DAY 25: GREATER LOVE FOR OTHERS

Ephesians 1:15–21 explains that it is through prayer that we see with the eyes of our hearts. The apostle Paul’s hope was that through “having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe.”

So how can we open the “eyes of our hearts”?

First, by realizing the value of the gift we’ve been given in Christ. We have already seen that God’s grace and forgiveness are available to all who call upon Him. We are in God’s eternal debt because we have been forgiven, fully and freely. It’s illustrated so powerfully, so beautifully in the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. When that son who had rebelled and wasted his entire inheritance came home, his father ran to him and welcomed him home. And in the greatest redemption story of all time, Jesus took the debt that was against us and nailed it to the cross. You’re never more like Jesus than when you’re extending the forgiveness and the love and the grace that He has given you to another person.

Second, we can see with the eyes of our hearts by praying for Christ’s love to fill us. It is a characteristic of a person who knows Jesus and has experienced unconditional love, that they will extend that love to others. When your prayer life is active and full, when you are communing daily with God, you will begin to see others as God sees them. I challenge you to pray that sometime—the next time you find yourself angry, frustrated, or disappointed with someone, pray, “Lord, help me to see this person as You see him.”

The next time you are compelled to harbor bitterness or respond in anger, pause and soak in the gravity of God’s unconditional love for you. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” John 15:13 says. Jesus died so that you and I could live a life worthy of the debt He paid.

There are two more important verses I want to point out from John: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-–8). “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Is God’s love flowing from your life?