Imitate

Be imitators of God and love. To imitate is to have an advanced behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's. God is love and love is the true encourager. Love strengthens all those around us. Love strengthens us. Love becomes the measure of our spiritual connection to God. Love becomes the way that we can measure our motives. We can only get the kind of love God has from Christ. For us to obtain this love, we need to live in connection with God, not just use our intellect and knowledge to know about God. We need to use our spirit to examine our lives and know love. If we really know love, we think in loving ways, we then act in loving ways, and we actually become love in the presence of others. Love is all they feel from us. I can know about love and define it and tell others all kind of ways that they can go about loving others. However, if I am not able to do it myself do I really know love? I can know about how to play football, tell you all the reasons that football players do what they do. But do I really know how to play football? What happens when I go out to get on the field and the reality of being in pads and being hit comes? I must practice to develop my skills so that I will really know how to play. It is then that I truly understand what it is like to play. Do we really know what it is like to love, to truly love?

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
This is how we know we're living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He's given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we've seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God's Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we've embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
To Love, to Be Loved.God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both. I John 4:7-21

Begin this year in love and love others. Love all those around you and be a true imitator of God.

Namaste'