Hello ladies, and welcome back to the Moms for Christ Podcast! This is Karen and today I'm going to be speaking to you about remaining in the Lord's love. There is no greater thing than to find love, but what I'm speaking about is not the love that we receive from this world, it's the perfect love that only comes from the Father. And that leads me to our verse which is John 15, 9 through 12 and it says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

"True love only comes from the Lord and what more could we want for our children..”

Each one of us was chosen by God and He has opened our eyes and our hearts to come to know Him and His perfect love. And most of us can testify, that before we had Christ, the ways that we tried to love or that we were loved, never seemed quite right; and it usually left us feeling empty and incomplete. But true love only comes from the Lord and what more could we want for our children than to come to know His perfect love.

He first loved us and allowed us to be with Him...

This reminds me of a recent conversation that I had with my daughter about remaining in the love of Christ. And we were talking about the ultimate act of love and sacrifice that Jesus did for us on the cross. He first loved us and allowed us to be with Him and it's nothing that we did or worked for in our own strength. And as a matter of fact, we don't even deserve it. So how do we love Him back? We give Him our heart, we seek after Him and continue to grow in our knowledge of His character. And we spend time with Him, just like we would in any other relationship. And we come to realize that we can't love unless He is in us. And our lives become about living for Him in thankfulness for all that He's done for us. And with Christ we can truly love others and give Him the glory. Then our joy is complete because regardless of the situation we have a living hope only found in Jesus.

How awesome is our God! And how awesome that our children can also come to know His love and His joy! Father, we just thank you so much, God, that you are love; that you teach us through our relationship with you what true love really is -- one laying down their life for another. You teach us how to love our children and our families with the perfect love that will never fail. And I just pray this day that every one of us would remain in your love and we will continue to seek you, God, with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our strength. We love you and we praise you, in Jesus’ mighty name, amen.