Loving through Prayer

I can’t name the number of times the love of God has come to me through the heart of a person in my life—through their actions, prayers, notes, emails.  Recently the power of someone praying for me (two, in fact) transformed a situation in my life that had been lingering.  It was beautiful to feel lifted up before the Throne, and to see how quickly God answered!  Oh, we must love those we love by praying for them; by not losing heart, or thinking our prayers do not ascend the ceiling, but remembering those dear to us in our prayers, and praying specifically for them so that we can be joyful when we see how God has answered! So often it is a matter of neglecting for a brief moment the crushing cry of the critical needs of the morning and counting prayer as more urgent!  Let us love one another in this way.  In 1 John, the love we actively show for one another is intertwined with abiding in God, and significantly, Him abiding in us, and with loving God.  If His Spirit is in us, we are giving from that storehouse when we minister to one another.

“If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.  By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” I John 4:12-13

The mysterious thing is that the first half of verse 12 is “No one has seen God at any time.”  Is the implication that we “see God”, know God’s love, in the love of one another?

“Above all things, have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins.”  I Peter 4:8

“The common quest or vision which unites Friends does not absorb them in such a way that they remain ignorant or oblivious of one another.  On the contrary it is the very medium in which their mutual love and knowledge exist. One knows nobody so well as one’s “fellow”.  Every step of the common journey tests his metal; and the tests are tests we fully understand because we are undergoing them ourselves.  Hence, as he rings true time after time, our reliance, our respect, and our admiration blossom into an Appreciative Love of a singularly robust and well-informed kind. If, at the outset, we had attended more to him [her] and less to the thing our Friendship is “about”, we should not have come to know or love him so well.  You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress; better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.”  --CS Lewis

“The nomad spirit of modernity has dashed the integrity of community  - but not the deep need for it.”  --Harold Beekser