genuine?

Ever since the beginning of the summer, I have been reading a chapter a day through the old testament (or at least trying to do something close to that...). It amazes me most days how much the Lord can speak through simply a chapter, simply a verse, and how often those verses hit me right where I am.

As I was sitting beside a beautiful lake on a warm Sunday afternoon, got struck me with a new concept to an old idea. Love. It's the theme of our bcm this year, and when it boils down it's really the theme of Christianity. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus replied to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind... And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself." --Matthew 22:37-38.

It's a commandment we all have heard, but I stumbled across this verse about love in 1st Timothy:
"Love... comes from a pure heart and a good conscious and a sincere faith." -1st Tim 1:5

These next words come unedited to you from the depths of my journal... a truthful, but often brutal place to be:

Love is based out of these things and therefor I cannot love until I have these in check. The greatest commandment is to love, but how? A pure heart. That is a daily process of renewing.... a daily, moment by moment choice. A good conscious comes only when you know yourself to be right with those around you, but more importantly right with the Lord. And that is a result only of a sincere faith. Love requires sincere faith... that's the truest thing I've heard all day. There are a lot of times I cannot love except for faith and faith cannot be faked. The beauty of the Lord is he knows the sincerity of your heart and your actions. Faking that sincerity is denying Him that love he more than deserves. Denying Him love in turn breaks His greatest commandment, His greatest and most humbled request to us. Breaking this commandment shatters the commandment to follow it-- how can I sincerely love others if I cannot even love the Perfect, most holy one? So I've got to get myself in check-- we all do-- if we ever expect to love. How fortunate that we can be loved when we are incapable of loving on our own. That is the true grace of the Father.

as always, just a thought.