Recently, I preached on becoming Love. If God is love and we become more like God, we become more like Love. Life presents many challenges to us and to our love walk. Every relational challenge is a challenge to our love. The world values beauty, power, riches, influence, fame, etc… God values love. Acts of love aren’t self-seeking and often go unnoticed—but God notices. Love is best seen in the cross of Christ. God so loved the world that he GAVE His only begotten son. Love gives. Love sacrifices. Love becomes vulnerable, Think of this: God created the world. All the power in the universe belongs to God, yet He chose to manifest in the world of flesh humbly, meekly, without credentials and without advantage. He was manifested hidden, weak, vulnerable, and helpless as a babe. The very nature of the cross is weakness, not strength. The cross, where God in Christ overcame the world, was a place of total self-abnegation—total surrender. Jesus gave Himself over to God in complete dependency. He did nothing from Himself or for Himself. He surrendered to the Father every moment of every day and found great joy in doing so; but, the cross was a surrender unto death. The cross involves pain, loss and shame. When we walk in God’s love we learn to consider others above ourselves, we learn to sacrifice for others and we learn to become vulnerable for the sake of others. True love is open, honest, pure, self-sacrificing and benevolent. If we grow in this love our weakness becomes strength and our shame becomes glory. There is resurrection for those who die to themselves and put on love for the sake of Christ.