Three simple questions...

Three simple questions to end with:

1.  How do I keep a love alive?  Answer.  Don't take it for granted. 

Keep doing the things we've talked about – kindness, caring, patience, time and actions, not just feelings.  You have to keep doing those things.  There are people reading this that can tell you how easily a love can die.  They can tell you what seemed so alive one day, seemed dead the next, just because they began to take it for granted.  If you have a love in your life that's working, that's a special jewel, don't take it for granted.

2.      How do I handle a love that is dying? Answer.  Act in love and not in fear. 

If a love is dying in your life it's likely that you're very afraid.  It's so easy to want to cling to it in fear.  Fear chains us but love can change us.  It's only through love, the simple actions of love that we can change a relationship, that we can begin to make it alive and healthy again

3.      How do I handle a love that's died?  What do I do about that?  It died, it's dead, it's gone, and it’s buried.  I'd say, don't give up just because it's dead. 

We have a GOD who specializes in resurrections.  If HE can resurrect JESUS CHRIST from the tomb HE can resurrect a relationship.  How do you do that?  You act your way into a feeling.  You begin to persevere again. 

Some of you are thinking, "I don't want to hope one more time.  I don't want to make myself vulnerable again." 

If there's the smallest amount of hope left in your relationship with your parents, your children, your husband, your wife, if there's the smallest opportunity left take the risk to love.  It takes two people to make it work, I realize that.  But don't let yourself be the person who's keeping it from working.  Make the choice to love.  That's your choice that you can make.

Now I deeply believe that in order to love, I have to be loved.  It all starts with GOD's love for me, for you.  When I recognize that HE loves me no matter what, sacrificially, with actions of love, then I can find the strength to look for a resurrection of love, I can find the strength to risk, even if they let me down, GOD never will.  Then I can find the strength to act in love, the real kind of love that GOD tells us about. 

Today, some of you need to begin to discover that kind of love that GOD has for you.  Trust CHRIST in your life.

Just a thought from the front porch…