When I had broken up with my boyfriend, the first couple of months were hard. Every time I saw a happy couple together, I thought to myself, “I’m missing out.”

I missed the feeling of falling in love.

My boyfriend would always be the first person in my mind when I woke up and the last person on my mind when I was about to sleep. I’d always look forward to reading his texts the moment I woke up and every night. He would always be someone I could go to when I was discouraged.

So when God told me to let go of the relationship, I felt empty. And for a while, I thought the single life was supposed to be empty until I could find someone to be in a relationship with again. But through this experience, God opened my eyes to see that I didn’t need anyone to experience falling in love.

God showed me that I could fall in love with him. 

The past couple of months have been the best months of my life because I was falling in love with God.

When I had no one to turn to when things were rough, I learned to turn to God. I went deeper into his presence and word. His words and promises were what I held on to morning and night. I started putting post-it notes of God’s promises on the walls in my room so that I could remind myself of his love and faithfulness when everything seemed hopeless.

God became my first thought every morning and the last voice I heard every night. He became my comfort and love when I had no one else to draw from.

As I obeyed and surrendered my life fully to God, he started opening doors for my dreams to come true. He helped me with the resources I needed to start Living Revelations Ministry and brought people into my life who were willing to serve and grow the ministry. He also opened opportunities for me to expand Living Revelation’s reach through YMI and the Singles Ministry at my church.

God then started using me through the prophetic. I found myself being an encouragement and influence to my family, friends/ministry, and co-workers.

God has been so gracious to me and never fails to surprise me each day. I wake up every day now looking forward to a new adventure with God.

Without me realizing, I was falling in love with God and still am today. 

Because I’ve experienced God’s love, I can’t stop praising him and talking about his goodness. Psalm 63:3 says, “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.”

God’s love is better than any other love story we could ever have. There is no promise from anyone that can compare to God’s promises and no love that can surpass God’s love. No one can love you more than God.

We must have a relationship with God if we want to experience his love. Christianity was never made to be about religious acts, but about falling in love with Jesus. We were never created to come to God dreadfully, but joyfully.

God wants us to be excited to spend time with him just as we are excited to spend time with our significant other. We don’t need to wait until we have found “the one” to experience true love. True love is only found in God. There is no love that surpasses God’s love. Psalm 36:5 says, “Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.”

God loved us so much that he came to earth in human flesh as Jesus to die for our sins. Jesus died so that we could have life abundantly now and forever. God wants us to experience his love now on earth.

God’s love will change our lives and others around us. I’m able to love others the way I do now because I’ve experienced God’s love in my own life. We can only give true love when we’ve received true love from God. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Are you falling in love with God? Are you excited to spend time with God or is time with God the last thing you want to do on your list? 

Our father in heaven wants to have a relationship with you. Will you accept God’s love and do life with him?

God loves you so much and wants you to fall in love with him. You don’t need to search for love elsewhere because God’s love is available now for you.

You will find yourself falling in love like never before when you take the time to build a relationship with God. God has the ability to surprise you, encourage you, and love you like no other. So remember, fall in love with God.

Prayer: Lord, I want to fall in love with you more each and every day. 

The food, scenery, and mini get away were all great, but what really made my trip amazing was the love I experienced in Asia.

I saw my family in Asia go out of their way to plan my visit there and made sure I experienced the best that Asia had to offer. I met friends who would sacrifice their time and money to take me out and even met strangers who would do the slightest things to brighten my day.

What kind of love did I experience that made my trip so amazing? Sacrificial love.

God opened my eyes to see how impactful love can be. In that moment of reflecting on the love I experienced at Asia, God reminded me of a greater love that I had which was from Jesus. Jesus showed his love to us by sacrificing his own life so that we could have eternal life and joy forever. Jesus left us an example of sacrificial love so that we too could love others sacrificially.

The best gift you can give someone today is sacrificial love. 

John 15:13 says, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This verse shows that love is willing to sacrifice without any benefits or reasons but simply for the sake of love. God has given us the gift of love to touch lives. There is no greater love than the love of sacrifice.

I’ll admit, I’ve lost touch to love. I’ve been so consumed with loving myself that I had no more room to love others. My trip to Asia inspired me to love again and reminded me of Christ’s own sacrificial love for me.

God never planned for us to live selfishly. When we spend time loving ourselves we leave no room to love others. God wants us to be overwhelmed by his love so that we could extend love to others. Just as God’s love has the power to change us, so does our love have the power to change others lives.

When we open our eyes to see how Christ loves us, we then can love others. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.”

Have you lost touch with what love is really all about? Who is God calling you to sacrificially love? We can choose to ignore others and live a life that pleases ourselves, but we will miss out on experiencing the true joy of love. Not only is it a blessing to receive love, but it is also a blessing to be able to give love.

God has amazing plans to use our sacrificial love to change and transform lives. Will you let God use your life to help others? When we love as God loves, we show others a glimpse of God’s beauty. So remember, don’t lose touch to love.

