Proverbs 21:21 He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour.

My classmates from high school have a page on Facebook. They post photos and remember when. I look and read and I am surprised at gleeful memories they paint. Some of them don’t remember the pain, or don’t want talk about it, or maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t as painful for them as I thought. Do I have good memories of those days, a few but to be honest I wasn’t happy.

I wanted a loving relationship and I didn’t have the faintest idea about how to love. While I was going to church the lessons of loving relationships was not taught. Every sermon focus was about sin, death and salvation. They were so heavily weighted on salvation they neglected the true meaning of discipleship.

John 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

If you cannot show me love, then I have no sense of the love relationship I so desperately desire. If I have no experience in being loved, then how can I model that love towards others?

Hosea 9:10 I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved.

If that is all you have seen, that is all you know.

1 John 4:20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

If I cannot show love, it undermines my confidence in my love toward God. So the examples set the stage of healthy memories by replacing the desires of the heart to be loved with genuine love relationships. It was just one verse earlier that John says we love Him because He first loved us.

While we appreciate all He did for us two thousand years ago, we need your love relationship now.