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When we speak about love, we do not only speak about dealings among people but rather more about the relationship with God. When the Lord Christ was talking with the Father about His relationship with His disciples in the famous Chapter of John chapter 17, He said, "I have given to them the words which You have given Me"
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(John 17:8), "And I have declared to them Your name and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:26).
It is a relationship involving recognition and love as well as sacrifice.
We find an example of this in the words of St. Paul the Apostle about his ministry, "in journey often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen... in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness..." (2 Cor. 11:26,27).
You would ask St. Paul: Is this ministry? And I can imagine him replying: It is rather love.
As for you, is your love for God mere words or action?
Does your love involve sacrifice and giving and the spreading of God's word?
Does your love involve control over your tongue, thoughts and lusts?
Does love appear in your prayers, ministry and forbearance?
Do you say in your prayer with the Psalmist : "I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness" (Ps. 63:4).
Is your ministry a kind of love as that of the Lord Christ of whom it was said, "having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end" (John 13:1).
True love is also without hypocrisy (Rom. 12:9).
This should be the kind of love whether towards God or towards people.
Let not our hearts be different from our tongue and our tongue from our emotions.
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