I Thessalonians 3:12
“and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you.”
Paul is praying for his church at large. His prayer is that their love would increase more and more. The gauge of our love may be the best measure of us. Do we love one another?
We are to love our families. Those are the ones that immediately surround us. Are we accessible to them? Do we initiate time for them? Are we praying for them.
We all have our responsibilities. We are to attend to those. We’ve got jobs, house maintainence, bills, friendships, hobbies and so on. Those will take up much of our time. However, we should be accessible to our families.
We should be loving our friends and church members. Do we give time and compassion to them?
We should be loving to our coworkers and those we bump into along the way. We will encounter difficult ones along the way. That’s a test of our love. We ask The Lord to allow our love to abound.
We should be involved in ministry. This should also be an output for our love. Are we praying for them? Are we thinking about them? The amount we do that is the degree to which we are loving.
There are several prayers that are modeled for us in the bible. One is in Psalm 139:23,24. It asks God to search our hearts and to lead us in the everlasting way. Today’s verse is another. We should be growing and abounding in love.
There are those in my life that are great examples of this. They are very motivating. There is no drudgery in their tone. Just delight and desire to serve. They probably aren’t aware, but they are living Hebrews 10:24, “And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds.”
Lord, thanks for these good people. Help us to grow in our love.