Prayer: Lord, help me to love others as you have loved me.

I never thought I had prideful issues because I was never the one to brag about myself. But after a rough day at work, God showed me the root of my hidden pride: the desire to be right.

I hated being proven wrong. Regardless if I was truly right or wrong, I found it natural for me to defend myself. I would go all ways to prove that I was right, even if it was at the expense of hurting others through prolonged arguments.

While the desire to be right isn’t always wrong, it becomes wrong when it comes out of selfish reasons. I found that my desire to be right was only stopping God’s love from flowing through my life.

I saw my pride hurting my relationships with my co-workers and even to my loved ones.

Wanting to be right becomes wrong when it comes at the expense of hurting others. 

While I thought I was so far from being prideful, God showed me how my desire to be right was only building on my pride. Pride blocks God’s love from flowing through our lives. When we focus on being right, we’re positioning ourselves as better than others. Instead of focusing on being right, focus on helping others. 

Philippians 2:3 says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.”

Wanting to be right is a selfish desire, and in this verse, God commands us to do nothing out of selfish ambition. When we realize that we are not better than anyone else, it no longer matters if we are right or wrong. What matters at the end is that the other person’s needs are served. Love cannot stem from a selfish heart, but only from a heart that puts others first.

When we focus on valuing others above ourselves, it positions us to love them. 

God despises pride because not only does it prevent us from loving others, but it also blocks us from understanding his truth. The Saduccees and other leaders of the law in the Bible are a perfect example of what pride can do to you.

Peter and John who were the two disciples of Jesus had healed a lame man who was disabled for 40 years. By faith and through the power of Jesus, the lame man was healed.

While everyone was praising God for the miraculous healing that had happened, the Saduccees and leaders of the law despised that very act and wanted Peter and John to stop sharing the good news o f Jesus. Acts 4:21-22 says, “…they didn’t know how to punish them without starting a riot. For everyone was praising God for this miraculous sign—the healing of a man who had been lame for more than forty years.”

Why do you think everyone was praising God except for the Sadducees and other leaders of the law?

Because they were filled with pride.

The pride of the leaders made them shameful to accept that Peter and John who were uneducated men knew more than they did. The Sadducees were known as experts of the law, yet because they had not known about Jesus, their pride prevented them from accepting Jesus as their savior.

The Sadducees’ desire to be right stopped them from accepting the miraculous power and truth of Jesus.

We must be careful to not let our pride blind us from the reality of God’s truth. Selfishness and pride do nothing but pull us away from living the life of love that God has called each of us to live. Let us put away our focus from ourselves and focus on helping others. So remember, it’s not always about being right.

Prayer: Lord, help me to focus less on being right and more on helping others so that your love may flow through my life.

The problem with focusing on doing good is that doing good can only go so far.

I definitely saw that happening in my own life.

I was focused on living a “good” life that even when I was hurt and angry at others, I would still force myself to do nice things just for the sake of looking nice and loving.

I asked God, “How is it wrong for me to show love and kindness to others even though deep down I know it’s forced?” I mean, I was still living a good life right?

But God’s answer to me was simple and direct: That’s what a Pharisee does – they do for the sake of doing, and nothing good comes out from it.

It was at that moment when I realized that what I was doing may have looked good, but it wasn’t producing any real goodness to my life and anyone else’s life.

1 Corinthians 13:3 says, “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not love, I gain nothing.” We give to the poor and do good things because we want to show love to others, but if our intention of giving is just to look like we are loving, then we have gained nothing except a false representation of love.

Why spend all our time and efforts for nothing? Yes, you are living a good life when you give to others regardless of what you may feel inside, but you definitely are not living a Godly life.

God calls us to be Christ-like; to love with no boundaries.

The problem with living a good life is that once someone does wrong to us, we are no longer obligated to love them. But when we live the Christ life, love no longer has any boundaries and we are still obligated to love.

In John 13:34, Jesus says, “A new command I give to you:..As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Jesus showed us what true love was, so we too are obligated to love others in that same way.

We are not called to live a good life, but to live Christ-like. Jesus was falsely accused, spat upon, and crucified, yet he still loved. In fact, his very last words were, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

Jesus fulfilled his calling from God to show the world what true love is. God is also calling each of us to fulfill a greater purpose that goes beyond living a good life; that is to show others what true love is by displaying it in our own lives.

We tend to put love in a container labeled “good people”, and hate in a container labeled “bad people”. However, God wants love to be put in a container labeled “all people.” Will you get past the good life and choose to live the Christ life? Will you answer to the greater call in your life?

God has made great plans to use your life, but that can only be fulfilled when you choose to make Christ real through your life. So remember, get past the good life and get to the Christ life.

There have been times when I found myself struggling to love those around me, especially when they did things that hurt me.

It happened recently with a close loved one of mine. I had expectations from them, and waited for them to give me the love that I desired.

