My heart should operate through love.  Yet, I continue to discourage, to complain, criticize and challenge those whom God has commanded me to love.  May I follow personal or alternate life agendas and maintain my position on the skinny path to glory?  Without love I’ve got just humanistic reason, analysis and good intentions.  Without love I am powerless to convince anyone of anything.  I love them that is why I do what I do.  Without it there are only self-serving reasons left for my subsequent action.

I am sorry for what I have said, done, how I have said it or have done it that did not resemble love.  Love is so precious that if I don’t receive it myself it may turn me bitter and through contempt cause me to react in kind.  That is the enemy’s intent to deny us loving kindness replaced by cruelty and self focus so that it becomes difficult if not improbable that we will meet others in love.  I am not controlled by enemy suggestion but I can “choose” to participate in the feelings and emotionally controlled responses purposeful to the enemy’s argument.  I only follow the good shepherd so those things which I have not done through love must be inspected, revised, apologized for and discarded.

This is the man I was intended to become.  A man who loves even when not receiving that in kind.  For if I give love only in response to extended love then I am merely reacting as a dog for a cookie.  Love should be given freely as from God gives it freely to me.  This is not one of the choices I can take lightly for it directs all my ministry, my friendships, relationships and fortune.  Living in love is a life not a convenience.  I love you and you need to receive clear reflection of that love through my initiated and responsive actions, not just as reward for service.

Father, keep me close so that I may never be deceived, be disobedient or led astray.  It is your path upon which each of us walks.  Keep my feet firmly upon that surface, direction accurate and focus undeterred.  This is your life, I am thankfully along for the ride.  Let me never inject my command over your helmsman-ship.  You are the leader I follow and that is how it should and how I want it to be.  Let me live in love, through love and with love, throughout.  In your name I live, Jesus Christ the King.