacrifice and service. In fact, it is one of the most basic needs a person can have.
“Living on love” is a by-product of realizing what a tremendous gift love is.
Regardless of who we are, this is the one thing we all have in common. We all want and need to be loved. The desire to love and be loved is built-in to the fabric of our being by a God who loved us enough to die for us.
Our lives are essentially a search for love; because without it, there is always something missing. Therefore, when we find love, we are brought as close to fulfillment as we can be.
I am blessed to have found love, in my wife of forty years, Bonnie. She has provided me with a love and fulfillment I could not find elsewhere.
Though we have known each other since we were fourteen years old, I did not know this young girl would be the person I would spend my life with. In fact, even though I knew she brought joy and happiness into my life, I had no idea what I was feeling was love.
As I look back and survey my life, I always remember her smile and the way I felt just being around her.
I am convinced there was a time in my life where I believed I could live without love. Instead, what I found was love was not only what I wanted; it was what I needed.
I did not know Bonnie and I would spend our lives together, “living on love”. I just knew love was what I had found in her. As cliché as it might sound, in the beginning it was a good thing love was all we needed because love was literally all we had.
The fact we started out together at such a young age gives testimony to the power and resiliency of love. Today, I can say without reservation, even though love can overcome all the uncertainties and unknowns of life, learning how to love is a process.
The point in all of this is. “Living on love” only happens when we recognize love as a gift. From here, we must understand that gift is expressed in loving and being loved by someone else.
As I contemplate love in my own life’s story, I must admit I never really understood how to love until I realized the way my Heavenly Father has loved me.
“Living on love” has never been more clearly expressed then on the Cross at Calvary. It was there we see Jesus dying for love, so we could spend eternity “living on love”.
To model this is to see, love is sacrificial, not self-indulgent. I pray I will always remember, I am “living on love”, because He chose to die for it.
1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us”.