I waited…waited..and waited, and at the end I found myself left deeply wounded and not loved.

I simply just didn’t have the motivation to love anymore.

I wanted to love them, but why couldn’t I love them? It was at that moment when God revealed to me the reason why my love was running dry: I was using the wrong source and motivation to love.

I was depending on the other person to be my source and strength to love. But the problem was, I was waiting on a person to love and fill me when they were never made to love and fill me. Only God was made to love me.

When we come to know God more, we will see that his love is satisfying and overwhelming. God’s love overflows in us so that we can pour out his love to others. If we wait on others to love us first before we love them, then we will find our love for them at a constant dead end because their love was never made to fuel our love. Only God’s love was made to fuel us.

God’s love fuels us to love others.

It’s when we accept Jesus’s unconditional love that we can then love others. We can’t give someone what we don’t have. We can’t pour out love to others when we ourselves don’t have love in us. And that perfect love can only come from God.

God loves us even when he knows we can never be good enough to please him. God chooses to love us even while we were sinners, and he calls us to love others the same way. We must love others even when they do not deserve it. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

God gave us the example of what true love is by sending his son Jesus to die for us even when we did not deserve eternal life. God wants us to understand that love is choosing to love others despite who they are or what they did. True love is loving without expecting anything back from the other person. Jesus loves us not because we are holy or have something to give him, but because he chose to love us.

Once we have received God’s love, we can then pour that love out to others. Let God be the source and strength for your ability to love others. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” The only reason we can love people is because we have been loved by our father in heaven. We can love others despite them hurting us when we experience God’s love for us. God’s love is greater and will surpass all the pain we experience from others.

You can love others because God has loved you. Before you try to go out there and love people, be sure to receive God’s love in your heart first. You are all called to be the light of the world, and that can only be done when you have a heart that has been changed by God’s love.

May we all be overfilled with God’s love so that we can pour it out onto others. We can love others when we stop expecting love from others, and start taking in the love that God has given to us. So remember, God’s love is a love that fuels.

Now, this is probably true, but only in the beginning of a love story.

So what is a true love story? From my own experience, it is definitely not what movies portray or what our minds dream about.

When I first dated my boyfriend things went perfectly. All we wanted was each other, and we could simply gaze at one another all day long. We were at that point in our relationship when we both wanted to do whatever the other person wanted to do.

Sounds like a typical love story right? But just a month ago, I really started to question if I was in the right relationship. My relationship just didn’t seem to fit with the typical “love story” that I had always pictured was right for everyone. We have been dating for almost 2 years now, which isn’t that long, but it was long enough to a point where I could see our love story start to fade away.

He started getting into his hobby collection and playing games, while I started getting more involved with church activities. I liked going to the mall, he didn’t. He liked to stay at home, I liked to go out. I loved to talk and ramble about my revelations with God, while he wasn’t always the perfect listener.

The fact was, we were two different people. And if we did have a similarity, it was the fact that we both would get mad when things didn’t go our way.

I was desperate for our old love story to come back, for us to have passion for one another like before. I yearned for his support and understanding which seemed to only get worse. But it was in my devotion time with God, when he spoke 3 words that really changed my relationship.

Love is patient.

God showed me that love is patient – it always hopes and perseveres for the best of the other. Love is willing to wait everyday in hopes that the other person will change. This is the kind of true love story that God had planned for each couple to live; to have a love that shows how God loves us.

Psalm 136:1 says, “..God’s love never fails.” How is it possible that God’s love will never fail? Because his love is a love that is patient. He patiently waits for us in hopes that we will change and love him more. His arms are always open to welcome us on that day when we will run into his arms. God will never give up on us because his love is always waiting and believing for us to come back to him.

This is the love that a true love story should have – a love that will never fail, and one that cannot fail. How can love fail when it never ceases to give up on the other?

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 says, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails..” If this is love, then how can love fail? True love was never made to fail.

Through my relationship, God really showed me what a true love story really is.

A true love story is not when two perfectly matched people come together, but rather when two different people come together and try everyday to be a perfect match for one another. Love is a choice and commitment to choose to love the other. Love is not a result of an emotional bonding, but rather it creates an emotional bonding.

Emotional love feelings were never made to last forever, but love as is stated in 1 Corinthians 13 was made to stand forever. A year ago I made a huge mistake and thought my boyfriend would never forgive me for it, but he stood by me and still chose to love me. He chose to be patient and hope for the best of me.

Today, by the grace of God I have been changed, and changed for the better. True love is a love that never gives up on the other, one that loves unconditionally. God reminded me that now it is my turn to be patient, because that is what love is. My boyfriend and I now try everyday to please one another and grow in Christ together. Because of my new perspective on what love is, our love story has definitely changed.

It takes both people in relationship to choose to love one another for a relationship to thrive. We will never be perfect for one another,  but we will never stop trying to be perfect for one another. So remember, this is what a true love story really is.