Christmas Advent Bible Reading Plan: Jesus Is BornNäide

To Show us Perfect Love

We all want to love and be loved perfectly, but we’re also human - messy, broken people who fall short even on our best days. We have mixed motives and short fuses. We don’t listen and then project our own assumptions onto others. God is the only one worthy and capable of fulfilling our love-hungry hearts.

Scripture tells us that “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). Unlike our love for one another, God’s love is untainted. His perfect love leads us towards wholeness. Love mingled with anxiety, comparison, and insecurity is imperfect and incomplete, and the exact reason God came to earth is to make us complete in His love (v.17).

On the day our tradition celebrates Christmas morning, God showed us perfect love by sending us His Son, Jesus (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10). And it’s out of this abundance that we are called to love others (John 15:12). The Bible says, “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19), and when we can feel in our bones that we’re deeply loved, it changes us. We’re able to love others in a way that is less hindered by our own insecurities. This is the true joy of the Christmas season.

Prayer

God, thank You for your perfect love, despite all the ways I fall short. Help me love those in my world as You love me. In the craziness of Christmas and my life, may I love people through it all. In Jesus' Name, Amen.