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“God so loves us, as to make love the great controlling motive power of our religious life. “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom 13:10) “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15). Such is the teaching of His Word. The religion we receive from Christ is the religion of love, and the religious life to which it is to give birth in us is to be a life of love to God, securing our obedience, enlisting our service, and constraining us, by the mercies of God, to yield our bodies living sacrifices; thus teaching and strengthening us to “deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live godly, righteously, and soberly in this present evil world” (Titus 2:12).
The love of God will become a motivating power in our lives to the extent that we experience it in our souls. The outward holy life of a believer is the result of an inward principle of love to God. “The love of Christ constrains us” (2 Cor 5:14). For this cause the apostle breathed that precious prayer in behalf of the Thessalonian saints: “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God” (2 Thess 3:5). Standing on the shore of this boundless, fathomless ocean, he prays that the Lord, the Spirit, might lead their hearts into its infinite depths. What a necessary, holy prayer! What a vast and precious blessing! Their hearts were sinful, sad, and weary; guilt tainted them, bereavement shaded them, conflict and service exhausted them; and now, the apostle prays that they might be led into the sanctifying, soothing, life-refreshing love of God.
Into this ocean of divine love, my reader, let your heart plunge, just as it is. Take all its sin, and sorrow, and weariness, to no other purifying, comforting source, but to the shoreless, soundless sea of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Descend, in simple, child-like faith, into its depths, and lose yourself amid its infinitude! With this love of God filling and overflowing your heart, all will be well. Winter will bloom into spring, and spring will blush into summer, and summer will ripen into the golden fruit of autumn. Oh, how the love of God changes the aspect of everything! Afflictions are then revealed to be disguised blessings; trials, proofs of divine faithfulness; clouds, chariots paved with love and penciled with light, in which the Savior comes to us.” ~Octavius Winslow